Cryers Hill Read online

  Her name shall follow, like a rhyme.

  He wrote her name, Isabel Hatt, in small slanting letters on the envelope and imagined her opening it. He spoke his own words back to himself as he thought of her reading them. He wondered whether perhaps he ought to have written her something jollier, lighter, something amusing. It was too late. He reassured himself with the thought, borrowed from somewhere, that girls like lovelorn language and the men who speak it; and, given a choice, they would rather take a man who knew how to speak it than a man who could not.

  He was wrong. Her words to him were not unkind, not complicated either. She said, 'I'm going with another boy, Walter.'

  And that was that.

  By the end of the week Walter discovered his feelings had changed somewhat. When he saw Isabel at the farm he was civil and she smiled sympathetically back.

  'Well, well, Walter, I know you want to kiss me.' So said Mary Hatt. 'You don't love me like you should, but you will,' she said, her face side on, suspicious and satisfied both. 'I know you,' she added. 'Daft boy.' And she was right, about everything.

  Twenty-eight

  MR DENNER EMPTIED a bag of blood-stringed eyeballs on to his desk. 'Dissection,' he announced. He spoke it out in pieces as if he'd cut up the word too. To Sean it sounded like a threat. Die sex Sean.

  You had to go and pick out an eyeball and cut it up and that was it: dissection. Before you broke up for the holidays you had to cut something up, it was part of your The eyeballs had once belonged to cows. Sean looked at them spilled on the desk, staring out in all directions. He wondered if they were the cows from Grange Farm. Whether these eyeballs had looked across the Hughenden Valley or the uplands by the Four Ashes road. He wondered whether these eyeballs had watched him as he'd rushed past on his way to Gomms Wood or the tip at Widmer End. Were these the cows he'd V-signed? The ones who had watched him moonwalk in the mud? You had to team up, a younger one with an older one. He shuffled miserably forward in the queue for an eye, sickened at the thought of the task ahead. Some of the class were shrieky with excitement. Even Mr Denner was springy on his toes. Eye after eye was claimed and carried away. 'Urgghhh!' cried the girls. Mr Denner handed out the little scalpels, one per table, and began his mantra. 'Quiet. Quiet. Don't be silly. When I say so. Put it down. Are you deaf? When I say so. When. I say so. Michael Millard. I won't tell you again. Quiet Quiet. Quiet Quiet.' Mr Denner sounded like one of the wading birds at the pond.

  The eyeball was sticky. It trailed a pink and red thread. Sean wondered where all the other bits of the cow had gone. Into the picture boxes probably. The picture boxes contained granules that could turn themselves into dinners fit for a king. You could see the picture food on the box, glistening under candlelight: Beef Romana, it would say, or Chow Mein. When you shook the box it sounded like gravel. 'Fancy foreign,' his dad called it; 'Accelerated freeze-dried,' his mother corrected him, as if you could buckle up inside it and take off. This was astronaut food for earthlings; cubes and powder that could turn themselves into Scotch Broth or Spanish Paella.

  Perhaps bits of the cows were spread for miles. It would take months to gather up all the pieces, reunite them, and anyway who would want to? Sean realised he did. He wanted to rebuild at least one cow. The eye gazed forlornly up at him. Where are all the cow's thoughts? Its memories? It was dreadful, the way the eye stared. He rolled it over so it stared instead at Mr Denner, the eyeball-gatherer, the pond-wader, whose fault all this was. Quiet Quiet Quiet.

  There is a man behind the cricket pavilion. A cricketer? Sean watches him. He is alone, and as far as Sean understands it, cricketers usually operate in teams. The man is very still. He has disobeyed the sign that says 'Keep Off the Grass'. An interesting situation, Sean realises. People who disobey signs are exotic and rare and don't live in Cryers Hill. It is hard to imagine what, if anything, has caught his attention. He stands as though he sees nothing at all, like the brown-suited mannequins in the windows of Lord John in High Wycombe, frozen in their fight-or-flight poses. And another thing: the man is not wearing white; it is therefore unlikely he is here for cricketing reasons. His trousers disappear into his boots and his hat is pulled down over his eyes. He is the same colours as the hedges and the road. The man moves his hand; or maybe, Sean realises, he is just imagining that it moves. The man remains so impossibly still, your mind begins to play tricks. Best thing is to look away and blink and start again. Sean does this. The man is the same.

  Sean thinks this could maybe go on for years. He shouts, 'Wur!' He can't believe he has done this. He dives for cover. He tries to mask himself behind the fence, then he scrabbles behind the cow parsley. What did you do that for? He doesn't know, he can't tell himself. 'Wur,' he says again, to himself. He still can't understand it. He feels afraid. What if the man heard him? Maybe the man didn't hear him. What if the man is coming for him? What if he gets into trouble? Whatif whatif whatif. He is going to have to look, to see if the man heard him. To see if he is still there.

  Sean forces himself up so he can just see over the top of the cow parsley. The man is gone. There is just the hedge, the sky, the Keep Off the Grass sign and the cricket pavilion gawping at him through its childishly square windows. Rudyell, where's the man gone? Sean gets up and moves out from behind the parsley. Maybe the man will reappear if he stands where he was before. He feels cheated now. This is a good day going wrong. Small things can pull a day out of shape.

  There is a mob of crows in the great oak, like miniature vampires, flapping about, darkening the afternoon. Sean wishes he could throw a stone, but they are too high. He throws a stone anyway, and it hits the Keep Off the Grass sign. Sean walks to the path, across the grass, beneath the giant tree, under the birds cackling. He decides that when he is grown up he will shoot crows, like farmers. Did farmers shoot crows? He didn't know any farmers to ask. He would shoot them anyway. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. What was that? A rhyme? What was it doing in his head? Who would want to eat a blackbird?

  Sean lies in bed and thinks about the man. Who can he be? He is not from the estate. He is a local. Local yokels his dad calls them. Anyone who is not an estate resident is a local yokel. They are easily upset, according to Gordon. He says one night they'll come round with their pitchforks and dogs to burn down the estate and hound the residents out of the village. Sean wonders if they will have to fight them. He realises they have no weaponry other than Lothian's bow and his mother's eyelids. 'Have no fear of southern pansies,' Gor advises. It occurs to Sean that if angry yokels did come round with pitchforks and flaming torches Gor might enjoy it.

  The man is a local yokel then, probably. He likely had yokel stuff on his mind, yokel stuff to do. There was a boy at school, Samuel. His dad was a farmer and his mother a farmer's wife, so they were a bit locally yokelly. The farm had gone wrong and they had no money for anything, which was why Samuel's trousers stopped above his ankles. One of their teachers, young Mr Turner, said soon there would be no farms left at all. He said it was an absolute disgrace. He said it quietly and then he turned red in the face. Mr Turner was always embarrassing himself with remarks. 'Commuter housing,' he said scornfully, reddening deeper, the colour of meat. He tried to stop himself making more remarks. He put his hand against his mouth, he clamped his teeth together, sometimes he shut his eyes, trying to switch himself off. Nobody cared about his remarks, but everyone liked to watch him having one of his red-heads. The subject didn't vary: 'This government; this country; no going back; spinning in their graves, what do you lot care?' Until he took himself off, yanked himself through the door. His punishment is a self-imposed frogmarch around the playground and an eye-burning cigarette to smoke. The class watch from the window. Sometimes you could think there were several people living inside Mr Turner and he was embarrassed by them all. He turned so red you thought his head would burst. The slightest thing brought it on: speaking, smiling, eye contact, playing guitar. He liked to play guitar. He blushed high into his sandy hairline until he loo
ked like a haystack set ablaze.

  There were two Mr Turners at school, an older and a younger. Old Mr Turner was somebody else entirely. He never turned red even when he should. Old Mr Turner had springy white hair and a tanned potato face, so they called him Tate. He taught the older children. He bounced along with his hands in his pockets. Mr Turner's hands lived permanently in his trouser pockets. They ferreted busily about for hours and only came out in an emergency, like falling down the stairs. The children sniggered at him when he sat in the classroom, pockets bulging, and they laughed as he swayed across the playground, a spring of hair adrift in the wind. If a football crossed his path he'd, quite unexpectedly, go after it, though the hands would not budge. He could sea-horse along at surprising speed after a ball. It was said his hands were in his pockets far too often. It was said that when his hands were in his pockets they were up to no good.

  'Rome wasn't built in a day' This was Gor's considered answer to a question. The question was: When will the police catch the man? Talking was a game of riddles, Sean can see that now. He thinks he will go and look for the cricket-pavilion man. This way he will leave no stone unturned. He will take his breathing tube. He will wear his helmet for protection.

  Twenty-nine

  WALTER SUSPECTS SOMETHING peculiar must have happened during the Hughenden Fruit and Flower Show in aid of the church clothing club. Nothing had come on well enough at the allotment to enter, but he had got there early to compete in the flat races. He wore his father's canvas tennis shoes and indeed had won the second race in them. He had gone looking for Mary so that he might enjoy a boast. Mary was at the Comic Dog Show and had seen nothing of his heroic dash.

  'Daft. Anyone can run,' she pointed out. They stood together for a while watching a pair of terriers in bonnets and matinee jackets pushing a doll's pram containing a Jack Russell in a beret. Walter couldn't help feeling downcast. She did this. You could be William Wordsworth, you could write 'Daffodils', for instance, and she would say it was just blooms, a lot of old daffs. He joined the applause for the dogs. Mary was talking, explaining.

  ''S'arder if you're an animal. They don't know nothing about it, do they?'

  She wanted to see the Baby Show next. More bug-eyed creatures in bonnets and bibs.

  'They're just babies,' Walter reminded her waspishly.

  'Wally-Walt, they're not just babies, they're the me-s and you-s in this valley for tomorrow and after.'

  This was another deeply irritating thing about Mary Hatt. She could trump you with an observation. She could make a remark she was in no position to make. She would make them when you least expected. Loving Mary Hatt was complicated and difficult; not loving Mary Hatt was complicated and difficult.

  The babies all looked the same to Walter but Mary was transfixed. She laughed and pointed and cooed, and when she got close enough she squeezed their pudgy hands and wobbled her head until they laughed.

  'Look, Walt! Oh, look at this bonny boy! Ha ha.'

  Walter took her hand. Mary put her head on his shoulder.

  'Married within the year!' Mrs Bates said, pointing at them, fanning herself, raising her voice. 'If these two aren't married within the year I shall want to know why!' Embarrassed, Walter dropped Mary's hand and everyone heckled and cheered.

  Aside from all the fruit and flowers on display, there were refreshments for sale. Walter and Mary sat beneath the trees to drink ginger beer and eat fruit bread. Before long they were joined by Sankey, carrying a cherry cake in a cloth as though it were the King's own crown.

  'I was looking for you,' he said.

  'Well, now you have found us,' replied Walter. 'Let's have a look at that cake then.'

  'Mrs Ford baked it. She charged me five bob.'

  'She saw you coming, Sank.'

  'Is that so? You won't be laughing once you've tried it.'

  Walter realised he must have fallen asleep when he awoke to discover himself alone in the cool shadow of the giant tree. Mary and Sankey were gone; the cherry-cake cloth was folded neatly on the flattened grass where they had sat.

  Walter took himself off to view the fruit and flowers. He noted some good specimens and admired the winners in the various categories, particularly the dahlias, sweet peas and roses, and the displays of beautiful Black Heart cherries, Laxton's gages and yellow speckled Williams' pears.

  During the sack race Walter skirted the boundary of the field. There were some fine oak trees there and an old ditch that had become a stream full of tadpoles and minnows. There appeared no sign of either Mary or Sankey. Where had they got to?

  During the bowling for a pig, which Mary always enjoyed, Walter crossed to the other boundary. The hedges were clogged with nests and lush with creeping roses and wild honeysuckle. He lit his pipe. The shouts and cheers from the crowd drifted over. Mary Mary, quite contrary. Sometimes he thought p'raps he ought to simply marry Sylvia, the butcher's daughter, and have done with it. Perhaps then things would be straightforward instead of tangled. But then he thought of her father's shop, with its hooks and heads and hooves and how he really would be trapped then, hooked and hung like a bacon pig for the rest of his life. The clatter of distant applause roused him. There was the ladies' three-legged and ladies' skittles coming up and he knew Mary would not want to miss them. He walked back towards the crowd.

  'Where are your raspberries this year then?' Harry Dugden was a committed competition grower and Walter always did his best to avoid conversation with him, as it was only another type of competition in itself.

  'Nothing come up this year, Harry.'

  'Nothing? Bit of care and attention. Raspberry is kinder nor the damson is. Now, my harvest better than last. Seen my roseberries? Bit o' muck helps. You want to point on next year. I seen your friend there staring like scissors.'

  'Where? Where did you see her?'

  'Ah. I'll lay a bob on ye and she. No harvest? Ha!'

  Walter turned to walk away.

  'In the birch coppice. I saw her.'

  Walter considered returning to the hedge where he'd left his bicycle. Might as well clear off home. Then again.

  The copse of birch and hazel lay to the east of the field. Walter couldn't imagine why Mary would be there, though he knew somehow that she was. A slight incline tipped him towards the woodland, hurrying him at a quicker pace than he wanted to go, suggestive of urgency when he wished to display nonchalance. As he entered the copse, a mistle thrush burst out, rattling its alarm call over his head. Walter stood for a moment within the trees, listening to the accordion tune that had started in the field behind him until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He stepped only a couple of paces and there she was on the ground, grinning up at him.

  'Wally Wally Wallflower,' she said through her jumble of teeth.

  'What are you doing there?' he asked stupidly.

  'Looking for buried gold.'

  A twig broke behind her. There was somebody else there, hidden behind the brush and fern. Walter yearned to be somewhere, anywhere else. He turned, dismayed, acutely embarrassed, and hurried away. He bumped himself and tore some ivy as he went.

  'Walt! Walt! Walt!'

  Walter ran up the incline towards the noise and music. He deserved this, thoroughly. He wondered why he felt so distressed, so queasy. She was following him, making everything worse, calling his name. Now the whole village would know. Walter made for the small tent where Fred and Len Page were selling their home-brewed beer to any man old enough to drink. Walter bought a small one and downed it. Not bad, foam like soapsuds across the top, but otherwise not bad. He bought another and lit his pipe, which was the only way to stand the intensity of the smoke inside the tent. Mary could not follow him here; it was gentlemen only. Mary could go to hell.

  'Well, well, Walter Brown. Anything to tell of Wycombe town?' John Roach had a slow, careful speaking style that Walter found reassuring. Roach had been head carter in his heyday; he sat in pubs and tents and fields and told his leisurely stories through a fleece of smoke.


  As they spoke, a team for tug of war was identified. And two teams it was that finally emerged like the Devil's own smithies wrapped in smoke, red-eyed and shirtless. Walter reckoned, with the powers invested in him by the home brew, that he would know at a glance who had snapped the twig in the birch coppice. He caught sight of Mary with her dress hitched up around her knees. She was in a lineup of local girls all flashing their legs for the Ladies' Ankle Show. She was turning this way and that, posing, laughing like a drain. Just now Walter felt he could pull a ropeful of men from here to Derbyshire. They spat on their palms and checked to see the ladies were watching. Stanley Gunn positioned the middle of the rope on its mark and counted them in: one, two, three, heave!'

  Far away down the rope Walter saw the thin, curved comma of Sankey's body. He watched his face strain as he pulled his pigeon weight for the opposing team – heave, heave – and he realised (though he stood under a boiled sun, full of beer suds, and could not know anything for certain) that there was a devil's chance Charles Sankey was responsible for the broken twig and everything that followed. As their ale-soaked team pulled Sankey's mob over the line, Walter found himself wondering whether he might break his friend's nose and defame his God and perhaps never speak with him again.

  Hilda Brown scrubbed, dusted, sluiced, beat and polished seven days a week. This was what she did. She suspected it was all right to do the silver on a Sunday in spite of what it said in Exodus 20: verses 1-17. She did all these things just the same as her mother had done, aided here and there by an innovation, like washing detergent or a carpet sweeper. Laundry on a Monday, baking on a Thursday. She did the windows in all weathers, particularly at the front. A clean house was a clean soul, something to be proud of. Locally Hilda was admired for her inability to stop cleaning. It was her badge of honour. In spite of this, it gave her little or no satisfaction. The baking, perhaps she enjoyed that, and the redisplayed silver when it was all done and ready to blind anyone who entered, none of the rest. 'This house will kill me,' she liked to warn. 'Sooner or later,' was her murmured calculation, while casting a critical eye over the china and glass, as though she didn't want the house to hear. 'It will run me into the ground. You will come home one day to find me lying here dead.'