More Than Human

He was careful and swift, careful and silent. He turned his wide shoulders to one side and the other as he moved, slipping through the alders, passing the pines closely as if it were intolerable to leave the direct line between himself and his call. The sun was high; the woods were homogeneously the woods, front, right, left; yet he followed his course without swerving, not from knowledge, not by any compass, but purely in conscious response.

He arrived suddenly, for the clearing was, in the forest, a sudden thing. For fifty feet outward the earth around the close-set pickets had been leached and all trees felled years ago, so that none might overhang the fence. The idiot slipped out of the wood and trotted across the bare ground to the serried iron. He put out his arms as he ran, slid his hands between the pickets, and when they caught on his starved bony forearms his legs kept moving, his feet sliding, as if his need empowered him to walk through the fence and the impenetrable holly beyond it.

The fact that the barrier would not yield came to him slowly. It was as if his feet understood it first and stopped trying and then his hands, which withdrew. His eyes, however, would not give up at all. From his dead face they yearned through the iron, through the holly, ready to burst with answering. His mouth opened and a scratching sound emerged. He had never tried to speak before and could not now; the gesture was an end, not a means, like the starting of tears at a crescendo of music.

He began to move along the fence walking sidewise, finding it unbearable to turn away from the call.

It rained for a day and a night and for half the next day, and when the sun came out it rained again, upward; it rained light from the heavy jewels which lay on the rich new green. Some jewels shrank and some fell -and then the earth in a voice of softness, and leaves in a voice of texture, and flowers speaking in colour, were grateful.

Evelyn crouched on the window seat, elbows on the sill, her hands cupped to the curve of her cheeks, their pressure making it easy to smile. Softly, she sang. It was strange to hear for she did not know music; she did not read and had never been told of music. But there were birds, there was the bassoon of wind in the eaves sometimes; there were the calls and cooings of small creatures in that part of the wood which was hers and, distantly, from the part which was not. Her singing was made of these things, with strange and effortless fluctuations in pitch from an instrument unbound by the diatonic scale, freely phrased.

But I never touch the gladness

May not touch the gladness

Beauty, oh beauty of touchness

Spread like a leaf, nothing between me and the sky but

light,

Rain touches me

Wind touches me

Leaves, other leaves, touch and touch me…

She made music without words for a long moment and was silent, making music without sound, watching the raindrops fall in the glowing noon.

Harshly, ‘What are you doing?’

Evelyn started and turned. Alicia stood behind her, her face strangely tight. ‘What are you doing?’ she repeated.

Evelyn made a vague gesture towards the window, tried to speak.

‘Well?’

Evelyn made the gesture again. ‘Out there,’ she said. ‘I – I -’ She slipped off the window seat and stood. She stood as tall as she could. Her face was hot.

‘Button up your collar,’ said Alicia. ‘What is it, Evelyn? Tell me!’

‘I’m trying to,’ said Evelyn, soft and urgent. She buttoned her collar and her hands fell to her waist. She pressed herself, hard. Alicia stepped near and pushed the hands away. ‘Don’t do that. What was that… what you were doing? Were you talking?’

‘Talking, yes. Not you, though. Not Father.’

‘There isn’t anyone else.’

‘There is,’ said Evelyn. Suddenly breathless, she said, ‘Touch me, Alicia.’

‘Touch you?’

‘Yes, I… want you to. Just…’ She held out her arms. Alicia backed away.

‘We don’t touch one another,’ she said, as gently as she could through her shock. ‘What is it, Evelyn? Aren’t you well?’

‘Yes,’ said Evelyn. ‘No. I don’t know.’ She turned to the window. ‘It isn’t raining. It’s dark here. There’s so much sun, so much – I want the sun on me, like a bath, warm all over.’

‘Silly. Then it would be all light in your bath… We don’t talk about bathing, dear.’

Evelyn picked up a cushion from the window seat. She put her arms around it and with all her strength hugged it to her breast.

‘Evelyn! Stop that!’

Evelyn whirled and looked at her sister in a way she had never used before. He mouth twisted. She squeezed her eyes tight closed and when she opened them, tears fell. ‘I want to,’ she cried, ‘I want to!’

‘Evelyn!’ Alicia whispered. Wide-eyed, she backed away to the door. ‘I shall have to tell Father.’

Evelyn nodded, and drew her arms even tighter around the cushion.

When he came to the brook, the idiot squatted down beside it and stared. A leaf danced past, stopped and curtsied, then made its way through the pickets and disappeared in the low gap the holly had made for it.