Dead Water

CHAPTER 1

Prelude

A boy stumbled up the hillside, half-blinded by tears. He fell and, for a time, choked and sobbed as he lay in the sun but presently blundered on. A lark sang overhead. Farther up the hill he could hear the multiple chatter of running water. The children down by the jetty still chanted after him:

Warty-hog, warty-hog

Put your puddies in the bog

Warty Walter, Warty Walter

Wash your warties in the water.

The spring was near the top. It began as a bubbling pool, cascaded into a miniature waterfall, dived under pebbles, earth and bracken and at last, loquacious and preoccupied, swirled mysteriously underground and was lost. Above the pool stood a boulder, flanked by briars and fern, and above that the brow of the hill and the sun in a clear sky.

He squatted near the waterfall. His legs ached and a spasm jolted his chest. He gasped for breath, beat his hands on the ground and looked at them. Warty-hog. Warts clustered all over his fingers like those black things that covered the legs of the jetty. Two of them bled where he’d cut them. The other kids were told not to touch him.

He thrust his hands under the cold pressure of the cascade. It beat and stung and numbed them, but he screwed up his blubbered eyes and forced them to stay there. Water spurted icily up his arms and into his face.

‘Don’t cry.’

He opened his eyes directly into the sun or would have done so if she hadn’t stood between: tall and greenish, above the big stone and rimmed about with light like something on the telly so that he couldn’t see her properly.

‘Why are you crying?’

He ducked his head, and stared like an animal that couldn’t make up its mind to bolt. He gave a loud, detached sob and left his hands under the water.

‘What’s the matter? Are you hurt? Tell me.’

‘Me ‘ands.’

‘Show me.’

He shook his head and stared.

‘Show me your hands.’

‘They’m mucky.’

‘The water will clean them.’

‘No, t’won’t, then.’

‘Show me.’

He withdrew them. Between clusters of warts his skin had puckered and turned the colour of dead fish. He broke into a loud wail. His nose and eyes ran salt into his open mouth.

From down below a voice, small and distant, halfheartedly chanted: ‘Warty Walter. Warty Walter. Stick your warties in the water.’ Somebody shouted: ‘Aw come on.’ They were going away.

He held out his desecrated hands towards her as if in explanation. Her voice floated down on the sound of the waterfall.

‘Put them under again. If you believe: they will be clean.’

‘Uh?’

‘They will be clean. Say it. Say ‘Please take away my warts.’ Shut your eyes and do as I tell you. Say it again when you go to bed. Remember. Do it.’

He did as she told him. The sound of the cascade grew very loud in his ears. Blobs of light swam across his eyeballs. He heard his own voice very far away, and then nothing. Ice-cold water was bumping his face on drowned pebbles.

When he lifted his head up there was no one between him and the sun.

He sat there letting himself dry and thinking of nothing in particular until the sun went down behind the hill. Then, feeling cold, he returned to the waterfront and his home in the bay.

II

For about twenty-four hours after the event, the affair of Wally Trehern’s warts made very little impression on the Island. His parents were slugabeds: the father under the excuse that he was engaged in night-fishing and the mother without any excuse at all unless it could be found in the gin bottle. They were not a credit to the Island. Wally, who slept in his clothes, got up at his usual time, and went out to the pump for a wash. He did this because somehow or another his new teacher had fixed the idea in his head and he followed it out with the sort of behaviourism that can be established in a domestic animal. He was still little better than half-awake when he saw what had happened.

Nobody knows what goes on in the mind of a child: least of all in a mind like Wally Trehern’s where the process of thought was so sluggish as to be no more than a reflex of simple emotions: pleasure, fear or pride.

He seemed to be feeling proud when he shambled up to his teacher and, before all the school, held out his hands.

‘Why – !’ she said. ‘Why – why – Wally!’ She took both his hands in hers and looked and pressed and looked again. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It’s not true.’

‘Be’ant mucky,’ he said. ‘All gone,’ and burst out laughing.

The school was on the mainland but the news about Wally Trehern’s warts returned with him and his teacher to the Island. The Island was incorrectly named: it was merely a rocky blob of land at the end of an extremely brief, narrow and low-lying causeway which disappeared at full tide and whenever the seas along that coast ran high. The Island was thus no more than an extension of the tiny fishing village of Portcarrow and yet the handful of people who lived on it were accorded a separate identity as if centuries of tidal gestures had given them an indefinable status. In those parts they talked of ‘islanders’ and ‘villagers’ making a distinction where none really existed.

The Portcarrow school-mistress was Miss Jenny Williams, a young New Zealander who was doing post graduate research in England, and had taken this temporary job to enrich her experience and augment her bursary. She lodged on the Island at The Boy-and-Lobster, a small Jacobean pub, and wrote home enthusiastically about its inconveniences. She was a glowing, russet-coloured girl and looked her best that afternoon, striding across the causeway with the wind snapping at her hair and moulding her summer dress into the explicit simplicity of a shift. Behind her ran, stumbled and tacked poor Wally, who gave from time to time a squawking cry not unlike that of a seagull.

When they arrived on the Island she told him she would like to see his mother. They turned right at the jetty, round a point and into Fisherman’s Bay. The Treherns lived in the least prepossessing of a group of cottages. Jenny could feel nothing but dismay at its smell and that of Mrs Trehern who sat on the doorstep and made ambiguous sounds of greeting.

‘She’m sozzled,’ said Wally, and indeed, it was so.

Jenny said: ‘Wally: would you be very kind and see if you can find me a shell to keep. A pink one.’ She had to repeat this carefully and was not helped by Mrs Trehern suddenly roaring out that if he didn’t do what his teacher said she’d have the hide off of him.

Wally sank his head between his shoulders, shuffled down to the foreshore and disappeared behind a boat.

‘Mrs Trehern,’ Jenny said, ‘I do hope you don’t mind me coming: I just felt I must say how terribly glad I am about Wally’s warts and – and – I did want to ask about how it’s happened. I mean,’ she went on, growing flurried, ‘it’s so extraordinary. Since yesterday. I mean – well – it’s – Isn’t it?’

Mrs Trehern was smiling broadly. She jerked her head and asked Jenny if she would take a little something.

‘No, thank you.’ She waited for a moment and then said: ‘Mrs Trehern, haven’t you noticed? Wally’s hands? Haven’t you seen?’

‘Takes fits,’ said Mrs Trehern. ‘Our Wally!’ she added with an air of profundity. After several false starts she rose and turned into the house. ‘You come on in,’ she shouted bossily. ‘Come on.’

Jenny was spared this ordeal by the arrival of Mr Trehern who lumbered up from the foreshore where she fancied he had been sitting behind his boat. He was followed at a distance by Wally.

James Trehern was a dark, fat man with pale eyes, a slack mouth and a manner that was both suspicious and placatory. He hired out himself and his boat to visitors, fished and did odd jobs about the village and the Island.

He leered uncertainly at Jenny and said it was an uncommon brave afternoon and he hoped she was feeling pretty clever herself. Jenny at once embarked on the disappearance of the warts and found that Trehern had just become aware of it. Wally had shown him his hands.

‘Isn’t it amazing, Mr Trehern?’

‘Proper flabbergasting,’ he agreed without enthusiasm.

‘When did it happen exactly, do you know? Was it yesterday, after school? Or when? Was it – sudden? – I mean his hands were in such a state, weren’t they? I’ve asked him, of course, and he says – he says it’s because of a lady. And something about washing his hands in the spring up there. I’m sorry to pester you like this but I felt I just had to know.’

It was obvious that he thought she was making an unnecessary to-do about the whole affair, but he stared at her with a sort of covert intensity that was extremely disagreeable. A gust of wind snatched at her dress and she tried to pin it between her knees. Trehern’s mouth widened. Mrs Trehern advanced uncertainly from the interior.

Jenny said quickly: ‘Well, never mind, anyway. It’s grand that they’ve gone, isn’t it? I mustn’t keep you. Good evening.’

Mrs Trehern made an ambiguous sound and extended her clenched hand. ‘See yurr,’ she said. She opened her hand. A cascade of soft black shells dropped on the step.

‘Them’s our Wally’s,’ she said. ‘In ‘is bed.’

‘All gone,’ said Wally.

He had come up from the foreshore. When Jenny turned to him, he offered her a real shell. It was broken and discoloured but it was pink. Jenny knelt down to take it. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘That’s just what I wanted.’

It seemed awful to go away and leave him there. When she looked back he waved to her.

III

That evening in the private tap at The Boy-and-Lobster Wally Trehern’s warts were the principal topic of conversation. It was a fine evening and low-tide fell at eight o’clock. In addition to the regular Islanders, there were patrons who had strolled across the causeway from the village: Dr Maine of the Portcarrow Convalescent Home; the Rector, the Rev. Mr Adrian Carstairs, who liked to show, as was no more than the case, that he was human; and a visitor to the village, a large pale young man with a restless manner and a general air of being on the look-out for something. He was having a drink with Patrick Ferrier, the step-son of the landlord, down from Oxford for the long vacation. Patrick was an engaging fellow with a sensitive mouth, pleasant manners and a quick eye which dwelt pretty often upon Jenny Williams. There was only one other woman in the private beside Jenny. This was Miss Elspeth Cost, a lady with vague hair and a tentative smile who, like Jenny, was staying at The Boy-and-Lobster and was understood to have a shop somewhere and to be interested in handicrafts and the drama.

The landlord, Major Keith Barrimore, stationed between two bars, served both the public and the private taps: the former being used exclusively by local fishermen. Major Barrimore was well-setup and of florid complexion. He shouted rather than spoke, had any amount of professional bonhomie and harmonized perfectly with his background of horse-brasses, bottles, glasses, tankards and sporting prints. He wore a check coat, a yellow waistcoat and a signet ring and kept his hair very smooth.

‘Look at it whichever way you choose,’ Miss Cost said, ‘it’s astounding. Poor little fellow! To think!’

‘Very dramatic,’ said Patrick Ferrier, smiling at Jenny.

‘Well it was,’ she said. ‘Just that.’

‘One hears of these cases,’ said the restless young man, ‘Gipsies and charms and so on.’

‘Yes, I know one does,’ Jenny said. ‘One hears of them but I’ve never met one before. And who, for heaven’s sake, was the green lady?’

There was a brief silence.

‘Ah,’ said Miss Cost. ‘Now that is the really rather wonderful part. The green lady!’ She tipped her head to one side and looked at the rector. ‘M-m –?’ she invited.

‘Poor Wally!’ Mr Carstairs rejoined. ‘All a fairytale, I daresay. It’s a sad case.’

‘The cure isn’t a fairytale,’ Jenny pointed out.

‘No, no, no. Surely not. Surely not,’ he said in a hurry.

‘A fairytale. I wonder. Still pixies in these yurr parts, Rector, d’y’m reckon?’ asked Miss Cost essaying a roughish burr.

Everyone looked extremely uncomfortable.

‘All in the poor kid’s imagination, I should have thought,’ said Major Barrimore and poured himself a double Scotch. ‘Still: damn’ good show, anyway.’

‘What’s the medical opinion?’ Patrick asked.

‘Don’t ask me!’ Dr Maine ejaculated, throwing up his beautifully kept hands. ‘There is no medical opinion as far as I know.’ But seeing perhaps that they all expected more than this from him, he went on half-impatiently. ‘You do, of course, hear of these cases. They’re quite well-established. I’ve heard of an eminent skin-specialist who actually mugged up an incantation or spell or what have-you and used it on his patients with marked success.’

‘There! You see!’ Miss Cost cried out, gently clapping her hands. She became mysterious. ‘You wait!’ she said. ‘You jolly well wait!’

Dr Maine glanced at her distastefully.

‘The cause of warts is not known,’ he said. ‘Probably viral. The boy’s an epileptic,’ he added. ‘Petit mal.’

‘Would that predispose him to this sort of cure?’ Patrick asked.

‘Might,’ Dr Maine said shortly. ‘Might predispose him to the right kind of suggestibility.’ Without looking at the Rector, he added: ‘There’s one feature that sticks out all through the literature of reputed cures by some allegedly supernatural agency. The authentic cases have emotional or nervous connotations.’

‘Not all, surely,’ the Rector suggested.

Dr Maine shot a glance at him. ‘I shouldn’t talk,’ he said. ‘I really know nothing about such matters. The other half, if you please.’

Jenny thought: ‘The Rector feels he ought to nip in and speak up for miracles and he doesn’t like to because he doesn’t want to be parsonic. How tricky it is for them! Dr Maine’s the same, in his way. He doesn’t like talking shop for fear of showing off. English reticence,’ thought Jenny, resolving to make the point in her next letter home. ‘Incorrigible amateurs.’

The restless young man suddenly said: ‘The next round’s on me,’ and astonished everybody.

‘Handsome offer!’ said Major Barrimore. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Tell me,’ said the young man expansively and at large. ‘Where is this spring or pool or whatever it is?’

Patrick explained. ‘Up the hill above the jetty.’

‘And the kid’s story is that some lady in green told him to wash his hands in it? And the warts fell off in the night. Is that it?’

‘As far as I could make out,’ Jenny agreed. ‘He’s not at all eloquent, poor Wally.’

‘Wally Trehern, did you say? Local boy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Were they bad? The warts?’

‘Frightful.’

‘Mightn’t have been just kind of ripe to fall off? Coincidence?’

‘Most unlikely, I’d have thought,’ said Jenny.

‘I see,’ said the young man, weighing it up. ‘Well, what’s everybody having? Same again, all round?’

Everybody murmured assent and Major Barrimore began to pour the drinks.

Jenny said: ‘I could show you a photograph.’

‘No? Could you, though? I’d very much like to see it. I’d be very interested, indeed. Would you?’

She ran up to her room to get it: a colour-slide of the infant-class with Wally in the foreground, his hands dangling. She put it in the viewer and returned to the bar. The young man looked at it intently, whistling to himself. ‘Quite a thing,’ he said. ‘Quite something. Nice sharp picture, too.’

Everybody wanted to look at it. While they were handing it about, the door from the house opened and Mrs Barrimore came in.

She was a beautiful woman, very fine-drawn with an exquisite head of which the bone-structure was so delicate and the eyes so quiet in expression that the mouth seemed like a vivid accident. It was as if an artist, having started out to paint an ascetic, had changed his mind and laid down the lips of a voluptuary.

With a sort of awkward grace that suggested shyness, she moved into the bar, smiling tentatively at nobody in particular. Dr Maine looked quickly at her and stood up. The Rector gave her good-evening and the restless young man offered her a drink. Her husband, without consulting her, poured a glass of lager.

‘Hallo, Mum. We’ve all been talking about Wally’s warts,’ Patrick said.

Mrs Barrimore sat down by Miss Cost. ‘Have you?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it strange? I can’t get over it.’ Her voice was charming: light and very clear. She had the faintest hesitation in her speech and a trick of winding her fingers together. Her son brought her drink to her and she thanked the restless young man rather awkwardly for it. Jenny, who liked her very much, wondered, not for the first time, if her position at The Boy-and-Lobster was distasteful to her and exactly why she seemed so alien to it.

Her entrance brought a little silence in its wake. Dr Maine turned his glass round and round and stared at the contents. Presently Miss Cost broke out in fresh spate of enthusiasm.

‘… Now, you may all laugh as loud as you please,’ she cried with a reckless air. ‘I shan’t mind. I daresay there’s some clever answer explaining it all away or you can, if you choose, call it coincidence. But I don’t care. I’m going to say my little say.’ She held up her glass of port in a dashing manner and gained their reluctant attention. ‘I’m an asthmatic!’ she declared vaingloriously. ‘Since I came here, I’ve had my usual go, regular as clockwork, every evening at half past eight. I daresay some of you have heard me sneezing and wheezing away in my corner. Very well. Now! This evening, when I’d heard about Wally, I walked up to the spring and while I sat there, it came into my mind. Quite suddenly. ‘I wonder.’ And I dipped my fingers in the waterfall –’ She shut her eyes, raised her brows and smiled. The port slopped over on her hand. She replaced the glass. ‘I wished my wee wish,’ she continued. ‘And I sat up there, feeling ever so light and unburdened, and then I came down.’ She pointed dramatically to the bar clock. ‘Look at the time!’ she exulted. ‘Five past ten!’ She slapped her chest. ‘Clear as a bell! And I know, I just know it’s happened. To ME.’