Heroes and Villains (10 page)

‘Fear,’ remarked Jewel suddenly, as if proposing a topic for discussion.

‘The ruling passion,’ responded Donally courteously. ‘I can provoke an ecstasy of dread by raising my little finger but then, I’ve worked hard and bided my time.’

The pork fat crackled deliciously. Donally raised and let fall one of Jewel’s heavy black plaits.

‘Go on, tell her about religion being a social necessity,’ said Jewel.

‘Not yet,’ said Donally. ‘She looks tired.’

‘Had a bad day?’ inquired Jewel with some irony.

‘I haven’t decided, yet.’

‘That’s a clever answer,’ applauded Donally.

‘I told you she was clever.’

‘You’re a gift from the unknown, young lady,’ said Dr Donally, smiling sufficiently to reveal his curiously uncompromising teeth. ‘You provide these unfortunate people with a focus for the fear and resentment they feel against their arbitrary destiny.’

He coughed, as in a lecture theatre.

‘Here, Donally,’ said Jewel. ‘They killed her father, back where she lived. They cut him up with an axe.’

He turned his head towards his tutor with a faint chink of jewellery and still no expression on his face; Donally put out his long, white, tender hand again and stroked Jewel’s cheek.

‘What are you thinking of, now?’

‘Regicide,’ the other answered.

‘Don’t let’s exaggerate,’ chided Donally mildly. To Marianne, he said: ‘Look at him, he’s the Duke of Little Egypt, he’s the king of a rainy country, he’s inherited the earth.’

He went off into peals of mirth and, reluctantly, Jewel laughed also. Both their faces grew so twisted and ugly with incomprehensible laughter that Marianne, disquieted, decided then and there she had no reason or desire to stay any longer in this disgusting and dangerous place.

Next morning, she found that one of the sick babies was roasting with a terrific fever while the other was limp and white. Three other babies were showing the same initial symptoms of vomiting and looseness of the bowels.

‘It’s the bad water,’ said Mrs Green authoritatively. ‘You should get water from the spring, not from the river.’

‘The Doctor says –’ said the pregnant woman. She did not tell them what Donally said but when she looked at Marianne she quivered with fear. Marianne supposed the woman believed she had brought the sickness with her.

‘It’s time to go,’ thought Marianne. ‘Now. Immediately!’

For however dangerous the open country might be, she would be safer there than among these strangers; whatever romantic attraction the idea of the Barbarians might have held for her as she sat by herself in the white tower, when her father was alive, had entirely evaporated. She was full of pity for them but, more than anything, she wanted to escape, as if somewhere there was still the idea of a home. So she ran away into the wood, not much caring if the wild beasts ate her; but Jewel found her, raped her and brought her back with him.

Yet she had taken a great deal of care to go secretly. She took her clothes, some blankets and some food. Mrs Green was far too busy with the sick babies to keep guard over her and, when she asked if she could go and rest by herself the next afternoon, the old woman nodded abstractedly and Marianne slipped unnoticed from the house by the back door.

It was a bright day of sunshine and soft air. The golden weeds in the courtyard scattered pollen on the green skin of the boy on the chain, who lay asleep on the sun-warmed stones, his hair floating out in a muddy puddle. There were marks of a recent beating on his body. If she had had
a knife, she would have tried to set him free but she had no knife. It was the middle of the day and nobody saw her go; the children were down by the river and the women, also, for they took advantage of the change in the weather to do their washing, cleaning the clothes by beating them against stones in the running water. She went up into the woods at the back of the house; she climbed the hillside and looked behind her. She saw the crumbling mansion, the dung heap, some horses grazing and the busy river but the whole valley wore to her the aspect of a vast midden. She hurried to put the crest of the hill between herself and the Barbarians.

The farther she went, the happier she grew. The beautiful sun glowed through the leaves which were just beginning, here and there, to turn to gold. A great part of the summer had passed outside time and known space, in illness, isolation and foul air, but now she was by herself in the sweet, curling grass, and the forest shone with berries. Fungus like apricots or splashes of crimson paint or solid frills of grey decorated trunks of trees and fallen boughs. Yellow gorse grew everywhere. If this was where the wild beasts were, it was so beautiful she could not believe they would hurt her. She tried to remember the whereabouts of the road on which she first saw the travellers but she had a poor sense of direction and would have to wander till she found it by chance, watching to spy a thinning among the trees to show her it was near.

There were no paths except those the rabbits made and the undergrowth set traps of briars, nettles and evil plants. When she wanted to rest, she climbed into a beech tree because she would be better hidden above the ground, in case the Barbarians came by. The beech tree already had leaves of solid brass. It stood at the edge of a small, open space. Secure upon a sturdy limb, she closed her eyes.

She wished she could tell her father about the true nature of the Barbarians and discuss with him the sociology of the tribe. And its psychology, also, especially that of the ragged king of nowhere and his adviser who perversely reminded her of her father, though it was only a question of tone of voice; but her father was dead. When she opened her eyes to let the tears out, she saw Jewel standing inexorably beneath a tree, as though she had dreamed him into being by thinking of him.

He leaned against the trunk of an oak on the other side of the clearing, chewing upon a stem of grass and paring his nails with a knife.
He had a rag tied round his head to keep hair and sweat out of his eyes. He had propped his long rifle against the trunk beside him, prepared for a long siege, if necessary. They regarded one another for some time.

‘You’ve followed me from the camp,’ she said at last.

‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘I saw you only a little way back. You’ve come quite a long way. I was surprised. And in a straight line, at that.’

She looked nervously round for his brothers but he came by himself. There was nowhere to go away from him, she could climb no farther up the tree. So she stayed where she was, too angry to speak.

‘Isn’t it a nice day?’ said Jewel at last. ‘After all the rain we’ve been having.’

He said these words as if he had learned them from a phrase book and grinned, a grimace of the face akin to a snarl. She continued to say nothing. She tore off some beech mast and pulled it to pieces.

‘Of course,’ he added unexpectedly, ‘it smells worse indoors on a nice day.’

Marianne gave up her silence in order to abuse him.

‘Nourished in the sty,’ she said unpleasantly, ‘I’d never have thought you’d make such fine distinctions.’

He gave her another white, unfriendly grin while he digested what she had said.

‘I wasn’t nourished in no sty,’ he countered eventually. ‘I used to sleep with the horses because I liked their faces better.’

He continued to pare his nails.

‘Furthermore,’ he added, ‘horses are herbivorous.’

He used words with the touching pedantry of the ill-educated; high on her branch, she felt immensely superior. She glowered.

‘Are you coming down?’ he asked her with detached interest.

‘Not until you go away.’

‘What, making another bid for freedom?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Where will you escape, though? Where will you go in this unknown desert, only wild beasts live here but for Out People, wilder than beasts. And you’ve got nothing to protect yourself with and no food, either.’

‘I am safer here than in your house. I shall find the road, the road leads somewhere. To a village.’

‘What, one of yours? Back to your own people, then?’

‘Another village, not the one I left.’

‘They are all much of a muchness, you know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been to very many.’

‘Only as a visitor,’ she said. ‘You’d always have been just passing through.’

He shrugged and put away his knife.

‘Come off your bough and teach me your vocabulary,’ he invited. ‘Sooner or later, we might be able to converse.’

‘We wouldn’t have much in common,’ she pointed out.

His shadow sprang out as he approached the tree, accompanied by the faintest jingling of charms and amulets. He was inevitable, like the weather, and even more ambivalent for his face was not constructed to support a smile and she could not tell what he was thinking or if he were thinking at all, even.

‘We’d have to establish common ground in order to communicate as equals, of course,’ he said. She heard his tutor’s high, thin voice behind his uncouth one and found, to her fury, she was crying again. She exploded with tears and rage and flung herself off the tree on top of him. She took him by surprise; they fell down together in the undergrowth and struggled for a while. He gasped and coughed horribly but he was a good deal stronger than her and soon she knew she would have to return to the camp with him by force. But this did not make her any the less angry to find herself trapped beneath him with her arms pinned down to the ground behind her head.

‘I think I’m the only rational woman left in the whole world,’ she said, spitting the words into his face; she could have said nothing to offend him more. They had fallen beneath the surface of the long grass. He pressed her down into the rich, moist earth itself and began to unfasten her clothes.

‘You’re nothing but a murderer,’ she said, determined to maintain her superior status at all costs.

‘You’ll find me the gentlest of assassins,’ he replied with too much irony for she did not find him gentle at all.

Feeling between her legs to ascertain the entrance, he thrust his
fingers into the wet hole so roughly she knew what the pain would be like; it was scalding, she felt split to the core but she did not make a single sound for her only strength was her impassivity and she never closed her cold eyes, although the green sun made out the substance of his face to be polished metal and she recalled the murder she had witnessed, how the savage boy stuck his knife into her brother’s throat and the blood gushed out. Because she was difficult to penetrate, he spilled several hot mouthfuls of obscenities over her. Taken by force, the last shreds of interior flesh gave; he intended a violation and effected one; a tower collapsed upon her. Afterwards, there was a good deal of blood. He stared at it with something like wonder and dipped his fingers in it. She stared at him relentlessly; if he had kissed her, she would have bitten out his tongue. However, he recovered his abominable self-possession almost immediately. She began to struggle again but he held her down with one hand, half pulled off his filthy leather jacket and ripped off the sleeve of his shirt, as he had done before when he had treated her snakebite. This repetition of action would have been comic had she been in the mood to appreciate it. He held the rag between her thighs to sop up the bleeding, a bizarre piece of courtesy.

‘It’s a necessary wound,’ he assured her. ‘It won’t last long.’

‘It was the very worst thing that happened to me since I came away with you,’ she said. ‘It hurt far worse than the snakebite, because it was intentional. Why did you do it to me?’

He appeared to consider this question seriously.

‘There’s the matter of our traditional hatred. And, besides, I’m very frightened of you.’

‘I have the advantage of you there,’ said Marianne, pushing him away and endeavouring to cover herself.

‘Don’t be too sure,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got to marry you, haven’t I? That’s why I’ve got to take you back.’

When he saw the expression of horror which crossed her face, he laughed until silenced by a brief spasm of coughing.

‘What’s that?’ she exclaimed.

‘Donally says,’ he told her when he could speak. ‘Swallow you up and incorporate you, see. Dr Donally says. Social psychology. I’ve nailed you on necessity, you poor bitch.’

When he left her to collect his rifle, she was too weak to attempt to run away. He also picked up her bundles, which had fallen from the tree with her, and offered her his hand. She ignored it and scrambled upright. She put him at a distance with an impersonal question.

‘You must use a good deal of ammunition, since you operate a hunting economy. And do you steal it all?’

‘Every bullet, yes.’

‘What will you do if they stop casting bullets?’

‘Bows and arrows, like the Out People,’ he said with disinterest for the Professors continued to cast bullets and he was prepared to cross the bridge of their ceasing to do so when he arrived at it. He mimed the gesture of drawing a long bow and watched a non-existent arrow fly off into the air. And his elegance and style in doing this were so remarkable and so archaic that, although Marianne disliked him intensely, she could not help but marvel.

‘You’d take to bows and arrows like a duck to water,’ she said. ‘You are a complete anachronism.’

Though, as soon as she had said it, she wondered if it were true, for he blended into the landscape around them while she herself did not.

‘What’s an anachronism,’ he said darkly. ‘Teach me what an anachronism is.’

‘A pun in time,’ she replied cunningly, so that he would not understand her.

‘Come off it,’ he growled; he was by no means an intellectual.

‘A thing that once had a place and a function but now has neither any more.’

‘Well, well,’ said Jewel, once more self-possessed. At that, they began to walk through the wood the way she had come. All the time, he repeated the word ‘anachronism’ over and over under his breath, as though learning it by heart, until she suspected mockery. He stopped to shoot a rabbit.

‘Look, do I really have to marry you?’ she asked despairingly. He dangled the dead rabbit by its hind legs; its iridescent ears trailed in the grass and blood dripped from its nose.