Page 47 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘Thanks.’

I watched him go, then I climbed out and dried off on my shirt. The heat stayed with me even once the winch came back down and lifted me up into the cold air beyond the glass shadows. I rode sitting on the bar rather than standing, my cane over my knees and elbow locked over the rope beside me. By the time I got back to the church, Raphael had the stove built up and open. I took a bowl outside to rinse the salt off my skin and then caught sight of my reflection in the window when I turned. There was only one bruise on my face. I went back in, pleased. I could say to Clem that I’d bumped into a tree or something, if he noticed. I didn’t even want to touch the idea of telling him someone had attacked me from behind and I hadn’t seen one solitary atom of them.

Raphael had climbed up the ladder that led up to his attic to start hanging the damp things over the rungs. There was a clothes-line too, between the side of the ladder and the nail that usually held a crucifix on the wall. The crucifix had been relegated to the top of the coffee jar now. I climbed on to a chair to help.

‘Get down,’ he said.

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, it’s rude here. You let the strongest work. You shouldn’t even be making me coffee.’

‘I . . . don’t care if it’s rude.’ I shifted when he frowned. ‘Look, the most frightening thing I can think of isn’t losing the leg, or getting shot or beaten up by angry Indians. It’s the moment I think yes, I should be sitting down, and he should be doing everything for me.’

He gave me some pegs. ‘By the hems.’

‘I know. I do it at home.’

‘Aren’t you rich?’

‘No. It’s me and my brother and a part-time kitchen maid who thinks I don’t know she calls us Walking Cain and Nearly Abel. He has polio,’ I explained.

He nodded, then smiled. ‘You’re Abel, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, shut up.’

He pegged my sleeve to the line, which made me laugh, partly because he didn’t seem at all like someone who played and it was a relief to find that he did.

‘Is it worth all this, for cinchona cuttings?’ he asked after a while. The bruise must have been darker by then. ‘You can just leave.’

‘I can’t. If I don’t do this I’ll have to rot in a parsonage in Truro. Am I in danger in here too?’

‘I don’t know. You should have been all right even sitting on top of the border, never mind where you were. Markham must have made them nervous.’

‘Well, we’ll hear if anyone breaks in.’

He was quiet, but it was the strange hollow quiet he had when he wanted to say something. Whatever it was, he swallowed it. I thought suddenly it was lucky to the point of unlikely that he had come to find me in the twenty minutes it would have taken before I died of cold. He’d had no reason to look for me, unless he’d known something would happen. It explained why he had been so gentle when he found me. Guilt is a good propellant for kindness. But I wasn’t sure enough to accuse him. Or perhaps I wanted too much for it to be real kindness.

SIXTEEN

It was the tail end of the afternoon and I was starting to wonder what to do about food when I saw that Raphael was watching me again. I’d been drifting through the kitchen, trying to keep moving but near the stove at the same time, turning over the idea of pineapple versus going into town to see about fish.

‘Come with me,’ he said, from nowhere. ‘We’re going to see the carver.’

‘Carver – what?’

‘You’re driving me mad, get your coat. And bring that carrot.’

Not sure what was going on, I gave him the carrot from beside the stove and then followed him out to fetch my coat off the woodpile. I had to shake the frost from it. ‘Why are we going to see the carver?’ I tried again.

‘To see if we can do something about that,’ he said. He swept his eyelashes down at my leg.

‘How?’

He looked as if he would have explained, but his voice was fracturing, and he moved his hand to say I’d just have to trust him. He led the way out to the bridge, slowly again, so that I could keep up.

The second stack seemed to be where most people lived. It was biggest, and all along the twisting path and the gantries that led through it was a jumble of miniature shops. None of them were anything more than canopies set up over people’s front windows, with a few upturned crates outside instead of chairs. Raphael tapped on someone’s shutter. A woman opened it and beamed when she saw us.

‘You must be one of his new foreigners,’ she said happily to me. A goat bleated somewhere beyond her. ‘I saw you go by yesterday, didn’t leap out at you; I hope you’re grateful. Where are you from then?’ She spoke fine clear Spanish and I relaxed into being able to understand.