Mr Mac and Me (12 page)

There’s been a grass frost in the night, and the blades snap stiff under my boots, but the sky is clear, and soon the sun begins to melt it back to green. I’d like to start straight away. But I can’t start or she’ll know that I’ve been watching her, and so instead I stand before the wall of gorse, and imagining that I’m Charles Rennie Mackintosh himself, I attempt to make a copy of the bright soft flowers that sit among the thorns.

When I look up the sun has risen above the sea, and if the bells were allowed to peal, they’d have been ringing out over the land for half an hour to call us into church. I pack up my things and run, pelting along the grassy lanes, crunching over acorns, snapping and popping, as I take a short-cut through the Hoist. The church is silent. The village packed away inside, and they must all be kneeling, bent forward in prayer, because as I tread along the path I’m sure that I can hear the rhythm of their breath. I stand by the oak door, listening, and when I hear the bustle of people standing, and the low voice of the vicar starting up, I creak it open and slide along the aisle.

Lunch that day is solemn. Father brings a bottle of whisky to the table and with every mouthful that we eat he takes a slug. My sisters turn on me, Mother too, hard-eyed as if to say: Now look what you’ve done. And they are right. It doesn’t need much these days to tip Father into fury. We wait. My throat is tight, and by the time he slams his fist down on the table I’m ready to be hit. ‘Sir Bly,’ he says, surprising us. ‘That scoundrel has turned down my application.’ And steaming fit to bust he tells us his plans to build a smokehouse and sell smoked fish from a shack beside the inn. But first the shack must be built, and Sir Bly will not allow it, and in the terms of the lease of the Blue Anchor it is Sir Bly who has the final say. ‘No new structures can be built.’ This is his final word. And I remember Mac’s face when he told us the same thing.
Now there are to be no new buildings.
But unlike Mr Mackintosh, Father cannot accept it. He is convinced this rule has been invented just to spite him, and not by the government at all, and as he takes another slug of whisky he reminds us of the rottenness of his luck, the torment of his life at sea, the knife-grinding business that refused to pay, until as always he comes to the glory of pork butchering and the empire it might have been. Mother, Mary, Ann and I keep silent. No one mentions the rent that is due. Or asks where the money would come from for bricks. No one mentions it or dares to even think it. In our silence we are careful to agree with him, for we’ve learnt that even through the fog of liquor his instinct for offence is sharp. Yes, I say inside my head, you’re right, you
are
right, so that he might know, even though I wasn’t born then, how convinced I am his enterprise at Dunwich would have flourished if he’d been given the chance.

I wait till he has fallen asleep, his head on the table, before I sidle out. This time I walk more slowly, the eggs cold in my pocket, the salt come loose. I sit in the hollow of grass and practise whistling through a fat green blade. It tickles my mouth and makes me shudder, but soon I am calling, low and loud, out across the sedge towards the sea. If I was a smuggler, in days gone by, I’d have used this whistle as my code. And I think of Betty at her outside sermons, standing on the common above Gun Hill, and I wonder what the parson says to them as his voice booms out in a foreign tongue.

‘I’m here,’ Betty startles me, ‘no need to whistle for me like a dog,’ and I spring up, the blade falling from my lips, and not able to think what else to do, I reach into my pocket for a boiled egg.

‘Thank you,’ she smiles. She unwinds her shawl and lays it on the ground. ‘Here?’ she asks, settling herself, and she tilts her chin towards me.

I take out my sketchbook, feeling the blood creep up over my face, and to gain time I flip open my penknife and slice a papery slither from the pencil. Now the other side must be evened up, and I sharpen it so thoroughly and for so long that when I press the point against the paper it snaps.

Betty doesn’t move. She neither smiles nor frowns, but looks past me, her face so pale I can see blue veins below the skin. I open the pages of my notebook and look at the gorse sketch I made that morning, hoping to take courage from its splintery likeness, but all I see is a scrawl of scratches surrounding a dark shape that may or may not be a flower.

Turning away, I leaf back to the earlier picture of Betty and there at least is the shadow of her face.
Look, Toshie, the boy has made a drawing of something other than a boat
. Mrs Mackintosh’s warm words come back to me. And glancing at her one more time, I force myself to begin.

Chapter 30

The news is all over the village when I wake. Danky’s been shot. It must have come over from the fishermen at the Bell, for by the time I’ve clattered down the ladder Mother knows it, and Ann too. He was on the beach at Southwold, night fishing, when the constable took him for a spy. A bullet caught him in the leg, and another whistled past his ear, before he had a chance to put his arms up and shout his name into the dark.

‘I want to see him,’ I say. But Mother won’t hear of any such thing. ‘You’ll go to school,’ she says, ‘and then, if there’s no work for Mr Allard, you can go on up to the common and take him some fresh bread.’

There is work for Mr Allard but I stop by and tell him I’m not well, coughing for good measure, and looking at the ground. Allard backs away. ‘You’ll be the death of me,’ he says, and he lets me go, but not before he’s told me in full detail how the fools in charge of the cannons on Gun Hill are digging round each one in the hope they’ll fall away into the ground. ‘How will they ever get them out again?’ he says. And he’s still muttering when I hurry away.

There are two houses on the common, small stone cottages, their backs to the estuary. Danky’s is closest to the water and I approach, fearful of his sister’s sharp tongue, as I knock on the door. There is no answer. So I turn the handle and look in. At first, all I see is a bundle of covers on a box-bed beside the stove. And then on the other side, his leg up on a chair, Danky himself, his eyes closed, his big old face naked without its cap.

‘There you are,’ he turns his eyes to me. ‘Get me a smoke, will you. The old girl’s gone out and left me. And to care for Mother too.’ He nods in the direction of the blankets where I see, now that I’m actually looking, the yellowed curls of his mother’s ancient head. The cheeks are sunken, the mouth is all bunched in, and if it wasn’t for a gentle wheezing, I’d swear the woman was already dead.

Danky’s pipe is on the table, out of reach, and I take it to him and his pouch of tobacco too. When he’s packed it full, grunting and sighing with the strain, I light a splinter of wood from the fire and hold it until my fingers burn. ‘That’s better,’ he says, and he sucks, spits and sucks again, releasing a billow of smoke into the room.

‘So?’ I sit down on a stool beside him.

‘Not even a cup of tea?’ He looks at me. ‘How hurt does a man have to be to earn himself a bit of tender caring?’ And I spring up while he laughs, and I put the kettle on to boil. I set the bread on a board too, bring it for his inspection, but he only waves it away and points instead to a bottle on a shelf. ‘Doctor’s orders. Even Lizzie can’t argue with that.’ And I look round fearfully in case his sister may have stepped, disapproving, through the door.

When Danky has his tea, topped full with whisky, I sit down again beside him. I want to hear the story of how he came to be shot. I’ve earned it, surely, even if he hasn’t tasted the bread. I wait while he slurps at his tea and sucks happily at his pipe, and I glance at his leg which is bandaged round and wonder if the bullet is still in there or if it passed right through.

‘Danky,’ I try when his eyelids begin to droop, ‘was it very bad when the bullet caught you?’ But Danky only raises his hand and nods towards the old lady laying on her bed as if any talk of what had happened might disturb her.

I wait, unsure how to go on. Surely Danky can’t still be frightened of his mam, and I imagine the beating I’d get from my own if I’d been caught down on the beach at night.

‘Silly bugger thought I was a spy,’ he mutters, and he chuckles round the stem of his pipe.

‘But . . .’ my voice is a whisper, ‘does that mean there were other, actual spies, out there that night?’

Danky frowns and the corners of his mouth turn down. ‘Bloody fool of a constable,’ he mutters and soon his eyes are closing, his teacup, almost empty, hanging from his hand.

I take the cup and put it on the side, and stand above him unsure whether to loose the pipe from between his teeth or not – what if it falls and sets the room alight? – and I move a little closer to the old woman to see if for all her frailty she might stamp out a fire should it arise. She’s rumoured to be the oldest person in the village. And I see now as I stare into her face that she is indeed more ancient than Mrs Lusher’s mother who sits cheerfully outside the shop in summer wrapped up in a rug. Mrs Danky is pale as milk, there are grooves across her forehead in three swooping lines, and the soft skin of her chin is wild with wispy strands of hair. One gnarled hand protrudes from the covers, shiny and thin, but it is her scalp visible through the curls that frightens me the most – where is her cap, surely she should not lie here uncovered? – and as I frown down on her she snaps open her eyes. ‘What is it, boy?’ she says.

Across the room Danky starts as if it is he who’s been addressed. ‘Nothing,’ I stumble. Her eyes are blue and unexpectedly bright and she looks at me so fiercely I take a step away. I glance at Danky but he has slumped back into his chair. And so bidding the old lady goodbye and whispering to no one in particular that I’ll come again should I be needed, I slip out through the door.

The common is wide open and free. Bell heather bursts purple on its borders and clumps of trailing yellow flowers cling to the ground. I race to safety, spinning over the hard short grass, scattered with the droppings of muntjac and rabbit, glinting black to show where they have most recently been. I follow the maze of paths that lead to the river, and scramble along the shoreline until I reach the bridge. There is nothing coming so I skip across the track, stopping in the middle, listening to the silence of the rails, feeling my heart race, until I can frighten myself no more. Slowly I walk along beside the river, peering over to the Southwold shore and the beginnings of the harbour, listening for the singing of the herring girls as they pack their barrels. Germany was where the fish used to be shipped out to, but there’s no fisherman who’d want to be feeding the enemy now, and no German who’d trust a herring caught swimming in water that is ours. Our fish will be sent out to the troops instead and I imagine the men in their smart uniforms, forking the pickled fish out of the barrels.

I count the sheds as I go by, the names of the fishermen scrawled above the door: Palmer, Upcraft, Watson, Hurr. And I think of Thorogood, bragging that he, of all of them, is still bringing money in from rent. It is Mrs Mac, apparently, that has the funds. There’s nothing that gets by in a village this size. And Mother had it from Mrs Horrod, who heard the same from Mrs Lusher, that old Mac’s business went down in Glasgow, and that when he fell ill, and ill he was when he first came here, it was she, his wife, who buoyed him up with money of her own. I think of Mrs Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, her fine clothes, her high head, the thickness of her hair, and I imagine the proud look on her face if I ever manage to complete the picture of HMS
Formidable
. It’s her smile that I’m after, and I smile so wide at the hope of it that I almost walk on past their shed. But today it is only Mac who is there. He has his board on his knee, and he is back on the winter stock, a thick stem in a jar before him, leaning so intently towards it that I daren’t disturb him. I peer past him through the door, hoping to catch the flame of Mrs Mac’s red bun, but the shed is empty and the panel she’s been working on is leaning against the wall beside my board. I lift it, and together with the crate box I consider my own, I bring them both outside. I place the half-finished painting on my knee and sit with it, staring out across the river as I have seen Mac do. Battle of Yser. Battle of Coronel. Battle of Tanga. I find myself repeating that morning’s list, although Runnicles has not set us the task, and my eyes wide with the horror of it I see the
Formidable
sailing into a battle of its own. I can smell the fireships and feel the cannons that blast into her sides, hear the cries of the sailors as they jump into the waves. I look down at my painting. The flatness of my ship. Its lifeless sails, and the portholes like bubbles with nothing behind them but thick rough paper and a wash of grey.

‘Are you not going to start?’ Old Mac surprises me. I hadn’t thought he’d noticed I was there. And so I slide out my paintbox, and filling a jar with water I squash my brush against the paper and mash the colours until the surface of the page is raw.

I might have gone on like that until the picture was all chewed over if the light didn’t desert us, and I look up to find Mac rubbing his eyes, standing, stretching, packing away his things.

‘Where’s Mrs Mackintosh?’ I ask him, surprised to find she has still not appeared, and Mac tells me she is gone to Glasgow. ‘This week her sister needs her more than me.’

‘That must be a great deal,’ I say before I have a chance to check myself and I bow my head and mutter an excuse.

‘No,’ Mac sighs. ‘You’re right. It is quite true.’

Together we lock up the shed and walk down towards the ferry where I slow my pace to see who exactly is getting on and off. There are a troop of soldiers, and a horse and carriage, with several people sitting on its box seat, and some girls with shawls about their heads pressed in against the sides. I think I see a flash of bright blonde hair but Mac, with his pipe and stick, is striding off ahead of me. ‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ I say, even though he hasn’t asked me to accompany him, and I wait there for a glimpse of Betty while he heads away towards the dunes. But Betty isn’t on the boat. It is Mrs Lusher’s girls who scramble off, and the two from the blacksmith’s, and so I wait for the next boat and the next, until it occurs to me she might already have gone home. Foolish, I walk down to the beach, and there, alone, his stacked boot in the waves, is Mac, the binoculars raised to his eyes. ‘Mr Mackintosh,’ I shout, my arms flailing as I run. And when I reach him I tap sharply on the sides of the black frames.