Cryers Hill Read online

  Later:

  Tripoli has just been bombed and the lovely promenade was hit slap-bang in the centre. All the hospitals are being emptied and Arthur has been moved. We have passed through Zavia, Sabrate – wooded country – and you can see the blue Mediterranean. We camped on sandhills among blue flowers like primroses. Now we are in Tunisia after going through Bengardane. Rooney is a very greedy fellow over rations. I cannot understand him.

  Beneath this sand there is heavy chalk rock. It's the very devil digging in and we have had plenty of action call-outs. While we were laughing over something at the Command Post, a squadron leader was killed – shot in the head. Typhus has broken out in places.

  Apparently people at home think we are having marvellous food. Please, Mary, tell them not to be so silly. At most we have 15 biscuits a day and teas are thin. Yes, we had turkey and pork for Christmas, true, but under what conditions? And it was only part-cooked.

  Later.

  Today I saw a bird drawn backwards by the dropping of a Jerry bomb, then hurled forward by our guns. Odd, what you notice. We have a night guard of 15 instead of 6 now and different passwords each day.

  Later:

  We have moved on. We are now near the American and South African armies – there are double guards everywhere. No vegetation here at all – just sand and beetles. I watched a most beautiful caterpillar yesterday as our tanks were broken through and we hurriedly moved a mine back (being bombed 3 times as we did so). A major and 2 men were killed. The raids are sharp and quick. I called your name as I lay in the dirt. On 7th March Gunner Douglas Smith was killed with Harry Mills, Jack Davies and 8 others. A bomb hit 30 yards from me. We have made a wooden cross for Doug's grave. All the dead men have correspondence that has just arrived. We prayed a bit at Doug's grave.

  Later:

  We have been badly strafed and Stuka-bombed. It was deafening and would have sorted out Arthur's other ear if he had been with us. Gunner John Butler died in hospital and Bdr Gray is still shell-shocked – really stunned he is, only half here. We had a march today and were inspected of all things! Hard to believe while men are dying all around.

  1700 hrs:

  We are arrived at a fort in a range of hills. So much action we can't dig in till morning. Hard stone beneath, so you can only go in about one foot. You have to hold hard against the terrific attack barrage, otherwise it begins to get to you, easy to feel demoralised. It is hot and I have had no proper sleep for a week. Bert Jones has had his arm off.

  Our shadows on the sand in the moonlight look grotesque. Guns and Bofors pop. I found a dead snake and we heard some news on the wireless. Terribly low Kitty Hawks overhead. Please let there be a letter from you tomorrow. Do you care for me, Mary? God knows I care for you. Sweet dreams.

  Yours, Walter xx

  *

  A cat has been cemented on Lilac Drive, at the top of the estate, where the new, more expensive houses gloat condescendingly down on the others. Everybody is asking, what cat? Is it dead? A woman with a tissue up her sleeve said, 'Was it done deliberately?' She said it accusingly, with her chin tilted, as if she suspected it was. Sean knows it was done deliberately, only a spaz would think otherwise. What kind of self-regarding cat would have an accident involving cement. And besides, there was concrete evidence. That's what Gor said. He said it over and over until he'd spoken it to every single person on the estate. 'Concrete evidence,' tipping his head back and groaning with laughter, while everyone looked at his fillings. The rumour is that a cat fell asleep in the sun on drying concrete and awoke to discover itself stuck fast. Adam swears it is true. One of the parents said, 'Pity it wasn't one of the bloody kids,' and got a big laugh. This, surely, proved that dogs were cleverer than cats. The dogs didn't have a problem with wet cement. They ran straight over it, pockmarking its surface with every imaginable style of print. Likewise the kids knew you had to ride your bike over it quickly, trailing rattlesnake patterns across people's nearly-patios for all time.

  The cement-cat episode drew kids up to Lilac Drive. They hung about and stared at the windows, hoping for a glimpse of something, anything: policemen, grief, fur. A few of them peered into a sun-filled, roofless house. It was unpainted inside and sweet with the smell of split wood. It was hard not to be impressed, upstairs and down. These had an extra small bedroom and, mysteriously, an extra toilet in the hall; perhaps in case two people needed to go at exactly the same time. There were doors at the back that opened onto a little patio, as well as a mud patch waiting for turf. They had creosote fencing instead of chicken wire. Charlie wrote a phonetic obscenity on the window frame and biro'd a huge pair of tits on the wall. Dean did a crap in an unplumbed toilet he found waiting outside on the path.

  The houses at the top were the land developer's stroke of genius. They sold quickly and the new occupants named them after unspoilt moors in the Chilterns on pieces of varnished wood. From the carefully appointed windows they could observe the cheaper houses below, descending in their wildflower cul-de-sacs.

  Nothing remained of the cement cat. There was nothing to see. Probably it was not even true. Sean left the others. He preferred to be by himself on the days when Ann did not fly up over the fence on her swing. He would go to the modern church. Maybe a modern miracle might happen.

  How come they killed Jesus? That was his thinking thought. It didn't make any sense. You can't kill Danger Man. And why did he let them? Why didn't he just zap them or beam himself up or turn himself into an eagle? Sean wondered if the wooden cross they made Jesus carry was as heavy as it looked. He looked for something to put on his back. He spied an empty box of Daz with a dark stain on it. He remembered the voice on the television said Daz had blue energy that could drive out stains, although there was another washing powder that could actually eat dirt. Even he couldn't manage that.

  He filled the box with stones and swung it on to his shoulders. It felt good to walk with the heavy box, it made you stoop like a persecuted man. He wished someone could see him right now, stooping and staggering.

  CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, the sign informed anyone who could read. This was once sheep country, it was true. Once this hill would have been grazed by Southdowns all year round. Sean stared at the other words on the sign. JESUS LOVES YOU. Soon, he thought, when he was changed, he would read out those sign words. Sean set down his heavy box of Daz on one of the turf squares that was piled up waiting to be holy lawn.

  In spite of its name, the Church of the Good Shepherd was self-consciously modern. The concrete bell tower consisted of two geometric interlocking slabs that left the church bell open to the elements on all sides. An average wind could ring the bell without difficulty and a storm would have it tolling all night like the end of the world had come. There were six tall church windows, thin as slits and hung inside with modish vertical blinds. The church had been completed before the water supply, some said. Local committees and town planners congratulated themselves. Gabbett Housing had a cheese and wine evening. It was considered proper that these new commuter families with their young children should arrive in their overloaded Hillman Sedans with their city ways and kidney-shaped dressing tables, to the summoning chime of a Christian bell. They could rest secure in the knowledge that whatever troubles, large or small, befell them, their village church (a church on a hill no less, meticulously designed to blend in style and tone with the estate) was there with new Cyril Lord carpet, coordinating cushions, and two Sunday-morning services. Sean tried the door, it was locked. He peered through the windows at the rows of blue chairs and the appliquéd wall hangings of aghast-looking shepherds surrounded by their hand-stitched, satin-horned flocks. It was a light, airy room, barely like a church at all, with a noticeboard, leaflet stand, and even a sideboard at the back housing a kettle, tea and coffee, for when the occasion demanded. It looked cosy and inviting compared to the annihilated shells of the unfinished houses.

  Rev Davis is in charge at the Church of the Good Shepherd. That is what people call him. Enc
ased in sandals are his long white toes, stroked with hair. This is the first thing you notice if you are a child. The theme continues up, even when he is off duty, through his bell-sleeved smock shirt and the tormented smile that is full of chestnut beard and the tumbles of John the Baptist hair. The Rev is a huge fan of the Messiah, you can tell. He looks up skywards to the Divine Father for inspiration, and down at the ground for effect. A right poofter, is how Gor described him. A right fruit and nut cake, he always added, laughing out loud at himself.

  As a matter of fact there were those who had already begun attending the Sunday-morning services, though most of the newly arrived families, Sean noticed, preferred to unfold wire chairs in their garden and read the newspaper. The tolling bell did not call them from their rest, not even for a free cup of coffee and a biscuit. The Good Shepherd was offering nothing they really wanted, truth be told. They had forgiven themselves their sins and renewed their flagging spirits at the White Lion the night before. Now they wanted some peace and quiet on a lawn chair, even while the grass turf remained undelivered (though none of them seemed to mind), even as they sank lower and lower, along with their uncleansed souls, into the chalk and clay-bound earth.

  It is cool in the woods and quiet as a crypt. This is where Ann likes to hide, to play tricks. She wanders off and hopes to scare him. You must be careful with your noise, the snap of a twig rings out like a rifle crack. Sean bows his head and creeps along, while above him birds call out their warnings. Spears of sunlight come down through the gaps in the forest canopy, like Lothian's arrows, hot and gold and sending up dust, like smoke.

  Sean thinks he will see if he can start a flame. He kneels down to make a bushman's fire. There was a programme he saw on television. The bushmen were long and slender and moved deftly as hunting cats. Their hair was curled close to their heads and they had small, smiling, crinkled faces, like old ladies. They knew how to make fire with two sticks: far, the television voice said. They have no need of matches when it comes to making a far. Sean gives up on his. His two sticks won't cooperate and have never seen a bushman, much less a far.

  This is where she hid last time. His dad was right. The female species are a strange law unto themselves, bottomless pits.

  'Ann?' he calls.

  Above him a warbler adjusts his song and a general shushing flows through the trees. Sean sees a line of words. They are growing on the bark of a tree with the lichen and moss. He stares. I looked to Him. He looked on me. And we were one for eternity. Tree words. Tree talk. What does a tree know? Not the liar alphabet. Sean hopes the tree cannot read and write. Holy cow. Where would that leave him? What if he were stupider than a tree?

  Sean thinks about the story-children who fell asleep in the woods. He struggles to remember their names. They are in an illustrated book of fairy tales he had been given once. He remembers looking at the wispy watercolour pictures, at the pale pinks of their fingers and toes, the blue spill of sky, and the watery greens and reds of their clothes. The book is not phonetic, so he is still peering at the pictures now, trying to figure it out while the words lie uselessly about. Somebody fell asleep, anyway, and paid the price. What was the price? He didn't know. Something bad, it always was. He will wait one more minute for Ann – however long that is.

  Sean is asleep beside a bramble thicket. Click. The trees stop their shushing. Through the fug of sleep Sean can feel the eye on him, the all-observing lens of the forest. Click. Every forest has an eye. He wonders if it watched him trying to make fire, being a spaz.

  He thinks he will go now. She always says she will count to twenty. Then she does not bother to come and find him. Liar. Liar. As he gets to his feet, something in the forest moves with him, shadows drift. He hears another click, and then again, like a person tutting. Where are the birds? The wood holds itself still. Is he awake? Is he dreaming? Dreamers eat pie in the sky. They live on cloud nine. They throw their lives away. They don't listen. They get knocked down on zebra crossings, tumble into manholes. They float off the earth.

  There is a rustling in the treetops. One tree and then the next and then the one beside it, as though something were moving quickly from one to the other. A creature? Sean thinks it would most probably be a creature. A dreadful one offers itself to his mind's eye. A thing with liquid bones and teeth like pins, who knows his name, who speaks it with a creature's hiss. He has heard his name spoken this way before, this way but with a curl at the end, same as when someone asks you a question, so that the hiss gave way to a cry, Sean? And the cry was all in the N at the end, so the call was, Seaner?

  Sean is running. It might not be a dreadful creature, he tells himself, it might just be a squirrel or a pigeon. But he runs anyway, and as he runs he thinks he is sick of running. He hopes he is sleeping. He hopes he is sleep-running. This would explain the colours that move and bleed against one another as if they can't decide, and the ground that rolls like water. Stop the dream. He must stop the dream.

  He is running without clothes. The dream will not stop. He is naked as Pan, with a straight back and startled face. Something else is running, he doesn't know what, nor whether behind or in front. Something burns and he feels the heat of it on his skin. He runs hard, straining the hoops of his ribs. Sensation is gone from his feet, as if he dashes on hooves now. The eye watches him, he knows it. It halts him between strides, frame by frame, looking, checking. It can speed you up, slow you down, and erase you completely. The figures are here. Some are in groups, some are alone. He tries to avoid them, to swerve, he tries not to look. They are hushed as Sean bursts past. Though he is moving at speed he feels sluggish. Is he being chased? Is he the chaser? No clue comes. He sees someone, just a flash. A girl, he thinks he knows her. She is curled up with her back to him, and he frightens her then, rushing up. He should have crept quietly. He does know her. He ought not to have frightened her. She turns and screams and that is when he sees that her flesh is almost gone and her body is liquid, like something spilled, and her bones are small and springy. She is frightened and so she screams and her teeth are long and sharp as knives, though her tears come down like any other girl's.

  Sean runs away, but her voice follows. Sean! Seaner! she cries. He does not want to stop. Seaner! He runs for the edge of the wood, towards the fields and paths and home. And as he runs he sees that the thing that is on fire, is burning, is him.

  Thirty-six

  SEAN WATCHES HIS mum as she wipes something from her fingers with a kitchen cloth. She stares out of the window as she does this, at the dirt and diggers and garage roofs. It could have been anything on her fingers, grease, salt or some other bitter thing. It could have been blood; no one would pay any attention. She is not speaking today. Today she will be starring in her own silent film. The other members of the cast are left to wander haplessly in and out of her scenes. Their job is to ruin her performance, deliver poor lines from some other script, spoil everything; at this they prove impeccable.

  Sean senses her silences are a punishment of some sort, for what he can't be sure. There are things that upset her, things you couldn't imagine would ever upset anybody; things like eating and laughing at the same time, jumping on or off furniture (unless the house was on fire), shouting (unless the house was on fire); running is another, but then so is dragging your feet. Sean had once tried to match her silence with one of his own. He too made his own dramatic film without words. He too stared and slumped and swiped at things with a limp cloth. At her approach he would fall aside like a wretch and let his mouth hang and his arm swing like an empty sleeve. Rather than capture her attention, it swiftly caught on as a competitive sport in the family. Gor, having noted with a narrow eye that elaborately executed mute battles were taking place around him, felt himself excluded and was quick to respond. To everyone's surprise, he suddenly struck himself dumb one night during The Avengers and didn't speak again for almost a week. A record. An unbeatable achievement in their household. One Cathleen couldn't hope to challenge in spite of her experience.
Together they went about their silent business in the house, sitting like three speak-no-evil monkeys around the Sunday-lunch table while Ty pulled out his eyelashes and groaned tunelessly through advertisement jingles. His Tarzan calls (more awful than ever when released into the silence) made Sean think of a jungle gone badly wrong, where the animals behaved freakishly, where roaring machines dug holes for the trees to fall into.

  If Ty noticed the silent tournament taking place he didn't bother participating. Gor was therefore, unarguably, the winner, and did not need to button up ever again.

  Sean and Ann are walking backwards up George's Hill Road for something to do. It is not as easy as it looks. Sean has developed a rhythm. He uses his arms as oars, he bends his knees; he goes off at tangents nevertheless. It is surprisingly difficult. Ann does well for a while. She creeps backwards with her hands in her pockets, she hums, she scolds. 'Spaz! Spaz! Crine out loud!' She has stopped now. Going backwards has made her sick and she is lying on the new tarmac pavement with grit in her hair. Sean bends over her to tell her about the grit and the ants and the tar that is on her dress. Ann lies there. It starts to become strange that she is lying there. Women don't behave like you or I, they are influenced by the moon. Sean pulls on her arm, but she won't get up. He sits on the kerbstone. The tar stinks, it makes you dizzy. There was a story, Sean thinks, a true one, about a horse who wouldn't get up and they had to shoot it. He tells it to Ann. She won't get up, she says, because she is bored, bored of him, bored of life, bored. She is going to get a different boyfriend this afternoon and anyway he is not her boyfriend, never was, never will be. Then they are quiet. Sean thinks about the streaker. There is more to streaking, he suspects, than meets the eye. If the streaker and the murderer turn out to be the same person it is possible he will be the first of his kind. Sean wonders if this could mean more will follow, or perhaps he would remain unique, a local legend, like the water serpent. P'raps they will have to change the name of the wood. P'raps one day Four Ashes will become Three Streakers.