Medusa's Children

CHAPTER FOUR

Tarrant knew his boat was likely to sink during the night if he tied it up at the jetty. He ran it on past the line of farm craft, hearing them creak and jostle each other as his wash brought them briefly out of their sleep, and kept going until he grounded on the beach.

The sea front was in darkness, the widely separated standard lamps serving only to mark the line of the narrow road which followed the upper edge of the sand. Localised brightness from the pearly globes had the effect of neutralising the starlight. Tarrant found himself strangely reluctant to jump into the black water, even where it was less than a metre in depth, but it was obvious he would get no outside help with the job of securing the boat.

He retracted the propeller, threw a coiled mooring rope ahead on to the beach, and jumped off the prow, almost managing to dear the water’s edge. Normally he would have been able to drag the light, shallow-draught boat on to dry land, but with its bilge spaces full of water it resisted all his efforts to move it. With some assistance from small waves he got its nose ashore, then compromised by running a long line up to the stump of a palm tree. Satisfied that the boat would remain in place while the tide receded during the night, he collected his rifle and walked towards the vague pyramid of street lights and glowing rectangular windows which was the body of the island.

He was surprised to discover so many households were still awake and then a glance at his watch showed him that, incredibly, it was not yet eleven o’clock. It seemed to Tarrant that much more than three hours had elapsed since he set out to patrol his sector. Now that he was safely back on land, surrounded by the cosy normality of the community and the breath of night-scented flowers, his encounter with the squid was like an unusually vivid nightmare. Frightening though the physical aspect of the monsters had been, the horror which lingered in Tarrant’s mind sprang from what he remembered of their behaviour. They had appeared to act in concert, like men, and with an extraordinary degree of intelligence. He had never heard of squid partially leaving the water, as those on the boom had done, and the largest one with the mottled skin trying to capsize his boat was something that was beginning to seem incredible, even to Tarrant. For some reason, recalling the entire episode, he was left with the disturbing impression that he had fought a skirmish with a platoon of enemy soldiers commanded by a tough, experienced sergeant.

The notion produced a cool, crawling sensation between his shoulder blades and he felt a sudden desire to be in the company of other human beings. He increased his stride and walked up the hill in the direction of the Kircher house. Several windows in the building were glowing with ivory light when he arrived, and when he knocked on the door there was an immediate sound of movement within. Cissy Kircher, Beth’s mother, opened the door a little and her jaw sagged with surprise.

“Hal!” Her gaze traversed him from head to foot. “What’s the matter?”

He smiled. “It’s all right, Mrs Kircher—I just wanted to call on Beth. It isn’t too late, is it?”

“But you’re soaking wet. And what happened to your head? Did you have a fall?”

Tarrant put a hand to his forehead and felt something like flakes of dried paint on the skin. “I’m fine. I’d like to see Beth, if it isn’t too late.”

Mrs Kircher made no move to admit him. She turned her head and, raising her voice, said, “It’s Hal Tarrant, Kenneth. Can you come to the door, please?”

Tarrant began to realise he had made a mistake in coming directly to Beth’s home from his boat. Obviously his appearance was not compatible with the image of a respectable, responsible suitor which he had so carefully nurtured in the elder Kirchers’ minds. Cissy Kircher, her incongruously voluptuous form wrapped in a tie-belted gown of black murex, continued to examine him suspiciously. Tarrant had never before seen her in anything but formal dress and he guessed she had been preparing for bed. It occurred to him that, even at the age of fifty, she was a well-equipped bedmate. His immediate reaction was one of guilt that he should have thought in that way about Beth’s mother. He strove to put the intrusive vision out of his head, but his gaze was drawn back across the light-accentuated contours of her body. At once she dosed a fold of material across her throat, and Tarrant came near to panic.

“I expect Mr Kircher will be harvesting soon,” he said. Cissy Kircher, undeceived, gave him a tight smile and did not reply.

“Is that Hal?” Kenneth Kircher said jovially, appearing behind her. “Why didn’t you bring him in? We’re always …” He stopped speaking and advanced cautiously into the cone of luminance from the porch light as he saw Tarrant. “Is there something wrong, Hal?”

“I called to see Beth. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

Kircher moved further into the light and his scalp glistened roundly beneath fine strands of hair. He was a plump, healthy-looking man who tanned red rather than brown, and who usually had sun blisters on his lower lip. Narrowing his eyes he said, “Hal, are you carrying a rifle?”

“Yes, Mr Kircher.” Tarrant unslung the weapon from his shoulder and stood it in a corner of the porch, dissociating himself from it. “I ran into some trouble out on my sector.”

Kircher scanned the darkness behind Tarrant as though concerned about his neighbours seeing him do something of which he was ashamed. “You’d better come in and tell us about it.”

Tarrant nodded and followed the Kirchers through the hall and into a long, split-level living room which had a glossy wooden floor and cane furniture with orange-and-rust cushions. In one corner stood an antique console television which had, in place of a picture tube, a brightly lit aquarium set into it. The door to the adjoining kitchen was partially open, showing a table covered with baking requisites. Beth Kircher was seated at the table while she filled pastry cases. She was a black-haired girl in her mid-twenties, with full lips and exceptionally white teeth. She jumped to her feet and hurried into the living room as soon as she saw Tarrant, her face registering surprise and concern. Now aware of the blood on his forehead, Tarrant gave her a reassuring smile.

“I’m all right,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“What happened to you, Hal?” Beth’s cheeks were pink with the heat from the oven in the kitchen, and she exuded an aroma of orange peel and spices. Her bosom, a slightly less voluminous and more buoyant model of her mother’s, worked against the constraints of a flowered shirt. The ambience of sex and domesticity overwhelmed Tarrant, filling him with a yearning to be married to Beth.

“I was out on my boat tonight and I managed to crack my head on the mast,” he said, glancing tentatively at a chair.

“Yes, sit down.” Kircher gestured at the chair and sat in the one facing it. “You said there was some trouble at your sector?”

“I’ll get a damp sponge for your forehead.” Beth went back into the kitchen with a flounce of tautly covered hips.

“I’ve been a bit worried about some of the things I’ve been hearing about you, Hal,” Kircher continued. “A cooperative farm like ours is more than just a joint business, you know. It’s an association—an association of gentlemen, if you like—and any suggestion that one of our members would vandalise another member’s equipment simply doesn’t go down well.” Kircher’s red-brown face pleaded with Tarrant to be gentlemanly. “It’s all a matter of trust, and if you….”

“I was wrong about that,” Tarrant said quickly. “I found out what was causing the damage tonight.”

Kircher sat back in his chair and looked pleased. “Worn connectors, was it?”

“Squid. The biggest ones I’ve ever seen. They were crawling up on my booms.”

“Squid?” Kircher glanced worriedly at his wife, who was lowering herself into a nearby chair. “I’ve often heard of giant squid, Hal, but I’ve never seen one.”

Tarrant had anticipated disbelief, but not so early in his story. “I don’t know too much about marine life, but isn’t the giant squid a recognised class?”

“As far as I remember it’s in the genus Architeuthis.”

“Well, these weren’t Architeuthis. They were the same shape as the common squid—I could tell they had pointed shells inside them—but their tentacles were two or three metres long.”

Kircher shook his head. “If you’re talking about Loligo—they never get above half a metre overall.”

“Here we are!” Beth emerged from the kitchen carrying a sponge and a basin of water. She set the basin on a small table, moistened the sponge and began to dab Tarrant’s forehead with it. He had to part his legs to let her move in close to him and he suddenly found that her breasts, which he had never been allowed to touch in six months of steady courtship, were almost in contact with his face. At once there was an opening of organic sluicegates in his groin. He turned his eyes to one side only to encounter Cissy Kircher’s accusing stare.

“Beth,” she said firmly, “I think Hal is old enough to do that for himself.” She stood up, twitching her gown into place, and picked up the basin. “Come on! We’ve got to get the kitchen tidied up—I don’t see why you had to start baking at this time of night.”

“Yes, mother.” Smiling ruefully, Beth handed Tarrant the sponge and withdrew into the kitchen, accompanied by her mother.

Tarrant turned back to Kenneth Kircher, who was regarding him with a puzzled expression which suggested he had sensed an undercurrent of feeling in the room without being able to identify it. It would all be explained to him later, Tarrant knew, and his spirits sank as he realised that, far from improving his standing as a suitor, the impromptu visit had seriously worsened his chances of acceptance. He wondered briefly what it must have been like to live in the 20th century, before the population crisis and the subsequent horrors of natural adjustment had ushered in the new morality. Sexual repression was at its greatest in a small, closed community such as that on Cawley Island—especially as there was little access to reliable contraceptives—and there had been times when he had considered packing up and sailing away to one of the continents where standards were less rigid or not so uniformly observed. He had known in his heart, however, that a man who would go to that sort of length in search of physical gratification would have to be some kind of degenerate, and the self-respect instilled by his upbringing had enabled him to weather the emotional squalls.

Kircher gave a low chuckle. “What’s the game, Hal? Are you doing a bit of play-acting to impress Beth? It won’t work, you know.”

“There’s no game,” Tarrant said doggedly. “I almost got killed tonight.” He went on to describe the events at the northern rim of the farm, ending with an account of how he had to blast the bottom out of his boat in order to get away from the underwater attacker. Kircher’s expression grew progressively more grave as he listened.

“No disrespect to you, Hal,” he said, “but this is kind of hard to take in. Big squid leaving the water to open your booms … attacking your boat….”

“Would you like to see my boat?” Tarrant tried not to sound aggrieved. “I didn’t shoot holes in it for fun.”

“Of course you didn’t—but it must have been pretty dark out there, and if….”

“If what, Mr Kircher?”

“Well….” Kircher gave an embarrassed laugh. “If you’d had a drink.”

“I hadn’t had a drink.” Tarrant knew that Kircher was a teetotaller of the kind who believed that one glass of wine was enough to turn a man into a witless animal. “If you don’t count coffee, that is.”

“Oh, I’m not suggesting…. Where would beasts like that come from?”

“Could there be a new upwelling current that’s bringing them out of the deep?”

“It hardly seems likely. Squid aren’t planktonic, you know—they control their own whereabouts in the sea.” Kircher seemed relieved to get back on to the neutral subject of marine biology.

“I was talking to Will Somerville before I went out,” Tarrant persisted. “He says the composition of the ocean around here is definitely changing.”

“What does he know? He’s fooling himself if he thinks he’s going to get anywhere with all that fiddling about with test tubes.” Kircher’s berry-coloured face mirrored his pride as he gestured at a shelf of textbooks, all of which had carefully mended covers. “It’s all there in the books, Hal. I go by the experts.”

“Yes, but those books were written a hundred years ago, or more.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Kircher gave Tarrant a patient smile. “The sea doesn’t change.”

“But that’s exactly the….” It came to Tarrant that he was on the verge of worsening his position with regard to Beth by quarrelling with her father. He sat quietly for a moment, pressing the coolness of the damp sponge to his forehead.

“Perhaps you ought to go home and get to bed,” Kircher said. “Why did you want to see me, anyway?”

“Actually, I called to see Beth. I was hoping it wasn’t too late in the evening.”

“Beth?” Kircher looked at a wallclock and kept his gaze on it long enough to show that he was only noting the time, but wondering how anybody would have the temerity to try visiting a respectable girl late at night in wet clothes, with dried blood on his forehead, and carrying a rifle. “Had you any special reason for wanting to see her?”

“No.” I just want to father children on her, Tarrant thought bitterly. But that doesn’t count.

“In that case….” Kircher looked at Tarrant with kindly reproach.

“I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.” Tarrant got to his feet and set the sponge on the table. “I’ll take your advice and turn in for the night. Good night, Mr Kircher.”

“Good night, Hal.”

As they were walking to the door, Tarrant glanced wistfully towards the kitchen, hoping that Beth would appear and assert some degree of independence by speaking to him, if only for a few seconds. She remained out of sight, and almost before he knew what was happening he found himself outside in the darkness, alone and defeated, walking up the hill to his house.

When he got indoors he spent ten minutes cleaning the rifle, then sat down at his window seat with a bottle of homemade coconut wine. The pale liquor seemed too bland and cloying, however, and he was unable to work up any interest in any of the half-dozen books he had partially read. Because of the blackness beyond, the window acted as a mirror, presenting him with the evidence of his solitude and thereby emphasising it. He had several spells of fantasising about Beth, but this produced an emotional torture so intense that, paradoxically, there would have been no point in self-relief. His mind as well as his body needed to share in the rituals of love, and as he stared out to sea—trying to peer through his own reflection—he thought again about provisioning his boat and sailing off towards Asia or the Americas. Changes might be taking place in the unseen ocean, but it seemed that nothing would ever alter the rigid social customs of Cawley Island.