No Way Of Telling (12 page)

“I don’t want to give him away,” said Mrs Bowen, weakly, overwhelmed by Amy’s passionate defence.

“They could have made a mistake about him, couldn’t they? Whoever it was did that to his arm he’s the criminal—that’s what I think—to have done that. I liked him, Granny,” said Amy, pleading with her grandmother to say she had liked him too.

Mrs Bowen dropped the medallion into the drawer of the table and began to pick up the dirty cups and saucers.

“Maybe we shan’t ever hear any more about him—that would be the best that could happen.”

But Amy went into the side-kitchen and put on her coat and wellingtons with a fiercely resolute air.

“I’m just going to fetch down a few more of those bales,” she told her grandmother.

“Amy!”

“I shan’t go a step past the haystack—I promise I shan’t.”

They eyed each other with perfect understanding of what the bales of hay would do: wipe out his footsteps sooner than the snow could cover them.

“All right, then,” said Mrs Bowen.

It was dark outside and very cold. Snow had been falling off and on all day, increasing towards evening when the wind began to rise. Amy, shutting the hens in, had observed a difference in the way the flakes came down; all day their lazy haphazard descent had been strangely companionable to her. For hours she had toiled to and fro between haystack and cottage, fetching the rest of the bales from the other side of the hill and then struggling with the great heavy awkward scratchy bundles to complete the wall she had already started to build between two of the shed-posts. And whenever she paused from her labours and looked up, there was that delicate movement all about her; somehow, without knowing why, Amy had found it reassuring. But towards evening the pace had altered, and the flakes drew together, massing like an army, and instead of slipping down in idle irresponsible spirals they began to drive sideways as though they had a purpose to accomplish and there was no more time to be lost. Then Amy was glad to close the door on approaching night and the hurrying snow.

But the sense of foreboding stayed with her long after the door was closed. Usually when they pulled the curtains across they shut out the weather and forgot about it. Tonight Amy found she was not able to shut out the snow. In her mind’s eye she saw it still, and the fire was not warm enough, nor the lamp bright enough, nor yet the walls thick enough, to prevent her vision of the miles and miles of empty hills surrounding their cottage, with the wind like a marauder sweeping across them.

“I don’t feel inclined for any sewing tonight,” she said.

“I’m not all that set on it myself,” agreed Mrs Bowen. “Why it should be I don’t know but sewing seems to call for a steady mind. I’ll get on with some darning—that’ll come easier.”

“And I’ll write to Dad,” decided Amy.

She had no recollection of her father. He had emigrated to Australia when she was only nine months old, unable to bear the catastrophe of his wife’s death in surroundings where they had been happy together. Consequently, for Amy he existed as a more or less mythical figure, the hero of a collection of stories told and re-told by her grandmother, the face she had looked at too often in half a dozen photographs. Yet sometimes she missed him very much, aware, painfully, of a gap where there might have been a living person, a silence when there should have been a voice.

She dipped her pen. “Dear Dad” she wrote again, and again the difficulty of communicating with someone so far away and so unknown held her with pen poised staring at the blank sheet of paper. The man who had sat in her grandmother’s chair that morning was more real to her than her own father.

“What shall I say, Granny?”

“Tell him we’ve all but finished the patchwork quilt.”

“He won’t think that’s very interesting.”

“Tell him how far you’ve got in school, then.”

Amy considered the possibility of turning fractions and Francis Drake into items of news. She sighed and dipped her pen again.

“That’s no good.”

“Well then, tell him what’s been happening here the last day or two.”

Amy bent over the table. “It has been snowing for three days nearly,” she wrote. “There is a lot of snow. A funny thing happened. Me and Granny—”

She stopped writing. Mick had jumped up from the rag mat and cocked his ears. He was whining. Mrs Bowen and Amy looked at each other. There was a knock at the side-kitchen door. “Granny?”

“I’ll go,” said Mrs Bowen.

They knew who it was even before they had opened the door: Mick told them—he kept his tail low and just moved the tip of it in the faintest wag.

“But in heaven’s name,” said Mrs Bowen to Amy, her hand on the bolts, “why ever should that man have come back here? Such folly!”

She spoke as one dismayed, and according to common sense they had every reason to be dismayed by his reappearance. And yet somehow when they saw him actually standing on their threshold Mrs Bowen and Amy were pleased. The kettle was over the fire in a flash. Mrs Bowen, with a gesture of triumph, whipped open the oven door to show him the leg of mutton spitting inside; she had decided to cook it that night to prevent any possibility of its going bad, and now he could join in the feast. But he shook his head when she invited him, pointing at the clock and then at himself and then towards the side-kitchen: whatever the purpose of his visit he had no time to stop for a meal. He was in a hurry and when he saw Amy’s writing things on the table he gave a grunt of satisfaction. This, clearly, was what he had come for. Without delaying another moment he sat down at the table, took up Amy’s pen, folded back the top sheet of paper, and with big awkward strokes began to write.

“And us believing you were half-way to London by now,” scolded Mrs Bowen.

“Maybe he thinks it might be best after all to stop on down at Tyler’s Place till the snow’s gone, or till he’s mended a bit.”

“Thinks!” exclaimed Mrs Bowen. “How can we tell what he thinks, Amy? Whatever it is goes on inside that man’s head is about as plain to you and me as a crow on a dark night!”

He took no notice of their chatter. Writing was hard work for him. He laboured at it, breathing heavily. Mrs Bowen placed a cup of tea on the table near him and looked over his shoulder.

“Oh, Amy,” she said, “if I could only just read what he’s setting down there on that piece of paper we’d be wiser a lot. It always has seemed to me such foolishness for human beings to talk in different languages. ’Tisn’t as though our ways are so different—when it comes to food and drink and a warm fire to sit by and a bed to sleep in we’re all much the same, as far as I can see. Birds and beasts have got more sense.”

Two sheets of paper had by now been covered on both sides with the blotched untidy writing. He was sitting back, reading over to himself what he had written, his lips silently moving. Then he picked up the pen again and asked Amy a question. She came and leant on the table beside him and he showed her his signature scrawled at the bottom of the letter, at the same time tapping his chest. Then he pointed to her, again asking his question.

“I’m Amy,” she told him. “Amy! Look—I’ll show you.”

In capital letters she wrote on the cover of her writing block: AMY BOWEN.

“Amy!” she said. “I’m Amy! Can you say it? Amy!”

“A-mee!” he repeated.

“Why, that’s good! Oh, Granny, doesn’t it sound funny, him saying it! She’s my Granny, mister—can you say Granny? Granny! Go on—see if you can say it—
Granny!
”

In a deep growl he tried to copy her: “Grrra-nee!”

“Amy—don’t laugh so! You’ll offend him.”

But he was too busy to be offended. At the foot of the last page he was adding some final message that included, Amy noticed, her own name. When he had quite finished he folded the pages clumsily and stuffed them into the envelope and gave it to Amy. She eyed him anxiously. What did he mean her to do with it? He rubbed his head, perplexed by her perplexity. Amy waited.

“London!” he said at last, pointing to himself and then raising his shoulders in a shrug that indicated extreme doubt of ever reaching London. He took the letter away from Amy and held it up in front of her, speaking with passionate conviction, his eyes alight. Then he gave it back to her, pressing her hands over it and still earnestly explaining. What he said, word for word, she had no idea, but his meaning was clear enough. Amy understood that it was a solemn trust he left with her, and she told him:

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll post it for you, as soon as I can—as soon as the snow goes. I promise I will.”

He was satisfied. He tossed off the cup of tea and stood up.

The front-kitchen was filled with the smell of roasting mutton. Mrs Bowen had just stooped and lifted the big meat tin out from the top oven.

“Amy—you cut him some bread and butter while I slice a few bits off this joint for him.”

“I don’t think he wants to stop, Granny.”

“He’ll surely have a bite to eat before he goes—it won’t take many minutes.”

But Amy was right: he was determined to be off—only first there was something he wanted to show them. From an inner pocket he had tugged out a battered old wallet and from this a card with a photograph pasted on to it. Amy stood on her toes to peer across his arm.

“Why look, Granny—that’s him in the photo!”

“I believe it must be, though it’s hard to credit.”

“Now we can tell what he’s like without a beard. I told you he’d got a nice face underneath. Is it his passport?”

“I don’t know if it’s a passport, exactly, but I do believe he’s a sailor like I said, Amy, and this card is what tells all about him. That’ll be the name of his ship there, see—and that’s the place he comes from, or the other way round.”

“And there’s what he wrote at the end of his letter—that’s his own name—Bar-tol-o-meo something,” she said, pronouncing it syllable by syllable. “Bar-tol-o-meo?” she asked him.

He had been holding the card between them, looking at each in turn to see how much of it they were making out. Now he put the card back inside his coat and patted himself.

“Bartolomeo! Bartolomeo!” he said, nodding at Amy.

“He’s got a name that’s big enough to fit him, anyway,” said Mrs Bowen. “Well, Bartolomeo, if you’re in such a hurry to be off you’d better take this leg of mutton with you. You’ve had it before so you may as well have it again—at least it’s cooked this time. Just you wait while I wrap it in a newspaper—I don’t suppose you’ll be too fussy about a drop of grease working through. There now—you button it up inside your coat and it’ll serve to keep you warm.”

At the side-kitchen door he surprised them. With his good right arm he encircled Mrs Bowen and lifted her clean off her feet. Amy caught a fleeting glimpse of the startled expression on her grandmother’s face, a mixture of concern for the safety of the lamp she was holding and horror at finding her soft wrinkled cheek pressed into a tangle of black whiskers. Then she was herself swept up and for one dizzy moment lost in a jumble of duffle-coat and bristly hair and the smell of hot mutton. A moment more and they were alone again in the side-kitchen.

“Well!” said Mrs Bowen.

“He
kissed
us!” cried Amy, ecstatic.

“Kissed indeed!” said Mrs Bowen. “I feel more like I was grabbed hold of by a grizzly bear.”

Absolutely confounded they returned to the front-kitchen, where Mrs Bowen put the lamp carefully back on the table before beginning to laugh.

“And him with that meat stuffed inside his coat like a hot brick—and me with the lamp—I was frightened out of my wits I’d let go of it. Suppose I’d set his beard on fire!”

They were both laughing so hard it seemed only natural for Mick to be barking too. He barked and barked and they, not heeding him, laughed and laughed. The sudden loud peremptory rapping on the front-kitchen door came as an interruption for which they were quite unprepared.

Like flames extinguished by a douche of water their laughter stopped. But Mick went on barking. He was snarling as well and making short rushes across the floor.

“It’s them, Amy. It’s those policemen again,” said Mrs Bowen in a low voice, glancing rapidly round the room. Quickly she put another cup on the table so as to make two, and filled them both with milk and tea, spilling a little. The rapping sounded again.

“Now there’s no need to worry, Amy. It’s lucky for us they didn’t come five minutes back,” she said in a whisper. “Who is it?” she called out, going to the door.

For answer there was another burst of knocking and the latch rattled impatiently. But still they were made to wait. Mrs Bowen was signing across the room at Amy, and Amy was utterly bewildered. What did the signals mean? All at once she realised: the letter Bartolomeo had given her was clutched in her hand, in full view. Hurriedly, she pushed it up inside her jersey, out of sight.

Mrs Bowen nodded at her encouragingly.

“Catch hold of Mick,” she said, and then at last she pulled back the bolts and opened the door.

“Oh—so it’s you again, is it!” Amy heard her saying.

Without a word they thrust their way past Mrs Bowen, like men desperate for admittance.

“You could have shaken some of that old snow off in the porch first,” said Mrs Bowen, severely. To be so unceremoniously pushed aside was not her idea of good manners. “I don’t want all that wet stuff brought into my house,” she said, showing her displeasure.

They were covered in it. Even their eyelashes were clotted with snow. It fell off them in heaps. While Mrs Bowen stood by clicking her tongue disapprovingly, Amy felt her eyes drawn to various puddles on the floor where previous deposits of snow had melted, and surreptitiously she moved the lamp on the table further back.

The tall man was already taking off his coat and his cap and his gloves. He threw them down on the oak chest with a gesture of relief and stamped his feet.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to let us in at all,” he said to Mrs Bowen, and added, casually reprimanding her: “It isn’t the sort of night one cares to be kept hanging about on the wrong side of a bolted door.”