Chapter Six
David walked side by side with Meredith through the dark forest, feigning as much appreciation of their surroundings as he was able.
In fact, he told himself, it really wasn’t so bad after all.
Stars twinkled here and there through the dense canopy of foliage, and it didn’t take long before his vision adjusted to the gloom.
On the other hand, he had no idea where they were going, and the landscape looked nothing like it had only a few hours before. The silence between them held an awkward, brittle quality that only seemed to intensify the longer it went on.
Very well, David would be the one to break it.
They’d reached the bank of a creek, and Bianca splashed through the clear shallow water. As Meredith searched for a narrower spot to cross, David began, “Look, I just think—”
“Bianca, wait!” called Meredith. When the Chihuahua darted ahead into the underbrush, he hopped over to the opposite bank after her, and David followed, crossing the water in a single stride.
“Bianca, really, you mustn’t—oh!” Meredith cried in dismay. “Oh, no.”
David reached him as he sank down to crouch on the forest floor. “What is it?”
Meredith looked up at him, eyes shining with tears. “Oh, David, look.”
On the mossy ground in front of him lay a small white mouse, quite dead.
“It’s only a mouse.” David meant the words to sound comforting. They didn’t.
“It’s a Midnight Mouse.” Meredith’s voice trembled. “They’re an endangered species, you know.”
“Ah. I hadn’t realized.”
“They keep the time here,” he explained. “Without the Midnight Mice making their rounds, the clock would go all wrong.”
In David’s opinion, the clock was already all wrong, time not proceeding in an orderly fashion at all, but it seemed in poor taste to say so just now.
He made another attempt at consolation. “These things happen. Nature. Cycle of life and all that.”
“We ought to bury her.”
“Don’t you dare,” said David. “We haven’t got a shovel, and the last thing you need is to pick up some disease off a dead rat.
” Surreptitiously shifting his weight to one foot, he stretched the opposite ankle in an effort to dispel the faint ache that often accompanied rainy weather—the result of an old sporting injury.
“Suppose not.” Meredith rose to his feet, plucked a large frond from a nearby fern, and pressed it into David’s hand. “Help me find a few more of these, would you?”
Resigning himself, David half-heartedly collected a handful of fronds while Meredith picked an assortment of stolen-breath and vicar’s shame and the odd white violet. Once he’d fashioned them into a ragtag bouquet, he took the fronds from David and knelt once more.
“Oh, now, is this really necessary?” asked David.
Taking no notice, Meredith arranged the ferns with care to cover the mouse and laid his collection of flowers before the makeshift grave.
“Do you want to say anything?” he asked.
David shook his head; he’d already contributed more than enough to this travesty. All he’d wanted was to spend his Saturday morning with a cup of tea and the paper, and now here he was, however unwillingly, standing vigil over a dead mouse.
#48: He insists upon holding an impromptu funeral for a rodent.
“One feels one ought to,” said Meredith apologetically, “only I don’t know any prayers. No, all right, I’ve got something.”
David half expected Meredith’s idea of a funeral oration to involve Bauhaus lyrics, and very nearly said so, but just managed to hold himself back.
Instead, Meredith recited:
“Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.”
He spoke the lines with such solemnity that an unexpected stab of shame lanced through David’s gut, and he was glad he hadn’t voiced his thoughts aloud.
As Meredith knelt, head bowed, David relented and rested a hand on his shoulder. “There, it’s all right,” he said softly. “Come on. You’ve done the best you can.”
Meredith stood, and for a moment, the two walked along in silence.
“I didn’t realize you knew so much German,” David said at last.
“I don’t really,” said Meredith. “Just bits of song and poetry and the like. That one they read at my grandfather’s funeral.”
David recalled Genevieve’s words: I haven’t seen your face at a family gathering since Grandpa died. This could be the opening he needed, but he had to tread carefully. “How long ago was that?”
“Oh, some time,” said Meredith vaguely. “Just before you were around, actually.”
He fell back into silence as they walked along. (As they made their way over the crest of a hill, David was almost sure he did see a cottage in the distance nestled among the pines.)
“Oh, look, there is some imitation wintergreen yet after all.” The dell below was filled with a sea of shiny dark leaves, and Meredith made his way down the gentle incline to kneel at a cluster of plants bearing round white berries.
David leaned against the trunk of a nearby hemlock and reached out to take a handful of berries from Meredith.
“Do you suppose she wanted the whole plant?” he murmured half to himself. “I didn’t think to ask. Suppose we’d best take one back just in case.”
As he carefully freed the delicate roots of the plant from the loose soil, Meredith surprised David once more by asking, “Do you get on with your family?” As soon as he’d spoken, he waved away the question. “What am I saying, course you do. You go and visit them every Christmas.”
“Oh, I suppose so,” said David. “About as well as anyone.” Truth be told, he didn’t have much family.
His sister, twelve years older, in Cardiff.
A few scattered aunts and uncles seen infrequently at holidays.
“My mother passed away when I was still at university, and my father moved back to Swansea not long after.” It was not without a pang of guilt that David realized he couldn’t recollect the last time he’d actually phoned him.
Meredith stood and rested a hand on David’s arm, rubbing his knuckles over his elbow in what David supposed passed for a gesture of comfort, and likely rubbing soil into his coat sleeve as well. “I’m sorry.”
Shrugging off both the touch and the sentiment, David said, “It was a long time ago. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose…” Meredith trailed off and leaned down to pick a few more imitation wintergreen berries.
David seized upon this opening. “Do you not, then? Get on with your family.”
“It’s not that, exactly.”
Perhaps this roundabout approach might get him somewhere. “Go on.”
Meredith shrugged. “Nothing to go on about, is there? We’re just not close. I do my own thing, they do theirs, that’s all.” With the toe of his boot, he nudged the disarranged soil back into place.
“What about your brother?”
“Florian?” Meredith drew his sweater closer around him as a biting wind swept through the Wood, rattling branches and making the treetops sway erratically to blot out the stars above. “What about him?”
“Well, for instance, what did he do?”
“Oh, he works in our dad’s construction firm. I expect he’ll take it over someday, if he hasn’t already. We…haven’t talked much in a while.”
Aside from the conversation about the bridal party that might or might not have taken place, but perhaps he wasn’t counting that.
“No. I don’t mean what does he do for a living,” David clarified as they started through the Wood once more.
“What did he do so that you won’t even go to his wedding?
” If he could get to the root of the matter, he’d be that much closer to resolving the whole issue.
Unless Meredith was simply being contrary for its own sake, in which case—
“It’s not—he didn’t—” Meredith floundered.
“It isn’t that he did anything exactly, not any one thing in particular, it’s just—like Genevieve said.
We don’t really get along. You know,” he went on, apropos of nothing, “it’ll be time for the sweet woodruff soon.
I want to make some decent May wine this year, last spring’s was a bit of a disaster. ”
#49: Everything he touches is a bit of a disaster.
Not to mention he was clearly avoiding the subject.
“In other words,” said David, “you’ve no good reason for boycotting this wedding.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Meredith. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
“In this case, no, it isn’t.” With a concerted effort, David clamped the lid down on the simmering frustration that now threatened to boil into rage. “It would help me, and it certainly wouldn’t do you any harm. It’s the least you could do.”
“I told you, I won’t.”
So it was sheer contrariness.
“This is Maitland Cartier we’re talking about!”
“Who cares about Maitland Cartier? Just because you’re a bit in love with some—some CEO or something—”
“How dare you!” The frustration finally boiled over. “I am not in love with Maitland Cartier. I admire his work ethic and aspire to join in his entrepreneurial vision,” said David in outrage. “You, on the other hand, are the most selfish person I have ever met.”
“Oh, yeah?” Meredith, too, had acquired a certain viciousness in tone, and though the foolish grin remained in place, there was an unnerving sharpness to it that put David in mind of broken glass. “Am I?”
“You are, as a matter of fact,” snapped David.
“You never think of anybody but yourself. You’re governed by whims and you don’t give a thought to the consequences of your actions and you’ve caused me no end of trouble with your utter promiscuity.
” The low rumble of distant thunder ground across the sky, and something scurried through the nearby undergrowth, but David was too incensed to be worried by it.
“Yeah, all right,” said Meredith. The sharp, sneering quality had gained a definite foothold in his expression. “Feel any better?”