Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 15

‘Well, I don’t know what she died of,’ Jasper said.

‘Guess it doesn’t matter,’ Leo answered. ‘It doesn’t matter to her now, anyway.’ He folded the blanket and put it on an old box that sat next to the bed and they stood looking down at the body.

‘It’s amazing,’ said Jasper. ‘She seems so . . . sort of colourless. Not white, just colourless, the way water has no colour. I’m not scared of her any more but I can’t say she’s exactly an attractive sight. Her skin feels a bit clammy.’

‘She looks like she’d have been a nice old lady though,’ said Leo. ‘I mean, it’s a bit hard to say with her mouth the way it is, but she looks sort of kind. Not that you can ever tell, of course.’

Jasper was starting to take an interest in the contents of the little hut. Apart from the bed and box and washstand the single room dwelling contained only an improvised table, made out of planks, a couple of stools, and a number of other trunks and boxes that served as cupboards. The decorations were simple: a painting of a boat, done in a child’s hand, but old and faded; a broken doll, one-eyed and battered; a couple of bottles containing flowers; some shells and pebbles; and a dried flower arrangement. The only features that were really striking were a number of beautifully-worked pieces of embroidery hung around the walls and piled on top of one of the boxes. The scenes they depicted were of children: children dressed in vivid clothes; children at work; children on a beach; children playing musical instruments and dancing.

Jasper and Leo looked through the pile of pieces on the box, lost in admiration. Both were aware that they had never seen more skilful work. The designs and the execution were the work of a great artist. ‘Maybe she had children and lost them?’ Leo ventured.

‘Mmmm,’ Jasper said. ‘These are amazing. My mother does embroidery but she’d give up if she ever saw these. Look at that doll.’ She pointed to a broken doll that had been worked into one of the pieces, a perfect miniature of the doll perched on the window-sill of the hut.

Leo started to open some of the boxes and chests. The first one contained only a jumble of clothes; the second a collection of books that seemed to be mainly poetry and which showed evidence of having been well-read. Other boxes held cooking and eating utensils and food. But it was the last box, nearest the bed, that revealed something of a personal nature. There were various curios, oddments, bits of jewellery, and a packet of papers.

‘I don’t know if we ought to be doing this,’ said Jasper uneasily, as Leo pulled out the papers and began to open them.

Leo shrugged. ‘Looks like she’s all alone. I don’t imagine she’d have visitors from one year to the next. We sh

ould at least try to find out who she is.’ He unrolled a sheet of paper and, after glancing over it, began reading out loud:

My boat moves out through the harbour.

I slip like a ghost past the bar.

I catch the wind at the headland

And steer by the evening star.

My vessel is stormed at by water

That tears at my sheets and my sails.

My bow is lost in the furrows

As water floods over the rails.

But it’s storms that give me my reason

And darkness that strengthens my sight.

From days of sweet calm I learn patience.

I sail unafraid into night.

I’m not a hunter or trader.

I go where I must, at the call.

The treasure of death still awaits me,

A dark, golden world to explore.

They were both silent for a few moments. ‘It’s hard to believe,’ Jasper said at last, ‘that she could have written anything like that, the way she’s lying there now.’ Leo continued to sort through the papers. There were more poems, and a packet of sketches, mainly of sea-birds, executed amateurishly but with a loving touch. About half the pile seemed to consist of letters. Leo started to read one but then stopped almost at once, and parcelled them up again. ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ he said.

Jasper had found a very old, very solid brass magnifying glass, and was using it to examine a ring set with a deep red stone. ‘Beulah,’ she announced, reading an inscription on the inside of the ring. ‘That must be her name.’

Yes, I saw it on one of the letters,’ Leo agreed. Jasper continued to pick through the collection of items admiring a carved wooden elephant, and lingering over a necklace of coral and rose quartz. But at last she had satisfied her curiosity and, putting the lid back on the box, she went in search of Leo, who was no longer in the hut.

She found him outside, digging a grave in the soil behind the little shack. ‘Are there any more spades?’ she asked.

‘Don’t think so,’ he answered. ‘Found this one behind the front door. But you could make something to put on the grave, if you want. Flowers and stuff.’

Jasper, who was quick and skilful with a knife, found one and carved into a piece of wood the name ‘Beulah’ and the date, then collected a garland of white and yellow flowers.

By this time Leo had finished digging in the sandy soil, and so, with some trepidation, the two entered the hut again and tried to lift the body from the bed. It proved to be unexpectedly heavy and surprisingly floppy, so they laid it back down and slid the blanket underneath. This was more successful, but even so there was little dignity about the old woman’s final journey, as they sweated and strained to get her out through the door, bumping themselves and the body a number of times. At the graveside they lowered her with more solemnity into the open pit and then, embarrassed by her haggard face, they closed the blanket over her.

‘We should say something,’ said Leo.

‘Yes, but what?’

‘I remember a sentence from when my sister was buried . . . I thought it was the most beautiful sentence I’d ever heard. “Rest perpetual grant unto her, and may light eternal shine upon her.” And we could read her poem.’

‘Yes, I’ll get it,’ Jasper agreed, and slipped into the hut.

Leo looked down at the shape in the blanket. ‘Good-bye Beulah, if that was your name,’ he said. ‘I think you were probably a very nice person, but maybe not a happy one. I wish I’d known you while you were alive, but I guess I’ve got to know you a little bit now.’

Jasper re-emerged with the poem, and read it with clarity and feeling. She picked up the spade and, not without some hesitation, cast a shovelful of soil into the grave. She laboured on without speaking until the job was finished, then Leo placed the carved inscription and the flowers on the mound. ‘We’d better go,’ he said. ‘We’ll be late enough as it is.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Jasper said. ‘I think we should leave a message here, saying what we’ve done, in case anyone does ever turn up to see her. I mean, she might have an estranged son who she hasn’t seen for twenty years, since he ran away to sea, and he might get shipwrecked on this very coast, and stagger into the hut expecting to find her waiting for him.’

‘Yes, she might,’ Leo agreed, sounding far from convinced. ‘Still, it’s a good idea.’

Between them they managed to write a statement of what they had found in the hut and of the actions they had taken. They broke up all the perishable food and threw it onto the beach for the seagulls. Then Jasper handed Leo a thick, very plain silver ring, as she slipped an identical one on her own finger.

‘What’s this?’ he said, in surprise.

‘Her rings,’ Jasper explained. ‘They were next to the bucket of water, and she had marks on her fingers where she wore them. I think they were the only pieces of jewellery she wore, so they must have been the only ones she cared about. I think we should wear them from now on, so that we remember her and she’s still got a little part of her left with us. ’Cos I don’t think she had anyone else.’

‘All right,’ Leo said, ‘but we better add a postscript to our note, saying that we’ve taken them.’

This task completed, they closed the door behind them, and set off for the headland, without a backward glance. The last half of their journey to the fairground was a struggle. They both ran out of energy at about the same time, and they stumbled into the light of Mayon’s fire feeling hungry and depressed and very very tired.

Chapter Fourteen

A week later, camped at the great trading centre of Bratten, the members of the fair prepared to enjoy themselves. Bratten was at the junction of two major rivers and three great highways. Leo thought he had never seen so many people before in his life. They crowded into the fairground all day and half the night, and Leo and Jasper were needed almost constantly. A typical morning might have one of them in charge of a throwing game, then acting as cashier for the freakshow, or cleaning up rubbish, before taking lunches around to people too busy to leave their posts. Sometimes too Leo would be called on to help Jud eject a trouble-maker, or patrol an area where the crowd was over-boisterous. As other stringers came and went, Leo found himself often in charge of people older than him. He had a few difficulties at first, until he learnt to identify the assertive ones. He made a point of being more assertive than they were, so that he got their respect, if not their liking.

For Bratten, this was the most important week of the year, as the district celebrated its Festival of the Gift. The fair was closed on the final day of the Festival, when the people went to the river for the Silence. But Leo and Jasper and most of the people from the fair were too tired to go. They spent the day making a few desultory repairs, washing clothes, lazing about. Around dusk nearly everyone drifted in to the communal fire, and a massive stew started to take form. Ruth sliced potatoes and Leo, the only one who could do it without weeping, chopped onions. Tiresias came out of the shadows of his caravan to throw in handfuls of herbs of some kind.

‘What are they?’ Leo asked, but Tiresias only smiled and shrugged. Titius, the human skeleton, as usual contributed nothing but advice, most of it bad. Delta and Cassim, the two women storytellers, arrived from the paddocks with aprons full of fresh mushrooms, which were received with delight. Mayon added his special tomato blend: he claimed it was from a recipe he had dreamed while asleep in a cave full of carnivorous lizards. Jasper’s contribution was a huge quantity of garlic.

The atmosphere was good, light-hearted and casual. People who had been taking each other for granted realised with sudden pleasure how much real affection and warmth they shared, and were suddenly delighted to see someone with whom they had been fighting a few days earlier. Even Tiresias unbent and became quite playful. One of the inevitable dogs that hung around the fair trotted close to the fire and tried to sniff the stew. Tiresias made as if to lift it up and toss it in to the pot; the dog yelped, squirmed free and made off. Everyone laughed; the tremor of shared laughter ran through the group.

After they had fed and were warmed by the excellent meal, the members of the fair sat around the fire, not wanting to leave, in a mood for sharing confidences. Mayon, who had been brought up on a farm, was telling a story of his own childhood. Leo, who had been washing plates did not hear the start of it, but arrived in time for the c****x. ‘When we went to dig the cattle out of the mud,’ he said, ‘we didn’t know that the ones we could see were only the top layer. As we got them out, we realised there were more underneath. I don’t know how many layers there were. But the smell, oh the smell. I’ll never forget it. It took days to get them all, even using a winch. That was a bad drought, that one.’