And this is how Lampie finds him the next morning, when she comes for her reading lesson. Edward is still on the floor, not lying under the bed now, but in the middle of the room. He is struggling and kicking like a rabbit in a snare. There is a kind of leather harness around him, with belts and straps, and at the bottom a clumsy leather shoe that is sticking out at an angle. His tail is hopelessly entangled; the belts have buckles and holes and he keeps tugging away at them, but he cannot undo them.
“Fish? What are you doing?”
“My. Name. Is. Not. Fish!”
“Do you need some help?”
“No. Go away.”
“Couldn’t I?… If I just undo the buckles on that… What is that thing you’re wearing?”
“Go away, I said!” His hands keep fiddling with a prong that he cannot get out of a hole. The whole rotten contraption is twisting his back and he cannot take it off, he simply cannot take it off.
“Are we going to do some reading?”
She is still standing there. “If you don’t go away this instant…” he pants. “I’ll bite you in two. I’ll bite your stupid head off. I’ll…” He struggles and kicks, but he only gets even more entangled.
“If you’ll just let me…”
“No! How many more times do I have to tell you? No!”
He hears her put down the tray on the chest of drawers and then she is suddenly standing there behind him. He feels a small tug and the harness slides off him and onto the floor. He is free. He wants to slip straight under the bed, but he has no strength left in his arms. So he lies there, with his cheek on the carpet.
“What on earth is that thing?”
He groans. She can’t just go away and leave him in peace, can she?
“Are you learning to walk with it? Are you trying to walk on your, um… deformity?”
She can see for herself, can’t she? She’s not blind.
“But why?”
“Because I made a promise.”
“Who to? Your father?”
He gives a little nod. She picks up the breakfast tray and puts it down beside him on the floor. He smells the fish and it makes him feel sick.
“Take that away. And take yourself away too. I have a headache.”
“But you have to eat,” she says. “You know, a bit of strength for the day ahead.”
What nonsense, thinks Edward. He lies on his back.
“My father,” he suddenly hears himself saying. “My father has a box in his desk.” He was not planning to tell her, but that little box has been on his mind all morning. “There’s an arrow inside it, he showed it to me once. A tiny little poisoned arrow.”
“Oh yes,” says Lampie. She sits down on the floor beside him. “The kind that the Bushmen use.”
He looks at her. “How do you know that?”
“Oh, I heard it somewhere.”
“Who from?” She can’t read, but she knows that?
“From Crow, from… from a pirate I know.”
“You know a pirate?”
“I know plenty of pirates.”
“Oh,” says Edward. She knows pirates? He can’t imagine that at all. So she must be lying. He sits up a little straighter. “But, anyway, that arrow – it came out of my father’s leg. Someone shot him with it, somewhere in the jungle. It was an ambush, of course. The cowards. His men took him straight back to the ship. Poison arrows are really dangerous, because…”
“Yes,” the girl says with a nod. “They give you blood poisoning.”
“Um… Yes. Well, anyway, the ship’s doctor was ready and waiting with a saw. But my father was still conscious. Any other man would have fainted from the pain, but not him. He took out his pistol. ‘Anyone who attempts to saw off my leg is a dead man,’ he said. No one dared to go any closer. The poison was slowly creeping higher. ‘But, captain,’ they begged. ‘You’re going to die. You have to—’”
“I thought he was an admiral.”
“That was later. Do you want me to tell the story or not?”
She nods.
“‘You’re going to die, captain,’ they said. ‘Let us do it.’ No. My father shook his head. ‘A man with one leg is no man at all,’ he said. And then his leg turned completely black. Any other man would have died. But not my father. He sweated it out. You can only do that if you’re really strong. Two weeks later, his blood was clean. A month later, he could walk again. Mind over matter.”
Edward sighs. It is the best story his father has ever told him. It is pretty much the only one too.
“Then it can’t have been actual blood poisoning.”
“Yes, it was, you stupid child.”
“Blood poisoning always kills you. Everyone knows that.”
“Not my father,” replies Edward. He does not care if she believes him. He just feels so very, very tired.
The girl lies down beside him on the floor and together they look up at the flakes curling off the ceiling.
“My father has only one leg,” Lampie says after a while.
He raises his head and looks at her. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not.” She shakes her head. “Honestly. He has one whole leg, but the other one is just half a leg. He walks with a limp. Which causes all kinds of problems with… with his job.”
“Because he’s a pirate too, of course.” It’s all lies – he’s sure of it.
“No, he’s a lighthouse keeper.”
“So how did it happen, then? His leg, I mean.”
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Oh.” He lies back down again. “Does he mind?”
The girl thinks for a moment. “Yes,” she says. “He does.”
Augustus would never talk about it. And he never wanted anything that might help either. Not a strong crutch, not a wooden leg.
“Gone is gone,” he used to say. “Dead is dead. I’m not going to go out and get myself a wooden wife, am I? So I’ll just have to do without. It’s not a problem anyway, is it?”
No, thinks Lampie. It wasn’t a problem. As long as I was there to do everything for him. And what about now? How is he doing it all by himself? Suddenly she really, really wants to go home. Wednesday afternoon, she thinks. Wednesday afternoon off.
The scent of grass wafts in through the window, along with the sound of Lenny’s shears snipping away. Seabirds sail around the tower, shrieking happily at the sun.
“What a din,” says Edward. “Shut that window.”
“But it’s nice with the window open. Everything smells so good.”
“Do as I say.” He rolls under the bed. “I’ve got a headache. Shut the window and go away.”
“Aren’t we going to read?”
“Not today.”
She picks up the tray and walks to the door. “I’ll be back at half-past three for your bath then. See you later.”
He does not reply.
When she goes outside, Lampie sees Lenny’s ladder sticking up over a hedge. He keeps moving it along just a little way, and then climbing back up and going on snipping. The two hedges at the front are beginning to look a lot like dogs, with open mouths and their ears flapping in the wind. The tall hedge at the back is turning into a rhinoceros, and the long spine that winds between them is getting dragon spikes.
Oh, Lenny, she thinks with a smile.
The air around her is warm and soft and even the house no longer seems quite as angry, now that all those little owl chicks are growing up in its ivy.
Lampie looks up at the tower with its windows so firmly shut. How is she ever going to get that boy to come outside with her?