Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (27 page)

“And how about the acre of land the woman asks for?”

“Well, they reclaim land from the seas in a lot of places--it's expensive but it's done. As for the planting and harvesting, nanotechnology...”

“My word! You Americans!” she said.

“That's just my science fiction side coming out,” I said.

That brought us up to dessert, or “pudding” as Eleanor called it.

Eleanor had changed the subject entirely, asking about my life in Alaska and my marriage. “Are you married?” I asked, when I'd given her the Cliff Notes version of that portion of my life.

“No, I never did,” she said sadly. “I retired ten years ago from the civil service. I was very lucky to find a position with my disability.”

“So you've basically been a career woman then?”

“I was engaged once, before the war. But we parted over politics and--and then he was killed, you see. So many were.”

“Yeah, Vietnam was kind of the same for women my age in the States,” I told her.

She was quiet all through dessert, and then said, “I met him here, you know. We were children together, Eamon and I. You'd have liked Eamon, Ann. He was musical, like you. A lovely singer, one of those soaring Irish tenors. Sometimes I hear him still, in my dreams. We were going to be married. We meant to announce our engagement during the Fair here, when we were all together for the summer again. But then the war broke out and the Irish Republic declared itself neutral. Eamon's father had been conducting his business in London for some time, but chose to return with the family to Ireland at the start of the war. Father was furious. Although he had always said that Daisy and I might marry as we liked, he had never really approved of Eamon's family and called the Houlihans traitors. Eamon and I met on the beach, as our families were angrily packing to leave. He asked me to elope and return to Ireland with him. I demanded to know why he was running away to Ireland, why he couldn't join up and protect us from the Nazis like every other real man. He said he would defend me with his life but for reasons that should be obvious to me, he didn't care to extend his protection to my country. We had a horrible row and--that was the last time I saw him.”

“What happened?” I asked.

She nodded. “Without telling me what he was going to do, he went right off and enlisted and was promptly killed en route to the front. I only learned of it months later. I was in uniform myself by then, driving ambulances and so forth. Until my jeep got hit. That was when I lost the use of my legs. Our parents were killed in the bombings in London. So you see, there was no use in falling out, no use in spoiling our last good time together here, and no use my giving up Eamon, for I never was fit to marry anyone else after, even had I wished..., no, no, don't protest. You don't know. You've no idea what it was like.”

I did, a little, having been a nurse in Vietnam, but I hadn't been injured as she had, hadn't lost someone I loved as much. I always thought of the English as being just an earlier, maybe a bit stuffier version of Americans. I kept forgetting how devastating it had been for them to have both world wars on their doorstep, killing not only soldiers, but civilians. I reached out and laid my hand over her and hoped she wouldn't think it terribly, gauchely American.

She didn't cry openly though there were a few tears. She must have shed so many.

“So that's why you wanted to come back here when you couldn't live alone anymore?”

She nodded. “Daisy hates the idea, but I keep thinking, perhaps if I become senile, I'll remain in the dream I have of seeing him again, of being here and young and in love...though I'd settle for old and forgiven. Ann, dear?”

“What?”

Her face was brightening. “You're so very clever, knowing about that song and figuring out how to solve the riddle of the shirt. Do you think we might, between us, do what you suggested and perhaps... I don't know. I just feel that I should like to do something of the sort.”

“I was going to leave tomorrow to visit a friend in Romsey for Halloween.”

“Of course, you must do as you think best, but it would mean so much to me...”

The lady had had a very hard life and was getting ready to spend the rest of it in a mangy old hotel to be near the memory she wished to honor. What I had told her about the song had apparently given her an idea for a little ritual gesture that would give her a sense of closure on something that had caused her pain throughout her life. My friends at home in Port Chetzemoka are always doing that kind of thing, but usually for a lot less important reasons. I didn't figure it would hurt me and my friend Marjorie in Romsey really wouldn't care one way or the other. “Okay sure.”

She sighed as if terribly relieved at my agreement and said, “One other little thing. I'd rather Daisy didn't know. She'd think I'm getting feeble-minded as well as just feeble. I shall tell her to rest an extra day tomorrow and that you have agreed to let me show you the town properly.”

The fabric store had a bolt of white linen that cost the earth, but was the closest thing we could find to cambric, a kind of French linen, or the other fabric mentioned, Holland, which was linen from the Netherlands. This linen was made in Sussex, but it would have to do. When the woman began to cut off a piece, Eleanor bought the entire remnant, so that it wouldn't have been cut.

“Now where would we find a laser knife in a Yorkshire seaside town, I wonder?” I said aloud.

“I've another idea. Could we not wrap a sort of shirt perhaps, since we've so much fabric? Rather like the Indian saris?”

And as soon as we got our hot glue gun at the local artist's supply store, that's exactly what we did, with Eleanor serving as model and me as draper-gluer, right there in the mostly deserted store. We were both laughing and swearing, me roundly and Eleanor with a surprisingly unladylike “bloody hell” once or twice. The sales clerk, a boy of about twenty who had previously looked extremely bored said, “I say, that's going to be a smashing mummy costume. You'll be the hit of the masquerade.”

The draping and gluing accomplished, we had a shirt of sorts, and all we had then to do was persuade the local dry cleaners to ignore the unorthodox nature of our garment and to give us their extra fast service--a goal accomplished by an under-the-table ten pounds in addition to what they normally charged.

Before the woman hauled the “sark” across the counter, Eleanor said, “Wait,” and stuck a thorn into one of the folds. “That's not to come out, now,” she told the woman, who looked as if she'd like to put as much distance between herself and us as possible.

After that, we had a very nice stroll along the beach. The day was one where the sky changed every two minutes, the brisk wind whisking mountain ranges full of clouds across the horizon, then sweeping it clear until the next buildup. The air was full of moisture and ozone and the salty, fishy smell of the beach. Eleanor had a friendly conversation with the tinker man who offered the pony rides--his grandfather had been the one to offer pony rides when Eleanor was a child, she learned.

We enjoyed a late lunch of hot dogs, soft drinks and ice cream in one of the tacky little waterfront places instead of at our hotel. The plan was that we would then go back and pick up our “sark” before the dry cleaning establishment closed.

But Eleanor started to fade then. “I'd best return and check on Daisy,” she said. “Do you mind picking up the sark yourself?”

I assured her I didn't and suggested she get some rest. The plan was that we would sneak away from the hotel at about eleven thirty, after Daisy was asleep, and I would wheel Eleanor to the beach where she would present her offering. We were hoping for high tide to take it out right away. I felt slightly silly, but it was fun and I knew it would be a great anecdote to share when I wrote home.

Eleanor returned to the hotel in a cab but I took the funnicular back up to the town and hired a cab out to the castle hill. Very little remained of the castle and the walk was too far and too steep. But the side trip occupied me until time to pick up the sark.

The thorn was still in it, and it was clean. The clerk shook her head as I held up the unlikely garment for inspection. “Halloween costume,” I said. “Our mummy's very particular about her shroud.”

I stepped back out of the cleaner's into a sudden, driving wind, flinging sheets of rain over everything. Fortunately, the sark was in a protective plastic bag. I ducked back inside, pulled my rain poncho out of my shoulder bag and slipped it over my head, then tucked the bag with the sark underneath it as well. Instead of battling my way back to the hotel, I headed for a restaurant I had seen around the corner. Hot dogs and ice cream left an empty place and I didn't want to battle the snooty dining room staff again.

Somewhere in the distance a siren announced a. that a speeder had been apprehended b. that a fire was being fought or c. that someone was on their way to the hospital. I voted for c. in a town so full of nursing homes. I wondered which one Daisy and Eleanor would select. The rain hadn't lightened at all even though I took plenty of time finishing my meal and had dawdled awhile longer reading my tour book over tea. I called a cab, and fifty minutes later later, it still hadn't arrived. So I fought my way against the wind back to the hotel, sloshed my way to the lift, and on to my room where I hung up the sark, divested myself of my wet pants, shoes, and socks, which I arranged over the heated towel rack, and let the poncho drip into the tub. Then I fell exhausted onto the bed and let a pit of sleep close over me while the wind whistled around the building and rain assaulted the pane of my window.

I awoke, confused, in the darkness, to the sound of a knock at my door. “Ann dear?” came a whisper. “It's Eleanor. It's eleven fifteen. Are you awake?”

I jumped up, pulled on my extra pair of trousers, and went to the door. My hair was still damp. Eleanor sat in her chair, dressed much as I'd seen her to begin with in her coat and scarf with her little lap robe.

“Maybe this isn't such a good idea tonight,” I told her. “It's pouring out there.”

“Nonsense, it's just a bit of rain.”

I pulled the sark out of the closet. “Here it is. Now that you have it, can't you do what you want any time?”

“Spoken,” she said. “Like someone young and healthy. Please, Ann. I've no idea how long I'll be able to do this. Come on now. There's a good girl. Stop whinging and let's get on with it.”

I knew it all along. I knew that I was nuts taking an elderly British lady, wheelchair bound and with a heart condition, to the beach in the middle of a storm at midnight on Halloween. It simply didn't seem like very good judgement, even at the time. But she wouldn't take no for an answer and if I hadn't gone, I felt sure she'd try to go alone. As it was, she couldn't have done any worse if she had.

“At least let's call a cab,” I said.

But she shook her head stubbornly and I pushed her out into the rain, then dragged the wheelchair backwards down the steps, a technique we'd used earlier in the day. I could hardly see and I really wished I'd brought mittens. My hands were already cold and numb on the handles of the wheelchair.

It was all downhill to the beach, however, and we had an excellent tail wind, my poncho making a kind of sail. The sark was tucked beneath Eleanor's lap robe. Except for the white mare's tales of the waves, the water was utterly black. The sky boiled with black on black on steel gray clouds and shimmered with the pelting rain when the wind pushed an opening for the clouds or the high, full moon. Dead leaves whipped wildly around us until we got to the beach, and then it was wet sand that sprang up to sting us.

Eleanor said nothing. The tide was high, as we wished, yard-high waves crashing onto the beach.

“You want me to put the sark in the sea for you?” I asked Eleanor.

“No, dear. Not yet. I want you to sing the first part of the song, about the sark. Would you do that please?”

No one ever has to ask me twice to sing so, though the wind tore every note from me before I quite had it out, I did as she asked.

I'd got to the bit about the “wash it in yonder dry well” part when I noticed someone walking out of the water, an aura of shining water still clinging to his outline. One of the surfers in his wetsuit, out for a highly stupid midnight surf, I thought at first.

I took a breath, meaning to wait until he'd gone.

“
Ann
,” Eleanor said urgently, shoving the wheels of her chair to propel herself toward the man. Her scarf tore loose from her head and went flying, as did the lap robe, leaving the sark twisting in a ghostly fashion on her lap. “
Keep singing.”

“Guy's going to think we're nuts, Eleanor, singing in this kind of rain.”

“Nonsense. Eamon's Irish. And he's been singing the same song to me in my dreams for years. That's where I knew it from, you see. Trust me, Ann. He will understand about the sark...”

But I couldn't remember any more. It didn't matter. The man was closer now, and I saw that instead of a wet suit, he wore a vintage military uniform. Just one stripe. As he drew nearer, the wind rose even higher and tore the sark from Eleanor's hand. She let it go, opening her fingers deliberately to let it fly at him. He caught it and let it fly out to sea like an oversize gull. He was almost close enough I would be able to make him out clearly, though his face was still in shadow.

Then, suddenly, a blast of wind roared between us, knocking me to my knees in the sand, and when I could look up, it was to see a huge wave come slamming down on us all.

I screamed and dived for the wheelchair, hanging onto it with all my might as I drank in seawater.

As the water drained backward again I scuttled toward the sidewalk, pulling the chair, but even before I could see clearly again I knew it was empty.