‘Cock…cock-a…er…’
He climbed down from the loft and stepped out into the thin mist of dawn.
The elderly chickens watched him cautiously as he peered into their house. An ancient and rather embarrassed-looking cockerel glared at him and shrugged.
There was a clanging noise from the direction of the house. An old iron barrel hoop was hanging by the door, and Miss Flitworth was hitting it vigorously with a ladle.
He stalked over to investigate.
WHAT FOR ARE YOU MAKING THE NOISE, MISS FLITWORTH?
She spun around, ladle half-raised.
‘Good grief, you must walk like a cat!’ she said.
I MUST?
‘I meant I didn’t hear you.’ She stood back and looked him up and down.
‘There’s still something about you I can’t put my finger on, Bill Door,’ she said. ‘Wish I knew what it was.’
The seven-foot skeleton regarded her stoically. He felt there was nothing he could say.
‘What do you want for breakfast?’ said the old woman.
‘Not that it’ll make any difference, ‘cos it’s porridge.’
Later she thought: he must have eaten it, because the bowl is empty. Why can’t I remember?
And then there was the matter of the scythe. He looked at it as if he’d never seen one before. She pointed out the grass nail and the handles. He looked at them politely.
HOW DO YOU SHARPEN IT, MISS FLITWORTH?
‘It’s sharp enough, for goodness sake.’
HOW DO YOU SHARPEN IT MORE?
‘You can’t. Sharp’s sharp. You can’t get sharper than that.’
He’d swished it aimlessly, and made a disappointed hissing noise.
And there was the grass, too.
The hay meadow was high on the hill behind the farm, overlooking the cornfield. She watched him for a while.
It was the most interesting technique she had ever witnessed. She wouldn’t even have thought that it was technically possible.
Eventually she said: ‘It’s good. You’ve got the swing and everything.’
THANK YOU, MISS FLITWORTH.
‘But why one blade of grass at a time?’
Bill Door regarded the neat row of stalks for some while.
THERE IS ANOTHER WAY?
‘You can do lots in one go, you know.’
NO. NO. ONE BLADE AT A TIME. ONE TIME, ONE BLADE.
‘You won’t cut many that way,’ said Miss Flitworth.
EVERY LAST ONE, MISS FLITWORTH.
‘Yes?’
TRUST ME ON THIS.
Miss Flitworth left him to it and went back to the farmhouse. She stood at the kitchen window and watched the distant dark figure for a while, as it moved over the hillside.
I wonder what he did? she thought. He’s got a Past. He’s one of them Men of Mystery, I expect. Perhaps he did a robbery and is Lying Low.
He’s cut a whole row already. One at a time, but somehow faster than a man cutting swathe by swathe …
Miss Flitworth’s only reading matter was the Farmer’s Almanac and Seed Catalogue, which could last a whole year in the privy if no-one was ill. In addition to sober information about phases of the moon and seed sowings it took a certain grisly relish in recounting the various mass murders, vicious robberies and natural disasters that befell mankind, on the lines of ‘June 15, Year of the Impromptu Stoat: On this Day 150 yrs. since, a Man killed by Freak shower of ?Goul~.h? in Quirm’ or ‘14 die at hands of Chume, the Notorious Herring Thrower.’
The important thing about all these was that they happened a long way away, possibly by some kind of divine intervention. The only things that usually happened locally were the occasional theft of a chicken, and the occasional wandering troll. Of course, there were also robbers and bandits in the hills but they got on well with the actual residents and were essential to the local economy. Even so, she felt she’d certainly feel safer with someone else about the place.
The dark figure on the hillside was well into the second row. Behind it, the cut grass withered in the sun.
I HAVE FINISHED, MISS FLITWORTH.
‘Go and feed the pig, then. She’s called Nancy.’
NANCY, said Bill, turning the word around in his mouth as though he was trying to see it from all sides.
‘After my mother.’
I WILL GO AND FEED THE PIG NANCY, MISS FLITWORTH.
It seemed to Miss Flitworth that mere seconds went by.
I HAVE FINISHED, MISS FLITWORTH.
She squinted at him. Then, slowly and deliberately, she wiped her hands on a cloth, stepped out into the yard and headed for the pigsty.
Nancy was eyeball-deep in the swill trough.
Miss Flitworth wondered exactly what comment she should make. Finally she said, ‘Very good. Very good. You, you, you certainly work … fast.’
MISS FLITWORTH, WHY DOES NOT THE COCKEREL CROW PROPERLY?
‘Oh, that’s just Cyril. He hasn’t got a very good memory. Ridiculous, isn’t it? I wish he’d get it right.’
Bill Door found a piece of chalk in the farm’s old smithy, located a piece of board among the debris, and wrote very carefully for some time. Then he wedged the board in front of the henhouse and pointed Cyril towards it.
THIS YOU WILL READ he said.
Cyril peered myopically at the ‘Cock-A-Doodle-Doo’ in heavy gothic script. Somewhere in his tiny mad chicken mind a very distinct and chilly understanding formed that he’d better learn to read very, very quickly.
Bill Door sat back among the hay and thought about the day. It seemed to have been quite a full one. He’d cut hay and fed animals and mended a window. He’d found some old overalls hanging in the barn. They seemed far more appropriate for a Bill Door than a robe woven of absolute darkness, so he’d put them on. And Miss Flitworth had given him a broad-brimmed straw hat.
And he’d ventured the half-mile walk into the town. It wasn’t even a one horse town. If anyone had a horse, they’d have eaten it. The residents appeared to make a living by stealing one another’s washing.
There was a town square, which was ridiculous. It was really only an enlarged crossroads, with a clock tower.
And there was a tavern. He’d gone inside.
After the initial pause while everyone’s mind had refocused to allow him room, they’d been cautiously hospitable; news travels even faster on a vine with few grapes.
‘You’d be the new man up at Miss Flitworth’s,’ said the barman.‘A Mr Door, I did hear.’
CALL ME BILL.
‘Ah? Used to be a tidy old farm, once upon a time. We never thought the old girl’d stay on.’
‘Ah,’ agreed a couple of old men by the fireplace.
AH.
‘New to these parts, then?’ said the barman.
The sudden silence of the other men in the bar was like a black hole.
NOT PRECISELY.
‘Been here before, have you?’
JUST PASSING THROUGH.
‘They say old Miss Flitworth’s a loony,’ said one of the figures on the ?t~inches? around the smoke-blackened walls.
‘But sharp as a knife, mind,’ said another hunched drinker.
‘Oh, yes. She’s sharp all right. But still a loony.’
‘And they say she’s got boxes full of treasure in that old parlour of hers.’
‘She’s tight with money, I know that.’
‘That proves it. Rich folk are always tight with money.’
‘All right. Sharp and rich. But still a loony.’
‘You can’t be loony and rich. You’ve got to be eccentric if you’re rich.’
The silence returned and hovered. Bill Door sought desperately for something to say. He had never been very good at small talk. He’d never had much occasion to use it.
What did people say at times like this? Ah. Yes.
I WILL BUY EVERYONE A DRINK, he announced.
Later on they taught him a game that consisted of a table with holes and nets around the edge, and balls carved expertly out of wood, and apparently balls had to bounce
off one another and into the holes. It was called Pond. He played it well. In fact, he played it perfectly. At the start, he
didn’t know how not to. But after he heard them gasp a few times he corrected himself and started making mistakes with painstaking precision; by the time they taught him darts he was getting really good at them. The more mistakes he made, the more people liked him. So he propelled the little feathery darts with cold skill, never letting one drop within a foot of the targets they urged on him. He even sent one ricocheting off a nail head and a lamp so that it landed in someone’s beer, which made one of the older men laugh so much he had to be taken outside into the fresh air.
They’d called him Good Old Bill.
No-one had ever called him that before.
What a strange evening.
There had been one bad moment, though. He’d heard a small voice say: ‘That man is a skelington,’ and had turned to see a small child in a nightdress watching him over the top of the bar, without terror but with a sort of fascinated horror.