Under the nest, the fire he had lit was already out. Jay regurgitated river water. He coughed and swore shakily. Fourteen had never seemed so far away. From her distant island in time he thought he could hear Gilly laughing.
The water was shallow on that side of the river, and he waded out onto the bank and flopped on all fours into the grass. His arms and hands were already swelling from the dozens of stings, and one eye was puffed shut like a boxer’s. He felt like a week-old corpse.
Gradually he became aware of Rosa watching from her vantage point upstream. She had wisely moved back to avoid the angry wasps, but he could see her, perched on the top rung of the gatepost beside the dragon’s head. She looked curious but unconcerned. Beside her the goat cropped grass.
‘Never again,’ gasped Jay. ‘God, never again.’
He was just beginning to consider the idea of getting up when he heard footfalls in the vineyard beyond the fence. He looked up, just in time to see Marise d’Api as she arrived breathlessly at the gate and swept Rosa into her arms. It took her a few moments to register his presence, for she and Rosa had begun a rapid interchange of signing. Jay tried to get up, slipped, smiled and made a vague gesture with one hand, as if by following the rules of country etiquette he might somehow make her overlook everything else. He felt suddenly very conscious of his swollen eye, wet clothes, muddy jeans.
‘I had an accident,’ he explained.
Marise’s eyes went to the wasps’ nest in the banking. The remains of Jay’s charred handkerchief still protruded from the hole, and he could smell lighter fluid across the water. Some accident.
‘How many times were you stung?’ For the first time he thought he heard amusement in her voice.
Jay looked briefly at his arms and hands.
‘I don’t know. I … didn’t know they’d come out so fast.’ He could see her looking at the discarded wine bottle, drawing conclusions.
‘Are you allergic?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Jay tried to stand up again, slipped and fell on the wet grass. He felt sick and dizzy. Dead wasps clung to his clothes. Marise looked both dismayed and almost ready to laugh.
‘Come with me,’ she said at last. ‘I have a stings kit in the house. Sometimes there can be a delayed reaction.’
Carefully Jay pulled himself up the banking towards the hedge. Rosa trotted behind, closely followed by the goat. Halfway to the house Jay felt the child’s small cold hand slip into his and, looking down, he saw that she was smiling.
The house was larger than it seemed from the road, a converted barn with low gables and high, narrow windows. Halfway up the front wall, a door stared out in midair from the loft where bales of hay were once kept. An old tractor was parked by one of the outbuildings. There was a neat kitchen garden by the side of the house, a small orchard – twenty well-kept apple trees – at the back and a woodpile at the other side, with cords of carefully stacked wood for the winter. Two or three of the small brown goats wandered skittishly across the vineyard’s small paths. Jay followed Marise along the rutted pathway between the rows of vines, and Marise put out a hand to steady him as they approached the gate, though he sensed this was less out of concern for him than for the vines, which his clumsy approach might have damaged.
‘In here,’ she told him shortly, indicating the kitchen door. ‘Sit down. I’ll get the kit.’
Her kitchen was bright and tidy, with a shelf of stone jugs above a porcelain sink, a long oak table, like the one at his own farm, and a giant black stove. Bunches of herbs hung from low beams above the chimney: rosemary, sage and pennyroyal. Rosa went to the pantry and fetched some lemonade, pouring a glassful and sitting at the table to drink it, watching Jay with curious eyes.
‘Tu as mal?’ she asked.
He looked at her. ‘So you can talk,’ he said.
Rosa smiled mischievously.
‘Can I have some of that?’ Jay gestured at the glass of lemonade, and she pushed it across the table towards him. So, he told himself, she can lipread as well as sign. He wondered whether Mireille knew. Somehow he didn’t think so. Rosa’s voice was childish but steady, without any of the usual fluctuations of tone of the deaf. The lemonade was home-made and good.
‘Thank you.’
Marise flicked him a suspicious look as she came into the kitchen with the stings kit. She had a disposable syringe in one hand.
‘It’s adrenalin. I used to be a nurse.’
After a moment’s hesitation Jay held out his arm and closed his eyes.
‘There.’
He felt a small burning sensation in the crook of his elbow. There was a second’s light-headedness, then nothing. Marise was looking at him in some amusement.
‘You’re very squeamish for a man who plays with wasps.’
‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ said Jay, rubbing his arm.
‘If you behave like that, you can expect to be stung. You got away lightly.’
He supposed that was true, but it didn’t feel that way. His head was still pounding. His left eye was swollen tight and shiny. Marise went to the kitchen cupboard and brought out a shaker of white powder. She shook some into a cup, added a little water and stirred it with a spoon. Handing him the cup: ‘Baking soda,’ she advised. ‘You should put some of this onto the stings.’
She did not offer to help. Jay followed her advice, feeling rather foolish. This wasn’t how he’d envisaged their meeting at all. He said so.
Marise shrugged and turned back to the cupboard. Jay watched as she poured pasta into a pan, added water and salt, placed the pan carefully on the hob.
‘I have to make lunch for Rosa,’ she explained. ‘Take what time you need.’ In spite of her words, Jay got the distinct impression she wanted him out of her kitchen as soon as possible. He struggled with the baking soda, trying to reach the stings on his back. The brown goat poked its head around the door and bleated.
‘Clopette, non! Pas dans la cuisine!’ Rosa jumped from her place and shooed the goat away. Marise shot her a look of fierce warning, and the child put her hand over her mouth, subdued. Jay looked at her, puzzled. Why should Marise not want her child to speak in front of him? She motioned towards the table, asking Rosa to set the plates out. Rosa took out three plates from the cupboard. Marise shook her head again. Reluctantly the child replaced one of the plates.
‘Thanks for the first aid,’ said Jay carefully.
Marise nodded, busy chopping tomatoes for the sauce. There was fresh basil in a window box on the ledge and she added a fistful.
‘You have a lovely farm.
‘Oh?’ He thought he detected an edge in her voice.
‘Not that I was thinking of buying it,’ added Jay quickly. ‘I mean, it’s just a nice farm. Pretty. Unspoilt.’
Marise turned and looked at him.
‘What do you mean?’ Her face was vivid with suspicion. ‘What do you mean, buying it? Have you been talking to someone?’
‘No!’ he protested. ‘I was just trying to make conversation. I swear—’
‘Don’t,’ she said flatly. The fleeting warmth he had glimpsed in her was gone. ‘Don’t say it. I know you’ve been talking to Clairmont. I’ve seen his van parked outside your house. I’m sure he’s been giving you all kinds of ideas.’
‘Ideas?’
She laughed.
‘Oh, I know about you, Monsieur Mackintosh. Sneaking around, asking questions. First, you buy the old Château Foudouin, then you show a great curiosity about the land down to the river. What are you planning? Holiday chalets? A sports’ complex, like Le Pinot? Something even more exciting?’
Jay shook his head.
‘You’ve got it wrong. I’m a writer. I came here to finish my book. That’s all.’
She looked at him cynically. Her eyes were lasers.
‘I don’t want to see Lansquenet turned into Le Pinot,’ he insisted. ‘I told Clairmont right from the start. If you’ve seen his van, it’s just that he keeps delivering brocante to the far
m; he’s got it into his head that I’m interested in buying junk.’
Marise began to add chopped shallots to the pasta sauce, seemingly unconvinced, but Jay thought the curve of her spine relaxed, just a little.
‘If I ask questions,’ he said, ‘it’s just because I’m a writer; I’m curious. I was blocked for years, but when I came to Lansquenet—’ He was hardly aware of what he was saying now, his eyes fixed on the hollow of her back beneath the man’s shirt. ‘The air’s different here, somehow. I’ve been writing like crazy. I’ve left everything to be here—’
She turned then, a red onion in one hand, the knife in the other.
He persisted: ‘I promise I’m not here to develop anything. For Christ’s sake, I’m sitting in your kitchen soaked to the skin and covered in baking soda. Do I look like an entrepreneur?’
She considered this for a moment. ‘Perhaps not,’ she said at last.
‘I bought the place on impulse. I didn’t even know you were … I didn’t think you … I don’t usually have impulses,’ he finished lamely.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Marise, smiling. ‘For a man who deliberately puts his hand into a wasps’ nest, I find it very hard.’
It was a small smile, maybe two on a scale of one to ten, but it was there anyway.
They talked after that. Jay told her about London and Kerry and Jackapple Joe. He talked about the rose garden and the vegetable patch beside the house. Of course he didn’t mention Joe’s mysterious presence and subsequent disappearance, or the six bottles, or the way she herself had infiltrated his new book. He didn’t want her to think he was crazy.
She made lunch – pasta with beans – and invited him to join them. Then they drank coffee and Armagnac. She let him change his wet clothes for a pair of Tony’s overalls while Rosa played outside with Clopette. Jay found it strange that she did not refer to Tony as her husband, but as ‘Rosa’s father’, but the rapport between them was too new, too tenuous, for him to endanger it by asking questions. When – if – she wanted to discuss Tony, she would do it in her own time.
So far, she was giving little away. A fierce independence, tenderness for her daughter, pride in her work, in the house, the land. A way of smiling, grave-seeming, but with a kernel of sweetness. A way of listening in silence, an economy of movement which belied the quick mind, the occasional wry twist of humour beneath the practicality. Thinking back to his first glimpse of her, to his previous assumptions, to the way he had listened to, and half believed, the opinions of people like Caro Clairmont and Mireille Faizande he felt a rush of shame. The heroine of his novel – unpredictable, dangerous, possibly mad – bore no relation to this quiet, calm woman. He had let his imagination run far ahead of the truth. He drank his coffee, abashed, and resolved to pry no further into her affairs. Her life and his fiction had nothing in common.
It was only later, much later, that the unease resurfaced. Oh, Marise was charming. Clever, too, in the way she had led him to talk about himself whilst evading all mention of her own background. By the end of the afternoon she knew everything about him. But even so there was something more. Something about Rosa. He considered Rosa. Mireille was convinced she was being ill-treated, but there were no signs of that. On the contrary, the love between mother and daughter was clear. Jay remembered the time he had seen them together by the hedge. That unspoken rapport. Unspoken. That was it. But Rosa could talk, spontaneously and with ease. The way she had shouted at the goat in the kitchen proved it, that quick, excited outburst. Clopette, non! Pas dans la cuisine! As if she talked to the goat habitually. And the way Marise looked at her, as if warning her to be quiet.
Why should she warn her? He went over the question again and again. Was it something Marise didn’t want him to hear? And the child – hadn’t she been sitting with her back to the door when the goat made its entrance?
So how could she have known it was there?
46
Nether Edge, Summer 1977
AFTER HE LEFT GILLY, JAY SAT BY THE BRIDGE FOR A WHILE, feeling angry and guilty and certain she would come after him. When she didn’t appear, he lay in the wet grass for a while, relishing the bitter smells of earth and weeds, and looked into the sky until the falling drizzle made him dizzy. He began to feel cold, so he got up and began to make his way back to Pog Hill along the disused railbed, stopping every now and then to examine something by the side of the tracks, more out of habit than real interest. He was so lost in his brooding that he completely failed to hear, or see, the four figures which emerged silently from the trees at his back and fanned out behind him in pursuit.
By the time he saw them it was too late. Glenda was there, and two of her mates: the skinny blonde – he thought her name was Karen – and a younger girl, Paula – or was it Patty? – ten or eleven, maybe, with pierced ears and a mean, sulky mouth. They were already moving across his path to cut him off, Glenda to one side, Karen and Paula to the other. Their faces shone with rain and eagerness. Glenda’s eyes met his across the track and they were gleaming. For a moment she looked almost pretty.
Worse still, Zeth was with her.
For a second or two Jay froze. The girls were nothing special. He had outrun, outtalked and outbluffed them before, and there were only three of them. They were familiar, part of the Edge, like the open-cast mine or the scree above the canal lock; a natural hazard, like the wasps – something to be treated with caution but not fear.
Zeth was another matter.
He was wearing a Status Quo T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A pack of Winstons was tucked in one sleeve. His hair was long, flapping around his thin, clever face. His acne had cleared up, but there were deep marks on his cheeks where it had been – initiation scars, channels for crocodile tears. He was grinning.
‘Astha been pickin on my sister?’
Jay was already running before he finished his sentence. It was the worst possible place to be cornered; high above the canal and its many hiding places, the straight, open railbed lay in front of him like a desert. The bushes on either side were too thick to squeeze through, too small to offer protection. A deep ditch and a screen of bushes hid him from even the closest houses. His sneakers skidded dangerously on the gravel. Glenda and her mates were in front of him, Zeth was a heartbeat behind. Jay took the best option, dodging the two girls and making straight for Glenda. She stepped out to intercept him, her meaty arms held out as if fielding a wide ball, but he pushed her with all his strength, shouldering her aside like an American footballer, and hurtled free down the abandoned tracks. Behind him he heard Glenda wail. Zeth’s voice pursued him, ominously close: ‘Tha little bastard!’
Jay didn’t look round. There was a railway bridge and a cutting about a quarter of a mile from Pog Hill, with a path leading up onto the street. There would be other paths, too, leading to the cutaway and waste ground beyond. If he could only get there … The bridge wasn’t far. He was younger than Zeth, and lighter. He could outrun him. If he could reach the bridge there would be places to hide.
He glanced over his shoulder. The gap between them had widened. Thirty or forty yards separated them. Glenda was back on her feet and running, but in spite of her size Jay wasn’t worried about her. She looked out of breath already, her overlarge breasts bobbing ludicrously under her straining shirt. Zeth was jogging quite slowly next to her, but as Jay looked round he put on a sudden, terrifying burst of speed, his arms pumping, gravel spraying up fiercely around his ankles.
Jay was beginning to feel dizzy now, his breath a hot stone. He could see the bridge just around the curve of the line, and the row of poplars which marked the abandoned points. Five hundred yards would do it.
Joe’s talisman was still in his pocket. He could feel it against his hip as he ran, and he felt dim relief that he’d brought it along. He could just as easily have forgotten it. He had been too busy that summer, too snarled up in himself to think very much about magic.
He just hoped it still worked.
He reached the bridge, with the gap between them widening, and cast about for somewhere to hide. Too risky to try the steep path up towards the road. Jay was winded by now, and there was maybe fifty feet of twisting dirt path before the road and safety. He clenched his fist over Joe’s talisman and took the opposite direction, the one they wouldn’t expect him to take, under the bridge and behind, towards Pog Hill. There was a swathe of willowherb gone to seed behind the rail arch, and he bobbed down in it, head pounding, heart tight with dark exaltation.
He was safe.
From his hideout he could hear voices. Zeth’s sounded close, Glenda’s more remote, thickened by distance, rebounding over the empty space between the bridge and the cutaway.
‘Wheer the bleedinell izzy?’
Jay could hear him on the other side of the arch, imagined him checking the path, measuring distances. He made himself small under the waving white heads of the willowherb.
Glenda’s voice, breathy with running.
‘Thaz lost ’im, tha beggar!’
‘ ’Ave not. He’s here somewhere. He can’t have gone far.’
Minutes passed. Jay clung to the talisman as they went over the area. Joe’s talisman. It had worked before. He had not fully believed in it then, but he knew better now. He believed in magic. He truly believed in magic. He heard a sound as someone crunched over the accumulated litter in the space underneath the bridge. Footsteps crossed the gravel. But he was safe. He was invisible. He believed.