This Green and Pleasant Land

by Ayisha Malik

  Please regard this as my polite but firm refusal of your request. My bush will stay exactly as it is and the issues caused to drivers can be taken up with the Queen for all I care – I can’t imagine she has much else to do. Should any of the village folk impinge on my private property, let it be known that though I am old, I’m happy to become acquainted with the process of pressing charges. In fact, it would be a welcome excuse to fill the time I’d otherwise spend trimming my bush.

  If you could excuse me now I must tend to my dogs, who are, I am pleased to say, in excellent health.

  Your most humble servant,

  Tom

  If Shelley had loved her beagle, Holly, any less, she might have accidentally ripped off her fur while stroking her.

  ‘It’s typical,’ she exclaimed to her husband of forty listless years.

  ‘Hmm,’ he grunted.

  ‘That man’s always thought himself above us all, with his quips.’

  Shelley got up, pausing to let her knees adjust to the movement, patting the lace throw over the floral sofa harder than necessary.

  ‘And it’s not as if I never tried. But would he have my help when that Isabelle abandoned her family? Awful woman. To suggest that I was the reason she left. Me and my so-called accusations. I’ll tell you, they’re only accusations when they’re not true.’

  Arthur increased the television’s volume.

  ‘“Your most humble servant”? It’s enough to … to … well, just …’

  She grabbed the letter again, the edges of the paper crinkling in her sweaty palms. Shelley stalked up to Arthur and shoved the paper in his face.

  ‘Don’t you see?’

  He skimmed through the words that brought her blood – which usually simmered anyway – to a decided boil.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well,’ he replied, looking at the television screen again. ‘The Queen’s not going to care about the bush.’

  Shelley looked at Arthur – the head of whispy white hair, the dark eyebrows and Roman nose, thinking of the way he had once made the beats of her heart skip to a new tune. Now, here they were: his hand on the remote, watching the races, and hers on her skipped-out heart. The only comfort that Shelley felt in this ocean of disappointment and irritation was that her parents were too dead to say, I told you so.

  ‘Of course the Queen won’t care, Arthur. That’s not the point.’

  Holly rested her face on Arthur’s lap as he patted her head absentmindedly.

  ‘Then why should you? Oh, come on,’ exclaimed Arthur at the horses on the television.

  What Shelley had once viewed as charming unflappability, she now recognised as apathy and downright laziness.

  ‘This isn’t just about what I feel. This is about everyone in the village – all the lives it affects. Society is not made up of just looking after what you care about.’

  Which reminded her to call Guppy about St Swithun’s garden’s maintenance.

  ‘Hmm.’ Arthur leaned forward as his horse gained speed. ‘Yes, that’s it, girl.’

  Holly whined. Shelley would’ve done the same if she didn’t have more pride.

  ‘Oh, you bugger.’ He leaned back and looked at Holly. ‘I knew I should’ve gone with The Colonel. She looked like a winner, didn’t she, Hols?’

  ‘Don’t you care?’ said Shelley.

  ‘Leave Tom be, woman. His family’s been through enough.’

  ‘Arthur, I’m not heartless. I know full well what they’ve been through with Teddy – that’s what happens without a father figure, you know. Still, I’ll grant you, she was brave for bringing him up after getting herself into trouble.’ Shelley pursed her lips. It was a distasteful subject, after all. ‘I’m sorry for it, but God knows I’ve spoken enough about children having too much time on their hands – the devil makes work for those thumbs.’

  It had been a case of serious bad luck. Teddy’s anxiety medication had reacted with the MDMA he took, which cost him his life, and now the once full life of his mother. How, after all, was Anne ever to overcome the unique grief of losing one’s only child?

  There had been fervent debate in the village as to whether it had been an ‘accident.’ It wasn’t as if Teddy wasn’t perfectly intelligent enough to know his medication’s risks and side-effects. People were left to draw their own conclusions, and it suited them this way. Shelley shuddered to think of it. How many times had she warned those children about addiction? She should’ve given them more detentions, more direction. Isn’t that what people always needed? Even Gerald and Dan, who had been ‘clean’, so to speak, had to bear some of the responsibility for what happened to Teddy. Whether it had been intentional or not was beside the point – it didn’t change the outcome.

  It was Copperthwaite who’d telephoned to tell her, voice trembling, because he’d been at the hospital for an MRI. She’d asked for more detail but, unable to finish another sentence, he’d put the phone down. (Teddy, in Copperthwaite’s view, had been the only tolerable teenager in Babbel’s End.) Didn’t Arthur know that it had shaken Shelley? She had gone to her room and sat on the edge of her bed for a full three minutes, swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat, thinking about that poor Anne and the blows life had dealt her. Shelley had been headmistress to the boys for the majority of their secondary school lives until she’d retired. Teddy’s round face, when he was just twelve-years-old, had kept swimming before her. Then she had pulled herself together to do her duty and inform Richard. Shelley was a firm believer that sentiment should never eclipse responsibility.

  ‘But this letter isn’t a man grieving – it’s … it’s spiteful.’

  Arthur grunted. ‘Not like that’s new around here.’

  ‘Anne doesn’t act like this. She’s shut right into herself, and it’s a sad thing but sometimes it’s as if it was our fault that Teddy killed himself.’

  ‘Shelley,’ said Arthur. ‘No-one knows for sure if that’s what happened.’

  His voice was stern, his eyes still fixed on the television. There was no more conversation to be had with this man.

  Shelley went to their bedroom, scrutinising the letter and thinking that it would take just one more problem in her life to push her over the edge.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  Anne folded her arms, the door closed behind her. Richard had expected as much when he parked outside her house on Whitbury Crescent – one of five houses in a small enclave on the other side of St Paul’s church. He made a mental note to himself to fix the wooden gate that scraped the ground. He was no fool – whatever people thought his belief in God made him – he had asked himself if his excess interest in Anne’s life was more than holy and he affirmed to himself that it was not. They’d been friends, after all. But conviction was always easier to believe when unchallenged.

  ‘I wanted to see how you were doing,’ said Richard.

  ‘At least you’re not in your costume,’ she replied, casting her eyes over his lack of a white collar.

  She had her hair back in a pony tail, as usual, wearing jeans and an open shirt with little birds on it. Anne, tall with a broad frame, seemed impervious in both look and manner. She’d never been a slim girl growing up, and years of being called fat in school hadn’t scarred her. She refused to make jokes about her shapely hips, nor had it led to an obsession with her weight. Rather, as she’d shared with him in one of their long chats – before – it taught her how to hold herself in the face of criticism, also helpfully imbuing her with empathy and kindness. It was the spirit of resistance that Richard admired, though sometimes Anne’s certainty of self made Richard second-guess himself.

  ‘Thought I’d have more chance of being invited in for tea.’

  Anne took a deep breath and opened the door as Richard followed her through the familiar narrow passage. It was a small space, the kitchen visible from the dining area that was also connected to the living room, and the light wasn’t brilliant. The kitchen seemed rather too tidy – was she eating proper
ly?

  ‘I just saw Gerald at the gym,’ he said.

  Anne sat down, hugging her shirt to her. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Feels more than he says, I’m pretty sure.’

  She looked at her lap. ‘I suppose you were preparing for your sermon?’

  When he had told her, years ago, that his best sermons came to him when he was on the treadmill, she had laughed and said: ‘A spiritual leader, running on the spot?’

  ‘Sometimes we’re already where we need to be,’ Richard had replied.

  ‘The treadmill seems too much like punishment. What are you atoning for?’ She had squinted, mocking him in that playful manner that never seemed to cause anyone offence. ‘Open skies and on the road is how any normal person should run.’ A small dimple had appeared on her cheek as she smiled.

  Richard couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Anne smile, but he knew it couldn’t have been in the past nine months. It was only now that he appreciated the rarity of fluid conversation – perfect, surprising responses, which activated the better part of his mind. He clasped his hands together and leaned forward.

  ‘My sermons aren’t as forthcoming nowadays,’ Richard replied.

  ‘Existential crisis?’

  ‘Some sort of crisis.’ He paused. ‘I don’t suppose Tom’s relented about this bush business?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him.’

  ‘I saw him on the way to check on Mrs Jones’s grandfather.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He stuck his finger up at me.’

  ‘Well … that’s my dad.’

  ‘He did it in such a charming way I almost didn’t mind.’

  Richard thought he saw a hint of a smile.

  Tom’s particular charm stemmed from his short-lived marriage. His wife, Isabelle, had been a ‘free-spirit’, as Shelley called her with the raise of an eyebrow. Isabelle’s uninhibited laughter, along with her cascading blonde hair and large blue eyes, endeared her both to her students (she and Shelley had taught together their very first year), and their fathers alike. Shelley had been raised on the virtue of inhibition and so she might’ve suggested, to more than one villager at the time, that Isabelle’s coquettish tone, and the touching of a student’s father’s arm, had rattled and, ultimately, broken a marriage or two. Anne had once told Richard, over tea on a cold winter evening, that Tom – between laying bricks for big houses in which other people would live – would leap to his wife’s defence. When Isabelle fell pregnant with Anne, she’d felt the power of her seductions wane. She witnessed Tom’s own spirit bind itself to their daughter in the three-bedroom home he had built for his family. This shift in adoration irritated Isabelle. And if there was one emotion she apparently couldn’t abide, Anne had said, it was irritation. So, she decided it was time to untie the thread of matrimony and motherhood that kept her tethered to Babbel’s End and left a five-line note:

  Darling Tom,

  I’m sure I still love you, but God, this place is a bore. I’m going to India, though our hearts will always be entwined. I do hope Anne loses that sour look of hers when she grows up. Don’t forget to water the daisies.

  Love, Bella

  Tom had kept that note in a drawer on his bedside table, next to the pills he took for his ailing heart. The letter was worn and thinned, some of the writing barely legible after years of him re-reading it every night. He was a man who had mistaken the eye of a storm for a whirlwind romance.

  Tom’s foul mood, it was widely acknowledged, had started on the day Isabelle left that note, and it hadn’t ceased since. Except with Anne. Tom would cease everything for Anne.

  ‘He doesn’t like many people,’ said Anne. ‘And nowadays people of God are at the top of his list.’

  Richard nodded. ‘I suppose they would be. We all need someone to be accountable at times like these.’

  ‘As if you’d know anything about “times like these”.’

  Richard met her gaze and shook his head. ‘No. Of course not.’

  He knew there was no shortcut out of grief, and you never got to the other side anyway. It had to be felt and then, slowly, a person would learn to manage it so that their life could run side-by-side with it.

  ‘Have you spoken to Mariam lately?’ he asked.

  Anne paused. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Right.’

  The vacancy in Anne’s gaze bothered Richard. There must be a way to reignite a spark. He’d hoped that Mariam would help somehow along the way. All he knew was that the two friends had quickly drifted apart after Teddy’s death.

  ‘I thought she might’ve told you about …’ Richard stopped.

  ‘What?’ asked Anne.

  His attempts to help were making him indiscreet.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  And there was Anne’s retreat.

  ‘Just Bill’s new grave escapade,’ he added.

  ‘His what?’

  ‘Not that it’s an escapade,’ said Richard.

  His words were coming out all wrong. He tried to measure them as he gave Anne the details of what some might call Bilal’s meltdown.

  ‘An actual grave?’ she asked, eyes glinting with curiosity. It was a hopeful sight.

  ‘Well, just a hole in the ground if you think about it but … really, I’ve never heard anything like it.’

  ‘How deep is it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I mean,’ she said, her words coming out slower, ‘is he lying in it regularly?’

  ‘I think so,’ replied Richard, surprised at Anne’s sudden interest.

  She looked at the ground, her eyes rounder and greyer, seeming to consider something. ‘What does he say about it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She paused. ‘Why does he do it?’

  ‘It’s something his mum used to do. She had preoccupations with death and what it means for life.’

  Anne rested her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands together. It was the most animated Richard had seen her in months.

  ‘So now he does too?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s trying to understand things.’ Richard paused. ‘I suppose he’s trying to be closer to her. Grief can have many manifestations.’

  Anne stared at him, giving a wry laugh.

  ‘How does it feel? To be able to give vague philosophical answers to things that happen in real life? Tragic things?’

  Richard wanted to comfort her, but he knew she’d keep pushing him away. He looked out of the window at the sky that was teeming with a flock of birds. Anne turned towards the perfect v-shaped formation too. They had the right idea, thought Richard.

  ‘No-one has answers to things like this,’ he said. ‘We just make do with whatever we can to try and understand it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t. I don’t understand it at all.’ Her voice was suddenly sharp. ‘It’s like I’m waiting for some kind of miracle. Either for him to come back – as if the whole thing was an elaborate, horrifying joke – or to just move on from this feeling that nothing makes sense. Can your God give me that? Can he give me a miracle?’

  Richard paused. He knew the answers he had weren’t the ones she’d want to hear.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The real miracle are those birds, flocking together; us sitting here, being able to speak to one another.’ He looked outside the window again. ‘This world. It’s all a miracle, don’t you think?’

  She’d stopped listening. It was too much: birds flocking together – a miracle? What comfort is that to a mother of a dead child? Sometimes he wished he’d keep his thoughts to himself. He tried to change the subject, ask her questions, but he’d lost her. Much like he seemed to have lost the ability to inspire people to faith. He had to reconcile himself to the fact that we no longer lived in an age of wonderment.

  Even his own wonderment might be suffering from a rapid decline.

  ‘I AM GOING TO BUILD a mosque.’

  Bilal swallowed hard as he looked at himself in the mirror. He breathed in, wo
ndering when he’d produced a paunch for a stomach.

  ‘Firm. Resolute,’ he added to himself, approving of the charcoal grey suit he’d decided to wear. The tailoring of a man’s suit said something about where he was in life.

  He’d done the proper thing and had waited for his conviction to wane. Unfortunately, with each day his need to tell Babbel’s End that he wanted to build a mosque had only expanded. Tonight this conviction was taking him to the council meeting. There was no accounting for feelings when they took a hold, except for the general rule that they strengthened in the face of opposition.

  Bilal had expected a different reaction from Richard. A part of him wanted his friend to tell him it was a brilliant idea, just what the village needed – a symbol of how far we’d come as a country.

  ‘Where are my long johns?’ asked Bilal, coming into the living room where Mariam was tapping away at her laptop as usual, and Khala Rukhsana was sitting on the sofa with her rosary beads. She’d been here a month now and had said nothing about being ready to go back, although he couldn’t deny that there was something comforting about her presence. The same couldn’t be said about the whistle around her neck, which she refused to take off in case she needed to whistle for help. Some fears you just couldn’t rationalise.

  ‘They’re your long johns,’ Mariam replied without looking up.

  Bilal hadn’t told Mariam what he was about to do. Her questions would make him tense and confuse him, but they’d force him towards rationality, which was usually a good thing.

  Not today, though.

  Bilal approached the village hall and got out of the car, his heart thudding. He reminded himself that he was wearing a suit and must act like it.

  He walked into the hall with its high ceiling, chipped yellow paint and wooden floor. The back of the hall was empty, bar a small stage with equipment that had been covered in a white sheet. The windows were all open, letting in the fresh, late summer breeze as Harry and Bilal sat in the seats set out for the public. Shelley and Jenny – no sign of Copperthwaite, on account of a chest infection – also took theirs at the rectangular tables in front. Jenny looked around, smiling and chatting to people, while Shelley surveyed the audience she liked to keep captive.