Charles Palliser (3 page)

“Why, I know what it is,” my nurse interrupted. “I meant to mind and tell you, ma’am: he’s aiming to make hisself a nice new weskit out of what rightly belongs to you. But it ain’t his property but yourn since it’s on your land and it’s your time as he’s doing it in.”

My mother sighed but I heard no more for in an instant I was flying away across the terrace and then down the steps and over the grass-plat whose smooth surface was marred by a small mound of earth.

“Mr Pimlott! Mr Pimlott!” I cried as I raced towards the edge of the lawn where he was at work. “What are you doing? Can I help you?”

He was kneeling down and at my approach he raised his sun-darkened face and looked at me with an expression I could not read. I was rather in awe of him, partly because he was that strange creature, a man, and the only one I knew at all well. I wasn’t sure what being a man meant, except that he was large, the skin on his face looked rough, and he smelt of earth and tobacco.

“Now, little mester,” he said, “don’t ye come a-pestering me with questions. I aren’t paid to abide ’em, like some.”

“But Bissett told me to come and find you so that you can give me something to do.”

“That ain’t no consarn of mine. Mrs Bissett don’t give me orders, the Lord be praised.

Though she sometimes thinks she do.”

I watched him for a few moments as he worked in silence. He was reaching into A WISE CHILD

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a hole that was more like a burrow than a pit and manipulating a long-handled tool with awkward jabbing strokes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He made no reply but looked up at the sun shielding his eyes from its still bright glare.

Then he withdrew the tool so that I saw how very long it was, and began banging it up and down on the grass to dislodge the earth trapped by the head. For its shape was very strange indeed with the blade curved almost into hooks on either side. He laid it down and began to gather up his other tools and place them on the grass beside the great wooden box in which he kept them.

“What have you been doing today, Mr Pimlott?” I asked in desperation.

Still without replying he began smearing thick grease like clear honey across the metal parts of the tools before wrapping each one up in a piece of soft-leather and carefully placing it in the box. They had always been objects of fascination to me: the fearsome spikes of the forks, the dibble with its two prongs for extracting thistles, and the spades with their heavy wooden handles polished smooth by use, the iron clamps that held metal and wood together, and above all, the blades that glittered so brightly and so surprisingly where the bare metal was kept shiny by being rammed hard and often into the earth.

“What’s this one called?” I asked him, indicating the long-handled one with the curiously hooked blade. “Is it a spade or a trowel?”

“Don’t you touch it,” he said. “It’s very sharp.”

“And this one?” I asked, and pointed to another that I had never seen him use.

He glanced at me. “That? Why, that’s my grubbin’-hoe.”

“What do you use it for?”

He looked at me for a long moment: “Why, I grubs.”

Encouraged by this reply, I looked round at the signs of his work: “Why have you dug up that tree?” I demanded, indicating a pear-tree lying on its side with its roots brutally exposed.

“On account of it has the canker.”

“The canker,” I repeated. Now here was an interesting new word and I repeated it several times to extract its full flavour. “What is the canker?”

“It’s a distemper as trees gets. And people, too. It rots ’em both away from inside.”

At this he opened his mouth suddenly, exposing a few blackened stumps, and made a harsh noise that I took for a laugh.

“But it looks all right. It seems a shame to kill it.”

“Why, anythin’ old or ill is to be throwed away or killed. And who has the right to pull up that tree if not I?”

“Why do you, Mr Pimlott? Surely it’s my mother’s tree?”

He turned away from me and delivered over his shoulder the longest response I had ever heard from him: “You want to know why? Because I planted it, that’s why. A dozen year or more a-fore your mither even come here, let alone you. What did you think?

That it just growed of its own self ? Everythin’ in this world has to be planted. And needs tending. Like yourself, with Mrs Bissett a-tendin’ of you. That is, if she done her work instead of leavin’ it to gossip and make trouble and let you come and bother folks as has work to do if she don’t.”

When he had finished I allowed a minute or two to pass before my curiosity overcame me again: “Are you burying the tree in that hole?” He shook his head. “Are you going to plant another?”

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“No. If you has to be told, I’m setting a trap for Old Mouldiwarp.”

“You mean ‘mole’, Mr Pimlott. That’s the proper word.”

“I means what I says.”

“But why are you trapping him, Mr Pimlott?”

“On account of he comes in and digs up your mither’s grass-plat as she pays me to keep nice. He don’t reckernise no rights of property, don’t Old Mouldiwarp. And so he must be killed.”

“But that isn’t right.”

“Right, Master John?” He turned to me and looked at me keenly: “When he comes straight in and takes however many muck-worms he wants without so much as a by-your-leave?”

I could see the error in this argument immediately: “But we don’t want the worms.”

“You don’t want the worms? No, in course you don’t want the worms. But no more don’t you want for no-one else to come boldly in and ketch them worms, being as they’re yourn.”

I thought about this because I was sure there was a reply, but without waiting for me to find it, the gardener went on : “Well, howsomever, he’s ketched enough worms and now I’ll ketch him, for he has something I want, and if I’m clever enough I’ll get it of him. And that’s the way the world goes: if you don’t eat him, he’ll eat you.”

“So are you digging a hole for him to fall into and be caught?”

Mr Pimlott grimaced: “Not him. He’s a deal too ’cute for that. He lives underground, don’t he? So holes is what he knows about just the way I knows about plants and Mrs Bissett knows about other folks’ business. Oh no, you have to be clever to ketch Old Mouldiwarp asleep.”

“Then how will you do it, Mr Pimlott?”

“The only way is, you have to make him ketch himself.” He indicated the excavation.

“This is one of his own burrers, see, so he won’t be a-feared of no trap. So I digs out a deep hole inside of it — which is what that there molin’-spade is for — and at the bottom I s’all place a gin with a spring and then cover it over with all leaves and earth. And if I’ve been canny enough, then Old Mouldiwarp’11 come looking for muck-worms and he’ll spring it and get ketched by his leg or mebbe his snout. And then I’ll make him turn tailor and fashion me a new coat.”

For a moment I imagined a captured mole holding a needle and thread in its delicate little paws and stitching away, and I laughed in disbelief. Seeing that I didn’t understand Mr Pimlott touched his waistcoat which I had often noticed because it was so shiny and darkly glossy.

“But that’s horrid!” I whispered in delight. I looked at the moleskin and it seemed strange to me that something so beautiful should come from the damp earth.

“That’s why I aren’t using a trap. I want his coat unsp’iled.”

“How cruel!” I cried and thought of the mole struggling and dying in the darkness.

Mr Pimlott laughed shortly. Now I remembered something and exclaimed: “But Bissett said the mouldiwarp isn’t yours to make use of.”

“Oh did she?” Mr Pimlott said, turning away.

“How many do you need for a waistcoat?”

Now, however, he appeared not to be listening as he fastened his box, picked it up, shouldered the long-handled tools, and began to make his way to the top A WISE CHILD

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of the garden. I watched him touch his forehead to my mother and nod briefly at Bissett before he went out through the gate into the lane and turned towards the High-street and his neat little cottage nearby.

Now that I suddenly found myself alone at the bottom of the garden, a daring and wicked thought came to me. I looked to see that Bissett and my mother were not observing me, and made my way through the apple-orchard, where I was truly out of sight, and into the Wilderness that lay beyond it. I passed quite easily through the tall grass, overgrown shrubs, and tangled bushes at the edge, but beyond that were ancient, stocky trees that spread their twisted branches into phantastic shapes as if pleading for more light, and here the darkness began to close about me and the sinister branches seemed to be reaching out to me like the long fingers of huge hands. Although I was only a few yards from the garden with its murmur of bees and rustling of trees in the gentle wind, it was as if I had passed through a door into another world for here there was no sound at all.

Something fluttered against my face, and as I brushed it away, suddenly there was a shape in front of me: a face with sightless eyes like the marble sculls I knew from the monuments on the walls of the village church. The features were worn away —

cankered, it occurred to me — and the surface of the stone was like a skin that was deeply pitted. Terrified, I stepped back but to my horror found myself held in a firm grip. I pulled again but to no avail. My heart pounded, and I felt a panic beginning to rise inside me. Desperately I wriggled again and at last came free. As I began to back away I heard a cry that seemed to come from a very long way away. It came again and I recognised the voice of my nurse.

Almost grateful for the summons, I fought my way back through the tangled undergrowth into the bright sunlight of the garden.

“Master Johnnie!” Bissett was calling from out of sight at the top of the garden.

“Where are you?”

Was it my imagination or was there a note of fear in her tone? I hastened up the steps and when I gained the upper terrace I found her turned to her right and I followed her gaze.

My mother was standing at the gate with an individual whom I had never seen before.

He stood in the lane talking to her with passionate intensity, his eyes fixed on her face and his hands (one holding a stick) gesticulating, while she listened with her eyes cast down, nodding her head occasionally. My first thought was that he might be a pedlar, for they were the only strangers who came to the house and he seemed to be trying to sell my mother something. But then I saw that he was not dressed like one and carried no pack.

In age the stranger was between my mother and Bissett, and although not tall, he had the head of a much larger man. A mass of curly, reddish hair tumbled about his ears from his high-domed head. His animated face on which every passing emotion seemed to register, was dominated by a large beak-like nose. His mouth was wide and thin and his eyes, deep beneath the jutting eye-ridges, were large and very blue. He was wearing trowsers which had once had a pattern of checks and squares but were faded so that the design was barely discernible; a coarse round frock-coat whose green cloth was worn bare in places; and a white stock that, although of fine wool, was now of a yellowish hue.

I might not have taken all this in if Bissett had not been watching them so closely, but seeing my mother like that it suddenly came to me that she had a life 12 THE

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of which I knew nothing, and in that moment she seemed herself a stranger to me.

The man broke off when he saw Bissett and me looking at him, and touched his hat ceremoniously to each of us.

“And a very good evenin’ to you, too, mistress, and to the little genel’man. I was jist explainin’ to this young lady,” he addressed himself to Bissett but with a friendly eye included me in his speech, “how it is that I find meself, a stranger passin’ through this country to seek work, havin’ to seek charity of strangers, which is a thing I haven’t never done a-fore.”

He spoke rapidly, and in a manner that was unfamiliar to me, so that I had to strain to catch his meaning. As he talked he glanced backwards and forwards between my mother and my nurse as if trying to judge which of the two it was the more important to win over.

“So will you help a poor honest workin’-man down on his luck,” he said to my mother, “to find a night’s lodgin’ and wittles arter a hard day’s tramp?”

“Be off with you,” Bissett suddenly cried.

In an instant the man’s face darkened and his brows drew together as he turned towards Bissett.

“Get off now,” Bissett called out again, perhaps alarmed by his expression. “Or I’ll go for Mr Pimlott.”

The stranger’s features lightened instantly and he said: “Why, I’d be happy to speak to the genel’man of the house.”

At this Bissett glanced towards my mother who blushed and looked down. Puzzled, the man turned to me: “Where is your father, young genel’man?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Come, young master,” he said, smiling at my mother, “everyone has one.”

“Oh no, I never have had one.”

“Take yourself away, and your impertinence,” Bissett cried.

As if she had not spoken the stranger addressed my mother: “What do you say, Mrs Pimlott? Will you not spare a few pennies?”

“Mr Pimlott’s the gardener, you silly man,” I cried. “Our name’s Mellamphy.”

“Why then, Mrs Mellamphy,” he said. “Will you sarve me?”

“I … I don’t believe I have any money with me.”

As my mother spoke she nervously touched the cylindrical silver box which always hung from the chain around her waist on which she kept the household keys, and I noticed the man’s large eyes rest inquisitively on it.

“What,” he said, pointing to it, “not even in there?”

She looked up at him for the first time with an expression of alarm and shook her head vehemently.

“No siller in the house?” he said. “Not even a few coppers?”

Still looking into his face my mother said: “Will you bring me a six-pence from my writing-desk, Bissett?”

“I will not, ma’am,” said my nurse stoutly. “I’ll not leave you and Master Johnnie out of my sight while that rag-a-bond is here.”

“I believe we should help him, nurse. I believe it would be better.”