Long Lankin: Stories (10 page)

—I’m afraid, Ben.

—Yes.

The cicadas sang about the scorched fields, through the shutters they could hear the brittle music. Outside the day trembled with white heat, but the sun had fallen past its highest point, and the afternoon was beginning its slow descent.

De Rerum Natura

The old man was hosing the garden when the acrobats appeared. They were unexpected, to say the least. Elves, now, would not have surprised him, or goblins. But acrobats! Still, he got used to them, and in the last weeks came to value them above all else the world could offer. Glorious weeks, the best of the year, sweltering dog days drenched with sun and the singing of skylarks. He spent them in the garden, thrashing about in the waist-high grass, delirious with the heat and a suffocating sense of the countless lives throbbing all around him, the swarming ants, the birds in the trees, glittering bright blue flies, the lizards and spiders, his beloved bees, not to mention the things called inanimate, the earth itself, all these, breeding and bursting and killing. Sometimes it all became too much, and then he would take the hose and saturate the garden, howling in a rapture of mad glee and disgust. It was at the end of one of these galas that he first saw the acrobats.

George and Lucy hardly recognised him. If they had met him in the garden they might have taken him for a tree, burned mahogany as he was, with that long beard like grizzled ivy. He had stopped using the cutthroat for fear that it would live up to its name some morning, and he had no intention of giving them by accident an excuse for an orgy of mourning. Anyway, at that time it looked as if he would soon starve to death. Then he discovered that the garden was rich with food, cabbages and rhubarb, potatoes, raspberries, all manner of things flourishing under the weeds. There were even roses, heavy bloodred blooms, unsettling. His fits of fury with the hose helped all this growth. What a silence there was after the deluge, and in the silence the stealthy drip of water slipping from leaf to limb to root, into the parched earth.

The acrobats appeared through a mist of sparkling light, a troupe of short stout fellows in black striped leotards, with furred bandy legs and leather straps on their arms and incongruously dainty black dancing pumps. An hallucination, he said, sure that in a moment they would vanish, leaving nothing behind but a faintly reverberating
ping
! But he was wrong. They set up their trampoline and parallel bars in the clearing at the bottom of the orchard and began to leap and prance about, clapping their hands and urging each other on with enthusiastic squeaks and cries. Allez up! There was one woman only, fat, with hot dark eyes, who managed to be the undisputed centre of the show even though she did nothing more than pose, and toss her hair, and flash those brimming eyes. The first performance was brief, and they went away puffing and sweating.

Next day they were back. He was tending the hives when he saw through the trees a figure sailing up and down with leisurely grace on the trampoline. Already he detected a distinct improvement in their act. They rounded it off with a human pyramid, a wobbly edifice fraught with unacknowledged hilarity. He sat in the shade of an apple tree and watched them bouncing and tumbling, wondering if he was expected to applaud. To the third show he brought along a saucepan and a pair of forks, with which he produced a tattoo as of a snare drum during those moments of stillness and suspense before the last daring splendour of a stunt was attempted. The woman waddled forward, smiling haughtily, and swept him a low bow.

He poured rapturous accounts of their antics into crazed messianic letters which he stuffed stampless in the postbox in the village at dead of night, laughing in the dark at the thought of the storm and panic they would precipitate on the breakfast tables of his family and friends. No replies came, which surprised and annoyed him, until he realised that all to whom he had written were dead, save his son and daughter-in-law, who arrived in the heart of the country one burning noon and laid siege to his sanctuary.

—He must be really bad this time, said George.

—No stamp, said Lucy. Typical.

The house was silent, the windows blind, the doors barricaded against them. They hammered on it with their fists, and heard within the sound of muffled laughter. They called to him, pleaded, and were turning away when suddenly there erupted a plangent discord of piano music, followed by a shriek of castors rolling on stone. The door collapsed slowly into the hall, and there was the old man grinning at them from behind the piano, his little blue eyes glinting in the gloom. His clothes were in tatters, his feet bare and crusted with grime. He looked more than anything like a baby, the bald dome and bandy legs, the eyes, the gums, an ancient mischievous baby.

—My god, Lucy murmured, appalled.

—That’s right! that’s me! the old man cried. He executed a brief dance on the flagstones, capering and gesticulating, then stopped and glared at them.

—What do you want?

George stepped forward, stumbled over the fallen door, and blushed.

—Hello there! he yelled. How are you …?

The heartiness fell sickeningly flat, and he blanched. Although well into middle age, George had the air of a gawky, overgrown schoolboy. His long thin frame gave an impression first of all of paleness, pale eyes and hands, pale dusty hair. When he smiled, the tip of a startlingly red tongue appeared between his teeth. There was an eggstain like a bilious sunburst on his tie. The old man eyed him unenthusiastically and said with heavy sarcasm:

—Rakish as ever, eh Georgie? Well come on, get in here, get in.

Lucy did not stir, rooted by her fury to the spot. How dare this decrepit madman order her George about! A hot flush blossomed on her forehead. The old man smiled at her mockingly, and led his son away down the hall.

He conducted them on a tour of his kingdom as though they were strangers. The house was a shambles. There were pigeons in the bedrooms, rats in the kitchen. That was fine with him, he said. Life everywhere. He told them how he locked himself out one day and broke the door off its hinges to get in again, then had to jam the piano against it to hold it up. The old woman from the farms in the hills who took care of him fled after that episode. He lived in the drawing-room, in a lair of old blankets and newspapers and cobwebs, yet he felt that his presence penetrated every nook and corner of the house like a sustained note of music. Even the mice in the attic were aware of him, he knew it.

In a corridor upstairs Lucy grabbed her husband’s arm and whispered fiercely:

—How long are we going to stay fooling around here?

George ducked his head as though avoiding a blow. He glanced nervously at the old man shambling ahead of them and muttered:

—It’s all right now, don’t fuss, we’ve plenty of time.

Lucy sighed wearily, and closed her eyes. She was a plump woman, still pretty, with large expressive breasts which trembled when she was angry. There was a damp sheen on her nose and chin, and she exuded a faint whiff of sweat. Summer did not agree with her.

—Tell him we’re taking him away, she said. Tell him about the home.

—Lucy, he’s my
father
.

He turned his face resolutely away from her and quickened his step. Once again he noticed how odd this house was, with its turrets and towers and pink and white timbering, like an enormous birthday cake set down in the midst of the fields. Only his father had felt at home here, while the rest of the family dreamt vague fitful dreams of escape into a world free of his malevolent, insidious gaiety. George remembered, with a shudder, his childhood, the genteel penury, the mockery of the village, the friends in whose homes he sat with his hands pressed between his bony knees, inwardly wailing in envy of the simple, dull normalcy of lives where fathers in suits and ties returned at evening, scowling and tired, to newspapers and slippers and huge fried teas. A door at the end of a corridor led into one of the turrets, a tiny eyrie of glass and white wood, capped by an unexpectedly graceful little spire. Here, suspended and insulated in this bubble of light, the old man had spent his days working out with meticulous logic the details of his crazy schemes, oblivious of his wife’s slow dying, the children’s despair. George felt stirring within him the first tendrils of confused rage, and he retreated into the corridor. His father came trotting after him.

—Wait there, I want to show you my plans for the distillery.

George halted.

—Distillery …?

—Aye. With potatoes. The place is full of them out there.

Lucy, behind them, let fall a shrill gulp of laughter.

They had lunch in the ruined dining-room, raw carrots, beans, mounds of raspberries, honey. Lucy found knives and forks and three cracked plates, but the old man would have none of these niceties.

—Do animals use forks? he asked, leaning across the table, his eyes wide. He had put in his dentures. They lent his face an odd look, both comical and savage.

—Well, do they?

—We’re not animals, she said sullenly.

He grinned. That was the answer he had wanted.

—O yes we are, my girl, yes we are, poor forked animals.

Lucy’s chest began to surge, and her forehead darkened, and George, his legs twisted under the table in a knot of anxiety, searched frantically for a way to head off the argument he could see approaching.

—Well listen, why, why don’t you tell us about these fellows in the garden that you see, these acrobats?

The old man’s eyes grew shifty, and he munched on a carrot and mumbled to himself. Then he sat upright suddenly.

—They dance, you know. They have this little dance when they’re flying in that tells the ones coming out where the source is, how far, what direction, precisely. You don’t believe me? I’ll show you. O aye, they dance all right.

Lucy looked blankly from the old man to George and back again, and in her bafflement forgot herself and ate a handful of beans off the bare boards.

—Who? she asked.

The old man glared.

—Who what? Bees, of course. Haven’t I just told you? Snails too.

—Snails! George cried, trying desperately to sound astounded and intrigued, and fired off a nervous laugh like a rapid volley of hiccups.

—
Yuck
, Lucy grunted softly in disgust.

The old man was offended.

—What’s wrong? Snails, what’s wrong with snails? They dance. Everything dances.

He picked up the honeycomb. The thick amber syrup dripped unnoticed into his lap. His lips moved mutely for a moment, striving painfully to find the words. Grime gathered at the corners of his mouth.

—It takes six hundred bees to gather a pound of honey. Six hundred, you’ll say, that’s not bad, but do you know how much flying it takes? Twenty-five thousand miles. Did you know that, did you?

They shook their heads slowly, gazing at him with open mouths. He was trembling, and all at once tears started from his eyes.

—Think of all that work, thousands of miles, on the flowers, that labour, the queen getting fat, the eggs hatching, then the frost, thousands dead, another world. Another world! You’ll say it’s blind instinct, cruel, like a machine, nature’s slaves, and you’re right, you’re right, but listen to me, what is it at the centre, how do they keep it all going?
They dance
.

Suddenly he leaped from his chair and began to zoom about the room, bowing and gliding, crooning and laughing, the tears flowing, waving the comb aloft and scattering honey on the chairs, the table, until at last he tripped on the fender and fell into the fireplace in a storm of dust and soot and cobwebs, out of which his voice rose like the tolling of a bell.

—Poor forked animals, and they dance.

Days passed. Lucy and George cleared the spiders and the mousedirt out of the big front bedroom, and there they spent the hot nights, waking up at all hours to engage in one-sided arguments. George dithered, lapsed into a kind of moral catatonia, smiled a chilling smile, giggled sometimes inexplicably. Once he interrupted her in full flight by saying dreamily:

—Did you know that whales sing? O yes, in the depths of the oceans, songs. So he says.

—George! Get a grip of yourself.

—Yes, yes. But still …

After the first day the old man ceased to acknowledge their presence, and went back to his life in the garden. Often they saw the water cascading in the orchard, and heard his howls. When he met them in the house he would glance at them furtively and smile to himself, like a man recognising familiar, harmless phantoms. Lucy’s rage turned into despair. She confronted her husband with final, unavoidable decisions, which somehow he always managed to avoid. The weather held, sun all day, breathless nights. She became obsessed with herself, her sweat, damp hair, scalding flesh. The taps in the bathroom did not work. She smelled, she was sure of it. This could not go on.

—George, it’s him or me, I mean it, make your choice.

His head sank between his shoulders, and he cracked his knuckles. That noise made her want to scream. He said:

—What do you mean, you or him? I don’t understand.

—You do!

—Do I? Well, I don’t know about that.

She looked at him closely. Was he making fun of her? His pale eyes slid away from her gaze. She changed course.

—George, please, I can’t stand it here. Can you not see that? I’ll go mad, I’ll be like him, worse.

He looked at her directly then, for the first time, it seemed, since they had arrived, and she saw in his face the realisation dawning that she was indeed in pain. She smiled, and touched his hand. The door burst open and the old man came bounding in, waving his arms.

—They’re swarming, they’re swarming! Come on!

She held George’s arm. He smirked at her in a travesty of appeasement, and wriggled out of her grasp. The old man disappeared from the doorway. George raced after him. When he reached the garden it was empty. The air throbbed with a deep, malevolent hum. He stumbled through the briars and the tangled grass, into the orchard, ducking under the branches. The old man lay on his back among the hives, eyes wide, the hose clutched in his hands, the water rising straight up and splashing back on his face. George knelt by his side, under the spray. The orchard quivered around him. Under the sun all was gloom and growth, green things, stalks, lichen, rot and wrack. He stared into thorns and sodden mould, drenched leaves, the purple hearts of roses. His flesh crawled. Then he saw the snails. They were everywhere in the wet, on the leaves, the trees, glued along slender stalks of grass, gleaming silver and black brutes straining out of their shells as though in ecstasy, their moist horns erect and weaving. It was a dance. The snails were dancing. A black cloud of bees rose from the hives and spun away into the sky, thrumming. The old man was dead.