The Kind Folk (12 page)

"I think she was quoting her grandmother. She said they were so old they showed you how the world was made. Now your breakfast will be ready. I hope I've left you with an appetite."

Luke isn't sure while he feels closer to the dream than to his body. No wonder when a girl on a yacht in the harbour is lifting her head and a telescope to watch something on the horizon—but the object in her hand is a bottle of lemonade she's draining. Nevertheless Luke continues to stare across the ocean until the waiter returns. "Careful, sir," he murmurs.

"Of what?" Luke blurts.

"Of your plate," the waiter says and plants it in front of Luke, using a napkin. "And your fingers."

Luke feels as if he has played a joke on himself, not even for an audience. He sees off the breakfast, because the waiter seems almost maternally concerned that he should; perhaps he's regretting some or all of what he said. "Is it home to the family now?" he says as Luke leaves the breakfast room.

Luke thinks of Sophie and the child inside her, and is able to say "That's the plan."

As he drives away from the hotel the masts of the yachts begin to nod at him and then at the horizon. He could almost fancy they're betraying that the ocean has grown nervous. The route leads past the headland, and as the road climbs he sees more of the sky rise over the brim of the world—just the sky and an enormous pale brow of cloud. Along the seaward side of the road bushes shaped by many years of winds stoop to point at the car. In a few hundred yards Luke comes to a layby from which a path leads to a bench overlooking the ocean.

He isn't there for the view. The bushes creak a greeting when he takes Terence's journal to the bench, and a wind leafs through the pages as soon as he opens the ledger. He glimpses a name and has to pin a wad of pages down while he searches for the entry. He would have been seven years old when it was written, and it does indeed say
GAZER'S HEAD.
Terence mentions how kind the people were—presumably his unnamed informants, whatever they told him—but otherwise the entry says only
LOOKED OUT, NEARLY SAW.
Who or what looked out from where, and did they nearly see him? Luke isn't sure he wants to know, and he's also troubled by an impression that he glimpsed something else while the pages fluttered. He's leafing through them when he realises he isn't alone on the headland.

Presumably the newcomers have climbed up from the beach. They're to his left, beyond a clump of shrubs that may well hide a path. He can just discern three figures through the tangled foliage—no, four. He can't see if they're facing him or the ocean. The thorny branches trap the glare of the sun on the water, so that the silhouetted heads look featureless, hardly even present, above bodies thin as twigs. Are they in fact unhealthily emaciated? He would have to venture closer to determine what they're wearing; he might even imagine they're naked. Perhaps they're senile, given their behaviour; they're imitating the cry of a seagull in chorus, and then they mimic the creaks of branches as the wind lets the bushes subside. If the performance is for Luke's benefit, he doesn't appreciate it at all.

He shuts the journal with a thud, and then he peers towards the group of figures. One after another they're reproducing the sound, so accurately that he can't believe they're doing so with their mouths; perhaps they're thumping their scrawny chests. He's tempted to confront them, but what would he say? Gazer's Head has troubled him more than enough, and he marches to the car without looking back.

He does glance in the mirror as he sends the car onto the road, and his eyes are drawn back to the reflection as he speeds away. Surely it's because the road is sloping uphill that the figures appear to have risen up to watch him, if they're even facing him. It's just an effect of perspective that produced the unnaturally simultaneous movement, and of course they haven't stretched themselves thinner still by growing taller; the glare from the ocean is confusing his vision. Just the same, he's glad when a bend in the road takes away the spectacle, and he tries to fix his mind on Sophie and their child. They're the safest things in his life.

THE OLD DAY

As soon as Freda heads for the kitchen Maurice murmurs "Any developments?"

"Only what we said," Sophie tells him. "Getting bigger and better."

"Not your little one," Maurice says and lowers his voice further. "I'm saying is Luke any nearer knowing where he came from."

"Nowhere I've been yet," Luke says. "I thought I had a lead but it wasn't one."

"Which was that?"

It's Maurice who asks, though Sophie could. Luke is about to mention Eunice when Maurice says "It's all right, son. No need to talk about our failures."

"He certainly takes after you there, Maurice."

"You can say Freddy and Terry as well if you like."

Luke feels as if they're trying to shape him between them, and he could think the same of Freda as she comes out of the house. She's singing happy birthday and carrying a cake, but how can they be sure this is his birthday? She brings the cake to the round wrought-iron table, pacing slowly enough for a more solemn ritual. The flames of thirty candles flicker in the July twilight, surrounding a 3 that resembles a crescent moon perched on top of its twin beside a full one. As Maurice and Sophie join in the song, birds begin to chatter in the hedge, and then at least a dozen of them soar up like ash into the darkening sky. Luke takes a breath as elongated as the prelude to a sneeze, a routine with which he has amused the Arnolds ever since he was very young, and expels it at the flames. As they bow and die virtually in unison Maurice says "Here's to every one you've had here, Luke."

"And to being a family," Freda says.

"To being even more of one," Luke offers.

He isn't meaning to prompt Sophie, but she lifts her glass of lemonade again and says "To the midsummer boy."

Freda looks puzzled. "Luke, do you mean? I suppose he is in a way."

"In the oldest one, Freda. It's Midsummer Day."

"I think you'll find that was last month, dear."

"Only since they changed the calendar. Before that it was the fifth of July."

"So that's what today is as well," Maurice says. "Can't mean as much as being our Luke's birthday, though."

Luke isn't sure why he feels uneasy. "What does it mean?"

"Quite a lot to some people," Sophie says. "They still have the old Celtic ceremonies. The Isle of Man has an official one. And there are songs about the day. I'll see if I can find them if you like."

As Luke wonders if he does Maurice says "Maybe that's what Terry had in his head."

"Here's to him as well," Freda says and lifts her glass of glimmering wine. "What did he have in it?"

"The song he sang on Luke's birthday about June."

"I thought that was yours," Luke protests. "You've sung it often enough."

"I remember," Freda says. "He kept on till the nurses told him to stop. We thought he must have been a bit drunk or something like that."

"So how did you end up with the song, Maurice?" Sophie says.

"I was reminding Terry on Luke's first birthday, that was what. He joined in, didn't he, Freddy? And it got to be a family tradition. I forget when Terry started leaving it to me. Maybe he was peeved I could have a laugh when he thought it was only him."

Luke can't grasp why he thinks Maurice has missed the point. He's left feeling that his birthday celebration is a pretence, a ritual substituted for another. How ungrateful is that to the Arnolds? He does his utmost not to let them sense his doubts, but he's glad when Freda's discreet yawn brings the evening to an end.

He doesn't want to trouble Sophie while she's driving. He stays as quiet as the lopsided moon above the river. Over the airport vapour trails hang down like threads, as if the otherwise black sky is fraying, its fabric unpicked by the needles of planes. Soon Sophie begins to murmur a lullaby to him or to their child or both. "...while the moon her watch is keeping, all through the night..." She interrupts herself to say "I don't mind if it's just the moon."

"What else would it be?"

She gives him an apologetic sidelong smile. "Just me being silly when you're not there."

The road swings inland, and the moon sails above the blanched roofs of houses as though it's tethered to the car. "Why" Luke says, "what happened?"

"Just a couple of odd folk at the club in Chester. They were at the back while I was on."

"How odd?"

"I couldn't really make them out. The lights were down." Sophie hardly seems to find it worth adding "I started thinking they were deaf, but they wouldn't have come to see me then, would they?"

"I'd pay just to look at you," Luke says but feels as if he's manufacturing the compliment to delay asking "Why did you think they were that?"

"I thought they were making signs to each other."

Luke clears his dry throat. "What kind of signs?"

"I only said I thought they were. I told you it was dark."

"But can't you give me an idea?"

"Not while I'm driving, and anyway I couldn't make my hands go like that." Sophie grips the wheel more firmly and says "It was just that they stayed in my mind. They'd gone when I finished, but afterwards I thought they'd followed me home."

Luke swallows, but his voice still comes out harsh and sharp. "Why?"

"Don't panic, Luke." She takes time to laugh and to coax a car out of a side road with a flash of the headlights. "I didn't see anything really," she says. "It was a bit like the dreams you used to have, and I expect that's where it came from. I thought they'd got into the bedroom."

Luke does his best to laugh as well, but his gift for imitation lets him down. "When?"

"I must have been dreaming about them and then the moon woke me up. Just for a moment I thought I saw one of them at the end of the bed, and then it went in."

"The moon did," Luke urges her to mean.

"That must have been it." Sophie ponders and says "That's what it was like."

Luke finds he has to conquer some reluctance to ask "What was?"

"I was dreaming, remember. It made me think of the moon going into a cloud, that's right. The gentleman who wasn't really there, he went into the wall."

She turns the car towards the road that leads home beside the river. As the moon recedes ahead of them it appears to be leading them towards the black void above the water. "At least nobody should blame Terence for my dreams," she says. "Am I ever going to get a look at his diary?"

"If you think it's worth your time. I don't even know if it's worth mine."

"I'll make some as soon as I can, then. I've got media interviews coming up and gigs as well. Stop me sounding like a prima donna, Luke."

"You're the first lady as far as I'm concerned, no, the only one. Don't go expecting too much from his diary, that's all. A lot of it doesn't seem to mean much of anything. He keeps saying how kind the folk he met were."

Sophie smiles as the moon begins to pace the car alongside the river. "So long as he wasn't away with the fairies."

"Fanciful, you mean?" When she shakes her head Luke admits "I don't understand."

"That was what people used to call the fairies to try and stop them getting up to anything too wicked, the Kind Folk. There are songs about them."

"He just meant people were helpful," Luke says and attempts to believe. The moon clings to the edge of his vision as he stares along the dark deserted road, but he's seeing the phrase he has encountered far too often in Terence's journal.
KIND FOLK HERE. KIND FOLK HERE.

THE SECOND VISIT

"Luke! We weren't expecting to hear from you again so soon. Is everything all right?"

"No different from yesterday, and thank you for my birthday."

"It wouldn't be summer without it," Freda says, "and now Sophie's made it mean even more."

"I don't think that means much," Luke says and hopes as well.

"That's not like you. You're supposed to be the imaginative member of the family. Well, you definitely are." Having paused to let this gather weight, Freda says "It means people who know about the old ways are celebrating your birthday every year. Do you think Terry knew?"

"I don't know what he did."

"I think he may have and that song of his was his funny way of saying it was midsummer. I wonder why he gave it up." As Luke refrains from answering she says "What can we do for you today?"

"I've been thinking about last night," Luke says while his eyes remind him how long he lay awake. "When you were talking about me being born—

"I'm sorry, Luke."

He feels dismayingly unsure that he'll want to learn "Why?"

"It wasn't actually you Terry was singing to that day, was it? But you know we'd never swap you for anyone."

Luke realises she means so well that she can't be aware of her turn of phrase. "I was just wondering—"

He's interrupted by the sound of a key in the lock. "What, Luke?" Freda says. "You can tell me. You always can."

"Sophie's just come in," he says and calls "It's Freda."

"Do you want to talk another time?" Freda suggests.

"Not at all." He feels as if he has been caught trying to conceal a secret from Sophie rather than having called Freda as soon as it occurred to him. "She's listening too," he says and turns on the loudspeaker. "What was he like when he was born?"

"Noisy and wriggled like a little worm. Sophie, we're talking about the baby I had." As Sophie gives him a searching look Freda adds "He was smaller than we might have liked and a bit frail. They nearly had to put him in an incubator."

"So when do you think—" Luke struggles to find words it should be safe to use. "When do you think it started to be me?"

"I've talked to Maurice about that, and we honestly don't know. It must have been early on, mustn't it? Only obviously we didn't notice any change. You didn't really start to put on weight till after we took you home, and that must have been you. If your baby turns out delicate you'll know you started out like that too."

"Delicate isn't the word, Freda," Sophie says. "He's just given me a kick to remind me, little Maurice."