Cryers Hill Page 25

  28th July 1943, M.E.F.

  My dearest Mary,

  I was delighted to hear that Isabel had a baby boy! William is a fine name. And you are become an aunt! I hope this finds you well. Are you looking forward to your birthday? How I wish I was there to wish you many happy returns. I try not to think of the hedgerows at home coming into flower – here is just sand, heat, fleas, bugs.

  Also, I have had a gippy tummy, typical of this place! Lime juice is the only thing I can drink. When you order a drink in Cairo you have all kinds of bits included. Lots of the lads are going ill – septic sores, bladder trouble, flu. At the moment I can see two sparrowhawks flying about. We went 10 miles beyond Tobruk (oh the blueness) then Whadi la Knif – wild, rocky, steep – on through Bazleaze and Toor Pass. We hear Mussolini is no longer in charge. I hope it's true.

  Sgt Dove and I talk for hours at a time. We discuss everything from philosophical matters to the strange varieties you find in the animal kingdom. I have been reading The Insect Man. Did you know certain types have 8 eyes and females eat the males after marriage? The other day we found a sultan lying on the sand. On to Burat.

  Later:

  The water is salty, the ground stony to sleep on, but lovely lilies abound. My bivvy is under date palms. The dates hang in bunches like walnuts. Now we are in the 10th Corps of the 8th Army. There are boy bird-scarers here for the crops (takes me back). The boys yell out each time a bird flies overhead, so the birds therefore rarely settle.

  We are by the sea and bathe every day now (I am quite the Esther Williams lately). Sadly one of the boys who bathed at night was drowned. You have to be careful. I do not swim out ever. Another fellow of ours accidentally offended an officer and was punished severely. He was told to nail a can to a post – but there was no post there. Then he was ridiculed and humiliated. The tragicomedy of the army!

  Later:

  The bivvies are small and unbearable in the summer heat. The officers have shade rigged up and drink rum and cognac. You wouldn't believe the queues for meals – 8,000 men waiting at each meal. It smacks of poor organisation and inefficiency. I saw two ships blow up at sea today. Our letters are passed in for censoring at 9 a.m., so I'll close now and get this one off. Lots of mail is stolen before it reaches us, alas. Please remember me to everyone. Cheerio and keep smiling. Did anyone ever tell you you're beautiful? They have now, darling.

  Yours, Walter xxx

  PS. Some of the lads found Bert Jones's grave and came to tell me so that I could let his wife know. It is beautifully kept, they say, and one of them took a photo of it for her.

  P.P.S. The shooting stars at night make me think of home. I can't think why.

  Thirty-nine

  FARMER JOHN HATT, father of Mary Hatt, has had to let some of his dairymen go and his head carter is unhappy, they say. It is not clear how much longer he will be able to go on. He is not alone. Stanley Smith's farm has fields lying fallow and his herd is already depleted; it will not be long for him. His sons are working on farms as far away as Penn Street. He is waiting for someone to make him an offer. No one has. Already people are speaking of the old days – stockmen preparing for show, local growers in competition, ploughing matches, that sort of thing. Bill Woods was finished off last year by the harvest storm. No warning either, a fine week previous, then the heaviest rainstorm of the year, a real burster, flattening most of his corn to the ground. John had got his in only a couple of days earlier. He had jokingly asked Bill when he was going to stop admiring his and get on with it and Bill had laughed heartily because it was a very decent-looking crop indeed. No one really saw Bill again after that. The word was he had troubles to start with and the storm finished him off quickly. The rain continued all week and anyone with corn out suffered, including another farm that went under at Naphill.

  Next thing is a cow has slipped her calf at a farm not six miles away. John will wait to hear, but if another goes the same way, he will know what to expect. It has happened before. It's possible to lose an entire herd this way. He was a young man at the time and in those days with application you could recover and restock. These days an outbreak was about the end of the matter. John put goats in with the herd, three billies, and hoped for the best. He left the praying to Mrs Hatt – she was in charge of prayers and second chances.

  Young Mary Hatt on the other hand had little time for prayers. What was the point of praying for a few dead calves? Animals were always busy getting born and killed, it's what they did. Animals were blood and muck and trouble, and if you want your living from them, get used to it. Her father had said it to her as soon as she could walk in her first boots, and she had taken pleasure in rattling it off ever since with just the right air of grim-faced conviction.

  Mary couldn't understand her father's squeamishness when it came to laying men off. Dairymen, ploughmen, pigmen, carters, there was no shortage of them, let them go and come and never mind about it. After all, it was not as though they were going to vanish off the face of the earth for ever.

  Sometimes, she reckoned, a man's no good for his own advice. One day, when the farm belonged to her brothers, as it eventually would, she would give a hand, get it done proper and decent, and then they would see. She would show everyone a thing or two about blood and muck.

  Cattle didn't move her anyhow; matter of fact, Mary was fondest of pigs. As a girl it had been her job to watch over them as they grazed for corn ears in the harvested stubble, a job that kept you standing as the stubble was sharp, and a lie-down in a corn stook would earn you a walloping. Though they could be affectionate, she admired more their lack of sentimentality and bent for enjoying themselves. 'A pig has a knowing for enjoyments,' she said. They are partial to a lark.'

  Like many, she disliked the back-breaking fieldwork: planting, hoeing, singling and most of the hand-picking (except for peas, which she didn't mind because at least you could sit and clack with the other women). The rest you could keep, the beets, mangels, onions, cabbages, sprouts, spuds and all – in particular on a finger-cold day – keep the buggers.

  Harvest time though, now that was different. The way the scythesmen swung their sickles made hand-reaping look restful, though it was no such thing. Like boatmen they swayed through a standing tow of corn; the rhythm, like a weave loom, would make you drift. John Brock threw his sandwiches ahead of him and scythed towards them to keep himself travelling.

  Mary's other partiality was reserved for Lyons Corner Houses. She had never in her life visited a Lyons Corner House, but she knew they existed. She had spied a photograph in a magazine. At any of these establishments you could order from a Lyons Corner House menu. One of their waitresses, a Nippy, would serve you. Lyons Nippies were famous. They were smartly dressed in immaculate uniforms that were sewn together with a particular scarlet thread, and beautiful as film stars. If you lost a button the replacement had to be secured with replica red cotton. Mary had never heard of anything so extravagant, so stylish. There were things Mary had in mind, like Lyons Corner Houses, private things, personal. It is for you the nightingale sings her song. She had found it in his pocket the night he wrapped his jacket around her shoulders to keep out the cold. He loved her, now she knew it. She wasn't telling. Not on your nelly, no. She would wait for him to go down on one knee.

  Forty

  SEAN ASKS ONE of the builders when the estate will be finished, please.

  'In a month of Sundays,' he replies pleasantly, and grins.

  'Ta,' says Sean.

  Sean is pleased. He will pass this on.

  He goes past the White Lion and stares at the Wag-Wanton Mummers grouped around one of the tables outside on the grass. Five of them anyway, one is missing. Perhaps one of the Daves. The Wag-Wanton Mummers are Brian Ross, Charlie Cross, Dave Pritchard, Dave Waddle, Dave Atkins and Dave Hodge. They are all talking at once and one of them, possibly a Dave, is saying, 'May God strike me down if I'm lying.'

  Sean stares because they'd heard that Mummers went back as far as the th
irteenth century, maybe even further. But they looked surprisingly young in fact, with their side partings, big square spectacles and open-necked shirts. He watches them grinning into their beer, blowing smoke over one another's heads. They like to accuse each other in loud mocking voices and smack the table with the palms of their hands. If two of them say something at the same time, they shake hands vigorously or embrace. Sean thinks they are strange and magical, like leprechauns. He wonders whether God would strike one of the Daves down.

  *

  Peep peep peep. Sean pauses when he gets to the lane. Here is the old church and the war memorial. He parks the line-marker beside the stile under a sycamore. You can't take a line-marker into a churchyard and start drawing lines around the dead, it is bad luck. Nor anywhere near a war memorial neither. He knows this because once when he sat on the little stone step at the memorial's base, his father pulled him up by his collar, by the scruff of the neck, like you would a rabbit.

  'Show some bloody respect for these lads who got themselves killed for you,' his father had said. He sounded upset.

  Sean had become interested in the memorial after that. He had had no idea any lads had got themselves killed, especially not for him. Why would anyone get killed for someone they had never met? There were no clues in the names. Stanley Collins. Archibald Dean. Albert Evans. Edward Evans. Herbert Evans. On and on they went; brothers, cousins, sons. Sean looks at all the names, unrecognisable in their spelling, unfamiliar in their sounds. He searches for his own name, but it is not there.

  Inside the church it is cool and still. The air is tinged with green and watery thin. Above his head Sean sees coloured windows in reds and golds; men with shields, with staffs, men on their knees. Far down beyond the altar, where Sean is too afraid to go, the Messiah is still dying on the cross.

  In the church it smells of rain and sand, as though it has stood here for all time like the Pyramids, before housing estates or line-markers or astronauts. In the corner are hymn books and flowers. There is a stone font and Sean tries to imagine what it is for. A giant gold lectern, draped in tassels, supports a giant book, partly read. When he looks away, Sean feels, the carvings adjust themselves. He places the hot-pressed daisy inside his hand into the long wooden palm of St Peter.

  People sang in churches, he knew that. Plus the vicar was in charge. Sean touches a pew. It is lovely in the church, he thinks. He is amazed it isn't full of people eating their sandwiches, or having a sit. Inside the pew there are little cushions stitched in clashing colours. This is nice. Being here is like waiting for something good to happen.

  'Ooooh!' Sean calls. His voice sets off. It travels all around the church. Up to the windows, down to the nave, around the Holy Virgin praying in the corner, over the heads of the wooden cherubs, across the robes of John the Baptist and back to him, four times bigger.

  'Aaaah!' Off it went. Then he doesn't do it any more in case a vicar guard flies out. Inside the church there is a stone tablet on the wall, bearing the names of more lads who got themselves killed for Sean Matthews. Sean deduces these are not the same lads as those outside. Still he does not see his own name, though he moves his finger carefully across the ones he can reach.

  Robert Riley. Jack Robson. Kenneth Sanderson. Charles Sankey.

  He reckons he should say a prayer, but realises he doesn't know any. Godsake. There are things that get said at weddings and funerals and when a man lands on the moon. Sean wishes he had the knack of those words. Then he thinks if he stands very still and stares at his shoes, the way they used to in church in the days when they could still be bothered, this might do for the lads behind the stone who got themselves killed for him. Then he goes outside to collect his line-marker.

  17th September 1943

  Dearest Mary,

  Sorry not to have written for a while. It has been rather a busy time. I felt so weary when we finally left this part of the world. We were loaded like horses and were deadbeat by the time we marched down to the docks. On board ship the bunks were full, so I slept on deck.

  The Italian landing, when it came, was hard. Frankly, you were either alert or dead. Five of ours were killed by a flame-thrower. Bob Davis was also killed and Sgt White and Lt Bass have been wounded. There were long-range snipers everywhere and warships out at sea sending screaming shells. At night we lay on the swampy ground (no cover, just face nets and gloves) and the mosquitoes were unbelievably numerous, adding to the misery. Somehow we slept well, even with all the guns banging away, and the rations were good, even providing cigs and chocolate. Everywhere about were ripe tomatoes, either hanging or harvested in piles, squashed, rotting – we grew sick of them.

  It is a fearsome thing to see an artillery barrage creeping nearer and nearer to you. It takes all your strength to stay put. One minute you're chatting to the fellow beside you, and the next he is peppered over with holes.

  Sometimes our planes came from over the sea, bombed Jerry and quickly flew back. We always seemed to be straining our eyes upward to the Apennine tops. Eventually we grew so weary we became sort of listless over the shells and bombs and the mud dragging, sucking you down. Anyhow, we stuck it. For some reason no thought of retreat ever entered our heads. The few poor simple folk from the hills were very kind – scared of course. The situation was either we were going into the sea or Jerry was going back. Eventually – slowly, slowly – Jerry went back. Now we are waiting – waiting – for what? God knows! All day shooting, bombing, killing, and now in the quiet moments the mosquitoes surge in.

  Vickers is hysterical and in the hospital tent. I may have some sort of fever. I feel vaguely wretched. Last night in the dark each fellow as he lay on his blanket sang a song. One fellow sang a song his little girl had taught him, 'God Bless My Daddy'. It made us all feel quite softie. Sorry to go on.

  Are you well, Mary? I still have your photo. I was afraid it would get damaged, but luckily you remain lovely, smiling up at me through it all.

  I have been vomiting, I do not know why. At this stage I feel the vomiting is worse than the shelling.

  I have to close, I wish I didn't. You are the most beautiful girl on God's earth. How lucky I am to have found you. You have lit up my life more than you will ever know. God bless you and keep you always.

  Yours, Walter xx

  Sean folds the letter into his pocket. He has no idea how far he has gone. He stops and glances back and there is the paint, perfect and precise, no matter how it squiggles or doubles back. Wet paint is a beautiful thing, he decides. He loves everything about it, the smell, the way it moves, the different colours. He wishes he had discovered paint before, but at least it is not too late. This is the best summer he's ever had, partly because of paint. Left or right here? Sean cannot decide. Eeny meeny miney mo.

  Forty-one

  SEAN KEEPS VERY still, same as you would for a deer. There is no deer, however. There is a man. He is in the woods. He just stands there as though this is normal. He has something in his hand. Sean waits, while the paint drips, for the man to say or do something reassuring. Adults do odd things sometimes and there's no point panicking; like when Mandy Day tried nude sunbathing on strips of tinfoil, or the time his own father pushed their car around the corner in his pyjamas so the engine wouldn't make a noise.

  What is a man doing alone in a wood? He should be at work. He should be trying to be an executive, a fathead. He should be thinking about his perks. Men in woods. Good or bad? Men who spend time in woods: lumberjack, murderer, lumberjack. Sean has never heard the word 'bodger'. He has no idea bodgers worked in beech woods or that this was their county, or that they had crafted Windsor chairs in the area for two hundred years. But the birds are all songless, because they know as well as Sean knows, bodger or not, that a man is standing aimlessly in the woods. If he dies today, Sean wonders, will he become famous like the dead girl? The man is moving. Rudyell. Bludyell. Sean thinks of two things. First, that he does not want to die. Second: Is the eye watching? Is God watching? Does anyone have
their eye on the ball?

  The man is looking at the ground. The line. Now Sean understands. The man has followed the paint line. The man has followed him from wherever it was he discovered the line.

  The man is looking at Sean. It is too late to hide now, you spaz. Sean swallows instead of breathing. He can hear his own heart and the sound makes him want to cry. He pushes his fingers in his mouth to stop himself crying. What would his mum say? What would his dad say? A man in a wood. A man in a wood is superior to a woman in a wood, though it is she who will display first to the male. Sean can smell dirt and dead trees and wind. He wants to run, but his legs have switched themselves off, they will not run: they are filled instead with sand and fag butts. The guardian angel that lives inside him is panicking to get out, he can feel her struggling against his ribs. She doesn't want to die alone in the woods, neither does he. He would rather have a hundred years of whatifs, a thousand. This is a whatif become a whatnow. It's no good crying. Our Father . . . He can't remember the rest. The man is talking. He is talking to Sean. The wood is green and gold, the light is pushing up and high above the blue sky is pressing down. Is that the sound of the man speaking? Is he saying something? He is saying, 'Good afternoon,' like that.

  'Good afternoon.' There, he said it again. He is standing next to Sean now.

  'Good afternoon,' the man repeats.

  Sean doesn't look at him. If he doesn't look maybe he'll go away.

  'Hello,' Sean replies. You can change your mind. Girls do. Best to be polite. They are standing underneath a beech tree. The tree has stood here for hundreds of years. Maybe, Sean thinks, he will have to stand here hundreds of years before the man goes away.

  'Looking for your trap?'

  What? What did he say?

  'Pardon what?'