The Lily Hand and Other Stories (23 page)

The boy sat with his eyes closed, and the colour ebbing and flowing in his thin cheeks, and all the lines of his body growing languid and eased.

When he opened his eyes, the Governor was leaning over him, smiling, a hand under his forearm to lift him gently out of the chair.

‘Come on, Harry! We're going home.'

The Purple Children

The outrage took place at eleven o'clock on a moonless night, before the stars began to silver the white walls of the church with their mysterious and tender twilight. The policeman on guard at the side door of the Town Hall was cut off from the rear entrance into the courtyard by one high wing of the building, and heard nothing until the alarm sounded. It was the sentry at the rear gate, an eighteen-year-old, new to the town and ill at ease with his enforced duties there, who was singled out as the weakest spot in the defences. Half-dozing on his walk back and forth across the gate, he heard the most innocent sound in the world, a girl's voice calling softly: ‘Puss, puss, puss … Here, pussy!'

As he started into wakefulness with the exaggerated attention which made the walls seem higher and the night darker, a little figure with the light running steps of a child darted towards the gate, and halted with her hands locked upon the bars. He saw how slight she was, and how young, not more than fifteen. Her frock was dark, probably black like so many of them here, and her thin, small wrists issued pale and strange from the sleeves, afloat from her body, as though they could have passed through the bars with ease, and left him helpless behind. But they did not. She turned on him a face which was only a silvery oval and a dark shining of eyes, and he thought he saw about it the shadowy movement of unkempt locks darker than the darkness.

‘You can't go in there,' said the sentry gruffly. ‘You ought to be in the house at this time of night. Don't you know there's a curfew?'

‘I
was
in the house. I only came out because of my cat. She got out when I went to bring in wood, and I couldn't catch her. She's only young, she runs away. It's no use telling
her
there's a curfew.'

‘She'll come back in the morning,' said the sentry awkwardly. ‘They always do. You go home, like a good girl, and don't you risk running about here in the dark. Somebody might think you were up to something.'

‘But she might not come back. She's never been out at night before. She sleeps on my bed. I could get her now, if you'll let me. She ran through there into the courtyard. Won't you please help me to catch her? I'll take her straight home if you will.'

The boy felt the small, cold hand laid entreatingly on his arm. She was only a kid, she hardly came up to his shoulder, and she was beginning to sniff ominously. He couldn't see any harm in it. He'd got orders to treat the natives politely and considerately, as long as they weren't making trouble, and what trouble could this waif possibly make?

‘I shall lose her,' said the girl in a quavering voice. ‘I've had her from a little kitten, and now I shall never get her back again. Oh,
please
!'

‘I
can't
let you in there, I should get into trouble if anybody found out—'

‘Well, who's going to find out? All I want is to get my cat. You'll be there close to me every minute, you can see every move I make. And you've got a gun – I don't see what you have to be afraid of. Oh, do please help me! Only a moment. If she won't come to me, I promise I'll go home.'

He hadn't meant to do it, but somehow he had set his hand to the bars beside hers, and thrust the gate open before her.

‘Well, be quiet about it, can't you, or somebody'll hear us. Come on, quick, and get her, and get yourself out of here.'

She slipped past him like a shadow. The only sound was the light, hasty tread of his own feet keeping hard on her heels. He turned his back on the gate and the silent, dark lane outside, and pressed at her shoulder as she flitted into the most obscure corner of the yard, where the shabby outhouses leaned together in a huddle of shadows, and the steps plunged down to the cellar. Behind them the tall bulk of the Town Hall shut off the awaking stars, and the ropes of the flagstaff creaked faintly in the wind which never stilled in the upper air.

‘There she is! You see, I told you!' whispered the girl triumphantly, and darted forward and was lost among the deeper shadows under the wall. And there really was a cat, the sentry saw with relief and satisfaction, a thin little tabby shape skipping from darkness to darkness, evading them with the light, unhurried insolence of cats everywhere. It took ten minutes to run it to earth at the foot of the cellar steps, against the closed door.

The girl snatched up her quarry and held it struggling in her arms. She looked up at the sentry under the black tangle of her hair, with a wild smile.

‘Thank you! Now I'll go home. You were very kind to let me come in.'

But she did not move, she stood looking at him still, her lips parted, her eyes enormous and shy and wary. When she looked at him like that he felt how alien he was in this place, and even her thanks could not compensate him for the quiet, patient hatred of her people. She let her body touch his, her sharp little shoulder leaning for a moment into the hollow of his arm, which moved of itself to hold her. It was like holding a willow sapling, so pliant she was, and yet so unmoved, so immaculate, as if her body did not understand, and felt no awareness of his disquiet. And then they both heard, clear through the silence, the sudden light impact of feet, as though someone had dropped from the high wall.

The sentry span round and went up the cellar steps three at a time, just in time to see the figure of a boy disentangle itself from the severed ropes of the flagstaff, and run head-down for the gate.

He would have kept silence if he had not lost his head; but the shout of rage and alarm was out of him before he knew it, and after that there was no hope of keeping it all quiet and pretending that no one had got past him during the night. The only chance he had was to get at least one prisoner to show for it. He hurtled after the racing boy, hauling the loaded spray-gun round from his shoulder in flight, to bring it to bear upon the fugitive.

He heard the girl scream, and was startled because the sound came from only a yard or two behind him, where silently, wildly, she was running, too. When she saw him check for an instant to ready the gun, she ran past him and flung the cat sprawling and clawing in his face. He threw up his left arm to cover his eyes, and swerved aside, firing the gun blindly.

The spray spattered darkly over her cheek and her spread hands, but she had gained the few yards she needed for herself and her partner, and she flew through the gate and pulled it to with a clang. Before the sentry could fling off the cat and wipe his eyes clear of the blood from his scratched forehead, both the fugitives were snatched away into the silence and darkness of the little streets.

People came pouring into the courtyard from three doors now. They found the sentry mopping his face, a long, violet stain upon the ground, and the coils of the severed rope dangling at the foot of the flagstaff. They got the Major out of bed, and the sentry reported to him with every excuse he could think of, though the sum of them all sounded thin enough.

‘She was only a little girl, sir, a kid about fifteen, I didn't think she could be up to anything. She was looking for her cat.'

The Major had been in the country for over a year, and was accustomed to the local style of warfare, to the ugly demands it made upon him, and the satisfaction he sometimes felt in their ugliness, which frightened and depressed him more than anything else. He stood gazing at the boy without rancour. After all, he was only three years older than the enemy, by his own estimate; for him this game might still be able to dissemble its ugliness.

‘They are always kids of fifteen,' said the Major. ‘Haven't you learned that yet?'

‘But there was a cat, sir, that was the truth, anyhow.'

‘That skinny tabby,' said the Major wearily, ‘belongs to the caretaker. I imagine its appearance was a stroke of luck. On the other hand, she may have seen it before she made up her story and began calling. She certainly never owned it. Well, you seem to have spent practically a quarter of an hour being civil to her, I take it you can pick her out again?'

The sentry, who was not good at thinking, obeyed his instincts. He was too frightened of his own side, by this time, to retain much resentment against the enemy; his fear even drew him into a kind of distant alliance with them. He said: ‘No sir, I don't think I could. She had her hair over her face, and she kept in the shadow all the time. It was pretty dark there under the wall. I don't think I should know her again. There's scores of them that same build, thin as a monkey.'

‘And scores of them,' said the Major, looking almost affectionately at the long violet stain like blood upon the stones, ‘with purple hands and faces? At least you had the sense to fire your charge. That ought to give her one distinguishing feature, don't you think?'

The sentry looked at the dye in his turn, and was filled with a treasonable but unmistakable regret.

‘I'm sorry, sir,' he lied. ‘It was just then she threw the cat, it put me off proper. I reckon I missed her.'

‘Then why,' asked the Major gently, ‘did she drip violet dye practically all the way to the gate?' He marked the last infinitesimal spot in the light of his torch, and, searching back and forth along the stones, could find nothing more. ‘A pity! A heavier charge, and we might have been able to follow her all the way home. Did you mark the boy, too?'

‘No, sir. He was well out of range, only he turned back to catch hold of her hand.' It was the first time he had fully realized all that he had seen. Regret rose in him like a tidal sea. ‘They haven't done anything all that bad, sir, it's only a flag.'

The Major smiled, thinking that when this boy was forty instead of eighteen he would no long make the absurd mistake of speaking of ‘only' a flag.

‘Whoever it was worked extremely fast. He's left about ten feet of the flagstaff coiled round with barbed wire as he came down, and it seems to be stapled in half a dozen places. You must have been very absorbed in your cat-hunt. And he must have spent a longer time practising the movements involved before he could reproduce them at that speed. Yes, I should like to congratulate that boy. But when we've found her we shall have found him, too. We'll try the grammar school first,' he said, smiling to himself, beginning to feel the terrifying satisfaction of hate reacting against hate. ‘If she isn't there, we'll visit the homes of all those girls who don't answer the register. We shan't have to look any farther.'

In the shed behind Niko's father's shop, Ariana knelt over a pan of water, scouring with a handful of wet sand at the backs of her hands. The water lay in her palms as she rinsed them, as clear as it had come from the well; only the wreaths of sand lay in the bottom of the pan, stirring idly as the drops fell. Cristo held the torch close, keeping his body between its light and the covered window. Andreas crouched on his heels, his head bent close to Ariana's, his cheek brushed occasionally by her swinging hair.

‘It's no use,' she said, letting her hands lie quiet suddenly in the wet skirt of her dress, and looking up at him with enormous black eyes. The misshapen blotches of purple ate away half her face into shadow. Behind her all the silent, intent partisans drew closer with a long sigh. ‘It won't come out,' she said with the calm of despair. ‘Now they have only to look for me – I can't be hidden. Andreas, what am I to do?'

‘If they find you,' he said, taking her stained hands in his, ‘they find me, too.'

‘That's foolish and wasteful. You'll be needed again. And besides, they'd beat you. They'll only imprison me. No, it was great luck that you were not splashed like me. Don't be so ungrateful as to throw it away.' Her voice was violent and resolute, but she was very frightened. He felt the small, wet hands, hot with scouring, tremble in his own.

‘I will not let you bear it alone. We were all in this act together. When we drew the lots we drew the danger with them, as well as the privilege.'

‘They'll come straight to the school,' said Cristo. ‘But if only one girl is missing they may not notice it, and no one will betray you. Perhaps if you stay at home and take care not to be seen—'

‘For how long?' said Andreas shortly. ‘You see the marks won't come out, they'll have to wear away gradually. Do you think she can be hidden for months?'

‘But they may give up in a week or two. She need not be hidden from our own people, only from
them
.'

‘If they do not find me in the school,' said Ariana with authority, ‘they will want to see the register and find out who is missing. It is only another way of being set apart. I think I would rather be there to face them. It is not I who will have cause to be ashamed.' But her body shook and her hands contracted in the boy's hands, because she knew she would still be afraid.

‘If we tried linen bleach,' said one of the girls timidly, ‘do you think it would move it?'

Niko shook her head. ‘No, it's an old vegetable dye, nothing will fetch it out, it has to wear off. My uncle is a dyer,' she said sadly, ‘I know.'

Andreas stood up slowly, still holding the thin marred hands in his. All the intent and anxious eyes settled upon him and clung.

‘Yes. I had forgotten,' said Andreas. ‘Yes, of course, your uncle is a dyer. Does he still use this dye?'

‘There's no substitute for it if you want this purple, and it's faster than the modern colours. Yes, he always keeps it.'

Andreas looked down and smiled into Ariana's eyes, and his thin brown face relaxed into a reassuring tranquillity. ‘Come!' he said, drawing her up by the hands. ‘It will be hours yet to daylight, we have time. They won't find you, Ariana. They'll never find you.'