Mr Darwin's Shooter Read Free Page A

made a field of blue for him to hop around in. He laughed and squeaked, never minding how cold the water was, and went swimming any time of year to win wagers or for the joy of it alone. Other times he took bread and cheese in a sack and wandered the fields. On summer nights he slept with a stone for his pillow like Jacob, waking in the moonlight and hearing a badger grunt and watching a hare strip bark from a sapling. He fought his fears on such nights and saw them come to nothing in the early light.
    When he reached the gates of the lock he could hear water trickling far below. It came from a dark door. There were times when Covington had swum below that door and thought of the weight of water above him. He knew the gates were held by iron bars, ratchets, cogs, and by oakwood planks. But all the same, what if the weight of water broke them? When he thought about that he saw himself on the surface of the water, shooting away like a leaf, and his illusion of floating in the sky vanished. Then he knew the feeling of being tested against eternal punishment and knowing he was loved.
    Upstream Covington began his play again, heading back to where two bundles of clothes awaited him on the bank, one bloodstained and filthy, the second lot as clean as hard scrubbing and hanging in the sun could make them. The canal became a river at that place, with willows trailing their branches and a water rat making a spline of ripples. It was a place to be cleansed of stains, except the boy had been in the water a good half hour and his forearms were still sticky with blood and flecks of fatty meat. He grabbed a handful of clay and scrubbed himself. He started singing. While he stood there, balancing in the mire, a man got up from under a tree near the lock-keeper’s cottage and walked along the towpath.
    The man wore a soft sailor’s cap with curly black hair poking from underneath, and a red waist-jacket leaving his ribs bare in the heat. He was past thirty years of age, short of stature, with a rounded black beard composed of tight corkscrew curls. His sunken eyes were feverish, his red lips parched, and when he swallowed a prominent Adam’s apple travelled up and down. He carried his belongings in a sailorman’s sack hung over his shoulder, and when he reached a narrow bridge that was barely more than a plank with a handrail, he shifted the sack to the other shoulder and walked the plank with an assertive and derisive gait, giving a few hard bounces along its length. From there hewatched Covington amusing himself. Daubing and daydreaming the boy sang ‘Barley Mow’ in a sweet soprano as clear as any girl’s, and this was remarkable because the sailor, whose name was John Phipps, had been thinking the boy looked like a shaved pig, and in the purity of the outburst asked God’s forgiveness for such thoughts and said a prayer for the impressment of souls.

All that Saturday afternoon Covington had helped his father and brothers, hauling horsemeat from a wagon sticky with flies and chopping it into portions on a market table. His Pa was a Bedford butcher wielding a long knife and bringing unwanted carthorses to their knees in a welter of blood and callous humour. After the markets the boy did the scrubbing-down with a stiff broom and a tub of soapy water. He had smiling narrow eyes, dusty blue in colour, high cheekbones and a wide generous mouth. His nose was aquiline, his nostrils slightly flared, and the bones of his forehead were like a shield. When asked why he laboured with no pay when he slaved all week, a clerk in a leather-merchant’s house, he brushed curls from his forehead and gave a shrug:
    â€˜Say the broom makes a good sound hitting the bristles against the stone. Say I feel like I’m drumming and making music for ’un.’
    Covington’s brothers and Pa at the end of their Saturday labours sank pots of dark ale, giving themselves winking blades of foam up their cheekbones. They