Cryers Hill Read online

  Ann has closed her eyes. She is very white against the black tar pavement. It is possible she has died of boredom. It's not so silly, somebody somewhere must have once, else why would people say it? Sean pulls at her dress.

  'Oi.' He watches the ants around her head; one of them hauling itself on to a strand of hair.

  'Oi.'

  She opens one eye, but it does not look at him.

  'P'sof, Spaz.'

  Sean wishes he could tell her something shocking and fantastic. He wishes he could say something that would electrocute her body, make her bounce up and look at him with two big unblinking eyeballs. Her mouth is closed. It is small and warm and full of commands. He wishes she would gasp and cry and flop against him, and kiss him with that mouth.

  Ann has a long red scratch on her calf, he notices, curling at the end like the letter L. Sean follows it down to the dirty ruff of her sock. By the time he gets there he has made up his mind. He bends over her to speak into her ear.

  'I'm going away for a long time.' Sean rubs his nose. 'I'm going now. Must be off. Don't tell anyone.' She closes her eye. She doesn't reply. 'See y'later,' Sean says. He stands on some ants beside her ear and then he is gone. When he is at the bottom of the hill he turns and calls back, 'Alligator!' But the wind pushes the word over his head so she does not hear.

  20th February 1943, M.E.F.

  Darling Mary,

  I am thrilled with the photograph of you. What a good one it is. I keep looking at it over and over again. I have shown it around, I hope you don't mind, but I thought it was such a good one of you. I was pleased to see the lane behind you and the old beeches. I also enjoyed hearing about your film-star moment on Clem's bicycle. I'm not surprised old Styles still has his cine camera on the go, in particular when a pretty girl rides by. I should like to see that cine film one day, so I would. I have a picture of it in my mind and that will have to do for now.

  We passed some white anemones, like a wondrous fall of snow, and I thought of home and of you. And then we came across a spread of wild flowers: miniaturised snapdragons, primroses, delphiniums and daisies. I gathered a few to press inside this letter.

  The Italians and Jerries have left their dugouts filthy and soiled. They leave notes: 'Hope we find this clean when we come back.' It makes you sick.

  The big news is that Churchill has visited and stayed near to us. He received a great welcome. A pithy remark of his was: if you are asked what you did in the war, all you need to say is you belonged to the desert army.'

  Soon Rommel's Panzer army will be extinct. I remember a while back meeting a pilot and he said, 'What mob are you?' I told him and his reply was, 'Steak meat, eh? Damn that for a game.' And we always thank our lucky stars we are on the ground!

  We have anchored our bivvies with tons of boulders. There is no water available. My uniform is dirty and full of holes and I have a beard and worn-out boots.

  Later.

  We're out of smokes and have pinched some food and cooked a cosmopolitan meal: Jerry stew, Italian tomatoes and English chips – very appetising.

  Later:

  Jerry attacks again and again. I was almost blown up trying to shave with spit in my bivvy this morning. Brigadier Lucas paid us a visit. We hope to be in Tripoli by the 17th. There are lorries burning everywhere along our route and we're knocking out tanks galore as we go. When we are stopped by Jerry tanks in a sand pocket, we disperse. Every man for himself then! A Spitfire came down nearby. The pilot only had a broken shoulder. We are filthy and hot. I am not allowed to say too much.

  Later:

  We have found a well in a lovely village, but there are many booby traps left by Jerry. We found a wine vat today with millions of gallons in. We had a sing-song and every single man in our brigade got drunk. A welcome break after travelling over 1,600 miles of desert. We see dogfights every day. Jerry is losing lots. The knocked-out Jerry and Italian vehicles have pin-ups of cinema actresses. You forget that they are human. We all have to be vaccinated again. Well, I'd better close. I look at your picture every day.

  Two days later:

  We went to a draughty place for a picture show yesterday. First there was a VD picture – the frankest I have ever seen. Then a Judy Garland musical. I have seen the brothels, Mary, but it is not for me. The women have two rooms usually; one to dance and talk, and one for their work. It costs 22 piastres, which is handed to an old woman at the door, and five or ten minutes later the woman is out again beseeching new customers. Most of the lads have tried it. I find I am not interested.

  Later:

  We captured the aerodrome before the Italians had time to move – about 200 planes. I am going on leave to Tripoli on Saturday with Arthur. I ate pomegranate and monkey nuts for tea today. I had better get this off to you, Mary. I look at your picture all the time. You are getting lovelier by the day. Are you my girl? Please say yes! Have you written? Well, cheerio for now.

  Yours, Walter xx

  It is a small shed. It stands in the playing field that is utilised by the school on one day of the year only, for their chaotic summer-term running races. Sean stands on a plastic bucket to see through the web-laced window. There is equipment, machinery, tools. He casts his eye over the blades and oily black chains. The door is locked, fastened by a padlock that is heavy as a stone. As he selects a brick, Sean has to steady himself. He is a thief today, a criminal. This is quite good. It is a masterful plan. His breathing comes in rushes and his skin prickles with cold in spite of the sunlight. He must keep his eye on the ball. He must remain calm so as not to unduly affect his aim. You do not go all the way to the moon only to turn spaz when you get there. If Neil had turned spaz over the Sea of Tranquillity things might have been very different.

  Sean pulls himself tall, takes a few paces back, rushes the same paces forward again and releases the brick. He keeps his eye on the window and the brick sails from his hand that is guided by his eye into the glass, which parts perfectly. There is a crash, a thud, then a slow tinkle of pieces as they drop into the lawnmower on the other side. The tinkling sounds festive. The world is silent for a moment. The trees, grass, sky, all wait. Nothing bad happens. Two-four-six-eight who do we appreciate? Sean is looking at a black hole. It is magnificent. It deserves a name. Holey. He has made it be there, it was not there before. Holey holey holey. It is one of the greatest holes in the world. Sean thinks he would like to make some more holes, honest to God. Sean picks up a piece of the broken glass and looks through it at the world. Everything is slightly different. He holds it up to the sky for a cloud to pass through. Ann will be amazed, perhaps she will blink. Sean Matthews, you're my hero. Sean imagines it, the words pressed between her lips. Girls like broken glass. Sean doesn't know why. He remembers how all the girls crowded around Nigel Drake the time he broke the bay window of an almost-house on Harebell Walk; hung round him like horseflies, swaying up and down the hill with him for days, giggling and whispering and laughing at nothing. It was mysterious. Sean was nonplussed and waited for an answer. The only clue was the glass.

  Now he has broken glass of his own. He begins to gather the pieces to show Ann and the others. It would be useful to have a pot to put them in, or an envelope, but he only has pockets, so he fills both pockets with jags of window. He can feel their sharpness against his legs. He knocks against the heavy padlock as he straightens up. No padlock in the world can keep him out, ha. No match for his aim, for his Holey. He kicks the door – it whines scornfully as it falls open. Sean hesitates while he thinks everything through. The shed. It was open all the time.

  Inside dust is rising and floating towards the door like smoke. The door was open, he could have stolen something without smashing the window. But now he has broken glass, which is better. Sean steps into the falling dust. It is hard to choose; there are cutters, scythes, saws, twine, pegs, paint, bicycle tyres. There are tins of nails too, a line-marker, a box of hammers and chisels, drills. It is difficult to want one thing more than another. He tries the rh
yme. Eeny meeny miney mo. He doesn't want the broom. He tries the rhyme again.

  Thirty-seven

  'WALLY WALLFLOWER, YOU ugly bugga, this is your last chance to marry me.'

  She said it five days before her fifteenth birthday in the middle of the cornfield, far from the lane, surrounded by men who worked for her father, some of whom had guns to shoot the rabbits as they fled from the corn.

  'I'd like to think about it.'

  The harvest holidays were hot and dry and went on for a hundred years, though you never got any older. Everyone helped at harvest time unless they were infirm or insane. At school they lined up and shrieked 'Gather in the Sheaves' to a piano accompaniment, before bolting as hard as they could go for the fields. This was Walter's last schoolboy harvest, as by St Matthew's Day he would be working as an office boy in Wycombe, and happy too to miss the winter grind of sugar-beeting. Harvest in the shires was no small thing. A lad who was willing was allowed to do a man's work and find himself treated like a man too, and if you worked hard you might even get paid something. It was a time to grow up and taste your first beer and your first tobacco and work until your back broke.

  The teams of horses, two to each binder, have already started in the cornfield after the hand-reapers, who began yesterday. A straggly troupe are hanging on the gate: Ernest Wright is by Walter's elbow and Eddie Redrup next to him with Bertie King, who is yawning great wide groans. Edna Stevens, Betsy Newell and Mary Hatt are making daisy chains while they wait for Mrs Hatt and Mrs Stevens to arrive with breakfast in the cart. Eddie is smoking a lumpy cigarette and boasting about his mole traps and all the rookeries his father shot in spring. Walter takes his fag off him and puts it between his own teeth. 'Cooked rook stinks,' he says.

  'Twerp, we don't eat 'em,' Eddie replies.

  Some of these boys would habitually raid birds' nests. They would stamp on any baby birds, especially sparrows, which they earned money from as they were a pest to farmers, along with pigeons. Rats too they killed with catapults for the farmers, a penny or maybe tuppence per tail. As a matter of fact they killed anything they could, whether it was a pest to farmers or not. Killing was natural to country boys in 1931.

  No sign of Charles Sankey from Lyme Regis. He will be on God's business. God's business my hat! This is what Walter's mother said. Walter waited for her proverb to follow. 'Him and that Perfect man. One bush can never hide two thieves.'

  Walter swings his legs over the gate and thinks, if harvest is not God's business, then whose is it?

  'Get down off that gate sharp!'

  A scythesman in waistcoat and cap finishes opening up the standing corn in the awkward corners where the binder cannot go. He leans slightly and swings his sickle. From Walter's position, the scythesman's progress suggests a lonely raftsman adrift on a high yellow sea. Naturally Walter does not have his notebook to write that down. In his notebook he collects interesting facts, remarkable observations, and amusements. He is susceptible to remarkable observations: he suspects he was born like it. He forgets to carry his notebook most days. He reckons all his best observations are blowing across Buckinghamshire with the corn stubble. He looks at Mary Hatt in her beret, daisy chains around her neck. Worrisome Wally Wallflower Woebetide you When you go. That's what she says to him these days, as if she's turned gypsy.

  The scythesmen, horsemen, all the harvest men seem to possess unknowable wisdoms about unimaginable things. Things Walter does not have in his notebook. He watches the men working, talking, making their quick remarks and asides. He studies them for information, hoping to catch something that will release their secret code, help him understand. He catches one of them saying, 'She said, I'll give you a go in a minute, and I said a minute's too long!' And they all laugh. What is funny about that? It is perplexing, as horses and dogs appear to understand them perfectly well.

  Compared to these unfathomably skilled workers, Walter feels he and the others are no more than a pile of idiots. This was borne out when George Rouse smashed his leg riding on the hay elevator, while his brother fell off a wheat stack, hit his head and fell asleep for a month. Another time little Sidney Wood lost one and a half fingers in the feed-masher.

  A man called Bailey arrives with his son; the corners of Bailey's mouth are flecked with white. They are on hard times and he has lost whatever job he thought he had. They have walked from Winchmore Hill looking for harvest work. Another family have walked from Beamond End. They stand away from everyone else, and the father wears his cap down to hide his eyes and does not speak a word. Walter wonders if he is a farmer gone to nothing.

  Walter likes to be around the working horses, masked in their leather blinkers, jangling, creaking in their harness. He likes to touch their hot, damp necks and feel their giant bony heads searching his pockets for apples. 'Warkon gowarn,' the horseman says, and his hands and voice are quick and he knows exactly what must happen and Walter wishes he were a ploughman, just for today, and could drive his chariot up and down till dark.

  Walter walks away with Eddie's smoke. It tastes good. He watches the sails on the binders turning like miniature windmills and the horses climbing, and far down the field, between the distant hedgerows by the giant oaks, he sees a black bowler gliding. Man of God, my hat. By the end of the day that bowler will be covered in straw.

  The way it was done was you all had to go after the binder and gather the corn sheaves into stooks, six sheaves per stook, grain at the top, butts on the ground. If you hadn't done stooking before you got your arms scratched, even while the straw was still green. Everybody did it, men and girls. Mary was fast and efficient and made remarks about the other helpers as she went; personal comments about this one, that one: 'No help but hindrance. Dear me – look at her.'

  Walter was picked to do rabbits. It was not a girl's job. You arrived with your stick and you hit the rabbits as they ran out from the standing corn as the binders approached – bashed them on the head. Any injured ones were finished off when they were gathered up. Fetched a reasonable price when you had as many as this, 6d or even up to a shilling each, which added up of course. By this stage the field would be running with them, and all the lads would be bringing their sticks down over and over as if they were hand-threshing. Thump thump thump. Rabbit heads broke surprisingly easily. You lost count of how many you had done. Some froze with panic and waited while you did them. Walter found he couldn't ignore the corn dust and clatter of the binders and the raw burn of the sun on his neck, but after a while he stopped seeing the pulp from the burst heads. You just kept bringing your stick down. Those who escaped the sticks would run into the guns. Walter didn't know Sankey had arranged to be a gun. How has he managed it? The other guns are farm men and Mary's brothers, Joseph and Clem. It is true he is a good shot, but to have someone who is neither family nor employee enjoying himself in this way? He has finagled himself. Walter feels childishly jealous. The guns are in a potentially dangerous corner; there are stookers, lads, horses and ploughmen moving continually about. A gun must shoot away from the corn as the rabbits flee for their burrows without killing any person or working horse.

  'Keeping you busy, Walt?' Sankey has become sardonic with a .410 on his arm. He addresses the head carter differently. 'Sorry to be late. I've been up Langley's at Spurlands End.' It is a given there will be nothing more said. William Fountain's family have farmed at Langley's for years. He had taken it over as a young man, but the farm had been in trouble like so many others, and last month he went bankrupt. Yesterday he hanged himself in the feed barn.

  Walter notices Sankey's walk is different. It is something, he thinks, a godly man who shoots like a demon.

  Walter is behind the south hedge relieving himself when Mary appears, startling him. She says nothing at all, but walks deliberately up, takes hold of his face and kisses him on the mouth. Her mouth and fingers are hot and sticky and she tastes of salt and something sour. Walter thinks some girls might be put off by the rabbit blood on his shirt. He listens to the guns poppi
ng. He thinks about the pounding his own head will receive if they are seen by anyone.

  'There now,' she says. 'Huh. Daft bugga.' He watches her go and he thinks there is not enough room in his notebook for this particular subject.

  As the light begins to fade they stop work. The air cools, darkens mauve, and the clouds of midges bring swifts and swallows diving from a pink-lit sky. It will be the same again tomorrow and the next day. There is a stooked field of wheat ready for carting tomorrow; but the church bell must ring three times before they cart today's oats for ricking, else they'll not be ready. Only God knows how many dry days are left. Nobody wants to hear the rainbird sing at this time of year. A storm now would be disastrous.

  Grub is always good on harvest nights and mothers' curfews do not exist. There is stewed pork and broad beans or rabbit pie with salt pork, cheese pudding, cherry cake, cherry pie and beer that was brewed in March, as well as cowslip or rhubarb wine. The harvest men clash mugs and begin slowly to change shape. By the end of the night they are bendy as if they had no bones at all, but by next morning they are completely upright again, quick and efficient on their usual skeletons, teasing their fellows about their bonelessness the night before.

  Walter and Sankey walk home draped in rabbits. It is dark but the moon curves over the great field, silvering the crop over. Clouds drift, veiling the stars, silent as icebergs. Sankey's shoulders are all fur as though he is Mrs Disraeli from the big house. Walt watches the soft heads swinging on his back. He is fuzzy with drink. He can feel beer bubbles gurgling inside him. His own rabbits are heavy to carry ungutted. His hands are sticky with blood and as he walks their skulls bump against his legs. He has two for his mother. She will say, 'Not on my clean table.' He will have to leave them in the sink and she will say, 'Don't walk on my floor.'