Piranha to Scurfy (12 page)

“What is it?”

“Chuck’s sick,” Carrie said. “I mean very sick. He’s lying in bed on his back with his mouth all drawn down to one side and when he speaks his voice isn’t like his voice—it’s slurred, he can’t form the words.”

“How do you phone the emergency services? I’ll do it.”

“Nora, you can’t. I’ve tried calling them. The phone’s down. Why do you think I’ve no lights on? The power’s gone.”

“What shall we do? I don’t suppose you want to leave him, but I could do something.”

“Not in this rain,” Carrie said. “When it stops, could you take the Land Cruiser and drive into Hogan?”

Then Nora had to admit she had never learned to drive. They both went to look at Chuck. He seemed to be asleep, breathing noisily through his crooked mouth. A crash from somewhere overhead drove the women into each other’s arms, to cling together.

“I’m going to make coffee,” Carrie said.

They drank it, sitting near the window, watching the lightning recede, leap into the mountains. Nora said, “The rain’s stopping. Look at the sky.”

The black clouds were streaming apart to show the dawn. A pale tender sky, neither blue nor pink but halfway between, revealed itself as the banks of cumulus and the streaks of cirrus poured away over the mountain peak into the east.The rain lifted like a blind rolled up. One moment it was a cascade, the next it was gone, and the coming light showed gleaming pools of water and grass that glittered and sparkled.

“Try the phone again,” Nora said.

“It’s dead,” said Carrie and, realizing what’s she’d said, shivered.

“Do you think Lily’s phone would be working? I could go down there and see. If her phone’s down too, maybe she’d drive me into Hogan.”

“Please, Nora, would you? I can’t leave him.”

The air was so fresh, it made her dizzy. It made her think how seldom most people ever breathe such air like this or know what it is, but that once the whole world’s atmosphere was like this, as pure and as clean. The sun was rising, a red ball in a sea of pale lilac, and while on the jagged horizon black clouds still massed, the huge deep bowl of sky was scattered over with pink and golden cirrus feathers. Soon the sun would be hot and the land and air as dry as a desert.

She made her way down the hairpin bends of the mountain road, aware of how poor a walker she had become. An ache spread from her thighs into her hips, particularly on the right side, so that in order to make any progress she was forced to limp, shifting her weight onto the left. But she was near Lily Johansson’s house now. Lily’s two horses stood placidly by the gate into the field.

Then, suddenly, they wheeled around and cantered away down the meadow as if the sight of her had frightened them. She said aloud, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

As if in answer the animal came out of the flowery path onto the surface of the road. She was the size of an African lioness, so splendidly loose-limbed and in control of her long fluid body that she seemed to flow from the grass and the asters and the pink geraniums. On the road she stopped and turned her head. Nora could see her amber eyes and the faint quiver of her golden cheeks. She forgot about making herself tall, putting her hands high above her head, advancing menacingly. She was powerless, gripped by the beauty of this creature, this cougar she had longed for. And she was terribly afraid.

“Catamount, catamount,” she whispered, but no voice came.

The cougar dropped onto her belly, a quivering cat flexing her muscles, as she prepared to spring.

WALTER’S LEG

WHILE HE WAS TELLING THE STORY about his mother taking him to the barber’s, the pain in Walter’s leg started again. A shooting pain—appropriate, that—and he knew very well what caused it. He shifted Andrew onto his other knee.

The story was about how his mother and he, on the way to get his hair cut, stopped on the corner of the High Street and Green Lanes to talk to a friend who had just come out of the fishmonger’s. His mother was a talkative lady who enjoyed a gossip. The friend was like-minded. They took very little notice of Walter. He disengaged his hand from his mother’s, walked off on his own down Green Lanes and into Church Road, found the barber’s, produced sixpence from his pocket, and had his hair cut. After that he walked back the way he had come. His mother and the friend were still talking. The five-year-old Walter slipped his little hand into his mother’s, and she looked down and smiled at him. His absence had gone unnoticed.

Emma and Andrew marveled at this story. They had heard it before, but they still marveled. The world had changed so much; even they knew that, at six and four. They were not even allowed to stand outside on the pavement on their own for two minutes, let alone go anywhere unaccompanied.

“Tell another,” said Emma.

As she spoke a sharp twinge ran up Walter’s calf to the knee and pinched his thigh muscle. He reached down and rubbed his bony old leg.

“Shall I tell you how Moultry shot me?”

“Shot you?” said Andrew. “With a gun?”

“With an airgun. It was a long time ago.”

“Everything’s that happened to you, Granddad,” said Emma, “was a long time ago.”

“Very true, my sweetheart. This was sixty-five years ago. I was seven.”

“So it wasn’t as long ago as when you had your haircut,” said Emma, who already showed promise as an arithmetician.

Walter laughed. “Moultry was a boy I knew. He lived down our road. We used to play down by the river, a whole bunch of us. There were fish in the river then, but I don’t think any of us were fishing that day. We’d been climbing trees. You could get across the river by climbing willow trees—the branches stretched right across.

“And then one of us saw a kingfisher, a little, tiny bright blue bird it was, the color of a peacock, and Moultry said he was going to shoot it. I knew that would be wrong, even then I knew. Maybe we all did except Moultry. He had an airgun—he showed it to us. I clapped my hands, and the kingfisher flew away. All the birds went, we’d frightened them away with all the racket we were making. I had a friend called William Robbins—we called him Bill, he was my best friend—and he said to Moultry that he’d bet he couldn’t shoot anything, not aim at it and shoot it. Well, Moultry wasn’t having that and he said, yes, he could. He pointed to a stone sticking up out of the water and said he’d hit that. He didn’t, though. He shot me.”

“Wow,” said Andrew.

“But he didn’t mean to, Granddad,” said Emma. “He didn’t do it on purpose.”

“No, I don’t suppose he did, but it hurt all the same. The shot went into my leg, into the calf, just below my right knee. Bill Robbins went off to my house. He ran as fast as he could—he was a very good runner, the best in the school—and he fetched my dad and my dad took me to the doctor.”

“And did the doctor dig the bullet out?”

“A pellet, not a bullet. No, he didn’t dig it out.” Walter rubbed his leg, just below the right knee. “As a matter of fact, it’s still there.”

“It’s still
there?
”

Emma got off the arm of the chair and Andrew got off Walter’s lap and both children stood contemplating his right leg in its gray flannel trouser leg and gray-and-white argyle sock. Walter pulled up the trouser leg to the knee. There was nothing to be seen.

“If you like,” said Walter, “I’ll show you a photograph of the inside of my leg next time you come to my house.”

The suggestion was greeted with rapture. They wanted “next time” to be now but were told by their mother that they would have to wait till Thursday.Walter was glad he’d come in the car. He wouldn’t have fancied walking home, not with this pain. Perhaps he’d better go back to his G.P., get a second opinion, ask to be sent to a—what would it be called?—an orthopedic surgeon, presumably. Andrew, surely, had had the right idea when he’d asked if the doctor had dug the pellet out of his leg. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, thought old-fashioned Walter, hast thou ordained strength. It was hard to understand why the doctor hadn’t dug it out sixty-five years ago, but in those days, so long as something wasn’t life threatening, they tended to leave well—or ill—alone. Ten years ago the specialist merely said he doubted if it was the pellet causing the pain; it was more likely arthritis.Walter must accept that he wasn’t as young as he used to be.

Back home, searching for the X-rays through his desk drawers, Walter thought about something else Andrew had said. No, not Andrew, Emma. She’d said Moultry hadn’t done it on purpose, and he’d said he didn’t suppose he had. Now he wasn’t so sure. For the first time in sixty-five years he re-created in his mind the expression on Moultry’s face that summer’s evening when he’d boasted he could hit the stone.

Bill Robbins was sitting on the riverbank, two other boys whose names he had forgotten were up in the willow tree, while he, Walter, was down by the water’s edge, looking up at the kingfisher, and Moultry was higher up with his airgun. The sun had been low in a pale blue July sky. Walter had clapped his hands then and, when the kingfisher flew away, turned his head to look at Moultry. And Moultry’s expression had been resentful and revengeful too because Walter had scared the bird away. That was when he’d started boasting about hitting the stone. So perhaps he had meant to shoot him, shot him in the leg because he’d been balked of his desire. He didn’t think of that at the time, though, Walter thought. He took it for an accident, and so did everyone else.

“I’m imagining things,” he said aloud, and he laid the X-rays on top of the desk, ready to show them to Emma and Andrew. On Thursday, their mother brought the children along after school.

The pictures were admired and a repetition of the story demanded. In telling it, Walter said nothing about the revengeful look on Moultry’s face.

“You forgot the bit about Bill running to your house and being the best runner in the school,” said Emma.

“So I did, but now you’ve put it in yourself.”

“What was his other name, Granddad? Moultry what?”

“It must have been a case of what Moultry,” said Walter, and he thought, as he often did, of how times had changed. It would be incomprehensible to these children that one might have known someone only by his surname. “I don’t know what he was called. I can’t remember.”

The children suggested names. In his childhood the ones they knew would have been unheard-of (Scott, Ross, Damian, Liam, Seth) or, strangely enough, too old-fashioned for popular use (Joshua, Simon, Jack, George). He put up some ideas himself, appropriate names for the time (Kenneth, Robert, Alan, Ronald), but none of them was right. He’d know Moultry’s name when he heard it.

His daughter Barbara was looking at the X-rays. “You’ll have to go back to the doctor with that leg, Dad.”

“It does give me jip.” Walter realized he’d used an expression that had been out of date even when he was a boy. It was a favorite of his own father’s. “It does give me jip,” he said again.

“See if they can find you a different consultant. They must be able to do something.”

When Barbara and the children had gone he looked Moultry up in the phone book.The chances were that Moultry wouldn’t be there, not in the same place after sixty-five years, and he wasn’t. No Moultrys were in it. Walter’s leg began to ache dreadfully. He tried massaging it with some stuff he’d bought when he’d pulled a muscle in his back. It heated the skin but did nothing for the pain. He tried to remember Moultry’s first name. It wasn’t Henry, was it? No, Henry was old-fashioned in the twenties and not revived till the eighties. David? It was a possibility, but Moultry hadn’t been called David.

Bill Robbins had known Moultry a lot better than he had. The Moultrys and the Robbinses had lived next door but one to each other. Bill was dead—he’d died ten years before—but up until his death he and Walter had remained friends, played golf together, and been fellow members of the Rotary Club, and Walter still kept in touch with Bill’s son. He phoned John Robbins.

“How are you, Walter?”

“I’m fine but for a spot of arthritis in my leg.”

“We’re none of us getting any younger.” This was generous from a man of forty-two.

“Tell me something. D’you remember those people called Moultry who lived near your grandparents?”

“Vaguely. My gran would.”

“She’s still alive?”

“She’s only ninety-six, Walter. That’s nothing in our family, barring my poor dad.”

John Robbins said it would be nice to see him and to come over for a meal and Walter said thanks very much, he’d like to. Old Mrs. Robbins was in the phone book, in the same house she’d lived in since she’d gotten married, seventy-three years before. She answered the phone in a brisk spry voice. Certainly she remembered the Moultrys, though they’d been gone since 1968, and she particularly remembered the boy with his airgun. He’d taken a potshot at her cat, but he’d missed.

“Lucky for the cat.” Walter rubbed his leg.

“Lucky for Harold,” said Mrs. Robbins grimly.

“That was his name, Harold,” said Walter.

“Of course it was. Harold Moultry. He disappeared in the war.”

“Disappeared?”

“I mean he never came back here, and I wasn’t sorry. He was in the army—never saw active service, of course not. He was in a camp down in the west country somewhere for the duration, took up with a farmer’s daughter, married her, and stopped there. I reckon he thought he’d come in for the farm, and maybe he has.Why don’t you ever come and see me, Walter? You come over for a meal and I’ll cook you steak and chips—you were always partial to that.”

Walter said he would once he’d had his leg seen to.

He got an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon, a different one, who looked at the new X-rays and said Walter had arthritis. Everyone of Walter’s age had arthritis somewhere.The children liked the new X-rays, and Emma said they were an improvement on the old ones. Andrew asked for one of them to put on his bedroom wall along with a magazine cutout of the Spice Girls and his
Lion King
poster.

“You ought to get a second opinion on that leg, Dad,” said Barbara.

“It would be a third opinion by now, wouldn’t it?”

“Tell about Moultry, Granddad,” said Andrew.

So Walter told it all over again, this time adding Moultry’s Christian name. “Harold Moultry pointed at a stone in the water and said he’d shoot that, but he shot me.”

“And Bill Robbins who was the fastest runner in the whole school ran to your house and fetched your dad,” said Emma. “But Harold didn’t mean to do it, he didn’t mean to hurt you, did he?”

“Who knows?” said Walter. “It was a long time ago.”

They were all going away on holiday together, Barbara and her husband, Ian, and the children and Walter. It was a custom they’d established after Walter’s wife died five years before. If he’d been completely honest, he’d have preferred not to go. He didn’t much like the seaside or the food in the hotel, and he was embarrassed about exposing his skinny old body in the swimming pool. And he suspected that if they were completely honest—perhaps they were, secretly, when alone together—Barbara and Ian would have preferred not to have him with them. The children liked him there; he was pretty sure of that, and that was why he went.

The night before they left he went around to old Mrs. Robbins’s. John was there and John’s wife, and they all had steak and chips and tiramisu, which Mrs. Robbins had become addicted to in extreme old age. They all asked about Walter’s leg, and he had to tell them nothing could be done. A discussion followed on how different things would be these days if a child of seven had been shot in the leg by another child. It would have got into the papers and Walter would have had counseling. Moultry would have had counseling too, probably.

Driving down to Sidmouth with Emma beside him, trying to keep in convoy with Ian and Barbara and Andrew in the car ahead, Walter asked himself if Moultry had ever said he was sorry. He hadn’t. There had been no opportunity, for Walter was sure he’d never seen Moultry again. Suddenly he thought of something. Ever since the pain in his leg had started, he’d thought about Moultry every single day. He was becoming obsessed with Moultry.

“I’m bored, Granddad,” said Emma. “Tell me a story.”

Not Moultry. Not the visit to the barber, which for some reason reminded him of Moultry. “I’ll tell you about our dog Pip who stole a string of sausages from the butcher’s and once bit the postman’s hand when he put it through the letter box.”

Another world it was. Sausages no longer came in strings and supermarkets were more common than butcher’s. These days the postman would have had counseling and a tetanus injection and Pip would have been threatened with destruction, only his parents would have fought the magistrates’ decision and taken it to the High Court and Pip’s picture would have been in the papers. Walter was tired by the time they got to Sidmouth, while Emma was as fresh as a daisy and raring to go. He had related the entire history of his childhood to her, or as much as he could recall, several times over.

His leg ached. He still thought exercise better for him than rest.While the others went down to the beach, he took a walk along the seafront and through streets of Georgian houses. He hardly knew what made him glance at the brass plate on one of the pillars flanking a front door—perhaps the brilliant polish on it caught the sun—but he did look and there he read: JENKINS, MOULTRY, HALL, SOLICITORS AND COMMISSIONERS FOR OATHS. It couldn’t be his Moultry, could it? Harold Moultry as a solicitor was a laughable thought.

After dinner and a drink in the bar he went early to his room. Leave the young ones alone for a bit. He looked for a telephone directory and finally found one inside the wardrobe behind a spare blanket. Jenkins, Moultry, Hall were there and so was Moultry, A.P. at an address in the town. Under this appeared: Moultry, H., Mingle Valley Farm, Harcombe. That was him, all right. That was Harold Moultry. The solicitor with the initials A.P. would be his son. Why don’t I phone him, thought Walter, lying in bed, conjuring up pictures in the dark. Why don’t I phone him in the morning and ask him over for a drink? Meeting him will take him off my mind. I bet if I had counseling I’d be told to meet him. Confront him, that would be the expression.