“I’m sure it will be wonderful, dear,” Linda said, taking his hand.
Seeing the two of them at the foot of the stairs, gazing at each other’s eyes in what for all the world appeared to be genuine connubial coadmiration, I recalled the scene in Templeton’s garden the previous night, savored the still humming pleasure of the conversation just completed, and grew almost dizzy with the heady advantage I had over both mortals standing before me. Though neither Linda Drain nor her husband had anything to do with my purpose in coming to Burkinwell, fate had somehow cast them into what — had I chosen to exercise it — could only be called my power.
Of what use was this “power” to me? I was attracted to Linda, but outside of my fantasies I had no desire to abduct her from this airy parsonage and chain her to my uncertain fate. And though I was sickened by Rev. Drain’s solitary nocturnal orgy (for reasons that seemed somewhat obvious, but which may not have borne close scrutiny), it could not benefit me in any way to destroy his career by exposing him to public obloquy.
To bear this kind of power and not to use it can bring about a certain pleasurable intoxication, which I thoroughly enjoyed as I backed, nodding agreeably, out the door of the Drains’ parsonage and bounced out through the gate and into the road.
Perhaps it was an excess of tea, or some residual effervescence from my conversation with Linda, but I felt a surge of energy and high spirits as I walked back through Burkinwell toward the Starry Night. It was late Saturday afternoon: The pocket of the weekend. Housefronts, walks, and gardens — the very air seemed pervaded with an air of relaxation and freedom. I passed neighbors chatting on doorsteps, children swinging lazily on gates, and girls walking arm in arm with warmly scented baskets of fresh bread. Hearing a rattling on the stones behind me, I stepped aside and was passed by a group of Gypsies, their wagon loaded with town provender.
Should I hitch a ride with them? I wondered. If Walsmear was at their camp, now was as good a time as any to seek him out. But I rejected this activity as far too heavy for my mood, which was one for the flourishing of happy plans and carefree imaginings.
Here, now, what was next for me? I imagined. Perhaps I could gather up my equipment from the church, pay my bill at the Starry Night, and return to London tomorrow. Bury this bizarre little episode in my life behind me in Burkinwell’s not-likely-to-be-disturbed obscurity. I could face my economic dilemmas with courage and cheer, and survive to fight another day with many still-vigorous years of manhood ahead of me. Running alongside the plan was another, completely opposite scheme. Why, I wondered, should I ever leave Burkinwell? Wasn’t that small town a kind of paradise in its own modest way? I would surely never get rich there, and the company (aside from Linda) would hardly be sparkling. But I could survive by supplanting the town’s resident photographer, with his ancient camera, moth-eaten bellows, frayed, dusty backdrop, and overfondness for drink.
So many choices! Savoring my mood, I did not head directly for the inn, but took a wide circle around the town, strolling down as many unfamiliar ways as I happened upon. At one point, I found myself angling a little farther into the countryside than I had intended, and so began circling back through a field that, at first, I didn’t recognize, but while I was in its midst realized was the field adjoining the Templeton cottage. Rather than passing the cottage directly, I backtracked a little, and hopped over the fence onto the road where it curved around beyond the factory.
Once again, I was on the bend around which Michael Walsmear drove his motorcar on what the penny dreadfuls might call “that fateful afternoon” when he struck Mrs. Templeton. Walking around the curve now, I imagined what it might have been like for him, high up in the driver’s seat while the motor putted ahead of or behind him, the leaf springs creaked beneath, and the wind blew around the glass and through his hair. Perhaps he was admiring the view from his bouncing perch, the gray stone walls, neat fields, and lush treetops swelling like hills above the scattered rooftops. Perhaps his eye was taken by the pointed sparkle of broken glass from the ruins of the factory, or the more sinuous reflections of the little stream that tumbled for a while alongside the road.
Whatever pleasant thoughts occupied him as he approached the far end of Templeton’s garden, the very place I was now walking toward, they must suddenly have been overwhelmed by the awful, horrible helplessness of those who witness fate hurtling along its path at a pace too rapid and inexorable for intervention. And so he must have seen her disappear under the front edge of the bonnet, must have rocked with the ba-bump, ba-bump as the wheels passed over her body . . .
This is as it might have been, I thought, passing the scene, if the policeman’s story was true. On the other hand, if, as was possible, Walsmear purposefully ran her down in a moment of passion and anger — what terrible, dark, and malevolent currents would have been flooding his soul as he passed this way!
The thought gave me a kind of chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. I actually hugged myself as I stopped beside the garden to let it pass. To the west, the sun was lowering toward the treetops. Skylarks, dark as commas, sailed above the tallest branches, and from leafy rooms, an easy, desultory twittering announced the coming dusk. I looked down at the garden to admire the effect of the slanting sun on its colors. To my surprise, Anna and Clara were there, playing amid the wands of blossoms.
I had not seen them at first. And they had not seen me. The reason for the latter, I guessed, was their deep involvement in some sort of imaginary sport. In solemn silence, and with faces possessed by a still absorption, they appeared to be chasing some thing or things down the path and through the byways between the flower beds. I recalled myself at their age chasing squirrels across Boston Common, or going after butterflies outside my aunt’s house in Quincy. What were these girls going after now? Midges? Fireflies? Fairies?
My pulsebeat suddenly roared in my head. Oh, why didn’t I have my camera?
They had to be chasing fairies. It made perfect sense. Whatever charm brought the fairies out would not likely operate when adults like myself, Walsmear, or Templeton were about. Otherwise some one of us would have seen them earlier. It was when the girls were alone and — I imagined — the air was charged with the full magic of their innocence that the fairies came out to play.
I almost dared not move lest they see me. But to observe them better, I had to take slow steps toward the fence. As I did so, all question of their playing a game of the imagination vanished. Their little eyes were both focused on something real. Sometimes the pupils of both would converge on the same precise spot. Other times they would diverge, clearly being led by things that flew before them. Moving points in space that they alone could see.
What would they do when they caught a fairy? I wondered, if indeed they were trying to catch fairies. An unsatisfactory answer came to me as I watched the younger girl, Clara, suddenly stop and put her hands together as if holding something between them.
Stopping my breath, I watched her quickly shift the invisible thing to the fist of her left hand, while giving a sharp twist over it with her right. At the end of this quick operation, she opened her hands, gave them a little shake, and went on pursuing another invisible point. Anna, standing a little way off, stopped and did almost the same thing: holding whatever it was in her left hand, then giving a twist with the other, almost as if she were taking the lid off a jar.
Astounded, and totally mystified, I took a moment when both their backs were turned and dropped to my haunches. Quietly and painfully, I duck-walked toward a portion of the garden wall overhung with a tall shrub where I might more comfortably hide and observe. Over the course of about ten minutes, I saw the girls appear to catch whatever quarry it was they pursued many times. And each time, they gave that little twist of the wrist before opening their hands and resuming the chase.
Never had I seen children so exhaust themselves in play. Yet the sport seemed utterly without merriment. Damp s
trands of hair nipped about their faces as they ran, stopped, crouched, and pounced through the flowers. Clara stopped at one point and began blinking and rubbing her dark-circled, red-rimmed eyes with her fists. Stretching, she squinted up into the sky as if waking from sleep and walked slowly toward the wall behind which I hid. Searching the ground around a certain low shrub, she crouched, then stood up again holding a small flower she had apparently plucked from the ground. Listlessly, as if performing an onerous duty, she stuffed the flower into her mouth, stem, leaf, and all. The moment she did so, she spotted me peering at her over the wall.
“Hello, Clara.” I smiled cheerfully.
She didn’t answer, but impassively spat the flower out of her mouth.
“Is that good manners?” I said.
“Mr. Castle!”
The shout came from her older sister, who came running over, apparently glad to see me. The younger girl stepped back.
“Now what are you girls up to?” I asked. “Eating flowers?”
“We’re saving them,” Anna said.
“Saving the flowers?”
“No,” Anna said, confused for a moment, then giving forth a weary giggle. “Not the flowers.”
“What’s he say?” asked Clara.
“Not the flowers.” Anna confused the girl further. To me: “The fairies.”
“You’re saving the fairies?”
“From . . . from . . .” the younger girl tried to name something for which, it appeared, there was no name.
“The little men,” Anna chirped. She turned to Clara. “The little men.”
“What are the little men doing?” I asked.
“They’re . . . they’re . . .” Clara began again.
“Hurting them,” Anna said. “They’re hurting the — ”
“Hoy!”
There was a shout from the cottage door. It was Brian Templeton, calling the girls in for their evening meal (it seemed that their new domestic regularity had survived my absence). Spotting me, he came walking over as the girls obediently ran inside.
“Just taking a last look, I hope,” he said, folding his arms as he approached the wall.
I nodded. “I’m considering going back tomorrow.”
“A very good idea. The best thing for all, I think.”
“I think so too,” I said, a little irritated by his manner. I wanted to goad him a little. “Of course, there’s nothing that truly compels me to go back there. You know, I might just settle down here in Burkinwell. I could set up a studio here. Maybe combine it with a camera shop and gallery. I think that kind of life might just suit me.”
“That would not be wise, Castle.” He frowned at me steadily. “This is not the American West. You can’t simply plop yourself down wherever you fancy and set up a life. The names in this town go back centuries. You have to be known to be accepted here. You have to be known or liked. If the people are against you, you don’t have a chance.”
“Well, thank you for the advice. I’ll keep it in mind.”
With a wave of my hand, I set off down the road. Glancing back, I saw him watching my departure, as if to make sure I was well and truly gone. From a stranger, to a guest in his home, to the man who might make him rich by photographing fairies in his garden, I had finally become for him a kind of enemy, it appeared. Or, at the very least, I was a discomfort and persona non grata. As far as I could see, I had no cause for self-rebuke in this becoming so. The status of my relations with Templeton had always been outside my control, his emotions clearly being steered by winds loosed in tempests long past.
The sun, the air, and the freedom of the day left me Saturday-afternoon tired by the time I returned to the Starry Night. The public room was crowded with strangers, in town for some commercial reason. I sat among the group for some time, listening to the talk and stories, but not really participating in the company. My mind was not held by the topics of motorcars, horses, crops, or the weather. Nor was I preoccupied by thoughts of fairies, or, curiously, the mysterious activities of Anna and Clara and the “little men.”
Almost to my own surprise, I found my mind crowded with a single image. It was an image that filled me with a terrible longing and sense of my own loneliness. It was the eyes, face, lips, hands, waist, and curving lips of Linda Drain as I had gazed upon them amid the plush and tea things of the afternoon.
I was aware that I myself felt strongly toward her almost from the moment of our meeting in the railway carriage. And it was no vain fancy of mine to believe that she in her turn was not indifferent to me. But up until now, I had felt myself constrained. I had put a limit on how far I would allow myself to dream of Linda Drain. She was, after all, married. And married to quite a decent fellow, as far as I could see.
My discovery of Rev. Drain’s nocturnal ramble, however, had changed my opinion drastically. I wasn’t quite sure what I had seen, but I was certain that it was “faithless,” in some serious way, to Linda. The man had, as the jazz singers might put it, “done her wrong.” To be writhing in sensual frenzy, alone, in a dark garden, while a woman such as Linda, ripe, eager, and narrow-waisted, lay alone amid the cold sheets, was, to my mind, a kind of senseless criminal act.
Therefore, I felt free to admit my feelings. And those feelings were simple. I loved Linda Drain. I desired her.
Of course, it was insane. Adolescent. But as I admitted these feelings to myself, I realized that I would not be leaving Burkinwell for London the next day. Or the day after. The thought that Linda Drain might be close would be enough to hold me in that little town. To weight me with longing, to confuse my ambitions, and probably to drive me to despair.
It was with an incredible melancholy that I dragged myself up the stairs to my room. I was, of course, spiritually prepared to love Linda in secret forever, to endure the hidden torture of my soul, and to go to my grave with her name seared in cipher on my exhausted heart. What I could not endure at that moment, however, was the impossibility of any physical union with the woman I loved.
My sense of physical longing became particularly acute as I entered my room where, as Esmirelda had predicted, the crumbs were still working themselves out of the floorboards. I had, in fact, a very rich sense of Esmirelda as I stood by the bed recalling the feel of her voluptuousness beneath the threadbare quilt. Where was she at that moment? I wondered, and then spotted a piece of paper protruding from under my pillow. It was a note. In a crude scrawl, it read, “We cannit meet here. Meet me jympsee camp. Tonit — Esmirelda.”
Yes, I thought, I will meet her. I will discharge my longing there, even as I despair that the great, low, inarticulate girl is not another. The body, if not the heart, shall have its release.
It was dark as I left the Starry Night, set out down the road, and went looking for the Gypsy camp. It would not be the experience I most wanted, I thought, but it would be good. Very good, in its own way.
The Gypsy camp, however, proved elusive. It was not in the wood where I had visited it before. Searching for it through grove and dale, I spent the evening chasing lights, shadows, fluttering bats, and lumbering cattle across the shadowy landscape.
By midnight, I had given up in despair. Wishing I had at least borrowed a bicycle, I set wearily off on foot back toward the town, wondering how to get myself readmitted to the inn without the unpleasant necessity of waking Cole.
From the place where I had decided to return, the most natural route took me, once again, down the road past Templeton’s. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I found myself rounding the bend toward the cottage; and as I did so, I had a queer fancy, seeing the darkened structure emerging from behind the wood.
The cottage, I fancied, looked like a sleeping man. The windows on the upper story were the eyes (now shuttered); the two large windows on the lower floor were the spots of two large, rosy cheeks; and the door was a squarish kind of mouth. Beneath what would be t
he cottage-face’s chin, the garden began and spread out in a great rectangular square like an enormous bedspread covering a vast recumbent sleeper.
This notion that the cottage was a sleeping face and the garden its blanket was, as I said, merely a notion or fancy. But it was so striking as to make me stop and enjoy it for a moment. Indeed, the rounded roof-top (tiled in the shape of its thatch predecessor) might have been an old-fashioned sleeping cap, and the chimney a — what? — a tall feather or a pipe tucked behind the ear. While I was pleasing myself with this view, I noticed some movement in one of the cottage’s cheeks.
Squinting into the darkness, I observed the shutters of the lower right hand window slowly push open from within. As I had done earlier that day, I hastened over to the garden wall and hid myself behind it.
Peering over the edge, I saw a small figure draped in white emerge from the window and drop to the ground. This was followed, a moment later, by a second figure, similarly garbed, who, as the first had done, ran for the garden the moment she touched the ground.
It was, of course, Anna and Clara. With their nightclothes billowing around them, they sped down the pathway to a spot not far from where I was hiding. There, I saw them bend and each pick a tiny blossom from the same spot where I had seen Clara pick one earlier that day. And as Clara had done then, both did now, each popping a flower into her mouth.
Not caring to be observed, I ducked down as Clara turned in my direction for a moment, chewing with a slightly pained expression on her face. I could hear the girls rustling out amid the flowers, whispering inaudibly between themselves. When I again looked up, I saw them grimly pursuing the same business I had surprised them at earlier. There were chasing some invisible things and occasionally catching them. And when they had caught one, they made that jerking, twisting motion with their hand, and went on to capture some others.
I could not imagine what the girls were doing, and Anna’s explanation that they were “saving the fairies from the little men” was not very helpful as I could see neither fairies, little men, or anything else in the moonless night.
Photographing Fairies: A Novel Page 20