The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  “Haven’t the faintest idea, mate. I just take the money and do the job. That’s how you get ahead in this world.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Davie said, and then he rang off.

  He looked around the room, at the books lining the walls, and wondered if Clare had actually read them all. He remembered her in school. She was still in primary when he was taking his exams to go to the comprehensive school in Penzance‌—exams that he’d failed. But he could remember how after the accident she’d been home for so long, and then going to school in her wheelchair, Janey Little always at her side.

  She would have had plenty of time to have read all of these and more, he decided. He pulled a book at random from the shelves and flipped through its pages. He wondered what it was like to read something like this. As a boy, reading the weekly Beano was about the most he could manage. The most he ever read now were the soccer scores‌—and that was only after he’d had a good eyeful of the page-three girl. But books . . . give him a good film anytime‌—preferably one of the old ones where black was black and white was white and a man didn’t get confused between the two the way it was so easy to in real life.

  He hefted a volume, enjoying the feel of it in his hand. Films were all well and fine, but something like this. It had a good weight in your hand.

  Clare was clever‌—had to be after reading all these books. And pretty, too. Funny how he’d never really thought of that before. You saw the cane and then that was as far as you looked.

  “Ready for that tea?” Clare called from the kitchen.

  “I’m on my way,” he said.

  Clever and pretty and easy to be with. And now someone was trying to kill her.

  He put the book back.

  Well, not if he had his say about the matter.

  5.

  “Felix, how could you?” Janey cried.

  To find him in bed with this woman was the final slap in the face. The ultimate betrayal. Because she’d been willing to listen to him. She’d believed Clare when she had argued for his innocence. But to find him like this . . . to know that all the time he really had been playing her for a fool. . . .

  The red tide of her anger lashed against the false calm that she’d held desperately in place for the past few hours.

  “Felix!” she cried again. “Will you at least look at me?”

  You drove him to this, a part of her protested, so why are you so angry? You sent him away into her arms.

  That was bloody rubbish.

  She’d sent him away‌—that much was true enough‌—but if he was really so innocent would he have rushed here to the American’s bed?

  “Felix!” she cried a third time, her voice going shrill.

  Lena was very cool. She rose from her awkward position‌—Felix’s penis slapping against his stomach as she got off him‌—and calmly covered her nakedness with a bathrobe.

  “Get out of here,” she told Janey as she belted the robe.

  Her voice was pitched low, but there was iron behind it. It was a voice used to being obeyed. A voice reserved for servants.

  Janey ignored her, all her attention on Felix.

  He never moved. He never turned his head towards her. He just lay there on the bed, staring at the ceiling, his penis shrinking and soft. He looked ridiculous, but Janey could feel her heart breaking all over.

  She took a step towards him. Lena moved forward, favouring her hurt leg, and stood between the bed and Janey.

  “I said‌—” she began.

  The woman’s movement broke the spell that Janey had been under. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she shaped a fist and hit Lena in the stomach as hard as she could. She stepped aside as Lena buckled over, gasping. Lena’s leg gave way under her and she fell to the carpet. Janey closed the distance that separated her from the bed. She moved her hand back and forth in front of Felix’s face, waiting for his gaze to track the motion, but all he did was continue to stare at the ceiling.

  Comprehension dawned on Janey, if not understanding.

  “You’ve drugged him,” she said, turning from the bed.

  Realizing that, her anger didn’t so much flee as it was redirected. But riding above it now was an awful fear for Felix. What had the woman given him? Would he recover?

  Lena was recovering. Using the side of the bed for leverage, she pulled herself up from the floor and leaned against the bed. She flinched when Janey took a step towards her.

  “Don’t think . . . you can get away with this,” Lena said. “I’ll have you charged with assault, you stupid little‌—”

  “You drugged him!” Janey cried, overriding the threat. “What did you give him?”

  As she stepped closer still, Lena took a swing at her, fingers spread like a claw, long polished nails arching towards Janey’s face. Janey dodged the feeble attack and slapped Lena, her hand leaving its imprint behind on the woman’s cheek‌—sharp red against the pale skin. Lena winced. She put up her own hand to cover the stinging cheek, her own attack forgotten.

  “What did you give him?” Janey demanded.

  She made another threatening gesture with her hand when Lena didn’t reply that quickly had the woman talking.

  “He’ll be fine. It’s just a drug to leave him open to suggestion. It’ll wear off in a few hours.”

  Her voice was surly, angry, but Janey didn’t much care. She’d bully the woman right out of Cornwall if she could.

  Keeping half an eye on Lena, she returned to the side of the bed.

  “Felix?” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Uuuh. . . .”

  She caught up his hand and gave his arm a pull, which brought him sitting up in bed like a robot that could move stiffly on its own, but couldn’t generate the locomotion without prompting. Janey glanced around the room until she spied his clothes lying on the floor. She gathered them up and gave them to him.

  “Put these on,” she said.

  He held them on his lap, but stared numbly into some unseen distance.

  Janey looked at Lena. All the fight seemed to have gone out of her except for a dark spark of anger that flashed deep in her eyes. Satisfied that she wouldn’t complicate matters, Janey helped Felix dress. It wasn’t much different from how she thought it would be clothing a mannequin. But she finally had him standing by the door, his duffel and accordion case standing out in the hall. Janey picked up Clare’s cane as well. Let the woman crawl around on her knees.

  “You’re going to be sorry,” Lena said suddenly.

  “Oh, really?”

  Janey was quite proud of the way she was keeping her temper in check.

  “You don’t have any idea of who I‌—”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Janey said. “I know exactly what kind of a person you are, and what you’re here for.”

  She smiled coldly as Lena registered surprise.

  “That’s right,” she added. “And maybe you can get anything you want with a snap of your fingers wherever it is that you come from, but it’s different here. Here we take care of our own. The best thing you can do is hop on the first train to London and fly back home, because if you come ’round bothering us again, you’ll have more than just me to deal with. I have a lot of friends in this area, Lena Grant, and we really do take care of our own.”

  “You don’t‌—”

  But Janey just shut the door on whatever the woman was about to say. She gave Felix a push down the hall, then lugging his duffel and accordion case, Clare’s cane awkwardly stuck under her arm, she followed him to where he’d stopped at the top of the stairs.

  “Down we go,” she said and gave him another little nudge to get him mobile once more.

  Ron met them at the bottom of the stairs, his anxiety almost comical. He looked closely at Felix who had paused once more, standing as still as a machine that had been switched off, then turned his questioning gaze towards Janey.

  “I heard shouting,” he began.

  Janey nodded wear
ily. “Sorry about that. Did we wake anybody up?”

  “No. It’s just. . .” He looked at Felix again. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “She drugged him. Nice clientele you have staying in this place, Ron.”

  “We don’t exactly pick and choose. Are you taking him to the hospital?”

  Janey shook her head. “I’m taking him home.”

  “But‌—”

  “About now,” she said firmly, “it’s the best place for him to be. I don’t want him waking up in some hospital room not knowing how he got there.”

  Ron looked as though he had more to say, but then he just shrugged.

  “Here,” he said, taking the duffel and case from her. “Give me those.”

  He stowed them in the car while Janey led Felix out into the rain and got him to fold his bulk into the Reliant’s small passenger seat.

  “There’s nothing more I can do?” Ron asked.

  “No,” Janey told him. She started up the car. “Thanks ever so much. You’d better get in out of the rain.”

  She flicked on the headlights and wipers. The latter were still misbehaving and pushed the water halfheartedly about on the windshield. Sighing, Janey rolled down her window and the rain came in. Ron stood watching them in the open door of the hotel. Giving him a wave, Janey turned the car about once more and headed back towards Mousehole.

  If she’d ever had a more miserable night, she couldn’t think of when it had been.

  6.

  Lena watched the door close behind them. She lifted a hand to her cheek, which was still stinging. Her stomach hurt too. Opening her robe, she looked down to see a bruise forming.

  She was not in good shape.

  Slowly she rose to her feet and hobbled over to the window where she watched Janey Little’s bizarre three-wheeled car pull away from in front of the hotel. She held a hand across her stomach, gently stroking the soreness, not caring that she stood with her robe open in the window where anyone passing by outside could see. But finally she belted it closed once more and sat down in a chair.

  It was karma, she thought. She had been trying to do the right thing, but because she hadn’t gone about it properly, it had all fallen apart. There had been a singular lack of focus. She hadn’t drawn on the clean sharp strength of her will, but had let her body’s pleasure centers rule her mind.

  “Never think with your groin,” Daddy had told her more than once. “That’s the first rule of business and it goes for women as well as men‌—don’t you forget it. Use your logic, not your libido. I’ve seen more comedowns brought about by business associates thinking with their brains in their groins instead of in their heads where they belong. . . .”

  It made sense. It was good advice.

  But she’d gone and broken that rule. She’d let her libido drag her into a situation where common sense would never have taken her. If she had just given Felix the knockout drug . . . rolled him up on the couch and then gone to bed . . . none of this unpleasantness would have happened.

  But now that it had . . .

  And when she thought of that little bitch waltzing in here like she owned the world . . .

  Anger didn’t solve anything either, but she indulged herself in it for a few moments all the same until she finally sighed. With an effort, she put it aside.

  Don’t get mad, get even.

  But that just meant losing him forever. Not that she had a ghost of a chance in patching things up with him in the first place. Not that she even wanted to. He was just some big dumb sailor, wasn’t he?

  Except and but and damn it all . . .

  She considered the alien sensibility that had brought her to this present situation and realized, with a maudlin regard that was also unfamiliar, that her feelings for Felix Gavin hadn’t changed. Not one little bit. He’d put a crack in the walls that she had raised so protectively around herself, squeezed his way through, into her heart and head, and now he wouldn’t leave.

  It wasn’t just the way he’d dropped everything to help her this afternoon, where anyone in her own circle would have nodded sympathetically and just gone on, if they even bothered to notice in the first place. Nor was it the simple honesty that just seemed to shine out of his pores, or the attentiveness with which he’d listened to her blather on. Nor was it the fact that he had a terrific bod . . .

  She didn’t know what it was. And what she didn’t understand, upset her. Because it left her open to weakness. Because it had her sitting here feeling lost and lonely like all the rest of the stupid sheep in the world who couldn’t have what they wanted. . . .

  She remembered the feel of his skin against hers. The gentle strength of his hands. How she’d drawn his hardness deep inside her. Because of the drug, he hadn’t been very energetic without prompting, it was true. If you stopped to think about it, it was almost a kind of necrophilia . . . but it had all felt so good . . .

  Her hand dropped between her legs and she leaned her head against the back of the chair, closing her eyes as she imagined that it was his fingers, rubbing back and forth, his touch, his caring for her that fueled the hot flash that grew deep in her belly and began to spread through her in a wave.

  But then she remembered Janey Little. And Felix’s disconsolate face when he’d come by to drop off the cane. . . .

  Her hand stilled. The desire fled, if not the need.

  She opened her eyes and stared across the room. Pulling her robe closed, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

  Don’t get mad, get even.

  There had to be a way that she could make good for Daddy and the Order and still get everything that she wanted at the same time. She just hadn’t worked it all through yet.

  This isn’t over, Janey Little, she thought. Not by a long shot, it isn’t.

  7.

  For Clare, it was a matter of control.

  When her assailant first attacked her, out there in the rain, just the two of them, she’d been afraid. Of being hurt. And then of dying. But underlying it all, reaching right to the heart of the primordial core that made her who she was‌—that differentiated her from the billions of other souls with whom she shared the planet‌—was the fear of losing control.

  What her assailant took from her at that moment violated her very essence. He had stolen what had kept her sane through the bedridden years and the years of physical therapy.

  Control.

  She had been dealt a bad hand‌—or dealt it for herself, some might say, though it was hard to think in those terms considering how young she’d been at the time she’d taken her fall. She had lost motor command of her body and fought with all the inner strength and will she could summon to regain it. And regain it she did. She didn’t recover it all, but she’d been far more successful than the doctors had allowed she ever would be.

  What was the secret?

  Control.

  When she was finally mobile once more, she swore she’d never give it up again. Not over any aspect of her life.

  So when her assailant stole it away‌—as casually as some horrible little child pulling the wings from a fly, simply plucking it from her with his brute strength and a knife‌—it undermined everything that had kept her strong through the years. Just like that. And even now, sitting in the kitchen sharing a pot of tea with Davie Rowe, the memory of that theft entangled her like a swimmer caught in a snarl of seaweed, caught and dragged down from the surface of the ocean, down into the depths, losing air, losing strength, losing control. . . .

  Control.

  What frightened her the most was how easily her assailant had stripped it away.

  She glanced across the table at her companion who was trying manfully not to slurp his tea. Davie Rowe. With his severe acne scars, pug nose, and oversize chin; the one large ear and his basically kind eyes that were unfortunately too small and set too closely together; the purple blotch of a birthmark that smeared the left side of his brow . . .

  It was a face only a mother could love, and from w
hat Clare knew, only his mother did.

  Like Clare herself, Davie Rowe had been dealt a bad hand as well, one over which he could never have had any influence. Based on his looks, he’d never had many friends. When he looked for employment, the doors closed in his face. He’d had little schooling and his only virtue, if it could be called such, was that he could handle himself well in a fight‌—he’d had a whole childhood and adolescence perfecting that skill. Unfortunately it wasn’t marketable. Was it any wonder that he’d taken up nicking wallets and the like from the rooms of the tourists who flocked to Penwith every summer? What else was he supposed to do?

  Everyone knew him in the village. He wasn’t so much Mousehole’s village idiot as its black sheep, and locally he was viewed with a certain amount of wary affection, though no one cared to spend much time in his company.

  But never mind his looks, or his history. At this moment Clare felt a pronounced fondness for him. And an odd sense of affinity.

  She considered‌—as a way of taking her mind away from that bleak feeling that had settled deep inside her and refused, point-blank, to be dislodged‌—what it must be like to be him.

  He wasn’t crippled, because physically his body performed all its functions in the manner they were supposed to, but he was disabled all the same. Because where people looked no further than her limp and her cane when they met her, with him they looked no further than his face. The principle difference between them was that she’d forced herself to overcome the limitations that society put on her while he either hadn’t been able, or been given the opportunity, to try to do the same for himself.

  “Have you read all those books?” Davie asked suddenly.

  Clare blinked and brought her thoughts back to earth.

  “What did you say?”

  “Those books in your study,” Davie said, nodding with his head down the hall. “Have you read them all?”

  Clare smiled. “Not likely. But I’ve read a lot of them. Why do you ask?”

  “I just wondered what it was like.”

  “What, reading that many books?”