Cryers Hill Page 23

  Something ghostly flaps over the lower field. A barn owl hunting leisurely up the boundary hedge. 'Who?' it asks, a quaver in its question. This – like a coin in the slot of a penny marionette – jerks Sankey into the first verse of 'Gather the Reapers Home'.

  Walter is not afraid of nocturnal shrieks; you hear cries at night from snares and gin traps and again in the early morning. Walter doesn't care for trapping, but he is keen to shoot. Sankey is odd about teaching him, coy. Walter reckons Sankey's relationship with God is more complicated than most. His singing is beginning to get on Walter's nerves.

  Just past the war memorial they bid one another goodnight. At seventeen Walter is the same height as Sankey but finds himself struggling to lift his chin high enough to make eye contact. He hears Sankey laugh. 'Look out whose bed you fall into!' Walter opens his mouth to reply, but catches sight of something over Sankey's shoulder instead. He looks again. A man is it, standing there in the shadow of the houses?

  'Thrust in thy sickle and reap,' says Sankey, 'for the harvest of the earth is ripe.'

  Standing alone beside the ditch. A man in uniform is it? Is he waiting there?

  'See the soldier, Sank?'

  'Walt, Walt, Walt. The harvest is truly plenteous; but the labourers are few!'

  Walter is afraid. 'I see him, behind. See, Sank? Look.'

  Sankey places a hand on Walter's shoulder. His singing is soft and as high as a boy's: Throw out the lifeline across the dark wave, there is a brother whom someone should save.'

  Take a look there!' Walter hisses.

  Sankey winks at his friend as he turns. He blocks Walter's view, so that Walter has to step around him. It is not possible, thinks young Walter Brown, it is too peculiar, this. He looks again and sees that the soldier is gone. There is only the dark tree with the moon in its branches. There is nobody there at all.

  Walter suspected that inspiration was eluding him. It was necessary to pin a poem down as they were flighty things. Walter narrowed his eye at the sky, the weather, the girls in the bakery; all conspired against him. Whenever he felt himself assailed by doubt he returned to the volumes of poetry written by other people. He noted that the esteemed William H. Davies had written a poem entitled 'The Rainbow', whose first line went: Rainbows are lovely things. He felt his confidence returning at this. Here was something he could have written himself. It was the other poets, the geniuses, particularly the B brigade: the Brookes, Brownings, Burnses, Byrons, these were the ones you had to watch out for, these were the fellers who made you feel a fool with their hollows, heights and haywains, their naked crags and solitary hills. It is this mob who will crush you with their cache of shadowy banks, leaf-blown churchyards, stippled rivers, icicled minarets, lighted moons, close-wrapped fogs and blaz'd twilights. Take the wind from your sails before you even get started.

  Of all the Romantic poets, Walter thought he loved Shelley the best. He couldn't say why. For his dreamer's heart perhaps. Walter suspected he and Percy Shelley were made of the same fibre. He would have liked to have shaken his hand: 'Mr Shelley, how do you do, sir. Walter Brown.' With dreaming must come faraway lands, because that was the way of dreams. A kind of transport, dreaming was. Besides, a writer, a poet, must travel to see and know the world of which he writes, surely. A poet could not remain all his life in the south-east of England. He might return to the south-east of England, but that is different. Truly, Walter told himself, if he was ever going to write anything of note, he would have to cross an ocean, perhaps two. He would have to devise his own heartfelt notions, and set them down, well lettered, for the cogitation of others. This is not as easy as it sounds.

  Walter Brown filled two notebooks with his poetry. He loved to feel their weight, as though the poems themselves had made the notebooks heavier. And the words did have weight, he knew that, and characters all their own. Sometimes the words could be bidden and sometimes not. Walter did not understand how this worked, he only knew that on some days he opened a notebook and no words would come. Other days they came slowly, grudgingly, in the wrong order. It occurred to Walter that a poet who wished to write of home would do so better if he simply left. He opened his notebook and tried again:

  Let not the songbird fail:

  She travels from Africa,

  the bold, intrepid nightingale.

  Her gentle songs do ne'er betray

  her will to conquer squall and storm;

  until, at last, her darkest night gives way

  to bright and hopeful dawn.

  Keats to Rome. Byron to Malta. Shelley to Switzerland. Wordsworth to France. At night Walter dreamed of deserts with wide golden tides rolling like ocean waves. And hillsides of olive groves, blooming with wildflowers, tinkling with the sound of goat bells. He dreamed of a fjord, high as a building, and himself at its crest with his pipe and his pen, and his beard (for he would grow one) frosted and his cheekbones mauve. And he dreamed of a volcano that burned away his clothes and, as he fell into its furnace centre, he dreamed that her voice was calling him. And he dreamed that he died there, burned to ash, and he saw them clearly – his teeth and his pipe and his sturdy pen – in the dust before the snow began to fall, and they were covered over then, flake by flake, as though by the laying of thousands of tiny cold wreaths.

  'And what will you live on, thin air?'

  It was not for Walter Brown to explain to his mother that a poet must eat and sleep where he can, and not bother too much about his animal needs.

  'Or perhaps you will eat your words, young man. Ha! Imagine, if we all lived by our fancies, where would it lead?' Her laugh squeezed her till her eyes watered. 'Nothing, my son, not coal in the grate, food on the table, or roof overhead, is materialised from a young man's whimsy, or where would we be?' The laugh is replaced by a quiet, threatening formality. And a warning stare. 'Hard work puts things in their place, Walter Frederick Horace Brown, and don't you forget it.'

  That night Walter dreamed he found Mary in his loop snare. She was naked and he shot her. She screamed and kicked like a doe. Her eyes watched him as they filmed over. He was looking at her breasts, rose-brown tipped and mottled with cold. He wondered if he should skin her. God Almighty. The next morning he could not look at himself in the mirror to shave. The previous night he had dreamed her arms grew longer and longer until she could tap him on the shoulder from half a mile away. Wally Wally Wallflower, growing up so high.

  Serpent or no serpent, the water pool by Cockshoot Wood is Sankey's favourite pond. In this July heat it is a dark oasis, trembling with insect life. He is standing in it up to his neck for there is no one about – man, woman or meddler – to pass comment or demand that he remove himself. Folk are far too willing to interfere when they should be minding their own business. Today at any rate he is alone save for a family of little grebe and the occasional startled flap of woodpigeon.

  'What shall I do to be saved? When the pleasures of

  youth are all fled:

  And the friends I have loved from the earth are removed,

  And I weep o'er the graves of the dead?'

  The song skates across the water and rises up into the hornbeam trees.

  Sankey wonders whether it is Tuesday or Wednesday. If it is Tuesday he will collect his paraffin from Grove Road. If he forgets he will have no light or heat tonight and moreover he is intending to cook an egg and piece of mutton for his supper. Perfect would be in his cups by now, or attempting to lighten his load; game birds were two shillings these days. A bird would be nice, roasted with thyme. Behold, he muses, to take his mind off food, here is Light. Here in this sanctuary I have seen thee. Sankey raises his arms and notes how brightly the drips of water glitter. My soul waiteth upon Him, From Him cometh my salvation. Sankey closes his eyes. He smiles. Everything is splendid. In his heart is comfort and everlasting love. Here is the Almighty, here in the pond, and in everything reflected therein, thereof.

  'My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, whe
re no water is. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee, now and for ever. Amen.'

  Sankey opens his eyes. A conversation would be nice. Young Walter will be busy in Wycombe. The Water Company must keep the water flowing or else. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, Walt. At evening time it shall be light.

  When at last the sun sinks behind the Chilterns' widest hill, he wades out and lays himself down on the bank. His head is filled with colour as he shivers. A marvellous feeling this, better than any food or lust or winnings or fiery drink; gone now was his paraffin, his egg and his mutton chop.

  'Behold, I stand at the door and knock!' Sankey calls up at the navy sky, darkening now with night cloud, for at last he knows that only He is his rock, his salvation, his defence. I shall not be greatly moved, he thinks. And falls asleep.

  Sankey had only one real memory of his mother. The rest was a wash of longing and some hotchpotch pictures his mind had constructed for comfort. His real memory though, like the photograph in his pocket, was a bright living thing. It remained in his mind sleeping or waking and sometimes drifted into view uninvited as he engaged in conversation or cut firewood or assisted Father Blagdon. In this real memory she is bending down to him. Behind her the sunlight is so dazzling it is hard for the young Charles to focus, but he can make out eyes, lips, teeth, revealed by her widening smile – the smile she has for him. She is talking, but he doesn't understand what she is saying. He doesn't care because he has the best part, the golden light of her attention, the evidence of her delight in him, and the cool softness of her hand on the back of his neck. He remembers her touch on his neck, on his head; it is sacramental, merciful, it is laid there to bless him, forgive him, protect him, it is laid there still. He looks up at her, into her brightness, and here, blinding him, is the love he dreams of now and has dreamed of always. He would like to say a prayer to that love but can think of none, save for the one he learned on her knee: Mary, Mother, all the day, Close beside thee let me stay. Keep me pure from sinful stain, Till the night return again.

  Close beside thee. Let me stay. Though he had spoken it morning and night like a good boy, no amount of praying had kept her. He had padded around her sickbed restlessly, counting her fingers, humming the hymn he knew, and when he grew sleepy he stood at her shoulder and rested his cheek on her arm. When she finally went away she did so quiet as a bird, though she had resisted for several weeks because she worried for her boy.

  'My poor Charlie,' she said to her friend Evelyn. 'What'll happen to him?'

  He saw her face. She was asleep. My boy, my darling boy, my darling little boy. These were her words. She said them whether she was dying or not. She held his face in her hands and he watched her tears make their long journey to her pillow. She stared at him as if to remember his face. She would have to wait a long time perhaps until he arrived at the gates. She would be waiting. They would be reunited then. My boy, my darling boy. I shall wait for you.

  When she died she said nothing at all. Charles ran to her bedside to show her his stone in the shape of a shield and found she had slipped away.

  Evelyn did her best with Mary's boy. 'Oh dear,' Charles commented. It was all he would say. Nobody could get any other words from him, not even a prayer. It upset the older ladies, the pity of it, until finally it was the ladies themselves that required comforting. Evelyn did her best, she dressed, bathed and held him, and still he continued: 'Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.' Evie thought, well, it will soon stop after a day or two, but it did not. After a while, her charity used up, it began to grate on her.

  He had no memory of his mother's funeral. He could not be altogether sure whether he had been there, buttoned up in a dark coat, or not. He went to live with the draper's widow, whose own children were almost grown, and there he settled down and did his lessons at school and, once he learned to read, attended to the two books in the house, the Holy Bible and Ira Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos. He visited his mother's grave in his short trousers, long trousers, and finally in his working boots. As he learned them he sang her the hymns from the book, though it was breezy at the churchyard on the hill. And this way Charles Collins became Sankey, or Charles Sankey for formal occasions, after the revivalist Ira Sankey's collection of hymns and sacred songs. They christened him in the schoolyard and it remained. A name his own mother would not recognise.

  Mary Hatt and Walter Brown were married in Gomms Wood by Charles Sankey around the time of Mary's seventeenth birthday. They placed their hands on the Holy Bible and exchanged flowers for rings. They sang 'Jesus, Beloved of My Heart'. Sankey had not intended to marry them but found himself, to his astonishment, offering to do so the day they discovered him close by, behind a holly bush with a ladies' hand mirror. He offered to charge them nothing – owing, he said, to the fact of his being an apprentice preacher at this stage. Walter and Mary saw no reason to refuse. It was a fine blowy day and Sankey had his Holy Book with him and everyone loved a wedding, so. More than this he volunteered to share his good tobacco afterwards.

  During the ceremony, as Sankey drifted, directionless, between sermon, homily, advice and admonishment, he fancied he felt the heat of God on them, all three. He found the spell of his own words deeply moving as he blessed the happy couple, blessed the day, blessed the cathedral of birch, beech and oak in which they stood, and blessed himself.

  You have gone off the topic,' Walter Brown pointed out impatiently, but Sankey had inspired himself with a blizzard of wisdoms. Some considerable time passed before Mary and Walter were able to find themselves conjoined by God. Afterwards they shared the pipe tobacco Sankey had been saving, and Walter was violently ill over his shoes.

  God's men, men of God. What Sankey wouldn't give to be counted among them. He wished he had learned more about reading and writing. He wished he could wear the collar and the wide-brimmed hat and that way be a salve and a salvation to the people who would come to him. The men of the cloth; it was they with all the answers and the final say, they with the power and glory for ever and ever, Amen.

  'A great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.'

  Sankey's voice drifts thinly out of him. He has always had a high voice, like a girl. Something was coming, he knew that now. The trumpet would sound. He was ready for the labour, for the Light. Difficult to find his preaching voice, to practise, with this cough. Sankey reckons it is walking up these hills that's done it. That and the damp in winter.

  When he began to lose his appetite he suspected it was the Lord, lightening his load to ready him for action. No good being a slowcoach when it came to God's own work. Others said it was the wood dust at the chair factory (worse than the solvents some said) that got inside the workers' throats and lungs. These were exotic woods imported from Africa. Some of the men developed chronic headaches and asthma and some of these men suspected a connection, but they were reassured by their own good doctor, Dr Summer, who could not confirm any link whatsoever between the imported wood and the symptoms.

  One day in the near future, during a time of turbulence in Europe that could not yet be imagined, it would be noted that the men in the area who were dying of throat and nasal cancers had, at one time or another, all worked at the chair shops.

  Thirty-eight

  THE LINE-MARKER MAKES no comment, it just draws the line. Sean discovers that it is very satisfying to draw a line and walk away. Sean draws the line. So long as the wheel is turning the paint pours itself in a careful stripe. It pours steadily, consistently. The smell of the paint, Sean thinks, is how the space shuttle must smell: new, fresh, white, scientific. Where Sean goes, the line goes. Sean is God. The line-marker squeaks with each revolution, it is the
sound of progress. It dictates the rhythm of Sean's steps, so that each is perfectly synchronised with the other. The line-marker leads him, as if it knows where it would prefer to go. He follows it across Windmill Lane, down the path skirting Lower Field at Widmer Farm, where the nettles are taller than him, past the tin bath where insects float and down North Road for a while. At the sound of a car the line-marker hurries him behind a tree until it is safe. It is, however, a giveaway, the way the paint stops suddenly beside a large object. Peep-peep, off he goes again. Sean thinks this is the best thing he has ever done in his life. He is making his mark on earth. Here and there he stops and listens, waits for trouble. But there is only the chattering of birds and the constancy of the lonely fireball sun.

  At the top of Cryers Hill Lane he takes a rest. Behind him the line stretches all the way down to Bottom Farm. It waggles a bit between the giant chestnuts, where he had looked over his shoulder to see behind him, and there is a deviation to the side further down, by the house with the low roof, where he had craned his neck for a glimpse of the old codger who lived there without electricity, and it had made him swerve. In spite of these lapses the line runs down the hill like a line on a map, jinking a little as map lines do, but swift and purposeful, as if it knows where it's going. Certainly it will lead him back; this line would lead anyone, it is a good line. There were lines on the stones in the classroom collection drawer; wispy they were, like feathers. Sean told the teacher that he did not know what they were. Bones, Miss Day replied. Yes, they are of course bones. Fossils, she said, to be precise. Miss Day is always precise, she never takes her eye off the ball. Miss Day told the whole class then, announced in her best sing-song voice, that the markings on the fossil stones were the bones of the dead. No one believed her for a second, but it was a good reply.