New and Collected Stories (84 page)

Her face and form were littered with the paper bits of John Delmonden's letter. When he'd pushed the pillow against her mouth it was only to stop his own agony of what she had told him. He began pressing in order to hide her face, and went on with all his force when she was beyond consciousness because he couldn't bear the thought of her coming back and reproaching him for what he was doing.

Rain was tapping on the window. Perhaps the Romney Marsh would swallow Delmonden up for what he'd done. His hands were pale and puffy, and trembled as he tore the month of April out of his almanack, and made the scraps of that descend to join the other. The air was sweetening, the glass falling, the pressure a great weight on his eyes.

Each separate bone was bitterly tired. He steadied himself by the wall, the paper now the colour of laudanum, belladonna, gin, recalling how four years ago Lady Delmonden had quipped that such a widower as he get married again, that it was sinful to stay single on God's earth. Wasn't he lonely?

‘I have a daughter to keep me company,' he answered – but she looked very strange at that.

A maid of hers would need a husband soon, she said, young, able, and bonny too. Perhaps he should have flowed with it – he tore March out as well, and the stitching came loose – but some stubborn notion gripped him, and he said no, and she was thwarted in her idea, so walked out cold-faced but polite, and never mentioned it again. But there'd been hidden pleading in her icy eyes. Six months later that same maid had a bastard drawn out of her, and who the lover was no one knew, except for certain hints about her roaming son.

Such a festering entered his vision when Emily told him the real truth of the tale he'd dreaded hearing when she came back five days after going with John Delmonden, and he joined it to the pictures in his own mind, and to Lady Delmonden's rigid face, and to her son's smile, and then to his new-found rage, and picked up the cushion because he couldn't bear the sight of tears on her cheeks. Was it only to wipe them gently away?

February and January, back to the hinges of the year. On January 1st there had been no cloud in the sky, a brilliant and empty blue all day, after the full moon of the night. What was the weather any more to him? Every subtle change of heat and sky he'd analysed, but what of the world inside his own flesh and blood, and that continent behind the pale blue eyes of Emily? It was all mystery, and his life had been an unchanging day that defied reading because he was locked blindly in his own brand of unknowing. The more you hide your soul from others the more it becomes hidden from yourself. But why hadn't he seen that until now?

He'd known she was dead, for ever and irrevocably, the moment he lifted the cushion, and so the calm of understanding took him under its protection. But as the hours went by he became less certain that she'd never talk to him again, and while taking his meteorological readings in the garden he forgot completely that she would not be walking about the house when he went back to it.

Bending down, he put his ear to her breast to see if any pulse was there. The feeling that someone would never come back again – all that his life meant to him – was replaced by the certainty that there were, after all, momentous things still to come.

One by one he pulled his almanacks to pieces and piled them into the parlour fireplace. He felt the excitement of a criminal as he knelt on the rug and shaped them down with his hand before lighting. Perhaps the flames would tell him something, the heat speak to the heat within. Emily moved – but it was a ball of paper to one side of the main heap, twisted by an unseen flame that had crept on an undercurrent towards it.

The enclosed space, the warm room he'd been used to with his wife and through his marriage, the semaphoring flame on the opposite wall, and Emily lying quietly on the chaise-longue, filled him with a joy of life such as he'd never felt. The music swirling and roaring fed his fibres, and blotted out memory so that his feelings were caged into this room and moment.

If there had been real music the ground would have opened more and he would have danced into it, a waltz for his feet, a gavotte for his arms, a minuet for his lips and eyes. But to feel the new rush of hope he sat on a straight walnut-backed chair midway between Emily and the fire, a final quietness in which he sampled the meaning of his past life. It held the agonies at bay, wolves beyond the windows and the wind.

The final black paper-ash crumbled. A draught came down the chimney and swirled it. When the birds stopped he heard its noise. It was a fair, fine day. The nothing-rain had passed over, only a threat. The curtains didn't meet, and a long sliver of sunlight hung from the ceiling.

A neighing horse outside displaced other noises, and he sat still, earmarked by the gap between its stopping and footsteps which ended with a knock against the side door. He reached to the shelf for his loaded pistol, and put it into his jacket pocket. Never let anyone know that you suspect them. Always keep secret those innermost perturbations that might otherwise ruffle the waters of their treacherous calm. Leave them in peace till the time comes to strike. The barometer's needle was set for a few days of good weather.

The knocking sounded again, and he sat down. It could be three times for all he cared – and would be. Let him hammer with his pampered fist. He didn't beat so loud when he came for Emily. He was an ill the world could well be purged of. Tears burst from his eyes when he looked at her. He'd heard them say that he was a wild man, but that meant he'd been afraid too long, set off for church too often perhaps, walking there with his back straight, but returning on his hands and feet. You can never get your revenge on someone who has given the first blow. Forget it, by destroying them.

He smiled, and stood as the third rapping began, walked through his study to the door and pulled it open. The hinges squeaked, alive. Everything had its own noise.

‘What's wrong with you, Stevens? You must open the place. Are you ill?' Lady Delmonden pushed her way in. ‘I
won't
stand outside.'

He felt the comforting hard weight of the pistol against his bone, his mind splintered at the shock of seeing her. She held an umbrella, as if to lean on it. ‘Tell me' – she was taller, her finger lifted – ‘has Emily had any word from my son?'

He knew he would have to speak, move his tongue with the same force as his arm when hard at digging. ‘She tells me nothing.'

‘I don't suppose she does, but I'll speak to her myself.'

‘No' – he hadn't intended to say anything.

‘Won't I? You must curb your temper, Stevens.'

If he didn't speak, he would shoot. ‘No, I tell you.'

‘Do you know what you're saying?'

He searched out his words, because he had never lied: ‘She went on the coach to Tunbridge Wells. I'll send her to you as soon as she comes back.'

‘Are you all right?' Her horse neighed again outside, a footman holding the reins.

‘Yes.'

‘Make sure you do, then. I can't be kept in the dark like this by the pair of them. Good day to you.' A final turn of rage brought her back: ‘And next time I call on you, you will ask me into your parlour. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, my lady.'

What did those blue eyes with the pale dead skin around them know? He looked as long as he dared into the waterfall of sky, as if he would collapse, hoping she would go, for his hand was on the cool handle of the gun. When she had come to him, and touted her pregnant maid, he had created in himself a complete scheme saying that really she wanted him to marry her, and this was her devious way of testing the ground for it. In her young years there had been stories of her runawayings and heart-stormings, but he knew that they were as nothing compared to his if he brewed up such ridiculous ideas as this. Who am I? he asked now, as he had then. I saw her first when she came with her mother, carrying a basket of cakes to the village school.

‘Send her to me, then,' she told him.

He closed the door, and went back to his parlour.

Primroses, sorrel, violets and celandines were in Oldpark Wood, but he'd no energy to go and search out a few. As a child Emily had laid a bunch on his desk one spring. It's an inhuman machine that won't let you bring back such tender moments in all their reality. He smelled the soil as he pulled them up by the roots. He pondered on it in his fixity when even his eyeballs wouldn't move though he wanted them to. Hands on thighs, legs slightly apart, a scene set for his immobile head, waiting for Emily to breathe again.

Hours drew out. There was no time to act because time did not exist. On the sea the waves were molten metal, thin, without smoke. The motion and the endlessness made him sick.

Someone had come into the house. His eyes moved, sending a fissure of life back to his fingers. It was all plain now, and he called Emily in a normal voice, as if she would run to him. A chair went over in the study. He wished he had strewn her with flowers instead of those plague spots of paper bits.

‘Emily!' Delmonden called.

He stood, and waited, awake again, calm even, but with a faint sweaty smile as if he'd turned back into a child. He wanted to be friendly and answer him, but was sly enough in his stunned and stunted childishness to know that if he did the frame of his new-found tenuous manhood would fall apart. For the first time he was aware of the clock ticking on the wall, and thought it must have stopped yesterday, and for some unaccountable reason started again this second, it was so loud and disturbing as it hammered inside him.

The door was gently opened, and the floor creaked as Delmonden looked in. He tried not to stare at him, and turned aside.

‘Why the devil didn't you tell me you were here? I don't want to see over your whole damned house.'

He was of the tall people who could walk in, and look for his daughter, sidestepping any man's freedom and dignity. There was no life without Emily. He wasn't afraid of him – as he had been when he watched the whole plot forming but told himself that his brain spun false pictures. What else is there to live for if you've stopped being afraid?

‘What do you want?' – surprised at the clearness of his voice. He stood between the door and chaise-longue.

Delmonden must have ridden hard. His cloak was open – a dark suit under it, pale waistcoat, white shirt up to his throat, a florid ill-formed face just out of youth, a long clean-shaven chin. ‘Why don't you let daylight in the place? Where is she?'

He stepped backwards to the shelf, a hand at ease in his pocket. ‘She's not well.'

Delmonden came forward. He saw the road in front of him, potholes whose water reflected the variable sky. The rhythm of hooves still rang in his hearing. His eyes almost touched her forehead. ‘I'll get the doctor. For God's sake, why didn't
you
?'

‘She's dead.'

He felt his finger on the curve. It was like a hook, and the handle tilted, hidden. Forgive me, Lord: I know exactly what I do. The clock behind him seemed to explode, a noise blowing paper into the air as the bullet flew, a great stone at Delmonden's stomach.

He screamed, hand to the pain. He wanted to ask a question, but changed his mind: ‘You devil! She hated you. I can see …'

The second ball hit him, this time the whole white of the sun before he fell.

Mr G. M. Stevens, late postmaster of Biddenhurst, was hanged at eight o'clock a.m. on June 6th at Maidstone Gaol, in the County of Kent.

When about to be executed the crowd threw soil and dung at him. He saw these gestures merely as the earth extending a hand, welcoming him to become part of the good fellowship of the loam. The people were enraged by his indifference, because the trial revealed the abominations he had practised on the bodies of his victims. He had been able to keep them a further day before Lady Delmonden's tenants broke in and found them.

As the mob pelted him, he remained silent, looking at the sky, and feeling the air on his face. It was a south-west wind. The cloud: nimbus. Amount: 10. Temperature (as far as he could tell): 50. The parson had been good enough to inform him, before beginning his futile prayers, that the barometer read 29.620. A slight rain was falling.

His left hand reached for his almanack, and the crowd roared when it swung into the air.

The Fiddle

On the banks of the sinewy River Leen, where it flowed through Radford, stood a group of cottages called Harrison's Row. There must have been six to eight of them, all in a ruinous condition, but lived in nevertheless.

They had been put up for stockingers during the Industrial Revolution a hundred years before, so that by now the usual small red English housebricks had become weatherstained and, in some places, almost black.

Harrison's Row had a character all of its own, both because of its situation, and the people who lived there. Each house had a space of pebbly soil rising in front, and a strip of richer garden sloping away from the kitchen door down to the diminutive River Leen at the back. The front gardens had almost merged into one piece of common ground, while those behind had in most cases retained their separate plots.

As for the name of the isolated row of cottages, nobody knew who Harrison had been, and no one was ever curious about it. Neither did they know where the Leen came from, though some had a general idea as to where it finished up.

A rent man walked down cobblestoned Leen Place every week to collect what money he could. This wasn't much, even at the best of times which, in the thirties, were not too good – though no one in their conversation was able to hark back to times when they had been any better.

From the slight rise on which the houses stood, the back doors and windows looked across the stream into green fields, out towards the towers and pinnacles of Wollaton Hall in one direction, and the woods of Aspley Manor in the other.

After a warm summer without much rain the children were able to wade to the fields on the other side. Sometimes they could almost paddle. But after a three-day downpour when the air was still heavy with undropped water, and coloured a menacing gun-metal blue, it was best not to go anywhere near the river, for one false slip and you would get sucked in, and be dragged by the powerful current along to the Trent some miles away. In that case there was no telling where you'd end up. The water seemed to flow into the River Amazon itself, indicated by the fact that Frankie Buller swore blind how one day he had seen a crocodile snapping left and right downstream with a newborn baby in its mouth. You had to be careful – and that was a fact. During the persistent rain of one autumn water came up over the gardens and almost in at the back doors.