Birchwood (13 page)

AT THE END
of the spring we stopped in a little seaside village in the south. It was a pleasant enough place, sharply divided between the whitewashed hovels of the natives at one end and, at the other, handsome holiday villas perched on promontories or retiring behind cypresses, not a few of them unshuttered and loud with children even in this early part of the year. We camped in a meadow behind the beach. The weather was glorious, days full of sun and glass, soft black nights with stars. At dawn, as the mist lifted, rabbits came out of the ground and scampered heedlessly under our wheels, into Magnus's traps. We feasted on stew and new potatoes, buttermilk and brown bread. The circus drew capacity audiences. It was a good time. We should have known, with all this, that our carefree days were numbered, that our happiness was ending. For we were happy, in our way.

There were eggs too, and jugs of thick milk, purchased from a farm nearby. There I went each morning, barefoot through the dewy drenched grass, swiping at butterflies with the milkcan. The farmhouse was a crooked affair, long and low, in need of new thatch, with tiny windows and a warped green door. Violets flourished in the filth of the yard, among the cowflop. The hall was suffused with furry yellow light, tranquil and still. I stood in the silence curling my toes on the cool tiles and waited for the daughter of the house. The doorway framed a patch of yard where brilliant sunlight shone on stylised chickens, a mongrel scratching its ear, two sparrows staring at a breadcrumb. It was odd to be inside a house again, to step across a solid floor and hear no axle creak, no horse stir. Mag came down the stairs at the end of the hall, her arms lifted, hands doing something to her hair at the back.

‘Uh,’ she said sleepily.

She went ahead of me across the yard tugging her brown sacklike smock into something close to her own shape underneath it. Mag was a squat heavy girl, all bone and muscle, a year or two older than I, with fuzzy red hair and a button nose and hands like cut steaks. It will seem extraordinary, but when I saw her the first time my heart skipped a beat, that hair, those odd blue eyes, although how I could picture her, even for a moment, in a white dress under a lilac tree I cannot say. Still, I was no great judge of female beauty, and I imagine that Mag appeared to me as pretty as any other. I was at that time an innocent lad to whom the dark damp side of life was still another country. I began my journey a virgin, and ended it still unsullied, but I am not ignorant of certain facts, and if here they create a somewhat twisted view of the basic acrobatic duet I insist that the warp is in the facts and not my recounting of them.

The hens lived in a wire run behind the cowshed. Mag knelt in the soiled straw and reached inside the little hut where the nests were. How odd the eggs seemed with their smooth self-sufficiency and perfect form among the crooked posts and torn wire, straw, shit, Mag's big red hands. She lifted them into the brown paper-bag with care, almost with reverence, while those ludicrous birds pranced around us, outraged and quivering. As the bag filled she reached deeper into the hut, and then paused and frowned and slowly withdrew her arm. She opened her fist between us, and there on her palm a tiny yellow chick waggled its stumpy wings and emitted a feeble cheep. We stared at the little creature, astonished that life could exist in that minuscule form, and suddenly Mag thrust it back into the hut and we fled, disturbed and obscurely embarrassed.

We went into the dairy, a long stone room with white walls and a whiter ceiling. The vacant milking stalls were whitewashed, the bare floor scrubbed. The light through the little windows was limpid and delicate. In here a silence reigned such as I have never experienced anywhere else, something like that frail nothingness which persists long after a churchbell has dropped its last chime into the pale upper airs of morning. Mag took the lid from the churn and ladled milk into my can, great dollops of it, filling the white room with a white fragrance. She seemed preoccupied and feverish. She splashed milk on her black laceless boots and gave a brief frantic squeal of laughter.

It seems incredible that we did not speak during all that followed, but I can remember no words, only glances and advances, sudden retreats like complex dance steps, and, perhaps in place of words, small modulations, readjustments in the silence between us. Mag offered me the can. I tried to take it. She would not let go. I stepped back. She put the can down on the floor. I cleared my throat. She made a determined advance, and I dived aside very neatly and fussed with the bag of eggs, placing it carefully on the floor beside the can so that nothing should break, terrible if an egg should break, smashed yolk on the stone, that yellow ooze! She reached a hand toward my trousers. I was terrified.

She lay down on her back in one of the milking stalls and I knelt before her, red-faced, with pains in my knees, grinning foolishly, with that lugubrious puce stalk, my faintly pulsating blunt sword of honour, sticking out of my trousers. Mag yanked her smock up over her enormous bubs and clawed at me, trying to pull me down on top of her. I stared at her shaggy black bush and would not, could not move. The situation was wholly farcical. She moaned beseechingly and lay down on her back again, turned up her eyes until only the whites were visible, and opened wide her mottled legs, and it was as though she had split open, had come asunder under my eyes. I knelt and goggled at the frightful wound, horrified, while my banner drooped its livid head and Mag groaned and writhed. My hand shook as I reached it forward between her gaping knees and, with my eyes closed, put my finger into her. She gasped and giggled, gasped again and thrashed her arms wildly. I opened my eyes and looked at my hand. Part of me had entered another world. The notion left me breathless. How soft and silky she was in there, how immaculate. She took my hand in hers and slowly pushed my finger out and in again, out and in, smiling to herself a strange and secret smile, and all at once I was filled with compassion. This was her mortal treasure which I touched, her sad secret, and I could only pity her, and myself also, poor frail forked creatures that we were. She sat up at last, and I leaned forward to kiss her, to plant my tenderness on her cheek. She reared away from me, gave a snort of contempt at my mawkishness, and rose and fled across the yard.

I stood in the doorway and wondered if she would return. She did not. Out in the field the caravans were ranged in a circle on the rolling green, tiny at that distance, toylike, gay. The wind blew. The smell of the sea mingled oddly here with the heavy fragrance of milk. Two of the eggs were smashed. I gathered up those that remained. The cream was rising already in the can. I went out into the yard. Violets and cowshit, my life has been ever thus.

I HAVE GIVEN
the impression perhaps that wherever we stopped we were greeted with a rousing cheer of welcome, or at the very worst indifference. It was not always like that. Sometimes indifference turned into a sullen resentment which seemed to spring paradoxically from part envy, part moral disapproval. That phenomenon necessitated a rapid departure, so rapid indeed that our goings then looked like high farce. A fast getaway was imperative too when our audiences went to the other extreme and worked themselves into such a paroxysm of excitement that we were all, performers, props, stage, everything, in danger of being trampled by stampeding boots and horny bare feet. In Wexford once a full house displayed its appreciation so strenuously that it brought the house down, the tent collapsed, and in the melee that followed two tiny tots and an octogenarian were smothered. You could not have seen our heels for the dust.

Official disapproval was worse. Some rat-faced fellow would arrive with a writ just as the last patrons had paid their pennies and the performance was about to begin, and then, feeling foolish in our makeup and our costumes, we would shuffle our feet outside the tent while Silas in the middle of the field vainly argued our case, acting out in dumb show before the queen's man our mute bafflement and resentment. I think it was better, I mean less dispiriting, when they swept aside the formalities and sent against us a squad of soldiers tramping behind a mounted officer, who placed an elegant hand on his knee and, leaning discreetly down, quietly ordered us to move. There was no arguing with those gleaming bared bayonets. I am thinking now of the last time they put the skids under us, the last time before the country became engrossed with disaster and no one bothered about us anymore.

It was a bright day in early summer, I remember it. We were campfed on a hill above a little town with a bridge and a glittering river, narrow streets, a steeple. The first performance the night before had been well received, and we rose in the morning with that calm elation which always followed a successful premiere. Magnus caught a couple of rabbits, and I was sent with them to Angel. I found her in the big caravan, standing by the table with her sleeves rolled up, slicing a lump of turnip. Silas was there too, collar and braces undone, bearded in lather, shaving himself before a bit of cracked mirror. He lifted the razor in a greeting.

‘Gabriel, my boy, good morrow.’

Angel took the still warm furry dead brutes and slit their bellies. The vivid entrails spilled across the table, magenta and purple polyps, tender pink cords, bright knots of blood, giving off a nutty brown odour. She hacked off the paws, chopping through bone, lopped off the head, peeled the skin. Into the big black pot it went, that painfully nude flesh, the turnip too, sliced carrots, parsnip, thyme and other aromatic things. Silas, beating the strop with the razor, lifted his head and sniffed, the wings of his red nose fluttering delicately.

‘Ah,’ he sighed fervently, ‘ahh, grub.’

Angel said nothing. Her hair was tied back in a greasy pigtail. An odd woman, our Angel. She rarely spoke, rarely even looked directly at anyone, but seemed always preoccupied by some abiding and malicious joke. If she did look at one it was with a brief but intense and probing stare, one eyebrow lifted, lips compressed. When she spoke, her words were scarred by elisions, run together into one sound like a bark, the tone jangling with derision and black amusement. Sometimes she would laugh without apparent cause, a rumbling hiccupping noise like that of something soft and heavy rolling about in a barrel. In spite of her seeming intangibility she presided over all the doings of the circus with a mysterious strength, her massive trunk, with that flat yellowish face set on the front of it, planted among us like an implacable and ribald totem. I found her unsettling and kept out of her way when I could, for she seemed to me to personify, more than any of the others, the capriciousness, mockery and faint menace on which the circus was founded. She wiped her bloodied hands on a rag.

‘Food, food,’ said Silas, towelling his face with such vigour that it gleamed. ‘Dear me, how I miss the splendours of my better days!’ He came and sat down by the table with a comically mournful look. ‘I remember a feast which my good friend Trimalchio once laid on for me. Such delicacies! Listen. Around the fountain, with the soothing sound of water in our ears, we ate olives, dormice smothered in honey and poppyseed, dishes of fragrant little sausages. Inside, where a hundred perfumed candles burned, we reclined on silken couches set so that we could look down over the twilit city, the hills. There we had goblets of seared wine with orioles baked in pastry. Next, the gleaming Nubians carried to us trays of capon and sowbelly, a hare with wings like a tiny Pegasus. The gravy boats…well well, forget the gravy boats. Then came a huge wild sow, a daunting brute, whose flank, split open, released a cloud of live thrushes. This pig was not to eat, only for show, for next there came a gargantuan hog which had for guts great rings of sausages and spiced blood puddings. There were fresh fruits and sweetmeats, eggs, pastry thrushes filled with raisins and nuts and sugar. There were quinces and pears and blushing peaches. At last came a platter of roast pork, pork roasted and boned and shaped into the form of fish and birds that swam in a gravy pond on which, ah my friends!, a goose fashioned from pork swam proudly. Great Jove, what a feed. And now? To what am I reduced?’ He puckered his mouth in distaste.
‘Rabbit stew F

Angel paid no attention to him. She counted off on her fingers silently the ingredients in the pot, paused a moment, pondering, and suddenly gave one of her frightful guffaws.

‘No spuds,’ she said, greatly tickled. ‘No spuds!’

Feet beat on the steps of the caravan and the twins tumbled in, struggling and giggling, fighting each other through the narrow doorway.

‘Theserverishere, theserverishere,’ they chanted, ‘theserveris-herewiththepaper!’

Silas jumped up and swiped at them with the towel. They fled amid screams of laughter.

‘Young ruffians,’ he said, shaking his head, and then stopped and stared with slowly dawning horror at his reflection in the cracked mirror. ‘What did they…? The
server!’

He whirled about and kicked shut the lower half of the door. The process-server, hopping up the steps, was rapped smartly on the knees. He was a weedy fellow in a green jacket, black britches and a preposterous battered high hat. His long thin nose was raw and red, his pale eyes were moist. He brandished the writ at Silas, who stood inside the halfdoor with his hands clasped behind his back.

‘Are you—?’ the server began.

‘I am not,’ Silas said, and grinned.

Tm serving this writ on you in the name of—’

‘You are not.’

Now it was the server's turn to be amused. His pinched face twitched with a sly little smirk.

‘O I see,’ said he. ‘It's like that, is it? Well let me tell you, we've had your kind before. Would you rather have the squaddies? They're clumsy lads, they are. Things get broke when they arrive. Heads and things.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘I am, aye.’

‘Uncouth fellow!’ Silas roared, and slammed the top half of the door. There was a cry of pain outside, and the sound of feet clattering down the steps. Silas waited a moment, took a deep breath, hitched up his braces and flung open the door again. The server with streaming eyes stood below the steps gingerly fingering his bleeding nose. Silas charged at him, but veered abruptly and scampered away around the side of the caravan. The server stumbled after him with one hand clamped on his hat, the other feebly waving the writ. I poked my head out the door in time to see Silas come pounding around from the left. The server doubled back, they met, and Silas skidded to a halt with a scream of mock terror. Soon they were running in circles around the field, the server wiping his eyes as he ran, Silas puffing and laughing and flapping his arms. The twins, over by the tent, danced up and down and cheered gleefully. Others came out to watch, Magnus and Sybil, Ida wringing her hands, Mario scowling. Silas and his pursuer, exhausted, abandoned the race at last. Silas jammed his hands into his pockets.

‘I don't want it,’ he cried. ‘I don't
want
that thing.’

‘It's not a question of wanting!’

‘Listen, my man—’

‘Will you take it
!’

‘But please—’

‘Right! This is one for Captain Tuzo to settle. We'll see how you get on with him and his men. I'll have the lot of you threw out of here before the day is done.’

‘Listen, my dear Malvolio, be reasonable—’

‘O that'll be all right now,’ said the server, with an assumed calmness, lifting a hand to straighten his hat. ‘That'll be all right.’ He stuffed the writ into his pocket, put a finger to the side of his swollen nose and deposited at Silas's feet a gout of blood and snot. ‘Now!’ he said, and left.

He was as good as his word, for within the hour Rainbird, who had been sent to scout, came back pedalling furiously with the news that the troops were on their way. We hauled down the tent, hitched up the horses, fled. Angel's stew was overturned and lost in the confusion. The army, at a distance, saw us go, lost interest in us and turned back to the town. Out on the roads the air was vile with a smell of rot, and in the ruined fields people stood motionless in groups, baffled and silent. The potato crop had failed.