The Wicker Tree Page 11

  Delia came on the line clearly thinking that this unexpected call signalled some sort of crisis at Mary Hillier's, that the so-far remarkably amenable young Beth had thrown what she called 'a wobbly'.

  'My dear Beth, what can I do for you?' she asked, when Mary handed the phone over to her young charge.

  'I thought you would like to know that I have checked out nuclear and it's OK. There are no what Terry, my teacher, calls 'contraindications' in the Good Book that I could find. I heard you say something about not being able to take the suspense of not knowing and wanted to like tell you it's OK just as soon as I could. Not to worry. Good night. Sleep well.'

  'Thank you for calling,' said Delia with what sounded to Beth like a choke in her voice. Relief, no doubt. Beth was glad she'd made that call.

  The Devil Makes a Call

  MAIN STREET IN Tressock that night was misty, almost to the point of fog. Outside the Police Station, where the lights shone hazily through the drawn blinds, the figure of Jack standing close to one of the windows, as if he hoped to hear something from within, seemed as insubstantial as a wraith. After a few minutes, Nevermore fluttered down and joined him, settling on his shoulder. Then Jack made his way to the pub, entering by the back door which led to the very basic, breezy and smelly men's toilet, and disappeared inside.

  From the front of the building, the Grove Inn had a much more beckoning air. A dense creeper covered half the grey stone building, having had to be trimmed away from the windows. But a honeycoloured light shone from these, making the whole place seem like a welcoming lantern from the dank gloom outside. Music and highpitched chatter filtered out into the night.

  Inside the inn, Steve was holding court, standing at the bar. So many people wanted to speak to him, shake his hand, buy him another Coke. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. It was like he was suddenly famous. But he knew that simply wasn't so. He was just the guy who had accompanied Beth Boothby into town. He was just a cowboy. Of course to be a cowboy at all was rare enough these days, but these folks couldn't know that. He told jokes he wouldn't have dared repeat back home, they were so old. But these guys laughed like he'd suddenly turned into Steve Martin. He kept off the war. No one seemed to want to talk about that anyways. There were a lot who were interested in his quarter horses back home. It seemed everyone here rode horseback and had some kind of mount.

  The little band had packed up, but a plump little lady he'd seen at the bar, swallowing some kind of red wine like she really needed it bad, was now seated at the piano and had started to play and to sing. She had one of those rich voices you heard sometimes, fuelled by wine, mellowed by tobacco, that could deliver a song so it kind of flowed out of her mouth like molasses.

  'I tempted him with apples, all golden in the light

  He laid me in the orchard, till the day turned into night

  And since he plucked my cherry, all red and juicy ripe

  To savour all the fruits of me is his delight.'

  Steve decided that a folk song sung like a torch song was something he'd have liked to hear Beth try, particularly with those words. It made him almost laugh out loud to think of it. But instead he yawned and, making his excuses, made his way towards the stairs and bed. Oddly, everyone in the crowded bar seemed to notice that he was leaving, going to bed. Something like silence fell. A chorus of 'Good night, Steve,' 'Sleep well, Steve,' followed him. The woman at the piano watched him all the time with her big brown eyes. As he climbed the stairs, he looked down for an instant at her cleavage. Big breasts. Like fruits indeed. But the Lord recalled him with an image of Beth's pert, much littler, probably much firmer tits. He felt the silver ring on his finger and walked determinedly on.

  In his room he could still hear the song. Peter, the innkeeper, knocked on the door to ask if he had everything he needed. He had. They exchanged cheery good nights. The room had a big four-poster bed and a feather mattress. Steve's grandmother had one of those, he remembered from visiting her as a child. You could jump into it and sink so deep no one could see you or find you. He hauled off his shirt and shucked off his jeans, just kept on his T-shirt and his under shorts and sat down to haul off his precious boots. Beth had bought him those at Neiman Marcus in Dallas and he knew they cost her an arm and a leg because they were made of at least three different kinds of leather. Calf, gator and – he couldn't remember the name of the other.

  He took his grey suit, the one they'd bought for him to go door-todoor, out from his case and went to hang it in the big mahogany closet. He opened the door and almost fell back – as something winged and black flew right out of the closet at him, flapping wildly, cawing. The raven. Jack was next. Right behind the bird. He was making a hideous face, leaping right out at Steve, shouting as he came:

  'I am Beelzebub, Prince of Darkness,

  Lord of the Flies, Devil Incarnate.

  I will make you drunk on black wine.

  I'll bend you to my implacable will.

  Till your miserable soul is all mine.'

  Jack's hands grabbed at Steve's chin. It was a gesture not so much sexual as proprietorial, like the slave owner's grasping for his human property. Or so Steve, his mind reeling, the shock only now giving way to a powerful rush of adrenalin, felt as he drew back his right fist and drove it with all his might straight into Jack's face. He was sure he was smiting the Devil.

  Jack was catapulted back into the closet, where he collapsed amidst a shower of metal clothes hangers. The crash resonated all through the inn. His nose was pouring blood and one of his eyes was starting to close. He seemed also to have cut his lip. Steve looked at him with anguish. What had he done? Devil or no Devil, violence was never the way. And this guy was borderline crazy. Downstairs they'd like told him this. Warned him even. Crazy but harmless.

  'Forgive me Lord, please forgive me,' he prayed. 'I just didn't know what I was doing. Like I couldn't have stopped myself doing it. Are you OK, Jack? Gee I'm really, really sorry. I didn't mean to…'

  But by now Peter McNeil was by Steve's side with Danny and Carl close behind. One of them got a wet towel from the bathroom and applied it to Jack's face, while Peter was examining Steve's hand, which had been cut, probably by Jack's teeth.

  'Steve,' Peter was saying. 'I am – we all are – terribly sorry. Of course you hit him. Anyone would. He loves jumping out of cupboards and surprising people. It's his favourite sport.'

  'He kept saying he was the Devil,' Steve almost moaned. 'He kept on saying it. Oh Lord I can see it now. He was tempting me to hit him. And I failed the test, Lord. Please, please forgive me. I punched him good. I really ain't worthy of this mission Lord. I just hate to think what Beth will think of me when she hears of this.'

  Danny and Carl started to get Jack to his feet when suddenly his previously pliable body went quite rigid. He stared around at them, knowing that he now had their attention, but it was to Steve, or rather his hat, that he now spoke – in his sepulchral tone:

  'Her fate with thine was intertwined,

  So spake it in his inner mind

  Each orbed on each a baleful star

  Each proved the other's blight and bar

  Each unto each were best, most far

  Yea each to each was worse than foe:

  Thou a scared dullard, gibbering low

  AND SHE AN AVALANCHE OF WOE!'

  'Stop that, Jack. Stop it!' shouted Peter McNeil. 'Take him to my flat and clean him up, please Danny. Put him under the cold shower if he goes on like that. I'll be there in a minute. Soon as I've seen that poor Steve is OK.'

  Danny and Carl did as they were asked, half-carrying Jack who, having delivered his jeremiad, went quietly enough, contenting himself with laughing until he gave himself loud hiccups that could be heard all over the inn.

  'Are you OK, Steve?' Peter's deep concern was certainly real.

  Steve felt far from OK. But he very much wanted to be alone so that he could sort out his emotions, so he could try and figure what this terrible and total
ly unexpected incident meant.

  'He's just crazy, right?' he asked, hoping for some guidance from Peter.

  'He is quite a different kind of human being from you or me, Steve. Something happened to his brain, probably when he was a baby. All sorts of possible emotions and abilities were wiped out. But that left others that have developed beyond those of any normal, every-day person. His memory is extraordinary…'

  'And he tries to tell the future?' Steve was anxious to know. Was Beth supposed to be his avalanche of woe? Was this the Oracle thing speaking? What could this – crazy guy really know?

  'He knows nothing, Steve. He gets his kicks persuading people he knows. He can't relate to others normally. So at least by playing the oracle he feels he is having an effect on others. Don't let him have any kind of effect on you. What he said was pure gibberish. Put it out of your mind.'

  Steve decided that he must be alone to think it through so he reassured Peter that he was OK, and to quote what the waiters in the hotel had kept saying every time he or Beth asked for something, he echoed, 'No problem at all, Peter.'

  Woe was not a word Steve had ever used. But his grandmother, she of the four-poster feather bed, was an Irish woman, born in a place called Mayo, who used to give Steve's grandad a real hard time whenever he bet most of his pay packet on some catastrophe of a horse. She told little Steve that his grandad only bet on three-legged horses. The only four-legged one he'd ever backed won big time and from then on in he was hooked.

  'Woe, woe,' she would say to the old cowboy. 'You bring nothing but woe on us all.'

  So the prophecy of an avalanche of woe was not something to look forward to if you were at all superstitious. However, Steve decided, after some prayer and a long conversation on the telephone with Beth, that he was not superstitious, that those who trusted in the Lord regarded all that oracle stuff as pagan bullshit. To liberate the people of Tressock from such superstitions was part of their Redeemer mission. Looked at like that, everything seemed cool again to Steve and he slept the deep sleep of a man who is secure in the belief that he is still captain of his own fate.

  The Rehearsal

  HE'D BEEN AFRAID that he would dream of Jack leaping out of closets at him. But, in so far as Steve could remember, as he was awakened next morning, his dream had been of the voluptuous lady at the piano who seemed to have been sharing his bed with a variety of juicy fruits scattered about her ample person. He knew that he felt guilty about allowing her to wallow beside him in this way, particularly as Lachlan Morrison himself seemed to be recalling him to consciousness.

  'Steve! Steve! Wake up! Wake up!' Lachlan was shouting.

  As he leapt from the bed, in the mistaken belief that Lachlan was in or about to be in the room, he heard the unmistakable neigh of a horse. He rushed to open the window. The first thing that met his eyes was Lolly sitting on a fine grey horse with a rather impatient looking Prince on a leading rein. Right next to them, sitting in an antique car (he was later to hear from Lolly that it was a 1936 Bull Nosed Bentley) was Lachlan dressed for the office.

  'Good morning, Steve,' he shouted. 'You'll remember Lolly? We thought you might like to be introduced to the countryside around here so we brought Prince for you to ride. Lolly'll show you the sights. Alright with you?'

  'Alright!' Steve shouted down. 'That is – just great! Thank you, sir. I'll be right down.'

  A man or a woman who loves horses can love other men and women, that goes without saying. But the bond there can be between a human being and a horse, for those who truly understand these beautiful animals and love them, is unlike any other. Sheep dogs, gun dogs, hunting dogs, even lap dogs come close in their relationships with humans. But a person who is completely comfortable on the back of a horse, for whom the act of riding is as if the person and the animal were fused into one almost indivisible creature, moves, however briefly, in another dimension. To have achieved this fusion is wonderful in itself. For that wonder to last means it has become addictive. Steve had been an addict since only a few years after he had learned to walk.

  Hauling on his clothes, splashing water on his unshaven face, Steve gave not a thought to Beth or the Lord that morning. After several long days of dealing with people he was once more going to be in his element. As he almost ran out of the inn, with no thought of coffee or breakfast, he took one look at that black beauty and thought – what a horse! And then there was Lolly.

  As the rest of Tressock awoke; as Lachlan changed gears noisily and the Bentley roared and grumbled its way out of town; as the distant hooter at Nuada signalled the change of shifts at the power station; as Steve and Lolly rode across the bridge over the Sulis and headed for the hills beyond; as all this activity stirred, Mary Hillier's household was already bustling with busy girls working hard on their May Day dresses.

  Beth came down into the eat-in kitchen wearing a Japanese cotton kimono, the kind you can buy for two dollars in Hawaii, her hair still wrapped in a towel after her shower. She had just completed a long and complex prayer. She was beginning to believe that she would one day, like the Rev. Pat Robertson, be able to have a dialogue with the Lord. Right now, satisfied that the Lord was approving of the course of action she and Steve were taking, she was ready for coffee and hoping for eggs.

  'Good morning, Beth,' said Mary. 'There's tea over there. Or coffee if you don't mind instant.'

  Beth didn't care for British tea. Iced tea back home was OK, but it was an odd thing about these people, she thought, that they ate or drank everything at the wrong temperature. Instant coffee at least gave you a shot of much needed caffeine, even if it tasted blah. Beer was warm, she'd heard. The OJ Mary poured her was tepid. To her relief she was handed a carton of fresh eggs and told to cook them any way she liked. Beth couldn't cook much, at home. Vashti did all that. But eggs were Beth's speciality. She made a big fluffy omelette and was flattered that the girls, and even Mary, all wanted to have a taste.

  'Can I call Steve again at the inn, Mary?' she asked. They'd spoken the night before about the guy he'd hit, with good reason she thought, although she didn't say that. She wanted to tell him about the May Queen dress and to plan the day.

  'Why certainly. You know where the phone is,' said Mary, who was putting finishing touches to the Queen of the May dress.

  'He might not be there right now, Beth,' said Bella. 'I hear Sir Lachlan has leant him Prince to go riding with Lolly this morning.'

  Beth felt irritated at this news, almost angry. What made it worse was that she knew it was irrational to not want Steve riding around on horses together with that Lolly. She forced herself to just shrug and give them all the smile.

  'It's all part of their plan, Beth,' Mary was saying. 'Sir Lachlan and Lady Morrison's plan. They're hoping that Steve can be persuaded to be the Laddie this year so that he can be the one to crown you Queen of the May.'

  Steve knew all about English saddles, had seen them used in Texas, but had never had an opportunity to do more than just sit in one to see what it felt like. Used to his legs stretched long in the stirrups, having them shortened so that his knees bent and the toes of his precious boots turned up was going to be a novelty. But Lolly, who helped him get the length just right, seemed to think that he would have no trouble getting used to it. Nor did he. The delicacy of Prince's mouth was another thing. The horse's response to the slightest pressure on the bit made Steve soon lighten the use of his hands on the reins.

  As they rode out of town, across the bridge over the Sulis River, splashing through the water meadows that bordered it, through yellow carpets of marsh marigolds, slowly moving onto higher dryer grazing land, Steve realized what he hadn't really considered before, that these horses, his magnificent gelding Prince, and Lolly's feisty little grey mare Pompadour, were bred for hunting, for jumping over everything from stone walls to five-bar gates – led by hounds in full cry – in pursuit of deer or fox.

  He had his pony jump things as a kid, but cattle didn't jump so there was little call for co
wboys to do so. So he let Lolly take the lead at the first dry-stone wall that barred their way. He watched her lean into the jump as she gave Pompadour her head. It seemed effortless and indeed it wasn't very high. Prince followed with a vigour that took Steve by surprise. His backside left the saddle and he lost one of the stirrups for a moment, but the horse had cleared the wall as if he was jumping a much higher obstacle and Steve had entirely recovered himself before Lolly turned to look at her pupil.

  Next it was a long gallop side by side uphill towards some woods. She watched him jump a deep ditch, letting the eager Prince lead the way. Steve felt much more in command this time; he was beginning to feel at one with the horse.

  Riding was second nature to him. They talked horses. He learned that his saddle was 'straight cut', in other words without much padding. Old-fashioned these days, but designed for hunting. He told her about his quarter horses back home. She confided that Pompadour had been, 'a great head tosser, if you'll forgive the expression. But we disciplined her with a Martingale.' Steve looked at Lolly, after she'd said this. Looked at her straight. She was laughing. A wonderful bawdy, chuckling laugh. Her whole face lit up with her amusement, particularly her eyes. Steve had noticed that laughter was never far away for her.

  'A head tosser?' Steve knew perfectly well what she meant, but he liked the sudden sexual tension she had introduced between them. She certainly was one extraordinarily sexy woman.

  'Oh you know what I mean, Steve!' she tossed her head, and flicking her reins so Pompadour's bit tightened suddenly, the mare tossed her head too.

  'Guess so,' he acknowledged, laughing. 'So where are we going?'

  'Lachlan thought you might like to see the route the Laddie takes when we do the Border Riding. By the way, England is only five miles away just over those hills.'

  They had gained altitude and could see the little town of Tressock clustered close to where the river Sulis meandered through the water meadows to curl round the castle like a silvery crook in the spring sunshine. Behind the castle, pale purple and green hills stretched under grey clouds blowing in from the chilly North Sea. Beyond that lay the land of the ancient enemy. To Steve this view was but a pretty picture that belonged in a movie, yet not so pretty that it seriously distracted him from the discovery of Lolly.