The Crocodile Bird (3 page)

Sean was wonderful to look at. She hadn’t much to judge by, the painted man at Shrove, grainy monochrome images of actors in old movies, the postman, the oilman, Jonathan and Bruno, Matt, and a few others. His face was pale, the shape of the features sharply cut, his nose straight, his mouth red and full for a man’s, dark eyes where she fancied she saw dreams and hopes, and eyebrows like the strokes of a Chinese painter’s brush. She had seen a painting in the drawing room at Shrove with willow leaves and pink-breasted birds, a strange flower Eve said was a lotus, and letters made up of black curves like Sean’s eyebrows. His hair was black as coal. Liza had read that, for as far as she knew she had never seen coal.

“You’ve been asleep for six hours.” He said it admiringly, as one acclaiming another for some particular prowess.

“For a minute, when I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. I’ve never been to sleep anywhere but in the gatehouse.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“No, why would I? I’ve never slept away from home.” She marveled at it. “This is my home now.”

“You’re the greatest,” he said. “I’m lucky to have you, don’t think I don’t know it. I never thought you’d come, I thought, she’ll never come and stay and be with me, she’ll go and I’ll lose her. Don’t laugh, I know I’m a fool.”

“I wouldn’t laugh, Sean. I love you. Do you love me?”

“You know I do.”

“Say it, then.”

“I love you. There, is that okay? Haven’t I proved I love you? I’d like to prove it all the time. Let me come in there with you, love, let’s do it again, shall we? D’you know what I’d like best? To do it to you all the time, we wouldn’t eat or sleep or watch TV or any of those things, we’d just do it forever and ever till we died. Wouldn’t that be a lovely death?”

For answer she jumped up, eluding his grasp, and shifted to the far corner of the bed. He had laid her clothes there, the garments shaken and carefully placed side by side, like Eve might. Quickly she pushed her legs into the tracksuit, pulled the top over her head.

She said gravely, “I don’t want to die. Not that way or any other.” A thought came that she had never considered before. “You wouldn’t ever do it to me without me wanting it, would you, Sean?”

He was angry for a moment. “Why d’you say things like that? Why did you ask me that? I don’t understand you sometimes.”

“Never mind. It was just an idea. Don’t you ever have nasty ideas?”

He shrugged, the light and the desire gone out of his face. “I’m going to make us a cup of tea. Or d’you fancy a Coke? I’ve got Coke and that’s about all I have got. I haven’t got nothing to eat, we shall have to go down to the shop.”

Anything,
she thought.
I haven’t got anything to eat.
She wouldn’t tell him this time. “Sean,” she said, up in the corner, her back to the wall. “Sean, we’ll have to
go.
I mean, leave here. We ought to put a good many miles between us and her.”

“Your mum?”

“Why do you think the police came? I told you they came.” As she spoke she knew he hadn’t thought, he hadn’t listened. Probably he hadn’t heard her say that about the police. He had been consumed by desire, mad for her, closed to everything else. She knew how that felt, to be nothing but a deaf, blind, senseless
thing,
swollen and thick with it, breathless and faint. “I told you the police came.”

“Did you? I don’t know. What did they come for?”

“Can I have that Coke?” She hesitated and made the hesitation long. “I’m supposed to have gone to her friend Heather. That’s where she thought she’d sent me. But I came to you.”

“Tell me what she’s done.”

His expression was a bit incredulous and a bit—well, indulgent, she thought the word was. He was going to get a surprise. It wasn’t going to be what he thought—she searched her imagination—stealing something or doing things against the law with money. He sat down where he had sat before and became intent on her. That pleased her, his total absorption.

“She killed someone,” she said. “The day before yesterday. That’s why they came and took her away and I’m afraid they’ll want me, they’ll want me to be a witness or something. They’ll want to ask me questions and then maybe they’ll try to put me somewhere to have people look after me. I’ve heard about that. I’m so young, I won’t be seventeen till January.”

She had been wrong about his absorption. He hadn’t been listening. Again he hadn’t heard her, but for a different reason. He was staring at her with his mouth slightly open. As she noted this he curled his upper lip as people do when confronted by a horror.

“What did you say?”

“About what? My age? Being a witness?”

He hesitated, seemed to swallow. “About her killing someone.”

“It was yesterday, after I came back from meeting you in the wood. Or I think so. I mean I didn’t actually see it, but I know she killed him.”

“Come on, love.” An awkward grin. “I don’t believe you.”

It left her helpless, she had no idea how to respond to this. She drank a few mouthfuls out of the open triangle in the top of the can. Eve had once told her that when a cat is in doubt how to act, it waves the tip of its tail. She felt like a cat but with no tail to wave. He must make the next move, for she couldn’t.

He got up and took a few steps away. The caravan was too small for more than a few steps to be taken. She drank some more of her Coke, watching him.

“Why did you say that,” he said, “about her killing somebody? Was you kidding? Was you trying to be funny?”

“It’s true.”

“It
can’t
be.”

“Look, Sean, I didn’t make it up. It’s why I came away. I didn’t want them to take me and shut me up, make me live somewhere. I knew they’d come this time. This time they’d find out and it wouldn’t take long. I was expecting them all night.”

His naturally pale face had gone whiter. She noticed and wondered why. “You mean she killed someone by accident, don’t you?”

“I don’t understand what that means.” It was a sentence she was often obliged to utter since she had been with him.

“She was shooting birds and she shot someone by mistake, is that it? You told me she wouldn’t never kill birds or rabbits, you told me that when we first met.”

Only the last four words really registered with her. They made her smile, remembering. She slithered down the bed, jumped off, and put her arms around him. “Wasn’t it lovely that I met you and you met me? It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

This time it was he who pulled away from the embrace. “Yes, love, okay, it was great. But you’ve got to tell me. About this killing, this is serious, right? What happened? Was it some guy poaching?”

“No,” she said, “no, you don’t understand.”

“Too bloody right I don’t and I won’t if you don’t tell me.”

“I’ll try.” She sat down and he sat down and she held his hand. “She murdered him, Sean. People do do that, you know.” It seemed a wild and curious statement for her to be making. “She murdered him because she wanted to be rid of him. She wanted him out of the way, it doesn’t matter why, it’s not important now.”

This time he didn’t say he disbelieved her but, “I
can’t
credit it.”

What had Eve said? “Then you must just accept.”

“Who did she murder?”

She could tell from his tone that he still thought she was lying. That made her impatient.

“It doesn’t matter. A man. No one you know. Sean, it’s the truth, you have to believe me.” She was learning truths of her own. “I can’t be with someone who thinks I’m telling him lies.” From delighted laughter, she was near to tears. She sought for a way out. “I can’t prove it. What can I do to make you believe it?”

He said in a low voice, “I sort of do believe you—now.”

“I’ll tell you all about it.” She was eager. She took hold of his shoulders and brought her face close up to his. “I’ll tell you everything, if you like, from when I was small, from when I can first remember.”

He kissed her. When her face was as close to his as that, he couldn’t resist kissing her. His tongue tasted of the caramel sweetness of Coke as she supposed hers must. They were on the bed, that was where you sat in the caravan, and her body grew soft, sliding backward, sinking into the mattress, she was wanting him as much as she had when she first arrived that morning. He pulled her up, grasping her hands.

“I want you to tell me, Liza. I want to know everything about you. But not now. Now tell me what your mum did.”

Being frustrated made her sulky. “What’s the good? You won’t believe it.”

“I will, I’ve said so.”

“I think we ought to leave, we ought to be on our way, not sitting here talking.”

“Don’t you worry yourself about that, I’ll see to all that. You tell me about your mum and this man.” She saw it in his eyes as the idea came to him. “Did he try raping her, was that it?”

“He was teaching her to shoot pigeons with a shotgun. He was out there shooting and she said, show me how.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“It’s the truth. If you’re going to say that, I won’t tell you.”

“Right, then. Go on.”

“I hate shooting birds. I hate people shooting anything, rabbits, squirrels, anything, it’s
wrong.
And I thought Eve—my mother—I thought she did too. She said so, she taught me to think like that. But she told him the pigeons were eating her vegetables and she asked him to show her how and he said he would. You see, I think he’d have done anything she asked, Sean.”

“She’s an attractive woman.”

“More attractive than I am?”

“Don’t be bloody ridiculous. Was you watching all this?”

“I’d been in the wood with you,” Liza said. “They didn’t see me. I came up through the garden and they were on the grass where the new trees are. Sound carries terrific distances there, you know. Even when people are speaking softly you can hear them. I saw the two of them with just the one gun and I thought she must be telling him not to shoot the pigeons. He was allowed to, you know, because though pheasant shooting doesn’t start till October you can shoot pigeons when you like. Poor things! What did it matter to him, he wasn’t a farmer, they weren’t his cabbages they were eating, and even if they were, the pigeons have got to live, haven’t they?

“I thought, good for her, she’s going to stop him, but she didn’t. She was out there with him for a shooting lesson. I’d heard her talking about it with him, but I didn’t think she was serious. When I saw them I asked myself, what on earth is she doing? He started showing her things about the gun and she was looking and then he handed it to her.

“I didn’t want to see the birds killed. I started to go back toward the gatehouse. Then the shot came and immediately afterward this screaming choking noise. So I turned around and ran across the lawn and there she was looking at him where he lay. She wasn’t holding the gun, she’d dropped it, she was looking down at him and all the blood on him.”

Sean had put up his hand to cover his mouth. His eyes had grown very big. He took his hand away, pushing at his cheek in a curious wiping movement. “What did you do?” he said in a small voice.

“I didn’t do anything. I went home. She didn’t tell the police and I didn’t, so I think Matt must have. You know Matt?”

“Of course I do.”

“He was there, up by the house. Only I don’t think he saw any more than I did. He guessed.”

“But you said the police had only just come, they were coming when you left—when? A couple of hours ago?”

“They came last evening. They didn’t see me. You see, they didn’t come to the gatehouse, not then. First of all, cars came and a black van to take away the body. I watched it all from my bedroom window. Eve told me to stay there and not come out, not to let anyone see me. I didn’t want them to see me. She went up to Shrove and I think the policemen talked to her there. They talked to her and they talked to Matt and Matt’s wife.

“She knew they’d come back, so she said I must go. For my own protection, she said. I ran away to you. That’s it.”

“That’s all of it?”

“Not
all,
Sean. It’ll take me a long time to tell you all of it.”

“I’ll get the van fixed up to the tow bar,” he said.

She went outside with him. The day was warm and sultry, two in the afternoon, and the sun a puddle of light in a white sky. Watching him, she picked blackberries off the hedge and ate them by the handful. She was enormously hungry.

The battered Dolomite shifted the caravan with the slow weary competence of an old carthorse. It groaned a bit and expelled a lot of black exhaust. Liza got into the passenger seat and banged the door. Car and caravan lurched off the grass verge onto the harder surface of the lane.

“Where shall we go?”

“We have to go where they’ll let me park the van. Before you come I was thinking of trying Vanner’s. They’re wanting pickers for the Coxes. We could both of us do that.”

“Coxes won’t be ready till the third week of September,” she said, always glad to show off something she knew and he might not. “Anyway, how far is it?”

“Twenty-five miles, thirty. Far enough for you?”

“I don’t know. What else can you do?”

He laughed. “Electrical work, sort of, put washers on taps, grind knives, I’m halfway to a motor mechanic, wash your car, do your garden—as
you
should know—clean windows, most things, you name it.”

“Why apples, then?”

“Apples make a change. I reckon I always do pick apples in September and cherries in July.”

“I’m hungry,” she said, “I’m so
bloody
hungry.”

“Don’t swear, Liza.”

“You do. Who d’you think I got it from?”

“It’s different for me. You’re a woman. I don’t like to hear a woman swear.”

She lifted her shoulders, the way Eve did. “I’m tremendously hungry. Can we buy some food?”

“Yeah, we can get takeaway.” He looked at her, remembered and explained, “Stuff they’ve cooked for you in a shop, right? Or we’ll find a caff, maybe a Little Chef if there’s one on the A road.”

She was no longer afraid. Fear might not be canceled, but it was postponed. The prospect of going into a café excited her. And she’d be with Sean. Shops she had been in, one or two over the years, but a real restaurant, if that was the word, that was very different. She remembered what she had taken with her when she left the gatehouse.