Heroes and Villains (25 page)

‘It’s best to leave a man and his wife alone at a time like this.’

The red paint was made from fat mixed with red clay, the white from fat mixed with chalk and the black from fat mixed with soot. He propped the mirror carefully against the wall and squatted before it, dipping his fingers in the various greases. A heavy slowness affected all his movements; he smeared black colour in clumsy patches round his eyes. She sat upright with her arms clasped around her knees, prim and grim with distaste.

‘Did you go out last night looking for something to kill you?’

He did not reply so she knew it was true.

‘What will you do if all this is real and you do, in fact, rescue Donally and you do, in fact, bring him home again?’

‘He’ll make me the Tiger Man,’ said Jewel. In his eyes she thought she saw the birth of ambition. She said:

‘If I took off your shirt, I think I would see that Adam had accepted the tattooed apple at last.’

‘When I was asleep this morning, I dreamed I had been digging my own grave and woke up to find a lion kissing me. I was embraced by a lion last night. The lion, the king of beasts.’

He smeared red on his cheekbones.

‘Am I beginning to look sufficiently terrifying?’

‘Not to me.’

‘Me neither. Perhaps I’ve lost the trick of it. I used to scare myself silly.’

‘You’ve thrown away all your talismans and amulets, what will you do without them?’

‘I shall find out soon how I manage, won’t I?’

She saw his painted face in the mirror; dream and reality merged with such violence she laughed hysterically and repeated over and over again: ‘You aren’t yourself this morning, you aren’t yourself this morning, you aren’t yourself this morning.’ When he finished painting, he drew his boots from a corner and put them on.

‘You’ve omitted to tire your head.’

‘Not today.’

‘You are no longer a perfect savage, you are not paying sufficient attention to detail. You aren’t in the least impressive; what will become of you?’

‘I can hardly see,’ he said. ‘Kiss me before I go.’

‘No!’ she cried out, disgusted. ‘Your mask has slipped too far for me to be able to respect you.’

‘Kiss me.’

‘Murderer,’ she said. He swung round and lunged at her, falling heavily across her and striking her face. This time she hit him savagely in return and sent him sprawling on the floor.

‘That’s the third time,’ she said with spiteful satisfaction. ‘I warned
you. Now you haven’t a hope. You knew I’d be the death of you.’

He took some moments to regain his breath and then went off, reeling and unsteady of foot. She thought: ‘I have destroyed him’ and felt a warm sense of self-satisfaction, for quite dissolved was the marvellous, defiant construction of textures and colours she first glimpsed marauding her tranquil village; it had vanished as if an illusion which could not sustain itself in the white beams of the lighthouse. She got up and threw the pots of paint he left behind him into the weedy cleft between the station platforms. She threw the mirror after them, in case she saw his face in it, his former extraordinary face left behind there, for it must remain somewhere; she watched the mirror break with pleasure. She felt heavy and her breasts hurt. She went into the large room, once a waiting-room, and found Mrs Green cutting up meat. The cleaver slid slickly through the crimson hunk and she was nauseated.

‘We can’t go to the fishers today,’ said Mrs Green. ‘We’ll stay here till Jewel comes back.’

‘Do you think he’ll come back?’ asked Marianne, surprised.

‘I dunno,’ said Mrs Green and tears silently descended her withered cheeks. ‘He should never have sent the Doctor away, he should have killed him outright and made a clean break. It was you that stopped him killing the Doctor, you wicked girl. It was you.’

Marianne drew herself upright and went out on to the platform. Jen sat there, dangling her feet over the edge.

‘Why is your face all bruised?’ she asked Marianne. ‘Has Jewel begun to beat you?’

‘Yes,’ said Marianne.

‘Then you’ll be glad to see the last of him.’

‘Yes,’ said Marianne but then she found she, too, was crying. She walked down to the end of the platform, where the paving stones ended, and stared out across the shrubland. She made out the small company in the distance, five or six figures moving very slowly, walking the horses. They were no more than a mile away.

It was difficult to run for the sandy soil bristled thorns, thistles and sharp, dry, hard plants that tore her feet and even the grass was coarse and cut her. The day was grey as ashes. She felt a sharp pain in her side and stopped to rest for a moment but ran on again as soon as she could,
for it was imperative. She ran until she could go no farther and they were still far ahead; she shouted as loudly as she could. Her voice cracked but carried clearly and Donally’s son turned, she saw the flare of his scarlet coat. He must have spoken to Jewel for Jewel also turned his head and then looked quickly away. Until he handed the reins of his horse to Johnny, descended and walked slowly towards her, she inhabited a totally durationless present, a moment of time sharply dividing past from future and utterly distinct from both; she felt the sweat trickle down her backbone and the texture of each blade of grass and grain of earth beneath her feet.

She was seized with the most extreme happiness as she saw she could pull him towards her on an invisible thread and he entirely without volition of his own. But when he was near enough for her to see the blurred colours on his face, she also saw he was making the gesture against the evil eye. Suddenly she recognized it.

‘They used to call that the sign of the Cross,’ she said. ‘It must be handed down among the Old Believers.’

‘Did you call me back just to give me this piece of useless information?’

When he was close enough to touch, she ran her finger down his cheek and looked at the paint embedded under her fingernail.

‘You see, I did not even love my brother much.’

He shied away, touched on the tenderest spot.

‘And when I dreamed of the event, afterwards, which I did very often, it was only you that I remembered. It troubled me.’

He raised his eyes and they looked at one another with marvelling suspicion, like heavily disguised members of a conspiracy who have never learned the signals which would reveal themselves to one another, for to neither did it seem possible, nor even desirable, that the evidence of their senses was correct and each capable of finding in the other some clue to survival in this inimical world. Besides, he was so much changed, so far fallen from that magnificence bred of sophistication and lack of opportunity, and so was she, now in rags and haggard with sleeplessness and her condition, dirty also.

There was no sun to be seen today. When he returned to the posse, the small company of men diminished among the bare bushes until
nothing more remained of them and she felt herself diminish with them, vanishing into the dangerous interior. When she could see him no more, she was surprised to find herself dislocated from and unfamiliar with her own body. Her hands and feet seemed strange extensions which hardly belonged to her; her eyes amorphous jellies. And she was not able to think.

She went off by herself down to the shore and searched for the place he had buried his rings but now the tide was high and lapped against the dunes themselves. The sea was brown in daylight, like an endless prairie, the colour of lions. She did not go as far as the lighthouse but watched the sea, which changed continually but always remained exactly the same. Far out, she once saw a fishing boat with a black sail but could make out no figures of men on board. She stayed out until it began to grow dark and could not think of anything, all day long. Mrs Green greeted her return inscrutably; she stirred a cauldron of stew with a huge metal spoon.

‘I’ll do that,’ said Marianne. The old woman, interpreting her, surrendered the spoon with some bitter laughter.

‘You’ll not make him come back by getting his meal ready, you know,’ she said. ‘They call that sympathetic magic. And if he comes back, he’ll bring the Doctor with him, more powerful than ever.’

She was already resigned, as was her custom. She was ready packed to make her own move, if necessary. Marianne went on stirring the stew. Jen and a crowd of children climbed on the station roof and looked out for the horsemen. Indoors, the cooking fire was reflected in a misty, cracked mirror on the wall; there also stood Marianne, unrecognizable to herself, leaning over the cauldron. Visions appeared in the steam, men, women and children with faces of horses and lions; the cicatrized man she had killed on the road made her a bow; her nurse’s almost forgotten face grinned triumphantly for, in some sense, her prophecy had been fulfilled; finally, she there re-encountered her father, who merged imperceptibly with the image of the blind lighthouse and then disappeared in the slowly rising bubbles. Jen came tugging at her sleeve.

‘I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them.’

‘Is he with them?’

‘It’s too dark to make out.’

The food was almost cooked. She stirred the spoon round and at last Donally’s son came in. The room was full of smoke, he materialized from it like an apparition in the pot. She thought he had painted himself red but it was blood with which he was covered from head to toe, naked to the waist for his coat was gone. He entered the room gingerly.

‘Where are the others?’ asked Mrs Green.

‘Seeing to the horses.’

Marianne leaned over the fire and pinched a piece of meat. It was done.

‘Is that Jewel’s blood?’ she asked the boy. He made a gulping, snivelling sound and whinnied in acquiescence. She fell down and the food spilled. The dogs fought over the meat swimming in gravy on the floor while Mrs Green helped her up and assisted her to the other room. She lay down again on the mattress where she would sleep alone in future.

‘Go away,’ she said but the boy stayed and lit a little lamp. Outside footsteps scurried about.

‘I’ll tell you what they’re going to do, they’re going to pack up and move on quick for the Soldiers are coming and Johnny says to leave you behind, for the Soldiers to get.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘They won’t get rid of me as easily as that. I shall stay here and frighten them so much they’ll do every single thing I say.’

‘What, will you be Queen?’

‘I’ll be the Tiger Lady and rule them with a rod of iron.’

After a pause, he went on: ‘They split up to spy around and Jewel and me went straight into a nest of Soldiers, it was in a little wood. So they shot him in the stomach but then the others came and scared the Soldiers away but as for Jewel, it was all over with him.’

‘How?’

‘Quickly but painfully. Johnny and the others heard the noise and came whooping down.’

‘Where was your father?’

‘Nowhere to be seen.’

‘So it was all fruitless or else it was a trap.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ Radiant with intuition, he said: ‘But I think they must have shot my father, I do think so.’

A little while later, he resumed: ‘Oh, it was a horrid mess and Johnny
and the others were like men possessed. There were only two Soldiers, Jewel and me were creeping through this little wood and it smelled of pine and the bullets came out of the forest and he fell down and the others came. I don’t know if it was an ambush, even, or if they were just out shooting for pigeons, in the first place.’

‘How do you come to be smothered in his blood?’

‘He was writhing around and biting his lips to stop hisself making a noise, in case there were any more of them, and I held him, to keep him still, I suppose. Nobody else had time, he was swearing and cursing and they were scrabbling away at a hole ready to throw him into, but I held him and I felt him go. I was holding him and then he wasn’t there any more, so I put pebbles on his eyelids to keep his eyes shut. And there was nothing no more.’

He seemed purely and strangely surprised at the swiftness and ease with which Jewel had departed from life; he looked at Marianne questioningly and giggled briefly. The ends of his hair had set in stiff spikes of dried blood.

‘No more,’ he said and relapsed into silence.