The Girl Green as Elderflower Read online

  ‘How did you know?’ asked Maunoir, his glass at his mouth.

  ‘I notice things. I’m a trained voyeur. Like you, Jim.’

  ‘Try again,’ invited Maunoir. ‘That hardly got through my hair shirt.’

  Saluting Mark, drinking Mark’s beer, Clare thought to ask: ‘What does it feel like, for you?’

  ‘Maybe you know,’ said Maunoir. ‘It feels like being lost in the woods.’

  ‘Yes,’ Clare said. ‘Yes, I do know.’ He thought of his dream, of how he had looked up out of his hole, his pit, his wolf-pit, and seen the foreign leaves, which had formed themselves into a face, invulnerably amused.

  Jim Maunoir had grown remote, gazing beyond Clare’s shoulder. His eyes were clouded over. He had the mouth of a good little boy, the priest’s favourite.

  Clare thought of Alicia’s voice. He said: ‘Don’t go away, Jim; I should be sad.’

  Walking with Clare to the top of Hole Lane, Mark said: ‘I’m glad we went out and met Jim. He’s such a young sort of bloke for his age. Some of the things he says are really funny.’

  Mark sounded a little elevated. While Clare had been playing dominoes with John, Jim Maunoir must have poured several whiskies into him.

  ‘The accent,’ Clare said, ‘helps him to be funny.’ He himself had felt the charm of Maunoir’s laconic manner when he relaxed, the stylishness of what Clare thought of as backwoods suavity. ‘Why is it that Americans, if they’re not idiots, can make us feel bumbling? Americans like Jim, for God’s sake, who only got an education because there were enough hands in the cow-shed already.’

  ‘It must be the space,’ Mark said, with a note of yearning, ‘and the way they move around, and talk to anybody, like Jim. You feel about someone like Jim that he’s in charge of himself. So he doesn’t care where he goes.’

  That described so fairly the Maunoir they had just parted from that Clare wondered at his own insight into the man. It occurred to him that they must have met at a moment when Maunoir was shaken. And the reason they had met would have been that Maunoir saw in him, standing companionless, someone to ask about the green-eyed girl.

  Head down, kicking at snow, he began to whistle ‘La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin’. After a moment Mark joined in. They made an intricate thing of it, lifting a ringing net towards the icy branches at the head of the lane, and the small far moon and the stars like holly-leaves of light.

  ‘Did you know,’ he said, when a last chord had died for lack of breath, ‘that the title is translated from Burns? “The lassie with the lint-white locks”.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Mark. ‘Funny you should say that.’

  ‘Did Jim ask you about her?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And I decided that what I told you was wrong. I don’t know who she is.’

  The white lane, even in the moonlight, was a gloom under its bare arching trees.

  ‘He’s made me restless,’ Mark said. ‘I’d like to go and be Beat, and try mescalin, and Vedanta, and be a fire-watcher in the Rockies.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Clare said, ‘there’s no way of combining all that with medicine.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Mark said. ‘No, I’ll read about it. I’ll be like bank-clerks who live on cowboy stories, and fish-and-chip-shop ladies who think a nurse’s life is glamorous. Well, booy, I must now be gooin’.’

  ‘Thanks for your company,’ Clare said. ‘That was a wild night for me.’

  ‘We’ll do it again,’ Mark said. ‘Christ, who’d have thought it could get any colder? Cheerio, dear booy—I’m orfft.’

  Clare turned and plodded away down the tunnel of coralline trees. The snow, with a glaze on it, cracked and crunched under his boots, which echoed. He remembered one warm, pitch-black night of late summer when he had been sure that other footsteps were following him, and had crossed his fingers because he did not dare to turn. It infuriated Alicia, his crossing his fingers, touching wood. He told her his meaning was profound. He himself was seen by some thousands of people as a warning against the dangers of taking sorcery lightly.

  Fumbling with the catch of the farm gate, he looked out over the vale. Under the sky which had cleared, and the moon which had grown so distant, the white and the black had no qualification. In that stark expanse, the lights which he had left on in the cottage asserted themselves weightily.

  He made long strides down the steep field, following the path which his feet had worn through the rough pasture. At the garden gate the snow had been churned up by wistful ponies. The cottage had only one door. When it was closed behind him, he stood for a moment with his back to it. The drawbridge was up. There was nothing he loved more than the little print, from a book of voyages in the Pacific, which was there every time he returned to his castle.

  In the study he crouched and shivered, reviving the grey fire. He would need more coal for the night he saw ahead. Out in the old brick privy, deep in evergreens, which he used for a coal-shed, his resident wren met him with panic, like a stranger.

  When the flames were high, he climbed to his freezing bedroom and fetched down the book. Coat and boots still on, thawing in his decrepit armchair, he found the passage.

  Tempore regis Ricardi apud Daghwurthe, in Suthfolke…

  His eye leapt to the last words on the page.

  …ac se Malekin vocitabat.

  ‘Malkin,’ he said aloud, gently, as if to a pet. Without surprise, he scanned the next page for a name.

  Confessa est quoque quod nata erat apud Lanaham…

  ‘Ooh-ah,’ he said. ‘So you was born in Lavenham, gal.’

  He got up and took the book to the table, and sat down on the hard chair there. Skimming the words, he pulled paper towards him and fumbled for a pen.

  Outside, the screech owl which so often visited the oak tree trailed a long, strangled agony across the sky. At the top of the blank sheet he printed carefully: THE LORD ABBOT’S TALES.

  ‘Malkin,’ he said, ‘we’re birds of a feather, gal. Come and play your games with me, give me something to do.’

  She spoke to him from the page. Loquebatur autem Anglice secundum idioma regionis illius. He laughed aloud at her voice, and began to write.

  CONCERNING A FANTASTIC SPRITE

  (De quodam fantastico spiritu)

  In the time of King Richard, at Dagworth in Suffolk, in the house of the lord of the manor Osbern Bradwell, there appeared a fantastic sprite.

  At that time the master lay in the chamber above the hall, where he had watched over the waning of the winter day, and where his death, he thought, would soon come to find him. He was a man in middle life, whose brown hair showed no grey, and whose face was made paler by the shadowing of beard which he had allowed to cloud his lean jaw. In the little light of the room his eyes were hollow, and looked before him with an expression of patience in which there was also a lessening bewilderment as he grew to feel at home with his fate.

  In the hall below a log-fire leaped, and on the table one lamp cast a yellower light over the game which engaged the sick man’s children. There sat the master’s younger son, a child of six years, with the blue eyes of his father and with fair hair which would darken in time to his father’s colour. Beside him was his sister, a girl of ten, brown-haired and brown-eyed, her child’s body promising buxomness before many years. Opposite them sat their brother, the young squire, an adolescent wonderfully tall but ungainly as a foal, with the eyes of the dying man, and in his hair a ruddiness coming from his mother.

  By the side of the youth sat the playfellow of his sister and brother, a girl of seven years, the motherless daughter of a neighbour. The hair of this child was fair as flax, and her eyes were of a tint between sparrow-brown and green.

  The children and the young man had not been silent over their game, for there had been many treaties and parleys, and not a few hot disputes. But all that was quietness beside the difference which presently arose.

  The daughter of the house spoke to her smaller brother, and said: ‘You rotten cheat, Mikey; I co
unted then. You landed on Northumberland Avenue, and I want my rent.’

  The little child, with the look of a warrior about his chin, responded: ‘I did not, Lucy, and if you can’t count, you can go and boil your head.’

  At that the tall youth spoke, and said peaceably: ‘You threw five, Mikey.’

  The little fellow regarded his brother with a face swelling with rage, and cried in a great voice: ‘I did not, Marco; I threw four.’

  ‘Oh, let it go, Lucy,’ sighed the longlegged young man. ‘He knows that blackmail pays.’

  ‘But then he’ll buy Whitehall,’ objected Lucy.

  ‘I’m going to buy it,’ vowed the boy.

  ‘All right, you can,’ said the youth, and took up a small card. ‘Just let’s not hear any more about it.’

  The child gave some brightly coloured papers to the young man, and received the card with great satisfaction. But his sister said: ‘You are a baby, Mikey. Amabel’s not much older than you, and she doesn’t behave like that.’

  ‘She’s miles older than me,’ said the boy. ‘She’s nearly eight.’

  The little fairhaired girl placed her hand on the young man’s arm, and when he had bent his head to her, whispered in his ear. He nodded at what she said, and spoke to his sister. ‘Just take no notice. Otherwise—you know—he’s easily upset.’

  ‘Still, there are rules,’ said the brown girl. ‘Oh well, your turn, Amabel.’

  The other girl threw the dice, and moved a toy thimble along the board to a place on which was written a question mark. From some cards which were piled near the centre she took the uppermost one, and privately read it, at first with puzzlement in her eyes, then with a small smile.

  ‘It says go to gaol,’ said the boy.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ answered Amabel, and she showed it to the youth.

  When he read it, the young man laughed, and seemed as puzzled as the girl. He said to himself: ‘Who could have done that?’ and then: ‘This isn’t the sort of thing you’d do, is it, Lucy?’

  ‘What isn’t?’ asked the older girl, and the young man reached out a long arm and placed the card on the table between his sister and brother.

  The girl stared at the card, and read aloud: ‘GO AND BOIL YOUR HEAD, MIKEY.’

  On hearing this, the face of the boy was vacant for a moment, then it went red and he shouted at the youth: ‘Marco!’

  ‘I didn’t write it,’ said the young man, with a convincing seriousness. ‘Did you, Lucy?

  ‘You know I couldn’t write like that. It’s italic, isn’t it? And I’m sure you didn’t, did you, Amabel?’

  The fair child shook her head, and the boy, still scowling at his brother, insisted loudly: ‘I know you did, Marco, I know you did.’

  Because of the passion in his voice, the brother and sister looked at one another with concern. Only the fairheaded girl, though grave and quiet, remained apart, and watched her companions with a detached curiosity.

  At a moment when the youngest child seemed about to burst into a bellow, a movement caught his eye, and he fell into stillness.

  Before each of the players of the game were heaps of paper of different colours, representing money. What the child observed with round eyes was an orange paper lift itself from a pile before his brother, float across the table, and place itself on the one scrap of that colour which was his own.

  Then another paper rose, from a pile before Lucy. The brown girl snatched at it in mid-air, but drew back her hand with a cry. The orange fragment continued on its way, and descended before Mikey.

  Mikey began to laugh. He asked: ‘What is it, how do you do it?’ And from the air came an answering laugh, and a child’s voice which said: ‘Numquam scies.’

  The face of the brown girl, though a strong face, was full of fear, and the young man was frozen and staring. Suddenly all the play-money which lay before him and Amabel was gathered into a bundle, rose, and fell in front of Mikey. Then Lucy’s money in the same way flew off, and all the wealth of the game was scattered between the hands of the boy.

  Out of a box little houses of red and green wood came floating, and settled themselves with sharp clicks around the edge of the board. Then a tiny racing-car of lead, which was Mikey’s counter, began to tear about the London square which had been created. It changed gear rapidly, passed each corner with screeching brakes, and at last crashed into a hotel in Mayfair. There was a hideous sound of rending metal and smashing plate-glass as the tiny car and house quite silently hit the floor.

  The tall boy got to his feet, as white as a candle. He reached for the fairhaired girl’s hand, and to his sister he said urgently: ‘Bring Mikey, come to me.’ He retreated to a high carved settle at his back, and sat stiffly down, one arm about the girl. His other arm went out to his sister, while the youngest child, between fear and laughter, made himself a redoubt of his brother’s knees.

  The oil-lamp on the table suddenly flared. An intense white light, in which no flame could be seen, for five seconds lit every cranny of the dark hall. Then as quickly it died, and the lamp burned peacefully on.

  ‘Oh Marco,’ Lucy whimpered. ‘Oh Marco.’

  One end of the great heavy settle lifted from the floor. As they slid to the other end, it sank to rest again. Then the end at which they were slumped entangled rose in its turn, to descend when their sliding had brought them to the middle.

  Mikey began to scream, and Mark caught him up in his arms. Lucy would not scream, but kept moaning breathlessly.

  The tall boy was sick with fear, and sick with shame at his fear. In his hoarse young mumble he cried out: ‘What are you? What the hell are you?’

  In the air, a child’s voice called on the two notes of the cuckoo: ‘Malkin.’

  A door opened, and the mistress of the house came in. At the sight of her children huddled together on the settle she gave a vague smile, and asked: ‘What kind of game is that?’ Then she saw the face of her eldest son, and her own face stiffened and whitened. ‘Marco,’ she said. ‘Marco—is it Daddy?’

  ‘No,’ he called out. ‘No, nothing like that. It’s all right. Only—’

  From the table the burning lamp ascended. Its yellow light slowly circled the beamed ceiling, until it was again above the table. Then it floated down, and stood fast, without a flicker. From the air, the small voice chanted: ‘Nolite timere, amiculi.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ whispered the russet-haired lady.

  But the little boy suddenly laughed, and twisting about in his brother’s arms, looked expectantly into the room. Slowly, as if by no will of his, his hand lifted from his brother’s, his arm stretched out, and his wrist turned. In his palm there was all at once a red apple, with a sweet smell.

  ‘Don’t eat it, Mikey,’ his mother called. But the boy had already bitten into it, and chewed with content.

  Unexpectedly, Amabel, who had made no sound until then, gave a tiny yelp. ‘You must say thank you, Mikey,’ she said. ‘Thank you, thank you, whatever you are.’

  Again the airy voice called, cuckoo-like: ‘Malkin.’

  Still white in the face, the boy in his arms, Mark stood up. He said solemnly into the air: ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, be gone from this house.’

  Close by him there was a laugh, and the childlike voice spoke again. ‘Nor don’t you come to ours, you lummucken great hippeddehoy.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ cried Amabel, ‘he doesn’t mean to offend you.’

  ‘I shall play with you again,’ said the sprite, ‘when that long lob int so fractious. I’m now going hoom.’

  ‘But tell us who you are,’ cried the fairhaired girl.

  From the open door behind the lady there came again the cuckoo-call of: ‘Malkin.’ It was repeated several times before dying away in distant rooms.

  The younger man and his mother looked large-eyed at one another. In the mistress’s face was a dwindling fear, which was letting in amusement. In the youth’s, fear was vanquished by mortification.
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  ‘I felt it,’ Lucy exclaimed, suddenly garrulous with relief. ‘I grabbed at the money it had in its hand, and it snatched it away, but I’d felt its fingers. Tiny fingers.’

  Amabel said shyly: ‘It pulled at—it snapped my knicker-elastic. Then it whispered in my ear: “Lot of thanks I get.” It meant from Mikey.’

  The little boy was still skranshing the spirit’s apple.

  ‘Mikey,’ his mother said, ‘what did it say to you?’

  ‘It was like this,’ the child said, and putting his lips against his brother’s ear blew a raspberry. ‘That’s what made me laugh,’ he explained. ‘It sounded like that, and I could feel this nice warm mouth.’

  In the chamber above the hall the sick man lay in the uncurtained four-poster bed. His melancholy eyes, in a face made the finer by his wraith of a beard, were on the sunny window, and on the tall black figure which stood looking over the walled garden.

  ‘It will soon be spring,’ said the man in black clothes. ‘I see some daffodils out around your fruit trees.’

  ‘So early?’ said the man in the bed. ‘How sudden everything seems to be this year.’

  The priest, turning back from the outlook, strayed to a chair placed by the bed, and lowered on to it his large, athletic frame. He was a man perhaps ten years younger than the other, with a strong face in which there was nevertheless something ingenuous. The eyes of the older man rested on him for a moment with an ambiguous expression, mingling indulgence with respect.

  ‘Do you have anything you want to say to me?’ the priest asked. ‘Any question?’

  The gaunt man shook his head with a smile in which there was still something boyish. ‘Why disturb our peace of mind?’

  ‘My peace is nothing,’ said the big priest. ‘But if that’s a consideration with you, you could think about making me feel useful.’

  ‘Ah, no,’ said the master of the house. ‘I couldn’t think about that. Because it’s calm here, where I am. You’re the stronger man. At a time like this, don’t disturb me by asking for my help.’

  The big man seemed made graver, and uncertain, by his friend, but after a moment smiled at him fraternally, and said: ‘You don’t change. No. Ornery as mud.’