Tonight, Again Read online

  Then—much to the girl’s utter astonishment—its despairing moans resolved themselves into words.

  “Please…” it said, “…don’t hurt me…” Its voice was filled with anguish, its body shaking violently.

  Francesca was astonished at the sight of its terror. But she was more astonished still by what lay fully halfway along the length of its ivory-coloured belly. The beast had been powerfully aroused by its sniffings and pressings; even its entrapment and the fear of what might happen to it now did not diminish the evidence of its arousal. Thick and wet and purple-red its phallus throbbed against its heaving belly, while glistening juice ran from the fat head.

  “I’m sorry…” the Craw said.

  “For what?”

  “For that,” it replied, its gaze going briefly to its monstrous endowment.

  “I don’t mind,” Francesca said.

  “No?”

  “Why should I?”

  Francesca made a little smile, and at the sight of it the veins in the Craw’s phallus thickened, and a new surge of moisture ran from the head. Francesca could smell the Craw’s semen. It smelt like lightning on a dry day.

  “Where do you come from?” she asked.

  “From the wilderness on the other side of the wall.”

  “So you are the Craw?”

  “That I am. And you’re Francesca.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve heard your abominable brothers call your name. They have ugly voices. But you…I like your voice. In fact, I heard your voice before I ever laid eyes on you. I was hunting a weasel, and I chased it for a mile or more, ’til it brought me to the wall. I snatched it up and was about to tear out its throat when I heard you singing. I let the weasel go. I climbed up over the wall and saw you here. And I was afraid.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of a lullaby my Mama used to sing to me, all about you.”

  “About me? Surely not.”

  “Yes. It was about you.”

  “Sing it to me.”

  “Must I?”

  “Yes, I insist.”

  “If I sing it, will you touch me?”

  “Touch you?”

  “Yes. Touch me…you know where.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Anyway you’re in no position to bargain with me. If I called my brothers now—”

  “They’d kill me.”

  “Indeed they would.”

  “So I’ll sing,” the Craw replied.

  In a thin quavering voice he sang the Craw Mammy’s Lullaby:

  “Death sat in a plum tree,

  “Singing her La-di-da.

  “Beware her, child! Beware her, child!

  “She killed your poor Papa!”

  “It’s not a very happy song,” Francesca remarked. “I think if my mother sang that to me, I wouldn’t sleep very well.”

  “I didn’t understand the song when I was a baby. It was only later…when I looked over the wall and saw you in the tree that I remembered it. That’s strange, isn’t it? I knew the words by heart. I simply didn’t know what they meant.”

  “But I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “No?”

  “No. I’m just a little girl.”

  “So you never knew my father?”

  “Of course not. How perfectly silly!”

  Francesca glanced down at the Craw’s phallus. It had not dwindled at all during this exchange. Indeed it seemed to have grown even more sizeable, the mesh of the net pressing deep into its flesh.

  “Will you touch me now?” the Craw said to Francesca.

  The girl considered the request for a moment. Then she reached down and delicately stroked the Craw’s tender skin, beginning close to the root of its member and moving up over the cobbles of netted flesh to the great raw head. As she came to it the beast let out a sudden noise, such as Francesca had never heard before. And an instant after it began to convulse so violently she thought it would surely burst the net. Then from the slit of its phallus came a rush of semen, which splashed against her hand like water from a spring. A second flood followed, and a third and a fourth, the sheer copiousness of its eruption almost frightening.

  And still the beast made that terrible sound, like a dozen kinds of animal, all giving voice to some unbearable pain.

  Francesca looked back towards the house. Somebody would probably have heard this din, she thought; nor would it be difficult to work out where it was coming from. She was right. As the torrents from the Craw finally dwindled to mere spurts, and the anguished noise it had made also died away, she heard shouts from the direction of the house.

  She looked down at her prisoner, who was panting and sweaty. Should she let the beast go? If she did so wasn’t there a chance that it would slip away, over the wall, back into the wilderness? She might never see it again. She couldn’t risk that. So instead of undoing the ropes, she clambered over the Craw’s wet, stinking body, and lowered herself down to the ground. She could hear her father calling her name, and her brothers’ voices, as they all came running.

  “Francesca! Francesca! What on earth’s going on?”

  She did her best to put on a look of composure, and then headed down the avenue of trees to her rescuers, all of whom had come from the house armed, her father with his old army sword, her brothers with kitchen knives. When she was almost ten yards from her plum tree, she glanced back at it, and was pleased to see that the summer canopy was so heavy that it screened her captive from sight.

  Her father was right in front of her now, demanding to know what was going on.

  “Nothing,” she said simply.

  “Well, what was that terrible sound?”

  “It was an animal, I suppose,” she said. “Probably on the other side of the wall.”

  “It sounded closer than that,” her father said, looking all around. The breeze had died away completely in the last few minutes. The orchard was as calm and as reassuring as a paternoster.

  “I’ll look around,” said Francesca’s eldest brother, brandishing the knife Papa Rueffert used to carve the meat on Sundays.

  “There’s no need…” Francesca said, “…there’s nothing here. If there was, I would have seen it.”

  “You’re shaking,” her middle brother said. “Papa! She’s shaking.”

  “I slipped climbing down from my tree, that’s all,” Francesca said.

  “And what’s that on your hand?” her little brother said.

  Francesca wiped the glistening stuff on her dress. “Cuckoo spit,” she said. “The grass is full of it.”

  “Francesca…” her father said, his voice laden with threat.

  “Yes, Papa?”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I won’t be lied to, my girl.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Her father glowered at her. “Go back to the house. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I know when you’re lying—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence because his eldest son was calling him.

  “Papa! Look at this!”

  Francesca turned. Her brother was standing a few paces from her plum tree, brandishing the Sunday carving knife. Even from this distance Francesca could see what he was so interested in. Drops of the Craw’s semen were falling out of the tree, splashing on the grass between the roots.

  “Leave him alone,” Francesca said. “He’s mine!”

  This was, of course, precisely the wrong thing to say. She’d no sooner spoken than all three boys were at the tree, the eldest clambering up into the foliage.

  “Papa!” Francesca implored. “Tell them to stop. Please, Papa! Tell them to stop!”

  From out of the plum tree there came a cry of horror, as the eldest discovered what lay concealed in the branches.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “What is it?” his younger brother demanded, as he climbed up to get a look.

  “Stay out of that tree!” Papa Rueffert yelled at them,
but his sons were too enraged by the sight of this abomination to obey him.

  The Craw let out a pitiful din. Francesca couldn’t see what was going on up the tree, but she could guess. They were attacking her beautiful beast with their knives. She could hear the Craw gasp as the blades entered it, over and over and over.

  She grabbed hold of her father. “Oh, don’t let them do this!” she cried.

  “What have you been up to, child?” her father demanded.

  “It’s just an animal. A poor, defenseless animal.”

  “What’s it doing up in your plum tree?”

  “I trapped it. Please, please, please don’t let them kill it.”

  Papa Rueffert’s anger at his daughter’s deception softened when he heard the tenderness in her voice. “All right,” he said, “don’t start crying! Boys—” he called to his sons. “Let the animal alone! Do you hear me?”

  He’d no sooner issued his instruction than the Craw’s agonized cries ceased.

  Francesca started to run back towards the plum tree, but her father went after her, and caught hold of her arm.

  “Wait, child,” he said. He strode on past her, calling up to the two boys as he went. The third, his youngest, was standing underneath the tree. There was blood on his face, which was raining down from the branches.

  “I think it must be dead, Papa,” the youngest said.

  Francesca let out a sob.

  “Is it true?” Papa Rueffert yelled to the boys in the tree. “Is the thing dead?”

  “I…think so…” the eldest replied.

  “Then throw the carcass down!” Papa Rueffert said. “Let me take a look at it!”

  “You morons!” Francesca yelled. “You idiotic, stupid morons!”

  She tried to approach the tree, but her father told her to stay back, his voice so fierce now that she did not dare disobey him. There was a lot of noise from the tree, as the brothers cut through the net to free the body.

  “Stand clear!” the eldest yelled, and a moment later the Craw’s corpse tumbled out of the branches, and dropped to the ground. Though the youths had only been up the tree a short time they had done terrible damage to the beast. The Craw was a mass of wounds, some around the head, but most on its phallus, which was barely recognizable as the splendid instrument Francesca had toyed with just a few minutes before. The sight of the creature reduced to such a state was horrible. Francesca covered her eyes, her little body wracked with sobs.

  “What kind of animal is it, Papa?” she heard her youngest brother ask.

  “I’m damned if I know,” Papa Rueffert replied. “But it’s surely dead.” He turned and looked back at his daughter, “I’m going to want an explanation for this, Francesca—”

  “It meant no harm…” Francesca sobbed.

  “No harm? A thing like that? Of course it meant harm. Stupid girl.”

  As he spoke Francesca’s gaze slid past him to the body of the Craw. Her oldest brother was kicking it, a contemptuous smile on his face.

  For a moment it seemed she saw a flicker of red in the Craw’s glazed eye. Surely not. The beast had been stabbed and cut open in a dozen places. How could there still be life in it? And yet—

  Her brother went on kicking it. The Craw’s body rocked, its tongue lolling from its gaping mouth. The other two boys were coming to join in the game now, laughing at the sight before them.

  As they did so, Francesca saw the lid of the Craw’s eyes flicker.

  It was alive! It was lying in the grass, pretending to be dead, so that they’d come to it, her brothers—her witless, murderous brothers.

  She had time, in between the flicker of the Craw’s eyelid and what happened next, to utter a warning. But she made no sound. She let them fall into its trap.

  In a heartbeat the creature rolled over and leapt at Francesca’s middle brother, its claws—which during its dalliance with Francesca had been entirely hidden—suddenly unsheathed. They were like razors. They sliced through the youth’s flesh to his innards. He shrieked, and fell back, sprawling in the grass. The Craw was on him instantly, delivering a final, fatal blow.

  As it was doing so the other boys came to their brother’s aid. The eldest—who had come from the house with the largest knife—threw himself upon the beast’s back, and drove the blade into its nape. In response to this assault the Craw did something Francesca would remember to the very end of her life. It left off its murder of the youngest, and simply stood up on its hind legs. She had never seen it in this posture before. It had either been stalking the tree, its belly to the earth, or supine. Now she witnessed another kind of beast: one which perhaps had the hope, or the dregs, of humanity in it. Her brother still clung to the Craw’s back, attempting to drive his own knife home to the hilt, but the beast walked forward, with a terrible elegance in its step, as though it were out for a Sunday stroll. Its eyes were on Francesca.

  She thought, at that moment, of the lullaby the Craw had sung to her; the song of death. And then, as the words came back to her, the expression on the Craw’s face changed. Its tenderness evaporated and it suddenly threw itself back against the plum tree. There was a tremendous cracking sound, which Francesca assumed was the breaking of the tree. It was only when the Craw dropped back onto all fours that she realized her error. The sound she’d heard was that of her brother’s spine and neck cracking.

  The Craw moved away from the tree, as though to display its handiwork. Francesca’s brother stood there for a moment, leaning against the trunk, as blood appeared from his crushed body. Then he fell face forward into the blood and semen-soaked grass.

  All this had happened so quickly that Papa Rueffert had only now come within striking distance of the Craw. No, no, no he kept yelling; as though he might drive the horrible sights in front of him away. He swung at the Craw with his sword, but the animal neatly sidestepped him. Then, before the old man could turn to attempt a second blow, the beast went after the remaining brother. Of the three boys, this—the youngest—was the most innocent: though he’d come into the orchard with a knife, he hadn’t used it. Perhaps it was this fact that made the Craw spare his life. Instead of taking out the boy’s throat, as it could easily have done, the beast simply reached down and unmanned the youth, its claws doing such grievous damage that all trace of the boy’s sex was removed.

  Then, before Papa Rueffert could come after it, the Craw ran to the wall, scrambled up over it, and was gone, back into the wilderness.

  A search was made, of course. Fifty men on horseback and a hundred dogs went out into the hills to bring the monster to judgement. They followed the trail of the Craw’s blood from the wall of Rueffert’s orchard for fully ten miles. They then came to a stream, where—to judge by the mess on the stones—the beast had bathed itself. But there was no trail on the opposite bank; nor could the dogs pick up any scent. The Craw had escaped.

  The two Rueffert brothers were buried three days later, and for several days following it seemed they would be joined in the grave by their wounded sibling. But he was a strong youth, and with the help of prayer and good nursing he survived.

  Francesca admitted everything, and was severely punished. Not by her father, who was so grief-stricken by the death of his sons he barely knew his own name, but by her mother, who became unrepentantly brutal towards her. A year later Papa Rueffert died, confessing to Father Kronhausen that he had no wish to live, now that he had no hope of any heir, except by his corrupted daughter.

  After his demise a steady and inevitable process of general decay set in. Despite the mildness of his manner Papa Rueffert had kept a firm hand on his business dealings. Now that he was gone, things fell apart. The labourers grew lazy. Arturo the Younger, who’d always been overly fond of wine, became a drunkard. The grass grew tall between the plum trees; birds feasted on the ripened fruit, so often it was spoiled before it was picked. Francesca’s mother did her best to keep her eye on things, but she was not liked by the labourers, and the work simply didn’t get done. Even the
wall that marked the divide between the orchard and the wilderness fell into a state of disrepair, and over the years the wilderness steadily reclaimed the fruitful order of the orchard for itself. The plum trees, used to being pruned and tended, died one by one, the last one perishing six years after Francesca had met the Craw. A kind of golden age had passed away. The labourers went to find jobs in other provinces; Arturo followed his father Old Arturo into the ground. Mama Rueffert locked herself up in the house with her gelded son, and lived out her years never again seeing the sun.

  As for Francesca, who carried the weight of the whole tragedy like a stone, she married at the age of nineteen, and left her mother’s house for another country. Her marriage did not proceed well. The man she’d wed was a wretched fellow, a gambler and a philanderer. She left him after four years, and for the next decade of her life wandered Europe. At last, in Vienna, she met a man who loved her better than she had expected to be loved, and she married him. She gave birth to three children. They were all fractious babies, who were not easily laid down at night. But she never soothed them with lullabies. Instead she let them cry themselves to sleep, as over the years she had learned to do.

  Afraid

  After six and a half weeks of passion, during which her suspicions about Vigo had multiplied, Marianne caught him, standing in the shower beneath a torrent of ice-cold water, breathing out a gilded mist. His eyes were closed. When he opened them, finally, and slid his lazy gaze in her direction, his eyes were black from end to end.