Firefly Gadroon Read online

  I felt a weight behind me on the rope, simply turned and there Devvo was. He’d drifted against the lifeline which linked me to Germoline. At least, I thought it was Devvo. He was a ghoulish mess of blisters and burned skin, blackened around his face and all his shoulder, floating on the surface about ten feet off and just keeping his mouth up. His hair had gone.

  ‘My legs, Lovejoy,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t move.’

  ‘Here. It’ll hurt.’

  I slid along the rope and tied it round his waist, lifting it to settle under his arms the way seemed best. He cried out in agony a few times as the rope bit. The sea was just too deep for me to stand. With each attempt I became weaker. I hooked my arm under the rope and let it come on to my shoulder. My arms wouldn’t work any more. Germoline brayed again, worried for me.

  ‘One more second, Devvo,’ I gasped, craning my neck up for air. ‘I’ll go and we’ll pull you in, mate.’ I called him mate. Him, that had murdered Drummer.

  ‘I can’t hold on . . .’

  ‘We’ll get you in.’

  ‘I can’t see, Lovejoy. You won’t leave me, eh?’

  ‘ ’Course not.’

  I dragged myself weakly along the rope until I touched the bottom and crept forwards, utterly done, pulling myself weakly back to the fogged shore. Germoline was waiting patiently as I crawled on to the mud beside her. I honestly thought I was dying from exhaustion. I lay there, unable to move a muscle. I couldn’t even support my own weight, but I’d done it. I’d saved Devvo, atoned for killing the owner of those oily hands out there on the black sea. All it needed now was for Germoline to pull him in. And thank God Germoline was there, bracing solidly against the rope as the tide tried to drown Devvo. She was just waiting for my command, bless her loyal little donkey heart.

  ‘Right, love,’ I gasped up at Germoline’s dependable form above me. ‘Pull.’

  Nothing happened. Not a muscle.

  ‘Germoline,’ I wheezed. ‘Please, cockie. I can’t do it.’ I was looking up at her.

  ‘Lovejoy!’ came weakly from the sea. ‘Lovejoy. For Christ’s sake.’

  Something spluttered out there in the creek.

  ‘Germoline,’ I bleated. ‘Pull, lovey. Pull. Please.’ Didn’t she understand? I tried to get up but my muscles weren’t moving. I felt indiarubber, like those elastic toy things you put into different shapes for children. Maybe she didn’t know what to do.

  I struggled up her forelegs and sagged over her neck, too done even to straddle her. She felt so warm and strong. All that power.

  ‘Fucking gee up, Germoline,’ I gasped in her earhole. ‘Please, lovey.’

  Not a twitch. Her head was turned seaward, almost as if she were listening to that awful burbling.

  ‘Lovejoy!’ came again offshore. ‘Please . . .’ A gagging sound. I knew it well. I’d been making the same sound for what seemed hours.

  I found tears running down my face. I wobbled off Germoline’s neck and tried pulling on the rope, the seaward side. It barely lifted out of the water.

  ‘Please, Germoline,’ I said. ‘Sweetheart . . .’

  I was helpless. The rope sagged, tugged a few times, drifted, sagged. Once I looked into Germoline’s eyes. She gazed back with that calm with which an infant watches another who’s crying, almost dispassionate and without the slightest sympathy. I suppose cold’s the word I’m looking for, something like that. Once or twice I shouted for help, that Mayday thing, without any real hope. In any case Drummer’s creek was nothing but a waste of mudflats at the best of times. Flooded at high tide, it was even more desolate.

  Numbed, I found myself sprawled on the mud, leaning against tough little Germoline with tears streaming down my face and those horrible sounds growing fainter out on the waters of the streaming creek.

  There came a time when the rope stopped tugging, but it must have been an hour before I could move. Every muscle I had was screaming. Even breathing was painful. As soon as I could I left Germoline there, tethered to something unspeakable floating out in the creek, and followed the marks back to Drummer’s hut by crawling, stopping every few yards to recover.

  It must have been a good two hours later that I returned, clumping across the receding tidal lip to where Germoline waited. She said nothing. I was still falling a bit and my muscles weren’t coordinating too well, but at least I was clothed in some of Drummer’s old garb and had got warm. I’d even brewed up and tried a slice of bread with some cold samphire on it but fetched that up.

  I unlooped the rope from Germoline’s neck, and pulled her round to face the land again. I simply let her end of the rope fall and left it as it had been, trailing into the ebbing tide.

  I didn’t get her straps right on the cart, which is something that normally makes her irritable. This time, though, she was as good as gold and tolerated my clumsy fastening while I got her roughly hitched. I had to sit in the cart then and just let her get on with it. I couldn’t have gone to report to Joe Poges at the staithe for a gold clock. The straps made it hard for Germoline but she seemed to know the problem and struggled gamely across the mudflats on to the hard with me in the cart. We came upon a man from the lobster fishery chipping and bending away over some of his pots. He looked up as Germoline clopped on to the stone staithing.

  ‘Good heavens,’ he called pleasantly. ‘Bit odd weather for donkey rides, eh?’

  ‘It is that,’ I said. He straightened up and watched us go past.

  That was all that was said until we reached home. I took the same way I’d come, through the American War Cemetery and back into our village through the woods. The cemetery looked more heroic than ever in the changed light, but I’d rather have the people any day.

  When we reached the cottage I was too far gone to unhitch the straps. My joints seemed to have stiffened all everywhere. I fell out of the cart whimpering with aches and hurts.

  I looked at Germoline. She gazed steadily back with that cold look. I noticed her eyes were a brownish grey.

  ‘You’re as bad as me,’ I croaked, and went inside.

  Chapter 19

  I woke into sunset, disorientated as hell and aching all over. Little Ginny was shaking me with the self-righteous face of a child aware that somebody was neglecting their duty.

  ‘You have to get up, Lovejoy,’ she was saying.

  I growled, ‘Sod off.’

  ‘Ooooh,’ from little Dobber, eyes wide.

  I creaked upright and tottered out after them into the garish sunlight. I was surprised. The world was still there, Germoline was plodding round the garden and three children were taking turns to walk her. The trees were still hanging around. Everything really average as ever, almost as though it was only to be expected. I sagged on to my unfinished wall, feeling about eight hundred. An evening breeze whistled round my limbs.

  ‘What did you get me up for, you pest?’ I demanded, avoiding Germoline’s eye – as Germoline was avoiding mine.

  ‘Tinker sent Harry to say get out of town, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Eh?’

  I was shivering. Surely to God things weren’t going bad even further? I felt I’d done enough. Harry’s our famous flower-pincher, a six-year old liberator of floral tributes from their churchyard pots. He escapes them back into the forests and woods, a one-child anti-liturgical plague which has struck as far as three whole villages away. It was his turn with Germoline. I shouted – well, croaked – him over.

  ‘Tinker says they’re coming to arrest you, Lovejoy.’ He was quite calm about it.

  ‘You’ve to hit the road and get out of town,’ Ginny confirmed. Telly Westerns.

  ‘It sounds like it,’ I said.

  The children were looking doubtfully from me to Germoline and back again.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said reassuringly. ‘I’ll get a bigger one. For speed.’

  I heard Ginny’s mother calling them back for their grub.

  ‘We hope you make it to Utah, Lovejoy,’ Ginny told me gravely. ‘And that the Red Indian
s don’t get you.’

  ‘Can we have Germoline if they do?’ little Dobber asked.

  ‘I’ll talk to her about it,’ I told them, and saw them off up the lane.

  I wished getting away from Maslow was so easy. I went in to make some grub, wondering where the hell’s Utah.

  Maslow came about five o’clock. He didn’t come in, just stood grandly at my door. He informed me that certain investigations were proceeding concerning certain events related to certain deaths concerning certain antique dealers. While insufficient evidence was available on which to base an arrest, he wanted me down at the police station to help him and others with their enquiries. I said to get stuffed. He smiled at that, and said I was not to leave the cottage under any circumstances without notifying him or his duly authorized deputy. I watched him go, knowing that Constable Jilks, our flying peeler, would be hovering in the lane.

  I stayed at home, resting some more, and then strolled up the lane at a geriatric limp for a pint at the White Hart. Word had got round about my escapades. I was treated like a mild explosive. Tinker was there. Ignoring his air of despondency, I got him into an alcove.

  ‘This rock piece, Tinker.’ I passed the chrysoberyl over. He turned it in his mittens. ‘To Silver Joe.’

  ‘What the bleeding hell is it?’

  ‘Never mind. Ask Silver Joe to price it. Then pass word to me. I’ll be in prison. If the price is right I’ll let you know, and you can have the commission on the sale. Joe can chop it for me.’ I meant to divide the proceeds, not the rock. I’d give half to Terry for his rotten old boat and half to Lemuel for his car. The value of the rock should cover it, with luck. I didn’t tell Tinker the value because prices tend to show in his face more than mine at times like this.

  Silver Joe’s a reliable old rogue given to homemade jewellery. His brother works in London, though, and I knew he’d dance with delight at the sight of the precious mineral. If Maslow had left me alone I’d have loved a crack at the piece myself, but it was better this way. At least I’d go to gaol not owing everybody on the outside. Tinker went a bit white about the gills when I said that about the car and the boat, fearing the worst. He didn’t ask after Devvo.

  The pub was quiet that evening. The dealers left me alone, only Tinker and Lemuel bravely coming to cadge a drink or several. Helen and Brad looked in for a minute but left after a bit of whispering together in the somnolence. It was a real mortuary. I explained to Lemuel that his car was a goner owing to an accident with Terry’s boat. Seeing that his car was the deposit . . . Lemuel took it better than Tinker, funnily enough.

  Finally I told Tinker to get me two hundred ounces of pure silver from Silver Joe and to leave it in my converted garage. It’s the sort of thing you can still do in our village without any risk of theft. Keeping alive and trying not to commit murder are a lot more difficult. I’ve found that.

  I did the work three days later. Dolly was with me and I felt fresh and in reasonable health. Dolly respected my long silences, seeming to understand what was about to happen. The police had called several times asking me to make statements. I’d refused, even when they brought Maslow. I wasn’t having any, and they were still in the lane, nodding to Dolly and eyeing her legs every time she went out. Once she came back from town looking fraught, but that was maybe her husband creating hell. Constable Jilks tried to come in once when it was raining, and several times I’d caught Dolly brewing up, feeling sorry for him stuck down in the lane while everybody else was in their warm house, but I put a stop to that. He wouldn’t bring me one when I was in the nick, that was sure. Let him do without.

  The silver was oval, done on an improvised sandtray, heated by my foot bellows of leather and hollowed ash. I’d have liked to use elder, like some of the northern men, but you can’t get that too easily in the south, not of the quality. I’d got Ian, Andy’s lad, to bring me all the dense logs he could find from the tithe cuttings, when all the extra wood in the village is given to the church. God could spare it. I had a pile as high as the garage when the time came.

  The die was the easiest part, as with most dies that aren’t too recessed. I used hard steel on account of the wear it was going to have to take. A piece as thick as a finger, made convex at one end, the sides filed flat to allow a good grip in the vice, and then cutting and filing the dome into a firefly pattern. I wanted it very stylized. After much thought I chose one of the patterns from traditional Chinese fireflies, more symbols than actual drawings. The mood was on me, and I knew it. I was in a trance, hardly eating, dreaming hours at a time between filing the metal tip into a firefly.

  That took the first day and half the next. I tried to rouse myself then, for the coming ordeal. I paced myself because of the state I was in, took decent rests and had good meals in between.

  Dolly was great, bringing grub and never asking what I was doing. Several times she fended people off and had one nasty fight with a pretty young reporter called Liz. I wasn’t too sure I wanted her to win that one, but thought maybe later, if . . . The rest of the second day I saw to the silver, making certain the edges were stencilled, the base clean and the casting of the dish impeccable. Casting’s fairly easy. I had to sand one small nick in the oval’s centre, but didn’t have time to repeat the whole thing. Maslow would be along for me any day once he’d gathered enough lawyers against me. I was for it, just as he’d said. I’d be lucky to come out at the other end.

  I slept late that third day. Dolly didn’t put the radio on, just let me go out after breakfast into the watery sunshine and start. I walked about nervously to keep from distractions, idly kicking sticks and grass, going round and round the garden as the mood came into me. Now and then I returned to the garage and bellowed the fire up. I always use the old charcoal-burner’s trick of banking the furnace up with clods, forcing the heat to stay alive yet closed during the nights. I’d uncovered it and got the fire drawing easily within an hour of getting up.

  The silver was in my hands before I’d made any conscious decision to start the Reverse Gadroon. It was heavy and ponderous, hellish difficult to control. On any normal day that would have put me off, but today I was above everything and simply went on, fixing the firefly die into my vice and getting the angle right. I began practice with a quick tap, using the sheet metal to get my arm going and make sure the die would hold nice and tight. The fact the marks showed neat and precise through the metal was no surprise to me, not on that magic day. Oddly, it was like watching Drummer.

  I hitched the huge silver dish to the hanging pegs and got the homemade pulleys running free. It took the heavy silver oval beautifully. One rapid dash to the furnace for maximum heat, and I laid the hammers out on the improvised benching. I have this great iron stool and perched myself on its edge. My throat was dry as hell and my eyes gritty from the sand table, which smoked and flickered behind. I spun the great silver oval, flat as a pancake, on its suspending clothes pegs. All ready. One more hitch at the stool to centre me against the die’s position, and I was off. I was in a dream, floating. I even wondered if it was me there.

  I simply watched the firefly gadroon come through the silver. One hammer blow, almost as if done by somebody else with me looking, fetched the indentation through the silver, impressing the firefly design. A smooth movement to one side a fraction of an inch and the hammer fell again, a loving stroke, not a blow. And again the impression came, meticulously in position against its neighbour. And another blow and another. Another. Another.

  The hammer’s sound drugged me. It was true love, the silver assimilating into itself the heavy loving strokes. And somehow, with every stroke of the hammer, the great silver oval spun itself that fraction of a turn into position to receive the next loving penetration of the rigid die. Round it spun, flashing reflections of the golden-red furnace colours. The hammer lifted and fell. The great dish spun. I heard somebody singing and only dimly realized after some minutes that it was me. My arms that had been arthritic and hopeless for the past three days were do
ing the silversmith’s work of their own accord. It was as if I were simply watching Drummer’s gnarled hands as, time after time in this same spot, he’d shown me the wondrous gift of the gadroon. I slammed on in the smoke, oblivious of aches and weariness, sometimes shaking sweat from my eyes and hefting the hammer down again and again as my hands flicked the ponderous dish in the air before me. It was beautiful, this spinning for the act of love, the silver seeming to quiver and move of its own volition as the hammer bore down and down again upon its gleaming surface. The last stroke brought the patterns into one circumferential oval, precise and ideal. Without a second’s pause I saw my right hand flick the heavy hammer aside with a crash and bring the lighter hammer into position, starting off round the silver’s edge again with the same loving actions, spinning and beating.

  It must have been less than half an hour but when finally the sounds ceased I couldn’t believe that my private blissful eternity had come to an end. The silver had spun the last time, and now hung there. I dropped the last hammer and sat there looking. The furnace flickered and darted colour off the silver surface. Its margin was indented now, the firefly design meeting exactly in its brilliant dance round the edge. The distances were right. The small markings where the design had to be fetched into precise line were there. It was magical, as beautiful as any gadroon design I had ever seen. And it was a reverse design, the most difficult of all. Done blind, guessing exactly for every one of the several hundred glittering impressions.

  I had done it. I found I was drooping over the bench, wheezing like my old leather bellows. The exaltation left me gradually. I got all my creaks back. I straightened and turned to place the dish on the sand tray, ready for its three silver ball-and-claw feet.

  Tinker was at the pub when I phoned and told him to bring the big Yank urgently, tell him I’d done the Reverse Gadroon. Dolly and me sat waiting on the divan.

  She knew there was something wrong. I suppose I’d led her on a bit, for the sake of peace. I decided now was the time.