SEVEN

 

 

 

 

Before Harold went to bed he asked Mirabella if it was all right for him to stay longer, not another night, but maybe most of the following day. It was good to be with her, he stressed, and to renew ties with Gerhardt, but more importantly the rose bush above Dollie’s grave needed pruning. He said, voice jagged, ‘It’s overgrown . . . only to be expected.’

She told him he could stay as long as he wanted, that, in the circumstances, she needed him. He knew what she meant. She was mad about Gerhardt Kelmann but it wasn’t a happy union—he was giving her grief.

When he woke it was no surprise to find that Kelmann wasn’t on the couch by the fireplace, just his hat and his trousers in a heap against the woodpile. After downing a glass of milk, he took a carving knife from the kitchen drawer and stepped out into the forest. He inspected the camper, which was parked in a clearing round the side of the house, and was irritated at the bird droppings splattered on its hood. Kel­mann’s car and Mirabella’s were untouched.

The bush above Dollie’s grave had spiralled out of control. There were flowers, lemon yellow, thrusting up among the dead and dying blooms; the fierce thorns tore at the skin on his arms.

An hour or so passed, and then, breathless, he stretched out on the colourless grass. Try as he might, he couldn’t see Dollie’s face. Once, the month before she had left him for Wheeler, she’d said that time would make him forget her, that she would fade like paintwork. ‘Paintwork,’ he’d shouted, ‘can last a lifetime.’ He’d cease to think of her, she insisted, because he was the innocent party; she, the betrayer, would remember him forever. He reckoned it was a spurious argument.

‘There you are,’ boomed a voice; Gerhardt Kelmann thudded down beside him. ‘If I’m in the way,’ he said, ‘just tell me to get lost.’

He didn’t know Kelmann well, but he knew he’d suffered more grievously than himself. A child’s exposure to sudden death was surely more shocking than that experienced by an adult. When Kelmann was eleven years old, he had found his father, a roofing contractor, head stoved in, sprawled on a pathway leading to the Long Island Railway. Nobody had been charged, nobody punished, but then neither had the person responsible for Dollie’s end. Not yet.

‘The worst thing,’ he said, sitting up and kicking at the soil around the grave, ‘is to realise that time blocks out most things.’

‘It has to,’ Kelmann said, ‘otherwise we’d go mad.’

The sun was now very strong, piercing fire through the lacework of leaves. Kelmann lit a cigarette. Puffing out smoke, he said, ‘She’s a strange girl.’

Harold nodded. He knew who he meant.

‘She only talks about college days.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess so.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘It’s not my concern.’

They both fell silent. Harold rubbed his thumb back and forward across the swollen mosquito bite on his cheek. No longer an irritant, it was still part of him.

Kelmann said, ‘She told me you’re both looking for Fred Wheeler.’

‘She is,’ he replied, ‘I’m just the driver.’ He knelt and stuck the knife into the earth that held his skeleton of love; the metal handle quivered upright, flashing silver. ‘I need to be alone,’ he told Kelmann, and strode away in the direction of the lake.

Returning to the house an hour later, he attended to his scratched arms. He used a towel in the bathroom to mop away the blood. When he went through into the living room, Mirabella was alone. She said that Gerhardt and Rose had gone into the village to look at Indian artefacts, that his girlfriend was after scalps, Gerhardt’s among them. Hadn’t he noticed how she’d snuggled up to him?

‘She’s not my girl,’ he protested. ‘And Rose isn’t interested in men, just Wheeler. She lives in the past.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ Mirabella moaned, black tears dripping from her pencilled eyes. Unable to keep still, she restlessly stalked the room, fiddling with the ornaments on the mantel shelf, smoothing the cloth on the table, clicking the radio switch on and off.

‘For God’s sake sit down,’ he bellowed, and she did, collapsing onto the sofa, face pressed against a velvet cushion, sobs wobbling her shoulders.

After a moment he crouched beside her, hand patting her head. ‘You’ve always known it wasn’t going to work,’ he soothed. ‘Kelmann isn’t the sort of guy to confine himself to one woman . . . you told me that yourself.’

‘Knowing and hoping are two different things,’ she said, voice smothered. ‘You of all people should understand that.’

‘In my case,’ he reminded her, ‘hope has long since gone underground.’

She sat up at that, wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘I’m just tired,’ she murmured, and allowed him to hug her.

They were still in that position, her head on his breast and his mouth against her hair, when Rose and Kelmann came back. Rose was holding a mess of goldenrod. ‘These flowers are for you,’ she said, thrusting them towards Mirabella.

‘They’re wild,’ Harold said. ‘They’ll be dead in an hour.’ He released his hold and stood up, indicating that Kelmann should take his place. Kelmann grinned, and remained standing.

‘We met a man,’ Rose burbled, ‘who was a direct descendant of a Red Indian called Little Bush Fire. He had a prominent nose, a bit like mine. He said he wouldn’t be at all surprised if we didn’t come from the same ancestors.’ Still clutching her bunch of goldenrod, she ran to the fireplace and on tiptoe studied her face in the glass above.

‘It’s a special day,’ Kelmann said, addressing Mirabella. ‘Some kind of a remembrance of an incident two hundred years ago.’

‘Is that so?’ she responded. ‘I couldn’t care less.’

‘A British colonel arrived here and made friends with an Indian chief.’

‘How interesting,’ she said, voice heavy with sarcasm. She was looking at him as though he’d crawled out from under a stone.

‘After a few trinkets changed hands, the chief said it was all right for the settlers to move in. He even promised to supply timber for shacks.’

‘That was nice, wasn’t it?’ Rose said. ‘Really nice.’

‘Trouble was,’ continued Kelmann, ‘these so-called settlers were the crazed occupants of English prisons . . . the mad and the bad.’

Mirabella was crying again, cushion clutched to her mouth.

‘It’s important to make allowances,’ Rose said. She turned to face Kelmann, one finger tracing the outline of her nose. ‘They were probably all over the shop due to their upbringing.’

‘To hell with that,’ he thundered. ‘They came here, slaughtered the inhabitants, then made a fortune out of mining.’

Rose gazed at him, eyes startled. Then she moved to the open door and stood there, shoulders hunched. Harold followed her.

‘I’m all right,’ she whispered. ‘Really I am.’

‘It’s not you I’m concerned about,’ he hissed, nudging her down the steps and striding into the trees.

Some distance from the churchyard, he confronted her. He told her she shouldn’t have gone off with Kelmann. Didn’t she realise that Mirabella needed to talk to him?

‘But it was Mirabella who told us to go,’ Rose said.

‘Didn’t you notice how hurt she was?’

‘It’s not him that’s making her cry,’ she shouted. ‘She doesn’t give a fig about him.’

He stared at her. She was brushing the leaves of those wild flowers against her cheek and for the first time he registered the colour of her eyes.

She said, ‘I don’t know what’s really wrong with her, but it happened a long time ago. What was she like way back?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said. ‘I’ve other things on my mind.’

It was then that she asked him why he hadn’t told her about his wife. He insisted that it was a private matter. He was astonished at the way she had turned the conversation away from herself. He said, ‘Your eyes . . . they’re green.’

She was smiling. ‘You haven’t seen me before now,’ she said, ‘not properly. That’s why you keep snubbing me. Ameri­cans never tell the truth . . . I don’t mean you lie, more that you find it easier to hide things. Where I come from we let everything out.’

He showed her Dollie’s grave. She didn’t say much, just that the roses looked chastened. Then she said she was worried about getting to that place where Dr. Wheeler was staying. She had to get back to England quite soon or she’d lose her job.

Kelmann had gone when they returned to the house. Mirabella was holding a towel to her lips. It was the same one Harold had used on his torn arms. She said that Kelmann had punched her before he left. She was quite calm and although her cheeks were flushed, her mouth didn’t appear swollen.

She kissed Rose goodbye and said she was sorry to see her leave. As they bumped from the narrow path onto the highway, Kelmann’s car approached from the opposite direction.

‘Harold, stop . . .’ Rose cried, but he didn’t. He had enough problems of his own.