by Mick Jackson
Having Sylvia Crouch stroll by was an absolute godsend. In an ideal world, he thought as he went after her, she’d be without the baby. His jackpot would be her going all the way down to the river, stripping off and having a dip, but he’d happily settle for her dropping her drawers to take a pee. That would keep him going right through the year.
Along the way several hedges had to be negotiated and twice Howard had to jump down into the lane, sneak along behind her and find his way back into the field. Sylvia seemed to know exactly where she was going—went down to the bridge, turned left onto what had been the perimeter road and carried along it for half a mile before suddenly stopping. By the time Howard caught her up, the baby was in her arms and she was rooting around under its blankets. The baby looked over her shoulder right at Howard. When it went back into its pram Sylvia was holding a package. She crossed the lane and tucked it in the hedge behind a milestone, turned the pram around and set off home.
As soon as she was out of sight Howard climbed down into the lane and tiptoed over. Picked out the package and pulled the string away. There was a folded workshirt, an old pair of moleskin trousers and some food wrapped up in newspaper. He stood and stared at them for quite a while before the penny dropped, then suddenly felt affronted. Felt a wonderful rage stir in him. And he pulled the string back around the package, put it back in the bushes and went back to his hiding place.
It was a while before anything happened—enough time for him to imagine every degenerate act the deserter and Sylvia Crouch had been getting up to—to imagine Sylvia with her skirt rucked up around her waist and the soldier pounding away on top of her. To feel the humiliation burn right into his soul.
When the stay-behind finally appeared Howard wanted to jump right out on him. There wasn’t much meat on the fellow and Howard wondered what on earth Sylvia could see in him. He crept along the road as if the slightest sound might scare him away. But Howard sat tight. Watched him pick out the package. Watched him open it up. And when the stay-behind turned and set off back to the gate Howard paused before going after him, telling himself that there was no hurry—no hurry at all.
It was to their lasting regret that the Five Boys hadn’t been around to see the rats being doused in paraffin and set alight. The first they heard about it was Mrs. Heaney saying how she had been out at a cousin’s at Duncannon when so much smoke came billowing down the valley that they had to bring her washing in.
The Boys hiked back out to Steere’s farm the next morning, but there was nothing left but a patch of scorched earth with a fringe of blackened grass, and when they finally managed to track down Steere in one of his sheds and pressed him for some details, he just carried on sawing and hammering and seemed not to want to talk about rats anymore.
The rats’ cremation turned out to be just the first in a season of bonfires. As usual, autumn’s debris had to be disposed of, as well as enough of the unbridled growth in the evacuated area for people to be able to get down the lanes, and for months it seemed as if the smell of wood smoke and burning bracken was always in the air.
But May’s was by far the largest bonfire—the one which drew the biggest audience and kept going deepest into the night—when the war, or at least Europe’s part in it, came to an end. The wood was gathered in a single morning and for a few hours it stood up on the hill like some primitive monument. Fallen timber, rotten fence posts and broken furniture were ail heaved up to it, as if the bigger the bonfire the quicker the dark days of the war would be erased.
At five o’clock the Reverend Bentley lit a creosote-soaked rag at the end of a stick and, like an arthritic St. George, jabbed it into the straw at the base. Within minutes the wood was alive. It spat and crackled and the hills beyond shimmered in its liquid heat. Around six o’clock some crates of beer arrived. Five minutes later everyone was singing. And as he stood and stared into the raw heat Lewis felt his mother slip her arm around him and pull him toward her, which he couldn’t remember her having done before.
When Howard Kent and Dexter Fadden swung an old armchair onto the fire an hour or so later it let out a tremendous roar and sent up a great rolling ball of amber sparks. The villagers were mesmerized by the fire—could feel its heat gently beat their cheeks. The Boys weren’t sure that ending the war was such a good idea. Howard Kent had no doubt. He saw his little dynasty collapsing around him. In no time at all the village would be overrun with returning soldiers and their tales of heroism. And even the women secretly wondered whether this meant that the world was going to be turned on its head again.
As darkness fell the other bonfires became visible—one over the river at Bovey Tracy, another near Totnes and a couple out toward the moor. The church bells had been ringing all day in all the villages but seemed to grow stronger in the dark—to carry farther. They rolled down the valley as if a dam had finally broken and all the war’s unrung changes had come tumbling out.
Queen’s Peal
JEM HATHERSAGE looked as if he’d just taken a bite out of something bitter.
“It doesn’t sound right without the six,” he said.
The bell ringers stood in a circle and steadied the ropes which kinked and buckled above them. They hadn’t been touched since ‘39 and the first round that night had brought down five fine columns of dust. Alec Bream had suggested they grease the stock heads, but no one could face the climb.
“Howard,” said Arthur Noyce. “You’re pushing on too hard.”
Howard shook his head.
“You are,” said Lester Massie. “You work that number five any fucking harder and she’ll pull you up through the belfry fucking floor.”
Howard glared at him but didn’t say anything.
“Are we going again?” said Alec Bream.
“Call it,” said Lester.
“All right,” said Alec. “And Howard, hold off a bit.”
“And quit sulking,” said Lester Massie.
Alec reached up and took a hold. “Look to …” he called out.
The other four raised their arms.
“… Treble’s going …”
Alec tugged at his rope, which dipped a couple of inches, then flew back through his fingers, yards at a time.
“… She’s gone,” he called out.
The men heaved on their ropes, one after another. A moment later the bells sounded above.
“Two to three,” shouted Alec. “Lester, wake up.”
The bells roared—cascaded out into the village—and for a while the men just stood and worked the ropes.
“That’s better,” said Alec. “Four to five.”
Lester Massie was looking at his neighbor’s feet. “Howard,” he said, and heaved on his rope. “Where’d you get the boots?”
Howard shrugged. “Totnes,” he said.
“Two to five,” said Alec.
Jem Hathersage looked over. “Them aren’t civvy boots,” he said.
“Two,” said Alec Bream, “closer on your backstroke. Follow five.”
“Them’s Army Issue,” said Jem.
“One to three,” said Alec.
“I’m lost,” said Arthur Noyce.
“I told you,” said Jem Hathersage. “We’re missing the six.”
The bells turned on their frame up in the belfry like a medieval engine. The ropes wound the great wheels and the bells emptied their sound on the Boys below. They lay facedown between the joists. They were wearing their balaclavas and had their hands clamped over their ears but could feel every muscle in their bodies being pummeled—could feel their lungs having trouble taking air in.
“This is what it must have been like in the trenches,” thought Lewis.
The Boys had been prepared for the pandemonium. It was the sheer brutality of the bells threshing the air which took them by surprise. They lay on the dusty floor for what felt like an eternity with them slicing around them and their bones jangling, until one of the men below finally barked out some instruction and the bells came to rest.
; The ringing stopped, but the sound took its time dispersing. The air was thick with it. Still groggy, the Boys shifted until they could squint between the floorboards at the five men below, rolling cigarettes. One was making some notes on a scrap of paper.
Lewis put his mouth up to Finn’s ear. “Which is which?” he said.
A few days earlier there had been a knock at the door and Finn’s mother had got up to go and answer it. A moment or two later she had let out a terrible scream. Finn ran into the hall. Found some stranger apparently trying to strangle her and he was still trying to work out what to do when she finally managed to wrench herself free.
“Your daddy’s home,” she said.
No amount of bunting or bonfires could have prepared Finn for the upheaval which followed. It was as if they had taken a lodger in. Some stranger with big boots who liked to talk and smoke and sit by the fireside. A man toward whom the whole domestic world had turned. The dinner table was suddenly crowded, the conversation seemed to keep Finn out. Bedtimes, mealtimes, even seating arrangements were all suddenly negotiable—all subject to change.
It wasn’t that Finn had no recollection of the man in the armchair. It was just that the memories, when they came to him, were so fleeting they might as well have belonged to somebody else.
Finn and Lewis continued to peer between the floorboards.
“Are you sure that’s mine,” said Lewis, “with the notebook?”
“I think so,” said Finn.
Lewis looked down, as if beholding mankind from some celestial platform.
“He’s almost bald,” he said.
The men returned to their ropes, the Boys took cover and the bombardment started up again, but within a couple of minutes the bells clashed, clattered to a standstill and the Boys could hear the men arguing about who was to blame. One of the fathers suggested having one last go, to see if they could get it right, another suggested calling it a day and having a drink, and in no time at all they were collecting their coats and jackets and heading for the door.
The lights went out and the Boys listened to the voices retreating. Listened to the footsteps on the path. They waited another minute, then crept down the tower’s stone steps and stood and brushed the dust off their jackets. Then they looked around the ringing chamber, which was still sweet with cigarette smoke, to see if their fathers had left anything interesting behind.
“They really hate Howard Kent, don’t they?” said Harvey.
“Everyone hates Howard Kent,” Hector said.
Aldred found the scrap of paper which the men had been studying and held it up to the moonlight …
It looked like a list of coordinates—or a series of sums capable of taxing old Foghorn herself. The other Boys had a glance at it, then carried on looking around. But Aldred wanted to know why these particular numbers were so important, so he slipped the piece of paper into his pocket and vowed to try and make some sense of them later on.
The Arrival of the Bee King
THERE WAS NO warning of the coming of the Bee King. No one saw a pantechnicon pull up outside Askew Cottage or any boxes being carried in. Yet, between the village retiring on the evening of Good Friday and rising the following day, he somehow managed to insinuate himself so successfully into the fabric of the village that when Mrs. Heaney went by just after nine o’clock, having overslept for the first time in eleven years, she walked straight past and was picking up speed on the high street before some barely conscious cogitation ran its course, jammed her brakes on and threw her trip to the post office into reverse.
The cottage had been empty for over a year and Mrs. Heaney had certainly heard nothing of anyone moving in, but when she retraced her steps and stood outside the cottage’s bay window she had confirmation of what she’d only glimpsed a minute before. A smartly dressed fellow was busy opening a tea chest, and as she waited Mrs. Heaney transferred her purse from one hand to the other so that she’d be able to wave at him when she finally caught his eye.
She must have waited in the lane for a full five minutes without him once looking up from his unpacking, but when she finally gave up and went on her way she discovered that the whole village was behind with its chores. The vicarage curtains were still pulled to. The Captain’s arm-chair was empty. The only life in the high street was the fallen plum blossom as it gently turned and shifted in the breeze.
The door to the post office had a habit of sticking, so Mrs. Heaney threw her little shoulder against it, only to bounce back off it, and bounced off it twice more before it occurred to her that it might, in fact, be locked. She looked at her wristwatch. Tapped it. Brought it up to her ear and listened. Took a couple of steps back until the clock on the church came into view. The clock and her watch both insisted that it was ten past nine, but the state of the village seemed to contradict it and Mrs. Heaney suddenly felt most peculiar, as if finding herself in a dream from which she could not wake.
She gripped the wall to steady herself. Her heart was pounding. Her vision seemed to come and go. And who knows how long that little episode might have lasted had Miss Pye not interrupted it by opening a window just below the gables and thrusting her huge chest out into the day.
She scratched the back of her neck. Squinted up the lane, then down at Mrs. Heaney.
“Are you early or am I late?” she said.
None of the customers that morning knew anything about any new tenants, but having heard all the speculation at the post office few could resist taking a more circuitous route home to take a look. One or two managed to catch a glimpse of the fellow without actually managing to provoke any sort of response, but when Howard Kent marched up to the cottage just after lunchtime and put his nose up to the window he could clearly see him standing on a stepladder, fixing a pair of curtains to a rail at the back of the room. Howard understood what was being asked of him.He straightened his collar and glanced back down the lane. A dozen other villagers were hanging around the corner.
“Ask him if he’s working for the estate,” hissed Miss Pye.
Howard had once accompanied his father on a similar mission, when, under the pretext of welcoming a young couple to the village the old man had quickly established how long the two of them had been married, where they came from and when they intended returning, as well as giving them a good idea of the sort of behavior expected of them in the interim.
Howard wanted to prove himself to be his father’s son. When the door opened, he thought, he would hold out his right hand. “Howard Kent,” he would say, “pleased to meet you,” obliging the newcomer to do the same. He took a deep breath, knocked and waited. “Pleased to meet you,” he whispered. Imagined the handshake. “Howard Kent. Very pleased to meet you indeed.”
The door seemed to have no intention of opening. Howard decided to knock again. It was only when he stepped back a few moments later to shrug his shoulders at the others that he saw the figure standing in the window, watching, and like Mrs. Heaney’s frustrated wave before it, felt his handshake wither and die at his side.
“Howard Kent,” he announced, trying to think on his feet. “I would just like to …”
The man in the bay window cupped a hand to his ear and shook his head. Howard had to start again.
“The name’s Kent,” he said. “Howard Kent,” and this, at least, seemed to penetrate the glass.
“And I’m just calling … to welcome you to the village …”, he said, then petered out.
The bridge between welcoming the stranger and extracting some personal information had somehow got washed away. Howard couldn’t work out how that had happened and when he looked back at the window the man was gone. He turned to face the door and straightened his collar again, but the longer he waited the better he appreciated how the meeting was at an end.
The walk back down the lane to the other villagers was deeply uncomfortable. They were all eager to hear how he had got on. Miss Pye had closed the post office early.
“What’s he up to?” she said.
His neighbors stood and watched him march down the high street.
“What do you make of that?” said Mrs. Heaney.
Miss Pye folded her arms under her bosom and shook her head.
“Spurned,” she said.
The Bee King’s performance the following day more than compensated for Howard’s failure. The newcomer’s absence in the pews had been widely noted and once the week’s devotional duties were out of the way the villagers gathered in the churchyard, where speculation about the fellow continued apace.
The Reverend Bentley stood and nodded by the door as the last of the congregation filed out into the sunshine and was already looking forward to his Sunday roast when a metallic clatter came down the lane and extinguished every conversation in its way.
The worshippers turned and saw the Bee King striding down the lane toward them, a metal spoon in one hand furiously rattling the saucepan in the other. He had his head held high but wasn’t hanging about. He looked like a drummer who had become separated from the rest of a marching band. This, at least, was how the Reverend Bentley saw it. Miss Pye saw only a madman banging a saucepan on Easter Day. But whatever they made of him, the villagers all found themselves drawn across the graveyard to try and get a better view.
Over the years Mr. Mercer had come to appreciate how a congregation liked something a little uplifting to help them to their feet and accompany them to the door, and as they left the church this morning Aldred pumped out Mr. Mercer’s gallant attempt at “For All the Saints, Who from Their Labors Rest.” When the organist lifted his fingers from the final chord the echoes multiplied in the rafters until they were soaked up by the stone. He pushed the stops back in, got to his feet and took Aldred’s shoulder, but when they opened the back door found their way blocked by the selfsame worshippers they’d just cleared from the pews.
