Cryers Hill Read online

  Walter opens the door.

  'Don't call me that please, Charles.'

  Sankey is glistening all over. He has pollen in his hair and is panting so hard that he cannot speak. Walter pauses only briefly before slamming the door in Sankey's face.

  'Walter Frederick Horace Brown! Where do you think you're going?'

  Her recovery is a miracle, she is once more entirely herself.

  'Gallivanting while I sicken here alone!'

  Excellent idea. Walter grabs his hat and dashes for a hurried handful of watercress in a fold of bread. When he reopens the door Sankey is still there and so Walter bundles him backwards and the door bangs a second time.

  'You are a cruel, wicked person, Walter Frederick Horace! You have no backbone, no! Yes and no head, and no heart neither!' The floorboards release a discordance of cries as Mrs Brown hurries back to her thickly draped bedroom. 'You are an unpleasant child, Walter Frederick Horace Brown, and a poor son.'

  *

  Walter thinks, he will purchase tickets for Macbeth. The Happy Harlequinaders are performing it in Amersham. He will ask Sankey along for company. He is uncertain whether his friend is partial to theatre. Perhaps he will have to explain the text to him. He will quite enjoy that.

  The Aitchy-Aitchers, as the Harlequinaders affectionately call themselves, have a fondness for performing the plays of William Shakespeare. They are a phlegmy troupe of players, whose productions you might call zesty at best, preferring as they do to remain breezily calm, genial even, during the foulest and most murderous scenes. Threats and blackmail are issued with the utmost courtesy, in tones of ashamed politeness. Corpses are known to wink or wave, as are evil kings, despots and black-hearted schemers. Speeches are delivered with bounce or, in the case of Hilda Crane, complete bewilderment. Soliloquys strain with apology and grimacing is encouraged. Consequently they are popular with families and ladies of a nervous disposition. As a matter of fact they are popular with just about everybody and play to a packed house every performance. Walter realises he has put a curve in his day.

  Ah falcon, who are in heaven. Come back.

  Sean is at the summit of a medium-sized brick tower. He scans the sky, but there are only white strings of jet vapour. The sky is enormous, it arches over him, but there is no bird in it. No falcon anyhow, just sparrows, crows and Gor's pigeons. Sean has changed colour; his legs, arms and forehead are smeared brick-orange. He kneels, arms hanging, like a hare.

  A pink builder, he notices, with smoke curling out the top of his head, is carrying bricks on his shoulder in a big metal spoon. Yesterday Sean surprised a builder as he sang 'One Broken Heart For Sale' in one of the not-yet gardens.

  In the distance Sean can see the edge of the sky tipping into Cockshoot Wood. Funny thing to give woodland a name of its own. All things are named in the countryside to show they belong – a pasture, a spinney, a pool of water – the merest slope might have a name or a clearing in the wood. Jack of Wadleys Spring, Hogpits Bottom, Grymsdyke, Venus Hill. The names tell you who or what once happened there, they tell you what the place is like, who farms it and whether – if you are in Devils Ley, Dead Mans Way, or Hanging Wood – you should be afraid. Spurlands End: somebody gave it a name, though nobody now could tell you why. These days it is the place where the falcon bird sits, fretting over possible Martians.

  How was it Jason Smith knew bird language? It was easy to be suspicious. Nobody could tell you how. Probably, it was just a speciality, like any other, same as Gor knowing the ways of the female species. Sean realised he didn't have a speciality, unless you counted spazzery. He wanted to have one. All the men he knew had a speciality; women didn't seem to bother.

  He tried a bird call. He tipped his head back and out came a wail. He couldn't tell if it was any good. He tried another, higher pitched, piping, more rabbit than bird really. It set the dogs barking below. They say there is a man at the White Lion can make pigeon noises; any sort of call you want. He has made the noises for so long now, he's started to behave like a pigeon. Everyone calls him Woody after the type he imitates. He is a little man, grey and panicky. He'd been quite a hit in his heyday, but no one seemed interested now. He sits alone, it is said, under an oak beam, twittering to himself.

  Maybe the bird would never return. Maybe Sean would have to go to Spurlands End to find it. He would have to get there and then he would have to remember how to get back and he had better not get lost, in the woods or anywhere else.

  Sean is walking purposefully up Windmill Lane. There is still debris outside the witch's door. The kids habitually chuck handfuls of gravel and sand as they ride by on their bikes. They throw bricks at her cat and spit on her path. It is almost certain she is a witch. Everyone says she is. They shout names after sundown, standing up on their pedals like Apaches on horseback. This wasn't the only house worth a gawp. Many people had moved in as the houses were being completed, the air inside still hazy with sawdust and reeking of paint. You would see them gazing from their kitchen windows at their mud gardens, and beyond that at the brick towers and sand piles and, in the distance, the giant orange crane that stood like a great hot dragon on the hill. Beyond that, too far to see, were the slopes of the county, still green in places where the few remaining farms peeped out. You could watch people having their tea if you wanted, before they had the chance to get curtains up. You could watch someone else's TV and hear it too through the modern Gabbett Housing walls. When the mud gardens were laid with their squares of turf, everyone sat outside and pretended they were unable to see or hear their neighbours through the chicken-wire partition.

  Sean runs. The tops of the trees are knocking against one another. Where has the wind come from? It occurs to him he may have created it himself with his running.

  Not everyone asked for the moon, some people are sick of it already. Fruit and Veg man looks like he couldn't care less – take it or leave it – nothing in it for him. Sean trudges past his stall on the roadside. Fruit and Veg man is squatting on his stool, shading his big walrus head under his buckled brolly, resting his lunch on his wide knees, chewing as slowly as one of the old farm's dairy herd.

  Sean does not stop to look at road signs – no point. He supposes they are all right if you can read them. It was amazing actually, how people knew where they were. The streets and houses with numbers on, the roads and crossroads and bridges and roundabouts. How did they know? How could they know whether a place was there on the right or a mile away or three streets down on the left? Yes, all right, the signs; the place names on white wooden fingers that pointed north, south, east, west, for those who knew their alphabet. But come off it! How did aeroplanes know where to land and boats which way to sail? Deirdre Simpson's cat found its way home from Bury End. How the bludyell did it do that? Sean reckoned it was possible he was stupider than a cat.

  Sixteen

  THE STAFFROOM DOOR is open. Sean waits. He must return the class ITA reading books to Miss Day in the staffroom. It is his turn. Inside he can hear teacher voices. Teachers – they know everything; they can tell you the answer to any question in the world. Except why God moves in a mysterious way. It is possible even God doesn't know why He is moving mysteriously. Sean listens for a clue. The teachers speak his parents' language fluently; the game is harder, though, as there are more players. He will have to concentrate and narrow his genius eye.

  'What I would say, Sarah, you know, what my concerns are, quite honestly, well, actually they're twofold. One is the amount of books and materials and two is the fact that pupils will repeatedly encounter traditional orthography out of school.'

  'Yes, but at five, Jeff, they would not be reading TO at home anyway.'

  'That's a good point, Jeff, actually.'

  'Might I just butt in, Di?'

  'I think – sorry, Barbara – just a moment please. I think it's important to be enthusiastic at this stage, without becoming blinded to the problems.'

  'I agree, Di.'

  'So do I, Di.'


  'Our alphabet does not know how to spell. Who said that?'

  'No idea, Jeff. Sorry.'

  'Sarah? Any idea?'

  'No, Jeff. None of us have any idea.'

  'Jeff? Barbara? If we can just keep bearing in mind that a whopping sixty per cent of English words are not spelled consistently and –'

  You are repeating yourself now. Sorry, Sarah, but you are.'

  '. . . Right, well, it is significant. It is quite significant.'

  'Mark Twain. I was, in fact, quoting Mark Twain.'

  'Can I get this right, that we're not supposed to discuss transition at this stage?'

  'It's significant, that's all.'

  'There's something about transition in here somewhere.'

  'Changeover.'

  'What?'

  'It's changeover, not transition.'

  'Right, changeover. Personally speaking, I'm not totally au fait with it.'

  'Don't worry about that at this stage.'

  'It's a murky area.'

  'I don't think it's murky, sorry.'

  'Don't apologise, Barbara.'

  'OK, I won't. I'm not sorry!'

  'If I may check the consensus re parents?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Parents?'

  'What about them?'

  The staffroom erupts with laughter. Someone has told a joke. Sean smiles. Why did the chicken cross the road? What is black and white and red all over? What goes up and down in a lift? Sean laughs. A gooseberry. A gooseberry of course. Two of the books slip from his arms to the floor, then a third and fourth. Sean can no longer hold the books. A gooseberry in a lift! He cannot breathe for laughing. He leans his head against the wall. He clutches his stomach. The books slide and drop, one after another. A gooseberry cannot reach the buttons! A gooseberry cannot read the numbers! Sean laughs until he cries.

  Seventeen

  THE SKY IS bright blue and startlingly empty over the allotment, as though someone has forgotten to paint in any clouds. Out of the corner of his eye Walter sees Nobby Dean flapping about with his binding twine, talking to himself. The trouble with competition growers is they make such a song and dance about it all. It affects them eventually, the competitive spirit, they become tunnel-minded or whatever it is. Work, family, church, all down the Swanee. Nothing else matters but the dimensions of their tomatoes or artichokes. Their world boils down to a single row of beans. Nobby won't be happy until he has won prizes for all his veg and dropped down dead in the process. One day he will be found rigor-mortising beside his vines, same as Walter's own father. Old Nobby, he lived for his allotment, they will say.

  In spite of everything Walter finds he is warming to cultivation. Increasingly he catches himself thinking of his runners or the goosegogs. They drift in his mind with his non-scanning rhymes and Mary's mouth and the sheening promise of his imminent future. Walt ignores the inexplicable hammer blows from Nobby's site. He can hammer all he likes, winning is not the be-all and end-all. Here in this small patch of earth and fostered green Walt can think and scan and dare to predict the good fortune that awaits him. They are perhaps related, the business of composition and cultivation. He supposes a wiser man than he would be able to explain it. A man from a cathedral town who had attended university, this sort of person supplied explanations for all sorts of enigmas; they were relied upon to do so. It was not his place to know the whys and wherefores of things. He was glad about that.

  Sankey's face presents itself through a hole in the hedge, framed within in a ring of hawthorn, eyebrows raised into his hairline. Walter does his best to conceal his startlement, he does not wish to appear nervy.

  'Whatsoever a man soweth, Walt, that shall he also reap.'

  'What d'you think you're playing at? Made me jump.'

  'Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, Wally.'

  Walter is not a drinking man but there is something to be said for a table by the fireplace on a day of the week that belongs neither to God nor employer, with a pint of ale that lasts all morning. As the sun rolls above their heads it ignites the copperware around the hearth, tinting the room rose pink. There in the low-beamed stillness of this little slanting space Walter can begin to collect his thoughts and enjoy the sound of time falling away. Here there is no mother, no task awaiting completion, no clerical duty, and only the faintest, ghostly impression of the person his father once was.

  Sankey's conversation is not taxing. The subject is always the same, himself, the Almighty, and himself. In the corner, the dartboard can be glimpsed through the mists of smoke. Floating in the mists are the flat-capped heads with blood-burst cheeks and yellow teeth and their talk and grumbling laughter. One will slowly rise and aim and release his arrows in short sharp jabs. As they plunge into the rings of the dartboard Sid Perfect will say, 'What did I tell you?' And Dannel, seated by the door with his great head in his hand, will nod.

  There are no women in the public houses, nor talk of women. There is talk of war, the war already fought and won. The war that surely will not come, not another. You have to be careful with such talk when Percy Evans is in, owing to his experiences in the last war. Poor unlucky Percy whom everyone calls lucky. Poor lucky Percy whose thoughts creep across the oak floor like woodworm. The new war, if it comes, will be different. Whole villages will not be emptied of their young men and boys. It could not happen a second time; they will not allow it. Poor Percy's war will not come again. Walter reckons he'll drink to that. He raises his glass to himself and drains it.

  He will walk the long way home through the wood, it being Saturday. Sankey has his rounds to do. Sankey is proud of his Saturday rounds. They are not official rounds as such, not like the preacher's visits; Sankey is no preacher, truth be told. Pesterings they are really, or, more kindly put, neighbourly visitations. He presents himself anyhow, here and there, to proffer advice and prayer, though he does no odd jobs, not usually, or manual labour, unless for a monetary donation. There are those who do not welcome him and those houses cease to exist in Sankey's mind. The only homes he registers are those where a warm pot of tea and a slice of cake or bread are offered and a piece of his home-wrought advice is gratefully received. He is godly and devout, is he not? He therefore opts to dress in black, suggestively, but stops short of the frock. Perhaps many just presume some affiliation with the Church.

  For a godly person he is a good shot. Moreover, he knows how to prepare snipe, rook and eel and to always add streaky bacon with rabbit.

  Sankey reminds Walter of the Sale of Work next week a couple or so miles away at the Methodist church in Great Kingshill. It will be opened by Mrs Coningsby Disraeli, OBE. There will be stalls and a bran tub and a ham tea at 4.30 p.m. for ninepence, and at 7.30 p.m. there will be a grand concert in aid of the debt reduction fund. Walter remembers now. Mary will be displaying her home-made jams: damson, marrow, rhubarb. She will bring them in the cart, same as last year. Walter will take Mary and her brothers to the concert, though admission is ninepence each. There are seats for sixpence but it would appear frugal, what with his decent job, so he will bear the expense and hope there will not be any stall purchases costing more than sixpence.

  Life, he decides, requires an awful lot of thinking out at times.

  Eighteen

  'D'YOU WANT TO see the murderer? I've seen him more than once – he likes me – d'you want to see him?'

  'OK.'

  They ran along the tarmac paths until the digging and drilling and thumping faded behind them. Ann had legs like rods, long and straight, without curve or irregularity. Sean thought if you fixed them on upside down no one would ever tell. Sean noticed his running style had improved. He kept a careful eye on his legs; the way his knees came up suddenly, one after the other, seemed to him not too bad, practically excellent. He suspected he might be turning into a long-distance runner. He thought how useful it would be to be able to run a very long way without stopping.

  'Spaz!'

  He had run into the back of her again. Her sandal had come
off.

  'If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times you are a spaz, Sean Matthews, what are you?'

  'A spaz.'

  'You are more crip than I thought.'

  'Sorry.'

  They ran past the stupefied cows, past the tin bath she'd once tried to drown him in and through the kissing gate where no one got kissed these days. They were almost at the place where there was once a castle. There remained a little moat and a ditch. This is a story Sean knows. He took a deep breath so he could blow her over with it. Seven hundred years ago a baron from Normandy lived here with his ten-year-old wife. It is completely true. He rode his horse, a knight in armour, a fierce lion upon his shield, with his friend Gilbert the Red. The Baron and Gilbert rode against the King, who was an idiot.

  Ann was not interested in Gilbert the Red. 'Are you chewing a brick?' she enquired.

  Sean had watched them coming and going around here after the girl was found in the wood. Gliding past in their Hillman Husky patrol cars, sideburns wide as television actors', ashtrays brimming, slamming doors; some of them without a uniform even. It used to be just one policeman. Local Bobby everyone called him. You could see him drifting about aimlessly from time to time, casting around for crime, gazing forlornly up and down Cryers Hill, squeaking down the deserted cul-de-sacs in his big law-enforcing shoes.

  'What did he say to you?'

  'Who?'

  'Him.'

  'That's for me to know.'

  Truly Sean did not want to know, but you were supposed to ask, and truly he did also want to know but she would never tell him. It was typical of Ann to have befriended a dangerous criminal, Sean thought. He pictured them together, unblinking, baring their teeth, grinning like leopards. He felt jealous. He thought it was possible this could turn out to be a bad day. Bad days didn't let you know from the start, they took you by surprise same as good luck and death. Things that seem like a good idea at the time have a nasty habit of going wrong.