The Dragon-Charmer. Jan Siegel

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СКАЧАТЬ your marriage: you’ll see. When you get to the church –’

      ‘Maggie,’ Fern interrupted, ruthlessly, ‘I’m not in love with Marcus.’

      The flow of words stopped; some of the eager glow ebbed from Mrs Dinsdale’s face. ‘You don’t mean that?’

      ‘I’ve never been in love with him. I like him, I like him a lot, but it’s not love. I thought it didn’t matter. Only now –’ Seeing Maggie’s altered expression, she got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have saddled you with all this. I’ve got to sort it out for myself.’

      ‘But Fern – my dear –’

      ‘Could I have the sheets?’

      Equipped with a sufficiency of linen, Fern and Trisha made up the beds together while Mrs Wicklow prepared a salad lunch for anyone who might arrive in time to eat it. Marcus and his family were to stay in a pub in a neighbouring village, maintaining a traditional distance until D-Day – something for which Fern was deeply grateful. Having to cope with her own relations was more than enough, when all she wanted, like Garbo, was to be left alone. Shortly after one the sound of a car on the driveway announced the advent of Robin, Abby, and Aunt Edie, the latter an octogenarian with a deceptive air of fragility and an almost infinite capacity for sweet sherry. Robin, at fifty-nine, still retained most of his hair and an incongruous boyishness of manner, though where his children were concerned he radiated an aura of generalised anxiety which neither their maturity or his had been able to alleviate. Abby in her forties was getting plump around the hips but remained charmingly scatty, easily lovable, impractical in small matters but down-to-earth in her approach to major issues. They had lapsed into the habits of matrimony without ever having formalised the arrangement and Fern, suspecting her father of a secret mental block, had never pushed the subject. Abby had received her seal of approval long before and she was content not to disrupt the status quo. However, even the nicest people have their defects. Abby had a passion for pets, usually of the small furry variety and invariably highly-strung to the point of psychosis. There had been a vicious Pomeranian, a sickly Pekinese, a succession of neurotic hamsters, gerbils, and guinea-pigs. Unfortunately, she had brought her latest acquisition with her, a chihuahua salvaged from a dog’s home whom she had rechristened Yoda. Fern tried not to fantasise about what might happen if the canine miniature came face to face with Lougarry. There was much cheek-to-cheek kissing, hefting of luggage and presentation of presents. Fern felt she was functioning increasingly on automatic pilot: her mouth made the right noises while inside her there was a yawning emptiness where her uncertainties rattled to and fro like echoes in a gorge. At Abby’s insistence she showed her the dress, thrown in haste back over the dummy, and while Abby touched and admired it a sudden cold fatalism told her that all this was meaningless, because she would never wear it now. She would never wear it at all.

      ‘What’s this?’ Abby enquired, picking up the drift of gossamer on the bed.

      ‘It’s mine,’ Fern said quickly, almost snatching it from her. ‘It was given to me – ages ago. Ages ago.’ And then, seeing Abby’s expression of hurt: ‘I’m sorry if I … It’s very fragile. I must put it away. I shouldn’t have left it lying about.’

      The intrusion of Yoda put paid to further embarrassment. Abby scooped him up in her arms to prevent him soiling the dress and marvelled aloud how he could have managed to climb so many flights of stairs when the treads were nearly his own height. Fern could not resist a sneaking hope that he might slip on the descent and roll all the way to the bottom.

      Will and Gaynor walked up the hill towards the moors. The same gleam of sunlight which spun a rainbow from the Atlantean veil as Fern gazed into the mirror danced across the landscape ahead of them, pursued by a grey barrage of cloud. The sun’s ray seemed to finger the farthest slopes, brushing the earth with a fleeting brilliance of April colour: the green and straw-gold of the grasses, the brown and bronze and blood-purple of thrusting stems, vibrant with spring sap, and in an isolate clump of trees the lemon-pale mist of new leaves.

      ‘Spring comes later here than in the south,’ Gaynor said.

      ‘Like a beautiful woman arriving long after the start of the party,’ Will responded. ‘She knows we’ll appreciate her that much more if she keeps us waiting.’

      He seemed to know where he was going, changing from track to track as if by instinct, evidently treading an accustomed route. In due course Lougarry appeared, though Gaynor did not see from where, falling into step beside them. Her coat was scuffed and ruffled as if she had slept out, the fur tipped here and there with dried mud, burrs and grass seeds adhering to her flank. Gaynor tried to imagine her and her owner living in an ordinary house, sharing a sofa, watching Eastenders; but it was impossible. They were, not quite wild, but outsiders: outside walls, outside society, outside the normal boundaries in which we confine ourselves. She sensed that Ragginbone’s knowledge, his air of culture, had been acquired by watching and learning rather than taking part – endless years of watching and learning, maybe even centuries. She could picture him standing sentinel, patient as a heron, while the tumult of history went rushing and seething past. The wind would be his cloak and the sky his shelter, and Lougarry would sit at his heels, faithful as his shadow, silent as the wolf she resembled.

      ‘If Ragginbone is a retired wizard,’ she asked Will, ‘where does that leave Lougarry? Is she a retired werewolf?’

      ‘Reformed,’ said Will.

      Gaynor had spoken lightly, her manner mock-satirical; but Will, as ever, sounded purely matter-of-fact.

      They found Ragginbone on the crest of a hill where the bare rock broke through the soil. Gaynor did not know how far they had come but she was tired and thirsty, grateful for a long drink from the flask he carried. It was cased in leather like a hip-flask, though considerably bigger, but the contents tasted like water – the way water ought to taste but so rarely does, cool and clear and straight-off-the-mountain, without that tang of tin and the trace chemicals that so often contaminate it. But afterwards she thought perhaps its purity was mere fancy: thirst can transform any drink into an elixir. Will related most of her story, Gaynor speaking only in response to direct questions from Ragginbone. He made her repeat the description of Dr Laye several times.

      ‘Could he be an ambulant?’ Will suggested.

      ‘Maybe. However … You are sure his skin was actually grey? It was not an effect of the television?’

      ‘I’m sure,’ said Gaynor. ‘When his hand reached out I could see it quite clearly. I can’t describe how horrible it was. Not just shocking but somehow … obscene. The greyness made it look dead, but it was moving, beckoning, and the fingers were very long and supple, as if they had no bones, or too many …’ She broke off, shuddering at the recollection.

      ‘Yet the picture remained flat – it wasn’t like your three-dimensional vision of Azmodel?’

      ‘The screen went sort of rubbery, and the arm was pushing at it, stretching it out like plasticine, but – yes, the image behind stayed flat.’

      ‘And this was a programme you expected to see?’ Ragginbone persisted. ‘It was listed in the newspaper?’

      ‘Yes.’

      To her frustration, Ragginbone made no further comment, his bright eyes narrowing in an intensity of thought. Will, better acquainted with him, waited a while before resuming the subject. ‘You know him, don’t you?’

      ‘Let us say, I know who he might be. If the skin tint is natural, and not the result of disease, that tone СКАЧАТЬ