Sacred Country

by Rose Tremain

  Mrs Riveaux’s coffin was ebony. It looked large to me so I think she must have been tall. There was a ton of flowers.

  I had to go and buy a suit for the funeral and I bought a black leather tie on a string. Bentwater wore lizard boots but I just wore some plain shoes.

  The Reverend talked about the good woman Mrs Riveaux had been while she was alive and how she and the Judge loved all living creatures, including the negroes and the poor and the hogs in the field. He made her sound like a female Jesus. He said the Riveaux farm was a place of beauty in a devastated world.

  Bent introduced me as his new singing partner. He wasn’t going to mention the agent business in front of a funeral congregation. He said I’d come all the way from Suffolk, England, because of my love of song.

  I played the guitar and Bent played the mandolin. We led the hymns. The mourners sang loud, as if they all belonged to the Sally Ann.

  Then we did two songs composed by Bent that were Mrs Riveaux’s favourites. We’d worked out some lovely harmonies. And I could see lots of the mourners crying. The titles of Bent’s numbers were ‘Bird in the Sky’ and ‘Down in My Yard There’s a Creek that Flows to Heaven’.

  We didn’t go to the burial. That was a private thing, under a magnolia. But before we left, the Judge came and shook my hand. He said: ‘Welcome to Tennessee. I’ll say prayers for your success in your chosen task.’ I thought the word ‘task’ was a bit peculiar, but I expect you remember that lots of words here have different meanings from the ones we’re used to giving them.

  By the time of Mrs Riveaux’s funeral, Walter’s repertory of songs for the demo tape was almost complete. He saved every cent he could save from his yard work for the day when he and Bent would hire session musicians and studio time and cut the tape. He thought of this day as a boulder. He was in a cave (quite an enjoyable cave where it was warm in winter) and the boulder was lying across the exit. It didn’t fit exactly. You could see light around it and weather. You could hear storms.

  He described the boulder to Audrey Pike. He said: ‘I’ve got my eye on it most of the time.’

  She said: ‘All I wish is, Walter, that you weren’t putting your trust in Bentwater Bliss.’

  He had to shrug this off. No one had trusted Pete Loomis except him. And Bentwater had become his mentor and guide. Without him and all the hours spent in the motor home he could have lost direction by now. He could have resigned himself to a life spent raking leaves.

  And then Bentwater made something else happen. It happened in one afternoon, a Friday. After it, Walter’s eye was only on the boulder some of the time and all the rest of the time it was elsewhere and blinking with fright and joy.

  They were backstage at the Ryman Auditorium, among the ropes and pulleys and sandbags that raised and lowered the advertising hoardings, behind the ragged blue and gold curtains.

  Bentwater had a single slot in the Grand Ole Opry line-up that night and he was here to rehearse. He was describing the origins of the Ryman to Walter. He said: ‘This is hallowed ground, Walt. In more ways than one. It was once a Gospel tabernacle where all the travelling evangelists came and preached. Now it’s the Mecca of Country Music. It’s where stars are made: Roy Acuff, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow, Hank Williams, Minnie Pearl, Johnny Cash … you name it. Elvis sang on this stage in ’54. The temperature here can go as high as 101 degrees. It’s holy air. Can you feel it? And these are its last days. The whole shooting match is moving to a new concert hall called Opryland.’

  Walter stared up at the advertisements for ‘Union 76 Gas’ and ‘Goo-Goo Clusters’ and the ‘National Life and Accident Insurance Company’, then out at the wooden seats like pews and the stained-glass windows above. He was about to say that he could definitely feel the holiness of the air when a thin girl in a skimpy sweater and skirt and high-heeled shoes came up to Bentwater and took his arm and said: ‘Hi, Bent. How y’all doing?’

  Bentwater gave the girl a kiss. She wore dark lipstick. Her brown hair was tied up in a bundle on the top of her head. Her face was long and pale. Walter stared at her and thought, she looks tired; she looks in need of someone.

  ‘I was tellin’ Walter about the history of this place,’ said Bentwater. ‘Walter’s from England.’

  ‘Well,’ said the girl, ‘I declare.’

  Walter held out his hand. The girl shook it lightly, hardly touching it.

  ‘This is Skippy Jean Maguire,’ said Bentwater. ‘She’s been a backup singer on the Opry for a few years now. You can sing any darn song you like, Walter, and Skippy Jean will find the harmony to it. And she’s self-taught. Can’t read a note-a music!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Skippy Jean. ‘Music sheets, they might as well be in Japanese. You a singer then, Walter?’

  ‘Trying to be one,’ said Walter. ‘Going to be one.’

  ‘He is a singer,’ said Bentwater. ‘He sang with me at Miz Riveaux’s funeral and we had all the whole church weepin’. And now we’re going to cut a demo. Yore looking at a future star, Skippy Jean.’

  ‘That right?’ she said. This was a kind of question but the way she said it made it sound like an answer to something.

  Walter said: ‘Bent’s going to be my agent.’

  Skippy Jean dug Bentwater in his gut. ‘Sweet Jesus!’ she said, ‘you mean you trust him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walter.

  ‘Hell,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t trust Bentwater Bliss further’n I could spit. You better get someone to watch over you, honey. Or you’ll be sleepin’ on First Avenue.’

  Walter took out a packet of chewing gum from his jacket pocket and offered Skippy Jean a piece. ‘You can watch over me,’ he said, ‘if you like.’

  She stared at him. Bentwater stared at him. The thing he’d just said had sounded like a declaration of love. He should have felt embarrassed but he didn’t. Skippy Jean took the piece of gum.

  He watched her all evening.

  There were three backup singers – two girls and one man. They sat on high stools near the microphones, waiting for their moments. They sang as if singing were breathing, as if they did it in their sleep. They put their three heads in a cluster. Walter kept thinking, I wish my head was part of the cluster, close to hers.

  Bentwater sang ‘Bird in the Sky’. Skippy Jean and the other backers sang a better, sweeter harmony than Walter had achieved at the funeral.

  At the end of the night, late, they went with a crowd to Fay May’s and Bentwater and Walter went with them. It was then that Walter realised he hadn’t had his eyes on the boulder for hours.

  He sat next to Skippy Jean. She chain-smoked. He breathed in her perfume and her smoke.

  He reminded himself how hopeless the passions of his past had been. Then he told himself that his particular past was further away than most people’s. He’d cut it adrift by coming to America. It was a speck on the horizon, receding and receding. Soon, it would plummet out of sight and out of mind.

  He bought drinks for her. She held her glass in both hands, like a child.

  He said: ‘Are you married to anybody?’

  She didn’t answer this. She put down her drink and smiled at him. One of her false eyelashes had come unstuck at its corner.

  She said: ‘The way you make the language sound, Walter, that sheerly mesmerises me.’

  Heartless River

  Timmy graduated from Teviotts College. He could feel the Hebrew that he’d struggled with for so long already leaving his mind. His head ached, trying to retrieve it. Then he let it go.

  He asked himself and he asked Pearl where lost knowledge went. Did it hang in the air, like a cloud of flies, waiting to be rediscovered?

  Pearl said: ‘Tim, your head’s full of unverifiable things. It’s lucky my field is Biology, isn’t it?’

  David Tate was moved by the sight of Timmy in his curate’s black. He put both his hands on Timmy’s head and said a blessing. Privately, he asked God to protect Timothy from malice.

&n
bsp; Timmy’s curateship was in Shropshire, not far from the Welsh border. Pearl and Timmy would live in a slate-roofed bungalow. It had a garden of cabbages. There were two bedrooms in it, one for them and one for the baby Pearl was expecting in the winter. The names they’d chosen for the child were David and Sophie.

  The church was called St Swithin’s. It shared a valley with three sheep farms and two hundred houses and a municipal swimming pool. When Timmy saw that a pool was right there at the foot of the grassy hills he thought, the 90° angle is now a 180° angle. The horizontal line is the earth, the perfect dome is the sky.

  They came to Swaithey for a few days, to say goodbye. They didn’t stay at the farm. Pearl wanted to sit with Irene, arm in arm and warm and cosy and talk about the baby. Billy knelt at Pearl’s feet and laid his head on her abdomen, listening for signs of life. Edward went to the attic and brought down the crib that he’d made for Billy and gave it to Timmy. Everybody in the house felt comfortable and at peace.

  Timmy and Pearl went to the farm for one day.

  ‘One day,’ said Sonny. One solitary fucking day.’

  They sat in the living room with the TV turned down. The perm was growing out of Estelle’s hair. Half of it was straight again and half curly. Ava Gardner had never looked like this.

  It was harvest time, except that there was no harvest. In four fields there was the beet crop. What grew in all the rest were thistles and dock and ground elder and sweetbriar and horseradish and grass.

  ‘It’s still yours,’ said Sonny to Timmy. ‘You’ve neglected it and it’s all gone downhill, but it’s still yours. You and Pearl and the baby could live here. You could have our old room. We wouldn’t mind. We’d stay out of your way. You could have the run of the place …’

  ‘No,’ said Timmy.

  ‘This is your last chance,’ said Sonny.

  ‘You know we can’t,’ said Timmy.

  ‘What?’ said Sonny. ‘Speak up.’

  ‘We’re going to Shropshire. It’s all arranged.’

  ‘I’m telling you, this is your last chance. It’s good land underneath. Fewer stones than in the days of my father. This has been Ward land since before the first war.’

  ‘Don’t go on, Sonny,’ said Estelle.

  ‘I’m not going on. I’m just telling him this is his last chance.’

  Estelle said: ‘Lunch is ready.’

  They went into the kitchen. The dog lay under the table. It rested its head on Pearl’s white shoes.

  Estelle had cooked a frozen chicken, bought ready-dressed in a plastic bag from Grace Loomis’s ‘Frozen Convenience Meats’ counter. Estelle knew the chicken tasted of nothing. She preferred things to taste of nothing than to taste like they once had long ago. She said: ‘Convenience Meats may not have got as far as Shropshire yet, but they’ll get there in time, I expect.’

  Pearl said: ‘Shropshire’s a very beautiful county, did you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Estelle, ‘but it’s on the other side of England. When will I get to see my grandson?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Timmy.

  ‘As often as possible,’ said Pearl.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Estelle.

  ‘It means as often as we can,’ said Timmy. ‘We can’t be more precise about it than that.’

  ‘Nothing is precise,’ said Estelle. ‘That is what you can be precise about: nothing.’

  A silence fell. Pearl thought, this is how it always was here, how it always must have been, for Timmy and for Mary. It was always filled with this unendurable silence. All they could do was leave …

  Timmy and Pearl left soon after lunch. They drove away in Edward’s car.

  Estelle kissed them both and said goodbye. She said: ‘Look after each other, that’s the thing.’

  Sonny was silent. He just stared at them and nodded. Then, as they were getting into the car he said: ‘The room I sleep in would do as the baby’s room.’

  They didn’t hear this. They waved and smiled as they drove away.

  Estelle refused to remember the date of the thing that occurred next. She’d say: ‘I can’t be precise. Who can be?’

  It was after Timmy and Pearl had gone to Shropshire. Estelle was watching tennis the day it happened. She could have memorised the date from Wimbledon, but she refused to. She said to Sonny before he went out: ‘The American players never give up. They’re not like us. Billie Jean’s not going to give up, I can tell.’

  Sonny walked in the direction of the river. The dog, Wolf, was with him. He carried the small gun, a four-ten shotgun he used for shooting rabbits. Rabbits had been almost wiped out by man’s ingenuity once; then they returned. Men went on and on believing they were ahead of nature and nature outwitted them, on and on, over and over.

  It was a humid, sunless day. The cloud was like a suffocating rug thrown between the earth and the sky.

  Sonny didn’t know why he’d chosen the river, but when he got there he knew. Memory was in the river. And resolution.

  He squatted down. Squatting was uncomfortable at the age of fifty-six. He wished there was a stone to sit on. After squatting for a while, he let himself fall onto his knees.

  He was in the place where his father had made a willow plantation. There had been money in it then. You stuck in sticks of willow. You made sure the water was channelled to their feet. And the sticks took root and grew into little saplings that sprouted a head of willow wands. The wands were stripped and sold to thatchers and basket-makers. It was money from nothing.

  Everything in Sonny’s father’s life happened late, except death which happened early. He was already old when Sonny was a boy: an old man making his willow beds by the river and laughing and saying: ‘Money from nothing!’ But it wasn’t nothing. Gangs of boys had to strip the willow wands, using an awkward implement like a pair of blunt scissors, called a Brake. Sonny was part of the gang. They squatted in the field beside the heap of wands. The heap rose above their heads. Their task seemed to have no end. And Sonny’s father stood near them, gleeful and proud, with his back turned. He never understood how terrible their work was. ‘Money from nothing.’

  Sonny thought, what am I waiting for? What have I been waiting for all this time? Waiting for someone to say: ‘You worked hard with the Willow Brake, here is your reward and your rest.’ Waiting for someone to say: ‘You were saved from death on the Rhine to cultivate your land and now you can lie down and be at peace.’

  He was as still as stone, listening. In his father’s day, in his mother’s day, they used to speak about the music of the river. His mother came from a family of craftsmen. They made merry-go-rounds. They heard music where there was none. They were oblivious to the heartlessness of water and sky. They were fools.

  Sonny didn’t know how long he’d been kneeling there. His knees felt sucked into the earth. He thought, I’d better get on with it before my fucking knees start growing roots like the willow.

  He put a cartridge into the single-barrelled gun. He snapped it shut and took off the safety catch.

  He felt all around him for a stick or a twig to throw for the dog.

  He found something. It was a rusted piece of tin. It could have been the handle of an old bucket.

  Wolf sat at his side, scratching. He’d scratched a part of his flank raw.

  Sonny whistled. The dog’s ears went up. ‘Fetch!’ said Sonny and threw the bucket handle into the river.

  The dog went running after the thrown object. At the water’s edge he hesitated, as Sonny knew he would. Wolf wasn’t fond of the river.

  Sonny lifted the gun. He’d always liked this particular gun, its lightness and accuracy. He aimed at Wolf’s head, just above his leather collar. He fired and the dog fell. The body lay half in and half out of the river. Later, the force of the current would draw it down and in.

  Sonny could hear himself wheezing and gasping, even muttering or jabbering like an idiot. In the still and silent day the shot had been deafening.

  His ha
nds shook. He knew he had to hurry. If he didn’t hurry the thing wouldn’t be done. The pointless waiting would resume; the waiting that killed you in the end …

  He re-loaded the gun. He held it down at his side, pointing towards his head. He stuck the barrel in his coral ear and pulled the trigger.

  *

  Pete Loomis found Sonny’s body.

  He’d gone to the river to get watercress for Estelle. She used to gather it herself; now she barely went out of the house except, once in a while, to get drunk with Pete and to dance.

  Pete returned to the bus. He poured himself a slug of whisky and drank it down.

  He found a blanket. He returned to the river and covered Sonny’s dead body with this.

  He walked very slowly and carefully up to the farmhouse. As he approached, he could hear applause coming from the TV.

  He went into the sitting room. Estelle was kneeling in front of the television smiling. As soon as she saw Pete she said: ‘Billie Jean won! She was a set and a half down but she never gave up. We should be more like the Americans.’

  Pete said: ‘Yes.’

  Then he came and sat down clumsily by her on the floor and took her hand.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  1975

  Martin:

  Every morning, when I wake up, I forget where I am. I have to stare at the furniture until I remember.

  Coming here was Rob’s idea. He said: ‘Mart, I just thought of someone you know in a far-away place – that boy who went to Tennessee.’

  ‘Walter?’

  ‘Yes. Go there. He’ll need rescuing by now. And the American South still thinks it’s a country on its own. It’s one of the last imaginary places on earth.’

  I had the next bit of surgery, the hysterectomy. I lay in the hospital and wondered about the cost of moving from the known to the unknown. Sterns came to see me. I said: ‘Would Tennessee be an appropriate place?’ He said: ‘Anywhere is appropriate. Leaving England is what matters. Use the money you got from Miss McRae.’

  My address is 767 Greenwood Avenue, Nashville TN, 37212. I have Walter’s old room. Walter lives in a downtown apartment now and wears a rhinestone jacket, but that is a long sweet story …