The Wanderers

by Tim Pears

A wasp buzzed. Close by. It must be flying around his head somewhere. Except that some quality of the sound suggested distance. Not an insect. A machine. Approaching. He stopped the horse. The sound grew louder, coming closer from along the winding lane. Leo slid off the horse and pulled him hard against the hedge and gripped the bridle tight. A horn blew, high-pitched, like the alarm call of a fractious mallard, and the colt tensed. The combustion engine grew louder, then it appeared around the corner thirty yards away, and bore down upon them.

  Eyes wide, the horse reared up as motorbike and rider screamed towards them. Perhaps what the colt saw was a grotesque parody of himself. Hooves replaced by wheels. Frame, rods and forks, pistons and pipes, the parts of a skeleton of a creature without flesh, nothing but bone. The colt pranced on his hooves as if the ground were suddenly too hot to stand on. Holding tight the bridle, Leo glimpsed the rider hunched over his motorbike like a jockey, gripping the handlebars with leather gloves, some kind of spectacles buckled to his head beneath a peaked cap, worn back to front.

  The bike disappeared around the next bend and the sound of the engine, like the scream of some animal in pain, faded away. When the boy could hear it no more, still its impact remained, some strange resonance, as if it had sucked oxygen out of the air, and the atmosphere would require a period of readjustment.

  Leo spoke to the horse, calming him from the terror of this intrusion. Holding the bridle with his left hand, he pressed the fingers of his right hand to the skin beneath the colt’s jaw until he found the artery there, and felt the animal’s heartbeat hammering, almost as fast as his own.

  *

  They rode down into the town of Tavistock. There was intermittent traffic: traps, a governess cart, carrier carts, drays. He was surely conspicuous amongst them. A number of the large granite buildings in the centre of the town possessed battlements, as if they aspired to the status of castles, yet the crenellations only made them look like children’s toys. Like Lottie’s facsimile, Leo remembered, of the big house in its own attic. In Tavistock he found a bakery and bought bread. In a provision store he bought a lump of cheese. A greengrocer sold him apples and carrots, and gave the boy a potato sack to carry these victuals.

  Leo mounted and rode out of the town. He followed the Tavy river down along a wooded valley. In one stretch all the trees were being throttled by ivy. In another the trunks of the beeches were covered in moss of an intense green, as if these trees had grown themselves an extra skin.

  The moist air smelled fresh from the downpour. No more rain fell from the sky but when a breeze shimmered through the valley, water dripped from the leaves. The rain had swollen the river, which ran dark brown. Four men built a wall beside it. Two dressed in waders stood in the water, the other two on the bank above. All stopped working to watch the boy as he passed them on the white horse, gazing blankly at him, none raising an arm to greet him or acknowledge his passing, as if he were some strange child of the woods of whom they had heard tell but never seen before.

  He rode beside a stream, through a valley with fields of meadow and marsh grass, no beasts grazing thereon and woods rising to either side. He saw men cutting trees with long two-handled saws.

  A chaffinch stood on the branch of a tree and called to him. Leo attempted to whistle back to it in its own language but it took off and flew away. He stopped and ate some bread and cheese. As he ate, Leo stood and listened to the birds. He could hear them calling – small birds, wood pigeons, crows. The air around him was composed of layers of birdsong.

  *

  In the afternoon he forded a stream and rode up out of the woods along a lane past large, long, quadrangular fields. Some for grazing, others ploughed. Beneath the young corn the soil was turning red again. As they kept climbing out of the steep valley, he and the horse rose straight up to the sky above, clear blue, washed clean by the rain. Up on the ridge he crossed a single-gauge railway line and then entered a large field across which a flock of sheep grazed. His arrival vitalised them. They came towards the horse, crowding all together, hustling and shoving, noisily bleating. They parted enough to allow passage through their midst then followed the horse and rider across their high field with a plaintive chorus of lamentation, beseeching them to stay. They’d hoped the boy was their Messiah long awaited, come to free them from their sorrow, yet they knew already that he was not, merely another false prophet, and so they wailed loud and resentful once again, a congregation grieving for themselves. If they could betray him to the gypsies they would.

  *

  In the cooling evening the boy sat his horse and looked upon the wide valley below, pondering his route down to the brown river, which snaked south, nosing its way towards the sea. Mist rose from the water. There was traffic on the river, boats of different size and sail. He could see one bridge. To the north was a quay with many buildings, and ramps, conveyors, sheds, bustling even at this late hour of the day.

  Across a water meadow lay a path. A ribbon of mist formed along it as he watched. He kicked the horse forward. They descended the steep fields, the boy leaning back almost with his own spine along that of the animal, so sharp was the incline.

  They rode along the misted pathway like ghosts of those countless animals and riders whose passage had hollowed out their route. As he approached the riverbank, Leo looked up. The bridge was a viaduct, raised on huge pillars, a hundred feet above the river. A train steamed across it. Halfway across, its whistle blew, for the benefit of its passengers, perhaps. Leo watched the plume of white smoke in the wake of the train dissipate in the sky, whose colour was turning to a paler blue before it darkened into night.

  He rode on upstream, passing beneath two of the massive pillars.

  *

  ‘An a’penny for you, but if you wishes me to take yon horse twill be a penny a’penny.’

  The ferryman was a stout, bearded man with muscular shoulders. He did not look simple but perhaps he was.

  ‘I do wish to bring the horse, sir,’ Leo said. ‘How could I not?’

  The ferryman shrugged. ‘Let im swim?’

  Leo looked across the river. Some kind of steamer sailed downstream.

  ‘I won’t be able to take no one else, see?’ the ferryman said. ‘They wouldn’t want to share the platform with no horse who might turn spooky, see?’

  The boy looked around. There were no people in sight, and little prospect of further passengers. He said nothing, but handed over the money and led the horse onto the barge. As the ground shifted the colt skittered, sliding his hooves one way and another to secure his balance. The ferryman loosed the rope coiled around a wooden post on the riverbank. He stepped onto the barge and took up the oar and placed it in a rowlock on the back plate of the vessel and began promptly to work it to and fro in the water, both oar and rudder in one.

  Leo held the horse, and stroked his shoulders. The barge moved slowly but unwaveringly towards its corresponding bay on the far bank. The ferryman must have much knowledge and skill to work so consistently against the current. As they came into the middle of the river the boy saw fish in the water before and around the boat, a multitude of them, all swimming downstream. He turned in confusion to the ferryman and yelled to ask him what they were.

  ‘Salmon,’ the man called back. ‘Come up the Tamar to spawn. This lot was born somewheres up there.’ He gestured with his chin upriver. ‘Two year old. Now they’s headin out to sea.’

  The barge progressed through the shoal of fish and on to the far bank. The quarryman turned the barge and docked. He secured the rope to its post. Then Leo led the horse onto the bank, and mounted, and rode on into Cornwall.

  Part Five

  DISSECTION

  1

  Lottie, July 1913

  The lad walked silently through the walled garden, on through the glasshouse and down the steps to open the door. Sid Sercombe stepped into the dank cellars. The girl was there, waiting for him. Often she was not, and he would leave a package for her in the old oak cupboard amongst the
stack of stowed furniture. He handed her a small parcel tight-wrapped in hessian.

  She took it and did not thank him but said, ‘Do you have more or fewer bones in your body now than when you were born, Sidney?’

  The lad frowned and said, ‘I do not know, Miss Charlotte.’ He shook his head. ‘I never thought about it.’

  ‘Have you never studied a skeleton?’

  ‘Not a human one, miss.’

  ‘In that case,’ she said in a tone of forbearance, ‘you might consider the matter a moment now, and favour me with an answer.’

  Sid pondered the riddle. ‘Well, I never counted em,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know as I’ve lost any. As I noticed, like.’ He bit his lower lip in concentration. ‘My brother Fred did push me out a tree when us was nippers and snapped the bone in my arm here. I thought twas mended but maybe there’s two bones now where there was one before.’ He smiled. ‘Yes, tis a trick question, Miss Charlotte, and that’s your answer. I has one more bone than I was born with.’

  The girl shook her head. ‘You have far fewer,’ she said. ‘You were born with three hundred. A number of bones fuse together in childhood. How old are you, Sidney?’

  ‘Seventeen year old.’

  The girl looked up at him. ‘By the time you are fully grown, if you are not already, you’ll have not many more than two hundred.’ She nodded to the small packet in her hands. ‘Now, what have you brought me?’

  Lottie placed the parcel on a dust-covered table and untied the string. Then she unwrapped the hessian and beheld the contents.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Another rat. Is that the best you could do?’

  ‘Her’s fresh. Alive not an hour ago.’

  ‘But still. You have given me a number of rats.’

  ‘See how swollen her belly is,’ Sid said. ‘Pregnant. And well on, I should say.’

  The girl gasped. ‘But that’s marvellous!’ she said. ‘It’s just what I wanted.’ She folded the wrapping as it had been before and tied the string. ‘Here,’ she said, and gave the lad one penny. ‘Thank you, Sidney.’

  The girl turned and hurried away along the corridor through the cellars. The lad went back out of the door by which he’d entered and walked away from the big house.

  2

  The girl helped herself from the silver chafing dishes set on the sideboard: poached and scrambled eggs, haddock, kidneys. There were also hot rolls, three kinds of marmalade. A cold platter of ham. She carried her plate to the table. Her father read the newspaper. He tilted his head slightly and looked up at her over the top of his spectacles, and smiled, and returned to his reading. The girl munched her breakfast. The poached eggs were perfectly done, runny orange yolk inside firm white globes, which meant Cook had poached them herself. Anyone else and the yolk was too hard or even worse the white too runny, gelatinous, it made lottie sick.

  ‘Does it not bother you, Papa,’ she said, ‘to know that what you are reading about took place the day before yesterday?’

  Her father looked at her, then lifted his cup and sipped coffee. ‘Your grandfather’s copy took not one but two days to reach here. Things are speeding up.’

  The girl was unimpressed. ‘I don’t know how you can stand it,’ she said, smiling. ‘I could not.’

  Arthur Prideaux removed his glasses. ‘Much of what is reported from around the Empire has taken days, weeks even, to reach London. Look at this.’ He lifted the newspaper and brushed his fingers against the page. ‘Skirmishes on the Northern Frontier district of the East Africa Protectorate. There’s nothing there, only arid waste, but the few unfortunate inhabitants are raided for their cattle by Abyssinians. Tribes bring their own beasts in from Somaliland to graze and steal the water from the wells. Ivory hunters cross the border in both directions. It says here a gang of Abyssinian outlaws attacked a platoon of native rifles. Shot the British officer. Murdered the poor fellow. It happened weeks ago. What does another day matter?’

  He reached forward and scooped a spoonful of marmalade, dolloping it onto the remnant of toast left on his plate. He lifted the toast and ate it. Lottie could hear it crunch between his teeth. He swallowed, and said, ‘One is told that many of the stars in the night sky burned out long ago, they do not exist, their light has taken aeons to reach us, yet still we study them.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Her father smiled again. Lottie saw and scowled. ‘You read the news down here a day later than almost everyone else in England does, Papa. That is sad.’

  Lord Prideaux shrugged, with mournful theatricality, as if to say, What can one do? One does the best one can in the circumstances. ‘Would you rather live closer to London?’ he asked. ‘Or Manchester, perhaps?’

  The girl shook her head and said, ‘I’m sorry, Papa. If being a little out of touch with events is the price we pay for living here, it is a small one. You are right.’ She poured a glass of pear juice and drank, then put her glass down and said, ‘Where is your heart, Papa?’

  ‘My heart?’ He frowned. ‘It is with you, my dear girl, of course. It is with your mother and always will be. But time moves on, and—’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, whereabouts in your body? The organ. Touch your chest to show me where your heart is.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well.’ Her father raised his left hand then changed his mind and lowered it and raised his right hand instead and touched his jacket over his left breast.

  ‘That’s what everyone does,’ Lottie said. ‘You’re all wrong. Our heart is in the middle of our chests. The bottom of it leans over to the left and the strongest pumps are located there, so that’s where we feel our heartbeat. It’s an illusion.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, my dear.’ Her father nodded. ‘Thank you. Most impressive.’

  ‘Some of our organs are to the right and the left of our body. Like eyes and ears, of course. And kidneys.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Two organs that are almost identical, but not quite. Have you any idea how many organs there are in a human body, Papa?’

  Arthur Prideaux rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t believe I do,’ he said, but he was already putting his reading glasses back on.

  ‘Almost fifty. Isn’t that remarkable?’

  ‘It is,’ her father murmured, while glancing at his watch. ‘I say, my dear, won’t Ingrid be expecting you?’

  ‘Which one do you think is the biggest?’

  Lord Prideaux removed his glasses once again. ‘What?’

  ‘Which is the largest organ in the human body?’

  Her father inhaled deeply, and sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The heart?’

  ‘No. You’ll never guess, Papa. Nobody does.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I just might. The lungs?’

  ‘No. Do you give in?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s a trick question, isn’t it? Some odd thing . . .’ He gazed towards the table and swung his head slowly from side to side. Then he looked up. ‘Of course! I know, the guts . . . they’re much longer than we think. What’s it called? The colon.’

  ‘No. Shall I tell you, Papa?’

  Her father breathed in and then breathed out, his shoulders dropping. ‘Well, all right,’ he said.

  Lottie grinned. ‘The skin.’

  ‘Skin?’ her father said. ‘Piffle. The skin is not an organ, dear girl.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘Nobody gets that one.’ She rose from her seat and turned and walked to the door, her father watching until she’d left the room before he returned to his two-day-old copy of The Times.

  3

  The dowager Lady Prideaux, Lottie’s great-grandmama, no longer left her bed. In the morning her maid washed and dressed her, changed the bedding, then fed her, one spoonful at a time. Often she needed help with her tasks from Lottie’s maid Gladys, for the old lady became distressed. The only one who could reliably calm her down was her great-granddaughter. So this morning after breakfast Lottie did as she always did before her lessons with Ingrid Goettner and visited her great-grandmama.
The old lady lay whimpering like a frightened bird and Lottie took her hand and spoke to her until her agitation subsided. Then she placed a kiss upon her powdered cheek and left the room.

  The girl studied Latin grammar for one hour then history for one more. While Lottie read of Romulus and Remus, then of William Tell, her governess marked the Latin/German translation she had set her.

  At eleven o’clock the maid brought in a tray of milk and biscuits – some flavoured with lemon, others almond. Lottie told her governess that the crumbs would pass from their stomachs to their small intestines. Ingrid grimaced. Lottie said that this organ was twenty feet long. The molecules of food would creep through its walls to tiny blood vessels, or capillaries to be precise, and be carried in the blood to parts of the body where they could become molecules of new human cells.

  ‘Of course what is not needed will continue, to the large intestine, and on to the rectum, and—’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Lottie,’ Ingrid said. ‘It is very interesting. Just what I am wishing to consider as we take our elevenses.’

  ‘It is natural.’

  ‘It is crude.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a muff, Ingrid.’

  The governess was of indeterminate age. Her unlined face could have been that of a girl but she wore dark, sternly cut clothes with high collars and her hair tight to her head, and her dark tresses had single white hairs scribbled amongst them if one looked at all closely. Lottie did not believe that she herself would become one of those vain, empty-headed women she had met at that summer’s parties, yet she reckoned she would pluck such errant hairs if they appeared before they should. She wondered whether Ingrid might be as old as thirty or even forty but had not quite the impudence to ask. Nor had she determined the cause of her governess’s limp.

  ‘You are ready to leave, Lottie, this is plain to see. You must be patient.’

  ‘I do not wish to leave. Why should I have to? Other girls don’t go until they’re seventeen or eighteen.’