AT THE EDGE OF A LONG, LONE LAND
3rd instalment
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
I rode Da’s bicycle to the top of the hill and threw my jacket on the cold ground, sitting with my back against a tree. A bitter wind swept in from the sea, biting and tearing into me as if it were a wild thing, and I knew soon enough there’d be another storm. I could see storm clouds kneading their way across the distant horizon.
I pulled my knees up tight against my chest, wrapped my arms around them, put my head on my knees and wept. The tall grass shivered in the hard wind—like someone rubbing their hand along the back of an arching cat might see—as the echo of a gunshot sounded somewhere in the distance; a singularly melancholy sound I soon dismissed.
There was such weight of sadness on my heart, such a sense of loss, that I felt as if I’d smother underneath it. I felt unable to catch my breath. Everything he’d ever had was now gone, I thought; his smile, his laughter, the deep creases that lined his face—even the sparkle in his eyes lost somewhere behind the blank stare of that mask. All I’d ever see of him were the two dark holes where his eyes peered out, the hole that was his nose, and the jagged line that was his mouth. I’d never see him smile again and eventually, I’d forget what he looked like. We still had the portrait of him above the desk—that familiar young man not much older than I was now—a face staring out at the promise of youth; seemingly nothing now except the empty reflection of a last rueful memory.
I don’t know how long I sat there feeling sorry for myself, but I could hear the gulls scream overhead as the wind swirled about me. My body felt as numb as my mind, when a sudden shadow fell across the path. I wiped my eyes and looked up at the figure before me. Charlie Smythe stood leaning on his crutch, looking for all the world like Long John Silver might look in a child’s stick drawing, as he worked at stuffing his pipe. His gloves were in his right hand pocket and I remember wondering why a man with one arm would have two gloves. There was a rifle strapped across his back, and a wicker basket—the kind you use for fishing—hanging off his right hip, the lid pasted with blood and black feathers.
“What are ye sitting here for, Jackie boy? Have ye done with yer deliveries? I haven’t seen ye riding about,” he added, chewing around his pipe and searching for a match in his shirt pocket. I nodded slowly.
“Are ye here spying, then?” he asked when I didn’t answer, striking the match against the side of his crutch, and rubbing his eye as the smoke drifted about him.
I looked up at him, squinting into the sunlight that seemed to filter through him as much as it filtered through the naked trees around us.
“I’m not spying on ye Charlie,” I said, wiping at my face with my hands. “Really, I’m not. I don’t even have Grandad’s spyglass with me.”
“Ye mean today? Yer not spying on me today,” Charlie said, laughing between puffs of his pipe. He looked toward the point, toward the McCreary Place, and I followed his gaze. Felicity was pushing her bicycle up the long hill. He nodded as he rolled his leather tobacco pouch against his thigh, biting the string tight. He leaned on the crutch under what remained of his left arm—he’d lost it just above the elbow—and put the pouch in his left pant leg—now an empty sack where his leg should’ve been. He reached into a hole he’d cut into the front of the pant leg, dropping the pouch inside.
“Don’t think I haven’t seen ye laying under these trees, watching me. Or is it her ye’ve been looking at all this time?” he asked, giving a nod in Felicity’s direction. “What a fool I’ve been, thinking it was me ye’ve been watching,” he grinned, looking out at the hill
“Does it matter anymore?” I asked, turning my gaze toward the distant sea before looking at the hill where Felicity was lost behind the rocks, and there was nothing left for me to see but the endless crash of waves and the screaming gulls overhead.
“It’s yer Da’ then, isn’t it? He’s come home?”
“How’d ye know that?” I asked, squinting up at him.
“I saw him in Penzance.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. He come in on the train and was standing about like a man having a time of it, making up his mind.”
“About what?”
“About what! Why, staying, of course! But he’d come this far, didn’t he? And I told him that, too. ‘What’s the point in coming all this way Jack,’ I asked him, ‘and not seeing yer family?’”
“Ye talked to him?”
“I did,” he nodded.
“How’d ye know it was him?”
“Ye mean on account of the mask he was wearing?” he asked, and now it was my turn to nod.
“Funny ye should say that,” he said, pointing his pipe at me as he talked. “He stood there staring at me, and I stood there staring at him—both of us feeling the other man’d suffered more than it was worth for either of us—when I got the feeling there was something about those dark eyes staring at me that made me think I knew him. But it was his shoulders, Jackie, and that stoop of his, ye know, the way he leans off to the right like that? It was the way he was standing there as he was—there’s not many men as big as him in these parts—I mean, there was a hunnerd little things about him. And when I stumped over to him, the people, well, they’d just as rather move out of the way than have to talk to the likes of us, and he says to me, in that strange new voice he has, he says, ‘Hi Charlie’, just like that. Just like it was yesterday, and we’d had a pint together.”
“I don’t know what to say to him, Charlie,” I said, as the sea crashed into the Point. That’s when I saw Felicity coming out from behind the rocks, the wind ripping at her long dress and her hair flying loose as she paused to tie her hat down on top of her head.
“It’s not what ye were thinking it’d be, is it?” Charlie said with a sigh, turning to watch her as well. “His coming back, I mean?” he added when he saw I didn’t understand what he meant.
He pulled the rifle over his head, and then the basket, slipping out of his coat and dropping it on the ground beside me. He leaned against the tree, holding onto the crutch as he let himself slide down to his coat.
“Was that you I heard shooting earlier?” I asked.
“Aye. T’was. It’s why I was in Penzance yesterday. I’m shootin’ crows, Jackie. They want me to cull the flocks. ‘Charlie,’ they says to me, ‘Murder the murder. There’re too many of ‘em.’ So now, I’m a murder murderer,” he said with a grin. “I wonder why they call them that—a murder of crows, I mean? No matter. They pay me a tuppence for every crow I bring in. It’s not much for a man like me to live on, but at least I’m living,” he added with a grin. “And that’s all that matters.” He sat against the tree puffing on his pipe.
“What of yer Da’?” he asked me of a sudden, looking at me sideways. “Maybe I should come in for a pint an’ we can talk about what it means to want to die. D’ye think he’d like that?”
“Me Da’?”
“Ye say ye don’t know what to say to him. How can ye not know what to say, Jackie? He’s yer Da’, for Christ’s sake.”
“I haven’t seen him since the war started, Charlie. Yer the only who made it back, and look at ye, yer missing an arm and a leg. Da’s got no face. There’s no way Mum’ll let me go—”
“Go?” Charlie asked with a laugh. “Why d’ye wanna be goin’ out there for, ye daft bastard? There’s nothing there for ye; it’s a killing field. The generals don’t know what they’re doing; they send wave after wave of young troops in like they’re still fighting the Franco-Prussian war—only now, they’ve got machine guns facing them. What kind of way is that to fight a war?”
“But what about the glory, Charlie?”
“There’s no glory in a war where people’d rather shoot themselves an’ get sent home than face the enemy.”
“That’s a coward’s way out!”
“Is it?” he said, staring up at the clouds as he puffed on his pipe. “I wish I’d’ve done it.” He turned to look me square in the eye, puffing his pipe, and I could see there were tears in his eyes.
“I’ll bet yer wishin’ yer Da’ would’ve done it.”
I was silent for a moment. I didn’t know what he expected me to say.
“The best thing ye can do right now is talk to him, Jackie. He might not be the man he was, but that man’s still inside. It’s up to you t’ find him, Jackie. Ye’d best talk to ‘im before it’s too late,” he said, wiping his tears.
“Too late? Too late for what?”
He was silent a moment longer—I could hear my heart racing; feel the wind coming up from the sea—before he reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out another wooden match. I hadn’t even noticed his pipe had gone out. He struck the match and puffed his pipe back to life.
“A man loses a part of himself when something like this happens—especially with what yer Da’s lost—an' I don’t mean just his face, but his self-worth as a man. It’s hard to be sincere once ye’ve gone through what he has.” He was quiet a moment longer as he puffed his pipe back to life, shaking the match out slowly. “Well, all sorts of thoughts go running through yer head, actually, but that might just be me talking,” he said, looking at me with a half grin. “I know all too well what he’s thinking, ‘cause I’ve thought about it m’self. Maybe I’d best come in for a pint with ‘im; sort of talk it out of ‘im?”
“Talk what out of him?”
“Do I have to draw ye a picture, Jackie boy? Ye’d best find out what he’s thinking.”
*
I knew Charlie was right. I’d have to say something. I couldn’t help thinking of the night before, and the face he’d shown Mum. How would I react if he showed it to me? I knew if a woman could love a man that unconditionally, it was a testament to the love they shared. But what about the love between a father and his son?
I saw Felicity on her bike, coming up the small path toward me, and I stopped to let her pass. She came to a stop beside me, catching her breath and wiping her forehead with a small gloved hand.
“Jackie, isn’t it?” she said in a singsong voice that made my heart melt; the perfect lilt of her Kentish accent sounding as I imagined an angel would sound.
“Yes,” I said, almost stammering that single word out and feeling myself flush just being close to her. I saw her smile at me unease.
“Have you done with the post then?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And you’re off for home?”
I nodded.
“Come on then!” she said, tying up her dress and pushing her bicycle down the hill. “I’ll race you!”
I could hear her laugh, her long hair streaming behind her as she pedalled. She’d stop pedalling as she took a corner, or else stand up when she rode over a particularly rough spot, and I could see that she knew how to ride. I could see I was in for a go of it, and began cutting the corners sharper, my pedals hitting the ground as I leaned into the muddy turns. I felt the bicycle slipping under me, and for a moment feared I might fall. She was a hundred yards ahead of me if it was a foot, and I knew I’d have to take drastic measures if I wanted to beat her, and oh, did I want her to know I was a man who didn’t take to being beaten by a woman.
I left the worn out path, feeling myself go airborne for the briefest of moments and coming down hard enough to feel it in the core of me. I knew the bicycle could take it; I’d ridden these hill for years and knew every hole along the path—just as I knew where I could cut corners and skirt along the track without sliding. The wind was a bracing scythe that cut through me and I could feel tears squeezing out of the corners of my eyes with what felt like the keen sting of a slap.
I passed her just as we approached the hotel entrance, skidding to a stop in a choking cloud of dust and a splatter of rocks that rained across the yard and hotel doorway as if it were hail. She came in behind me, laughing, and I thought she brought with her the song of angels.
Da’ came limping out of the doorway leaning on his cane and her smile faded at the sight of him, draining from her face as if a cloud were passing in front of the sun. She stood rigid as she straddled the bicycle—perhaps frightened at the thought of what lay beneath the mask—because I could see what he meant about how people perceived him. She forced herself to smile, and I could see it was forced; but so could he. I saw him look at me before turning and going back inside without a word. There was a lingering hurt in the depths of his eyes, and it felt as if a piece of my heart broke with him as he went back inside without a word.
“Who was that?” she asked, pushing her bicycle toward the wall and leaning it against the arbor.
“It’s me Da’,” I said slowly. “Been home three nights now.”
“Oh, the poor man,” she said, and for some reason I felt my anger rising, knowing how Da’ didn’t need her pity any more than I needed to hear it. Perhaps she saw the anger in my eyes? I don’t know. She looked down at the ground for a moment before lifting her eyes up to me again and I could see how everything about her changed in that fraction of a heartbeat. There was compassion in her eyes, and tenderness in her voice.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. He startled me coming out like that, is all. It must be hard for you. I should be happy for you—happy for your Mum, I mean—at least she has her husband back. I know what it means to be alone—as well as lonely. That’s why I’m thinking of making my way back to London.”
“Yer leaving?” I asked, thinking how I’d just now got up the nerve to speak to her.
“I said I’m thinking of it,” she said, forcing a weak smile.
“Would ye like to meet him then? My Da’?”
“I’d be happy to meet him,” she said, and I knew at that moment that everything would be fine. Even though she didn’t know it, she’d shown me a part of myself I hadn’t even seen before—a part of me I couldn’t see—and that was the reflection of myself I’d shown Da’. I thought of what had Charlie said as I walked inside, calling for him.
He stepped out of the kitchen, Mum following, and I hugged him, holding him close and whispering in his ear that I loved him. I stepped back and looked at him, peering into the darkness of his eyes where I could see tears.
I looked at Mum standing off to the side as if she were a breathless girl and saw there were tears in her eyes, as well. I smiled, looking sheepish. She burst into one of those happy, laughing sobs as she fought for self-control, wiping her eyes with the corners of her apron.
“Da’,” I said stepping back. “May I introduce Mrs. Felicity Sidereal?”
“Do I know ye?” Da’ asked with a curious tilt of his head. “Seems I’ve heard that name somewhere before.”
“I don’t believe we’ve met.”
I knew Charlie was right. I’d have to say something. I couldn’t help thinking of the night before, and the face he’d shown Mum. How would I react if he showed it to me? I knew if a woman could love a man that unconditionally, it was a testament to the love they shared. But what about the love between a father and his son?
I saw Felicity on her bike, coming up the small path toward me, and I stopped to let her pass. She came to a stop beside me, catching her breath and wiping her forehead with a small gloved hand.
“Jackie, isn’t it?” she said in a singsong voice that made my heart melt; the perfect lilt of her Kentish accent sounding as I imagined an angel would sound.
“Yes,” I said, almost stammering that single word out and feeling myself flush just being close to her. I saw her smile at me unease.
“Have you done with the post then?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And you’re off for home?”
I nodded.
“Come on then!” she said, tying up her dress and pushing her bicycle down the hill. “I’ll race you!”
I could hear her laugh, her long hair streaming behind her as she pedalled. She’d stop pedalling as she took a corner, or else stand up when she rode over a particularly rough spot, and I could see that she knew how to ride. I could see I was in for a go of it, and began cutting the corners sharper, my pedals hitting the ground as I leaned into the muddy turns. I felt the bicycle slipping under me, and for a moment feared I might fall. She was a hundred yards ahead of me if it was a foot, and I knew I’d have to take drastic measures if I wanted to beat her, and oh, did I want her to know I was a man who didn’t take to being beaten by a woman.
I left the worn out path, feeling myself go airborne for the briefest of moments and coming down hard enough to feel it in the core of me. I knew the bicycle could take it; I’d ridden these hill for years and knew every hole along the path—just as I knew where I could cut corners and skirt along the track without sliding. The wind was a bracing scythe that cut through me and I could feel tears squeezing out of the corners of my eyes with what felt like the keen sting of a slap.
I passed her just as we approached the hotel entrance, skidding to a stop in a choking cloud of dust and a splatter of rocks that rained across the yard and hotel doorway as if it were hail. She came in behind me, laughing, and I thought she brought with her the song of angels.
Da’ came limping out of the doorway leaning on his cane and her smile faded at the sight of him, draining from her face as if a cloud were passing in front of the sun. She stood rigid as she straddled the bicycle—perhaps frightened at the thought of what lay beneath the mask—because I could see what he meant about how people perceived him. She forced herself to smile, and I could see it was forced; but so could he. I saw him look at me before turning and going back inside without a word. There was a lingering hurt in the depths of his eyes, and it felt as if a piece of my heart broke with him as he went back inside without a word.
“Who was that?” she asked, pushing her bicycle toward the wall and leaning it against the arbor.
“It’s me Da’,” I said slowly. “Been home three nights now.”
“Oh, the poor man,” she said, and for some reason I felt my anger rising, knowing how Da’ didn’t need her pity any more than I needed to hear it. Perhaps she saw the anger in my eyes? I don’t know. She looked down at the ground for a moment before lifting her eyes up to me again and I could see how everything about her changed in that fraction of a heartbeat. There was compassion in her eyes, and tenderness in her voice.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. He startled me coming out like that, is all. It must be hard for you. I should be happy for you—happy for your Mum, I mean—at least she has her husband back. I know what it means to be alone—as well as lonely. That’s why I’m thinking of making my way back to London.”
“Yer leaving?” I asked, thinking how I’d just now got up the nerve to speak to her.
“I said I’m thinking of it,” she said, forcing a weak smile.
“Would ye like to meet him then? My Da’?”
“I’d be happy to meet him,” she said, and I knew at that moment that everything would be fine. Even though she didn’t know it, she’d shown me a part of myself I hadn’t even seen before—a part of me I couldn’t see—and that was the reflection of myself I’d shown Da’. I thought of what had Charlie said as I walked inside, calling for him.
He stepped out of the kitchen, Mum following, and I hugged him, holding him close and whispering in his ear that I loved him. I stepped back and looked at him, peering into the darkness of his eyes where I could see tears.
I looked at Mum standing off to the side as if she were a breathless girl and saw there were tears in her eyes, as well. I smiled, looking sheepish. She burst into one of those happy, laughing sobs as she fought for self-control, wiping her eyes with the corners of her apron.
“Da’,” I said stepping back. “May I introduce Mrs. Felicity Sidereal?”
“Do I know ye?” Da’ asked with a curious tilt of his head. “Seems I’ve heard that name somewhere before.”
“I don’t believe we’ve met.”
