A raincoat and no rucksack, as though he’d come down out of the morning mist to meet his solicitor. Even the angry ruddiness of his cheeks was damped down, Kevern noted. Did that mean he could turn it on and off at will — his raging rusticity?
‘So what business are you on, looking such a dandy?’ Kevern asked.
Kroplik tapped his nose.
It was that gesture, more than anything else — denoting a man who had a hundred secrets of his own and was privy to a thousand more — that inveigled Kevern, who had hardly slept, into confidentiality. Who could say: maybe Kroplik knew something about what was going on.
‘I’ve been away for a few days,’ Kevern confided.
‘Anywhere interesting?’
Kevern waved that part of the conversation away. ‘While I was gone my cottage was broken into.’
‘Not guilty,’ Kroplik said.
‘I would never have thought you were. I just wondered if you’d heard anything on the grapevine.’
‘I’m not on the grapevine.’
Kevern had a go at an affable grin. It was that or push the swine into the sea. ‘I’ve yet to hear of anything happening in this village that you haven’t heard of first.’
Densdell Kroplik inclined his head before the compliment. ‘I’m the village historian,’ he said, ‘not the village gossip. Ask me something that occurred here a hundred years ago and I’ll tell you. Ask me what occurred yesterday and your guess is as good as mine. I don’t deal in yesterday.’
Kevern was grateful that, as befitted his suit and his unruddied cheeks, Densdell Kroplik, though as awkward as ever, was not playing the local this morning. But he still regretted what he said next even as he was saying it. ‘That you know of — did my father have anything to hide?’
The historian rubbed both his eyes, as though before a spectacle that amazed him. It was a morning of miracles for both of them. He asked Kevern if he minded his joining him on the bench. He pretended to need time to catch the breath of his astonishment. ‘Other than his being an aphid, you mean?’
‘Yes, other than that.’
He scratched his head under his hat. ‘Well he had you,’ he finally answered.
‘I assume that’s a 
oke,’ Kevern said, smothering the action of putting two fingers to his lips with a cough.
‘Joke or not, many a child born round here is a clue to a secret people would rather didn’t get out.’
‘I’m guessing you’re not telling me I’m someone else’s child?’
‘You wouldn’t be the first. It’s always hard to prove whose child anyone is, and usually unwise to try.’
My fault, Kevern thought. My own stupid fault. ‘So is this a general supposition or do you know something specific?’
Densdell Kroplik put a hand on Kevern’s knee. That Kevern could recall, no other man had ever done that. Not even his father. He found it hard to believe it could presage anything but an appalling revelation.
‘No, nothing specific,’ Kroplik said, noticing that Kevern shrank from his touch, ‘though there was a story circulating some years ago — tell me to stop if this is painful — that your mother used to get free meat.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘What it sounds. A certain butcher from these parts was said to enjoy her company on and off. They’d go for walks together. Up around here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m a historian.’
‘But not of gossip, you said.’
‘Give it enough time, brother, and gossip’s history.’
‘And he’d give her free meat, this butcher?’
‘That’s my understanding.’
‘Free meat!’
‘Would you have rather she’d paid?’
Kevern rose from the bench. ‘OK, enough,’ he said.
Kroplik shrugged his shoulders. This wasn’t his doing. Kevern had started it. ‘I know how you feel,’ he said. ‘My mother was a slut too.’
‘OK, I said that’ll do!’ Kevern repeated.
‘Keep your shirt on. It’s just a word. Mine ran off with a tin miner from St Abraham.’ St Abraham! — he spat the words on to the ground. ‘Used to be Laxobre. Lovely name that. Flinty. Like licking a stone. What lunatic would change Laxobre to St Poxy Abraham? Axe-wielding men lived in Laxobre. Not that that excuses them stealing my mother.’ He paused to wipe his mouth. ‘Anyway the butcher wouldn’t have been your father. I don’t as a rule do births and deaths, but for you I’d hazard a guess he came into the picture after you were born.’
Kevern wasn’t sure it made it any better to imagine his mother — his mother! that bundle of old rags! — getting free meat from the butcher while he was at school. Did the other kids know? Did his father?
‘I don’t question your historiographical accuracy,’ he said, ‘but—’
‘My what?’
‘Don’t play the village clown with me. You know what well enough. But this is fantastical. You must have seen my mother.’
‘Walking out with the butcher?’
‘No. You must have seen what she looked like.’
‘Well I only saw her when she was getting on a bit. So that tells me nothing. She might have been a good-looking woman when she was younger. Your grandmother was a beauty, everyone said. Stuck-up, but beautiful.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that. She died before my time.’
‘And mine. But you can take it from me she was. I saw a painting of her once. Done from photographs or memory, in my humble opinion. Too proud to pose for anybody, that one. Too private.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I don’t. But the painting was called something like So Lovely Yet So Cold, or So Near Yet So Far. Which I reckon is a clue.’
‘Where is this painting?’
‘Search me. Behind a bar some place. I might have its whereabouts written down, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Her husband now—’
‘Her husband what?’
‘No one wanted to paint him. Nothing beautiful about a hunchback.’
Kevern needed to resume his position on the bench. Was this to be one of those mornings after which a man’s life is never the same again? Like the morning you meet the woman you love? Like the morning you forget to lock your door?
‘You’re going to have to slow down,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to ease me into this more gently. You’re telling me my mother took free meat from a butcher in return for sexual favours. You’re telling me my grandmother was reputed to be a beautiful, stand-offish woman which you can confirm because you’ve seen a portrait of her hanging above a bar you can’t remember where. And now my grandfather was a hunchback. How much of this are you making up?’
For some reason Densdell Kroplik, raincoat or no raincoat, made the decision to revert to being the evil, inconsistently incoherent genius of Port Reuben. ‘I never zeed ’im with my own eyes, Mister Master Cohen,’ he said. ‘So I can only goes on what I’ve picked up here and yonder. But yes. Nowadays they’d as like as not throw stones at your grand-daddy but in them days they’d ’ave respected him. Hellfellen, the giant, was a hunchback. Charged people to feel his hump. It was a way of taxing travellers. If you wanted to get in or out of Ludgvennok you had to pay to feel him, which you gladly did anyways ’cos a hump brings you good luck. I doubt if your grand-daddy did any of that. Kept himself to himself, I’d say. And kept his wife to himself too, if he knew what was good for him. But everyone understood it was lucky to have a hunchback in the village. He might ’ave frightened the kids, but a talisman’s a talisman. They’d ’ave given him no trouble whoever he was.’