Cryers Hill Page 28

  I have met plenty of Yanks now. It is not always possible to get a straightforward story from them – they are mighty leg-pullers – but they are very generous with their goods.

  I'm afraid lots of the local children have picked up some unholy words and without knowing what they say are cursing and swearing. It fair stuns one at times.

  There are plenty of lemons and oranges on the trees – no sign of tomatoes.

  So, keep smiling and happy and write! Write! Write! Remember me to everyone. Remember how I feel about you. You walk beside me, Mary.

  Yours, Walter xx

  Once upon a time there was a squirrel.

  'Good boy, Sean, off you go. Try your best.'

  Sean pointed his brain at the words. He tried with his left eye, then his right. Then both. Eye on the ball. Eye on the ball. Thunderbirds are go, you spaz.

  'Onkey upon a timmy the wass a skew rile.'

  He looked up at Miss Day. Her face was bad. Bludyell. He checked again. That's what the words said. Sean, you spaz. But these were the words. What kind of crip words were these anyway? Written for a laugh by a monkey. What?

  'A screw wile?' he tried. But still this was wrong.

  He knew words. He liked words. What's happened to the monkey words?

  'A skwile?' Screwing up his face as though he very much doubted it, just as much as Miss Day doubted it too. The true alphabet, helo. welcum. wur.

  'This is a difficult word, isn't it, Sean?' Miss Day has been led by her chalk to the board.

  Yes. Very very difficult word, Miss, bludyell. This word may be too difficult even for Miss Day. Her chalk is poised. All eyes watch the ball. All mouths open to say the chalkword. Her chalk writes. The word is, wuns. Oh.

  'Wuns,' says everyone. 'Wuns.'

  Miss Day writes, wuns upon a tiem a skwirel.

  Oh. 'wuns upon a tiem a skwirel.' Everyone says it now with relief. Oh. Sean checks the changeover words. But they still say, Onkey upon a timmy the wass a skew rile.

  Changeover is a good word for it. The days when you could read and write are over. It is time for Class 4 to cry themselves stupid, like Miss Day said. This will make a change. That was clever, one word made from two things. Sean hadn't known you could do that. He wanted to put his hand up. He wanted to say, Miss, Miss, changeover's got two things in it. And maybe she'd say, But he didn't. She is talking again. Maybe she is still talking. Changeover. Wur.

  'SEAN!'

  'Yesmiss!'

  'Do I have to say it all again?'

  'Nomiss, yesmiss!'

  'Then stop wasting everybody's time and read out the next sentence.'

  They went down to the lion trap but there was nobody there except a squirrel who was using it to store his nuts in.

  Sean stared at the words. Black and white. Easy and peasy. They were laid out in code. You had to know the code to get the ever-changing never-ending inexplicable shapes. Black and white, it should be easy.

  'OK, Sean. Never mind. Jane?'

  Jane Stevens. Soon they will have to cut a hole in the ceiling for her head. She opens her mouth like a sparrow.

  she reads.

  She does read well, give her that. Lispy. Nice. No pauses, much.

  She can read true words. She knows the code. She is a git.

  'OK, good, Jane. Very nice, thank you. Sean?'

  Godnose.

  'Would you like to finish the very last sentence for Jane?'

  No. 'Yesmiss.'

  'Good boy. Off you go. From OK?'

  Timmy's mother was busy ironing. 'Oh dear, it's you, is it?' she said. 'What's the matter now?'

  'Sean?'

  Black and white. Easy and peasy. Laid out in code. You had to know the code. You had to get the ever-changing never-ending inexplicable shapes. Black and white, it should be easy. There are more than fifty thousand galaxies in space. These are only words. Why couldn't he read them? Whie?

  Forty-six

  WALTER AND MARY walk clockwise around the cricket green in Montague's Meadow. Walter would have preferred to go to the woods, but Mary insisted. He walks with his hands at his back, ignoring the sunset over the pavilion and the cruising dragonflies. He inspects the grass instead with forensic interest. Mary hums a tune.

  'Don't you know any others?' he asks.

  Mary blows in his ear. 'Wait your turn.'

  He will end up on his knees in his father's allotment, he thinks. He has known it always. It is waiting for him, that scene, as it waited for his father, as it will wait for his son when he comes. It is a dark and certain shape, and a tunnel of time will lead him there. If he does not leave soon, the pattern will not be broken.

  Mary is lunging at dragonflies. She trips about, hands outstretched, spinning left and right. She chants:

  'The first butterfly you see

  cut off its head across your knee.

  Bury the head beneath a stone

  and lots of money you will own.'

  Walter has reached the bench; he sits down to watch her. Now that he has decided he feels better. Each thing he studies now, the shadowed green, the insects, the sunset, Mary, each is loaded with significance. These are the things he will leave behind. These are the things he will learn to love.

  Walter and Sankey walk up Deadman's Hill, where the line of elm has stood guard for hundreds of years. Walter has his .410 on his arm, and they have two rabbits apiece. Walter has not broken his friend's nose or defamed his God after all. He has forgiven him instead. Sankey, by turn, has not broken his friend's lantern jaw either. Walter reckons Sankey is a child when it comes to matters of the heart. Sankey reckons Walter is a child when it comes to matters of the heart.

  Sankey says his knee is paining him on account of Edna Green's bicycle, which he felt obliged to ride after she had kindly offered it for his Saturday rounds, but is, he explains, not fit for human usage.

  They stop at the gate to watch the view below them. On winter mornings mist and cloud gather in the valley and smoke up the woodland like a forest fire. Today the sun has glazed all the green hillside, coppice and pasture and pulls the birds into busy patterns across the sky. They stand for a time before Walter speaks.

  'I've been considering trying my luck in the city.'

  'There's none too many jobs.'

  'No, but I could try my luck.'

  'What is there to see except motor cars?'

  'I don't know. See what I can see. P'raps fate has a surprise in store.'

  Sankey is quiet for a while.

  'Restless legs, that's your trouble.'

  'Most likely.'

  'Restless legs.'

  It could have been the storm that did it. Sankey suspected as much. Storms had a way of redesigning what was assumed to be permanent. The good Lord had sent storms since the beginning of time for the purpose of rearranging, redefining.

  Sankey would not have been at Sladmore Farm for a start were it not for the storm, but there he was among the ruins of the two-hundred-year-old oak tree, which had been hit by a lightning bolt and shattered into thousands of pieces. A pity as it was a great old tree, the pride of Cryers Hill, and had survived being hit by both a truck and a motor car, as well as a fire in the nearby barn. Moreover, the ghost of a child skipped around it at night, and her songs could be heard from the outbuildings. Now the tree was gone. Only half its charred trunk remained, revealing ropy cables at its core. Above, it has been cross-sectioned, leaving spliced upper branches to sway and creak flimsily in the breeze, like the mast and rigging of a stricken boat. Folk are arriving to take firewood and souvenirs. Sankey ties up a bundle of good sticks for his stove and listens as people discuss the tree. They remember how it was spared in the last big storm before the war; they agree the pity of it all; they thank their fortune things were not worse, that they suffered no more than the heads off their nasturtiums. Morning, Sankey, they say. No, none of us got a wink, not one wink of sleep. Still. Alive to tell the tale, they say.

  Not everyone is alive to tell the tale. T
he facts are gathering on Dorrie Penn's tongue. She lives next door to Mr Looker, so she has heard it from the horse's mouth. Sankey hears it now hushing around him. The Pages' cottage on Boss Lane near Gomms Wood has been hit and gutted by the lightning. Tom Page was asleep in his bed and most likely knew nothing about it. Poor Tom. His son George was killed at Passchendaele and his wife, George's mother, died quietly afterwards from grief. She turned her face to the wall. That's what Dorrie Penn said. After her boy was killed in Belgium she turned her face to the wall.

  All the men in the Page family go to violent ends it was said. This sounds unlikely until you think it through: two fires, a flood, war, a fall from a rick, a firearm incident, a bolting horse incident, war, a lightning bolt. Not a single Page man now remained to face his fate. All had been wiped away, one after another. There was a nephew, somebody pointed out. He had moved to the New Forest. A quietening then while everyone considered the kind of untimely death he might expect there.

  Sankey sees Mary Hatt. She is walking away. He hadn't noticed her at the lightning tree, but sees her now plain as day with her piece of wood in hand. He follows her. He means to call out to her, but thinks he will catch up with her first. She walks with small steps like a child or a nun. In spite of this, oddly, he finds himself lagging behind.

  By the time he crosses Cryers Hill Lane into the woodland he has lost sight of her. He runs, pausing only to be sure there is not another direction she may have taken. He is a hundred yards down the path before he finds her. She is lying on her side, tipped over like a clockwork toy.

  'Mary?' The sound of her name in his mouth makes him stumble; it is a word belonging to prayer.

  'Mary?'

  She is fallen across the path, her feet in the shade. Her eyes are open and so Sankey speaks again. 'Mary?' But she does not respond or look at him, but only stares, not at him, not at anything; her eyes are dull as if she were blind or deceased. She is gone from herself, this is how it seems.

  'Mary?' Sankey whispers it as though she were asleep. Do not wake the dead, he thinks, and no. 531 from Sacred Songs balloons up in him in spite of everything. In the shadow of the rock, let me rest, let me rest.

  Sankey kneels beside her. He is tempted to touch her forehead, to stroke her hair, when he notices a tremor in her jawbone. There is drool on her lip, catching the light. The light lasers through the foliage, heating her hair, warming her cheek and falling across her throat. Sankey half rises and looks around him as though there may be a doctor lurking or an instruction pinned to a tree. But there is only him and a large tatty crow and the fallen Mary. What is this? Something in the day is shifted, something is realigned. He too is sliding with it. She is trembling now, a volcanic thing. He knows the cure for the faints: smelling salts to bring them round and tea for the shock. Good. Better that another female were present though, girls know the correct procedure when it comes to falls, shocks and ailments. Anthrax. The cattle had it, Cramer's herd. It was in their feed, the seed cake from Eygypt was contaminated. Surely girls didn't get anthrax? She suffered the fits from time to time, yes. The fits it could be. Sankey is afraid to touch her but he will force himself.

  She makes a noise, a tiny leak out of her mouth. He can't tell if it was a sensible word or not. He crouches lower and places his face in front of hers so that she may see him through her unseeing eyes.

  'Mary?' She stares blankly into the dim hollow of his devoted heart. He takes her hand and the light beams flare, igniting her. Surely she'll be right as rain in a moment. Girls do fall over, it is well known. He would like to help her, but cannot think of a way. On the other hand p'raps he ought to run. A person happening along may assume an incorrect assumption. He will get into trouble. Trouble that he does not deserve, in point of fact.

  The light takes him by surprise as it refracts quite suddenly through the trees. It bounces into his face, making him start. Mary sits up in a single sudden animal movement. She is bright as gas. The light is pouring from her mouth and eyes, viscous and drifting, like nitrogen. It fills her up and spills brilliantly out. She is lit as though he had struck a match inside her. It electrifies the trees and blinds him with its whiteness. She is a human flare. What is this? Sankey clasps his hands to pray. O angel of God, preserve me this day from all sin and danger. But he knows of course. He realises he has suspected all along. Suspected but did not dare to hope. He kneels before Mary and bows his head.

  'Queen of Angels. Mother most pure. Virgin most merciful, have mercy on us.'

  'Never shone a light so fair,

  Never fell so sweet a song,

  As the chorus in the air,

  Chanted by the angel throng.

  Weary and sore distressed,

  Come, come, come unto me,

  Come, come, come unto me,

  Come unto me and rest.'

  He has been a fool. It is all now quite beautifully clear.

  Sankey has often wondered how the chosen few know they are called. Now he understands. The signs are unmistakable. A bright margin of light has appeared at the edges of his day, as though his life were catching alight. His blood is hurried up and his mouth is frothing with sacred talk. The burst of energy in his arms and legs makes him feel he could jump the houses, the hills, the earth itself. And the presence in his heart of a fiery truth, a knowing, quick and fizzing and waiting to be spoken, confirms his best suspicions.

  Sankey runs to Uplands. He runs to the hill where the wind drags the giant trees to the ground. He falls to his knees and the wind roars into his throat and into the chambers of his faithful heart. The wind flings his prayers about and pulls the clouds apart. The light falling from the sky appears to Sankey to be as holy as the first light on the world. 'One there is who loves Thee,' he assures his God. And he lays himself down under a pink enflamed sky that is scratched with gold, weeping tired tears of joy.

  Forty-seven

  HIS FACE FRIGHTENS her as it floats out from behind the big elm by Cockshoot Wood. She screams and dances into the air while Sankey clasps his hands in apology and bows his head.

  'Mother most pure,' he murmurs.

  'Shut your face,' she replies. 'Shut your cakehole, Sank, d'you hear?'

  'Yes.'

  Sankey cannot bear to look at her, but longs to look, all the same. When he does he smiles, knowingly, fondly, and tears well in his eyes.

  'Daft. Not daft, mad. Peeping Tom. Weeping Willie. Keep away or else.'

  Sankey kneels before her, closes his eyes. He raises his palms to the sky.

  'Keep away! Keep away!'

  Sankey is surprised, hurt. Why does she persist in this way? She is ungrateful, truly. He does not deserve this, no indeed.

  'Mary,' he says. 'He won't marry. Not you, not anyone. I think you ought to know.' There. She had it coming.

  'Keep away, Charles Sankey. You're not the full shilling.'

  'You are mistaken if you think he loves you.'

  Mary cannot swallow the air squeezing up in her throat. It escapes behind her eyes and makes quick hot tears.

  'What do you want? Clear off! Go on!' Her voice is an angry squeak.

  'Don't be annoyed, Mary. I only want to talk to you.'

  'Well, I do not want to listen.'

  'It's only that I want you to be happy'

  'Well, I am not happy, so bugga you.'

  'Mary.'

  'Bugga you!'

  Sankey watches her go. She runs like a little girl, he thinks, stumbling and crying. He wonders why she shuts him out when he only wants to help. Why does she do this? After all, it is he who understands her, he who can assist her, he who cherishes her; he. It is a poor show. It is he, after all, who is come to protect her, to guide her, to save her.

  Mary runs. It is at first fear, then anger, and finally grief that drives her across the field and over the stile towards Grange Road. In the bag on her shoulder is the food she said she would deliver to Miss Ford for the Sunday school chapel. If it is spoiled she will have some explaining to do. She run
s anyway. It is a small price to pay. A man who sees the Messiah's own mother when he looks at you, a man who waits for you in the woods, who begs and kneels and carries on and on. A man like this is worth fearing.

  Sankey stands at the edge of the wood, waiting while he remembers why he has come. Nearby a bird speaks. Ah! it says. There is light the colour of rust filtering through the trees and a smell of dug earth. A cloud directly above Sankey's head slides back to reveal a soft ball of late sun. He waits. There is something between the forest and the sky and Sankey, a type of entanglement. He stands stiffly with his hands at his sides and his head fallen back, while the sky rolls out its secret messages for him to translate. It is a grave responsibility, this. It is not a lark or a lampoonery; it is not for Perfect or the others. It is for him, Charles. Poor young Charles, whose mother is with the angels. And what a good boy he is in truth. He shall be rewarded in heaven, yes he will. It is for he, Charles Sankey, an ordinary man to all intents and purposes, for whom an extraordinary task lies ahead. It is for him and him alone. Sankey is not ashamed to note that he has moved himself to tears.

  He has a way of knocking. You know it's him. Walter waits until his mother has moved into the kitchen before he opens the door.

  'The Virgin is here. Lord have mercy upon us.' Sankey says, matter-of-factly.

  'Who is it?' Mrs Brown calls.

  Sankey stands in a haze of dust. Mayflies bounce around his head.

  'I am cleansed,' he says. 'She is come, Walter.'

  Walter replies, You don't look well, Sank.' He realises, as he says it, that it is a dampening thing to say, a bucket of cold water over his friend's newly arrived Virgin. But Sankey continues brightly, unaffected.

  'A vivid light brought her, Walt. White as the light of Heaven. You cannot look directly in actual fact. Like this it is.' And Sankey screws up his eyes, throws up his arms and twists away to demonstrate brightness, it will blind you, you see, if you look directly at it. You must look to one side, this way.'