Bring Larks and Heroes (10 page)

Her face had become intense to the point of pain,
her
pain. She impressed him, against his will, as being
far beyond the limits of his understanding, and, therefore, of his talent.

‘Are you feeling ill, Mrs Daker?' he felt bound to ask.

He, master forger, hemisphere's light of art, felt confounded by a face so shut in upon itself. The eyes had no meaning as eyes; that is, they did not look to have been made for seeing. In the shade they seemed anthracite; in the open they held no image and threatened to consume themselves.

‘Are you feeling ill, Mrs Daker?' Ewers called again, giving the alarm before her tinder face should go up in flame and singe
Beryllus
'
s
feathers.

A small, sluggish fly was on her nose. She shook her head enough to be rid of it. Then she could see again, and seeing covered her face with astonishment.

It could, of course, have all been merely a disorder of the eyes. So Ewers hoped.

‘What were you saying?' she asked.

‘Nothing very much, Madam. Perhaps Mrs Daker might want to go home? To rest.'

‘Why would I?'

She eyed the dust and gave a private, bitter laugh, which meant that Ewers had presumed.

‘What were you saying?' she insisted.

‘Nothing very much, Mrs Daker.'

‘Then tell me something.'

‘Yes, Mrs Daker?'

‘Tell me something. Something, anything. Tell me about your school of art in Dumfries.'

‘Not exactly a school of art, Madam. It aspired to be a . . .'

‘Damn you, stupid Ewers!' She clouted her own thigh. ‘Don't hedge. Tell me straight!'

‘If you wish, Mrs Daker.'

‘Not if I wish, Ewers. You are a transported felon and my husband's servant. I order you. Tell me something!'

Ewers swallowed, despising frowsy womankind.
Vivat
Aunt Norris!

‘I made an engraving and printed five hundred oval cards on linen-faced paper. I distributed the cards throughout Dumfries, and even took three out to Lord Dunscore's house in the Nithsdale. He had a daughter and two nieces, you see, who came to Dumfries at least once a fortnight.'

It was such a heavy morning to take out those old hopes, and the dream of patronage from the feckless daughters of the gentry. The surgeon's poor birds emitting their marrow-sucking squeaks made poor music to his nostalgia. So, too, did Mrs Daker.

‘Continue please, Ewers!' she said, unaccountably sweet.

‘It is not hard to understand how, if even one of these girls had taken my classes, I would have been flooded with pupils. I waited until I knew how many
young applicants I had before I hired rooms. I was wise. I had three applicants.'

‘How much was the charge, Ewers?'

‘A guinea, Madam, for two classes.'

‘My word, you were no cheapjack, were you Ewers?'

‘I was trying to attract a certain type of young lady, Mrs Daker.'

‘Ohhhh . . .!' said Mrs Daker, prurient as a playgoer. ‘So?'

‘So I used Aunt Norris's pleasant front parlour for the classes.'

‘Aunt Norris?' asked Mrs Daker.

Aunt Norris! Where were the words to tell this despicable woman and her mean hills of the heights and depths of Aunt Norris? He did what he could with workaday oratory and a few quotations from the Book of Proverbs. As he spoke, he dabbed indolently at his second portrait of that wearying kingfisher.

The brush jerked with the awareness of a presence at his elbow. It was, of course, Mrs Daker. She had stood there for an undisclosed time, observing his paean from close quarters, no more than eighteen inches. His head felt quite tight with frightened blood. In mid-virtue, Aunt Norris faded on his lips.

‘I have guineas,' babbled Mrs Daker. ‘I have pearls, silly Ewers.'

And she spoke on. Her mouth stood open, her
whoredom spoke out quite automatically from its dwelling. What was said had for Mrs Daker a validity like that of an established text of prayer for the devout. And like the accomplished worshipper's, Mrs Daker's face had once more become blind and closed upon itself.

Ewers ran away from her, holding his head which swelled to splitting with disgust. His neck he carried stiffly, solid in its disbelief that any woman would blazon her goatishness, her deficit of male flesh before him, before his eyes, before his eunuch eyes.

‘The mouths of women beset me,' he called out on the river bank.

9

One shoe off, Mrs Daker was found gibbering through the aviary. Her dress was piping red with blood which passed so satisfactorily for her own that, having found brain-sick Ewers by the river, they took him prisoner for it. To double the griefs of the Daker family,
Beryllus
,
the kingfisher, was gone from his toppled cage. He was a desert bird, his liking was dry heat, a nest deep in spinous grass, and to peck at the dew of a morning. How many summers would need to pass before he would come back to the futile plenty of the riverbank?

Ewers was brought back down the river. The Judge-Advocate's court sentenced him to hanging.

They had him in an all-but-underground magazine at the Battery. It was empty and had a grille in the roof. In the daytime the grille was opened. Thereby entered
the steamy days of early March; and sometimes Ewers reclined thigh-deep in them by stretching flat-out from his wristlet on the wall. Not that the light wasn't hot. But it was as if he were bathing himself in the river of life.

A Marine called Private Terry Byrne guarded Ewers here. He even came to see Halloran one night with a message from Ewers. Byrne was a wide-faced, boyish-looking man. His nose and jaws were made to be beefy and innocent; but beef and innocence were both out of the question in that far station on the earth's rim. In fact, his large face looked pasty, his eyes more stupid than they thought they were, and cleverer than they would ever let on. Twenty-eight gormless years had gone to instilling in him an air of vague and fractious hunger. When with Halloran, he spoke out of this hunger and morbidly of scarcely anything else but Ann and hell (of a night he woke feeling damned, he said). He was hard to suffer after a hot day.

Halloran had been resting on a bench under the eaves of his hut; nostalgic, waiting for a south wind. The night had swaddled him round and over-swaddled him. Sitting still, he sweated. You could smell the spent day particularly stale on Terry Byrne when he came up the street among the company hutments.

‘Corporal Halloran darling,' he called from some way off. He always
darling-ed
his friends. He said nothing more till he was conspirationally close.

‘You're a friend of that Ewers who tumbled Mrs Daker?'

‘I've met him.'

‘He sounds to have more than met
you
.
He sounds to have great esteem for you.'

‘Aren't you just a crafty one, Private Byrne? A person would never think you were trying for the whole story of Ewers and me. A person would never have an inkling. Let me tell you all about it.'

‘Good for you, Corporal darling!'

Byrne put one foot on the bench and leant against the daubed wall. He was so crooked and avid waiting there that Halloran felt ashamed.

‘No, I'm only gulling you, Byrne. I've met him the once. That's all.'

‘Well, he has the sort of message for you that's only sent to friends of long standing.'

‘Yes?'

‘He says read Genesis, Chapter thirty-nine. And for God's sake come and see him.'

Halloran sat back, watching high-up boughs supine across the face of the big, low moon.

‘Thanks, Terry.'

Terry Byrne took his foot from the bench. But he wasn't leaving yet.

‘Well?' he said.

‘Well?' said Halloran. ‘What do you mean, well?'

‘Aren't you going to read Genesis, Chapter thirty-nine?'

‘I haven't a Bible. And he can wait till tomorrow.'

‘But they're hanging the poor feller in two days' time.'

Indeed. They were building a high, five-sided gallows on the transport side of the Brook, a cedar frame nearly as high as forty feet, something to look mystic at night, a shape to stick in the mind of the wrong-doer. They would finish it in another day perhaps. Then it would perform its first exemplary hanging.

‘He seems to have earned hanging,' Halloran said. ‘Almost my last words to him when I met him the once were to be careful of Mrs Daker. And then he goes off with his paint-box and rushes her like a bull.'

‘How do you know he did the rushing? That's what occurs to me to ask. As a man of hearty yearnings myself, I ask that question. How do you know he did the rushing?'

‘He could have run away if he wanted to.'

‘Hadn't you been told, Corporal darling? They don't let felons run away, even from randy women. Why don't you get your hands on a Bible?'

‘I don't own one.'

‘I know a man who does. Come on, you have to help the poor beast by that much. You know the name of that narrow little Scots sergeant?'

‘No.'

‘No. But he's got a Bible, anyhow. Let me get it for you, Halloran. Give the feller a chance.'

Even in that hot seam of night, Halloran felt a sturdy distrust of Genesis, 39.

‘I'll get it myself,' he said, standing up. ‘You can tell Ewers I'll read it carefully. But I can't come to see him. Tell him that.'

Neither of them moved.

‘Well, goodnight Terry. And thanks,' said Halloran broadly.

‘You said you didn't know the Scot. I'll go down with you as far as his place!'

‘I know him. His wife died on the water. He has his own hut over there near Sabian's Barracks.'

‘Let me walk that far with you, anyhow.'

Halloran shrugged, and they started off. As they walked, they heard the wind sluicing through the south end of the town, rattling in trees, blowing doors shut. Up their military hill it came in a surge, and men were out to their doors, anticipating it. Washing over Byrne and Halloran, it was one of those luxuries of creature-flesh which make men buoyant. Byrne began to sing.

They found the hut, the spare old sergeant sitting in the door.

‘You wait here, Terry Byrne,' said Halloran. ‘We don't want the whole regiment reading that particular chapter.'

Halloran went up to the old man and said good night.

‘Could my friend and I borrow your Bible for a second?'

‘Tell me why?' the sergeant said.

‘I want to read to him from the book of Genesis. He's a Wexford man like me and he's got more devils than one of the pigs Christ drove into the lake. He came to me since there's no priest. I want to read to him from Genesis.'

‘That's what you tell me.'

‘Sergeant, I'm a respectable soldier, a corporal. I'm Captain Allen's orderly. I don't want to sell your book. I don't want to use it for betting. I just want to read it to poor damned Terry Byrne over there.'

The sergeant got up and went into his hut, coming back with the book in pale and covetous little hands.

‘When will you have it back with me?' he asked.

‘Within an hour.'

‘Your friend over there got his coat on him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then leave it here with me.'

‘All right.' Halloran stepped aside and called to Byrne standing in the street. ‘He wants your coat while we have his book. That's fair enough.'

Byrne came forward, but slowly, with distrust.

‘You wouldn't sell it on me, would you?'

‘No. I'm one of the chosen,' said the sergeant, ‘like the two of you.'

He handed the Bible to Halloran, and Byrne took off his coat.

‘Better without it on a night like this,' commented Halloran, and thanked the sergeant.

They had not gone far along the road when Halloran decided that he could perhaps make out the print by moonlight. He opened the book. Night made the pages a tranquil blue, but the print was the smallest a printer could manage.

‘What's it about?' asked Byrne.

‘Shush! Let me read it first.'

It was the story of Potiphar's wife and Joseph, of how Joseph fled from Potiphar's wife leaving his garment in her hands, of how the woman accused Joseph before her husband, of how the woman was believed and Joseph sent to prison.

‘Read it to me?' asked Byrne.

Genesis 39 was an accusation by Ewers. It was a hidden accusation, and not meant for Byrne's ears.

Halloran turned the pages back and read Byrne something about Jacob and Laban and Rachel, and some dirty work with a second daughter called Leah.

‘That doesn't mean anything,' said Byrne, ‘except they would have had a time getting some of them old Hebrews into the Carmelites.'

Halloran agreed.

‘Are you going to see him?' Byrne asked.

‘No. Why should I?'

‘You're probably wise,' said Byrne, pop-eyed and magisterial.

He said goodnight and went off to get his coat back with the book. Before he'd gone three yards, he turned around laughing.

‘Hoy, Corporal darling,' he said, ‘Ewers probably liked the part where Jacob tumbled the wrong lady.'

‘Yes,' said Halloran. ‘We'll have to make sure the same never happens to us.'

‘I wouldn't say that, two for the price of one is the type of trade that's always appealed to Terry Byrne.'

‘Go on, you old bull!' said Halloran.

But the next afternoon, in the dead of the noon rest, Halloran came to that length of rampart and Empire which Byrne, torpidly, kept safe.

‘I thought you weren't going to see the man,' Byrne complained.

‘I changed my mind.'

‘I can't let you see him.'

‘Can't you? Well, I've been sent by Captain Allen. Prove I haven't!'

‘You're a close beggar, Halloran.'

‘A person has to be.'

‘It's a shock to a man to find he's not trusted.'

‘Come on, Terry. Be of good heart and so on.
I changed my mind, I tell you.' He pointed his finger at Byrne. ‘Don't you go listening in now!'

He climbed the side of the embankment. All that you could see of the magazine was the bolted double door and the vent poking out at the top. The rest of it had been dug into the hill and covered with soil. The vent stood open. There were three drunken blow-flies on the grating. Halloran knelt down, and the sun scalded the nape of his neck, while the earth was so hot to kneel on that you dreaded burial. He peered through the vent and at last could see Ewers' legs patterned with the shade of the grating. He could not see Ewers' face.

‘It's Halloran here!'

The legs twitched.

‘You said you wouldn't come.'

‘There isn't time to sulk. What did you want to say?'

‘Did you read Genesis, Chapter thirty-nine?'

‘Of course I did.'

‘I am Joseph, Halloran. I swear it to you.'

Halloran squinted down the vent.

‘Halloran, don't you believe me?'

‘I'd rather believe you than Mrs Daker. But I've heard the story, Ewers. That she had blood all over her.'

Of course, Ewers wept. Poor damned Ewers.

‘She is a goat and a harlot,' he said.

‘Yes, she is.'

‘I ran away from her. I was painting a bird for Daker when she came up at my elbow. She breathed like a cow at my elbow.'

‘And you made her bleed for breathing like a cow.'

‘No! Halloran, I was unable to look at her, let alone make her bleed. I ran away.'

‘Why didn't you tell them at the court?'

‘I did, and they asked me where the blood came from. They asked me over and over, until I thought that I was mad and
had
harmed the woman.'

‘But you're Joseph. Hurry up. I've got no sort of permission to be here.'

‘Halloran, I was brought an envelope yesterday evening. I have it with me now. It contained one green feather. There was no writing on the envelope, but the message was from Mrs Daker, beyond doubt. I had been painting a green kingfisher on that particular day, and when I had run away, Mrs Daker took the kingfisher and mangled it and, no doubt, spread herself with its blood. And being mad, dared to send me this feather.'

‘But you can't know this. You can't tell Sabian this.'

‘Aunt Norris,' said Ewers. He could barely say the name.

‘I'll write to her,' Halloran told him. ‘I promise you that.'

‘Katherine Norris, near the Newgate, Dumfries, Scotland.'

‘Yes. The Newgate.'

‘Thank you, Halloran. Thank you, thank you.'

The bay was luxurious blue, and a small, luxurious breeze came up the embankment to refresh the left side of his face.

‘Halloran,' Ewers said without warning, ‘I am a eunuch.'

‘What?'

‘I am a eunuch from childhood.'

Phelim shook his head.

‘Did you tell them in the court?'

‘No.'

‘Why?'

Ewers said nothing more for perhaps two minutes. A number of times Halloran asked why as gently as he could. He considered whether he should walk away or, better still, run from Ewers in his pit.

‘I was in a dream in court. I thought that they might somehow find out without my telling them. I told myself that there was time, there would be time to tell them even after the trial.'

‘My God!' said Halloran.

‘I am very noticeable,' Ewers explained softly. ‘They would have made a mock of me.'

‘You're mad.'

‘I've been made a mock of before this.'

‘What can I do?'

‘Tell Major Sabian.'

Halloran said nothing.

‘You believe me, Halloran?'

‘What do you think? It's hard. Didn't Partridge know?'

‘He never did. You've no idea what extremes I went to, not to be mocked. Don't you believe me?'

‘Don't ask me that question yet.'

‘Can you see me?'

‘Waist down,' said Halloran. He could see quite clearly the sailcloth legs.

‘Even from there, you will be able to tell.'

Ewers made inconsolable noises, while his free arm undid the prison trousers and scraped them down over his hips. As he had promised, he was unmistakably deformed, even at a glance through the grating. He sounded to be beyond himself. Halloran looked away.