Long Lankin: Stories (2 page)

He paused, and turned his great pale eyes on the boy.

—They won’t find me.

And then, as though his challenge had been heard, there came to them the sounds of something moving through the wood. Horse got to his feet and stood with the axe held in his fist. The boy looked up at his face, searching for a sign. The noises came nearer, and then a figure left the trees and came slowly toward the light.

Horse raised the axe, and the flames flashed along the wicked cutting edge. He took a step forward, and another, and the figure before him halted in uncertainty. All was still. Far off in the wood something cried out, and the strange voice called to them over the tops of the dark trees.

—What’s up, Horse? said the figure in the shadows. It’s me.

Horse gave a grunt of surprise, and the boy jumped to his feet.

—Rice, he cried. You gave us a fright, boy you really did.

Startled at the loudness of his own voice, he lowered his head and looked at his hands in confusion. Rice advanced, and Horse lowered the axe but did not move from where he stood. Rice passed him by, laughing nervously.

—You gave me a bigger fright, he said. Your man there with the hatchet, I thought he was going to take my head off.

He laughed again, and stood by the fire with his hands on his hips. Horse came and sat by them without a word. Rice looked from one of them to the other and asked:

—What’s up here?

—Nothing, said the boy. Why?

—You’re very pale, the two of you. Who did you think I was, anyway?

—Why did you come out here? Horse asked quietly.

—Do you not like my company, Mr. Big Shot?

Horse shrugged his shoulders and looked away. Rice turned and grinned at the boy, and winked. Rice was a fat little boy with a plump round face and straw-coloured hair. He had short thick fingers with broken nails, and he was always short of breath. He turned to Horse again and said:

—You’re getting dangerous with that hatchet. Some day you’ll go rightly off your nut and brain somebody.

He gave a little wheezing laugh. Rice was the only one of the gang who was not awed by Horse. Now he said:

—Hey Horse.

—What?

—I have a message for you. I came out with it specially.

—What message?

—Ah let it wait a while, Rice said slyly.

He slipped his hand into his pocket and drew out a sticky pink sweet and popped it into his mouth. Sucking noisily, he gazed into the fire.

—Funny thing, he said. I met a fellow out on the road.

They looked up at him, waiting, but he seemed to have forgotten about them. He brooded, his cheeks working slowly on the sweet, and then the boy prompted:

—Well? What about it?

Rice looked down at him, startled.

—What about what?

—The fellow you met.

—O yes. Yes.

He sat down between them, taking great care that his bottom was covered by the tail of his raincoat.

—Well, he said. I was coming up the hill on the bike and it was getting dark. There was this fellow sitting in the ditch at the top. Well, I wasn’t afraid of him or anything, but as I said it was getting dark, like. Anyway, when I was going past him he calls me over and tells me about this murder.

He paused, and the silence about them seemed to grow more intense. After a moment Rice went on:

—He said there was a woman killed in town last night. Her head was battered in.

—What woman? Horse asked, without raising his head.

—That Mrs Hanlon that had the shop in the lane down by the picture house. You know her. We used to get the sweets from her when the matinees were on. Her.

—I know her, the boy said. I remember her.

—This fellow, anyway, he said that she wasn’t found until this evening. She was on the floor behind the counter and the shop was shut. She was on the floor and her head battered in and blood everyplace.

—Who did it? the boy asked.

Rice ignored him. He was staring into the fire with a perplexed look.

—He was a funny guy, he murmured.

—Who?

—This fellow that said about her getting murdered. Funny-looking.

—But who did the murder, Rice?

—What? O I don’t know. He said that no one knew. The guards are looking for a man but he says they won’t find him. He says anyone who’d do a thing like that would be smart enough not to get caught. He was a queer guy.

Horse moved a little away from them, and with his axe began to cut a notch in a thick green branch. Rice and the boy stared into the fire.

—Nothing was took, Rice said.

—What do you mean?

—He said there was nothing took out of the shop. No money or anything. Nothing at all. That’s queer, isn’t it?

—Queer all right.

The boy looked at the wood that encircled them. It was fully dark now, and the firelight threw long shadows that pranced and leaped against the trees. He shivered, and turned to Horse. But Horse was gone.

—Horse, he called softly, but no answer came.

Rice stood up and looked about him.

—Where’s that mad eejit gone to now. I never heard him make a move.

They stood side by side and peered into the darkness that lay between the trees. They looked at each other uneasily. The boy crossed the clearing to where Horse had been sitting. No trace was left of him but the branch he had been whittling, it lay there in the firelight with a deep wound in its side, bleeding a trickle of sap.

—Hey, Rice softly called to him. Look at this.

The boy went and stood beside him and looked where he pointed. Horse’s axe lay at their feet, a wicked weapon among the leaves. They turned and walked slowly together about the perimeter of the clearing. They searched the shadows, and even stepped among the trees, but would go no deeper than where the firelight reached. They called to him, and called, and nothing answered but the wild wood’s echo.

Lovers

Birds were going mad in the square, spring and the recent rain had them convinced that they were enchanters. Muriel crossed the road and sauntered along by the green railings, swinging her bag and whistling with the magic music. Late April sunlight was in the street, softly washing against the houses and dusting the ragged trees with colour.

She turned the corner and light from above flashed in her eyes. She looked along the tall face of the houses. At a high open window a figure stood, one hand on the sill. She waved her arm, and smiling she lowered her head and ran across the road. As she came near it the door opened and a bent old man in a shabby raincoat shuffled out on the step. He peered at her, his jaw working, his little eyes half closed against the light. She was about to step past him when he turned and slowly, firmly closed the door. She watched him as he went down the steps muttering to himself, then she grinned and put out her tongue at his back. She rang the bell. After a long moment she heard steps in the hall, and Peter opened the door.

—Well, she said. You came at last.

He stood in the dark musty hall, smiling, one arm raised and laid along the edge of the door. The front of his sweater was covered in dust, and he needed a shave. He was about to speak when she pointed at his head and laughed.

—Look at you, she said. You have cobwebs in your hair.

—Cobwebs. So I have.

They climbed the stairs and he put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. She said:

—Have you everything ready?

—Almost.

The flat looked as though something had exploded there. On the sagging bed were piled books and papers tied into bundles with thick white string. Two battered trunks stood by the window, their straps straining. The kitchen table held the remnants of two or three meals, and the floor had a thick layer of dust that soaked the sunlight where it fell. An ancient wardrobe lay on its side before the fireplace like a great dead animal, its mirror smashed. She stood in the middle of it all and looked around with comic despair. He lit a cigarette and leaned his long thin frame against the sideboard. He watched her, smiling. She said:

—Have we to take all this?

—Well, not the wardrobe.

She laughed, and dropping her bag she stepped near him, and the light picked out the tiny yellow flecks in the pupils of her eyes. When she opened her lips a thin silver thread hung between them an instant, and broke. He took her in his arms and kissed her. After a moment she laid her cheek against his neck and asked:

—What will we do today, Peter?

He did not answer, but buried his face in her dark hair. She moved back a pace and looked up at him.

—What’s wrong?

—Nothing, he murmured. Have you forgotten?

—What?

—We said we’d visit my father. You said you would come with me.

She went to the window, and he said wearily to her back:

—One day. It’s not much.

—I know. But I’m afraid of him, Peter.

He snapped his teeth together and looked at the floor. He said:

—How can you say that? He’s just an old man.

—I don’t know.

He went to her, and her lip was trembling when she turned. He took her face in his hands. At first she would not look at him, but he stood silently and stared at her until she raised her eyes. He said slowly:

—He’s an old man and dying and he can’t touch us even if he wanted to. Next week we shall be in France and then the world is before us. There’s nothing to fear.

She dropped her eyes again, murmuring:

—I know. I know. But Peter, I’m not logical like you and … and strong.

He laughed suddenly, and putting his arms around her he picked her up and whirled her in a circle. With her hands on his shoulders she looked down at him and giggled. He buried his face between her breasts and shouted:

—We’re getting out. Out. Away.

He set her down again and said into her face, his voice shaking with laughter:

—You hear me, you mad bitch? We’re getting out and we’re not coming back. Think of it.

With her mouth open she grinned, nodding her head, yes, yes.

—And we’ll be free, she said.

—We’ll be free. We’re young and the world is wide. We’ll be free.

He told her to wait then, and whistling gaily he left the flat. She listened to his steps fade down the stairs, and when the whistling too had faded she turned back to the window and put her face against the glass. The sun-drenched street was empty but for a lame dog that stood in the gutter, sniffing delicately at a soiled scrap of newspaper. From far off came the sound of faint music, beating softly through the air with slow, sad strokes. The dog lifted a leg and watered on the paper, shook himself, and trotted away. The music ceased, and there was silence. Muriel turned and stood with her arms stiff by her sides and looked at the disordered flat, the books, the dust, the blue threads of smoke he had left to hang so still on the air. Everything seemed strange, and somehow mournful, as though the things she knew were fading into the past even as she stood there. She began to weep.

When he came back she was standing before the mirror, painting her eyelids. He stopped whistling and looked closely at her reflection in the glass.

—You’ve been crying.

—I have not. Where were you?

—At the shop. Why were you crying?

—I wasn’t. I told you I wasn’t.

—All right. You wasn’t.

She twisted about and fell into his arms, pulling him close. She said:

—Everything will be all right, Peter, won’t it?

—Of course. Now let’s go see the man.

She went out of the flat, and on the stairs Peter kissed her again and told her that everything would be fine.

By the canal the green bus carried them, past the hideous new buildings of glass and steel, past bored swans, the dusty trees, past the old men who walked the tow paths to watch the water in its changes. Peter said:

—I wonder if we’ll miss all this.

She looked at the streets riding past.

—I will. I’ll miss it. Poor city.

The trees were in bloom in the grounds of the hospital, their faint wood perfumes mingled with the smell of cut grass. As they walked up the drive a pair of pigeons fled before them, their wings clattering in the silence. Cars were parked before the entrance, and a withered old lady was slowly picking her way across the lawn.

They went in through the high doors and stopped at the reception desk, where a nurse with a bored expression sat behind the glass. From the stairs above them came the sound of voices to disturb the hanging silence.

—Mr Williams, please, Peter said.

The nurse looked slowly from one of them to the other, then lowered her eyes and examined Muriel’s white linen dress. She ran her finger down a chart before her on the desk and said:

—Three-forty-two. The corridor to your right. Count the doors.

They walked down the white echoing corridor. Far off at the end there was a window of frosted glass where the sun came in and made a mist of light that glared on the polished floor. Muriel pulled down the corners of her mouth and said in a funereal voice:

—Count the doors, all ye who enter here.

Peter smiled vaguely at her and looked away. They came to the room and he knocked gently.

The walls were of the same sterile white as the corridor, and the floor had pale green tiles. There was a plywood wardrobe and a small locker. Opposite the door a square window looked out over the lawn to the trees along the drive. The bed was long and narrow, with white enamelled legs and a white spread. The old man lay there propped up against the pillows, his face turned to the window.

—Hello dad, Peter said.

Slowly the old man turned his head and looked at them blankly. Muriel took time to close the door, then stood awkwardly with her weight on one leg. The old man was tiny, his feet reached only half way down the bed. His thin hair was white as the walls, and his eyes were small and dim and seemed to look inward. His withered hands lay motionless on the covers like two white, plucked birds. He continued to gaze at them without sign of recognition. Peter rubbed his hands on his trousers, and laughed nervously and said:

—It’s me. Peter. How are you today, dad?