Some Kind of Fairy Tale (7 page)

In repose he looked a little younger than I at first took him. He needed a shave, I thought. But he was handsome and he had luscious lips, and they twitched slightly as I watched him; and I watched him maybe for half an hour.

He woke—or pretended to wake—with a start. He sat up too quickly. First he looked for his horse, which nodded from the shade beneath the tree. Then he spun round and looked at me, and after that all about him, as if he couldn’t make out how he’d ended up where he was. Then just as suddenly he relaxed.

He lay down again, but this time propping up his head with a hand and smiling at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You must think me awfully rude. I don’t know what took me off there.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I just felt the sleep come over me. And I couldn’t do anything. It’s like this is an enchanted place.”

“Oh, it is,” I said. “It is enchanted.”

He looked a little worried, though I still think he was pretending. “Really? Is it?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. I do like it when you can get the better of a man. “I know this place.”

“I think you do,” he said. “I think you do.”

His horse moved away. “Aren’t you worried?” I said.

“The horse? No, she won’t go far from me. She’s my best friend in the world.”

“Your best friend is a horse? That must be because you don’t get along with people.”

He laughed, and when he laughed the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkled, and I thought he was older, after all. “You’re a girl with a bit o’ trunk, aren’t you? You’re right. I don’t get along famously with others. I’d rather my own company, you know?”

“I’m the same,” I said.

Now he squinted at me. “If I come and sit beside you, you won’t jump on me, will you?”

He had this way with him that made me laugh. “No, I won’t jump on you.”

He crawled through the bluebells on his hands and knees and then sat next to me, his back against the mossy rock. His bottom was maybe three or four inches away from mine. I could smell him. He had an odor; fresh, but manly. He folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the blue sky. The birds were twittering in the trees. I know what you’re thinking, that I was risking it, there in the woods and all. But I felt quite safe with him.

He had such a gentle air.

B
ack at The Old Forge while Peter walked with Tara in the Outwoods, Zoe paced the living room with her mobile phone surgically attached to her ear. She was talking to her boyfriend, Michael, a fifteen-year-old white rapper with heartbreaking acne, a taste for designer labels, and a history of self-harm. Amber tried to eavesdrop on her sister while watching a DVD her mother had already described as unsuitable while Josie had stolen a bottle of Zoe’s nail polish and was painting both her toes and the carpet. Genevieve was trying and failing to tidy around them when she heard the chimes of the doorbell.

She wondered who the hell was calling on New Year’s Day. “Can someone get that?” she shouted, already on her way to answer the door, since she knew none of the children would.

On her way through the hall she collected a pair of sneakers, a pullover, a T-shirt, a child’s pair of pajamas, and a wet stick one of the dogs had brought in from the garden. She had these things bundled in her arms when she opened the door. Hovering on the threshold was a tall, thin man with severely cropped hair
and round wire-frame spectacles. He had a slight stoop. “Is Peter in?” His voice was very deep.

“He’s gone for a walk up at the Outwoods.”

“I’m Richie.”

“Yes, you are, aren’t you? You coming in?”

She dropped the shoes in a tea chest by the door and led him through to the kitchen. There she dumped the clothes on the counter. She told Richie to have a seat at the table, opened the back door and slung the stick outside, closing the door quickly before one of the attentive dogs could dash out and bring it back in again. Then she pushed a curl out of her eye before filling the electric kettle.

She folded her arms, leaning a hip against the roll of the kitchen counter as she waited by the kettle for it to boil. With her eyes fixed on him, Richie sat down and shuffled uncomfortably under her gaze.

“It’s all a bit strange,” she said at last. “Tara turns up after twenty years—”

“Nearly twenty-one,” Richie suggested.

“And now here you are.”

A slap hit the wall from the outside. Richie flinched. “Hell was that?”

“It’s our feral son, Jack. Peter bought him an air rifle against my wishes, and he’s mounting a twenty-four-hour rat patrol. He doesn’t live indoors anymore.”

“When me and Pete was kids we spent hours lying on the garage roof, waiting to shoot rats.”

“Some things don’t change.”

“A lot of things do.”

“Tea all right? I have got fresh coffee somewhere but I’d have to dig for it.”

“Tea is good.”

Richie watched her as she flicked teabags into a pair of chipped mugs and poured boiling water from the kettle. When she was done making the tea she placed the mugs on the table and sat across from him. She offered a hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you, Richie.”

He shook hands without a word.

“You’re a luthier, aren’t you?”

“Fancy word for stringing guitars.”

“Nice work, though.”

“Was. Don’t anymore.”

Genevieve noticed the tremble in his hands as he raised the cup to his lips. “Why not?”

“Ain’t got the patience no more.”

“He’ll be sorry he’s missed you. Had you said you were coming?”

“No. Just spur-o’-the-moment thing. Thought I’d drop round. Always been curious, like. Knew this place from when we were kids. Knew the old farrier. Fairy-tale figure; old white-haired boy with great big mutton-chop sideburns. Saw you from a distance once or twice. Knew he had a lovely family and all that. Lovely wife, lovely kids, all that. Felt pleased for him.”

“It’s just ridiculous that you haven’t spoken in all this time. He said you were best of friends when you were kids.”

“Best mates we were. Best mates.”

“Well, I don’t understand it.”

“You weren’t there when it happened.”

“I don’t even know what happened exactly. Pete doesn’t talk about it.”

The door opened and Zoe came in, still talking on her phone. She seemed not to notice Richie. She pressed the mouthpiece into her collarbone. “Can I go out tonight?”

“Where to?” said Genevieve.

She lifted the phone again. “Where is it?” She listened and said, “The White Horse.”

“Drug den, it is,” Richie said.

Zoe flickered a glance at Richie and then looked back at Genevieve.

“You’ll have to ask your dad.”

“Should be all right,” Zoe said into the phone and went out of the kitchen.

“Right scruffy hole, The White Horse,” Richie said. “Used to play gigs there. Wipe your feet as you come out type of place.”

“I’ll see what her dad says.”

“Wouldn’t let my daughter go there.”

“Have you got a daughter?”

Richie sighed. “I have got one. But I’m not allowed to see her.”

“What happened?”

“Long story.”

“You know what, Richie?” Genevieve said. “Round here, everyone’s story is long, but no one’s telling it.”

He snorted and reached for his pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. Then he had second thoughts and left them where they were. “I had a daughter with the wrong woman, let’s just say. She were a witch, there’s no other word for it. Now she won’t let me see my daughter, and it’s a wound every day I don’t see her.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Nearly nine.”

“That’s hard for you.”

“Her life has been stolen away from me.”

Richie told Genevieve some of the details of the case. How he hadn’t seen his daughter since she was five years old. He talked about his experiences with the courts and how they were stacked in favor of mothers. He was bitter. But he found himself talking at length to Genevieve, as many had before. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he said more than once.

Then Amber came in and said, “Tell Josie!”

“Tell Josie what?” said Genevieve.

“She’s being a pain!”

Genevieve went to sort out the uproar and discovered the nail polish spilled across the carpet, and Richie took advantage of her absence to go outside and spark up a cigarette. He remembered the lad on the workshop roof, so he took out his white hankie and waved it. “Don’t shoot! For chrissakes.”

Richie stood in the yard, puffing on his cigarette and looking up at Jack. “Howdoo,” he said.

Jack nodded and then looked back down the sights of his air rifle.

“They ain’t gonna come and play while I’m standing here, are they?” Richie said. “Who are you, then?”

“Jack.”

“What caliber is it?”

“One-point-seven-seven.”

“You wanna ask your dad to get you a two-two. That’ll punch a rat’s brains out.”

“Are you Richie?”

“Indeed.”

“Thought so.”

“Your dad mentioned me, has he?”

“Yeh. Sometimes.”

Richie smoked his cigarette while Jack lay stretched on the roof, peering down the sights of his air rifle as if the enemy might appear at any moment.

Richie finished his ciggie and went back inside. Genevieve hadn’t reappeared, so he found his own way into the living room, where she and Zoe were on their hands and knees trying to scrape nail polish out of the carpet while Josie wailed and Amber, arms folded, sulked on the sofa. His eyes fell upon a guitar in the corner of the room.

“Who plays that?” he asked, above Josie’s din.

“Zoe is learning,” Genevieve said.

Richie picked up the guitar, weighed it in his hands, and strummed it. He presented it to Zoe. “Give it a go then, my love.”

Zoe looked at Genevieve. “I can only play three chords,” she said, and not to Richie but to her mother.

“Then play three chords,” he said. “Come on, give it a go.”

“I’m not in the mood,” Zoe said.

“I am, though,” he said, and he held out the guitar for her. Zoe looked up and caught something in his eye that made her a little afraid to say no again. Reluctantly, she took the guitar from his hands, sat down, and started to strum. The television set was still running a DVD, so Richie turned it off. Amber made a gasp of pretended outrage. “Give it a go, mi’duck.”

Zoe played her three chords, varying the strum pattern, trying to smuggle a little enthusiasm into her playing. Richie listened attentively, and the younger girls watched him listening. When Zoe stopped, Richie held out a hand to relieve her of the instrument. “Give it here.”

He sat down on the sofa next to Amber and he played the guitar, expertly, very fast. Throughout his playing he looked full-on
at Zoe. Her cheeks flamed as he gazed at her. She looked away; she looked at her smiling mother; she looked back at Richie.

He stopped playing suddenly.

“Wow,” said Genevieve.

He stood up and handed the guitar back to Zoe. He suddenly seemed in a desperate hurry to leave. “I’ll come back later when he’s in.”

Genevieve raised her eyebrows at his sudden haste. Then she got off her knees to follow him, for he was already moving toward the door.

“I’ll tell him you called round.”

“Right. Thanks for the tea.”

“Come back anytime.” She opened the door for him. “Before you go, Richie.”

“Yes.”

“You should know it’s been hurting him. All these years of not speaking. He’s never told me what happened between you, or what was said. But whatever it was, he’s been hurting. Whatever it was.”

“Right,” said Richie. Then he set off down the path. “Right.”

I
’ll give you a story if it’s a story you want. I almost wrote a song about it, but it didn’t come out right. It was supposed to be a love song and it ended up sounding like a protest song. Though most love songs are protest songs, when you think about it.

There was me and Peter and Tara and a couple of other boys in the band and all was well with the world, and then one day
everything changed. I wasn’t yet eighteen and it was like someone slammed the door shut on my life the way it was then. Everything was right and the world was full of prospect and possibility; and then it was all wrong.

It was always going to be Tara. Always was. She was just Peter’s kid sister and I was only fifteen years old and I was at her house on her thirteenth birthday. One day she was a skinny kid and the next day there was this glow about her. And I would catch her looking at me. When me and Peter were talking she would be listening and I could sense her listening like someone stroking you and I could feel her eyes on me. She looked up to me in those days.

And I knew she was a cut above. From that day on I couldn’t stop thinking about her, though I couldn’t tell Peter. For one thing it wasn’t cool to go chasing after girls who were younger than we were. The object of lust and fancy was older girls and women, even if they were unobtainable. Girls our own age and younger were treated with disdain.