Undercurrent (24 page)

A bird; a captive bird in a futile dance.

He could not quite tell what type of bird, A starling perhaps; a tiny creature in relation to the noise it made. He moved towards it, unsteadily. The bird sensed him and moved to flutter madly at the next window, and the next. His presence terrified; the loud movement of the wings grew more frenetic. When Henry stopped, it stopped; when he moved, the bird moved. Once more, it forgot and flew towards him, encountered his forehead, flew back to batter at the next window. Gradually fascinated, Henry made himself stay still. His breath slowed down. He watched the outline of it, a confused, demented bullet of being.

There were open windows; he remembered them, back there. Remembering the glassless windows made him remember, too, that all he had to do, keeping his eyes shut if he needed, was to turn round and go back, one step after another and finally, even if he crawled, he would be in the larger spaces where he could breathe.

The bird was an idiotic bird which could not go back, only forward, instead of seeking the route which had brought it inside and using the same route to get out. Hammering again, at a narrow slit of metal-framed glass it would never open. How exhausted it must be, poor, desperate thing. More exhausted than himself. And if he had not appeared, it might have rested. Henry could not bear the thought that the bird might break its wings because of his presence, or that it would kill itself out of panic, die before morning. He was furious with pity for it ‘Hush; he said softly,

'hush.'

If he approached, the noise of his boots would set it off. He would be freakishly lucky if he were able to catch it in his hands. He would have to catch it with something else; something to throw over it. Henry stood as still as the walls, thinking out the problem. It was the only problem.

The only thing that mattered was to catch the starling and set it free.

Take these chains from my heart and set me free
... She did not like his choice of music and it had not been a successful day, or not in the way Neil had hoped.

Perhaps he simply was not used to the prolonged company of a female and a whole day together was a strain. Angela and himself had never been big on outings, even when their relationship was new; ah shit, he must not think of Angela. In the days when she had loved him, she had reassured him again and again that sex really did not matter and anyway, would improve in time if only his temper would do the same.

There was the occasional, almost successful coupling, and he knew how to please her but it was not the orgasm she wanted as much as the child which should result. He could have been a king, a millionaire mogul, an artist, an international athlete and still be nothing but a controlled diabetic with a low sperm count and erectile dysfunction. Perhaps the strain of a whole day with the new girl lay in the fact that he could not tell her about all that; could not yet entrust her with the worst aspect of his history, and somehow she knew he was hiding something. Women never did like that, but she would like it less if she knew.. One coupling achieved only-made it worse; it was the second that counted.

It had made him a thief, and not even a successful thief. A day trip to France, slightly marred by his anxious hopes for the evening, and his feeling of shame for the evening before. She sat across the table from him in his own house, smiling at him and admiring his cooking and drinking the wine they had bought. Or at least she drank, to please him, because he pressed it on her in the hope of relaxing the tension which seemed to have developed, while he himself drank sparingly, afraid it might interfere with the little blue pill he was going to take, soon.

Try 50mg, the doctor said. 100mg is average. It followed, in Neil's anxious way of thinking, that 300, the whole of the stash, might be even better. Three little pills and bugger the paucity of supplies. All gone by tomorrow, but tomorrow was another day and the rest of his life could take care of itself, if only he could keep her for a few hours.

'I got a present for you,' he said, coming back from the bathroom. The wine and the food had worked; she was languorous and mellow and leaned back against him as he draped the shawl round her shoulders. Against the background of his small, nondescript room, she was lovely; her skin soft and warm, and he never wanted her to think, I could do better than this.

'I can't stay all night,' she said. 'I'll have to get back, eventually.' She lived with her parents.

He liked the eventually. It would not take all night.

Maggie passed an hour in the most anonymous public house on the seafront, talking to old men about their dogs, drinking a glass or three of indifferent wine until she decided she could do better than that, caught the off-licence before closing time and exchanged cash for two bottles of chilled Sancerre and three packets of nuts. She hauled this booty indoors, beaming vacantly at Timothy and Peter, who both wanted to chat but backed away when they saw how the land lay.

She went upstairs, inflicted a manic tidying up on her room in order to give herself some sense of control, and then sat down to think. There was the nagging memory of Uncle Joe, but that was largely irrelevant, like a fly buzzing in the corner of a room, since most of all, she wanted to savour a feeling of triumph and read his letter for the third time. Could I please come and see you?

Not what he might have said: Why don't you come up to town and see me? He was suggesting that he make the effort to visit a scrubby little town he had always despised. Men are so blind, Francesca had said. I can't stand the way they leave and then have to come back later and tear the heart out.

Look, Philip, I have a modus operandi here, Maggie wanted to say. I live a small life with none of your entertaining; remember how we entertained, Philip? As elaborately and generously as the proprietors of my guest house cook for guests, Philip, only they do it at a fraction of the cost, treble the effort and with a genuine desire to please rather than impress. You tried to make me into a sophisticated clone of yourself but my favourite vegetable is still frozen peas and I prefer the kind of man who can enjoy an overcooked pizza and not notice. I let you dictate the whole progress of our lives, so that when you decided I was superfluous, I became a spare part.

She crunched on the nuts and reached for pen and paper; the wine scarcely pleasant. He had been a wine snob, messed and tinkered with the stuff and agonized over labels. Dear Philip, other people have better things to do and drink what they're damn well given, so they can get on with talking. Why did I let you distract me from anything that was ever really important? Why do I waste my time on lousy choices? She would write him a tremendous letter if only she could find the pen, not any of the old ball points that littered and clogged her bag, but the fountain pen which gave some dignity to her handwriting. Oh yes, she would let him have it in words, a verbal battering fit to shake him out of his own peerless prose and make him feel the rat he was.

Then she remembered another of those poems she had memorized so easily, long before the marriage days. '

When I loved you, I can't but allow

I had many an exquisite minute;

But the scorn that I feel for you now

Has even more luxury in it.

Thus, whether we're on or we're off,

Some witchery seems to await you,

To love you is pleasant enough,

But Oh! tis delicious to hate you!

The nuts were finished and she felt a vague, nauseous hunger, temporarily sated by another glass of wine. They would fret about her a little downstairs, but these locked-in evenings others were not without precedent, although they had been far less frequent, lately. '
Oh, tis delicious to
hate you
!' she wrote again, noticing how the writing was not steady. The fountain pen was running out of ink and she had no idea of where she had put the refills. Or whether she wanted Philip to come and see her and look at her life and what she had made of it in fifteen months sitting in a closet.

But the one thing she did know, even as she underlined the word, was that she did not hate him. She had never hated anyone for longer than a day; she did not have it in her; she might be absurdly hurt by the slightest hint of rejection, but she could not hate. Perhaps that meant she did not have the capacity to love men either. Of course you do, Francesca said, but only if they look at you. Recognize what you are. Anything else is insulting.

That was what she was, insulted. It was too soon for sleep; the wine was winning and by now Maggie did not want anyone to see her in this indecisively maudlin state. She washed, cursorily, in the upstairs basin, thought with a token guiltiness of all the other business of the day, brushed her hair until her scalp hurt as much as her head ached, tidied up rigorously and went to bed. Confused thoughts scuttling like rats, Angela, Harry, Henry, Harry, Neil, was Neil fishing on the beach with that dog. Henry. Fishing. Philip and how she had glibly explained the demise of that marriage.

Not quite the success we hoped. Not quite the success he had hoped. Not the answer to a girl's prayer, or even a man's. A bit thorough and brutal, if Neil remembered it right. Not as prolonged as it might have been, although he had rather lost touch with the passing of time.

Marvellous to fuck but not so entirely pleasant to be fucking and wondering all the time how long it could last. The erection, the relationship, the fierceness of her embrace which had gradually turned into rather more dutiful gestures of fatigued encouragement as he went on and on, culminating in a noticeably timid curling away from him after the final groan. She kissed him in response to his smothering of grateful kisses and choked, heartfelt thanking her and telling her how wonderful she was, but it did not seem so long afterwards that she said she had to go, you know the way it is, becoming insistent about it.

And when he rose, with difficulty, to dress and escort her the short distance, she had kissed him again, more hurriedly and said, what nonsense, it was only a spit away down lit streets and she would not hear of it. This was no London, it was Warbling. She was chattering a bit, slipping away and gathering her clobber with twice the speed of his dressing, and then, before he could insist, was gone.

She was running away. She left behind the stolen shawl, folded over the kitchen chair. This hurried escape would have alarmed and worried him intensely, if the symptoms did not alarm him more. Neil lay on his bed, considering the implications of a foul headache and dizziness not lessened by closing his eyes. When he opened them, all that he could see appeared to be tinged with pink, giving him the impression of a mildly fluorescent evening or the colour of the sinking sun on the sea in summer.

He blinked to dispel it, but the pink tinge remained and when he turned on the overhead light, the brightness of it attacked his eyes. He was trembling and his mouth was dry.

The bleeper was going on his pager. Some bugger was in the castle and he could not see.

The only priority was to catch the bird. It fluttered at the next window and the sound of its fatigue was so cruel. Henry wanted to weep. He retreated two steps, very slowly, bent down and fumbled with his shoelaces until they were undone and he could slip off his boots. He shed his jacket quietly; it was too heavy to use as a snare; the little thing would be crushed to death. His cashmere pullover, because Henry had a weakness for fine woollens, was light and fine for all its protective warmth. The ground was cold and damp, soaking his socked feet as he tiptoed forward blindly.

The wall rounded to his right. He had just made out the outline of the bird when he stumbled on a loose brick, put out a hand to steady himself and swore, shit. The starling came back to life, disappeared in a smudge of black and began again the ghastly battering of a window further round. If he could only somehow get beyond it, he thought, and frighten it into going back to where he knew there were windows which were broken or open or free of glass, perhaps it would find its way out of its own accord.

Perhaps it was better to chase it forward in any event; they might come round full circle to the larger space where it could fly with ease or settle. And then be lost for ever and even harder to catch. Or maybe this rounded passageway led nowhere but to further obscurity, maybe it petered out into a pit, a cellar, a well. Henry swallowed.

With pullover draped round his neck, he inched forward, testing the wet ground with his stockinged feet and keeping one hand on the wall. The starling became visible again; he felt as if it was looking at him and waiting. He removed the pullover, remembering to breathe quietly. Up ahead there was another sound, a drip, drip, drip, and from the window he passed a draught and a tantalizing sound of rain.

The starling beat its wings and flew drunkenly to the next glass. It would die from fear and exhaustion. Henry's feet were icy cold; he flexed his fingers silently. The sound of rain outside would muffle the noise of his own progress, but only a fool would think that a starling had senses as unrefined as his own. Three times more, creeping forward and the bird detecting him, but each time, he told himself, he was that small bit closer. Then, beneath the merciful glow of a tiny light in the ceiling, which showed the gleam of moisture on the stone of the ledge where water dripped, he saw the starling bathing in an irresistible shallow bath of collected water in a dip hollowed by years of drips.

Henry was close enough, threw his net and followed. Gently, gently, does it. A furious struggle inside the garment. Keep still. He cupped his hands round the heaving bundle he had made and cradled it, feeling, as he began to stumble back the way he had come, the frantic beating of a tiny heart, feared the bursting of it. Quick. He needed both hands to keep the captive; his feet would have to find their own direction. He stubbed his toes and cracked his elbows, stumbling from side to side and letting the wall, curving to his left, lead him. He tripped on his own shoes, felt the material of his jacket in the puddle underfoot and did not stop. Another window, another and another, and then the blessed draught.