The Knot Garden

  The others stared at me.

  I waited for their startled approval.

  Then:

  ‘You ain’t.’

  ‘Liar!’

  This was too much to bear.

  ‘I have,’ I said hotly. ‘Loads of times. With my granfer.’

  At the mention of Hawkweed they went quiet again. Stripes rubbed his ear furtively. It was something he often did if he felt uncomfortable, or if the weather were changing.

  ‘He’s a dreamcatcher, ain’t he?’ Fernie said, squinting at me through the bright sunlight.

  Seamus made two scratches in the dust. He looked fearful.

  ‘So?’

  Ginge stuck his chin out. He knew he’d lost points: wasn’t prepared to lose more. ‘They’re filth, dreamcatchers. They attract evil, like flies to shit.’

  For a moment I was stunned. I felt the hackles rising all the way down my spine like teeth of fur, and it was only when they reached my tail that I realised I was furious: furious on behalf of my grandfather, the dreamcatcher who kept the wild roads of this region safe from the harm of human dreams: furious on my own behalf, as his apprentice.

  I opened my mouth to respond, and was surprised when a roar came flooding out.

  Ginge’s ears went flat and his whiskers trembled.

  Fernie stepped between us. ‘Enough fighting for today, I’d say.’ He turned to me, a calculating light in his eyes. ‘You’re not the only one who’s seen the wild roads. I have too. So, been out with your granfer, have you? What do you do then?’

  For a moment I havered, caught between the urge to fight and the compulsion to impress them. Vanity won; but just how honest should I be? My so-called friends could be unpredictable. Volatile hormones spun through their bodies seeking an outlet. One-upmanship was not encouraged: there was an agreed hierarchy, and stepping out of line could bring savage reprisals, even exile from the group. Rodomontade was tolerated, so long as it was entertaining, but the fact that I’d kept my excursions secret from them might well earn their displeasure.

  I decided to hedge.

  ‘Well, you know – hunt and stuff.’

  At once I knew I had their interest.

  ‘Hunt what?’

  ‘Oh, this and that. Rats and things.’ I could see this hadn’t impressed them. Hastily I added: ‘A dog, once.’

  ‘A dog?’ Fernie sounded sceptical.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

  ‘Dogs can’t use the wild roads—’

  ‘They’re too stupid!’

  ‘Anyway, the Great Cat would never allow a dog on to the highways – She made them for us—’

  ‘Now we know you’re lying!’ This from Ginge.

  ‘I’m not. We did. It tasted... bloody awful.’

  The swear word brought them back to me.

  ‘Yuk! A dog! Fancy hunting a dog.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t hunt it, exactly—’

  But that was enough for them: now they were off and flying. ‘Wow! I bet that old Alsatian at the yellow cottages tastes bad—’

  ‘Or that little yappy one down the lane—’

  ‘Can’t imagine that on a wild road.’

  ‘Perhaps if we all banded together we could get it on to that little highway past Glory Farm,’ Feisty suggested.

  ‘It doesn’t really work like that,’ I said hesitantly.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, the dreams. They come out of dreams, see.’

  ‘How could a dog come out of a dream, stupid?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know exactly. This one did. It started really tiny and it... grew.’ When I tried to explain the dog-dream like this it sounded plainly ridiculous, a desperate and ill-constructed lie; even I began to question my memory of the events.

  ‘Don’t believe you—’

  ‘A dog!’

  I felt I was digging myself a deep hole.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t a mouse?’

  I began to wish I had, and could hide myself in it forever. It was all or nothing now: if I backed down I’d lose my place in the hierarchy, probably get chased off, ridiculed.

  ‘Right then,’ I said forcefully. ‘If you don’t believe me. I’ll show you.’

  ‘Yeah?’ sneered Ginge.

  ‘Anyone who’s got the nerve for it can meet me back here tonight when the moon’s full up. I’ll take you dreamcatching.’ I stared challengingly around the group.

  Seamus wouldn’t meet my eye. Feisty shifted uncomfortably from paw to paw. Fernie grinned cynically. Stripes examined something interesting upon the ground.

  It was Ginge who broke the silence.

  ‘All right, then. I’ll be here. Looking forward to seeing what a liar you are.’

  *

  Midnight saw a furtive group of cats gathered by the garages. Moonlight gifted them with long, attenuated shadow-selves. Of Seamus and Feisty there was no sign.

  ‘Seamus is superstitious,’ Stripes said matter-of-factly. ‘He’s scared of dreams and stuff.’

  ‘And poor little Oscar’s mummy won’t let them out in the big bad night,’ Fernie jeered.

  ‘Let alone the wild wild roads,’ added Ginge, swaggering up and down with his tail up.

  ‘How’s yer bum, Pink-Boy?’ Fernie asked evilly. ‘Ready to earn a licking from the lovely Liddy?’

  I led the little group past dark-windowed houses and their sleeping occupants, through silent gardens and across the empty road. I could sense the presence of dreams in the air, and sure enough, by the time we reached the common I could see a soft trail of golden lights skimming the tops of the hawthorns, drawn by the network of highways that criss-crossed this wilder heart of the village.

  Weaving through a rough boundary of brambles and furze, we passed from the civilised world of cultivated gardens, neat closeboard fences and carefully pruned privet hedges into an area of land that had – apart from the temporary effects of volunteer parish working parties trying to keep some of the winding pathways clear for dog walkers and blackberry pickers – rebuffed the modern world. Largely unchanged since medieval times, the common acknowledged no owner, made concession to none other than its own. Here, amongst the goat-willows, gnarled crab apples and blackthorn, ancient hollies loomed dark and massive, leaves hostile with prickles from crown to root. At Christmastime, heedless of such defences, villagers came to steal their boughs and berries; but hollies have long memories, and the satisfaction of knowing that their assailants will soon be in the ground themselves, nourishing the soil for another generation of trees.

  Ginge looked about him apprehensively. ‘It’s pretty dark in here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Does little Pinkie want to go home?’ Having been out on the wild roads already, Fernie wasn’t frightened: scoring points off the younger cats’ fear was only adding to his enjoyment.

  I gave him a hard stare. ‘Leave him alone.’

  Fernie looked surprised. ‘Or what?’

  I stood my ground. ‘Or I’m not taking you in with me.’

  ‘Suits me.’

  ‘Oh leave off, Fernie,’ Stripes said wearily.

  The wild road we found was a small one, framed by blackberry runners heavy with hard green fruit. To the uninitiated it might just have been a rabbit run; but I had been here before.

  Fernie shouldered himself in front of me, pushed his head into it and looked around. Ginge, arriving a moment later, was confronted by the sight of what was apparently half a cat hanging in mid-air, its head, front legs and chest in some other dimension entirely, and jumped backwards with a little exclamation of shock. Fernie withdrew from the highway and regarded him with satisfaction. ‘Now you see me—’ he winked at Ginge ‘—now you don’t—’ and leapt into the wild road, leaving only the tip of his tail visible to the outside world.

  I sighed at these theatrics. ‘Come on,’ I said to the others, ‘before he does something really stupid.’

  Inside, it was at once icy and dusty and a freezing wind blew all around us
. For me, this was something I barely even noticed any more, but the others looked less comfortable. Ginge, a small and tawny sand-cat, shivered in the gale; Stripes, belying his domestic name, had taken on the form of some small, spotted jungle cat. Fernie, revelling in his prior experience, was larger entirely, with tufts on his ears and fangs that glistened in an ear-to-ear grin.

  ‘Where are these dreams of yours, then?’

  I looked around, but the air was dark in all directions. Trying to appear decisive, I set off into the gloom, Ginge close behind me, Fernie and Stripes bringing up the rear.

  The dreams were elusive that night, of all nights. For half an hour, we paced the highways, Fernie’s taunts growing ever more derisive, and I was beginning to think of turning back, and leaving home forever. Then we came to a junction where two other highways joined the flow and there, bobbing gently above our heads, was a cluster of small golden globes. I turned triumphantly to my companions.

  ‘Watch what I do,’ I said softly. ‘Stay here quietly, or they’ll scatter.’

  I dropped into a hunter’s crouch and silently approached the dreams.

  Stripes turned to Fernie, his face quizzical. ‘What’s he doing then. Fern?’

  Fernie stared into the darkness, eyes narrowed. The gloom reflected back off his pupils as dark, unrelieved black. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  Ahead of him, all Ginge could see was the large cat whom he had known in another life as his friend Orlando making a balletic leap into the roof of the tunnel, jaws opening and closing with a snap, then performing a neat flip and jerk movement as if to bring quarry to the ground.

  With the dream squirming pleasantly underfoot, I raised my head. ‘Come and see,’ I said.

  Intrigued, Ginge stepped forward. A bitter whiff raced past his nose, an acrid, unfamiliar smell. ‘What’ve you got there, Orlando?’ he called into the darkness.

  ‘A dream, Ginge; just a dream. Come and have a look.’

  ‘I can’t see anything, Orlando.’

  ‘Well, open your eyes, then.’

  ‘They’re open as far as they’ll go,’ returned Ginge; and it was true; his eyes were as round and wide as dinner plates.

  Stripes and Fernie pushed past Ginge.

  ‘You’re a fraud, Orlando; nothing but a bloody liar!’

  I stared at the usually mild-mannered Stripes, bewildered. I opened my mouth to protest and turned to indicate to them the half dozen or so dreams still bobbing in the air currents above us. But as I did so, the globes began to dance in an agitated manner, then to stream wildly away from me; and when I turned back to my friends their faces were lit briefly by the golden lights. In their eyes, in the split second during which the dreams illuminated them, I could read a shared expression of dawning terror. Then there came a great roar and a rush of blizzard wind and suddenly in the highway, seeming to fill all available space and gaining on us by the second, was a great black shape, in the midst of which glowed a red maw framed by shining white incisors.

  The chill that permeated my chest was not one of horror, but of recognition.

  Then Hawkweed, the vast and savage Hawkweed of the wild roads, was upon us, anger radiating from him like a fire, his breath steaming hot and rancid in the freezing air.

  At once, Fernie, Ginge and Stripes took flight, legs everywhere, falling over each other in their panic to get away. And who could blame them? As they ran, their wild forms sleeted off them, shimmering wisps of primal energy sucked back into the fabric of the highway. Dwindling second by second from magnificence to their undistinguished domestic forms, they hurtled away into the darkness.

  Hawkweed turned to me, his face twisted with disgust. ‘What are you doing here, Orlando? Without me? With those—’ he stared after the diminishing trio ‘—those houseflies?’ The word held the utmost scorn.

  I hung my head. ‘They didn’t believe me,’ I whispered.

  Hawkweed curled his lip. ‘And you thought you’d show off to them? Show them what a hero you are? Hunting down all the little dreams of the village like some mighty spiritual warrior?’ He craned his neck, thrusting his great head up under mine. At such an angle he appeared even more grotesque than usual, the preternatural light of the highways gleaming off his eyes so that they appeared at once blank and milky. I backed away, more than a little afraid.

  ‘I meant no harm by it—’ I began.

  ‘No HARM?’ Hawkweed’s roar echoed off the walls of the tunnel.

  ‘No harm?’ he said again, more softly. He laughed. ‘The world is full of harm, and it’s our job to lessen that harm wherever we can. You’re the son of a dreamcatcher’s son, Orlando, and you have eaten the weed. For you there is no escape, no way to shed or share the burden. Wherever you go it will be with you always and you will feel its presence.

  ‘Only you can see the dreams, laddie. Don’t you understand that? Only you.’

  14

  August faltered, then failed. Then, after two weeks of miserable weather, Ashmore was rewarded with an Indian summer. The village spread itself once more with a satisfied sigh under blue skies full of broad white cumulus clouds. No one could remember anything like it since the summers of the postwar idyll. On three notable occasions – all Sundays – Hilda and Reggie Candleton ran out of ice-cream to sell. The tourists, having traipsed through Drychester all morning, came out in the afternoon to drink summer ale at the Green Man and examine the Saxon grave-slabs in Ashmore churchyard; then drove off in a generous daze to try and get a glimpse of Nonesuch through the cedars. You could see their camera lenses flashing in the sun.

  ‘Cultural paparazzi, dear,’ said Stella Herringe, when Anna pointed them out. ‘Middle-brow cultural paparazzi.’

  When weather permitted, they had had ‘tea’ on the lawn – or one of the lawns – two or three times a week. Stella insisted on it, and Anna – who, despite her first reactions, had begun to love Nonesuch – had no will to resist. By then she was trying to see Stella as a lonely woman with an unfortunate manner, someone whose good points – an absent-minded generosity, an acerbic wit – were there to be enjoyed by the persistent observer. This was easier at some times than others. Despite her youthful looks, Stella often seemed tired and bad-tempered. Sometimes, after an afternoon’s gin and tonic, even her looks deserted her: her strength of character ebbed away with them, leaving only a kind of wilful self-pity. But her intelligence was never in doubt, and neither was her curiosity. As Nonesuch worked its relaxing magic, Anna’s resistance lessened: across the bright days, Stella stripped her bare with the simple repeated question, ‘And what about men, dear? It’s no life without a man.’ Anna told all. Out of some dim sense of self-preservation she saved Max until last, and regretted him the very moment his name was off her lips.

  There was no price to pay at the time: Stella only smiled with a gossip’s cunning – she had, after all, dug her way to the pearl inside the oyster – and cried, ‘Max Wishart! Oh but I know some people who played with him, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1997! The Downing Ensemble? Anthony Downing and his friends?’

  All drunks, thought Anna.

  ‘I’ve met Anthony,’ she was forced to admit, and left it at that. She felt depressed without knowing why. Except that it had nothing to do with music or musicians. She felt as if she had let herself down.

  As a reward, perhaps, she was given the run of Nonesuch, or at any rate parts of it. ‘Now you must,’ Stella insisted, ‘as long as I’m here and the door’s open, you must just make yourself at home. No one’s loved this place as much as you for years.’ Anna, taking her at her word, wandered the unlocked solars in a childish daze of pleasure. A bar of creamy golden light fell diagonally across the Chapel Corridor. Dust motes hung like dandelion fluff, a whole afternoon suspended with them in the heat. At the tiniest shift of humidity Nonesuch creaked like an old ship. Occasionally she felt as dizzied by its complexity, as oppressed by its weight of history, as she had that first afternoon. But in time these sensations became like clues, gu
ides to a more intense experience of her own pleasure at being there, and she grew to welcome them. It was as if she had accepted – or been accepted by – the Nonesuch past. Annoyed by the false light of its trompe l’œil courtyard, she avoided what she had learned to call the Painted Room. Sometimes, she still thought she heard a cat crying, but it was a long way off.

  ‘Oh and by the way,’ Stella reminded her one afternoon, ‘I hope you’re using your skin cream. If not, just try anything you find.’ She made a vague gesture with one hand. ‘There are boxes of the stuff around.’ There were – at least until the Ashmore & District Summer Fête had come and gone, and along with it the traditional yearly Nonesuch cosmetics stall, piled high with Engelion seconds. ‘It’s just shopsoiled packaging, dear, or mis-labelling,’ Stella explained. ‘Or perhaps we tried out a new jar and no one liked the shape. Nothing wrong with the stuff inside.’

  Alice Meynell had other ideas.

  ‘They’ll put any old muck on their faces,’ she told Anna, ‘the silly bitches round here. My old Gran, now, she never had cosmetics on her, not once. Before she died she was like a road map to her own life. All those lines! But they had a wonderful dignity, and her skin felt like a kid glove, it was that smooth.’

  She shook her head in wonder, then looked angry again. ‘She had a life, my old Gran. It kept her young, however she looked. What have this lot ever done but stare in mirrors?’ She thought about this, then said: ‘You don’t want to worry about all that.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Anna guiltily. The night before, she had taken down the little Engelion jar, touched her index finger to the cold, smooth, slightly resistant surface of the stuff inside, and stared at it for a long time. Then, catching sight of her own expression in the bathroom mirror, she had wiped her fingertip on a tissue and put the lid back on.