Heroes and Villains (24 page)

It grew very dark as the stars went out one by one. Behind them, the tide was beginning to creep back over the exposed strand; out of curiosity, she wanted to ask Jewel if the lewd clock-bearer were fully hidden at high tide but found she could not break the pentacle of his continuous, black silence. He turned back the way they had come and led her into the dunes till the headland hid the town in the sea or the sea in the town and they were also out of sight of the approaching hem of water. He knelt and began to scrabble a depression in the sand.

‘What on earth are you doing, now?’

‘Digging a hole, crawling into it and sleeping.’

He lay down half-buried in the sand like a black fox which has gone to earth and she sat beside him. She watched his closed eyelids flicker at the passage of the dreams beneath them until she experienced such a vibrating intensity of tenderness and concern for him she jumped up and ran away, discontented until two or three tumuli separated them. The conurbation had formerly spread out fingers of small houses behind the dunes; she found herself high enough to see the rotten concrete sunk in foliage, a horrid but natural growth as if ruin had been the original blueprint and men and women had lived here only in a necessary but intermediate stage of the execution of the grand design. It was impossible to tell where houses began and trees ended. When she saw a stir of movement in a ruined house, she thought her eyes were deceiving her and when she saw a lion leap through the window hole of a chalet bungalow, she thought she was asleep and dreaming.

She had never seen a lion before. It looked exactly like the pictures of itself; though darkness washed its colours off, she saw its mane and tasselled tail which flicked about as it moved out of the edge of shadow on to the dune. It paused to snuff the air, bayed softly and resumed its sinuous progression across the sand. Immediately she returned to the place where she had left Jewel though it was now some distance away and the idea that she played hide and seek with a lion in order, perhaps, to die beside her husband seemed to her utterly preposterous even as
she felt her heart contract within her to think of the terrible, innocent paw snatching away her husband’s skin and he bereft of life.

The lion reached Jewel before her. She cleared a ridge of sand and saw the lion’s blunt, noble profile bent over the man, sweeping his hidden shape with the mane that hung from its great, domed head. The world ceased to whirl and the sea to move; the shore was now the lion’s home and she and the man were intruders who could only survive by imitating the stillness of the sand itself, to freeze in silence, attempting to deceive the devouring beast by the pretence of not-being. The ancestors of this lion came over the sea in cages to delight and instruct the children of domestic times; she watched it and was instructed. Its eyes glowed more steadily than candle flames and Jewel would feel its warm presence close and amorous; it was a most seductive death. It investigated the man thoroughly with nose and tongue. Its tail twitched from side to side.

Then it raised its head and yawned immensely, prey to an infinite boredom. Jewel lay as he had lain before the fire; if it bit him it would find no flesh inside his clothes so the lion sniffed him over one more time and wandered off, indifferent. Back it went to the forest, such miraculous, slinking grace, joints and muscles loosely and easily moving beneath the skin; it took its own time, which was very slow.

Marianne waited until it disappeared among the dunes and then she waited some more but still Jewel did not move. She waited again, and again, until she saw the sand held a paler glow and, looking behind her, she saw some hints of dawn in the sky, some breaks of blonde cloud. At that, she went to him. He was dark as a calcined statue but his eyes were open; she recalled pictures of the Ancient Egyptians who used to paint figures of the dead with their eyes open so they could see the way to the next world.

‘Gypsy is a corruption of the word, “Egyptian”,’ she told him in a cool voice, to keep at a distance from him.

‘My mother’s family, the Lees, they were gypsies, whatever that was, before the war. They traded scrap metal, or so my father said, and were wonderfully surprised at the amount of scrap metal the war provided until they realized there was no one left to trade it with and became chagrined. Are you real or am I dreaming you or did a lion come and lick my face?’

‘A lion came. I saw it.’

‘They must be breeding in the forest. At first they were very rare but soon will be an everyday hazard. I often wondered what it would be like to be the quarry as well as the hunter and lie in the undergrowth in ecstatic dread, harkening to my own intrepid footsteps. It licked my face and went away.’

‘Yes, it was remarkable.’

There was no help for it; she knelt beside him and put her arms around him. But when she tried to slide her tongue into his mouth, he pushed her away. In the forest, the lion roared like sweet thunder.

‘I don’t believe there’ll be a dawn this morning,’ he said.

‘It’s started already. Everything is as it should be.’

But one by one he took the rings off his fingers and buried them deep in the sand. Then the rings from his ears.

‘Why are you doing that?’

‘Go back. Go back and go to sleep.’

‘What about you?’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Do you want the lion to eat me?’

‘He’s gone away, he won’t do you no harm.’

‘I’ll go if you want,’ she said perfidiously.

‘Don’t look behind you.’

She lay behind a dune and spied on him. He walked back down to the water’s edge. She followed him. The light was bleak and mean, promising a day of rain and clouds. He took the chains and amulets from his neck and laid them on the surface of the smallest waves of the incoming tide, which first washed them farther up the beach, then briefly floated them and then a big wave, a seventh wave, took them in its hollow and they vanished into the heart of the sea. Alone on the sickle of sand, Jewel looked as tiny and as inconsequent as a cast shell. He walked into the sea.

He walked slowly but the incoming waters took him to their changing breasts and the backward tug of the waves made him stumble but he persevered. His hair floated out on the water and soon only his head was visible, as if it had been decapitated and set on an endless platter of ridged silver. She precipitated herself across the beach, threw off her
jacket, leapt into the freezing water and caught hold of him. He fought her with all his considerable strength.

Both lost their footing and wrestled in a contention of air and water. He swore, gasped and tried to drag her down and drown her but she was too agile for him and the water overcame him, anyway; he choked and went limp. The incoming tide thrust them up the shore and she pulled him across the sand by his hair till they were out of its reach. He had fainted. His flesh was wet and cold as that of a marine creature. She lay on top of him, covered him and warmed him until he returned to consciousness, moaned and hit her with extraordinary violence, so she was flung quite away from him. He crawled some small distance and vomited up a good deal of water. Soaked and aching, Marianne remembered she was pregnant and screamed with rage.

‘That’s the second time you’ve hit me. How could you hit me, at such a time. If you ever hit me again, something terrible will happen to you.’

‘I told you not to look back.’

It was bitterly cold. She found her dry jacket and wrapped herself up. He was shaking and weeping but she allowed him to lurch upright, unaided, because she disliked him so passionately. He appeared to resent the ghastly indignity of her rescue more than anything. The night was over; he deserted her. She let him go on ahead of her, back to the camp, and followed his footprints afterwards, shivering and muttering vindictively to herself. In the camp, they were lighting the first fires.

She went into the room with the levers, took off her wet clothes and lay down. She was exhausted and numb with cold. To her surprise, Mrs Green brought her a bowl of porridge and stood over her with arms akimbo as she ate it.

‘What happened?’ asked Mrs Green. ‘He looks like hell.’

Marianne ate another spoonful placidly before she replied.

‘He tried to drown himself. When I got him out of the sea, he hit me. Look at the bruise.’

She displayed her shoulder.

‘Oh, my God,’ said Mrs Green. ‘And you in the family way, as well.’

‘It will be his fault if I miscarry,’ said Marianne smugly and repeated these words in a louder voice as she saw him approach the door. Water
streamed from his hair and his soaked clothes stuck to him, the gaunt survivor of a shipwreck, his eyes momentarily blind as pearls. Mrs Green stood squarely before the girl in order to protect her but Jewel carried only a torn scrap of paper in his hand.

‘She’ll have to read it aloud for me.’

He placed the note in her hand and sank down beside her. She moved away so that no part of her would touch him and examined the message, which comprised a few scribbled words on the back of one of Dr Donally’s engraved visiting cards. The card was creased and dusty.

‘He says: “
SAVE ME
”.’ She had expected some gnomic aphorism. She was disappointed. Jewel pulled a blanket over his head and coughed.

‘Dry yourself,’ said Mrs Green. ‘Your health is so precarious.’

‘He wants a rescue, see,’ said Jewel heavily. He was so waterlogged all his movements were in slow motion as if he had remained at the bottom of the sea and brought this environment on land with him.

‘How did you get this note, anyway?’

‘His son brought it. He just came and started eating porridge from the pot with his fingers and he said some Soldiers surprised his father and loaded him with irons; so much for the persuasive powers of his silver tongue. But the boy hisself, he got away, perhaps flew.’

‘It’s lies,’ said Marianne. ‘And you know it.’

He slowly began to rub himself dry with the blankets. Mrs Green stooped and felt his forehead.

‘You’re in a fever.’

‘I’m on fire,’ he said. ‘There must be something wrong with the sea.’

Though the water drops ran down his arms, he seemed to crackle with fever; Marianne felt this fever heat beside her and did not know what to do.

‘Does he expect me to rescue him after I expelled him?’

‘So it would seem,’ said Marianne.

‘And am I really burning?’ he asked as if he could not trust the evidence of his own senses.

‘You are.’

‘I must go and talk to my brothers.’

‘Stay here and keep still,’ said Mrs Green.

Marianne felt a movement under her heart like a fish plopping in a
pool. She dug her nails into her palms to create a counter-irritant to her tenderness but, all the same, she said:

‘Don’t go.’

‘It’s easier said than done; I am nothing but the immediate promptings of my conscience –’

The brothers came to find him, anyway. Johnny, Bendigo, Jacob and Blue, for Precious was still too much hurt to move. They darkened the room with their presence; they stood around the mattress like four handsome and anonymous young trees.

‘Get up,’ said Johnny. ‘She’s bewitched you, it’s her that made you turn him out. You can’t keep your hands off her, can you, she’s eating you. You aren’t the man you were.’

Johnny had four knives of different sizes, a rifle on his shoulder and a revolver in his belt. There was blood of slaughtered animals on his furs.

‘He’s ill,’ said Mrs Green.

‘He is far too ill to go chasing that charlatan,’ said Marianne.

‘He hasn’t the time to be ill,’ said Johnny. ‘He’s got his job to do. You just shut up, you bitch.’

‘I shall not shut up!’ she shouted. At that, to her astonishment, Johnny took a few scared backward steps and made the sign against the evil eye. She felt the beginnings of a sense of power.

‘But I shall get up and I must get up,’ said Jewel. ‘I shall go and look for my tutor although it is most likely a trap to delude me and I shall be killed and you with me, Johnny, Jacob, you also, Bendigo, and Blue who can’t even be trusted to keep watch; I hope I shall be able to take you all with me. And we shall all together make a beautiful dive into nothing, we –’

‘You’ll stay with me and father your child.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Johnny.

‘She is,’ said Mrs Green with fat contentment.

‘Now leave me alone to paint my face and tire my head and find a window to look out of –’

The Lees were Old Believers. Mrs Green, as if mesmerized, took up his weird thread.

‘– and the little dogs came and ate up everything but the palms of her hands.’

‘If you go out after Donally, I shall leave you.’

‘See if I care.’

The Doctor’s son appeared, eating bread. The adventures of the past day and night had reduced his coat to shreds.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked Jewel as if continuing a conversation begun elsewhere.

‘Paint my face. Fetch my jars of paint, watch me turn into the nightmare.’

Johnny signalled to the others and they were gone as suddenly as they had come. The boy went, also, to root about in their possessions until he found the paints.

‘When the Soldiers see you coming, they will think you are the devil incarnate, riding a black horse.’

‘They are the devils, with their glass faces. One cannot escape the consequences of one’s appearance.’

‘It is the true appearance of neither of you.’

‘But it’s true as long as one or the other of us wants to believe it.’

‘You’re not a human being at all, you’re a metaphysical proposition.’

‘Wild beasts won’t eat me nor the sea drown me; what other conclusion can I draw?’

‘The lion wasn’t hungry and it was I that rescued you from the sea. Bullets will kill you for sure; besides, I think you are dying already.’

As if appearing on cue, thick, dark blood spilled from the corners of his mouth. He clapped his hand to his lips and the blood ran between his fingers and down his wrist. Mrs Green took a cloth and wiped it away. The boy brought the jars of paint and a jagged piece of mirror, which he laid down on the floor. Mrs Green took the boy’s hand.