The Hollow Land

by Jane Gardam

  Harry’s mother went to the door and coughed. Immediately in the opposite door across the passage stood the woman.

  “Oh—do you think we might have a little—jam?”

  “Jam?” said the woman. “Well—jam. I’ll have to go to my store cupboard.”

  “Oh please—” But too late.

  In time she arrived with delicious home-made blackcurrant. “That’s better,” said appalling Harry—who was always good—and dug deep down in it and got a fair dollop on the tablecloth and several smears about the hair and mouth. He met the bristle-lady’s glare with his clear eyes. In time once more, she went away.

  “We’d better go,” said Mrs. Bateman looking through the tight shut window at the standstill day. “Long walk home. And with eggs it will be slow.”

  The woman appeared with the tray of eggs and handed it to Harry. “Oh thank you so very much and the jam was lovely,” said his mother very courteously. “How much do we owe you?”

  “I can’t take pay on a Sunday,” said the woman. “You must come and bring the money tomorrow. We’re Chapel people here. I can only give you the eggs today. You must pay tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. Of course we’ll pay tomorrow when we return the tray. I’ll send some of the big boys on their bikes. You should—”

  “It is a sin to buy and sell on a Sunday.”

  “Yes. I see. Of course. And do tell me how much we should bring. And how much we owe you for the tea.”

  “For the tea?” The woman’s eyes pierced into Harry’s mother’s muddly kind face. “For the tea? I don’t take any money for teas. I’m a long way from needing to serve teas. The tea was a kindness.”

  Harry’s mother’s mouth fell open in shame (Oh the jam! She had asked for the jam. And it had been an invited tea!).

  Harry stretched up a hand to hold hers as they stood once more outside the front door.

  “By the by,” said the woman, “didn’t I see the lad had left his milk? Would you not like him to come back and finish the milk? Waste is a sin.”

  So Harry—who was always good—let go of his mother’s hand and put his own on the tray of eggs. Then he took his other hand off the handle of the tray of eggs. Then he turned the tray of eggs over and watched them drop to the ground. Thirty-six big fresh farm eggs. They splatted with thirty-six splats onto the white scrubbed stones. Every one of them broke and ran except for perhaps three or four and these Harry chased as they rolled and he jumped on them.

  Then he jumped and he stamped with his feet on all the eggs until his sandals were slidy and slimy and juicy yellow and left great sticky messes down the path.

  Far and away he ran, down the path, past the dog, out of the gate, down the lane. Down the lane to the three lane ends and his mother after him. “Harry!” she cried down the dark narrow flowery lane. No sign of him.

  Faster and faster she ran crying “Harry” at every bend; but every bend showed only the white ruts and the clutched fingers of the rose branches overhead and the red spikes of the nightshade laughing at her from the deep grass banks. She shot out of the lane onto Gypsies’ Hill. But the gypsies were gone.

  Their fire smoked white ash. There was a good deal of rubbish left. But the vans and cans and the pony and the line of washing might never have been. GYPSIES PROHIBITED spoke out from the post, and the gypsies were gone.

  And so was Harry.

  “Harry! Harry!” his mother shouted. He couldn’t have got this far so fast. She ran and ran—still no Harry. Past the pub and the cluster of houses and into Jingling Lane and still no Harry. Oh, she thought, Harry gagged and bound. Away with the gypsies. He loves gypsies. “Good day my lovely,” they’d said, and he’d waved and said hello.

  “HARRY,” she shrieked and ran down Jingling Lane and into the village lane and into the village, sure now that Harry’s short legs could not have got this far alone. “KIDNAPPED,” she shrieked at Jimmie Meccer, who blinked and pointed.

  For there he was—and so were the Teesdales and old Grandad Hewitson laughing, and Jimmie Meccer laughing, tottering and peeping from his shed, and the four proud upset hens putting their necks out of the hedge again and village people waking up as it grew cooler and looking out round curtains to see what the noise was about, and the blood-red lupins standing watching and Mrs. Teesdale in her sugar-pink holiday hat.

  As Mrs. Bateman puffed up, the car with the rest of the Batemans came over the bridge too and Harry rather tended to wander out of sight again when he saw his father coming.

  But somehow all was laughter.

  “You never—you never went asking favours at Blue Barns’,” said Mr. Teesdale. “Dearie me—it’s prayers only there on a Sunday. None the worse I dare say, but it’s not a place for jollifications.”

  “She was awful. She said she’d give us tea and then she wouldn’t let us pay. And she said she’d give us eggs but it was a sin if we paid before tomorrow. She just let us make mistakes. She watched us making mistakes. She enjoyed us making mistakes. Harry was dreadful. She brought out dreadful things in him. You’d not believe—I just don’t understand people up here.”

  “You understand us,” said Mrs. Teesdale, “and you’re coming in for a proper tea and some eggs in boxes.” Which they did, and the milk didn’t taste of meat and the butter wasn’t marg and there was the most tremendous lot to talk about.

  “Should we ask Jimmie Meccer in?” said Mr. Teesdale.

  “That we will not,” said his wife. “Letting them go asking favours of that witch.”

  “You’d best take a scrubbing brush with you,” said Mrs. Teesdale as they left, “unless you’ve got one up there at Light Trees. Harry’ll need it tomorrow when he goes back to scrub her path—though she’ll have done it by then herself of course.”

  “She will,” said Grandad Hewitson. “First stroke after Sunday midnight she’ll be out on her knees on them stones.”

  “How much for the eggs?” asked Mrs. Bateman.

  “Tell you later,” said Mrs. Teesdale.

  Back at Light Trees, late in the long light evening, Harry was singing happily on the horse rake and his parents were hanging over the sheep pens, watching the sun go down behind the Castle Farm below, where the Lord of the Marches must have seen it sometimes too, looking much as it did tonight, and said as they did, “What a day it has been—and I’d think it would be hot again tomorrow.” Perhaps the mother and child curled up under the bridge had sometimes said the same.

  “We saw the gypsies again today,” said Harry’s mother. “First they were there, then they were gone. Like magic. I think they put a spell on Harry. I’ve never known him so naughty. Or maybe it was that woman. Did you hear Mrs. Teesdale say she was a witch?”

  “Rubbish.”

  “She was funny about selling eggs. Very superstitious, that. Perhaps she is a witch after all.”

  “No different from Mrs. Teesdale. Didn’t you notice? She wouldn’t take money from you today either.”

  “She was different from Mrs. Teesdale. Mrs. Teesdale spares your blushes. And she makes you laugh. In her pink hat.”

  “The pink hat makes the difference? If the egg-witch woman had a pink hat . . . ?”

  “Let’s buy her one.”

  “She’d paint it black.”

  Harry behind them was content upon the horse rake. He swung it up high in the sky over the fells and looked down on the sleeping land. He droned happily to himself as he wheeled and swung high in the sky with the pale stars beginning to show. He wondered why they had had to go out visiting for tea when there was a horse rake and Light Trees to play in.

  SWEEP

  The chimney sweep, who also kept the fish and chip shop, had said that he would take the big London lads fishing one day and they had said thank you. Smashing. “Oh great,” they had said—and forgotten. They weren’t
prepared then on a dark wet August day for a knock on Light Trees’ ancient oak door and the sweep—Kendal was his name—to be standing there sopped through, with floods streaming from his hat and his arms full of rods.

  It was a day when great curtains of rain swept the fells and away and away stretched dismal wet hills. Every one of the London folk was still in bed with books and breakfast and the radio at nine o’clock. The little lad, Harry, was in bed with a Lego set and a gang of invisible friends. It was Harry who heard the sweep knock, the front door being under one of his bedroom windows.

  “Fishing,” Kendal called up to him, wet as a man under the sea.

  “Any chips?” asked Harry.

  “Haven’t caught any yet. Chips is hard to catch. And the opposite sort of an affair.”

  “Opposite?”

  “Aye—you throw chips in the deep end. Fish you fishes out. Can I step inside? I’m taking the big lads fishing.”

  Various older boys of terrible appearance emerged from the bedroom where they had all been put in together to keep the mess in one place. One was eating bread and marmalade, one was holding a paperback western. James, the tall thin Bateman one, was doing nothing but look vacant. Tremendous pop music flooded out from behind them and out of the front door across the mournful landscape.

  “Isn’t it too wet?” James said doubtfully.

  “Wet is what’s needed for trout,” said the sweep.

  “They’ll catch pneumonia,” said Mrs. Bateman fussing round in a clutched-up dressing-gown to get the sweep a cup of coffee.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Never int’ world. I never yet met a trout with pneumonia. These lads tell me they like the thought of fishing every time they come in my shop. It happens that there’s this day free, people not being over-fond of having their chimneys swept with dampness about.”

  The dampness flung itself against the kitchen windows like tidal waves. A tempest of wind shrieked.

  “I think I ought to do some work,” said James. “It’s a chance, a day like this. I’ve got exams you see.” He slunk back into the bedroom and his friends kept well out of the foreground too.

  “I’ll come,” said Harry.

  “No you will not,” said his mother, “you can’t swim.”

  “Oh, it’ll not come to that,” said Kendal. “We just wade. Only deep places is whirlpools and once in whirlpools swimming’s of little advantage.”

  The mother waved a coffee pot helplessly about, looking urgently at her husband, who had just appeared in pyjamas, unshaven, with his hair very early-morning. “Aha,” he said. “Ha. Early call? Yes. Good to see you, Kendal. Forgotten I’d mentioned the chimney. Rather wet for it today, I’d think.”

  “It’s fishing,” said the mother. “Kendal wants to take everyone fishing. Just the weather, he says.”

  “Wonderful idea,” said the father. “Great. Grand. Couldn’t think what on earth to do with any of them today. Splendid. We can knock up a few sandwiches for everyone, can’t we? It’ll be an all day affair?” he asked hopefully.

  “It will,” said Kendal, “and you’re welcome to come with us.”

  “Ah well now then,” said the father, “it just happens that I can’t. There’s a phone call coming from abroad. I have to wait for it.” He looked out at the deluge. “Great pity,” he said. “Long time since I had a day’s fishing.”

  “The telephone lines are down,” said Kendal. “The wind took them in the night. You’d mebbe hear it happening? Two trees across the Appleby road an’ all and a cargo of dead sheep strowed about all over it. Like an air disaster. Vet had to go and put them out of their misery. There’ll be no phone calls.”

  Mr. Bateman gave Kendal a look, picked up the phone, found it dead and gave him another look. “Yes,” he said. He glared thoughtfully at Kendal as if Kendal had arranged the wind, and Kendal stared serenely back. He was a short, broad man with a wide mouth and dauntless shoulders. He strikingly resembled the stone figure that had been dug up in the churchyard some years ago—a very early Saxon hackabout of the devil in chains. Bound hand and foot, this stone demon looked entirely comfortable, watching the torturer with an expression of the purest happiness. Queer words carved beneath meant “Beware or cop it”.

  It was possible that the model for this stone had been an earlier member of the Kendal family, for it had been discovered in a field below the church and Kendals had always lived below the church. “Well, since thirteenth century anyway,” he said. “A very funny class of persons lives above.” And if you weren’t careful he began to tell stories about them. All Kendals told superb stories—this Kendal in particular—and while he told them you found that you were going along with him in a sort of dream and had bought five pounds’ worth of fish and chips or seven fishing rods displayed in his window beside the bottles of vinegar and tomato ketchup; or had contracted to have your chimneys swept twice yearly till the turn of the century.

  Or as now—he had started on an account of last night’s storm: a tree struck by lightning in Jingling Lane that he’d heard tell had flattened the vicar; Blue Barns’ roof blown in whilst madam was out on her broomstick. And you found yourself trudging off towards his Land-Rover and the river to catch trout, wet, cold, ill-tempered as any group of prisoners in the world, when all you wanted was bed and toast and Radio Two. Harry and his mother, who had been expected to stay behind, were left with a built-up fire at Light Trees and a comfortable quiet morning.

  And afternoon, so it appeared, for there was no sign of the fishermen by four o’clock.

  And evening—for there was no sign of them by seven.

  Mrs. Bateman had done Normandie potatoes and the lovely smell of cheese and onions floated out of the windows and up the chimney and under the front door and away over the fell. “You’d think it’d tempt them home,” she said. But the river was far below and four miles westwards.

  “Hot air only rises,” said Harry. “Only the birds’ll know it’s Normandie potatoes and they’re not bothered.”

  “Don’t say ‘Not bothered’,” said his mother. “Don’t talk like Bell, nice as he is. And there’s not a bird flying any more than there has been all day. It’s a day for neither human, animal, bird nor fish. Ridiculous, the whole thing.”

  “Completely ridiculous,” she said rather later. “Your father was feeble not standing up to that sweep. He’ll get a chest again. And James with his exams.”

  At eight she said, “Ridiculous, reckless, unwise and jeopardizing his work”—for the telephone had revived and New York had just rung at the time it had arranged for a vital discussion. There had been great difficulty in getting through, said New York.

  “The lines have been down,” said Harry’s mother. “We are having very bad weather here.”

  “Then why is he out in it?” New York asked and rang off.

  “Call this a holiday?” Mrs. Bateman cried, as she often did.

  At half past nine there was a scuffly sound over the yard and the scrape of a catch of a gate. Then subdued and squelching feet slowly plodded over stone flags. Hungry Harry and his mother beheld the group standing with pools spreading about their feet, long faces drooping below drooping hats, rods held dipped like flags at a funeral. From Mr. Bateman’s left hand hung four trout, so small and of such depressed appearance that they could have hardly tugged. Fish, one felt, that had been hanging about waiting for death.

  “It is nearly ten o’clock at night!” screamed Harry’s mother.

  She seized the fish, flew to the kitchen, whacked off their heads, whipped out their insides, swished them with butter and flung them under the grill.

  “Four between six. Four between seven if Kendal’s staying. Where is Kendal?”

  “Here I am,” he stepped cheerfully in, “rather late. Never mind. Four fine trout. They weren’t rising today in any numbers.”

  “I’ve been frantic—f
rantic, Kendal. All alone with the baby Harry—up here in the mist.”

  “Even so—even so—a grand day.”

  “Frantic. Lonely. And the phone rang! There you are now. The phone rang. They’re furious with you. What a holiday. You’ll have lost it. Lost the job.”

  “A fair day tomorrow I’d think,” said Kendal, shutting the door on the outside world, “fairing up every minute. We must keep—”

  She disappeared into the kitchen to turn the trout. The rest of the party staggered upstairs towards hot water. Kendal stood by himself in the porch, dripping and smiling at Harry.

  “—keep our heads,” he finished. “Unlike the poor trout. Not wise to remove their heads,” he said to Harry. “The finest taste is in the cheeks.”

  “Teaching me to cook fish now,” Mrs. Bateman fumed to herself in the kitchen. “I’m being treated like a fool.” The four fish looked smaller every minute. “Will you stay for supper, Kendal?” she called bleakly.

  “That’d be grand,” he said. “Just the thing.”

  “Though I dare say Mrs. Kendal may be worrying?” She put her hot face round the kitchen door. “I expect you feel you ought to go home to Mrs. Kendal?”

  “Oh not at all. Not at all. She knows my ways.”

  Salad, bread, butter, cheese appeared on the table with Harry’s sleepy help—mayonnaise, wine, water and the four fish, now looking like minnows. The big dish of Normandie potatoes put in the middle. They had got very crusty.

  “Serve them right and serve them right,” muttered Mrs. Bateman crossly. Feeling like the Egg-witch she crossed her hands on her apron and said, “That’s all there is.”

  “Mrs. Kendal sent up something,” said Kendal as the rest of the family shambled in with the bright pink slippery exhausted look that comes at the end of a day’s wind and rain and open air and ineffectiveness. Mr. Bateman considered how stupid he was, not even being able to stay in and wait for a phone call. James considered what it was going to feel like when he’d failed his exams. The other boys considered how unwise they had been to come up here to this wet bit of England for their holidays. Their hostess considered how unmarried women with wonderful jobs have a better time of it, and who, if they knew, would be silly enough to have children? Harry considered how much he loved Mr. Kendal the sweep who never got out of sorts and here he was coming from his Land-Rover carrying a covered basket.