Cryers Hill Page 13

  'Are you still chicken then, Walt?' Bright water droplets fall from Sankey's elbows, chin and ears. 'Cluck-cluck-cluck,' he says. 'Cluckety-cluck. Love-a-duck. Cluckety-cluckie-cluck.'

  Sankey's clucking is intolerable. In comparison, drowning seems the lesser evil. The water is not as cold as Walter expected it to be, and his dive is no worse than his friend's. It is possible to stand up on the muddy bottom as long as you don't move towards the centre, where it is deepest and darkest. Still, Walter feels afraid. He tries to smile, to appear as though he is enjoying himself, when all he feels is fear and irritation and a sort of pity for himself. Charles splashes Walter. The splashing is worse than the clucking.

  'That's enough then, Sank. That's enough now. Bugger off bugger off bugger off bugger – !'

  Underwater Walter is surprised how loud air bubbles sound, how bright the sunlight is through the gloom, how strong Sankey's arm is as he holds his head under. He has feared water all his life and now here it is filling his ears and nose and eyes, squeezing his heart. He should like to swim. Mary would swim, she would go deeper and circle back and surprise Sankey, beat him at his own game. He cannot swim. Nor for that matter can he ride a horse or drive a motor car, and he's not much good with his hands either – not even with his own fruit and veg – not to mention his singing, which is off, and his piano-playing, which is terrible. He is at least a poet, remaining (as yet) undiscovered. If he drowns now will someone root out his poems and find a publisher to publish them? He would like to hope that people will remark upon the fact that this talented young poet died before he had the chance to produce his finest work, drowned tragically, needlessly, suspiciously, while out swimming with an apprentice lay-preaching Methodist. Perhaps Sankey will be hanged for it. The water rushes inside Walter's ears as he comes up, and as he gasps for air he sees that Sankey is speaking mouthfuls of words, his voice a whine of piety, and the words, urgent, imploring, are rising from the water into the trees.

  '. . . confess the faith of Christ crucified. Manfully fight under his banner against sin, the world, the devil. Continue as Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto your life's end.'

  'Charles!' Walter cannot speak for coughing.

  Sankey closes his eyes. He cradles Walter's head in one hand as if he were a baptised child, the flat palm of the other is pressed against his brow. He lowers his voice. 'He will come to judge the living and the dead, Walt. Accept him, accept him.'

  'Christ's sake, Sank!'

  'Christ claims you for his own! Receive the sign of his cross!'

  Walter wonders if, in the event he is not hanged, Sankey may, at least, be institutionalised. Walter struggles. He is surprised to discover he cannot get free. He kicks and pulls at his friend, but Sankey proves considerably stronger than Walter could have estimated. Finally, Walter swings at him, catching him sharply across the cheek.

  'Inherit the kingdom of God.' Sankey cries, in response.

  Walter swings again, landing one on his ear.

  'O father!' calls Sankey, as Walter continues to thrash. 'O father!' he cries. 'Here is a light delivered. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!'

  Twenty-two

  THE LOCAL CHILDREN had been told they must not walk anywhere alone. Especially not the woods. They were not allowed in the woods, it was banned. Nobody took any notice. Now the estate kids visited the woodland in twos and threes or in morbidly curious groups.

  The game was always the same. The boys all wanted to be the beast. Some roared and spat, some crawled with bared teeth, some dropped from branches and some staggered with rolling eyes. As one re-enactment finished so another candidate would declare himself and off it would go again. The boys were always the murderer and, one after the other, the girls were always the victim, walking along in the woods without a care in the world, a bag on her arm, sunlight flecking her shoes. Often more than one girl at a time declared herself about to die. Chorusing screams filled the woodland so that nearby herds would lift their heads from grazing. Some of these girls would alter the proper course of events, escaping or fighting their attacker to the ground, thereby creating a different ending, leaving the beast not the beauty in a bed of leaves. Most of the girls were faithful to the facts, however. Most of them fell to their knees and cried out to their mothers and died with their eyes open.

  All except Sean. Sean was the only dead girl who was a live boy, the only one who wanted to. Something about this fact roused the other boys and they chased him with a new resolve. Gone was the pantomime growling and eye-rolling and in its place was feral intent. They chased him as a pack, at least seven of them. They chased him with cunning, working as a team, happy as wolves. The forgotten girls hurried after, hooting, laughing at the thought of Sean pretending to be a girl in the woods, pretending to be hunted, pretending he was important. Sean, dashing on his soft streaky legs, hoping to die with dignity.

  They piled on top of him and stuffed his mouth with leaves and dirt and Sean was happy. They pulled off all his clothes and covered him with twigs and soil and he didn't mind. The boys saw that he didn't mind and so they hit him with sticks and pushed earth in his eyes. Sean had pictured himself dying well. He'd imagined himself producing an awful scream and dropping face down (the girls never did that). He suspected he could die the best. Now the boys were shouting in his ears and whipping his legs with switches. His punishment for wanting to be her, for wanting to be the hunted thing, for upsetting the natural order. Who did he think he was? Sticks and stones can break my bones, he told himself. He covered his head with his arms and drew his knees up. He considered how this sort of thing would be impossible in space. How the sticks and stones would merely float or twirl through the air, no matter how hard they were flung. He realised it would be hard to hurt someone on the moon, to break their bones or even shoot them. He imagined that if you managed it somehow their blood might hang about in globules like Christmas berries.

  It wasn't bad in the woods. Once the others were gone it was peaceful. He found his socks, his other shoe. He listened for the murderer. The silence began to make him afraid. Do not go to the woods alone. Do not talk to strangers. Do not take your eye off the ball. Do you think I am made of money? Sean ran. As he ran he thought to himself: I can run, I can run. Sometimes when you are looking for a murderer it may turn out they are standing right behind you.

  *

  18th September 1942, M.E.F.

  Dear Mary,

  I hope you received my airgraph. This time I am trying an airmail letter-card.

  Well, what a sky. Not an English sky I should hasten to add. It is a blue of the lapis lazuli variety (if you know lapis).

  Newsflash! George Williams has just got engaged by letter. It seems to be quite the fashion to do it by letter or cable these days. How are your parents? And Joseph and Clem? What is the local news? Have you seen or heard from Sankey? I shall drop another line to Mother, though it would be so kind of you if you could pay her a visit sometime. She did, in fact, mention that Isabel is expecting. What jolly news.

  There are many types of lizard here, Mary. For instance there are two chameleons who sit on the ration wagon's backboard chains and catch flies on their tongues – I think you would like them. Fletch has called them Monty and Rommel, what a wag. Sandstorms blow up here without any warning, real whirlwinds they are. Of course this is the reason why camels have the ability to close their nostrils.

  We are allowed out on evening leave, so Bob Henderson and I went on a walk. After 3 miles we found an Egyptian canteen. It cost us a small fortune! Whatever money you put down, you hardly ever receive change. A small tin of pineapples is 5/- and a pen is 2/-. Well, when you consider our salary of 30/- (less one and a quarter piastres lost on rate of exchange) someone is doing well, but it is not us! Moreover, Bob and I got ourselves lost on our return and arrived back rather pooped.

  Well, darling, everyone thinks we now have Jerry on the run. (The Italians don't count any more – they are poor fish.) You'd be amazed to see all the
stuff left behind by Jerry and the Italians – vehicle parts, chairs, tables, pans, stoves, ammunition, old planes, tanks, tins, helmets, clothing, boxes of cigarettes (rain-soaked, unsmokeable!) – all left lying on the desert sands. And the harbour nearby is full of half-sunken ships. By the way, the Greeks are nice – polite and kindly disposed. Odd how they all seem to have fillings in their teeth.

  I could eat some allotment peas now, and perhaps one of your potato pies. We have stewed bully and biscuits at night and sometimes cold bully during the day – a bit monotonous, I'm sure you'll agree. These letter-cards are rather short on space, aren't they? So I'll close now. I am thinking of you. Cheerio. God bless you. Please write, Mary!

  Yours, Walter xx

  PS. You are beautiful.

  soll cloes now. chee ri. o.god be less yoo. ples witer maryi. yous water.

  This was a good letter. This letter he liked, dear mary, dear mary. yurs waltr. yurs waltr xx. This was Sean's favourite letter. He carefully replaced the bricks.

  Twenty-three

  IF WALTER WANTED a kiss before his eighteenth birthday he would have to take Mary to the orchards in April, when the cherry blossom was thick and the sweet smell made you gag. He took her in May as it turned out, just as the blossoms were falling in the orchards. They lay under the trees and watched the flowers as they came down until they were smothered, snowbound as two polar explorers.

  'Give us a kiss then.'

  'Not likely.'

  Mary Hatt was not a formal girl, it was one of her charms. Walter couldn't understand which part of his approach was off the mark. If he spoke pretty words, she would just laugh.

  'Give us a kiss. Just one. Go on.'

  'Not on your nelly, Wally-Walt.'

  'I think you may have a mean streak, Mary Ann Hatt.'

  'Stick it in your pipe and smoke it. Ha ha ha.'

  A ball of blossom landed in Walter's eye. He could not understand why anyone, William Shakespeare included, would write sonnets in praise of the female sex. They seemed to him a petty, single-minded lot, the two he knew at any rate. For his part, he decided, he would stick to nature and, when the chance came, travel. He thought if another war were to come along and if he were called upon to do his duty, she might live to regret her decision to leave him unkissed in the snow blossom. Perhaps one day she would weep at his grave, perhaps there, on her knees, she would beg his forgiveness, and perhaps she would never, ever forgive herself and die a lonely spinster.

  'Give us a kiss or I'll spank you.'

  'Spank me then.'

  Walter came up on one elbow to decide.

  'Well? Hurry up. I haven't got all day, Walter Wallflower, unlike some layabout buggas.'

  'If I spank you, will you kiss me?'

  'You shall have to wait and see.'

  This was no good at all. Walter Brown had hoped Mary Hatt would love him ferociously. He had hoped she would be grateful for his attention and that she might throw her arms around his neck and kiss him and tell him what a clever and handsome feller he really was. He would love her back, naturally. He thought this kind of thing would probably be perfectly all right.

  Mary Hatt had no plans of this type. Mary had pictured herself marrying a sturdy, wealthy man like the ones in her sister's magazines. Someone who would drive her to the racecourse in his long-nosed car. She liked the idea of servants and gardeners and how she would laugh at them. But Mary had miscalculated. She had not anticipated falling in love with Walter Brown, indeed she had reckoned him faintly ridiculous in some departments, namely the department of poop-poetry and fancy whatnottery. Words and more words, not as valuable as water or timber or land or the muck that did wonders for crops. You don't know nothing about blood and muck, Walter Brown. Fancy words did wonders for no one, not even the fancy-worder himself, as who would want a load of words? He ought to be falling in love with her and she ought to be laughing at him, not the other way round. How had it become the other ways about? It was too late now. Bugga the back of it. He thought a lot of himself too these days. His talk had got bigger and bigger until it hardly could fit inside his mouth. Lately he reckoned he was too good for this place and lately she had begun wondering if he was right. She kept something of his in her pocket, folded up. She thought it was rubbish but she had been reading it more and more frequently.

  Here is a daisy chain for your hair,

  Here is gingerbread I won you at the fair.

  Apple blossom, cherry blossom, peach blossom, pear,

  Come beside the water, find her swimming there.

  Walter's fancy words; even she had become susceptible.

  Walter had thought to visit George Osbourne, who lived in an ivy-wrapped red-brick house by the smithy's old forge. He would show him five of his poems and hope he might receive a positive response. George had had his poem 'Lepidoptera' published in the church magazine, and another, 'The Cinnabar', published in the Bucks Gazette Poets Corner. He was the only published poet Walter had ever met. Walter considered him an interesting personality. George was a collector of butterflies and moths, but also of birds' eggs and occasional lizards. He was keen on ballroom dancing, though had to borrow partners, as his wife had been fatally hit by a tram in her twenties, and consequently there were no children.

  George retired early from his accountancy firm in High Wycombe due, it was said, to lung problems caused by the poison fumes he breathed when preparing the killing bottles for his entomology. Not to be put off, however, he continued signing for his cyanide at the chemist, and announced he would be grateful to be buried with his collections like an Egyptian. Nobody paid any attention to that.

  He had recently acquired an unusual specimen, he claimed. The death's-head hawkmoth was the largest moth in Britain, a rare find indeed, and so Walter had two good reasons to visit.

  On the inside George's house was neat and immaculately ordered, as though he had a pinafored woman tucked away in his collections too. On almost every wall hung the delicately framed corpses of winged insects. The butterflies in particular magnified the stillness in the house, their gaudy colours brightening the dull browns of the sitting room. The clock on the mantelpiece counted down the minutes with an ostentatious ticking, as if it were logging this living death for some important purpose. As if, Walter fancied, at some preordained moment the hour would chime and all the butterflies would simultaneously reanimate and burst from their glass cases to swarm in a blaze of colour. How he wished they would. How pitiful they looked, he decided, in their categorised rows; how unremarkable in such vast numbers.

  'Cake, Walter?' George was an attentive host. No less than three types of sliced cake fanned in a pleasing spiral across the plate and the tea was strong and very hot. Walter found he could relax and let his thoughts drift. George never minded a pause or a dismal observation. If you preferred to be gloomy or distant, that was all right with him. He would continue to rush for your refill, scoop up your crumbs, and chuckle at your frailest swing at humour. He would proceed as though you were a credit to the afternoon, as though he were indeed fortunate to have you in his second armchair.

  The moth was very large indeed, Walter noted, almost a shrew. It made him squeamish to look at it, pinned through the thorax, splayed and stretched. He thought, startlingly, of the Messiah in his agony. He stared at its furred face, the dusty wings, and found he could not meet George's eye for a moment.

  He was almost sure, George was explaining, that it was a death's-head, but he was going to write to the Society to be certain. It required authenticating, he explained. Words bubbled out of his mouth in a froth of excitement. 'Walter,' he said, 'a young man like you should have a pastime. A hobby is an excellent way to organise your mind. Pick the right thing and you won't know yourself. You're only half a man without a passion, son.'

  Walter thought of his father on his knees to his root vegetables, and of Sankey bowed before God. He pictured George piercing the hearts of lepidoptera with a pin, and staking down their wings. He smiled and, producing
the poems from his jacket, said, 'I have brought these for you to see, George.'

  George sat with the poems for some time. He read each one twice, sniffing irritably when he got to the end. Finally he handed them back to Walter without meeting his eye, and Walter's heart sank. George put his hand to his jaw and stared towards the window. Walter waited. He began to think bringing the poems had been a mistake.

  'They're good,' said George, quietly.

  'Oh?' replied Walter, unable to hide the bounce of excitement in his voice.

  'Yes,' continued George. 'But they are unlikely to be published.'

  'Oh.'

  George turned towards Walter. He was smiling warmly now. 'They are, how shall I put it? They are good, Walter, you have talent, certainly. But.' George wrung his hands as though he must now express some complicated truth in such a way that a simple soul like Walter would understand. 'Talent is not enough, Walt.'

  'It's not?'

  'No, Walt. Talent is a beginning. You have purchased your first killing bottles and rudiments and now you must discover whether you can capture any decent specimens and, moreover, display them to Society standard. They possess pep, I accept. Joie de vivre let us call it. Also an attractive melancholy. Some pleasant rhymes. But they lack originality, technique, expertise. They are, in a word, amateur, Walt. There is work to be done.' George beamed. He had warmed himself up with this advice. He had quelled his fears, allayed his suspicions that his young friend possessed a superior gift. He had destroyed Walter's hopes. He felt buoyant, peckish.

  'Thank you, George. I'm obliged.'

  George swung an arm around Walter's shoulder and fixed him with a friendly grimace. 'Any time, Walt, any time.'

  George's moth collection was kept in another room. Moths are nocturnal, he confided, his commiserating arm still curled up on Walt's shoulder.

  The room containing the collection was north-facing, cool and grey and filled by a large oval dining table, covered partially by a cloth at one end, and laid with two places. For lunch there was beetroot and cress and steak-and-kidney pudding. George swooped down with his fork. Another clock ticked faintly, sporadically, as if it wasn't much bothered about the o'clock. George began to talk animatedly with his mouth full: 'A moth, you see, must be trapped at night with treacle. A tree trunk will do the job; daub your chosen tree, then use a torch to choose from the dozens that are stuck all over the bark. Many of the more common varieties you will already have in your collection, so it pays off to take your time, to inspect thoroughly; likewise you can miss a real treat if you're not careful.' Swoop.