Peter Dickinson - Tulku

‘Going to be a moon,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘We better keep watch, I suppose. Don’t feel like sleeping, myself, so you go and kip down, Lung, and I’ll wake you when it’s your turn . . . No, you stay along of me, young Theo, and I’ll tell you my life history. I need a bit of company, stop me thinking. You’re not too fagged?’

‘No, not at all,’ said Theodore with automatic politeness, though his eyes were sticky with needed sleep and his whole body chilled through.

‘That’s the ticket. Here, wrap yourself in a couple of blankets. Off you go. Lung, and don’t lie awake half the night making up poetry – I can see you’re in the mood. You’ll have the other half for that, when you’re doing sentry.’

Lung mumbled his goodnights absent-mindedly and felt his way down the stair to the single tent they had pitched for him and Theodore. Mrs Jones had decided to sleep in the cave.

‘He’s all right,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Matter of fact he’s a sight better-mannered than some of the poets I’ve known – he can hold his liquor, for a start. You think I’m a wicked old woman, don’t you, young man?’

Theodore was too surprised to answer.

‘I’ll lay you do, though, don’t you?’ insisted Mrs Jones.

‘Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.’

‘Jesus said that, didn’t he? ‘Bout a harlot, what’s more. I was never that, not really. Wouldn’t do me much good in any case, would it, young man? You’ve not had the time to do much by way of sinning, nor the opportunity neither. Do you want to chuck any stones?’

Behind the flippant words there was an urgency which cut through exhaustion, cut through the carelessness of the past few days, and woke the numb centre.

‘I am worse than anyone,’ muttered Theodore. ‘I have betrayed my faith.’

‘Ah, come off it! You couldn’t help that – you did what you had to! Now see here . . . it ain’t no good, though, just having to. I suppose I had to shoot those blokes this morning – ‘nother second and Lung would of been a goner if I hadn’t got that feller what was swiping at him with his sword . . . but it’s shook me up a lot worse than a lot of other things I done what you’d call wickedness I dare say . . . Do you like me, young man? Spite of it all, do you like me?’

Her voice had dropped to a throaty mutter, but all her energies lay behind the question, compelling an answer.

‘Yes,’ said Theodore, ‘I like you all right. And my father says . . . used to say . . . it’s no odds what a man’s done in his past life. It’s what you’re going to do in your future life – that’s what counts.’

‘Good for him, then – not that I’d stake much on me becoming a holy body for the rest of my born days.’

She was silent for a while, as if brooding on the possibility. Theodore became aware that he could see her now, sitting at the mouth of the cave, surrounded by an irregular glow, a mere paling of the blackness. For a while he thought that he was imagining the effect in his weariness, that his mind was playing tricks, making him see the invisible forces that beamed out from her. Then, rather to his relief, he realized that the moon must be rising.

‘Do you want to know why I’m here?’ said Mrs Jones suddenly.

‘So you can watch and see if we’re being attacked.’

‘That ain’t what I meant. Here I am, bundling round these heathen parts, looking for odds and bobs of plants, running for my life now, ’cause of a young man whose family paid me to stay out of England for ten years.’

‘Was that Mr Jones?’

‘Lord no. I give him the push years before. He was a wrong g’un, if ever. Like to hear about this other bloke?’

‘If you want to tell me,’ said Theodore.

‘He’s a nice young man,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Least, he was when I met him. I suppose he must be around thirty-five now. That’s right, he’s four years younger than what I am . . . rich as crazes . . . you see, he’s the one and only white-headed boy of one of them old Jewish banking families. He never took me home, of course, but he told me about it. There’s his Dad, what ran the bank and could of bought up the Prince of Wales twice over, and his Mum, come from just the same kind of family only in Paris, dripping with diamonds, handsome, full of brains, sharp as a green lemon, and all his sisters and his aunts, them as nobody’s managed to marry off into other banks, all sitting around of an evening in this great big house north of the Park; and in the middle of them, all in black, deaf as a post but still missing nothing, is his Gran – his Dad’s Mum, and what she says goes. Even my Monty’s Dad, with his hunting-lodge in Scotland and his yacht at Cowes and his pack of hounds in the Midlands – even he’s scared stiff of her. Now, I don’t think any of them minded a straw when Monty hit it off with me – only an actress, my dear, keep him out of trouble till we choose a wife for him. What they didn’t realize was it was going to get serious between Monty and me . . .

‘I suppose I better explain about that. I told you I wasn’t a harlot, ’cause I’ve never been with a gentleman what I didn’t fancy a bit, and I let them give me jewels and things, but it wasn’t serious, not more than once or twice . . . anyway, I was too young then to know what I was doing, almost. But Monty and me . . .

‘When his family saw what was going on, they done their best to break it up, but it didn’t work ’cause Monty upped sticks and took me to Africa. Funny, ain’t it, how a rich Jew-boy, brought up in the middle of London, should want more than anything else in the world to have a great big garden full of foreign plants . . . two years we spent at it, fossicking round after roots and bulbs and things. We done Africa. We done Inja. We done South America. I used to tell Monty, teasing him like, as I was only his excuse for getting away from his bank and going plant-hunting. Course, it wasn’t true . . . he was gone on me and I was gone on him . . . mercy, yes! Not that he’s much to look at, a little bloke, trim, going a bit bald even when I first met him, something about him made him look like he’s just been polished, even in the middle of a jungle, know what I mean? Oh, they was good times . . .

‘Funny how things work out. We was in Mexico, and I started having a baby. I’d always managed to miss that before, but now it seemed like the best thing of all, and Monty took it into his head that he was going to bring me back to London, where I could have good doctors – and spite of his family he was going to marry me. Me, I didn’t care what happened, I was that happy for him. So we come home.

‘We found a nice little house, up in Swiss Cottage, and Monty set about arranging everything. He would of married me if they’d cut him off with a shilling, but he was used to being rich, and there ain’t no point in being poor if you can help it, is there? So he had a bit of argy-bargy to do, took him out a lot. And we hadn’t been settled even a week when I was sitting alone one morning and a lady come calling, and it was Monty’s Mum.

‘Surprising how we hit it off, despite we was on opposite sides. She didn’t say so right out, but I got it into my head something must of happened to her, back in Paris, like what was happening to Monty now, and she’d come and married Monty’s Dad when she was stuck on someone else. She didn’t come the grand lady with me, nor lay down the law, neither. But she told me straight out that if I married Monty he wasn’t getting a penny. They’d chosen a wife for him, and what’s more she wasn’t one of themselves – she was the daughter of an English Marquess. I can’t hope to explain to you what that meant to them – all these years the Jews being shovelled aside by the English nobs, not being let into their clubs, not being allowed to meet their wives, being treated like dirt, really, despite lending them all the money they needed . . . Monty’d told me how it hurt. And then Monty’s Mum explained how they’d set him up if he married this girl, with everything he wanted. I remember I asked if the girl was interested in gardening, and Monty’s Mum just smiled and nodded. She’d taken care of that! She even knew the bit of ground we’d chosen for Monty’s garden – Monty’d come home the day before a bit down in the mouth, because he thought it was all settled and then he’d found it had been sold all of a sudden to someone else. Guess who had the title deeds in her handbag!