CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ABOUT TWO WEEKS LATER
It's Wednesday afternoon. Seamus is sitting on a fence rail watching me rake out Easy's stall. Some distance behind him in the pasture Easy is grimly watching us both. He's as fond of Seamus as he is of me, and he doesn't want either of us in his house, but someone has to clean up after him.
And my Wednesdays are for chores. In the village, that's the half-day for the working people; Jepson extended this holiday to himself by simply walking off after lunch each Wednesday and heading out to do God knows what. After a while I became accustomed to going outside and finishing wherever he'd left off, and then taking over his Thursdays too, while he laid suffering in the cottage with the curtain pulled tight and a wet rag over his eyes. For fairness Wednesdays then also became Rosalind's early afternoon off; and I suppose Seamus' too, though he's never asked for one until just now.
"And if I could borrow against this week's pay, provided you have it lying about," he's asked me while pitching himself backwards off the rail, holding himself up with the toes of his boots. He's nearly upside-down and the strain on his neck is making his voice froggy. "Stuffed inside your mattress or something."
"What do you need it for?" I don't want to sound imperious but that's how it comes out.
"Dereliction," he whispers, inverted face purpling. "Crime."
I rake angrily, and sneeze. "Where, the Bell?"
"Lord, no." He laughs. "No. T'other one. What is it? With the creek by it. The old one. Out down the road to Gale." He swings himself back up with effort but his hair has stayed aloft. "They wouldn't have me in the Bell unless I borrowed your suit. Which I would, if you'd lend it." He gives me his Cheshire grin but the effect is somewhat spoiled by his hair.
The place he's speaking of is, of course, the Rowan Tree, the ancient inn of the crossroads, the one with the hex-sign hanging over the doorway, the inn which I have passed by a hundred times and never entered, would not, can not; he's right about the Bell and my suit and the practicality of his instead choosing the village workingmans' drinking-place for his night off but what I am now dealing with is that I am tacitly uninvited and also that the village workingmen, soon as they cop to him, will begin beetling round bearing free pints and questions. I can imagine what he'll say to them. Alarm rises in my throat like mercury in a thermometer.
"The sleeves would be too long on you. Don't go to either. Drink at home for nothing," I mutter. He laughs, delightedly, and kicks his heel against the rail.
"You don't fancy the place," he says.
"I've never been," I say, trying for neutrality.
"Of course you haven't," he says, all sharp teeth and happy mockery. "You want to keep me an innocent, same as yourself. It's no good. One of us 'as to see the world, Henry." He swings backwards again, tentatively releasing one foot. "You can yell at me tomorrow morning when I'm sick. It'll be a comfort to you. And tonight while I'm gone you can look forward to bein superior." One hand wavers crazily in the air. He's won. There's no countermove. All I can do is let him go and try to appear serene about it. Say nothing more.
"Stay in," I tell him, helplessly, "and I'll hold off on the yelling."
A choked laugh. "Now there we are. I would never ask you to stay in." He's bent back; I can't see his expression, and I don't know how much meaning I should be reading into these last words. Does he mean what I think he means, by staying in?
I'm considering calling his bluff, lending him my suit, and sending him to the Bell, which would at least mean he wouldn't be surrounded by a henhouse of peasants asking things like Did you hear what came of the last Lord Harthome and Did you hear of his great grand-da what got shot with a rifle and I hear he only eats raw meat and Is it true he makes himself into a wolf at the full moon? No one at the Bell had the impropriety to ask Jepson these things, even if they wondered them, and if they ever did he never answered, I am sure of it. Because, for one, he loved me and was protective of me, and secondly because if he had I would assuredly have been shot by now, myself. I do remember- vividly- Jepson scolding me after finding me out in the heather, where I had snuck away to go "play". I remember his sickly yellow eyes- almost as yellow as my own, except his were only yellow where they were supposed to be white- piercing into me, and his hard grip on my arms, and his voice saying Now you can't go running about like a little beast, this is shooting country, they bain't know the difference. I remember his rough hands scraping the dirt from my arms, him getting me back into my clothes, cursing, and telling me I would be hunted down. They're simple people, Anry, he said. They're scared of their own shadows. You can't run about like this.
The Rowan Tree. Simple people. There is nothing simple about any of them. Rules at the Bell are different, of course, because of class, because of Jocelyn and Gleeson and all the people whose lives and incomes and respectability are touched by Harthome. But the Rowan cares nothing of my title, and knows Harthome to be the evil castle on the hill; the Rowan's public room is filled with the descendants of men who once cowered under its shadow. Throughout this narrow valley of which my home is the coastal peak and the Rowan marks the lowland boundary opposite, all of the oldest buildings- mostly decrepit thatched cottages- have barred windows of turned iron over the glass. Unheard of, this, in a quiet country village, barred windows. And all the oldest doors are fitted with ancient two-man locks, wrought by a long-dead blacksmith whose distant progeny is probably drinking in the Rowan's dingy public room right now. I can't blame these men their superstition. Those locks and bars were for of us.
What does Seamus want at the inn, anyhow? To be around other people, I expect, and their laughter and warmth; to get drunk, to brag, tell jokes. To find a girl to show off to and maybe walk with outside to the darkness of the back lawn. A sadness settles over me. Bad enough that I am isolated by my own fears; here I am asking him to bow to them as well. And even though the image of him walking out in the dark with a girl makes my chest feel hollow, the thought of his loneliness is worse.
"All right," I tell him. "Tell me how much you'll need. Don't ask Agnes for it, for God's sake."
When he comes up again he's grinning. "That's it. Good. There may be hope for you yet, my boy." I have no idea what he means. He leans forward and pulls the rake from my grip, bends to facetiously shake my hand, which I pull away and punch him in the arm with. He laughs, nearly falls off the rail, rights himself, and gives a little crow of victory. I turn my back to him and rake.
.
An hour later they head off together down the main road, him in his one good shirt and with his clean hair combed down sleek, shining in the last slant of afternoon sun, Rosalind with her apron off and a bright flush on her face, her head at level with his shoulder. He's slowed his loping gait so she can keep up. Her head is tilted up to him and I notice his effect on her. He revels in it, I think. There is a part of him that seems to feed on longing. Often at night when we are playing chess he'll pause and lean back on the ottoman, hands on his knees, eyes holding steady at mine, and I swear he is doing nothing but drinking in the wave of turbulent emotion I cannot help but emit. And savoring it. It is terrible for me. At the same time, when it is over, I count the hours until I can experience it again.
The sun is sinking on the lane. Above it the ancient rows of elms wave in the coast wind. I watch their two figures grow distant, slowly shrink and blur, and then the dusty road rises to swallow first Rosalind and then him, in a last gleaming red wink.