Courting Shadows

by Jem Poster

  ‘I’d be interested to hear more,’ I said, ‘but on some other occasion. I must attend to Harris. He works well enough under supervision, but he can’t be relied on to do the same when I’m not standing over him. There’s also the matter of his indiscretion. I shall have to speak to him about that.’

  ‘Indiscretion?’

  ‘Starkey and Elsham knew about the coffin. More significantly, they appear to have known that the body is that of a woman.’

  ‘Either brother might have mentioned that.’

  ‘Yes, but only one of them knew – or should have known – about the inscription on the coffin-plate. Besides, I paid George Harris – not handsomely, I admit, but at a level commensurate with his expectations – to keep quiet.’

  Banks gave me a pained look.

  ‘Nobody can buy silence in a place like this, least of all – forgive me – an outsider like yourself. You have to remember that this is a close community with its own loyalties and a network of family relationships intricate enough to perplex the most expert genealogist. I’m aware, for example, that Laura Jefford has connections with the Starkeys through her mother’s side of the family and with Elsham’s wife through her father’s. Whether she could have known anything about the coffin’s occupant I’m not sure, but she’s certainly seen the inscription. I’m not necessarily pointing the finger in that direction, you understand – nor, I might add, am I rejecting your assumption out of hand – but I think you should acquaint yourself with the range of possibilities before confronting Harris with an accusation which may prove in time to have been misdirected.’

  ‘In that case I might as well drop the matter completely.’

  ‘That would be my counsel.’

  Dubious counsel, I thought; but I held my tongue.

  6

  Harris made a good job of reburying the coffin, piling the soil above and around it and stabilizing the heap with turves taken from the stack against the wall; but the smell of decay still hung about the place the following morning, pervasive as the fine drizzle drifting in from the west. He must have caught my expression as I joined him at the edge of the trench.

  ‘It clings to everything, sir. You can’t get clear of it. My wife smelt it on me last night when I got home – on my clothes, on my skin. You’ll wash yourself down before you lie with me, she said; and even though I did as she bid me – and my skin red with scrubbing – she turned from me as I got in beside her. And it might have been my imagination, but I woke in the night with the stench as strong in my nostrils as when I’d been kneeling here by the trench with the thing cracked open below. Sweating too, sir, my nightshirt soaked. And the dreams – I can’t get at them now, but they had to do with the woman. Yes, and I remember dreaming, or thinking as I woke, that we have a pact with them – with the dead. Don’t trouble us, I think they say, and we won’t trouble you. That’s the bargain, and if we break our side of it … I’m not a superstitious man and I don’t believe in ghosts – not in the usual way at any rate. But we’ve set things awry here with our meddling and I don’t reckon to see them put to rights until you’ve packed your bags and gone.’

  I should have responded, and with justifiable asperity, if Banks had not emerged at that moment from the porch, head down and with his hands cupped close to his chest. As he approached, he extended them to show us what they held.

  The bird had closed its eyes, but they flickered open as I bent to examine it more closely. The feathers of the crown were spiked, matted with blood; blood was crusted, too, around the nostrils and at the corners of the gaping bill. Banks shook his head.

  ‘Too far gone, I think.’ He half opened his hands, but the bird simply lurched sideways and keeled over, its exposed wing trembling slightly, its left leg stiffly outstretched, claws tightened in spasm. As I watched, the lid slowly closed again over the lustreless brown eye. Harris leaned over.

  ‘All the caring in the world won’t save that one,’ he said. ‘Better to put an end to its suffering now.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Banks. ‘I’ve thought about it on other occasions but could never quite bring myself to carry it through. Partly, I suppose, because I always nurse the hope, right up to the last minute, that even those in extremis might somehow recover.’ He looked up at us with an apologetic smile. ‘It’s an optimism fostered by my reading of the gospels rather than by the harsher teachings of experience.’

  ‘Take my word for it, sir, the bird’s dying.’

  ‘And partly because the calculated decision to kill a fellow creature seems such a serious matter.’

  Harris held out a soiled hand. ‘Give it to me. I’ll do it.’

  Banks appeared to hesitate.

  ‘It seems cruel, sir, but it’s the kindest way.’

  Harris took the bird from him with surprising gentleness. I had expected him to wring its neck, but he placed it carefully on the ground and then, almost before I had time to register what was happening, brought down the heel of his nailed boot on the small head, crushing it as a gardener might crush a snail. The body quivered briefly and relaxed. I saw Banks wince but, speaking for myself, I felt nothing but relief. Harris took up his shovel and dug a small slot in the spoil-heap. He scooped up the body and slid it in, then scuffed the loose soil back into place with his foot.

  ‘As close to a Christian burial as a bird is likely to get,’ I remarked lightly, turning aside. ‘Laid to rest in consecrated ground with a clergyman in attendance.’

  Banks did not smile.

  ‘I wonder if we might have a word,’ he said.

  He touched my elbow, nudging me towards the porch. I stiffened against the coercive pressure of his hand and swung round to face him.

  ‘A word about what?’

  He gave an almost imperceptible nod in Harris’s direction. ‘A word in private,’ he said quietly, edging away but with his eyes fixed on mine. I followed reluctantly.

  It seemed colder inside the church than out. Banks pushed the door shut behind us and stood for a moment in silence, staring into the gloom.

  ‘I’ve been thinking further,’ he said at last, ‘about your proposals for the nave. In particular, the matter of the pews.’

  ‘The matter has already been addressed, Banks, and a decision reached. I had no difficulty in convincing your superiors of the desirability of removal, and I’m under no obligation to recapitulate my arguments for your benefit. What I told you last week about the windows applies equally to the pews.’

  ‘But the whole lot, Stannard—’

  ‘The situation’s quite simple. The majority of the pews are riddled with wormholes, and those against the north wall are, without exception, rotting from the base up. We might conceivably get away with replacing a little over half of the total. But think about it: do you imagine our heirs would thank us for bequeathing them a patched vessel when we might have left them a sound one? From a practical, an aesthetic and – if we take the long view – even from an economic standpoint, complete replacement is the only sensible solution.’

  ‘Oh, it all sounds simple and sensible enough.’ He paused, holding me with his gaze for a second or two before continuing.

  ‘There’s something else. When I raised the matter with the Dean, he told me that your correspondence suggested that you had some moral objection to retaining the old pews.’

  ‘That’s an additional consideration, yes. I imagine you’ll be in broad sympathy with my views. The impact of a barbarous iconography on susceptible minds—’

  ‘Sympathy? I’m not sure that I even know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I can easily enlighten you. Come with me.’

  I led him up the aisle to the pew that had particularly attracted my attention on my first visit to the church.

  ‘Have you ever looked closely at this bench-end?’ I asked. ‘I mean the carving.’

  The figure had been worn to a glossy smoothness by the hands of generations of worshippers, but one could hardly fail to recognize the ess
entially pagan nature of its inspiration. A young girl, her forehead crowned with what appeared to be a floral wreath, was tossing back her head with wild abandon. Her mouth was open; her snake-like tresses tumbled loosely about her shoulders. The lower part of her body was largely concealed by the crudely carved folds of a long robe or gown, but where the garment fell open above the waist it revealed a bodice stretched tightly over the unmistakable contours of the breasts. The right hand had been smoothed almost out of existence, but it was still possible to see how its slender fingers cupped the left breast in a gesture at once self-absorbed and lascivious. The left hand, partially entangled among the curls, held what appeared to be a flute or pipe.

  ‘Of course,’ said Banks. ‘I often look at her.’

  ‘With a certain amount of unease, I would imagine.’

  ‘On the contrary, with a great deal of pleasure. I imagine her singing, in a kind of ecstasy. Between you and me, Stannard, I sometimes wish I could see a little more of her spirit in the faces of the occupants of some of these pews.’

  ‘This animation is of the flesh, Banks, not of the spirit. It belongs to an art less refined than our own, an art still struggling to purge itself of the qualities so disturbingly evident in this woman’s attitude and features. Take a good look at her. She’s low-life – fairground, bar-room, slum. Surely you can see that?’

  He gave me a strange sidelong glance.

  ‘Your interpretation is your own affair, Stannard. For myself, I confess I’d taken her for a member of the heavenly chorus.’

  He appeared to be entirely serious. I was struck, not for the first time, by the astonishing naïveté of the man, and it was with something approaching exasperation that I broke away from him and made for the door. He hurried after me.

  ‘Wait a moment, Stannard.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I feel we should continue this discussion. If not now, perhaps later in the day, at your leisure.’

  I kept walking.

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ I said.

  As I emerged from the church, a clod struck the porch wall, followed by a hail of small stones. I looked up to see two boys leaping up and down on the spoil-heap, grimacing like monkeys. One of them stooped as I stood there, picked up another stone and let it fly. I heard it whizz past my left ear and strike the downpipe behind me with a dull clang.

  They must have thought themselves safe enough, and certainly I had little expectation of catching them when I started to run. The taller of the two was off and over the wall in seconds, but the other stumbled in the loose earth and fell sprawling. I was on him before he could recover, dragging him from the mound and hauling him to his feet, my finger and thumb closing on his right ear. He gave a sharp grunt and kicked out at me, striking my shin a glancing blow with his muddy boot, but I tightened my hold and twisted his ear firmly enough to bring the tears to his eyes.

  ‘Let me go,’ he shouted, pawing ineffectually at my hand, his neck hunched into his shoulders.

  ‘Not until you promise me there’ll be no more stone-throwing. What do you mean by it?’

  ‘You’re digging up our ancestors. You’ve no right.’

  I think in retrospect that I might have applied a little too much pressure, though I remain unconvinced that the boy’s response was entirely genuine. He began to sob, a dry obstructed panting, his stooped back shaking. I shifted my grip to his collar but the sobbing continued; and then, without warning, he threw back his head and uttered a loud wailing cry.

  The noise brought Harris running from the far side of the tower, and at the same moment the door shuddered back and Banks came hurrying out of the church. As they approached, Banks half stumbling on the wet grass, the boy began to duck and twist, evidently in the hope of breaking my hold. I seized a tuft of hair with my left hand and, winding it around my fingers, quickly brought him under control.

  ‘What’s going on, Stannard? What was that cry?’ Banks was pale, breathless, visibly agitated.

  ‘Pure histrionics. The calculated response of a young ruffian worried that he might be about to get what’s due to him.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘He attacked me. Stoned me as I came out of the church.’

  Harris came up behind Banks and peered narrowly at the boy.

  ‘Is that so, Davy?’

  ‘I never, Mr Harris. I was throwing at the church wall when the gentleman came through the door.’

  I gave a half-turn to the thick curls in my hand. Banks winced.

  ‘You’re hurting him, Stannard.’

  ‘No more than he deserves to be hurt. It’s a preposterous story. The attack was deliberate.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘He’s as good as admitted it.’

  ‘Has he? When?’

  ‘When I caught him. He suggested that the reason for the attack was my disinterment of his ancestors.’

  ‘It’s not true, Mr Banks. I don’t even know what that word means.’

  ‘Ancestors?’

  ‘No, the other one.’

  ‘Did you mention your ancestors, Davy? Did you say anything about Mr Stannard’s digging them up?’

  ‘I might have. But I never said I threw stones at him on account of that. I never said I threw stones at him at all.’

  Banks looked from me to the boy and back again as though weighing our contradictory claims. I felt absurdly compromised by his handling of the situation.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Banks,’ I said, rather more heatedly than I’d intended, ‘you’re not adjudicating between a pair of scrapping schoolboys. I’ve told you how it was.’

  Harris leaned towards me with just the faintest hint of aggression in his stance.

  ‘The lad’s got a right to be heard too,’ he said.

  ‘Liars forfeit their rights, Harris. And this is none of your business. You’ve work to do – would you mind attending to it?’

  He moved off, but his intervention had clearly encouraged the boy, who twisted in my grasp and stared up at me.

  ‘I’m no liar,’ he said. ‘And if I did say that about our ancestors, where’s the wrong in that? You have dug them up. Everyone in the village knows it. You’ve dug up Jack Elsham’s grandma.’

  ‘That’s a story put about by fools,’ I said, ‘and you’re as big a fool for believing it.’

  He muttered something under his breath. I tugged at his collar, drawing his thin body so tightly to mine that I could feel his heartbeat against my ribs.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked. ‘What did you say just then?’

  ‘Let go, sir. You’re choking me.’

  ‘Nonsense. Tell me what you just said.’

  Banks reached out and touched my wrist.

  ‘I think you might ease off now, Stannard. There’s no need for that.’

  His misaligned sympathies had placed me a delicate position, and my embarrassment was compounded by the arrival of Redbourne, who came down the lane at that moment: an altogether more dashing figure on horseback, I thought, than he had appeared in his pew a few days earlier. He dismounted at the gate, tethered his horse and strode up the path towards us. I let the boy go, half expecting him to make a break for it; but he simply took a pace back and stood there glowering at me, fingering his reddened earlobe. Redbourne looked at him for a moment, evidently sizing up the situation, before turning to Banks.

  ‘I take it young Farr’s in trouble again?’

  ‘He’s certainly got on the wrong side of our architect. May I introduce—’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Stannard.’ Redbourne peeled off a glove and held out a white, rather feminine hand. ‘A great pleasure. It was partly in the hope of making your acquaintance that I rode out this way.’

  I was flattered by the remark; but as I began to frame an appropriate reply he turned aside, addressing himself to the boy.

  ‘This isn’t what I’d hoped for, Davy. What did I say last summer when we spoke about the poaching?
’

  ‘You said I should watch my step.’

  ‘What I actually said was that you should try to become a more useful member of society. You’re a clever lad, and I believe you might do well in the world. You owe it to yourself to mend your ways, and you owe it to me too. Do you remember what I gave you at the time?’

  ‘Threepence, sir.’

  ‘And what was the point of my giving you the money?’

  ‘I can’t remember the word you used.’

  ‘Inducement, Davy. The money was an inducement to good behaviour. And I can’t help feeling it was money ill-spent.’

  ‘You don’t know the truth of this, sir.’

  ‘I can guess.’

  ‘Guessing’s not knowing.’

  Redbourne was silent, toying with the fingers of his glove.

  ‘It’s not the same thing, is it?’ the boy persisted.

  ‘I think you should run along now, Davy. I want a word with Mr Stannard.’

  The boy looked up at him slyly from beneath his tousled fringe.

  ‘You said there might be more to come, sir. Another threepenny piece.’

  ‘On certain conditions. But I see no evidence that you’ve met those conditions. On the contrary.’

  ‘I have met them, sir. I’ve kept clear of trouble since the summer. And it’s not my fault if the gentleman thinks I was throwing stones at him.’

  He was looking at me as he spoke, staring rudely into my face as though daring me to respond. I should have done so, and sharply too, but Redbourne forestalled me.

  ‘That’s enough, Davy. Now go away. And you’re to stay out of the churchyard until the work’s finished. Do you understand?’

  The boy nodded and moved off, limping slightly. Redbourne watched him out of the gate before turning to me.