Eight Days of Luke (10 page)

“Good morning, David,” said the stranger pleasantly.

“David,” said Cousin Ronald, “this is Mr. Wedding. He has come to take you out to lunch.”

“H
ow do you do?” David said hopelessly.

Mr. Wedding held out his hand. “I hope,” he said, as David took hold of it, “you'll give me the pleasure of your company. Your guardians have agreed.”

David tried to muster the rather large amount of courage it was going to take to refuse. To help muster it, he looked up into Mr. Wedding's face. He was thoroughly taken aback to find that, close to, it was the kind of face he could not help liking. It was an agreeable, firm face, not young and not old, and rather lined. These lines, combined with a strange, searching way Mr. Wedding had of looking, made David feel he would like to get to know Mr. Wedding—although he also had a feeling that it would be rather difficult to do so.

“I do advise you to come,” Mr. Wedding said. He said it amiably, even laughingly, but there was a good hint of warning to it too. He was letting David know that there was going to be trouble if he refused, because Mr. Wedding had somehow got David's relations on his side. But the most perplexing thing was the way David found himself wanting to go with Mr. Wedding, and very pleased to be asked. He struggled for a moment, and then found he had to give in.

“Thanks,” he said. “I'd love to come.”

His relations began telling him he was to mind his manners and remember to thank Mr. Wedding afterward. While they talked, David bit his tongue hard and told himself that this Mr. Wedding was certainly an enemy of Luke's and he must be careful what he said to him.

Mr. Wedding's car was waiting outside the front gate. It was big, white and expensive, with a lady chauffeur at the wheel. She smiled at David as Mr. Wedding opened the rear door for him to get in, and David smiled back. She was one of the prettiest ladies he had ever seen.

“I think we'll go out to Wallsey,” Mr. Wedding said to her. “That suit you?” he asked David.

“I think so,” said David. “At least, I've never been.” He had heard of the place, of course, but he had no real idea where it was or what it was like.

“Wallsey,” said Mr. Wedding, and got in beside David.

The way to Wallsey seemed to be through the center of Ashbury. Before long, David saw Trubitt's and, on the other side of the street, the black-windowed shell of the burned building. He could not resist craning his head round to have another look at the damage. When he turned back, he found Mr. Wedding watching him. David felt his face going scarlet, because he had let Mr. Wedding see he was interested in the building; but some of his shame was the way he had caused so much damage simply by a careless word to Luke. He was afraid Mr. Wedding was going to ask him about it, but Mr. Wedding said nothing. They drove out of Ashbury.

“You know,” said Mr. Wedding at last, “I really know next to nothing about you, David. Could you tell me about yourself?”

David sensed danger. “I—I don't think there's anything to tell,” he said.

“School?” suggested Mr. Wedding. “You go away to school?”

This was harmless enough, and nothing to do with Luke. David admitted he went away to school. But Mr. Wedding seemed interested. He asked so many questions and understood David's answers so readily, that before long David was telling him all about the French master everyone thought was mad, friends, enemies, food, cricket; the time the whole class made groaning noises behind old Didgett's back, books, cricket; the day he and Kent got locked in the pavilion, cricket; the punch-up with 3B, and cricket again. It was a long way to Wallsey. David had plenty of time to tell Mr. Wedding how he had taken five wickets against Radley House, and, because Mr. Wedding evidently appreciated his cunning, he described the ball which had defeated each batsman: off-break, leg-break, and the quicker one that got in under the bat and uprooted the middle stump.

While he was describing the fifth wicket, which had really been something of an accident, David noticed that the countryside he could see from the windows of the car was strange and wild. There were steep hills, very green grass, and waterfalls dashing down past pine trees. It reminded him a little of Norway, or the Lakes. He turned to ask Mr. Wedding where they were.

Before he could ask, Mr. Wedding said: “We're nearly there now. Look.”

There was a wide, misty lake ahead, and a green island in the lake. A long arching bridge led from the land to the island, held up by a spiderweb of girders. As the car rumbled up the arch, the sun shone in through the bright ironwork, breaking up into hundreds of rainbow colors which half dazzled David. He was still blinking when the car stopped and they got out at what seemed to be an inn. The lady drove the car away, and Mr. Wedding led David to a table outside in the sun, where there was a view over the misty lake to the brown hills beyond it.

“What would you like to drink?” said Mr. Wedding.

“Milk shake, please,” said David.

The barman brought it at once, and beer for Mr. Wedding. Mr. Wedding sat down at the table and stretched, as if he found it pleasant to relax, and David sat down opposite him feeling anything but relaxed. This must be where Mr. Wedding got down to business.

But no. “I don't much care for those people you live with,” said Mr. Wedding. “Do you?”

While he was speaking, David tasted the milk shake. It left him little attention for anything else. Never had he tasted anything so marvelous. He wondered how Mr. Wedding could prefer beer. “No,” he said. “No, I don't like them either.”

“But you have to live with them?” said Mr. Wedding.

“Yes,” said David. “When they don't send me off somewhere. And,” he continued bitterly—and whether it was the effect of the milk shake, or the strange clear air on the lake, or the fact that he now seemed to know Mr. Wedding so well that made him say it, he did not know—“and I'm supposed to be
grateful
. I wouldn't mind them nagging so much, or being boring, or forbidding things, or going on about manners and sending me to bed without supper all the time, if only I didn't have to be grateful all the time. I am grateful. They do look after me all right. But I wish I didn't have to be.”

Mr. Wedding thought about this, drumming his fingers on his beer mug. “I'm not sure you do have to be grateful,” he said at last.

David looked up from the milk shake in astonishment. “You're joking,” he said doubtfully.

Mr. Wedding shook his head. “No. I'm quite in earnest. Look at it this way. You're still a child, and you can't earn your living or look after yourself properly. When you were younger, you could do it even less. All children are the same. So the law says that someone has to look after you until you can do it for yourself—your guardians in your case. And there's another law which says that when you drop a stone it falls to the ground. Are you grateful to that stone for falling, or does the stone ask the earth to be grateful?”

“I—oh—” David felt there was something missing from this. “But people aren't stones.”

“Of course not. And if people do anything over and above the law, then you can be grateful if you want. But no one should ask it of you.”

“I see,” said David. “Yes. Thanks.” As he sucked the last bubbles of the milk shake loudly up the straw, he thought about what Mr. Wedding had said, and it was like having a huge weight slowly levered off his back. He felt lighter and lighter, and happier and happier. “Thank you, Mr. Wedding.”

“If you've finished that stuff,” said Mr. Wedding, “you might come and look at the river.”

The river thundered over green rocks just beyond the inn, wonderfully clear, with the sun making moving circles on the stones at the bottom. David only waited to ask before he had his shoes and socks off and his prickly trousers rolled up and had bounded into the cool water. It ran so briskly that it stood up in fans beside his legs. There were shells on the bottom of a kind he had never seen before, and stones like round jewels. Blissfully, David waded, threw stones, collected others and picked up shells, until Mr. Wedding strolled down the bank and said it was time for lunch. David put his collection of shells and stones in his pocket and his socks and shoes back on, and they went back to the inn. There they had the most magnificent food David had ever eaten. He ate so much that he had to sit rather carefully afterward.

Finally, Mr. Wedding pushed his chair back and looked at David in a way that was different and difficult. David abruptly forgot that he had overeaten.

“David,” said Mr. Wedding, “I'm very anxious to find someone whom I imagine goes by the name of Luke. Can you help me at all?”

“No,” said David. “I'm sorry, Mr. Wedding. I can't.”

“Perhaps you mean you won't?” suggested Mr. Wedding.

“Yes, but I still can't,” David said.

“But there must be one or two things you can tell me,” Mr. Wedding said thoughtfully. “For instance, how you came to let Luke out. I thought I was the only one who knew how to do that.”

“I did it by accident, trying to curse,” said David.

Mr. Wedding laughed. He threw back his head and laughed very heartily, but David, all the same, had a notion that Mr. Wedding was not amused—or not quite in the way he or Luke were when they laughed. “You did it by accident!” he said. “I wish I believed in accidents. Where is Luke now?”

“I don't know,” David said truthfully.

“But you can find him when you want to?” said Mr. Wedding.

Before David had decided what to say to that, a swirl of black pinions was beating the sky over his head. He ducked and put one arm up, but the creature passed him and landed with a heavy
clack
on the table beside Mr. Wedding's coffee cup. It was a great black crow. “That gave me a shock!” he said. The crow glanced at him over its shoulder and then looked up at Mr. Wedding.

It said something. David knew it said something, though he could not catch the words.

“It talks,” he said, fascinated.

“Just a moment,” said Mr. Wedding. “Where?”

The crow said something else.

“I see,” said Mr. Wedding. “That's no good then. I'll tell you what to do later.”

“Is it a crow?” asked David. “Will it talk to me?”

“A raven,” said Mr. Wedding. “And I doubt if it will talk to you, but you can try if you like.”

“Er—raven,” said David. “Hallo.” Cautiously he stretched a finger out to the bird's large shiny back and gently touched its warm, stiff feathers. “Will you talk to me too?”

The raven turned one eye on him. David could not help thinking it looked rather an evil creature. It put him in mind of a vulture. “Yes, I'll talk to you if you want,” it said, and David could not stop himself grinning with pride. He could see that Mr. Wedding was really surprised. The bird hunched up to scratch the top of its head with its big gray foot, and looked at David from under its leg. “I saw Luke just now,” it remarked. “He was trying to find you.”

“Don't tell me where he was, then,” David said.

“It won't matter. He saw me and went away,” said the raven. “We've lost him for the moment.”

“Good,” said David.

“Hm,” said Mr. Wedding. “I think that will do. Off you go.”

“Going,” said the bird and took off with its legs trailing, in another great black sweep of feathers. Looking up, David saw it circling with its wing-pinions spread like fingers while it came round into the wind and tucked up its gray feet like an airplane retracting its undercarriage. “I'll see you,” it called. Then it was away across the lake with large leisurely flaps of its wings.

“Brilliant!” said David, watching it get slowly smaller against the hills.

“They don't often talk to anyone but me,” Mr. Wedding said. “You were lucky—I suppose lucky is the word for it. May I speak to you seriously, David?”

“Yes,” said David, a little apprehensively. “What?”

“You don't know much about me, do you?” said Mr. Wedding.

David looked up at him to agree, and to protest a little. And he saw Mr. Wedding had only one eye. David stared. For a moment, he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. He could not understand it. Up till then, there had been nothing strange about Mr. Wedding's face at all, and it had been perfectly ordinary. David had not noticed a change. Yet one of Mr. Wedding's eyes was simply not there. The place where the second eye should have been had an eyelid and eyelashes, so that it looked almost as if Mr. Wedding had shut one eye—but not quite. It did not look at all horrible. There was no reason to be frightened. But David was. Mr. Wedding's remaining eye had something to do with it. It made up for the other by gazing so piercingly blue, so deep and difficult, that it was as wild and strange in its way as Mr. Chew's face. As David looked from eye to empty eyelid and back, he had suddenly no doubt that what he was seeing was Mr. Wedding's true face, and his real nature. The hair on David's spine stood up, slowly and nastily, as he looked.