Part 5 (1/2)

'Didn't you hear on the radio?'

'I didn't hear anything about it. I do sometimes listen to the radio, but I didn't hear anything.'

'So you might have watched people drown?'

'They were too far away.'

'Grandma?'

'Yes?'

'We went down into the caves in the Mendips. Have you ever been down in the caves?'

She shook her head, and he told her about the bottomless void and the Cave of Gloom and the twenty-fifth chamber with no exit. He told her about the one brave man who had dared and dared and failed. She listened, coughing and puffing at her cigarette. She nodded.

'So you want to dive into the bottomless,' she said. 'Yes, of course you do. Well, you go on wanting that. And maybe one day you will come up into the pure air, on the other side.'

'Is there pure air, on the other side?'

'Who knows? They do not come back to tell us. There must be something, or why would we wish to plunge?'

She threw her cigarette on to the floor, and stubbed it out on the floorboards with a high-heeled diamante slipper. She caught Benjamin's disapproving glance, and cackled.

'Don't worry,' she said. 'I won't set myself on fire. This place is so wet, you'd need a few gallons of paraffin to get even a little blaze going. Every night I spend an hour or two with the firelighters. It's hard work, here, keeping warm.'

Benjamin cupped the globe in his hands. Demerara, Cayenne, Isle aux Morts.

'Come on,' said Frieda. 'We'd better get back, they'll be wondering if we've fallen off the battlements. I've just one more place to show you before we go. I'll show you my treasure house. Follow me.'

And she set off, down some backstairs with old bell-pulls, to a room that she called the butler's pantry.

'I don't know if it was the butler's pantry,' she said, 'in fact I don't know what a butler's pantry is, do you? But that's what I call it. I'm in charge here. I call things what I like. Upstairs, downstairs, what I say goes.'

There were drawers, and cupboards, and a sink with copper taps deeply encrusted with blue-green verdigris.

'Look,' she said, opening drawers. 'Here's the family silver. What's not on the tea-table. If they ask you where it is, when I'm dead and gone, you can tell them.'

Wrapped in green baize lay cutlery, candlesticks, sauceboats, ashtrays, monogrammed cigarette cases. A tortoisesh.e.l.l box with cufflinks. A velvet-lined box with coffee spoons. Pastry forks, fish forks. An ivory-handled ladle. Treasures from a past world.

'These are Palmer pieces,' she said. 'There was nothing on the Haxby side. Nothing to speak of. You never met your grandfather.'

She stated this as a fact, inviting no query.

She opened another drawer, full of a tangle of old necklaces of sh.e.l.l, coral, amber, green gla.s.s. 'Nothing valuable here,' she said. 'Don't let them waste time sorting this lot out. There's nothing here. Except'and she picked out a square maroon plum leather gold-initialled box'except this. This is my best medal. It's probably worth something.'

It lay in its ivory-cream satin nest. A ribboned, enamelled heraldic brooch, gold and blue and yellow, with writing upon it, in Latin and in another language he did not recognize.

'Yes,' she said, 'that's probably worth a few bob.'

She fastened the box's little golden hook-and-eye catches, and put it away at the back of the drawer.

'I suppose you're too old for farm animals,' she said, as she opened the last drawer.

She handed him an old Clark's shoe box. He lifted the damp lid. It contained small chunky animals, crudely hand-carved from woodcows, horses, pigs, sheep. They were carefully arranged, more lovingly stored than the silver and the beads. They were forlorn yet cherished. Benjamin could see that a whole childhood was preserved in that box. He narrowed his eyes and stared at them. They were full of power. He could awaken them. He stroked their blunt heads with his finger.

'They were mine,' said Frieda. 'My father made them for me when I was ill. I was in bed for weeks. He made me a farmyard, and these were the animals. He was a farm labourer, your great-grandfather. He liked the beasts. That's what he called them. The beasts. Though mostly it was ploughing. The sugar beet. And humping sacks.'

She paused. 'I was in bed for weeks,' she said.

'What was the matter with you?'

'I fell off a ladder at the mill. We weren't supposed to be there. We were trespa.s.sing. Look'she pulled up her long skirt, ruching up the fabric to bare her thigh'look, there's my scar.'

He stared at the purple-white, s.h.i.+ny, puckered scar on her bluish elderly mottled soft flesh.

'That's when he made me the animals. I was delirious. They thought I'd got teta.n.u.s.' She rolled her skirt down again, to his relief; and laughed. 'We called it lockjaw, in those days. Terrible things happened to you if you got lockjaw. Fits and spasms. I don't think I had lockjaw, I'd probably have died if I had. I think I just didn't want to tell. It's a fine scar, isn't it?'

'Ghastly,' said Benjamin, happy to praise it now it was concealed.

'They couldn't st.i.tch it, too much dirt in it. I was delirious. I thought I could make the animals move.'

'And couldn't you?'

She looked at him sharply. 'Well, for me they moved,' she said. 'But I was only a child.'

'One last thing,' she said, reaching into the back of the drawer, and taking out a small j.a.panned tea-caddy. 'Your great-grandfather gave me these too. They were turned up by the plough. He was always hoping to find a golden necklace, or even a coin. Bert Caney found some coins. They're in the museum at Peterborough. But all my father found were these. Do you know what they are?'

Benjamin handled the cool and amber-green, the coiled and wrinkled twists of stone. He shook his head.

'They're fossils. Fossil sh.e.l.ls. But the village people called them the devil's toenails. They were two a penny. They were always turning up. But we liked them, my father and I.'

'I like them too,' said Benjamin.

'They're all that's left, of those days,' said Frieda. He was shocked, for tears stood in her old eyes, she blinked, and her firm voice caught and trembled. How could she care for things so long ago? Such small things from so long ago? Was she going to cry? He could not bear it if she cried. But no, she shook herself, her sequins glittered, she was back in the saddle.