Дэймон Найт: Orbit 7

“As always,” her mother said, with the barest hint, a wrinkle at the corner of her mouth, that this might be a joke. She leaned back against the garish mandala that was the trademark of the manufacturer of the shop’s chief commodity.

“And did you go to Holy Communion today?” her mother asked.

Emma blushed, though it was certainly nothing to be ashamed of. “Yes. It’s First Friday.”

“Well, that’s good.” She closed her eyes.

After a long silence, she said, “The sun is very warm today.”

“Yes,” said a voice from behind Emma, “it will be summer before we know it.”

Emma turned around. The speaker was an old woman in a dress of tattered black origami, an obvious piece of refuse. Sparse hair, dyed to a metallic silver, hung down over a face that was a witch’s mask of sharp bones and pouchy skin.

She laid an arthritic hand on Emma’s head. “She’ll be a beautiful little lady, she will.”

Mrs. Rosetti seemed to give this serious consideration before replying. “Probably. Probably she will.”

The witch cackled. “You couldn’t spare half a crown for an old woman, could you?”

“How old?”

“Old enough to know better.” Another spasm of laughter, and the hand clenched, tangling itself in Emma’s hair.

For no reason at all (since mortals no less decrepit than this woman were often to be seen in this part of the city) Emma felt terrified.

Mrs. Rosetti took a coin from her pocket and gave it to the old woman. Without a word of thanks, she pushed past Emma to the entrance of the drugstore.

Mrs. Rosetti put a hand on her shoulder. “ How old?” she insisted.

It was hard to tell if the woman meant her smile to be as nasty as it looked to Emma. “Fifty-four. And how old are you, my lovely?”

Mrs. Rosetti closed her eyes tightly. Emma took her hand and tried to pull her away.

The woman followed them along the pavement. “How old?” she shrilled. “How old?”

“Thirty-seven,” Mrs. Rosetti said in a whisper.

“It wasn’t you I meant!” The old woman lifted her head, triumphant in her malice, then returned and entered the shop.

They walked back to Lant Street in silence, following a roundabout path along the least busy streets. Mrs. Rosetti did not notice her daughter’s tears.

The bitterness that Emma felt was insupportable, and she could not, at last, stifle the cry of outrage: “How could you! How could you do it!”

Mrs. Rosetti regarded Emma with puzzlement, almost with fear. “Do what, Emma?”

“How could you give her that money? It was enough for a dozen daffs. And you just threw it away!”

She slapped Emma’s face.

“I hate you!” Emma shouted at her. “And Walt hates you too!”

After the girl had run away, Mrs. Rosetti took another twenty grams. She sat down, not knowing where, not caring, and let the spring sun invade the vast vacancies of her flesh, a beauty that tumbled into her farthest depth.

Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys. You turn your back to the sea, and with the sharp end of a stick found half buried write in the wet sand Tackman Babcock.

Then you go home, knowing that behind you the Atlantic is destroying your work.

Home is the big house on Settlers Island, but Settlers Island, so called, is not really an island and for that reason is not named or accurately delineated on maps. Smash a barnacle with a stone and you will see inside the shape from which the beautiful barnacle goose takes its name. There is a thin and flaccid organ which is the goose’s neck and the mollusc’s siphon, and a shapeless body with tiny wings. Settlers Island is like that.

The goose neck is a strip of land down which a country road runs. By whim, the mapmakers usually exaggerate the width of this and give no information to indicate that it is scarcely above the high tide. Thus Settlers Island appears to be a mere protuberance on the coast, not requiring a name - and since the village of eight or ten houses has none, nothing shows on the map but the spider line of road terminating at the sea.

The village has no name, but home has two: a near and a far designation. On the island, and on the mainland nearby, it is called the Seaview place because in the earliest years of the century it was operated as a resort hotel. Mama calls it The House of 31 February; and that is on her stationery and is presumably used by her friends in New York and Philadelphia when they do not simply say, ‘Mrs. Babcock’s’. Home is four floors high in some places, less in others, and is completely surrounded by a veranda; it was once painted yellow, but the paint - outside - is mostly gone now and The House of 31 February is grey.

Jason comes out of the front door with the little curly hairs on his chin trembling in the wind and his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his Levi’s. ‘Come on, you’re going into town with me. Your mother wants to rest.’

‘Hey tough!’ Into Jason’s Jaguar, feeling the leather upholstery soft and smelly; you fall asleep.

Awake in town, bright lights flashing in the car windows. Jason is gone and the car is growing cold; you wait for what seems a long time, looking out at the shop windows, the big gun on the hip of the policeman who walks past, the lost dog who is afraid of everyone, even when you tap the glass and call to him.

Then Jason is back with packages to put behind the seat. ‘Are we going home now?’

He nods without looking at you, arranging his bundles so they won’t topple over, fastening his seatbelt.

‘I want to get out of the car.’

He looks at you.

‘I want to go in a store. Come on, Jason.’

Jason sighs. ‘All right, the drugstore over there, okay? Just for a minute.’

The drugstore is as big as a supermarket, with long, bright aisles of glassware and notions and paper goods. Jason buys fluid for his lighter at the cigarette counter, and you bring him a book from a revolving wire rack. ‘Please, Jason?’

He takes it from you and replaces it in the rack, then when you are in the car again takes it from under his jacket and gives it to you.

It is a wonderful book, thick and heavy, with the edges of the pages tinted yellow. The covers are glossy stiff cardboard, and on the front is a picture of a man in rags fighting a thing partly like an ape and partly like a man, but much worse than either. The picture is in colour, and there is real blood on the ape-thing; the man is muscular and handsome, with tawny hair lighter than Jason’s and no beard.

‘You like that?’

You are out of town already, and without the street lights it’s too dark in the car, almost, to see the picture. You nod.

Jason laughs. ‘That’s camp. Did you know that?’

You shrug, riffling the pages under your thumb, thinking of reading, alone, in your room tonight.

‘You going to tell your mom how nice I was to you?’

‘Uh-huh, sure. You want me to?’

‘Tomorrow, not tonight. I think she’ll be asleep when we get back. Don’t you wake her up.’ Jason’s voice says he will be angry if you do.

‘Okay.’

‘Don’t come into her room.’

‘Okay.’

The Jaguar says ‘Hutntntaaa …’ down the road, and you can see the whitecaps in the moonlight now, and the driftwood pushed just off the asphalt.