The Girl With Glass Feet (23 page)

‘Stop,’ urged Ida, seeing one of the stumps moving. This was no broken tree, but a man in waterproof trousers and cagoule: hood turned up, fishing net sieving the water. ‘Stay in the car.’ She got out carefully and called from the road, ‘Hi! Hello there?’

The man jumped in surprise. It was obvious from the sheen on his glasses and the beard sprouting from the open hood that this was Henry Fuwa.

‘Ida Maclaird!’ he exclaimed, giving her an awkward salute.

‘You remember me!’

He splashed towards her, careful not to tip his net, and she saw he’d caught some twenty crabs, pincers flapping, carapaces the grey of oyster shells.

Henry noticed Midas’s car with Midas inside. ‘I had already been reminded of you by your friend there.’

‘We’ve just been to your cottage, Henry. I’d hoped we might catch up.’

He was still looking warily at the car. ‘I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. And my poky cottage isn’t hospitable enough for three.’

She read him with disappointment. Was this the general suspicion among islanders, or had something happened between the two of them?

‘Well, I expect Midas will want to wait outside.’

‘Ida,’ he said quietly, ‘didn’t he tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

Henry looked with frustration at the car. ‘Perhaps
I
could drive you back to my cottage. My own car’s nearby. That way I can drop you back at wherever it is you’re staying. Then poor old Midas won’t have to wait around.’

Henry glanced upward in admiration as a swan called its bass
horrnk
and took to the air nearby, the beat of its wings rocking the algae leaves into swarms. In a quiet voice nearly carried away on the breeze Ida asked, ‘What should Midas have told me?’

‘It… It’ll take some explaining.’

She shrugged and made her way up to the car. ‘I’m safe with him,’ she whispered to Midas, ‘you can go back and enjoy your afternoon. Look out for me in a couple of hours.’

‘I want to help…’

‘You are helping. Only, Henry says he’d rather see me alone.’

‘We fell out.’

‘I gathered.’

‘He said he couldn’t help you.’

She nodded. ‘Go on. I’ll come and see you when we’re done.’

He looked worried, but drove away like she’d asked.

‘I planned to take these back and cook them,’ said Henry, tipping the crabs he’d caught into a pot in the boot of his car. ‘I’ve got plenty of tuna cans, so that’s no trouble. And anchovies, plenty of those. Wait… you’re not…’

‘Vegetarian? No. Crabs would be lovely.’

She got into his car and they drove through the flooded bogscape, Henry’s headlights glowing off puddles all the way back to his cottage.

‘So,’ asked Henry, when he was taking off his shoes in the hallway (he didn’t ask Ida to take off hers, even though they were cusped with mud). ‘Are we going to get straight down to talking business, or have a… a… chit-chat first?’

‘A chit-chat, I think.’

‘Ida, this is going to be hard.’

‘I want to apologize. I tried to catch up with you after I offended you in the pub in Gurmton. I couldn’t find you then, but now I realize… Those things you told me about… You weren’t drunk, were you?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Gin does tend to go to my head. But if I was drunk I wasn’t lying. I told you about the moth-winged cattle after you saw that poor bull. I think I told you they eat and shit and die like everything else. You see, just because something’s… unfamiliar, doesn’t mean it isn’t bound by all that stuff.’

She shivered. ‘There’s something unfamiliar happening to me.’

‘Yes. Midas let on.’

She stared at the framed diagram of the jellyfish on the wall. She sighed. ‘How are the moth-winged cattle?’

‘Well…’ he hesitated. ‘Do you know, this is the first time in my life I’ve been asked that question? They’re in fine health.’ He
leant on his chin, scratching his beard ruminatively. ‘Would you, um, care to see them?’

The moss-covered door swung open. He led her into a musty kind of airlock and took an excited breath as he opened the inner door on to the pen proper.

A heater hummed quietly in the centre of a floor smattered by dung. Birdcages and gutted lanterns of all sizes swung from rafters on the ceiling. The herd of moth-winged cattle lapped the pen in a figure-of-eight, swooping and turning sharp angles like a flock of autumn swallows. The blur of so many wings wrapped them in a shimmer. They tossed their heads and kicked their forelegs as they flew. Some of the larger bulls had curving horns and flew with heads bowed as if charging impish matadors. Thread-like tails flowed behind them in a breeze created by their flight. Ida felt it as a faint blowing on her cheeks and laughed in involuntary delight.

Afterwards, in the house, Henry fussed as he helped her into a comfy armchair, ‘Can I offer you some tea? I’ve only green, I’m afraid.’

‘That’d be a refreshing change. Being with Midas all I get is coffee.’

‘So you’re… with… the Crook boy, are you?’

‘The
Crook boy
? Who would that be? Don’t tell me you’re like that about him.’

Henry’s smile had a knowing twinge to it. ‘I meant no offence. I merely called him that to distinguish him. What happened was tragic.’

‘Concerning his father?’

‘And the way his mother took it.’

She scowled. ‘I don’t see why any of that should impinge on how people treat Midas. He’s been so sweet to me.’

‘You’re young, though, Ida. That’s what you have to remember. People look for patterns in their existences, and one of the patterns they see on these islands is that of families making the same mistakes through generations.’

She huffed and folded her arms. ‘That only happens because the community here’s so tiny. People don’t have the imagination to see Midas as his own man. They file him neatly in the spot his dead dad vacated.’

‘Quite, quite. I couldn’t agree with you more.’

‘Yet you still don’t want him in your house. The two of you fell out, he said.’

‘He hasn’t told you why?’

‘No.’

‘Did he tell you… anything at all?’

‘Only that he’d found you. He said the two of you talked about his mother. He said you knew her once.’

‘I… That is, I…’ He scratched his beard. ‘Did he tell you what I showed him in the bog?’

‘No. What did you show him?’

‘Just… Well it was a bright day. I showed him the light on the meres.’

They were briefly quiet. She knew there was something more, but decided to press Midas for it later. ‘I’ll make the tea,’ he said, forcing a smile and leaving her at the table while he went through to the adjacent kitchen.

He poured simmering water on to the tea leaves. It wouldn’t help to tell Ida what lay in the murky bog pool, which he assumed was also Midas’s reasoning. The poor girl was here because he was her last resort, and he didn’t know how to convince her there was nothing he could do. He had certainly done a bad job with Midas. He watched the tea leaves flex and expand in the water.

Ida hobbled into the kitchen behind him.

‘Forgive me…’ he said. ‘I fear you’ve terribly misunderstood
me. I don’t feel any aversion to Midas because of his father. It’s his mother… that’s… what… I must be honest with you.’

‘You mentioned her earlier.’

‘Yes. You must understand that I’m telling you this in the strictest confidence.’

He stared into the steam rising from the pan. She had this power (he recalled feeling it now at their first meeting that summer) to prise open your carapace and get in amongst the gooey mess beneath.

‘You’re in love with her,’ she said.

He hung his head. ‘Yes. And no. Not any more, I think.’ He hoped his honesty would help her accept what he had to say about the glass.

‘Did you have an affair with her?’

‘Not everyone can speak as… freely as you can, Ida.’

‘Sorry, I thought you wanted to discuss it.’

‘I wanted to explain that… Midas offered a route to Evaline. But as a kind of bargaining chip to get me to help you. And you see I could not accept his offer, not only because Evaline… Evaline is something different now… but because I have nothing to bargain with in turn.’

‘I’m turning into glass,’ she said softly.

He wiped sweat from his brow and set the teapot down with a clunk. He felt so hot inside that the thought of drinking it made him swoon. ‘I fancy a glass of something,’ he declared, then covered his mouth shamefaced. ‘I mean, of course, a drink. A… tumbler of something.’

‘It’s all right. It’s everywhere, isn’t it?’

He gave an awkward kind of bow, then went to a cupboard for a bottle of gin. He poured them both a shot, leaving the tea in the saucepan. ‘I don’t really drink. I’ve found myself doing… things while drunk. Yet under pressure… I am weak-willed.’

She nodded.

‘Her husband was an obstacle that nervous people such as she and I could never hope to overcome.’

‘He’s been dead for a decade.’

‘That makes no difference now.’

‘It makes all the difference. Move away. The two of you.’

‘And leave the cattle behind?’

‘Then defy what people think. People here don’t even know you. Bring her here to you.’

He bit his lip. ‘How selfish. Forgive me, Ida, for bringing this up.’

‘Don’t be stupid. You must be so lonely you barely notice any more.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re too young to understand.’

‘Don’t patronize me.’

‘Ahh… I didn’t mean to. I just mean… it’s too late for me and Evaline.’

She looked into her gin. ‘It’s never too late.’

He watched her closely as she said it. ‘See,’ he said sadly, ‘you were surprised by the doubt in your own voice.’ He put his glass down and wiped his palms on his trouser legs. ‘Thank you for your optimism, but it was too late long before Midas Crook died. One day the Evaline I knew was simply… gone. If I had done more back when she was still with us perhaps she would have stayed. But who knows where that woman is now?’

There was silence, broken by one or the other of them slurping gin.

‘Henry,’ she said quietly, ‘if I show you my feet, what are you going to say?’

He held up his hands. ‘I don’t want to see them. Thank you, Ida. I can picture them perfectly.’

She nodded.

‘And as far as talking about them goes… I’ve told you everything there is to tell.’

She put her gin down heavily. ‘But you haven’t told me why. Or how. I’ve always been a really normal person, Henry. How the hell does a person go from a normal life one second to a life like this the next, walking on a stick with no feeling in my toes?’ She had screwed up her fists. Her eyes were bulging. ‘What did I do, to bring this on myself ? Just tell me what I did, where I stepped, who I crossed… Something.’

‘You came all this way, to find me, to ask me that?’

‘Because of the moth-winged cattle. And the creature you said can turn a thing white with one look. You know how these islands work.’

He shrugged meekly. ‘I don’t know anything.’