The Little Country by Charles de Lint

Denzil snorted. “What a pile of nonsense!”

  “It may well be. But I smell it all the same. And after all, rumour has it that the Widow is a witch.” He held up a hand before Denzil could argue further. “But first we’ll take a turn around the town, a-foot and with our eyes peeled for mischief‌—yes?”

  Denzil gave a reluctant nod, which made his glasses skid down to the end of his nose. He pushed them back up again, thinking of Taupin’s offer. Denzil knew he needed help. He just wished he could have found it in a more practical corner. Still, a man took what he was offered.

  Finishing his own bitter, he pocketed the mechanism that Taupin had given him and got off his stool.

  “Let’s be on our way,” he said.

  The Pipers Despair

  If you live close enough to the edge of the land and the edge of the sea, if you listen hard and watch close, you can get some sense of places that are different from what most people see and hear.

  ‌—HlLBERT SCHENCK, from Chronosequence

  Felix thought about Lena as he walked back to Mousehole from Penzance. She seemed like a decent sort of person, yet he couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about her obvious interest in him. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, or that she’d thrown herself at him. He just didn’t need or want any more complications in his life at the moment.

  He had enough on his mind already.

  But the trouble was, he felt sorry for her. Dumped by her boyfriend in a strange place, unable to even tour about now because of her accident, and then he showed up. . . .

  Was it the Japanese who believed that if you saved someone’s life you became responsible for that person? His helping her hadn’t exactly been a rescue from a life-threatening plight, but he couldn’t deny that‌—now that he knew of her and the unhappy situation she was in‌—he did feel just a bit responsible for her.

  It was probably a case of empathy, because he knew exactly how she had to be feeling. But there was also something else that troubled him about her, some subtext underlying the time he’d spent in her company that had nothing to do with her attraction to him, or his feeling sorry and just a bit responsible for her. Whatever it was, he couldn’t put his finger on it. He didn’t really want to think about it or her.

  He just wished he hadn’t met her in the first place. And having met her, he wished he weren’t seeing her tomorrow, because that only complicated things more.

  Was nothing simple anymore?

  At North Cliff he turned up Duck Street towards the Gaffer’s house. When he got to Chapel Place and found his bags sitting outside the garden wall, he realized that he hadn’t known what complication was yet.

  Now what was going on?

  Pulse quickening uncomfortably, he left his luggage sitting there, both duffel and accordion case, and knocked upon the door. The grim face of the Gaffer as he answered did little to allay his growing distress.

  “Hello, Tom,” he began. “What’s‌—”

  “Get away, you,” the Gaffer said.

  “Don’t I even get some sort of explan‌—”

  “Is that him?” he heard Janey ask from inside.

  “He’s not worth your time, my gold,” the Gaffer said, but Janey pushed by him in the doorway.

  Felix was shocked at her tear-stained face, the hurt in her eyes that grew rapidly into anger the longer she stood there looking at him.

  “I hate you for what you’ve done,” she began, her voice deadly calm.

  Felix could feel his heart turn to stone at her words. A foggy numbness settled over him, making everything appear to be happening at half speed.

  “What‌—what is it that I’m supposed to have done?”

  His own voice, when he spoke, seemed to drone on forever just to get those few words out.

  “We know all about you and your‌—” Her voice cracked, tears welling up anew in her eyes. “You and your little tart.”

  She meant Lena, he realized.

  “But‌—”

  “Don’t start lying again!” she shouted. “Gramps saw you with her.”

  Quickly now, Felix told himself. Explain the innocence of your meeting with the woman because this was already getting far too out of hand as it was.

  But his voice was still trapped behind the growing numbness that was fogging him. The coldness in his chest deepened. When he spoke, his words seemed distant‌—unreal even to himself.

  “I don’t know what he saw, but‌—”

  “And that’s not the worst. That stupid lying letter of yours‌—you wrote it yourself, didn’t you? Or did she do it for you? You knew‌—you knew how much the book meant to me . . . and the promise . . . the promise Gramps made Billy. . . .”

  She couldn’t go on. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she turned to the Gaffer who enfolded her in his arms.

  “Get away from us,” the Gaffer said.

  “But‌—”

  He could feel his world collapsing around him like a house made of cards knocked apart by the uncaring sweep of a giant hand.

  “Get away,” the Gaffer repeated, adding, “or I’ll call the law on you.”

  He turned away, pulling Janey with him, and slammed the door in Felix’s face.

  Felix stood there, numbly staring at the door. Deep in the pit of his stomach a knot, hard as a rock, was forming. His chest felt tight, heart drumming a wild tattoo.

  This couldn’t be happening, he thought. They weren’t going to shut him out of their lives like this without even giving him a chance to explain that he’d done nothing wrong, were they?

  He lifted his hand to knock again, then simply let it fall to his side.

  Madness: This whole trip out here had been nothing but madness.

  He thought of the letter that had brought him to Mousehole.

  Janey claimed she hadn’t sent it.

  He thought of the odd stories the Gaffer had told about strangers trying to steal his old mate’s writings.

  What had turned such kind and gentle people as the Littles into a pair of raving paranoids?

  Those stories‌—were any of them even true? There was the theft he’d stopped. . . .

  He lifted his hand a second time, then slowly turned away. What was the use? They weren’t going to listen to him.

  His own eyes were burning now. He let the tears fall as he collected his bags and stumbled off to the only sanctuary he might still have in the village.

  “Oh, no,” Clare said when she opened the door. “It didn’t go well, did it?”

  “It went bloody awful,” Felix said. “It didn’t go at all.”

  His head had cleared a little on the walk over to her place, but the coldness was still there inside him. He didn’t know if it would ever go away. He could think a little more clearly again; he just couldn’t believe that the scene that had played itself out on the Gaffer’s doorstep had actually happened. He kept wanting to go back, to prove to himself that it had all been a mistake, something he had only imagined, but then he’d see Janey’s face again, the hurt and the anger in it, he’d see the Gaffer’s rage, and know it had all taken place.

  Clare ushered him inside. Her mother was already in bed, but Clare had been sitting up reading. She took him back into the kitchen and poured him a cup of tea from the pot she’d just made for herself. Felix accepted it gratefully, almost gulping the scalding liquid down. He was trying to warm the coldness that had lodged inside him, but the tea didn’t help. Maybe nothing ever would.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Clare asked.

  Felix lifted his head slowly from the whorls of wood grain on the kitchen table that he’d been staring at.

  “There’s nothing really to tell,” he said. “I never got to say a thing. I got back from Penzance to find my cases sitting outside by the wall and when I knocked on the door, all she did was yell at me. She was crying and shouting all at the same time. The Gaffer said he was going to call the cops if I didn’t leave.”

  Clare listened with mounting horror. “
What did you do?” she asked.

  Felix laughed bitterly in response. It was an ugly sound that grated even on his own ears.

  “That’s just it,” he said. “I didn’t do anything except. . .”

  Slowly he told her of what he’d done since he’d seen her to her door earlier in the day.

  “I swear there was nothing going on between us,” he said, finishing up. “I mean, what was I supposed to do? Leave her lying there by the side of the road?”

  “Of course not. You did the decent thing.”

  “Maybe it looked bad, when I was taking her back to her hotel on her bike, but, Jesus, shouldn’t I at least get the chance to tell my side of it?”

  Clare nodded. “There’s got to be more to it than just that.”

  “She thinks I wrote this letter she sent,” Felix said. He pulled the crumpled paper from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. “Or that Lena wrote it for me,” he added.

  “Oh, no,” Clare said. “She’s wrong. That’s not at all what‌—”

  “And then there’s all the Gaffer’s crap about people coming around trying to steal William bloody Dunthorn’s precious writing.” Felix shot her an anguished look. “They’ve gone off the deep end‌—both of them.”

  He shoved his seat away from the table and stood up.

  “I can’t stay here,” he said.

  There was a wild look in his eyes, like that of a caged animal.

  “Felix, you can’t just go.”

  “You’re wrong. I can and I will. I’ve got to.”

  “At least stay here for the night.”

  Felix shook his head. “I’ll find a place in Penzance, get the stupid cane for Lena, then I’m going to hitch back to London and find myself another job. I spent almost everything I had just to get here as quickly as I did. If Janey wants to talk to me, she can just show up at whatever dock my next ship happens to land in.”

  Clare caught his hand before he could walk away.

  “The stores are closed tomorrow,” she said. “It’s Sunday.”

  “The antique shops . . . ?”

  “It’s not the tourist season anymore.”

  “Shit.”

  “I can lend her one of my canes. There’s some business cards beside the typewriter in the study with the store’s address on them. You can tell her to drop it off there when she’s done with it. No sense in spending the money on a new one.”

  She let go of his hand and Felix moved to the doorway, pausing on its threshold.

  “You believe me, don’t you?”

  Clare nodded. “I just wish I’d known earlier you fancied girls with canes.” She obviously regretted saying that as soon as it was out of her mouth. “I’m sorry. This isn’t a time for teasing.”

  “That’s okay,” Felix said. “I know you mean well. I’ll keep in touch with you. And I’ll come visit. I should have sooner, but I . . .” He sighed. “I shouldn’t forget what friends I do have.”

  “Don’t write Janey off so quickly,” Clare told him. “Things can still work out.”

  Felix merely shook his head. The coldness hadn’t left him. He was still numb and shaken, but reality had settled in.

  “There was never anything to work out,” he said. “I see that now.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “If there had been,” Felix said, “she’d have heard me out.”

  “But that’s just her temper. You know Janey, she’s‌—”

  “That’s right. I do know Janey. Or at least I know her now. I. . .” He shivered. “I have to go, Clare. I just have to get out into the air. I feel like my head’s going to explode if I don’t. Where’s that cane?”

  “Beside my desk.”

  She followed him out of the kitchen into the study where he picked up the cane and a business card.

  “Felix,” she began when they were by the front door. “About that letter.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk anymore. I’ll call you before I leave Penzance tomorrow, okay?”

  “But‌—”

  “Thanks for the cane.” He bent down and gave her a kiss. “I love you, Clare. Always have. You were always there for me. I’ll try to make it up to you sometime.”

  He saw the tears starting up in her eyes. Before she could say anything more, he gave her a quick hug, then collected his luggage and went out the door.

  2.

  That’s what you get for meddling, Clare thought as she watched Felix head back down Raginnis Hill towards the harbour.

  She sighed and looked out over the rooftops to where Mount’s Bay lay dark and brooding in the Cornish night. There were no stars visible over the water tonight, the sky being overhung with a cloud cover that promised rain. She looked back down the road, but Felix was gone now. The street was empty, except for the inevitable Mousehole cat. This one was the small calico female that lived a few doors down. She was prowling along the side of the road, stalking who knew what.

  Clare watched her for a few moments longer, remembering the old story about the red cats of Zennor.

  Between the two World Wars, a woman came to the village of Zennor, which lay on the north coast of Penwith Peninsula, and announced that she was going to breed tigers. The local authorities, needless to say, forbade her to do so, whereupon the woman promptly announced that if she couldn’t breed tigers, then she would breed a red cat as fierce as a tiger. Now, if one was to go anywhere from St. Ives to Zennor, it was the oddest thing, but nearly every cat one would see would have a tinge of red about it.

  When the calico disappeared into a garden across from the Wild Bird Hospital, Clare went back inside her own house and closed the door.

  Meddling, she thought.

  She’d always been a meddler.

  It dated from when she was very young‌—just after her accident down by the cave‌—when the doctors told her parents that she’d never walk again. She’d been playing above Mousehole Cave and followed some older children who were clambering down the rocky fields to where the cave lay; only where their longer limbs took them easily down, with her smaller size, it was all she could do just to keep them in sight. She scrambled after them and one misjudged step later, she was tumbling straight down a twenty-foot drop.

  She’d been lucky to come out of it alive, though that wasn’t how she viewed things in the first bleak months of her convalescence.

  The bones of one leg sustained multiple fractures, and to this day that leg remained thinner and weaker than the other as it had never healed properly. She could sense the weather in it, as an old sailor could in his bones. But there had been damage done to her spinal column as well.

  For two years she’d had no use of her lower limbs. But she was determined to walk again and whether it was through the sheer persistence of her will‌—“Never seen a child with such heart,” the doctor told her parents when, after an initial depression, she simply refused to give up her dream of walking again‌—or whether it was a miracle, eventually the nerves and muscles healed. She was in a wheelchair for three years after that, a walker for another six months, the crutches for far too long, but finally she could get about with a cane as she still did to this day.

  The muscles never fully recovered, and she still had her bad days when her leg gave her such trouble she could only walk after taking a painkiller against the hurt, but what did she care about that? Compared to being a bedridden invalid for the rest of her life, her present mobility was a gift from heaven.

  Janey had been her best friend before the accident, and stayed her friend after. While Clare was still bedridden, she came by after school to share her lessons, or just to gossip, and once Clare was mobile again‌—if only in her wheelchair‌—Janey pushed her about all over the village, struggling up the steep roads, hanging on the back as they played daredevil in places where the inclines weren’t too steep.

  Still, for all Janey’s companionship, Clare had far too much time on her own. It was during this period that she began a life
long love affair with the written word. And it was also then, when it appeared that she would only be able to sample a great deal of life vicariously, that she began her meddling.

  It was Clare who convinced her mother to go back to school when Father died. She was the one who pushed Jack Treffry into trying out for the local rugby team where he did so well that he eventually turned professional. She, along with Dinny, kept after Janey when she was first starting up the pipes because Clare understood long before any of them that, while a fiddler was welcome at any session or barn dance, one needed something a bit more exotic to make a mark for oneself in the folk circuit where fiddlers were a penny a dozen.

  It became such a habit that when she could take up the reins of her own life again, she continued to meddle in the affairs of others all the same. As she had with Janey and Felix.

  But how, she asked herself, could she do anything but meddle when it came to them? They were the two friends she loved most in the world. And she knew they were right for each other. They were just each too thick-headed in their own way to put what was needed into their relationship to keep it together.

  So she’d done what she could, only now it had backfired on them all.

  Clare sighed.

  She’d do anything for Janey. And when it came to Felix . . .

  Her only real regret with Felix was that she hadn’t met him before Janey had, but she knew she’d kept her feelings well hidden about that over the years‌—except for the stupid remark she’d blurted out to him just before he left.

  Fancying girls with canes.

  She wished.

  But he and Janey were never to know and she could only hope that feeling as he had, Felix would simply forget her momentary lapse.

  Time to set matters right, she thought as she put on a jumper her mum had knit for her last winter. Over that, she wore a yellow nor’wester against the coming rain and stuck a matching yellow rain hat in its pocket.

  Leaving a note for her mum, in case she should wake up and wonder where her daughter had gone off to when she said she was staying in for the evening, Clare let herself quietly out the front door and set off down the hill towards the Gaffer’s house, her cane tap-tapping on the road by her side.