Harnessing Peacocks

  ‘Not for days and days.’ Silas’ voice rose in lamentation.

  Jim took stock of the situation. If the child knew people who had the key it was their business to help. The sensible thing would be to take him to one of them, let them take over.

  ‘Do you happen to know somebody called Bernard Quigley?’ he asked vaguely, thinking Bernard might help were he here.

  ‘Yes!’ Something about the boy’s eyes, the way they lit up, touched him. ‘My mother does and I do too but it’s a separate friendship, it’s nice to—’ How to express, how to explain that it was nice to see old Quigley by himself without Hebe being there?

  Jim thought, Really, these latchkey children, how irresponsible people are. ‘I am staying with Bernard Quigley,’ he said, watching the boy’s face. ‘Been doing his shopping. Would you like to come and see him? Perhaps you could tell him your trouble.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Silas adding, ‘there’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Come on, then.’ Jim led the way to his car. Silas followed. Jim wondered why he was angry, why he was behaving in this mad way. This boy was no business of his. But as he drove out of the town with Silas beside him Jim thought, This will help me to meet that woman. Knowing her boy I can call later to ask whether he is all right. To see her would get rid of the niggling idea he had had since he had first seen her. Just one more who isn’t, this one is obviously a bitch of the first order.

  They did not speak on the drive. Jim thought small talk unnecessary. Silas was sunk in nervous gloom. When they reached the lonely call box Jim asked Silas to open a gate into a field. ‘The farmer lets me leave my car here.’ He locked the car.

  They walked across the fields in Indian file, Jim leading the way, carrying the shopping. Silas followed. If I run, thought Silas, it’s only a half mile to the cliff. I could jump, there would be no need for explanations. He mulled this dramatic vision. Commonsense told him the man walking ahead would run faster than he, would catch him and he would look even more idiotic, an even greater fool. He followed Jim sulkily through the wet field. Halfway to the house Feathers met them, bouncing and bounding, wagging his tail, yelping with joy.

  ‘I have brought a friend of yours to lunch.’ Jim greeted Bernard who stood in his porch, watching them walk towards him through the rain. ‘Got himself locked out.’

  ‘Come in and get dry.’ Bernard expressed no surprise. He put his hand on Silas’ shoulder and guided him into the sitting-room. He was moved by Silas’ appearance. Someone had hurt the boy.

  ‘We must find you dry clothes,’ he said. ‘You had better change. But have a drink first. Just a spoonful of brandy. You hate sherry, you won’t like this either but it will warm your guts.’ Bernard poured a small measure of brandy and handed the glass to Silas. ‘Don’t pour that on to the rug. Drink it.’

  Silas blushed and swallowed the brandy obediently. Bernard kept his hand on his shoulder. Silas stopped feeling he must throw himself off the cliff. Bernard waited until Silas’ shoulder muscles stopped feeling like a wound spring. In the kitchen Jim was moving about unpacking the shopping, talking to Feathers, who, being a vocal sort of dog, rumbled and groaned in response. Bernard said, ‘Now go upstairs, first door on the left, take off your wet things. Jim,’ he called, ‘find clothes for Silas to wear until his are dry.’

  Jim brought a towel. ‘These will keep you warm.’ He handed Silas a T-shirt and a heavy sweater. ‘Put them on. Socks.’ He handed Silas socks. ‘Can’t do anything about trousers. Try this, wrap it round you.’ He took a shawl off the bed.

  ‘Thank you.’ Silas stripped off his clammy clothes and pulled on the T-shirt and sweater, which reached his knees. It was warm and smelt delicious. He wrapped the shawl round his waist like a sarong, pulled on the socks.

  Bernard called up the stairs. ‘You had better stay here until your mother comes back.’

  ‘Can I?’ Silas was amazed.

  ‘Of course. Come down and sit by the fire with Feathers when you’re ready.’

  Jim beckoned from the kitchen. Bernard joined him.

  ‘There’s something badly wrong,’ Jim whispered to the old man. ‘What sort of people are they? I’ve heard about children being locked out and what it leads to.’ His voice rose. ‘What does the child’s father do? He should be prosecuted—’ He was blazing with righteousness.

  ‘There is no father. Keep your voice down.’

  ‘And the mother’s a prostitute I suppose,’ Jim sneered.

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘Then she should be prosecuted. It’s criminal leaving a child alone. I found him shivering and crying, shut out, afraid to go near the neighbours. What sort of bitch is she?’

  Bernard was wheezing in an effort to stifle his normal cackle.

  ‘What the hell’s funny?’ Jim snarled.

  ‘Silas is supposed to be staying with some rich school-friend in the Scillies. His mother is consoling herself for his absence by working as a cook for my friend Louisa.’

  ‘Mrs Fox, who you sent me to? That one?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bernard used his snuff-stained handkerchief. ‘The boy has an adoring mother who slaves to—’

  ‘Prostitutes, you mean,’ said Jim nastily.

  ‘If you like. To educate him at a lamentably expensive prep school. When not, as you put it, prostituting, she takes jobs as a cook with old ladies. I assure you whatever happened to Silas happened in the Scillies and more than likely he has brought it on himself. Since when have you been so puritanical?’

  Jim was deflated. ‘He will tell you what happened?’

  ‘I doubt it, knowing his mother. She makes an oyster look like an open safe. Silas takes after her.’

  ‘What shall you do?’

  ‘Keep him here. Telephone Louisa presently.’

  ‘Here he comes.’ Jim listened to Silas coming down the stairs.

  ‘It was unforgivable of me to tell you what I have just told you.’ Jim saw that Bernard was distressed by his indiscretion.

  ‘I too can oyster,’ he said, listening to Silas approaching.

  As Silas reached the bottom step Feathers, a dog with a sense of occasion, jumped up, putting his paws on his shoulders, knocking him back into a sitting position, licking his face. Silas laughed. The old man and the younger man exchanged relieved smiles.

  Eyeing Silas’ feet, Bernard said, ‘You’ll break your neck in those socks. See what you can do about them, Jim. Sit down, Silas.’

  Silas sat by the fire and Jim showed him how to tuck the socks back so that he would not trip. Feathers huffled and snuffled round him, noting that Jim’s smell was now joined with Silas’.

  ‘Lunch,’ cried Bernard. They followed him into the next room. ‘Sit here by me.’ Silas sat beside Bernard. He was furiously hungry. Jim put a bowl of soup in front of him. ‘Start eating,’ said Bernard. Silas obeyed.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Jim said to him. ‘It’s out of a tin, let me add a drop of sherry.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘It improves it no end.’ Jim poured a little sherry into Silas’ soup. ‘Try it.’ Silas sipped.

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Silas had never met a friend of Bernard’s, imagining him forever solitary. He drank his soup, feeling safe with Feathers’ chin pressed on his knee, wriggling his toes in Jim’s socks.

  Then they ate fish baked with fennel. ‘Tonight,’ said Bernard, ‘we are eating grouse which clever Jim found in Salisbury. Ever eaten grouse?’ he asked Silas.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I would have bought more. There was only a brace left, some greedy woman had bought nearly the whole stock. She was filling a deep freeze, the fishmonger said. I shall make soup from the carcasses.’

  ‘Fancy yourself as a cook.’ Bernard was mocking. ‘Silas’ mother is a paragon, you can’t surprise him.’

  Silas looked down his nose. There was a drop in the temperature. Jim caught Bernard’s eye. Bernard, using his great age as armour, asked, ‘Were you proposin
g to kill yourself when Jim found you?’ Not waiting for Silas to answer, he turned to Jim. ‘When did you last wish to do away with yourself, Jim? I can’t remember when I last had the impulse. It’s something which dims with age. It must be thirty years since I seriously considered it. Come now,’ he was looking directly at Jim, ‘tell us.’

  Sensing the appeal (did Bernard hope to cauterise Silas’ wounds?) Jim rose to the occasion.

  ‘Quite some time ago I imagined myself in love.’

  ‘You!’ mocked the old man, encouraging Jim. ‘In love?’ he scoffed.

  ‘In Italy,’ said Jim. ‘I was taken to a party. It was a feast day, you know the sort of thing, a procession, statues of saints carried wobbling, priests, altar boys swinging censers, people singing and chanting, smell of garlic, wine, incense, children shouting, getting over-excited, their mothers slapping them.’

  ‘Italians don’t slap their children,’ interrupted Bernard. ‘But go on.’

  ‘I was watching the procession. It was at night, did I tell you? There were brass bands, tumpity-tump.’

  ‘Carry on.’ Bernard watched Silas’ interested face.

  ‘The dark town lit by candles, candles stuck in all the windows of the town, lined along ledges. It was Lucca. Ever been to Lucca?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was watching from a balcony. The procession wound through narrow streets which make the houses seem tall when they are not really tall. By the light of all those candles they did seem tall—’

  ‘Where was the girl?’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The one you fell in love with.’

  ‘She was down in the street with a group of hippies. There were stalls selling necklaces of hazelnuts. I saw she wanted one. I ran down and caught up with her. We walked together. I bought her necklaces and put them round her neck.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Very long brown hair, long dress, could hardly see her face. You know how it was at that time, one didn’t see people’s faces, there was so much hair. I had a beard.’

  ‘I remember you, a sad sight.’

  ‘It was the long hair and beard era.’ Jim was defensive. ‘Flower Power and so on, tremendous crops of hair on both sexes.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We spent the evening together. She was lovely.’

  Silas was absorbed. He was with Jim in Lucca walking with the candlelit procession, he could hear the people singing, the bands. It was wonderful.

  ‘She had brown eyes, a wonderful walk. We were happy. Then she went wild, it was quite hard to keep up with her at times, she moved so fast.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then’—Jim spoke fiercely—‘the night went sour. There was a fight of some sort. I lost her. Everyone was running to get out of trouble.’

  ‘So you didn’t make love to her—’

  ‘I had, before the confusion, the fight, the running away. She vanished. It was as though she’d never been. Can you understand? Perhaps,’ Jim said, ‘she was an illusion.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bernard sighed, ‘perhaps she was.’

  ‘When I could not find her I felt like killing myself.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bernard sighed. ‘You had not known her before that night?’

  ‘No, I told you.’

  ‘So you have been seeking her ever since.’

  ‘Sometimes I think I see her,’ said Jim, ‘catch a glimpse.’

  ‘And it’s never the girl.’ Bernard snapped his fingers. ‘I would not have believed you capable of such flights of fancy. Shall we have coffee by the fire?’

  ‘All very well to mock.’ Jim got up to make the coffee. ‘Some of us, not you of course, are romantics.’

  ‘I have had my moments.’ Bernard was dignified.

  Silas burst out laughing. The idea of Bernard in a romantic situation was hilarious.

  Bernard looked satisfied. ‘I was never so stupid as to mislay them,’ he said, stooping to put logs on the fire. ‘When I was no longer in love with a girl I arranged matters so that love turned into friendship. In that way I have kept up relationships with nearly all my amours.’

  ‘And how do you manage that?’

  ‘When you are—er—on the wane, you work it so that it is she who thinks she is cooling. She keeps her amour propre, you keep yours and you remain friends. It works,’ said Bernard smugly. ‘In every case except one it has worked with me and even that one—well, we were talking about you. What was your girl called?’

  ‘I don’t know. I asked the people she had been with. They said she wasn’t of their party. I was not surprised, they were not her kind of people—into drugs, I’d say.’

  ‘So she had no name. What nationality?’

  ‘We spoke French. Her Italian was poor. She said “Do you speak French?” I remember that. She may have been French.’

  Bernard was laughing. ‘A girl without name or nationality. You are inventing her.’

  ‘I would not wish to kill myself for a myth,’ said Jim stiffly.

  ‘You have not even described her appearance.’

  ‘I told you, she had long hair, brown eyes, brown skin. If I saw her now as she was then I might know her, but by now I might not recognise her. We met at night, by torchlight. I made love to her in darkness. It was quiet, near the church, the noise of the procession muted. There is a black Christ in the church.’ Jim was back in Lucca.

  Silas looked at Jim’s face lit by a sudden blaze from the fresh logs. ‘What happened?’ he whispered.

  ‘I searched for days. I was working in a bar to earn money. Nobody admitted seeing her. I described her as a girl running. They said a lot of people were running that night. It was a disgrace to have a fight on the Saint’s day. It was the fault of foreign hippies. I suppose she left the town.’

  Jim poured coffee into cups, handed it to Bernard, offered it to Silas.

  ‘Silas?’ It was the first time Jim had called him by name. Silas accepted coffee, helped himself to milk and sugar. Bernard sneezed. ‘It is quite refreshing to find that people still fall in love. What happened?’

  ‘I decided against suicide, had an affair with an American blonde, became a philanderer.’ Jim spoke flatly.

  ‘But you still look for her,’ Silas suggested.

  ‘Exactly.’ Jim looked at the boy. He is recovering, he thought, feels safer now, not safe enough for us to ask what happened, probably won’t even tell his tarting mother. Perhaps he won’t tell anybody until some occasion arises like today, when I have told him about my love in Lucca to distract him. ‘Sometimes I see a woman who reminds me of the girl. It never is her.’

  ‘That must be tantalising.’ Bernard was almost sympathetic.

  ‘It keeps me young.’ And single, Jim thought, surprised.

  ‘Perhaps she is still looking for you,’ Silas suggested, liking the idea.

  ‘I doubt it. Last seen in full flight,’ said Jim. ‘She was a fast mover.’

  They sat drinking their coffee, Bernard by the fire in his wing chair, Jim opposite him, Silas, Feathers and the cat at their feet. Outside the rain poured pitilessly, soaking the peninsula from the Atlantic rain clouds. Feathers licked his chops in a dream. Bernard put his cup into its saucer with a clink.

  ‘I have never before told anyone about that girl.’ Jim caught the old man’s eye.

  I am supposed to believe it never happened, thought Bernard. He is as vulnerable as the boy. ‘It was generous of you to tell us,’ he said. Presently, he thought, I shall stumble across the fields to the telephone and alert Louisa about Silas. She will tell Hebe. I must wait as late as possible; I have not the strength to stump across the fields twice. We must see that Hebe does not take fright and drive recklessly on her way home.

  Twenty-three

  FROM THE CALL BOX by the bus stop Bernard dialled Louisa’s number and listened to the ringing tone which would rouse her in Wiltshire.

  Many years before, knowing that she was in London with her husband, he had visited
the house, prowled round, explored the garden, posing as the man who was calling about fire insurance. He had asked the maid to accompany him round the house so that no suspicion would be aroused. Thus when he talked to Louisa he could picture her in her surroundings, enduring grief when her husband dropped dead (quite a shock) and the change to widowhood, pushed for money but enjoying her garden, her dogs and latterly the joyful treat of Hebe’s cooking visits. He could visualise her in the drawing-room with the view of the garden through the French windows. When he rang up at night he saw her in bed, library books, clock, pills, spectacles on the bedside table. Sometimes he forgot that she had grown old and imagined the girl who had shared bed and breakfast in the Hotel d’Angleterre with such zest.

  ‘Hullo?’ Louisa’s voice was clear. ‘Bernard?’

  ‘Yes.’ She always guessed right.

  ‘Darling Bernard, I have so much to tell you that will make you laugh.’ She bubbled with delight.

  ‘You have Hebe with you?’ He cut her short.

  ‘Of course I have. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Her boy. You know she has a boy?’

  ‘She doesn’t know I know. You know I am discreet.’

  ‘Louisa, I have the boy here with me.’

  ‘With you? Why? How strange.’

  ‘Hebe let him go and stay with smart schoolfriends in the Scillies.’

  ‘I know. You told me that was why she has come to me. What’s happened?’

  ‘Jim Huxtable, our go-between—’

  ‘Yes? I liked him. I liked his looks. Nice manners, too.’ She would have liked to discuss Jim.

  ‘He found the boy sitting on the doorstep, his mother’s you understand, locked out, blubbing. The man doesn’t know what to do, the boy won’t tell him what’s the trouble, so Jim brings him out to me. He is here in my house.’

  ‘But what happened? What—?’

  ‘Child doesn’t say. Just like his mother, a clam. I have not asked.’

  ‘Was it something terrible? Was he raped? One reads such awful things in the papers.’

  ‘No, no, nothing physical. He’s run away, that’s all I know, and needs his mother.’

  ‘Of course he does,’ she cried.