Cryers Hill Read online

  Now all the boys were throwing gravel. Sean put his hands in his pockets and pretended not to notice. A mouse? It could have been a mouse. The gravel stung, so he walked away towards the church, pretending to look at it, examining its cement corners as though he'd never seen it before, craning his neck to get a better view of the bell and iron cross that he saw every day, same as he saw the sky and the moon and his own smeary hands. The boys threw more gravel. It rained down like freak weather, as though all of Sean's bad luck had turned into a thousand sharp teeth. Ow. Yes, it was a mouse and she ate all her babies, that was it. There were tears in his throat now, rudyell. Don't cry Spaz all right don't cry you spazzing squirt. He thought of Ann's smile to the boy, the way it slid, like something submerging. The stones were stinging through his clothes, bouncing off his skull. He watched them landing and rolling as if they were alive; it made him think of insects. Sean ran. Some gravel followed, like a killer swarm, and then stopped. Sean ran on. The sound of his plimsolls, ack, ack, ack, was like a machine, like a long-distance runner: he loved this sound.

  At the bottom of Campion Road Sean sees Rob Boyles sitting on the kerb with his chin on his knees. Beside him lies a long stick. Rob Boyles has trouble saying his name and other words. Sean reckoned 'Rob' was simple enough to say. 'Boyles', what could be difficult about that? Sean slows down.

  'RobBoylesRobBoylesRobBoyles.' Sean says it aloud with his chin high, so that the words fall down mockingly on Rob's head. Well, what did he expect?

  Sean waits but Rob does not look up. A breeze pulls the dust on the tarmac towards them. It gives off a fine spray as it moves, and then the breeze pushes it back again, like a tide. Sean looks at the stick. Rob lifts it and lays it across his knees. The heat presses them deeper into the tar.

  Sean is transfixed by the top of Rob's head. In his hair are dozens of red crusts where he has picked and scratched and bled. Some crusts have oozed into others, forming larger ones that look like volcanic lava. Across his scalp there are lumps, bumps and craters. Rob looks up. Sean puts his hands on his hips so that Rob will see a runner standing there, tall and strong, with no time for this sort of thing. Rob sees Sean's helmet of yellow hair blazing under a noonday sun.

  'I was wondering where that was.' Sean kicks the stick with his toe.

  It is a fine stick, dark and heavy and kinked at its middle, suggestive of a rifle.

  'Mine.' Rob says the word perfectly well, though he knows the stick no longer belongs to him. He speaks the word to the stick, without eye contact, so that Sean knows he can take it without a fight, and so he does, examining it carefully first and then raising it to his shoulder.

  'I've been looking for that stick.'

  Rob knows better than to call a liar a liar. I am a long-distance runner, thinks Sean. I am Danger Man. I've got a stick.

  'OK, Spaz? Cheerio then.' And he raps Rob smartly on the head with the gnarled end.

  Over the course of two hundred yards the day has improved immensely. Sean runs, ack, ack, ack, his stick on his shoulder and a plan in his head. This day is turning out all right. He has survived gravel and now he has a stick. Out there are murderers, streakers, water serpents and loons. He will hunt them down and return a hero. They will clap, cheer, everyone. They will pat his back, shake his hand. Girls will rest their heads upon his shoulder. The flash from the newspaper camera will dazzle his eyes, and Ann will kiss his lips.

  Sean lies on his back in the long grass. In his head he has saved the world from myriad threats and now he is tired. He has his plan, but he must rest first. The grass is so tall that Sean has disappeared. He listens to the hiss of breeze moving towards him and the scrape and click of insects. He can see nothing but pointed blade tips and the broad sky.

  He wonders when he will get to the bottom of Ann. You'll never get to the bottom of a female,' his dad told him. 'Women are bottomless pits.'

  Nevertheless there have been some improvements lately, this cannot be denied. As Andy Williams himself sings, 'Love is a Many Splendoured Thing.'

  There cannot be a man in the moon, Sean realises as he dozes off, because if there were the astronauts would have found him there. It was just a tale, like Father Christmas, a fib, like the liar alphabet.

  Things change while you sleep. When Sean wakes he discovers the sun has swung itself into the wood and is busy burning up the trees. The sky above him has grown burrs of wispy cloud and the high grass no longer burns but is dingy and cold. Sean has a feeling he has missed something important. He examines his hands for a nail to chew. He wonders if anyone has died while he's been asleep. It is possible.

  He hears a scream. He waits in case the scream is in his head. The scream comes again and this time it shushes the birds. Sean buries his head in the grass. Who would scream and why? There is only one answer and here he is alone, drowsy, with no nails left to bite. No more screams come. A single bird begins a tentative song, a burbling tune with excessive tremolo. Sean reckons there is a story about a child fallen asleep in a cornfield who gets chopped up by a combine harvester. He stands up.

  'Spaz!'

  It is her voice. She is by the elm trees in Foxes Field, her hair flying from running. Even from here he can see she is grinning. Bludyell. Sean lifts his stick rifle and aims. She is coming; her elbows float above the tall grass and her mouth is speaking. About him probably, about spazzery. Sean cannot hear the words. He shoots. Bang bang pop pop you're dead I'm not.

  Marry Ann,

  Oh marry Ann,

  Oh won't you Bang! Gotcha!

  marry me?

  Here she comes walking and talking. By the time she arrives she will have stopped all that. She will be watchful and will not blink. Ann would make an excellent dead girl. And she'll say nothing at all, except 'Spaz'. Reminding him, like that. Then she'll take over. She'll pocket his afternoon and all his thinking thoughts and it will become her afternoon, her grass, her sky, all hers. She will take his stick and he will fall in behind her and follow like a child, like a naked ape.

  He hates her. He should hit her with the stick and that would be that. If it were a gun, this stick, he would shoot her, yes he would. He would shoot her all over, like in that film, but mostly he would shoot her smile off, that would be first. He would shoot the smile right off her face, leave it lying in the grass. Shooting was nothing to laugh about.

  'Where'f you bin?'

  'That's for me to know.'

  Ann falls down in the grass, like he has already shot her. He checks in case there is blood. It is possible to do things without knowing you've done them, like when his mother clouts him over the head for something he did earlier, or his dad clouts him for something he did not do at all. Or sometimes his mother will arrive in a room and not know why she is there. Why am I here? she will say. And nobody will be able to tell her. Out she will go again to try and discover. Sometimes she never discovers why and it just goes down as another one of life's mysteries.

  Ann lies in the grass. Her mouth is slightly open and she is staring at the sky as though something significant is about to happen there. Sean reckons if aliens were about to land then Ann would know about it. They would inform her in advance. He follows her gaze. The cloud has formed in loops, like a giant net. Sean imagines that Ann will almost certainly become a spy when she grows up. Spies can spear you with poison umbrellas; there was one in the newspaper.

  Ann closes her eyes. Gor says the female skull is smaller than the male. This is due to the fact that the male brain is larger than the female brain. Sean lies down beside Ann. If he has the bigger brain then why is she so difficult to understand? He knows she knows it all. The sun bakes them into the ground like fossils. Sean closes his eyes and feels the earth whip beneath them. Maybe they will be discovered here in a thousand years, their bones grown into the hill, like those fish bones in rocks. Maybe they will go in a museum and people will say, Oh look, a girl and a spaz.

  'Would you rather burn to death or drown?'

  Sean tries to think. 'Dro
wn.'

  'Me too.'

  There is a quiet then. Sean wonders with dread if God is writing it down.

  'Would you rather be dead or crippled?'

  'Dunno. Crippled.'

  He speaks quickly and quietly in the hope that an Almighty God, even one with sonic hearing, won't catch it. This is just talking anyway, chatting for heaven's sake. Surely He doesn't expect people to mean every little idle thing they say.

  'Anyway, you can kiss me if you want, I don't mind.'

  Sean waits. This is the kind of thing his brain does in spare moments. Voices that sound real that are only in his head, thoughts that run amok and turn themselves into remarks, laughter, screams.

  'Well, hurry up.'

  There is still no hard evidence that Ann is actually speaking.

  'Where then?' Clever. A way of testing.

  'What on the lips stupid bludyell Sean, you're so spaz.'

  It is really happening. She actually spoke the kiss words. Maybe there will be an alien invasion after all. It is the only thing weirder than this. Here is a thing: The male and the female Homo sapiens are behaviourally unique on earth. Gor had pronounced it. It had tumbled out of his mouth like one of the estate bricks and lay on the floor for everyone to step over. Except for Gor, they couldn't care less about such things in their house. Gor liked to potter about in evolutionary science the same way other men liked to potter about in sheds, or tinker with cars. Gor pottered and tinkered with his apemen and his bones in Africa and his pigeons on aerials. It pops into Sean's head now, the Homo sapiens thing. Time to be uniquely Homo sapiens, hurry up. On the lips, stupid.

  He feels air pressing on his eyelids, on the top of his skull, squeezing his heart. A loop of it has found its way inside his stomach and is pulling up a drink he's forgotten he's had. It is hard to know which way is up and which is down.

  'Go on then.'

  'I am.'

  'Well, hurry up.'

  'I am.'

  It is possible this will be his one and only chance. He has to keep his eye on the ball, that's all. A small step, a giant leap, he can do it. He has begun his descent. There were no second chances over the Sea of Tranquillity, they just had to put it down, Neil and Buzz, in front of the whole world. There is that bird again, the one who sounds as if it is warbling through water. The trees and the grass turn to water too, rippling and rushing, filling his ears with trick sounds. The sun is burning the back of his head as his lips touch hers; he thinks maybe there will be a scorch there later, or a word.

  She closes her eyes just before, he sees them close, twin hatches, as his kiss arrives on her mouth. Not a kiss, a landing. Once he is there he gives up. He waits on her lips as if someone has pulled the wind-up key out of his back. There is no more information, there are no clues about where to go from here. The warbly bird sings on. He can feel Ann's teeth and the lap of her tongue. Her tongue is cooler than his; it hurries around his own limpid one, making him think of sock puppets. A sock puppet? I'll give you a bloody sock puppet in a minute. He is aware that his body is doing things by itself now while his large brain looks on in astonishment. He feels his hips hard against hers and heat inside his bones. He can feel her sigh; it raises him up at least an inch and he thinks, oh God, now she will roll her eyes, yes of course, and laugh, and he will be the biggest spaz who ever fell on a girl's lips. But instead she breathes out a long gasp. And when she opens her eyes she says, 'Sean, do you love me?'

  January 1943, M.E.F.

  My dearest Mary,

  I hope this finds you well and not too chilly there at home. Those land girls must be wishing they were tucked up inside a munitions factory by now! I was relieved to hear that John is thoroughly improved. The increased herd, being useful, as you say, has put him right.

  I am dug well in, as there is a smell of death on the air. Jerry is really trying to trouble us and bombs are dropping all over the place. The Colonel came and there has been action all day. The big push has started. We had a church service on the sand today, which was good. Then we found some Jerry food which we ate; it was delicious. There is a lot of night-strafing. A little kiddie has just been buried nearby (bomb blast), such a little mound.

  A huge pile of post has come in! Will I be lucky?

  Later:

  Exceptionally lucky as it turns out, as I have three letters. Best of all one from you, also one from Mother, and one from Uncle Gerald. Well, I am very proud to think of you training hard at Valley Road Garage. A mechanic! Are they lucky to have you? I should say so! It sounds as though you are learning fast, Mary. Soon you will be a first-class mechanic – what a turn-up for the books. True to say this war is doing strange things to the world.

  The winter cauliflowers sound all well and good, a credit to you, and not easy to grow. You say the beetroots are small but healthy. Did you give them any salt? Manure will enrich the soil, but you will have to be careful in applying it as it burns so.

  A Shakespearean storm earlier: sand everywhere, thunder, wind, lightning. It gives you the pip. One of ours was killed in a booby trap this afternoon. He thought he'd found a battery and picked it up – it exploded, leaving him in pieces. We're told repeatedly not to pick up things of course. Not much of a New Year for him. Everywhere smells of shot, shell and corpse – and everywhere lie the discarded implements of battle. Here and there are crosses (Australian, English, German graves) all entangled – apart in life, together in death.

  Sorry to be so down and dreary, Mary. My head appears to be in a brain muddle for some reason and I don't want to put you off with my ramblings. I've been in the dumps but everything is OK now.

  I can't remember whether I mentioned I found a jar containing a set of false teeth and a scorpion? Also, did I tell you I saw In the Navy with Abbott and Costello, in Alexandria? Anyhow, I killed a rat beside my bed last night.

  I have no more light to write by.

  Ana mamnoon lak for being you. I think of you all the time.

  Yours, Walter xx

  P.S. Did you receive my photo I sent you? Perhaps you are too polite to comment on it. Oh dear! Well, the dust and heat do make us all appear jaded.

  Thirty-three

  HARRY STYLES OWNS the brick foundry. He has no sons, though he does have a cine camera. There is a sign up outside the Grove Road Stores. It says:

  To the Village Residents: You are Invited to Gather at this Spot at 9 o'clock on Saturday the 14th of June for the Purpose of a Village Photograph. Attendance is Optional. Filming by Harry Styles and his Cine Camera.

  Harry Styles is a cine-photography enthusiast. He taught himself to use the camera and is now quite adept. In the beginning he filmed only the works at the foundry, reel after reel of black-and-white furnace heat, leaping sparks and faces gathered around a cigarette. Then he filmed each of his daughters as they came along, his dogs, and his hunting horse. Now he films things that don't belong to him, ordinary village things: children, arguments, bicycles and the sawing down of the diseased tree at Scratch Corner. Nobody has escaped the sleek eye of his mysteriously glassy contraption. He will film man, beast, machine and weather without a thought for who will want to watch this stuff.

  There are those who do not wish to be filmed and some who reckon they will remonstrate with Mr Styles when he points his camera at them and their private business. Nobody does, however. Once they see Mr Styles with the thing to his eye and realise it is busy noting the best and worst of their attributes, manners and all, they soon come round. Most people smile, or pretend to. And there is a good deal of last-minute spit-licking and smoothing down. Everyone knows that appearance tells a story, and demeanour too. The camera will judge in an instant; it will identify the decent from the not-quite-so-decent and those from the God-awfully indecent. All in all the appearance of the cine camera is apt to produce the best in the residents of Cryers Hill, even as they are proclaiming not the slightest interest in the thing.

  Harry Styles manages to carry his camera, his tripod and his lunch on his
bicycle. He films the farrier in his dark, smoky forge. He films the plough horses leaning into the hills as they work. All ploughmen talk to their horses, some sing. A good horseman never has a problem with his team, he knows them better than his own family. A straight furrow is something to be proud of, true enough; nobody wants to look back and see a wavering furrow. A straight furrow is that man's mark on the land; it may as well have been his own name there for all to see.

  Harry Styles films these plough teams as they criss-cross the hills. He thinks it a pity he has no way of recording sound, because he considers that one day – what with tractors taking over – the ploughmen's songs might get forgotten along with the hiss of wheat as it is cut, the jangle of harness and the chink of stones on the harrow. Harry is tolerated in the fields, ignored more accurately. But ignored is what a film-maker hopes to be, and Harry can often be seen walking backwards or sideways on the tracks and lanes while the giant horses wade towards him. He films in any weather. The snow-draped landscape looks very well, he thinks, on his black-and-white film, and he gets himself out to film winter feeding, as well as children toboganning on hemp sacks or sliding on frozen cowponds. He films at dawn as the carters lead their steamy-breathed horses into the mists that cling to the churches and farms. He films geese running down Windmill Lane, foraging white sows getting dirty in a winter field and the cowman tapping the dairy herds in for milking. Perhaps, though, his personal favourites are the films he takes of people. He has spools of farm labourers squinting through cigarette smoke towards the camera, talking-talking, never taking their eyes off the lens – laughing suddenly at a gibe; then the farrier in his apron, stock-still, jaw locked, arms hanging motionless at his sides, as if the slightest movement will spoil the film. There is Mrs Hurst taking her apron off for the camera while Dukes, the butcher, hurriedly puts his on. Then the Walker girls skipping with a long rope, Fred and Ernest Evans riding the same bicycle, Albert Hodge with the milk wagon and Albert Tilbury with the bread wagon, toddlers crying while their mothers laugh and little Archibald Perkins drinking from the horse trough. These are the films he loves best, the people that he has known for years held fleetingly in a wink of time.