Mister Creecher (28 page)

It was dark by the time he got back. He found Creecher standing in the moonlight, looking down the valley. The giant seemed vague and transient in that light – as though he were constructed of shadows and moonbeams.

‘You were at the stone circle,’ said Billy.

‘Was I?’ said Creecher, turning round.

‘Yes. Why are you spying on me?’

‘Why are you meeting people in secret?’

‘You don’t own me,’ Billy snapped. ‘I can do what I like.’

‘Then why keep it a secret?’ said Creecher tersely.

‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her,’ Billy replied. ‘I was going to, honest.’

Creecher scowled.

‘
Honest
,’ insisted Billy. ‘I just wanted to get to know her a bit, that’s all. I just wanted something of my own, something that wasn’t about you and Frankenstein. It’s always about you and Frankenstein. I’ve got my own life, you know.’

‘She enjoyed your poetry,’ said the giant coldly.

Billy winced and blushed.

‘Yeah, well. They like that sort of thing, don’t they? Girls, I mean.’

‘You have not told her about me?’ Creecher asked.

‘Of course not,’ said Billy.

‘Or Frankenstein?’

‘No,’ said Billy. ‘I’m hardly going to tell her that I’m walking the length of Britain with a man-made giant, am I? Or that we’re tracking the man that made it, because he’s going to build another one.’

Creecher stared at Billy, and the intensity of his gaze made Billy squirm. He searched through the words he had just spoken, trying to discover the cause for the sudden drop in temperature.

‘
It?
’ Creecher said eventually.

‘What?’ asked Billy, but he knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

‘You said, “the man that made
it
”. Is that how you see me? Am I a thing? Even after all that we have been through together?’

‘No,’ pleaded Billy. ‘God, it was just a slip of the tongue, that’s all.’

But Creecher was not going to be so easily placated. He walked away and leaned against the wall they had made when they first arrived. An owl shrieked in the copse of trees behind the barn.

‘Damn it!’ said Billy to himself.

Creecher had melted into the shadows of the wall by the time Billy walked after him. He stood at the giant’s feet.

‘Maybe that is how I used to see you. But not now. Don’t be a fool.’

Creecher turned to face him, his eyes flashing in the darkness, and Billy took a step back, worried that the word ‘fool’ had been too much.

‘I came all the way up here to help you,’ he went on. ‘To help you find some happiness. Why can’t you let me be happy?’

‘You helped me because you were scared of me,’ snarled Creecher, ‘and then because of what I might do for you.’

‘At first, maybe.’

Creecher snorted derisively.

‘You ain’t going to make me feel guilty,’ said Billy. ‘It’s not like you helped me out of the goodness of your heart neither. You only helped me because you needed me to follow Frankenstein.’

‘Pah!’ said Creecher. ‘I have never needed you.’

Billy was caught by surprise at how much those words stung him. He stared at the giant for a long time before replying.

‘Well, then,’ he said coolly. ‘There ain’t no problem, is there?’

‘This girl,’ Creecher growled, ‘do you love her?’

‘No!’ said Billy. ‘Of course not. I don’t know. Maybe.’

Creecher got to his feet and walked out into the moonbeams. Billy followed him and grabbed his arm.

‘Why are you so angry with me?’

The giant refused to turn round.

‘Look, I didn’t understand before. About why you wanted a mate. I couldn’t see why I wasn’t enough for you.’

‘But you do now?’ said Creecher quietly.

‘Yeah,’ Billy replied. ‘Maybe I do.’

Creecher muttered something under his breath.

‘I won’t tell her anything about you or Frankenstein,’ said Billy. ‘Why would I? I just want to be with her.’

‘And me?’ Creecher asked, turning to face him. ‘What about me?’

‘Don’t say that,’ said Billy. ‘It ain’t fair! What was going to happen to me when Frankenstein built your mate? You’d have forgotten about me in a heartbeat.’

Creecher looked at the ground and then walked away, gradually dissolving into the darkness.

‘Yeah!’ shouted Billy. ‘You’ve got no answer to that, have you? Have you?’

The following day, after he had finished his work on the farm, Billy walked to the stone circle again. His argument with Creecher was still clinging to his mind when he woke, but very quickly he felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted from him.

He was glad those things had been said. They needed to be said. It had to end somewhere – they both knew that. Why not end it here, where Billy had a chance of happiness? Creecher could look after himself.

Billy gathered wild flowers as he went, smiling to himself at what his old cohorts back in London would have made of such behaviour. When he reached the circle he saw Jane taking the air nearby, but he lost his nerve and hid behind one of the stones as she approached.

Peeping out, he saw that she was looking another way, and he quickly sneaked out to place the flowers on an altarlike stone, before scuttling back behind one of the monoliths.

He watched Jane walk this way and that. She was singing a song to herself in a clear, quiet voice, and Billy began to fear that she would never see his gift.

But, all at once, she turned, making him jump back out of sight. A few moments later, when he peered out, she was standing holding the posy in her pale hands and smiling – a sweet, puzzled expression on her face.

‘Thank you,’ she said, without turning round.

Had she seen him? Billy did not know. He only knew that the moment would be ruined, somehow, by the awkwardness of any meeting that would follow it. So he stayed where he was.

The next time he looked, Jane was walking towards the cottage gate. Billy sank back against the stone and laughed. He felt a little foolish, but even that felt good.

Everything felt good.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Billy spent the next morning digging out an old tree stump, while Creecher helped Thwaite replace a roof beam in the house. He and Creecher had barely spoken since their argument about Jane.

It was hard work. A group of sheep came to a safe distance and watched him, staring with their long, silly faces. Billy shooed them away and they bolted, bounding down the hill as though pursued by wolves.

Billy looked down across the distant fells and saw the scattered farmhouses dotted across them. Maybe one day he would live in one of those cottages with Jane.

They would have some sheep and tend the land. Billy would work in the field until dusk, then come home to his wife and sit by the fire with his children, and tell them how he once knew a terrifying giant and how they became friends . . .

As Billy returned to the farmhouse, he saw Creecher resting in the shade of the barn, reading.

‘If I wanted to stay a bit longer,’ he said to the old man, ‘would that be all right with you?’

‘How much longer?’ asked Thwaite.

‘For good maybe,’ said Billy.

‘Just you?’ The old man looked over towards Creecher.

‘Just me.’

‘What about the big fellow?’

‘He’s got to go to Scotland,’ said Billy.

The old man winked and tapped the side of his nose.

‘Scotland, is it?’ he said. He nodded and sucked on his pipe.

Billy half opened his mouth to assure old Thwaite that Creecher really was bound for Scotland and not heaven, but thought better of it. Scotland, heaven, hell – what difference did it make? Creecher was going, that was all that mattered.

‘So I can stay?’ said Billy.

‘Aye – of course you can, lad,’ he said. ‘Stay as long as you like.’

Billy walked over to the little cottage by the stones when he had finished his work and had washed. Every rock and leaf seemed to have its own particular significance now that he thought he might live here permanently. He noticed new things at every stride. It was as if his senses had been heightened.

He saw dragonflies flitting past, using the path as their guide. He noticed the new bracken fronds rising up and curling open. He heard a skylark twittering above him, a lamb bleating down the valley. He saw quartz crystals twinkling on a distant crag and slate shards, watered by a nearby spring, shining in the sunlight.

Glistening fragments of the poems Creecher had read out over the past months came back to him, tumbling one over another until Billy was no longer sure whether he was remembering or inventing.

‘I was just passing,’ he said as Florence opened the door of the cottage. ‘I wondered if I might call on Miss Cartwright.’

‘I’m sorry,’ replied Florence coldly. ‘She cannot see you today, Mr Clerval.’

She was already closing the door.

‘I was only planning to stay a few min—’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Clerval,’ said Florence, and she shut the door.

Billy frowned and raised his hand to knock again, but paused midway. There was no hurry. He just needed to get Jane away from this frosty witch, and there would be ample opportunity to do that.
‘Stay as long as you like,’
the old man had said. He had all the time in the world.

Billy decided to walk into Keswick. He would buy Jane a present. He still had some money left. Girls liked gifts. He was sure of it.

But Billy had never bought a present in his life. He had no idea where to start looking and, after walking round in circles for ten minutes, he stood staring confusedly at passers by.

He saw two women enter a dressmaker’s shop, but Billy knew he could never go into a place like that. He stood outside a jeweller’s, but could not work up the nerve to ask the price of any of the items he looked at in the window.

He would have found it far easier to steal the jewellery, but he felt uncomfortable with the idea of giving Jane something he had stolen. He wanted to make a new start with her. His whole life was about to begin again. It was as if a great fog had lifted and he could see clearly at last.

Suddenly it came to him: a book. That was what he would buy her. But what book? He did not want to buy her poetry. That would confuse things. He hoped that now he had got to know Jane, he might let the whole idea of his being a poet gently die away.

A novel, that was the thing. Women loved novels. And women loved Jane Austen, didn’t they? He would buy her a Jane Austen novel – the one that Creecher had been reading when they were in the attic, back in London. What was it called?
Permission
? No –
Persuasion
. Perfect.

Billy knew he had seen a bookshop at the end of the alleyway leading down to Frankenstein’s warehouse, and so he set off, whistling a song his mother used to sing.

He paid for the book and had it wrapped in lemon-coloured tissue paper and tied with sky-blue twine. And, all the time, Jane’s smiling face flashed across his mind like sunlight on water.