Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

The stranger stops in the road by the lane to the farm. He leans down. Peers at the boy.

Y'ou do not appear, child, to be made of mud and straw like

the other inhabitants of this place. Indeed you put me in mind of someone. You have never been in Nev^gate? The Fleet? Bridew^ell? No . . . well, 'tis only my humour. Tell me, do you have money in your pocket? A penny perhaps?'

James shakes his head. The stranger shrugs.

'Then nothing is something, for w^e have it in common. You are schooled here?'

A nod.

*You can read?'

A nod

'God's teeth, child, I could have a better conversation with my hat. Do you never speak? . . . Ah, the creature shakes its head. And is the creature happy to be dumb? ... It does not know. And where does the creature live? . . . Behold! It points . . . Here? Here! Is Dyer your father?'

Before James can move his head to answer, the stranger takes the boy's face between his hands, studies it like a portrait. His hands smell of tobacco juice. He laughs, more like a bark than laughter, then whispers, Til be . . . I'll be . . .'

From along the road comes a burst of voices. It is the wedding cart, freshly daubed with yellow paint, turning out of Church Lane with Jenny Scurl and Bob Ketch and a half-dozen of the wedding party on board, singing and shouting and passing the bottle.

The stranger looks a moment longer at the boy, then hurries off towards the orchard, the sole of one of his shoes flapping as he goes.

James runs into the house. The women are sweating in the kitchen. He goes upstairs unnoticed. Sarah, Liza and Charles have long since changed. Their common clothes lie sprawled upon the beds. Now that they are older the room is divided by a curtain. James fingers the wool of his sisters' dresses, and the wooden combs where strands of Sarah's red-gold hair catch the light. She is the

beautiful one. Half the village are enamoured of her, her name carved into the bark of a dozen trees, and though Joshua talks loudly of his blunderbuss, its cargo of rusty nails, they still come, men and boys, misty with lust.

Liza also has admirers, but treats them so fiercely most go off in search of easier conquests and softer hearts. In truth, her affections are already spoken for, split like a divining-rod between her father and her youngest brother.

James undresses, pulls on a pair of leather breeches and a linen shirt. He studies himself in the mirror. He is tall for his age, fineboned, his skin slightly burnished by the sun. Such an enigmatic look; such a silent, knowing face. There are moments when he thinks the face will speak to him and tell him secrets, remarkable secrets. He looks until he is dizzy.

On the stairs he hears the patter and stamp of wooden soles, then Jenny Scurl and his mother, laughing and chiding each other. He goes on to the narrow landing. Jenny Scurl's face is round and pale as a sliced apple. She has already drunk a good deal, and the sight of the boy seems to mulch something in her heart. She bends down and kisses him fatly on the cheek. Elizabeth says: 'Go out now, Jem.'

In the orchard, the noises of the wedding party are already unnaturally loud. The guests sit at a long, white-clothed table, feeding themselves upon Joshua Dyer's food and drink. Joshua, squeezed in the coat he wore at his own wedding, sits beside the Widow Scurl, a threadlike, nervous woman in a large, unsuccessful hat, the brim of which strikes the parson's nose each time she turns to talk with him. The parson barely notices. He is sweating and telling a story no one can be bothered to hsten to. An empty bottle of port glints in the grass behind him. Next to the parson sits Widow Dyer, a dense and disapproving cloud. Beside her is Bob Ketch, and his sister Amelda, the girl looking at something

the stranger is showing her in the palm of his hand, and nodding her hot, pretty head as he talks. Beneath the table is a dog, black, thick-necked, scavenging from foot to foot.

The harvest looks like being fair again. Joshua, revelling in his part as stand-in for Jenny s sea-deceased father, has seen to it that the table is v^ell spread with dishes. Seeing James, he calls him over and in an awkward movement drags him on to his lap. The bride totters to her seat, a large grin adrift in her face. Widow Scurl flashes her gums, tears a piece of white meat from the chicken and pushes it between the boy's lips. He keeps it there, on his tongue, until Joshua picks up the knife to carve. Then he slides from the farmer's lap, sidles beyond the nearest trees and spits the meat into the grass.

He weaves between the avenues of fruit trees, comes by and by to an old cherry tree, the tallest tree in the orchard, and taking off his coat he circles the trunk until he finds a knot in the bark to serve as a foothold. He climbs, smudging his shirt-front with lichen as he stretches up for the lowest branch, then swinging his legs, rotating his body until he is topside of the branch like a drowsy cat. He sits up, finds another branch within easy reach and sees how he may go from one to another as if ascending a spiral staircase. Birds, thieving the cherries, go off like small explosions as he climbs towards them. Now and then he pauses in the hot shade to eat the fruit, letting the stones fall from his mouth to bounce off the branches below. Watching them fall, he sees a black shape moving at the base of the tree.