The Girl Green as Elderflower (14 page)

So the merman from that time lay alone in the straw, which was never changed. Sometimes his fingers moved as if he were enjoying a tune from the radio. Sometimes he heaped up straw in the shape of his friend’s sleeping body, and before sleeping himself he patted its head.

There came a day when John and Roger had leave in Woodbridge, and at the proper time Roger returned alone. To inquiries about Private Westoft, the silent older soldier merely said that he had ‘lorst ’im’.

John returned two days late. Taken before the Constable, his only explanation was: ‘She was worth it.’

‘I hope you’ll continue to think so,’ said the Constable. ‘Mr Clare, make arrangements for that man to be flogged.’

The flogging took place below the mound, before all the castle’s company. Among them was the merman. His face showed no expression, but on each cheek was one unmoving tear.

That night John came back to the now freezing dungeon, to the wet and stinking straw. John could not stop shivering. The merman prepared him a bed in the driest corner, heaped straw over him, and on top laid his own warm body, which never suffered from cold. But through the straw he felt his friend still quivering, as if in the throes of malaria.

In the dark the merman went to the wall where the ladder usually hung. His cunning fingers and toes found impossible crannies, he swarmed up the glistening wall to the level of the vestibule. The portcullis was raised, but a sentry slouched near it. With regret, with no great force, the merman gave a chop to the soldier’s neck, and the man toppled. The merman caught him and lowered him carefully to the floor, where he lay still.

Going back to the dungeon, the merman let down the ladder and went to rouse John. John had not been fully asleep, but was feverish and light-headed, and could only say, as he was helped up the ladder: ‘It int morning, is it?’

They wandered through a night of mist and rusty brambles, over a field, by a windmill, across a marsh. John’s thoughts were in confusion; he responded like a child to the merman drawing on his wrist, the merman supporting him.

They came to a halt, and the merman swept up his friend in his arms. The young soldier, with a laugh which sounded delirious with fatigue, muttered: ‘I int a gal, mate, I can climb over a stile.’

The merman stood with his friend in his arms, and looked down sharp-eyed through the gloom. John’s eyes had closed, and he burrowed into the merman’s shoulder, muttering, almost asleep. A slight white smile divided the merman’s beard. He leaped into the sea.

The merman entered into his own kingdom, with its vales and hills, its woods and fields, its orchards bearing acorn-shaped fruits. Among the trees rose his palace, its walls and turrets white as coral, its roofs agleam with copper and gilded vanes.

The great hall of the palace welcomed him silently as master. His grey gaze took in with a quiet joy the familiar things of his life: the Egyptian gold, the Grecian marbles, the complexities of Celtic bronze.

With a gentle movement of his shoulder he shifted the head of his human guest to lie in the crook of his arm. The merman smiled. John’s mouth was slightly open, his round blue eyes were wide.

The merman bent his head and lightly, almost timidly, kissed the parted lips, the staring eyes. But John was drowned. The merman threw back his head and howled, in a great bubble of soundless grief.

*
pitman
: ‘The last child of a family, or the smallest of a brood or litter.’ Moor’s
Suffolk Words and Phrases
(1823).

In the late May light of his study, Clare sat reading a letter from Maine.

Clare put down the letter and picked up another, with an Iranian stamp. The stamp puzzled him, and the writing. He could not remember having seen it before.

The telephone rang, and with a start he lifted it. Mark Clare’s voice, much noise in the background, said: ‘Cris, I’m ringing from a box at Charing Cross, and I’m skint. Could you ring me back at this number?’

‘Sure,’ Clare said, noting the number on Jim-Jacques’ letter. He broke the connection, then dialled.

‘Thanks, Cris,’ Mark said. ‘Listen, would you do me another favour?’

‘If it’s as easy as that one.’

‘It’s a bit of a liberty. Well, a diabolical liberty. You see, there’s this girl, and she’s got a car, and on Saturday morning I’d like to bring her down to yours.’

‘Understand,’ Clare said. ‘I’ll make myself scarce.’

‘Oh, don’t put it like that. Just for a while. Suppose we stay the night? She could cook you a decent meal.’

‘It depends how you want to arrange it,’ Clare said. ‘By the time you arrive I’ll be out, anyway. I’m going to a football match in Ipswich with John and Roger. I’ll see you about suppertime, if you’re still here.’

‘Oh well, that’s great,’ Mark said. ‘That’s really great. You won’t mention it to anyone will you?’

‘No, of course not,’ Clare said. ‘Though anyone is more broad minded than you probably know. Listen, Mark, I’ve got to hang up on you, someone’s knocking on the door.’

He put down the receiver with a ping and went to open the door, feeling a new interest when he saw the big fair man who stood there. ‘Morning, Reg.’

‘Morning, master,’ said Reg. ‘What’s your pleasure today?’

‘Nothing much,’ Clare said. ‘The usual pair of kippers, I suppose. No, make it three. I’m expecting company, for a change.’

‘Lonely old place, this,’ Reg said. ‘But pretty.’ Moaning with pigeons, blooming with lilac, hawthorn and laburnum, the neglected garden seemed to belong to some idyllic time before nature needed to be rearranged by man.

Clare looked at the fisherman (Reynold the Fisher, he was called now in his mind) and thought that with his crisp hair, his clear eyes and single gold ear-ring, he had all the freshness of the sea upon him. ‘How’s business?’

‘Well, that int you,’ Reg said, ‘that make it worth my while to come all the way from Lowestoft. But passable, thanks.’

Clare went with him to his van, which was parked on the farm road beside the stream. They walked by the apple tree, a tethered cloud of blossom fading to white. Under their feet crushed camomile smelled pharmaceutically sweet.

From the field opposite the cottage an oak leaned its bright new leaves over the van. The steep sides of the stream were a mass of cow-parsley, reaching up to the overhang of a flowering hawthorn hedge. Though buttercups and red campion were everywhere, the insistent note of the countryside was white embowered in green.

Reg handed over the fish, and climbed into the van. ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ Clare said, ‘I haven’t paid you.’

‘My memory,’ said the rueful fisherman, accepting the few coins. ‘It get like that when you’re over twenty-one. But you wouldn’t know, would you? Enjoy your company.’

In the study once more, Clare slit open the letter from Iran. Inside was only a card. A Tarot card: The Hanged Man.

He felt a horror of it, of the malice which must have sealed it and addressed it. He stared at the envelope, and all at once thought that he knew the writing. From his memory of a single postcard, he believed it was Matthew Perry’s.

He turned the Hanged Man over. On the back was written: ‘
Your card = Resurrection. M.J.P.
’

Later in the morning, while Clare was slashing weeds in the garden, surrounded by the pungency of hedge-garlic and by the Orange Tip butterflies which lived on it, the young carpenter Robin came to replace a cracked warped door. He carried the new one on his back from the van, stooped under it like a certain arthritic old farm labourer who haunted the fireplace of the Shoulder of Mutton. Below the inevitable cap of black wool, his gypsy-like eyes had their usual look of faint amusement; which, it occurred to Clare, was not exactly friendly, not exactly unfriendly, not exactly anything but detached and interested. Like a grey squirrel, thought Clare.

‘Cup of tea before you start?’ he asked, and Robin said: ‘Wouldn’t say no.’

They sat in the whitewashed back kitchen with its quarried floor, its old copper and bread-oven. ‘Can’t see a modern woman living here,’ said Robin.

‘I’m not particular,’ Clare said. ‘Speaking of women, Mark’s found one.’

‘Oh-ah,’ Robin said. ‘Not a bad old boy, Mark. We int the same class, of course, but we always been friends, since we was babies. Well, you tell Mark he int the only one.’

Looking at Robin’s slight reminiscent smile, his secretive mouth, Clare guessed that he was not speaking of courtship, of anything that touched him.

‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, good luck, Robin.’

The gypsy-dark boy was overtaken by the urge to confide. ‘You ever sin a blonde girl walking about here?’

‘Yes,’ Clare said. ‘With green eyes?’

‘Thass the one,’ Robin said. ‘Well, I was out in the van Monday and I see her walking along miles from anywhere and I stop and offer her a lift. Well, one thing lead to another with surprising speed. I never been raped before, and I recommend it.’

Clare found himself oddly shocked, his image of the girl violently revised. ‘You don’t mean that?’

‘That’s how it seem the first time,’ Robin said. ‘The other two was quite voluntary.’

The boy was grinning widely, and Clare saw in his mouth something innocently feral.

‘I hope,’ he said, not knowing why he should be concerned, ‘you were kind to her, Robin.’

‘Well, I warnt unkind,’ said Robin. ‘But don’t you worry about her. My experience warnt a rare one, by all accounts. They say there’s only three things she’s interested in, and two of them are round.’

Clare wanted to change the subject, but still had a question. ‘Where does she come from, did she say?’

‘No,’ Robin said. ‘She don’t go in for talking. But she’s a stranger of some kind. I’d say Welsh.’

He set down his empty mug and scraped back his chair. ‘Well, to work,’ he said. Then, with a return of his enigmatic smile: ‘Given you something to think about, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, you have,’ Clare admitted. ‘Welsh, you think? I’d never have thought of that.’

On Saturday, after the football match, Clare was dropped by John and Roger at the top of Hole Lane. An early full moon was out, and at the end of the lane he stopped to look up at the chestnut tree. In that light the tree’s little pagodas of bloom were drained of their rose veining and gleamed an eggshell white.

Before going in, he skirted the cottage, but found no car. They had gone, he decided, and the light in the study had been left on to guide him home.

But in the study, before a fire stoked high against the house’s pervading chill, Mark was slumped in the rickety armchair. He turned his face towards the door, and Clare was shocked by it. ‘Marco! What is it?’

‘Nothing much,’ Mark said. ‘Here, have your chair and get warm.’

‘No, stay there,’ Clare said, and went to lean on the mantelpiece, trying not too evidently to observe the stricken young face.

‘She went,’ Mark said. ‘For me it wasn’t a minute too soon. I told her I’d stay the night with you. I’ll walk to the station in the morning.’

‘Oh, Mark,’ Clare said, compassionately. ‘Forget about it. She’s obviously a bitch.’

‘It wasn’t obvious,’ Mark said. ‘But then, I haven’t had much experience in judging. One thing that’s clear is that we weren’t made for one another.’