Mr Mac and Me (22 page)

That night there’s a spring tide and the water rushes in over the shingle, up the dunes and on to the marshes where it makes a lake knee-deep. At first light I walk down to its shore to see what I can find. I inspect the horizon, flat and still and no sign of an invader. I kick off my shoes, and roll my trousers high. Mud and silt squelch underfoot, and there’s sand too, between my toes. There are stones and tiny shells, and I wish I’d woken in the night to see the waves tumbling up over the beach, rolling the sea bed with it. I peer into the water, but it’s murky, brown as a canal, and I can’t see anything, so I take a step. And that’s when I feel it – a fish – in the mud below my feet. I bend down fast, it’s slithered away, but when I take another step I graze my toes against it. I wade out to the bank and find a stick. It has one sharp end that I make sharper, and once I’m in the middle of the flood, I slam it down. Nothing. I step again, nothing, and then I come across a shoal of flounders, their bodies flat and shadowy as cloud. I crouch low and raise my spear. And I’ve caught one, pinned it by the neck. And thinking suddenly of Betty, and how I might tell her of my triumph, I drop it into my sack.

We have fish stew for tea that night. While Mother is preparing it she makes me walk along to Mrs Horrod just as it is getting dark. I glance across at Millside as I pass. There are men from the Duke of Westminster’s unit stationed there now, and an armoured car parked in the yard. They’ll have scared the tall ghost woman right back inside the mill, with their marching and their drills, and taking courage I edge into the middle of the road, and look up at the top window, right at the place that I once saw her peering in through the glass. Nothing there, I almost laugh, remembering how I was a boy then, holding tight on to my mother’s hand, but even so I feel the air around me shift. What is that? I spin around, and before I can stop myself, I’m shivering hard enough to shake my teeth. ‘Hello?’ There’s a shuffle on the verge, and I almost scream as a figure looms out from the hedge.

‘Good evening.’ It is Mac.

He has his cloak on and his hat, and if it wasn’t for the white puff of his pipe, I’d still not see him. ‘It’s a good bit milder tonight,’ he says.

‘Yes.’ And to steady myself I tell him how I caught half a dozen flounder and I’ll bring him some if he and Mrs Mackintosh would like.

‘Thank you,’ he nods. ‘Will you come by tomorrow? I’m not sure when I’ll be through with my walk.’ He turns down Palmers Lane, and I watch him go, his hat casting a black shadow in the darkness around.

I walk on to Mrs Horrod’s. I hadn’t known it but I’m to collect herbs for Ann.

‘Wait here now, will you,’ Mrs Horrod takes the fish, and so I stand by the fire where her husband sits.

‘Full moon last night,’ I say to him, and his mouth twitches just once so I know he’s still alive.

Mrs Horrod’s herbs smell bitter, even through the muslin of the bag. ‘Tansy, parsley, penny royal and angelica,’ she mutters as she ties it tight. ‘Tell your ma to boil them up, strain them, boil them, and then strain them again. Then when they are cool, they can be swallowed. On an empty stomach, mind.’

‘Boil, strain, boil, strain,’ I murmur to myself, and I thank her and I run back down the street.

The next day the water is lower but I wade in anyway, spreading my toes wide. Mud, silt, stalks, sand. I walk slowly, lifting my feet high to avoid a splash, out across the marsh, my stick resharpened. I imagine the flounders, burrowing into mud, their boot-noses snuffling, their fins hovering like wings. I raise my stick high, and close up my heart. I’m determined to bring fresh fish to Mac. I want him to see the camouflage of their bodies, feel the flip of their tails in his hand. I go more slowly, the sky above me sodden, the land turned to sea. And there it is. A shiver in the mud, and I bring down my stick so fast I nearly spear my toe.

Mac is working on a bright purple grape hyacinth. He has it laid out on a sheet of paper and is examining its tiny solid head. ‘No,’ he mutters to himself, ‘no.’

I’ve let myself in, but now I’m not sure whether to disturb him.

‘Hello.’ He looks up and catches me at the door, and he tells me that never has he spent a morning with a flower and known less about it when he was through. ‘Look,’ he lays it out. And together we peer at the dense purple blocks of it, solid as wax above its stalk of blazing green.

I reach into my bag and draw out a fish. It’s the smallest one I’ve caught. Just long enough to cover my hand.

‘Well,’ he smiles, and he leans down and inspects its sandy coat, the dark dots that might be pebbles, the menace of its lower jaw.

‘Will you paint it?’ I ask, and he looks back at his hyacinth. ‘Eat it, I think,’ he says. And he takes the bag into the kitchen where he leaves it in a tray for Mrs Mollett.

I sit with Mac through the afternoon, hands scrubbed, insides warmed with tea. It’s not long before he’s battling with his flower again, and with Mrs Mac gone over to Southwold I tiptoe to the desk and bring the blue art-lovers’ book over to the fire.

Speise Zimmer
,
Musik Zimmer
, I watch for a break in Mac’s drawing and I ask him, ‘What does it mean, this word,
z-i-m-m-e-r
?’

‘
Zimmer
’, he says, ‘is room.’

‘
Zimmer
,’ I murmur. And there it is, I’ve said it. If Mac is the enemy then I’m the enemy too.

‘
Freundes?
’ I ask him later. And he tells me. ‘Friends.’

I could skip to think that it’s that easy. ‘If you could teach me a word a day, then one day I’ll have a whole other language, and when I go off on my travels . . .’

‘Yes,’ he nods. ‘In about two hundred years you’ll be fluent.’ And when Mrs Mac comes in, he tells her, ‘This boy here wants to learn German.’

‘Really?’ she checks to see that we’re alone. ‘Why is that, Tom?’

I shrug. ‘Or Gaelic?’ And then I blush, because even as I say it I’m thinking of Betty. Betty, Betty, Betty. Since the start of spring her name has filled my head, and last night while Ann slept, I wedged the candle near and drew her a flounder.
Dear Betty
, I wrote below it.
I hope the winter’s easing up. We’re managing all right here. Although we have Zeppelins flying over now. They’re on their way to London and don’t bother with us. You’d like these little fish I caught, although they’re not as simple as herring to gut. Carnivores they are. Do you have them in your part of the world? They stick close to the sea bed
. I wondered then how Mac would fill a page, and as I did, I chewed my pencil until the wood was pulp.
Let me know. There’s nothing more I’d like than to hear some news of you
. And after another long chew, I signed,
Your Tom
.

Your Tom
, I doodled, knowing that I’d never send it.
My Betty. My Betty Your Tom. MBYT
. And I had it. The secret of Mac’s message. My Margaret. Your . . . what was it that Mrs Mackintosh called him? Toshie. MMYT.

The day is nearly done when I get home. The hens are out, chort­ling by their coop as if they’d prefer to be inside, so I stamp them into a line and clap my hands until every last one of them has run up the ramp. ‘Ma?’ I call, as I push through the back door, but the stove is out and there’s no warm smell of food.

‘Ma?’ I call again and Father walks through, unsteady, from the bar. I glance at the clock on the mantel and see it’s more than an hour before opening. He catches me looking and his face darkens, but the hand he lifts drops to his side. ‘It’s not any of your business’, he turns away, ‘how I run this inn.’ And I see it across his shoulders. Why waste the effort it would take to raise my hand to you?

I climb the ladder. I’m thinking I might count my coins. Last time I counted there was a pound, five shillings and sixpence. There’s no reason to think there might be any more today but the counting is soothing, and it’s possible I may have got it wrong. But as soon as my head comes through the trapdoor I’m distracted by the smell. The bitter smell of Mrs Horrod’s herbs. ‘Keep calm now,’ Mother is kneeling on the floor of her room, and Ann is hanging off the bed, retching out a filthy stream of brown.

‘Oh Lord,’ Ann cries when she has breath, ‘help me,’ and she clutches her stomach and curls into a ball. Mother looks up and sees me. ‘Shhh,’ she puts a finger to her lips. And slowly, calmly, she tells me to go down and light the stove and put a pan of water on for boiling. I nod, but I don’t move. There’s a sweat standing out from Ann’s face, and her skin looks thick and greenish.

‘Quick,’ Mother hisses, as Ann retches again. And I clatter down the ladder and throw wood into the stove. There’s half a pan of water already standing, but just in case I run out into the yard and throw the bucket down the well. It’s darker now and silent, and the night is sharp with cold. The bucket hits the water and is sucked under, and I’m heaving it up when the back door opens. ‘Where’s your mother?’ Father’s silhouette sways, and I’m so frightened by the light spilling out from the kitchen that I shout at him to get back inside. A fury sweeps over his face and I imagine he might take me and hurl me down the well, but something stops him. He staggers backwards and slams shut the door.

It’s blacker now than it ever was, and every minute that I stand there new stars crack open the sky. An animal screams. A fox I think it is. And I imagine the hens tucked up inside their hutch, their feathers swelling, their eyes swivelling with fear.

‘A watched pot never boils.’ I’ve heard Mother say it but I’ve never waited so long to find that it is true. I go back up the ladder. ‘How is she?’ I ask. Ann is lying on the bed, her face the colour of old candle. ‘Please,’ she murmurs, ‘God forgive me.’ Her lips tremble in prayer.

Mother looks at me, and I see that she is scared. I’ve never seen her scared before. Not of Father, not of travellers brawling in the bar, not even of the man who came across one year from Southwold Circus with a bear on a rope.

‘Is the water hot?’ she asks, and I tell her it’s close to being boiled but not there yet. ‘Bring it,’ she says, and as I turn away I see her lift Ann’s cover and adjust the bloody cloth that’s clamped between her legs.

The water, away from my scrutinising, is grumbling in the pan. I roll down my sleeves and lift the handles, and step by heavy step I heave it up. I want to wait there, see how this water will be the thing to save my sister. But Mother wishes me away, and with nowhere else to go I open the door into the best room. It’s cold and clean in here. And I can hear the talk of men in the bar below. Father must have opened up. Or have they been here all the afternoon? I listen to Father turning over his old theory that the guns in France and Belgium are drawing down the bad weather, flooding the land, freezing it, keeping winter with us when spring should have settled in.

‘But it won’t be long now . . .’ Is that Fred Tilson? ‘. . . with Germany starved into submission.’

And Father cursing. ‘So God damn it, why didn’t they have the blockade before?’

‘They did, they did have it. But America was still to agree. There’s a lot of money to be made from a war.’

‘Not so that I’ve noticed.’

‘Someone’s making it. Right now.’ Gory is there too. ‘Big business. That’s why they’ll keep it going.’

‘No.’

There’s no one wants that.’

The voices overlap each other so I can’t make out the words. I take off my boots. I’d lie on the bed but my feet are black from the rot of the marsh and so I stand at the window, and with no light behind me I look out through the curtain. At first it’s as if there’s nothing there, but the longer I stand, the more clearly I can see the shape of the village, the row of houses opposite. Victoria Cottage, Holly Cottage, Thorncroft. I can see down to the end of the street where the road breaks up into a lane, and the sky above it, lit up by the sea, wide open and white. The other way is dark. Large shadowy buildings, and beyond it the arms of the mill, and before I can stop myself an image of Mr Allard’s wind-powered wheel stabs me in the gut. How is he getting along? I wonder, telling his stories to those sails of cloth, and I imagine him looking hopefully towards it and asking, ‘You want to hear what happened next?’

I lie down on the floor at the end of the bed. I fancy I can feel the glow from the fire below, warming the boards. And I listen to my father’s voice telling the men about his days as a pork butcher and the business he was building up. I roll my eyes. And then I remember how he can sniff out disagreement even through a wall, and I turn on to my back and I listen instead to the rats tumbling and thudding in the roof.

When I wake it’s dawn and I hear wailing. I stand too fast, forgetting where I am, and crash against a chair. I open the door, and rub my eyes in time to stop myself falling down the shaft.

‘Ma?’ There’s no one in her room, and so I climb down the ladder. The snug bar is empty save for a few sour glasses striped with beer, and the main bar too. I open the front door and look out. Nothing but last night’s moon, sinking low towards the sea. And then I hear it, the low, pained moaning, and my blood stills. It’s Father. I’ve never heard him so much as sniff, but I know his crying all the same, and it’s drifting through the outshot window of our room. I climb back up the ladder and push through the low door. Father is sitting by the bed, his face sodden with tears.