Cryers Hill Read online

  The clock pinged the hour, though Walter saw it was already a quarter past by his watch. Ping ping ping. On it went like a child, insistent, inaccurate, ping ping, on and girlishly on. Walter thought of Mary.

  Piri-iri-ig-dum, do-man-wee,

  My love is a sailor on the sea.

  Piri-iri-ig-dum, do-man-wee,

  If he do not return, I'll marry thee.

  'A moth,' George said conspiratorially, 'is distinguished from a butterfly by the absence of a knob on the end of the antennae.'

  As though silenced by George's pronouncement, the clock stopped pinging.

  'Fortunately,' he went on, 'there are somewhere in the region of one hundred thousand species, so there is plenty enough to keep you occupied for a lifetime.'

  After lunch there were a few minutes remaining in which to look at the eggs. George's egg collection stretched back to his boyhood. They lay cold as stones in a glass display case. They too possessed a strange defiled stillness that left Walter feeling gloomy. As he looked at them, speckled, dappled, in creams and browns and blues – colours that remained as pretty as they had been before George got his hands on them – Walter wondered whether in fact the gulf between him and his friend was as great as he imagined.

  Sensing Walter's attention wandering, George blew his nose abruptly. Did he think he might fancy eggs? As he folded away his handkerchief, he raised a finger. As with moths, there were rules with egg collecting. George explained them: 'Do not, Walter, take more than one egg from a nest. And do not take more than two eggs from one species – excepting, of course, for vermin. Moreover, an egg must be correctly blown – that is, have its contents removed.' George offered to lend Walter his own blow-pipes if he ever fancied a go at eggs in the future. Did he think he might fancy having a go in the future? Walter thought, yes, he probably, almost certainly, assuredly would have a go, yes. In the future.

  George offered Walter his consoling arm again as he bid him goodbye at the door. 'Good luck with any future attempts!' was his parting commiseration. Walter had replaced the poems in the inside pocket of his jacket. George reached out and tapped them with his finger, three prods on Walter's heart.

  Though he took the long way, Walter walked home quickly. He disliked himself thoroughly; he couldn't say why. It occurred to him he ought to be lying under glass with the eggs, inert, cold, his innards all sucked out. Was he ashamed? Probably. How could he have imagined he was a poet? Dead insects were simpler, that was evident, cheerier too, no doubt. Right balls-up. The truth of it, he suspected, was that there was no difference between George and himself, none. George with his moths and eggs, and he with his words, and the selfsame business of pinning them down for others to admire; it was all a vanity. Each man thought himself a god. Mary was right. It was a squirt of poop, all in all.

  Twenty-four

  THE SOUND STARTS as his head goes under. The lonely sound of the satellite ping bounces over the crackling static. Once he is fully submerged it fills his head, loud and clear. Now, even if they shout and bang on the door he will not hear them.

  Delta zero mac. This is a good one. Delta one. The Eagle has landed.

  Sean is rationed to one bath a week due to his habit of filling the bath to the very top, thereby emptying the hot-water tank, so he is resolved to make the most of it. He turns his head below the surface to adjust his soap-on-a-rope breathing apparatus. His helmet, recognisable to other members of the family as his mother's transparent shower cap, billows as it fills up. Ping. Bubbles blow from Sean's mouth. I have opened the hatch. His hair floats inside his helmet. He submerges his blue breathing tube. Ping. Receiving you. I am exiting lunar module, Columbia.

  As he rotates, Sean uncoils the dressing-gown belt around his waist that attaches him to the lunar module, to avoid becoming entangled. The last bubbles escape from his mouth. He stares up. He has no air left. He places the blue tube in his mouth and breathes. The other end of it swings over the bath mat. He can breathe. Ping.

  He can open and close his eyes, he can smile, he can breathe, he can think and he can dream. Thunderbirds are go, you spaz. Perfect happiness. He can hang about like a gas, bothering no one, feeling nothing. If he had freeze-dried food he'd never have to leave the bathroom.

  Delta Houston. This is an Al. Sean is turning again. Slow slow. He is keen to watch the progress of a plastic soap dish as it floats by; here comes a toothbrush. He smiles, sending tiny bubbles from the tube. He looks up through the water at the shower head high up on the wall and raises his thumb to it. His breathing is loud in his ears. He is unaware of the slops of water escaping over the top of the bath, waterfalling on to the carpet.

  That's one small step for man. Ping. He rolls with his knees tucked up. One giant. Ping. Leap for mankind. Delta one, we copy you.

  Sean is unaware that a controller has begun his ascent, that even now he is approaching the lunar module and that Sean will be required to respond immediately to new commands from the control room. He is oblivious and weightless and orbiting. Unaware that ground control has issued a final warning. Unaware that he is about to suffer the consequences. Ping. He is aware at last. He suspects there may be a malfunction. There is an unidentified object visible through the porthole. He jerks up, sending more water into the atmosphere. I copy you, Control. I copy you. Er, Houston, I think we may have a problem.

  'Do you want a leathering?'

  'No.'

  'Do you want a leathering?'

  'No.'

  'You're asking for a leathering, young man. Bloody well asking for it! You are a cretin. What are you?'

  'A cretin.'

  You are a stupid, stupid little boy. What are you?'

  'Stupid.'

  'Do you think I want to redecorate this house?'

  Careful. A trick question.

  'Well?'

  'Um.'

  'You dumb bloody kids. What if no one was here? What if you flooded the whole ruddy house?'

  Whatif, whatif, whatif. The controller leaves quickly, too quickly. You get the bends at that pace. You cannot lose your temper in space, the doors will not slam. You cannot fling open the hatch and demand, Whatif! Space will give no answer. Space does not care about your whatifs. In space there is only So what?

  Sean has a great long stick. He is hitting the estate with it: the bricks, the houses, the almost-paths, the tyres of the lorries. It makes a loud cracking noise that makes you want to do it again. 'Oi! Little sod you!' A red builder with a roly-poly tummy and a square mouth, brick-shaped. He is burned all over, even his ears and his eyelids. He is coming for him. Sean thwacks his lorry with the stick one more time, gives him the V-sign and runs.

  'I'll break your bloody little arms,' shouts Brick Man. Sticks and stones, sticks and stones, sticks and stones will break my bones.

  Sean runs down the echo tunnel, flushing out a trio of wiry dogs, and out on to Shepherds Lane, where the residents have lush little lawns with pansy borders and nets up at the windows. Sean wonders why it is bones are white. Why not a dark colour? Like navy.

  The houses look cheery here, stuffed with families and furniture and coyly veiled at the windows to discourage nosy parkers like Sean from peering in on their secret lives. He peers anyway. There is a solitary car parked in the street, a blue Ford Consul. The tarmac road curves proudly around it. Sean stops to look. He presses his face against the window, burning his nose, to see the shiny seats and wide Saturn ring of the steering wheel. He breathes in the rainwater smell of the glass and lets his fingers burn on the hot metal door. To drive your own car was a step up in the world, to park it in your own garage was another step. A house was a step. These were the steps you made until you hit your head on the ceiling of life, which meant you'd reached the top. The people who lived in Mary's Mead, outside Wycombe, had reached the top. They had double garages, big gardens and (it was rumoured) swimming pools, so they had definitely reached the top.

  Top people. Rich people. Fatheads, Gor called them. You would have thought they
should be called flatheads, but it wasn't prudent to challenge Gor.

  At Fray Bentos there were men above Sean's dad. At work you were either over or under somebody. Gor worked under these superior Fray Bentos men. Sean pictured a kind of tower into which the men were stuffed, under, over, under, over, each in his own cubbyhole, each both above and below another. Everybody wanted to go up, even Gor, everybody wanted to become a fathead. The Fray Bentos fatheads received special treats like cars or cash, the same as cereal-box competition winners. Gor wanted treats too: cars, cash, holidays, the special fathead parking spot in the company car park, not to mention the executive fathead Christmas lunch. Not everyone attended the executive Christmas lunch; that was the idea, you had to be an executive. Executive perks. These were the words that tortured Gor. He spoke them nervously as if they might conjure something holy, or unholy. He spoke them wistfully too; they made his eyes widen and his mouth tighten. Even when separated, the words held their command over Sean's dad. 'Perk' or 'executive', singly, could produce the same effect.

  Elvis, according to Ty, had thirty-two cars, mostly sedans and Corvettes. Sean had no idea how Ty knew that. Elvis had got to the top. He was, if you like, a fathead. He had gone through the ceiling of life and burst through the roof, but he still sang 'Heartbreak Hotel' as though nothing was going right at all.

  Sean runs across Foxes Field. You are an executive runner, he tells himself; perky. When Sean is running he pulls the grass and the wind and the sky with him. Top. Executive. Fathead. Perk. You had to get the rhythm. When he is running, he is not afraid.

  Ann is not dead. Sean is both relieved and disappointed. She says, 'Wotcha, Spaz,' as though everything is completely normal. Her knees are orange with brick dust and her hairband is dirty. Sean points these things out and she stares over his head. Women do this, his dad explained it. Not explained exactly, but he mentioned it. No one could explain it as a matter of fact, not even scientists. A woman's mind is a mysterious terrain, his dad said, not for mortal men to fathom. Even women themselves didn't understand their minds, so it was no good asking them. Sean wondered, if there was a woman scientist one day, would she understand her own mind? A rhetorical question as it turned out. 'Women and science don't mix,' his dad informed him.

  So Ann doesn't care about dust and dirt today. She cared last Tuesday when she asked Sean to bury her in builder's sand and then violently changed her mind. She may well care tomorrow because tomorrow is another place, disconnected from today. Women like to change their minds and then change them back. This was something Sean could sympathise with, he required no explanation for the mind-changing part. Being a woman, Sean thought, probably wasn't so bad. There was only one drawback as he saw it: women weren't allowed in space. This was a major drawback and he pitied them on account of it.

  Ann has finished staring over Sean's head and now she is walking determinedly away from him. She is heading for the brick mountain. It is infuriating, the way she just does things without discussing them first. He hurries after, watching his feet to see how quick they can go. Sometimes he watches his face in the hall mirror to see if he can catch it doing something. This is pointless, things don't happen while you look at them. Watch the ball is a good example. He reckons his face does all kinds of things behind his back. 'A watched pot never boils,' his dad said. His grandmother had said it before him. She was from Newport. Sean thinks that if someone had been watching in Gomms Wood that day, really looking hard, perhaps a child would not be dead. Things happen, he decides, when you take your eye off the ball.

  Ann is standing at the foot of the brick mountain. The mysterious wind lifts her hair and presses her dress against her bones.

  'You can look.' Sean hands her a thin blue letter. 'It's from mista waltr, see. I got them off Mrs Roys.'

  Ann stares at the swirly blue words. 'This is rubbish. Put it in the dustbin.'

  'It's not. I read it.'

  You can't read, you nasty little liar!'

  'She gave me a fizzy drink and a giant egg.'

  'Liar liar liar liar.'

  'She has got banana feet.'

  'Yur a spaz liar, Sean Matthews.'

  'It's true.'

  'I wasn't born yesterday, was I?'

  Sean pushes the letter into his pocket. Women are controlled by the cycles of the moon, son. There's nothing we can do about it.

  'Climb.'

  Sean looks up at the cliff face of brick, the faraway summit touching the blue.

  'P'sof.'

  'Climb, Sean.'

  'Climb yourself.'

  The mysterious wind whips a piece of hair across Ann's face. She doesn't pull it away. Sean can see the stain on her neck from the day before and the bruise on her arm that won't go.

  'Spaz spaz spaz. Horrible little liar spaz. Do as you're told.'

  'P'sof.'

  'I see.' And she is gone. Off on her rod legs. Good riddance. That's what she would have said. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Sean can't be bothered to say it. The wind is nice, it blows away the dust, the smell of cement. It blows away Ann. 'Goodbye.' She stops and turns to say it, her arms are folded. She has to shout. Her hair blows into her mouth. You won't see me again. Goodbye, Spaz. Good riddance to bad rubbish.' And she whirls round and takes off again.

  'Bye.' Sean doesn't mind if she hears it or not.

  There is a tune playing, not exactly a tune. It is the wind in the plumbing pipes, the same three notes really.

  The brick mountains are strong, he realises. The wind presses against them, but the mountain is too strong for the wind. You have to admire the bricks, the way they hold together, their strength. Sean looks up again. The sky is swaying at the top; its blueness makes the bricks redder and their redness makes the sky bluer. Sean begins to climb.

  Twenty-five

  PYUU-PYUU-PEEOO. The gold plover is always sad. Walter could remember a long trail of gold plover over Escourt Farm, crying like little girls. The grey plover looks on the bright side, pee-oo-wee, like a man calling his dog. You get to know them, buntings, skylarks, linnets. Four thousand house martins lifted out of a field beside The Harrow as Walter cycled home last week and as he tipped his head back to take in the sight his bicycle dawdled into the ditch. Today Walter can hear the chak-chak-chak of the red-backed shrike and somewhere about is a song thrush, throstle, they call him, letting off a gruellingly complicated song.

  The Sale of Work was to be held in the schoolroom and was due to commence at 2.30 p.m. Mrs Brown had set off walking as she could no longer cycle up the hills. Walter was therefore free of the scoldings he would have received for overfilling/underfilling her cycle tyres, not cleaning the frame and failing to mend her bell. It meant he would arrive early. He considered riding on and circling back and he considered riding on and never returning at all. Instead he parked up neatly within a row of cycles, before discovering a gaggle of circuit ministers flapping over the imminent arrival of Mrs Coningsby Disraeli, OBE.

  Charles Sankey was tolerated by the ministers so long as he worked harder than anyone else. He was arranging the trestle tables and chairs and helping prepare the stalls and fill the bran tub. Walter thought he had never seen him happier.

  'Lend us a hand with this, Walt, grab hold. When's Mary coming?'

  These village events always enjoyed a good turnout, though nobody had much money to spend these days. They would come from Holmer Green, Hazlemere, Wycombe, Naphill. Last year there was a man from Denmark.

  'Lay it down, Walt, good man. Fancy a smoke? Shall I have a lookout for Mary?'

  Mary came swaying up the hill in her best hat and print dress fastened at the front by her mother's peacock brooch. She clomped in her heels up Cryers Hill Road, under the great green bursts of beech and sycamore. She hurried as fast as she dare without running, calling out to those she recognised, chivvying her brothers traipsing behind her. Other girls arrived in groups or in twos and threes, arm in arm, weaving around the prams and carts and darting children. Most were accompanied by olde
r women, but Mary clomped alone, one hand on her hat, the other swinging her bag, as if she were still a gawky child. If she would only find a way of adapting herself, Walter thought. There were things Mary did, styles of behaviour, that charmed him in private and embarrassed him in public. If only she would imitate the other girls' behaviour now and then.

  Sankey stepped out to greet her.

  'Mary,' he breathed, as she swayed past him.

  'Wally Wallflower,' she said. 'Fancy seeing you then,' and she yanked his cap over his eyes.

  Mrs Coningsby Disraeli, OBE, is wearing a large hat consisting mainly of feathers. At her bosom is a ruff of lace out of which sprout two dark pink velvet roses, complete with leaves. There are pearls around her neck and more pearls swing cheerily from her ears when she speaks. She speaks for rather a long time, about the village and the valley, the people who live here, their fortitude, talents, skills, their resilience in the face of economic adversity, their cheerful outlook, their way of life, which she refers to as 'our way of life'. She waves her glove towards the stalls and mentions her astonishment at the depth and range of talent in such a small rural community, commending the ministers and members of the church charity committees and everyone who pulls together during times such as these. She says she is proud to be a member of such a community, hip hip hooray. She declares the Sale of Works open and receives a burst of applause.