Owls Do Cry (12 page)

—It’s wedding nerves, Fay. Not long now and you’ll be in that little home of your own, sweeping the doorstep and hanging out your washing on the new clothes-line.

And so it happened. Fay was married, a spring bride, and looking the social page of the newspaper said — radiant in white nylon over lace with an heirloom veil held in place by a tiny sprig of orange blossom.

And Albert’s cousin Gloria, who was in the church choir, sang The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. And after the wedding there was a breakfast, really a supper because it was an evening wedding, but they called it a breakfast, in the Brown’s Hall, which was twice as expensive to hire as the Cosy Nook restaurant; and there were three kinds of cream cakes, and plenty of fruit salad, no liquor of course, only soft drinks because the Chalklins and Crudges, the parents, did not approve; but returns of everything if you asked for them, even though the waitresses were working late, and tired out and crotchety. Oh it was a beautiful wedding, everybody said so, and the bride and
bridegroom went away late that very night to the Lakes for their honeymoon.

And that night Toby sat in his room reading his Atlas. In the inside cover was a map written in old writing which said

A New Map of the Terraceous Globe according to The Ancient Discoveries and First General Divisions of it into Continents and Oceans
.

Toby read the words over and over and then he turned the pages to the South and North Poles and the rest of the world that was not ice, all in pale colour of seashells. Gulf of Guinea. Morocco. Asia. He touched the gold piles of wheat and the swamp grass and the monsoon forests and the salt flats, plantless rock deserts and the terrible tiny mass of black that meant a million people crouched on a world of yellow sunlight. And he crossed the seas, Tasman, Pacific, Adriatic, Antarctic, and the continent, unnamed, on the last page, that was burned through with the mark of a leather storm; he crossed the seas with one stroke of his dirty red hand. How simple to travel, and on a night like this too, a spring night with the air outside so thick with hawthorn and plum and powdered catkin that it had to be elbowed and brushed aside before it could be breathed.

The willows down on the banks of the creek were showing their tenderest green, and the pear trees too, and the oaks, mother-wide, by the old pig sty, and wondering with every sprout of infant leaf, Who will eat our acorns when they grow? Years ago the people before the Withers had kept pigs that used to snuffle among the dead oak leaves and swallow the coffin-polished acorns that rained down,
like death, and were trodden in the earth and squashed, until some shot up like little green periscopes, and

—Little by little,

Amy Withers would say, who remembered and liked to quote verse,

—Little by little the acorn said.

If you looked outside on this spring night you would think there would never be any winter or blot of death, only tonight and tonight, and people getting married and having their photos taken to put in the paper or keep on their mantelpiece for the first ten years, and then put away in the drawer; and having rice thrown at them, and the keys of their suitcase stolen for fun; and for ever after, perplexed young-old men of thirty-two sitting alone in their bedroom and travelling across blue-bag seas to fields of paper corn; only tonight and tonight and mothers and fathers sitting in their kitchen, half asleep, half listening to the radio talking to them of soap and floor-polish and Ceylon tea; and then drinking their own cups of tea and eating shortbread with the holes pricked for it to breathe; and all the Chicks living up north, far away and grown-up, but writing down from beside their spaceheaters that breathed a dragon-warmth, —We are coming south to live. Tim has bought a house there. Excuse the letter-card.

And all the Daphnes sitting somewhere in a mad hospital, in a small room with a shut window and a bed of straw and singing; and all the Francies being burned for ever in a toi-toi hollow of mind.

You would think this night that the world sated with blossom and love and death would finish and there would
be no memory of it anywhere, save perhaps on a cave wall of new time, where the posturing figures dance unseen their stillness of clay or chalk or stone.

You would think all this on a spring night.

Except the thinking is not real.

A week later Toby received through the post a small silver tin of wedding cake from Mr and Mrs Albert Crudge. It was in a nest made of pink and blue threads of coloured paper. He was about to eat it, or at least taste it, when his mother said,

—Toby, Toby, you sleep with it under your pillow and you dream of the person you will marry. No, no – she corrected. That’s only for a girl. If
you
sleep with it under your pillow you will dream of your future, and it brings good luck. Not that I believe in good luck, it is all the Lord’s will. It’s just a quaint superstition of putting the cake under your pillow.

Toby said he was sure he would not sleep with cake under his pillow.

And his mother said, —Well, we’ll send it to Daphne, then, poor soul, I wonder how she is. They never
seem to tell us, and she never seems to write and we can’t visit her. I’m sure she would like a piece of wedding cake.

So it was arranged to send the cake to Daphne, and Toby put it on his dressing-table to remember to post it the next day. But that night as he got into bed he thought, well, I’ve seen Dad asleep with cake under his pillow; cake, wedding and Christmas, as well as those Cornish elves he sends for, dipped in magic water, that will grant every wish. It might bring me luck. I need luck to pull down the Peterkin Hotel and make money. It’s a silly superstition but there’s no harm in trying.

He put the tin under his pillow and turned over to sleep. He thought first of Fay Chalklin – no, Fay Crudge, and her husband, with factories and ledgers locked in them, and he wondered what Fay was doing at this time, and how she liked being married, and whether she would look any different when he saw her next time. Would she be having a baby? What would it be like to have a son or daughter? And a wife, having a wife, what would that be like?

And then Toby thought of the world, of Barcelona and Berlin and London, and some words that kept in his mind,

—
Say this city has ten million souls
.

And he thought of the short grass, tall grass, bunch grass, mountain grassland, swamp grass, mangroves. Of desert savanna and salt flats. Of pack ice and mean annual precipitation. Of all continents, scarred and burned by wind and rain. And his nose was itchy, and he picked a little ball out of it and rolled it round between his thumb and forefinger, and wiped it on his pillow. Then he curled himself
up warm as an embryo and went to sleep, floating without breath on an Adriatic sea, a Gulf Stream of grey water.

And he dreamed
.

And in his dream
he sat in a cold apple orchard on a corner of the moon. He sat in a circle of toi-toi that hung with apples of ice. He would have picked one and eaten it, for he liked apples, but three witches danced about him, singing the same words that Daphne had told him they sang, three witches, on the heath with Hecate, in thunder and lightning.

—He shall live a man forbid, they sang.

Then they stopped singing and sat down, cross-legged, with their long skirts over their knees, and they rocked three cradles that were made, each one, of a corner of the moon; and Toby wondered where the fourth corner lay, and he felt afraid until he remembered he was sitting on it in an ice-cold apple orchard. But where is the world, he thought? I need a tiny telescope, even a toy one made of a stick of toffee that I could eat afterwards, only I need a telescope, a toy one cheap and plastic from Woolworths, yet stronger for my needs than the walking stick of Albert Crudge; and I will not spend much money on my telescope; only to look that I may know the world and see my life and my mother and father and three sisters on their island with the fire at the centre and the sea with its green web of forgetting; and across it, Fay Chalklin, the mill girl, and her Albert, the Social Security man, inhabiting where I shall never sail; and he has taken his wife, I know he has taken her, and sliced her in pale coloured slices like a seashell to be thrown back, day by day to the water; and pressed her like a flower
between the pages of a large black book of judgement that has written on the outside, in frilly silver writing like a wedding invitation,

A New Map of the Terraceous Globe according to the Ancient Discoveries and First General Divisions of it into Continents and Oceans
.

Then in his dream Toby began to cry because he was alone and took fits and the middle witch left off rocking the cradle and came up to him, and said,

—Don’t cry, Toby, have an apple. We are safe here. No one will know it has been stolen.

She gave him an apple of ice that melted green and red in his warm hand, the green changing to sea, the red into blood, and both flowing in salt streams across the corner of the moon. He washed his face and hands in the two streams, trying to take the black away from under his fingernails, and the nicotine from his fingers; while the three witches that were called Francie, Daphne and Chicks, rocked the cradles that held themselves as children, dreaming, with sticky warm faces, like kittens set down to suckle furry mother sleep.

—But where am I, thought Toby. There is no place for me. Where is my cradle?

—Why don’t you rock
me
, he asked the three witches. And one or all of them answered,

—We are afraid of you, Toby. You will take a fit.

And then he wondered again, Where is the world? He thought, perhaps I should ask the witches where the world can be, for I need money and food and clothing and some kind of social position. I shall be arrested here as a tramp
and thrown in the sea or burned when morning comes and the old fires are relit in the circle of toi-toi.

He beckoned to Francie.

—Francie, you are the eldest and can tell me. Where can I find some money to have for treasure?

Francie laughed and shook her long skirt. He saw that her eyebrows had been plucked and she wore lipstick.

—Toby, don’t you know this is our treasure place right here,
you know
, the books and valuable writings and things that we find, and we sit here, and the sky rolls round and round like a blue and white and grey milky marble. Oh Toby, don’t you know? And the pine tree with the needles that fall and sew up our crying. She twirled her skirt again and frowned like a real witch and said, in a superior way, Don’t believe me, then, if you don’t want to. But ask Daphne or Chicks. Go on, ask them. Or I’ll tell.

—Who will you tell?

—I’ll tell Dad and then you’ll be given a hiding, and have to fill the coal-bucket while he watches and gives orders. Or I’ll tell mum, but she won’t do anything to hurt you. She’ll warn you and kiss you.

—Or I’ll tell God, and
then
you’ll be sorry. He’ll write in his book about you, and on resurrection day, in all the crowd, with the people looking and everything, God’ll read out your name from the platform and you’ll have to go up in front of him and be judged, while we watch you, while everybody watches. And it’ll be hot in the crowd, with so many people, and they’ll be selling ice creams and cold drinks as fast
as they can make them, but
you
won’t get any ice creams or cold drinks, fizzy and coloured, or candyfloss either. Or be able to go and see the bearded lady and fat man when it’s interval, and God has tea in the special tent. Yes, Toby Withers, I’ll tell on you.

—What’ll you tell about?

—I’ve forgotten now, but I’ll tell, you see.

And Francie twirled her skirt again and began to rock the cradle, singing, as she rocked,

—Come in you naughty bird, the rain is pouring down.

And Toby turned to Chicks and said,

—Chicks, I shall spend my life in prison if I have no money. Where can I find some money?

Chicks stopped rocking her cradle and came forward to him, and put her arm around his shoulder. Then she withdrew it quickly,

—Toby your neck is greasy, and your hair, too, with that oil, if you are not careful you will get boils on the back of your neck and they will take a long time to heal. You will have to have penicillin, and that may shorten the time. One of the children had boils only last year and I had such difficulty. The doctor said he had never seen a case quite like it in children. It was unique, he said. He had to give the children some kind of special treatment, some drug newer than penicillin, very expensive; but of course we have the money to pay, Tim earning what he does. But the price of things these days is fantastic. You say you want money. You will never find it here. What we used to think of as treasure wasn’t really treasure
at all. Ours was a childish outlook, not allowable in an adult who has to adjust himself to a complex society. I’m trying to bring my children up to fit in with things. When in Rome, I say. I am training them to handle money, for money is the most important thing, or almost, in this society. I am glad you realise that money is the treasure. Of course I grant there is the spiritual side of things, love and all that. We try to love our children for a few hours each day, to stabilise them. I advise you, Toby, to take up some kind of profitable business as soon as you can. But I wish–

She fell quiet, not speaking her wish, and looked into the cradle. Toby looked too, and saw Chicks as a little girl, fast asleep, with her eyes closed upon a future dream of a vast world, changing and sucked and warm, like an aniseed ball.

Then he turned to Daphne who was rocking her cradle and crooning something which sounded like,

Sift where and how through a cloud of sky

Brown the green sea in a warm salt pie
,

Eat and turn off the sun and die

Cold as a coin in an oven of why
.

She stopped singing and rocking and stared past Toby to something beyond him. He looked over his shoulder, afraid, and saw a vaporous and profound drop of nothing.