Текст книги "The Pesthouse"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Ten

The child, named Bella after her dead mother, was the only dreamer on the Dreaming Highway that night. The three adults judged valueless by the rustlers did not have any rest. For the first time since leaving the Pesthouse, Margaret spent the night alone, too shocked and frightened to sleep but not allowed to offer any comfort to the net makers or to seek from them any comfort for herself. The Boses had found a narrow, ferrous crevice, damp and unwelcoming but dark enough to hide them from any further passersby. Margaret had tried to squeeze in with them, but they had pushed her back with their feet and elbows, not wanting even to touch her with their hands. Their only conversation after that had been shouted, and brief, just long enough for Melody to warn Margaret to keep her distance “or else.” She’d armed herself with a heavy piece of metal. If Margaret came too close, Melody was ready and prepared, she said, to do some lasting damage to Margaret’s shaven head.

The night was not silent. Andrew Bose, chirring like a katydid, kept up a muttered chorus of curses against humankind for its cruelty and its treachery and against his own mother for ever having given birth to him. Melody soothed the baby and herself with rocking and repetition, “Son. Son. Son…,” not daring to invite more misfortune by naming him out loud. And all around, the relics made noises of their own. Trash disturbed by all the recent hoofs and feet settled back in place. Degraded concrete slabs shifted and wheezed as the night grew cold. Insignificant animals with outsized, moonlit eyes that were only scavenging for scraps sounded to Margaret and the Boses as large and dangerous as horsemen. The taller metal shapes picked up any wind in their hollows and their tubes and played their fluty monotones with it, competing to produce the saddest and most spectral sound.

Margaret was trembling for a long part of the night, too shaken by her loss – her losses – to settle on a single emotion. In just a few days everyone she loved had been carried off. Bitterness piled up on bitterness. She had not expected to get any sleep, but nevertheless, once the Boses had rejected her and she had exhausted herself with weeping and vomiting, she had moved her bedclothes onto the barrow and stretched out on her side, resting an arm across the empty space where Franklin had slept. Another good man gone, she thought, as if somehow it was her fault, that it was as inevitable that misfortune would attend Franklin once he was in her company as it was certain that the men in her family would beat with sticks that older, fine-mannered stranger who had proposed a midnight meeting with her all those years ago. Maybe it was correct what everybody said: “Red hair, bad luck.” But then, she had been lucky in other ways, hadn’t she? Like no one else from Ferrytown, she was alive. Yes, thanks to Pigeon, thanks to him. His touch had rescued her twice, first when his strong slow fingers had massaged her feet and then again when his sudden, quicker fingers had pulled off her scarf.

She should not be angry with the Boses. Margaret knew that, despite her spinning emotions. They had a right to suspect and fear her shaven head, even though her hair was now a few days old and visible, an orange fuzz that felt like the nap of some fine cloth when she ran her palm across her skull. She almost had eyebrows, spiky and stiff. But still she could not expect them to risk exposing a child of Bella’s age to a disease, even if that disease was clearly in retreat. Nor could she expect them to show much sympathy to her for the loss of her “half-brother.” How could that compare to their loss of a full son and their granddaughter’s loss of a full father? Nor could she expect them to stay quiet during the night, when their grief, their shock, and their terror were so burdensome. Yet she was angry with the Boses. She was angry at the way they had turned hostile and despairing so quickly, creating more conflict instead of staying calm. She was angry that only a short time after sharing a fire and their life stories with her, and at a time when the four of them should be unified and thinking of ways to help or rescue their men, they were threatening her with a strip of metal. Not that such a threat was frightening. The Boses didn’t have the pluck or strength to do her any harm. They didn’t have the character.

Margaret’s anger made the time pass more quickly. It kept her warm and busy. Keep your distance or else?The threat was so infuriating and unkind that Margaret succeeded in persuading herself that it would be easy, a pleasure even, to take the metal out of Melody’s hands and give her graying braids some sharp, painful tugs. Or else she would happily find a strip of metal of her own and put an end to all that “Son. Son. Son…” Melody, the crowd of emigrants who had stoned them on the shingle beach at Ferrytown, the short horseman who had stolen Franklin’s coat, anyone ahead of her who’d dare to block her path, they all became one body, dropping to its knees under the thrashing weight of Margaret’s metal strip.

As soon as there was some light, Margaret wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and clambered up a high rampart of rubble to make sure that the junkle was deserted. She could not trust her eyes entirely, but she listened carefully, turning into and against the wind. No whinnying. No brays. No dogs. No men. Not even birds. For the time being they were safe. Safe enough to run away.

The Boses watched her from their hiding place. They seemed so weary and so old suddenly, so frail and defeated, that Margaret, against her instincts to tell them nothing, called out to inform them that she was moving on, and that if they wanted to – and if they had any sense at all in their old heads – they could join her. “At a distance, if you prefer,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll have to manage on your own. Make up your minds.” She sounded like her mother for a moment, impatient and practical, when what she truly felt was desolate and hollow.

“Where will we go? How will we get there?” Andrew Bose asked eventually, after a whispered conversation with the ill-named Melody.

“We walk. How else?” They might be in possession of a carriage and a boat barrow, she reminded them, but without any horses to pull the former or anyone strong enough to push the latter, they had no choice but to leave behind anything they could not carry easily and go ahead by foot.

“But where?”

“I don’t know where. Don’t ask me where. We go. We carry on. That’s what we have to do.” Again she recognized this tone of voice, not her natural, more respectful way of speaking, and not her mother’s. It was the voice her brothers had often used to bully her. It was the voice she’d heard from Franklin just the day before, when he had made her take the highway despite her worries. It “will speed us to the coast,” he’d said. Well, he’d been wrong. Horribly so. And she’d been right. I’ll never take the advice of a pigeon again, she told herself – and it almost made her smile, just to imagine for a moment that she was truly saying it to him, that he was still there with her to be teased.

Well, now she had the chance to take her own advice, to leave the old wide track and all the hard lands thereabouts and follow country routes, ones too narrow, preferably, for horses or groups of men. But Franklin needed her. She was not free to take her own advice. There was no one who’d look for him if she didn’t. So what she’d have to do was try to find where he’d been taken, no matter where it was, even if it meant continuing along the highway.

“Okay, it’s true, I don’t know what we ought to do,” she called out to the Boses. “And nor do you. All I know is that I want my Franklin back.” She fought her sobs. “And you must want your Acton back, too. Her pa. So what’s the choice? There isn’t any choice. We find the horse scuffs and we follow them. What happens then will happen then. We can’t stay here. So let’s pack up our bags and go. Before those men come back for us. Or something worse.”

The Boses were persuaded by those last two words.

They dragged their remaining possessions and the few things left by the Joeys out into full view from the darkness of the rubble cave and made their choices. Any food they had to keep. And water bags. But otherwise the hard decisions were their own. Margaret kept her fishing net, one of Franklin’s knives, his spark stone, a thin blanket, one tarp, the comb, the hairbrush, the green-and-orange woven top that had been rescued from her room in Ferrytown, a spare undershirt, and her blue scarf. She forced them into Franklin’s back sack, leaving enough space on top for what was left of their salted meat, the honey, and her remaining taffies, as well as some damp tack from the potman’s stores. The cattle skins would have to be abandoned. They were too bulky, as were her father’s wading boots, which Franklin had for some reason rescued from the house, and – she hesitated – the coil of thick rope, which might prove useful but was heavy. She hesitated, too, about the bow and arrows. Franklin would want to keep them, she knew. But she could not use them herself. Women were never trained to hunt, so taking them would be an empty gesture – as, possibly, would be the inclusion of Franklin’s change of clothes. She did not want to challenge fate by adding them to her load. If she and Franklin ever met again – which, candidly and with bitter resignation, she doubted that they would – then a change of clothes would not matter one way or the other. But if she took his clothes with her, it was guaranteed – they were so capacious – that they would weigh her down and use up space and energy. Throwing them out was shamefully distressing. A murder of a sort. Again she had to swallow tears.

The fruit-juice flagons were also too heavy to carry, even the empty one, but she filled a water bag with juice and hung it on its lanyard around her waist, together with the larger bag still nearly full of now stale water from the river at Ferrytown. Then she filled her stomach with the remaining juice. She offered it across the clearing to the Boses, but they shook their heads and wiped their lips defensively, as if the mere mention of sharing a spout with her were enough to smear them with contagion.

The little clay pot over which she’d cooked their breakfast birds while she and Franklin had been resting in the forest was not worth keeping, she thought, and then she thought again and remembered a chilling moment from the night before. Those metal scavengers, those people rustlers, whatever they were, had thrown out her mint plant, the one intimate thing that she had shared with her family remaining in her possession. Margaret stepped into the cave with the clay pot and felt around with her foot until she located the earth and the plant. The mint was damaged, both by the assault of the previous evening and by the season. Few leaves were left. Soon there would be none. The mint would draw back to its roots until the spring. But still she scooped the earth and the plant into the pot and nestled it among her clothes at the top of her bag. This was not sensible, she knew. Why bother with a plant that grew wild anyway? But Margaret was determined to defy the scavengers, in some small way at least. The mint would live.

It did not take her long to find the traces of the horsemen and the mule train. Pack animals are not discreet. Their bowels leave steaming messages. Their hoofs leave runes. And mules can never pass a scrap of bush without tearing at it with their gravestone teeth. The men – this much was clear – had gone back to the highway with their pillage and their hostages and, lit by the moon and the night vision of criminals, had headed east like everybody else.

Margaret led the way and the Boses, grumpily – and with good cause, Margaret had to allow – followed twenty paces behind, stopping whenever she paused to examine the track, looking away when she glanced back to see if they were managing. They did not wish to catch her eye. She had become a dangerous mystery to them. Why was she so angry and unreasonable? Why was she impolite? Why didn’t she pull that scarf back on to hide herself? They did not understand her lack of respect, and she could not be bothered to shout out her explanations: that she was angry because anger was purposeful, that she was impolite because courtesy was an impediment, that her scarfless head – and this surely must be welcome – would keep strangers at a distance.

The Boses followed on, taking it in turns to carry their granddaughter in a sling across their chests and taking it in turns to complain about the burden. They were glad at least that they didn’t have to gaze at Margaret’s unnerving bald scalp. Their view of it was obscured by the few mint leaves that protruded from the top of Margaret’s back sack and tickled the nape of her neck when she walked, a touch of green against the red of her new hair, a combination that anybody not as beset by troubles as the Boses were might recognize as beautiful.

So they followed the highway from sunup until sundown, hardly exchanging a word all day, not sharing food and not daring to rest in case they fell too far behind their abducted men. There were no other travelers ahead of them for Margaret to frighten off with her bare head, although in the afternoon, behind them to the west, they could see and hear from a rise in the road that a convoy of farm carts, a large number of travelers on foot, and some cattle were moving slowly in their wake. Apart from hoofprints and dung, the only, chilling evidence they found that other emigrants had passed recently ahead of them was an abandoned cart with the bodies of a half-dressed woman and a dog draped across its deck and its load of household furniture and effects scattered around. The boxes had been kicked open, the bags turned inside out. And possibly any man fit enough to work or sell had been added to the line of captives that already included Franklin, Acton Bose, and the Joeys.

The woman’s body was warm. She’d died that morning. The blood on the crown of her head was sticky, and her limbs were not yet stiff. Margaret covered her face and legs. The dog was alive but injured badly, though still vigilant enough to growl and show its teeth when Margaret went to it with a piece of tarry stone to finish what the rustlers must have started. She knew that what she’d have to do was ugly, and probably unwomanly in the Boses’ eyes. But she would not regret it. She thought of her own dogs, Becky and Jefferson. Better to be ugly and unwomanly than to leave a loyal dog to suffer. She guessed it had done its best to protect its human family. This was its recompense. It took three blows.

They spent the night away from the road, crouching in the undergrowth under a makeshift tent of tarps and branches and taking it in turns to stand guard. They knew from the pillaged cart and the dead woman that the rustlers were still in the neighborhood. That was both reassuring and alarming. But they dared not light a fire, although the temperature was wintry and there was a wind. Margaret was allowed to occupy the shelter with the Boses, though not to sit too close or to share their food. She chewed on dried meat with a slab of the potman’s tack and drank a little juice, which had already grown bitter from the journey.

Andrew and Melody whispered to each other as they did their best to make their granddaughter accept her meal of cold water porridge with mashed fish. Margaret presumed from what little she could hear that the Boses were discussing her, what their attitude should be. They must have recognized how well and fit she’d been that day. Hardly a flux-ridden invalid. And what a leader she had proved to be, taking the decisions, selecting the route, quietly valiant. Even her unbecoming killing of the dog was oddly reassuring to the Boses, she gathered. It showed she was a woman who would not turn away from problems or challenges, and that if pressed, she might defend herself and anybody in her company. What was clear to Margaret was that the Boses had come to fear her slightly less. On the whole, they could now allow that they were better off in her company than out of it.

The Boses would have preferred it if Margaret had walked a little slower that day and for less time and with more rest breaks, however. Bella had turned out to be a heavy, struggling bundle who would rather be on the ground, learning how to bend her knees and crawl, than strapped to an irritated grandparent and not allowed to move. The effort of taking care of her and of themselves, after the undemanding luxury of riding in a carriage, had come as a shock. Perhaps, if they could persuade themselves to overcome their anxiety just a little more and convince Margaret to cover her mouth, then she could take her turn with the baby. Yes, it would be in their interests to talk to her, to broker a period of peace. They’d not find Acton on their own. Even if they did, they’d not know what to do. Whereas Margaret…well, Margaret was “knotted from strong twine,” the highest praise from net makers.

So it happened that when they set off the next morning, after a night in which the baby would not hush or sleep and the adults could not stop shivering, the gap between Margaret and the Boses was reduced to a few steps. A workable peace had been made at sunup, with apologies spoken if not entirely felt, explanations offered, comfort and sympathy finally exchanged. Margaret was being sensible. The Boses had dried peas and a good supply of oats, as well as several bags of salt fish. They might not be the finest company, but they were preferable to traveling alone. Six eyes would make better lookouts than two poor ones. Three adults, even if two of them were frail, could defend themselves better than one. Besides, it was Margaret’s duty to support her elders. She might not like the Boses much. Certainly she could not admire them, ever. But the little girl was lovable.

Margaret had compromised for prudent and selfish reasons. She wore the blue scarf around her face and head, as she was asked, with just her eyes on show; she made an effort to defer to her elders and to be more outwardly patient; and she was content that in return, they let her carry Bella on her chest. The child was unexpectedly warm and consoling. Her head had hardly any more hair than Margaret’s. Her body smelled of stewed apples – sweet piss and bloom. The child was also less difficult in the younger woman’s care because she was less bored. They played tug with an edge of cloth. Margaret sang to her, everything from nursery rhymes to laments. She invented new noises by trumpeting farts on the girl’s neck or blowing in her ear, a sensation that Bella evidently loved. She gurgled her appreciation, but when she grew tired of that and even of sucking her own thumb, she accepted Margaret’s little finger as a pacifier, determined to find nourishment for her small, empty stomach. The baby had not eaten properly since leaving home, and she had not fed truly properly since her mother died and her umbilical was cut. Bella Bose needed milky food. Margaret whispered promises that somehow, and within a day or two, she’d get hold of some for her.

By afternoon the Boses had decided that they could walk with Margaret, shoulder to shoulder, and tell her what a fine life they had had back home before the migrations began, how respected Andrew had been, and wealthy. His creels would last for years – and they were beaver-proof. His nets were the best. You could snag them on rocks and it would be the rock that lifted and not the net that tore. Fishermen from the far bank of the river would risk the rapids just to get across and purchase a Bose net. He owned a good part of the riverbank. He owned a carriage and had a dozen boats for rent as well as the canoe that Acton used for fishing. He had more land than any farmer in the neighborhood, which he rented out for one fifth of the crop. “Now look at me,” he said, handing over Bella for the umpteenth time that day. “A bag of oats, that’s all we’ve got worth anything.”

The road degraded. With every step of their journey the highway became more damaged and disordered, its top shell cracked and coming apart. The route was losing its clarity. A watercourse that had once flowed along a man-made culvert had broken through its false banks years before and flooded, every time it rained, onto the road, tearing out the surfacing and, with the undramatic patience of water, shifting blocks of curbstone and rubble scree. It became easier to walk along the berms and margins than to scramble through the detritus. This was no longer a route for vehicles or even for horses. If there’d been no rustlers and the Boses had made it to this place intact, they would have had to find another route or abandon their carriage and their animals.

Margaret was glad to leave the highway at last when what was left of it turned to the right in a great arc, heading for the south. She had found no traces of the band of rustlers since midday. No fresh horse dung, no scuffs consistent with a line of men or a string of mules, no more bodies sticky with blood. So she did not feel that she had abandoned her duties toward Franklin when she finally led the Boses away from the old straight road and through the debris fields surrounding it, with rainclouds at their backs, and onto a narrower, less exposed pathway that was more truly pointing to the east but that was also virtually unused and therefore likely to be safe.

Before long they found the ideal place to spend the night, replenish their drinking bags, and revive their spirits: a disused cow barn backing onto a creek in which minnows and darters evidenced how sweet and safe the water was. Even better, the cow barn still had half a roof, so not only could they be certain of a rain-protected stay and a warmer one than on the previous night, sheltered from both the wind and the sky, but also they were blessed with kindling wood, the splintered, hollowed-out remains of roof beams that were featherlight and dry and would produce hardly any telltale smoke.

Soon they had a decent fire as their companion and were making the best of their pooled food. Bella refused most of her meal again. The salt fish was too strong and the oatmeal was too weighty for her stomach. She was distressed, as well, and colorless. Her olive skin seemed metallic.

Margaret was happy to share her blanket and the tarp with the child, though surprised that the Boses seemed to have abandoned their health precautions so thoroughly in the space of just a day. They had, indeed, said, “Let little Bella spend the night with you. She’s better off with you. You’re young.” But their thorough change of heart was soon explained. They were whispering again at their end of the cow barn, and Melody was sounding oddly sweet and childish for a change. They did not seem able to settle and were constantly arranging and rearranging their bedding. Margaret might have called out to them to keep quiet, that there was a testing day of walking ahead of them, and that she for one would welcome a good night’s sleep. But when she heard the rasping notes in Andrew’s throat, she knew that the Boses were making love. She’d heard the sound of it before, from her father, and from her younger sister’s husband, Glendon Fields. She’d heard it from her neighbors’ windows at all times of the day, the selfsame loss of breath and pigsty squeals, high-pitched and not quite male, the shushing sounds, attempts at secrecy, the creaking timbers of the bed, and sometimes panting from the woman, too. But she’d never seen anybody making love, and so her sense of it was constructed only out of sounds, which seemed both distressed and joyful at one time. It was a mystery that, because Franklin had been taken, she felt would never be solved for her. She’d live a maid, not touched by anyone, a listener to lovers.

Margaret hadn’t thought the Boses could be lovers. Lovers as well as partners. Lovers as well as grandparents. It wasn’t just their age and frailty or (when it suited them) their stiff good manners that made their passion so unlikely, it was also the current shape of their life. Their son was missing, all their wealth had been taken from them, their lives were draped with fear, anxiety, and grief, their bodies were exhausted by the walk, they had not truly eaten well for a month – yet still they had the will to kiss.

Margaret lay as still as she could. Soon the breathing at the far end of the barn was back to normal. Then the snoring started, and the rain, beating on the roof slates noisily. Little Bella began to stretch her legs and cry, invasively. She wanted to crawl and try to seize anything that caught her eye in that dim light. The supper was making her restless, so Margaret put her little finger in the girl’s mouth and let her suck on it, and then she let her snuggle to her breast. The cow barn settled to the night. Soon everyone was sleeping. Another day, then, passing without incident.

First they noticed that pockets of land around the pathway were cultivated and that within easy reach were clusters of unabandoned wooden huts, some with plumes of smoke and hostile dogs, others with washing lines, others with a tethered cow or two and goats. The farms around the homes were dying back for winter, but still the practiced eye could recognize where rows of beans and corn had been, and see that apples had been in such abundance that year that the ground was squelchy with windfalls. This was almost the America that they had all been born in. It was reassuring finally to discover such normality, but it was unnerving also, especially for the Boses. If everything was normal here, then who was to say that their flight from their fine shuttered house and those lucrative riverside employments that had provided wealth and respect had not been precipitate? Had Acton been the price they’d paid for haste?

Margaret tied her scarf tightly around her head and under her chin, left the adult Boses in charge of their bags and possessions, and went, with Bella sitting on her hip, to find out what she could about the way ahead and beg some baby food. She avoided the first two huts. Their guard dogs, both on long leashes, were a warning to stay away. But at the third building, a single-story cabin with a slate roof similar to the one that had kept them dry the previous evening, no dog was in evidence. There was, though, a washing line with children’s clothes on it and the bulky figure of a woman sitting on the stoop and working on a reed basket. Most important, they had a yard of nanny goats with young. There would be milk to spare.

Margaret was not noticed until she lifted the rope tie on the garden gate and began to walk slowly down the ash-and-clinker path toward the house. Then she coughed and waited. When the woman looked up, startled, it was clear that she was younger than she appeared, a girl, probably less than twenty years old. That made Margaret the elder, so instead of going forward to introduce herself, she stayed where she was, as was the custom. To do otherwise would be to insult each other’s dignity. If you are alone and they are in company, then you salute them; if you are sitting and they are standing, they greet you; if you are walking and they are riding, you acknowledge them, and certainly it always was the case that the young should defer to anybody older. So Margaret waited while the heavy girl put down her work, struggled to her feet, and came forward toward her visitor. She called out “Pa!” before addressing Margaret.

A man, her father, fat and tall and with a curly, close-fitting beard, came to the door, holding a stick. “What does she want?” he said.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Just ask her, then.”

“What do you want, he says.”

So this was hardly normality. For all their goats and windfalls, their garden gates and washing lines, these people were living with fear, a fear that extended even to a single woman with a child. If this had been a village in the America that Margaret and the Boses had been born into, she could have expected a smile, a little curtsy from the girl. Her father would have reached his door not with a stick but with the immediate offer of a bench to sit on and a cup to drink from. In small communities like this, if not in places such as Ferrytown, where there were too many people for these observances to survive, passing guests could expect a dozen offers of a bed for the night. Neighbors would have competed “for the honor” of having her dent in their mattress. Who could be more generous? Who could promise most?

Margaret could remember being told by Grandpa that when he’d been young – and that was going back a bit! What, fifty years? – he’d gotten lost high in the hills during a blinding storm. But he’d been taken in by a family of fur trappers and allocated their only bed. They had no meat to give him for his supper, and so the father of the family had walked across the valley in the rain to his nearest neighbor’s quarters and, finding him asleep, had stolen a hen and brought it back to pluck and roast for Grandpa. When the neighbor showed up early next morning to protest about the theft, the trapper simply said, “We had a guest. He had to eat. We thank you for your hen. I’ve got a herd of sheep, still out in the pasture half a day from here. You’ll know which ones. My sign is three green bars. Next time you pass them, take two, take three, whatever you like. It makes no difference. We had to feed our guest.” That used to be America.

But all Margaret was getting from this small, fat family was hostility. Showing them the baby made no difference. Her offers to undertake any work that needed doing were ignored. Her smiles and her determined cheerfulness were wasted. And every time she made to take a step closer to the girl, her father lifted his stick and growled.