Читать книгу Dead Water - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 9

That evening in the private tap at The Boy-and-Lobster Wally Trehern’s warts were the principal topic of conversation. It was a fine evening and low-tide fell at eight o’clock. In addition to the regular Islanders, there were patrons who had strolled across the causeway from the village: Dr Maine of the Portcarrow Convalescent Home; the Rector, the Rev. Mr Adrian Carstairs, who liked to show, as was no more than the case, that he was human; and a visitor to the village, a large pale young man with a restless manner and a general air of being on the look-out for something. He was having a drink with Patrick Ferrier, the step-son of the landlord, down from Oxford for the long vacation. Patrick was an engaging fellow with a sensitive mouth, pleasant manners and a quick eye which dwelt pretty often upon Jenny Williams. There was only one other woman in the private beside Jenny. This was Miss Elspeth Cost, a lady with vague hair and a tentative smile who, like Jenny, was staying at The Boy-and-Lobster and was understood to have a shop somewhere and to be interested in handicrafts and the drama.

The landlord, Major Keith Barrimore, stationed between two bars, served both the public and the private taps: the former being used exclusively by local fishermen. Major Barrimore was well-setup and of florid complexion. He shouted rather than spoke, had any amount of professional bonhomie and harmonized perfectly with his background of horse-brasses, bottles, glasses, tankards and sporting prints. He wore a check coat, a yellow waistcoat and a signet ring and kept his hair very smooth.

‘Look at it whichever way you choose,’ Miss Cost said, ‘it’s astounding. Poor little fellow! To think!’

‘Very dramatic,’ said Patrick Ferrier, smiling at Jenny.

‘Well it was,’ she said. ‘Just that.’

‘One hears of these cases,’ said the restless young man, ‘Gipsies and charms and so on.’

‘Yes, I know one does,’ Jenny said. ‘One hears of them but I’ve never met one before. And who, for heaven’s sake, was the green lady?’

There was a brief silence.

‘Ah,’ said Miss Cost. ‘Now that is the really rather wonderful part. The green lady!’ She tipped her head to one side and looked at the rector. ‘M-m –?’ she invited.

‘Poor Wally!’ Mr Carstairs rejoined. ‘All a fairytale, I daresay. It’s a sad case.’

‘The cure isn’t a fairytale,’ Jenny pointed out.

‘No, no, no. Surely not. Surely not,’ he said in a hurry.

‘A fairytale. I wonder. Still pixies in these yurr parts, Rector, d’y’m reckon?’ asked Miss Cost essaying a roughish burr.

Everyone looked extremely uncomfortable.

‘All in the poor kid’s imagination, I should have thought,’ said Major Barrimore and poured himself a double Scotch. ‘Still: damn’ good show, anyway.’

‘What’s the medical opinion?’ Patrick asked.

‘Don’t ask me!’ Dr Maine ejaculated, throwing up his beautifully kept hands. ‘There is no medical opinion as far as I know.’ But seeing perhaps that they all expected more than this from him, he went on half-impatiently. ‘You do, of course, hear of these cases. They’re quite well-established. I’ve heard of an eminent skin-specialist who actually mugged up an incantation or spell or what have-you and used it on his patients with marked success.’

‘There! You see!’ Miss Cost cried out, gently clapping her hands. She became mysterious. ‘You wait!’ she said. ‘You jolly well wait!’

Dr Maine glanced at her distastefully.

‘The cause of warts is not known,’ he said. ‘Probably viral. The boy’s an epileptic,’ he added. ‘Petit mal.’

‘Would that predispose him to this sort of cure?’ Patrick asked.

‘Might,’ Dr Maine said shortly. ‘Might predispose him to the right kind of suggestibility.’ Without looking at the Rector, he added: ‘There’s one feature that sticks out all through the literature of reputed cures by some allegedly supernatural agency. The authentic cases have emotional or nervous connotations.’

‘Not all, surely,’ the Rector suggested.

Dr Maine shot a glance at him. ‘I shouldn’t talk,’ he said. ‘I really know nothing about such matters. The other half, if you please.’

Jenny thought: ‘The Rector feels he ought to nip in and speak up for miracles and he doesn’t like to because he doesn’t want to be parsonic. How tricky it is for them! Dr Maine’s the same, in his way. He doesn’t like talking shop for fear of showing off. English reticence,’ thought Jenny, resolving to make the point in her next letter home. ‘Incorrigible amateurs.’

The restless young man suddenly said: ‘The next round’s on me,’ and astonished everybody.

‘Handsome offer!’ said Major Barrimore. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Tell me,’ said the young man expansively and at large. ‘Where is this spring or pool or whatever it is?’

Patrick explained. ‘Up the hill above the jetty.’

‘And the kid’s story is that some lady in green told him to wash his hands in it? And the warts fell off in the night. Is that it?’

‘As far as I could make out,’ Jenny agreed. ‘He’s not at all eloquent, poor Wally.’

‘Wally Trehern, did you say? Local boy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Were they bad? The warts?’

‘Frightful.’

‘Mightn’t have been just kind of ripe to fall off? Coincidence?’

‘Most unlikely, I’d have thought,’ said Jenny.

‘I see,’ said the young man, weighing it up. ‘Well, what’s everybody having? Same again, all round?’

Everybody murmured assent and Major Barrimore began to pour the drinks.

Jenny said: ‘I could show you a photograph.’

‘No? Could you, though? I’d very much like to see it. I’d be very interested, indeed. Would you?’

She ran up to her room to get it: a colour-slide of the infant-class with Wally in the foreground, his hands dangling. She put it in the viewer and returned to the bar. The young man looked at it intently, whistling to himself. ‘Quite a thing,’ he said. ‘Quite something. Nice sharp picture, too.’

Everybody wanted to look at it. While they were handing it about, the door from the house opened and Mrs Barrimore came in.

She was a beautiful woman, very fine-drawn with an exquisite head of which the bone-structure was so delicate and the eyes so quiet in expression that the mouth seemed like a vivid accident. It was as if an artist, having started out to paint an ascetic, had changed his mind and laid down the lips of a voluptuary.

With a sort of awkward grace that suggested shyness, she moved into the bar, smiling tentatively at nobody in particular. Dr Maine looked quickly at her and stood up. The Rector gave her good-evening and the restless young man offered her a drink. Her husband, without consulting her, poured a glass of lager.

‘Hallo, Mum. We’ve all been talking about Wally’s warts,’ Patrick said.

Mrs Barrimore sat down by Miss Cost. ‘Have you?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it strange? I can’t get over it.’ Her voice was charming: light and very clear. She had the faintest hesitation in her speech and a trick of winding her fingers together. Her son brought her drink to her and she thanked the restless young man rather awkwardly for it. Jenny, who liked her very much, wondered, not for the first time, if her position at The Boy-and-Lobster was distasteful to her and exactly why she seemed so alien to it.

Her entrance brought a little silence in its wake. Dr Maine turned his glass round and round and stared at the contents. Presently Miss Cost broke out in fresh spate of enthusiasm.

‘… Now, you may all laugh as loud as you please,’ she cried with a reckless air. ‘I shan’t mind. I daresay there’s some clever answer explaining it all away or you can, if you choose, call it coincidence. But I don’t care. I’m going to say my little say.’ She held up her glass of port in a dashing manner and gained their reluctant attention. ‘I’m an asthmatic!’ she declared vaingloriously. ‘Since I came here, I’ve had my usual go, regular as clockwork, every evening at half past eight. I daresay some of you have heard me sneezing and wheezing away in my corner. Very well. Now! This evening, when I’d heard about Wally, I walked up to the spring and while I sat there, it came into my mind. Quite suddenly. ‘I wonder.’ And I dipped my fingers in the waterfall –’ She shut her eyes, raised her brows and smiled. The port slopped over on her hand. She replaced the glass. ‘I wished my wee wish,’ she continued. ‘And I sat up there, feeling ever so light and unburdened, and then I came down.’ She pointed dramatically to the bar clock. ‘Look at the time!’ she exulted. ‘Five past ten!’ She slapped her chest. ‘Clear as a bell! And I know, I just know it’s happened. To ME.’

There was a dead silence during which, Jenny thought, everyone listened nervously for asthmatic manifestations from Miss Cost’s chest. There were none.

‘Miss Cost,’ said Patrick Ferrier at last. ‘How perfectly splendid!’ There were general ambiguous murmurs of congratulation. Major Barrimore, looking as if he would like to exchange a wink with somebody, added: ‘Long may it last!’ They were all rather taken aback by the fervency with which she ejaculated. ‘Amen! Yes, indeed. Amen!’ The Rector looked extremely uncomfortable. Dr Maine asked Miss Cost if she’d seen any green ladies while she was about it.

‘N-n-o!’ she said and darted a very unfriendly glance at him.

‘You sound as if you’re not sure of that, Miss Cost.’

‘My eyes were closed,’ she said quickly.

‘I see,’ said Dr Maine.

The restless young man who had been biting at his nails said loudly: ‘Look!’ and having engaged their general attention, declared himself. ‘Look!’ he repeated, ‘I’d better come clean and explain at once that I take a – well, a professional interest in all this. On holiday: but a news-hound’s job’s never done, is it? It seems to me there’s quite a story here. I’m sure my paper would want our readers to hear about it. The London Sun and I’m Kenneth Joyce. “K.J.’s Column.” You know? “What’s The Answer?” Now, what do you all say? Just a news item. Nothing spectacular.’

‘O, no!’ Mrs Barrimore ejaculated and then added: ‘I’m sorry. It’s simply that I really do so dislike that sort of thing.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Dr Maine. For a second they looked at each other.

‘I really think,’ the Rector said, ‘not. I’m afraid I dislike it too, Mr Joyce.’

‘So do I,’ Jenny said.

‘Do you?’ asked Mr Joyce. ‘I’m sorry about that. I was going to ask if you’d lend me this picture. It’d blow up quite nicely. My paper would pay –’

‘No,’ said Jenny.

‘Golly, how fierce!’ said Mr Joyce, pretending to shrink. He looked about him. ‘Now why not?’ he asked.

Major Barrimore said: ‘I don’t know why not. I can’t say I see anything wrong with it. The thing’s happened, hasn’t it, and it’s damned interesting. Why shouldn’t people hear about it?’

‘O, I do agree,’ cried Miss Cost. ‘I’m sorry but I do so agree with the Major. When the papers are full of such dreadful things shouldn’t we welcome a lovely, lovely true story like Wally’s. O, yes!’

Patrick said to Mr Joyce: ‘Well, at least you declared yourself,’ and grinned at him.

‘He wanted Jenny’s photograph,’ said Mrs Barrimore quietly. ‘So he had to.’

They looked at her with astonishment. ‘Well, honestly, Mama!’ Patrick ejaculated. ‘What a very crisp remark!’

‘An extremely cogent remark,’ said Dr Maine.

‘I don’t think so,’ Major Barrimore said loudly and Jenny was aware of an antagonism that had nothing to do with the matter under discussion.

‘But, of course I had to,’ Mr Joyce conceded with a wide gesture and an air of candour. ‘You’re dead right. I did want the photograph. All the same, it’s a matter of professional etiquette, you know. My paper doesn’t believe in pulling fast ones. That’s not The Sun’s policy, at all. In proof of which I shall retire gracefully upon a divided house.’

He carried his drink over to Miss Cost and sat beside her. Mrs Barrimore got up and moved away. Dr Maine took her empty glass and put it on the bar.

There was an uncomfortable silence, induced perhaps by the general recollection that they had all drunk at Mr Joyce’s expense and a suspicion that his hospitality had not been offered entirely without motive.

Mrs Barrimore said: ‘Good night, everybody,’ and went out.

Patrick moved over to Jenny. ‘I’m going fishing in the morning if it’s fine,’ he said. ‘Seeing it’s a Saturday, would it amuse you to come? It’s a small, filthy boat and I don’t expect to catch anything.’

‘What time?’

‘Dawn. Or soon after. Say half past four.’

‘Crikey! Well, yes, I’d love to if I can wake myself up.’

‘I’ll scratch on your door like one of the Sun King’s courtiers. Which door is it? Frightening, if I scratched on Miss Cost’s!’

Jenny told him. ‘Look at Miss Cost now,’ she said. ‘She’s having a whale of a time with Mr Joyce.’

‘He’s getting a story from her.’

‘O, no!’

‘O, yes! And tomorrow, betimes, he’ll be hunting up Wally and his unspeakable parents. With a camera.’

‘He won’t!’

‘Of course he will. If they’re sober they’ll be enchanted. Watch out for K.J.’s “What’s The Answer” column in The Sun.’

‘I do think the gutter-press in this country’s the rock bottom.’

‘Don’t you have a gutter-press in New Zealand?’

‘Not as low.’

‘Well done, you. All the same, I don’t see why K.J.’s idea strikes you as being so very low. No sex. No drugs. No crime. It’s as clean as a whistle, like Wally’s hands.’ He was looking rather intently into Jenny’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You didn’t like that, either, did you?’

‘It’s just – I don’t know, or yes, I think I do. Wally’s so vulnerable. I mean, he’s been jeered at and cowed by the other children. He’s been puzzled and lonely and now he’s a comparatively happy little creature. Quite a hero, in a way. He’s not attractive: his sort aren’t, as a rule, but I’ve got an affection for him. Whatever’s happened ought to be private to him.’

‘But he won’t take it in, will he? All the ballyhoo, if there is any ballyhoo? He may even vaguely enjoy it.’

‘I don’t want him to. All right,’ Jenny said crossly, ‘I’m being bloody-minded. Forget it. P’raps it won’t happen.’

‘I think you may depend upon it,’ Patrick rejoined. ‘It will.’

And, in the event, he turned out to be right.