The Levels

by Peter Benson

  ‘I can afford it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To buy you a drink.’

  She drank, looked around the hall.

  ‘I’ve seen you somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘We haven’t been here long.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My mum, me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘We came from London.’

  ‘London?’

  ‘You ever been?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Like to?’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she said.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Blackwood.’

  ‘Round here?’

  ‘Near Kingsbury.’

  ‘Episcopi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s near us! Drove House.’

  ‘Yes, I…’ I stopped myself.

  ‘You know it? Under the hill with the tree.’

  ‘Higher Burrow Hill.’

  ‘You do!’

  ‘A little,’ I said, now I had given myself away.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘you were the one we saw in the orchard when we moved in.’

  ‘No. I was working that day.’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘The day you moved …’ I murdered myself.

  ‘So it was …’

  ‘I. …’ I got up, ‘You want another?’

  We stood in the car park while a fight developed by the lamp post. She’d come to the disco as she’d driven back late from Bridgwater and passed by, she’d wandered into it by chance, just fancying a drink.

  ‘I could show you around,’ I said.

  She laughed again. ‘Around where?’

  ‘I don’t know; the Moor, Kingsbury, Taunton?’

  ‘Much to show?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘I’ll see. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I was late before I arrived.’

  We walked to her car.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘I’m Muriel.’

  ‘Call.’

  ‘I will.’

  I had to find Dick. I looked round the back, I looked round the front, I looked in the toilets and behind all the cars and motorbikes, I looked in the room behind the stage. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t at the bar. He wasn’t dancing. He couldn’t. He wasn’t standing by the door. He wasn’t with his mates. I looked behind some dustbins. I walked one hundred yards one way along the river bank, and another hundred yards up the bank the other way. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in a car. I walked along the road for a while, but couldn’t find him. I looked in the hedge and under the wall round the car park. I looked back in the hall. I asked a few people if they’d seen him. Someone thought he was behind the stage. I looked; he wasn’t. I sat down on a canvas chair while last orders were called. A few people drifted away, but the disco carried on. I went out and looked round the bank, again, along the bank, calling ‘Dick! Dick!’ I thought he’d fallen in the river, drunk, sluiced down the steep, muddy bank into the torrent. By the light of the stars and a vague moon, I scanned the water, hopelessly; a plastic carrier bag, stuck to the mud on the opposite bank, caught my eye. I looked upstream towards the bridge, and saw somebody, leaning over the side, dropping stones into the water. A car drew up and the person climbed in. I walked back towards the hall, looked the other side of the car park wall, but he wasn’t there. People were revving motorbikes, his was where he’d left it. I looked back in the hall. I didn’t want to walk ten miles home, and was looking for a lift when he appeared, around the back, with a slip and a large bottle.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Down Dan’s.’ He pointed along the bank towards a house, its downstairs lights glowing in the night. ‘Saw you with a girl, I wasn’t hanging about!’ He sat on the ground and said, ‘Urgh!’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you’re my horse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Motorbike, remember: brum-brums?’ I did some throttling with my wrist.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, and fell back on the grass, spilling his bottle and stretching his arms above his head. He did not look capable. I went back to the hall, and filled a bucket with water, carried it back to where he was lying, but he’d gone. I found him by the dustbins, so I said, ‘Dick!’ and when he looked up, threw the water at him.

  ‘Whaa!’ he groaned.

  ‘Wake up!’ I shouted.

  The journey back to Blackwood is not a comfortable experience to remember. Some events from my life appeared in motion in front of my eyes, playing themselves out on the back of Dick’s crash helmet. I remembered my father telling a bald man the price of petrol was enough to make your hair stand on end. I remember seeing a police car in Langport, and stopping to wheel the bike behind a hedge in Huish. I heard a voice cry, ‘What bloody time do you think this is?’ but my own voice said, ‘Dick brought me home.’

  ‌‌10

  ‘Kink the league!’

  ‘Both sides?’

  ‘Put your thumb on the spot, where you kink it.’

  ‘It’ll split.’

  ‘It will. It doesn’t matter; let’s see.’

  ‘It’s holding.’

  ‘Then pull the ends together. Like this. Tie them; then work the stakes like usual.’

  I hate basketmaking. We are working. My old man told me the mystery tour story. He was a boy, taken to stay with his mother’s sister, Aunt Janet, in Sheffield, where the snow turns black and Chinese people eat their tea in the rain. One day, he’d been taken by Donald, his uncle, a large man with a steel leg, on a mystery tour. The Hodges Coach Co. offered the trip; leaving at ten, back by nine. On the journey, Donald drank from a bottle he carried in a red duffle leg, unscrewed his leg and put it in the luggage rack. He fell asleep outside Bristol.

  When he awoke, the party was disembarking at its Mystery Tour destination, the interesting country market town of Taunton. They had five hours to spend on their own, so caught a bus to Kingsbury, had a cup of tea with his grandparents, and then my father and Great Uncle Donald went back to Sheffield. I’ve heard it a thousand times.

  The sun was shining, another warm day. My father sat in the corner and sorted sticks. I was making shopping baskets, fitting them with split hazel stakes.

  ‘When Uncle Donald took his leg off, my mother fainted. He was someone the family could have done without. He was hauling cattle north. Aunt Janet met him at Taunton Market, she disappeared, people thought he’d stolen her.’

  My father had met my mother before her parents died and Blackwood came to her, but he’d only lived in Kingsbury, so couldn’t steal her anywhere. She came, shouting, ‘Where you put my buckets?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My buckets!’

  In five strides she crossed the yard from the house to the workshop door, barring all the light from the place as she stood, framed in the valley of The Isle. One of the jobs I’d inherited from my father was the cleaning of six galvanized buckets every day.

  ‘Have you washed them?’ she screamed, ‘bet you haven’t.’

  I hadn’t. I got up and went to wash the buckets.

  I was round the back of the workshop by the taps, when I heard a clanking. It stopped. Footsteps. The egg man? I was on the third bucket, scrubbing it round with a brush when I heard a row break out in the yard. Mother was shouting at the egg man again, he hated Blackwood. I stacked the buckets, carried them around the side of the shed where Muriel stood next to her bike, opening her mouth to shout: ‘I only came to say hello to Billy. You always scream your head off at innocent people? Does he live here? I met him at the disco. You know?’ My mother hung her chin off her face like a banana, stared up and down at Muriel, while I appeared with the buckets.

  ‘Hello!’ I said to Muriel, ignoring my mother. ‘I never thought you’d come.’

  ‘I s
aid I would.’ She had yellow ribbons plaited into her hair, a blue vest, shorts, again.

  ‘My buckets?’

  ‘I remember,’ I said.

  ‘If I’m not interrupting anything.’

  ‘Bike only just made it,’ she said, holding it away from her body and giving it a mean look.

  ‘I heard it!’

  ‘Clean, are they?’

  ‘What a beautiful day. Are they always like this?’ she said.

  ‘Seems like it, at the moment.’

  ‘If I may!’ My mother grabbed the buckets, and stalked back to the house.

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘Sorry. She shouts a lot.’ I scratched my leg. I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands.

  ‘My mother never shouts.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Sometimes wish she would.’

  ‘Sometimes wish mine’d shut up.’ I pointed. Muriel laughed, threw her head back. ‘Stick the bike against the wall,’ I said.

  ‘You work here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Growing willow?’

  ‘Making baskets.’

  ‘Great! Show me.’ I didn’t think it was great, but I’d show her where I did it.

  ‘Here.’

  I pushed the workshop door open. We walked into the gloom. My father tried to get up.

  ‘Morning!’ he said, to her. ‘Who are you?’ She gave a little jump.

  ‘My father,’ I said.

  ‘Muriel.’

  ‘Muriel? A friend of Billy’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a lovely name.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said.

  ‘You…’ she laughed, he struggled to get off the floor, but clenched the small of his back and slumped down again.

  ‘Arthritis,’ he said. ‘I’d get up but can’t.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ she said, and before he could say no, had her arms under his shoulders and heaved him up.

  ‘My dear, thank you!’

  Muriel was a forward, modern girl, and though I was modern in the sense that I lived now, I could have lived fifty years ago and not noticed the difference. She had a huge, wide smile, and showed it to my father, who couldn’t believe his luck.

  ‘Call me Jack,’ he said, and stuck his hand out.

  ‘Okay, Jack.’

  Okay, Jack?

  ‘Elevenses?’ he said to me.

  ‘Yes; you want some tea?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘We’ll be on the bank; thanks Billy,’ he said, and by a surprised arm, took Muriel from the workshop, round the back and onto the river bank. He’d charm honey from the bees.

  ‘What you doing?’ mother shouted, as I made the drinks.

  ‘Want a cup?’

  ‘Course I do, only one who’s worked for it.’ She threw a sock at me.

  While the kettle boiled, I stood under the porch and watched Muriel wave her arms at the old man. He laughed. The sun shone, the kettle boiled, and I carried three cups outside. My mother was banging upstairs, with sheets, I left hers on the draining board, to cool.

  As I climbed the bank, Muriel was saying, ‘So when they found her, she was stuck with her foot down a rabbit hole! She’d shouted “Help!” for hours, she said. Any excuse for a bit of attention.’

  ‘Tea?’ I said, bending to pass a cup first to Muriel, then to him.

  ‘Thank you.’

  We drank.

  ‘Urgh!’ said Muriel. ‘Sugar!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You put sugar in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Didn’t you bother to ask if she took it?’ I didn’t say anything. I went and made another cup.

  He came down the bank as I climbed back up, ‘Nice girl,’ he said, ‘she’s waiting for that.’

  Chedzoy’s cows had worked their way across the field opposite, their smell drifted over the water to us.

  ‘Been doing anything?’ I said.

  ‘We went to Exeter yesterday, shopping. Mum bought me a new dress; she got a hat. Straw one, plenty of plastic fruit.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We’re going to Taunton this afternoon.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Suppose you go there all the time.’

  ‘Sometimes. Saturday, market.’

  She followed me to the workshop.

  ‘Are you going to show me around?’ She was a straightforward girl, asking me out.

  ‘You want to?’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re so funny,’ she said.

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘No. Not funny ha-ha, just funny; I don’t know.’ She looked into my eyes. ‘You’ve lovely eyes,’ she said. I didn’t know what to say; nobody said things like that.

  ‘Really,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh what.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She got up and stood by the door, watching my mother walk across the yard.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. She looked at me. The light caught her face.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Your orchard?’ She pointed.

  ‘Want to see?’

  ‘Great!’

  ‘I built a tree house in the orchard at your place.’

  ‘Drove House?’

  ‘When I was a kid, with Dick.’

  ‘Dick?’

  ‘My mate. Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of?’

  ‘Spends all his time on his bike now, getting drunk.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  I showed her the apple trees, pointed out three Foxwhelps and the Kingsbury Blacks. I explained they don’t require blending to produce good cider.

  ‘Taking the day off?’ my mother shouted from behind the chicken house. Muriel looked at her watch.

  ‘I should be home,’ she said.

  ‘So when shall I show you around?’

  ‘Anytime, pick me up, I’ll give you the number.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ my mother shouted, as Muriel disappeared down the road. I told her. I didn’t want a scene. I was working in the shed when the old man came back, and sat in the corner.

  ‘You’re a dark horse,’ he said. ‘Never knew you had it in you.’

  ‘Might have done,’ I said.

  ‘Nice girl,’ he said, ‘not from round here.’

  ‘You saw her before, on the bike, down Muchelney Embankment.’

  ‘I haven’t got a bike.’

  ‘She has.’

  ‘Did it make a noise?’

  ‘We were coming back from Wright’s, his cider had us.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘No, her.’

  ‘Muriel.’

  ‘So where’s she living?’

  ‘Drove House. With her mother.’

  ‘Drove House,’ he said, quietly, and flicked a piece of willow between his thumb and finger.

  ‘I told you then,’ I said, ‘when we were sick.’

  I liked it that she came out with what she was thinking. She wore ribbon in her hair. She walked towards things so the things she was walking towards knew she was coming. She moved her head when she talked, brushing strands of hair away from her eyes with a casual movement of small, brown hands.

  When we were eating tea, my mother asked about Muriel, but the old man told her to stop going on. He ate rice pudding and sat at table with a cigarette.

  On my own, that evening, I took a walk over Thorney Moor to Muchelney and stood in the churchyard to watch the sun sink. A gardener was working in front of the priest’s house, and carried his fork round the back. I heard the whine of Dick’s motorbike, coming up the road from Longport, and crouched behind a gravestone until it was gone. A bowl of wilted daffodils sat beside me; ‘Gone To Sleep.’ Nobody came to church, nobody tended any of the graves. An aeroplane roared down towards me, a long, low descent, hanging in the air, waiting to lan
d at Yeovilton. The sun sank when I wasn’t looking, behind a bank of thin cloud, but the sky turned red, the gentle heat of the day went ‘snap’ and was gone.

  ‌‌11

  I didn’t wait to call Muriel; on the way home, I stopped at the phone box. Her mother answered, they’d just got back from Taunton, where she’d bought a thing for doing spaghetti.

  ‘Can I speak to Muriel?’

  ‘Of course, how nice, hold the line.’

  There was a pause, I listened to feet disappear up the hall. ‘Muriel! M-U-R-I-E-L! Telephone!’ ‘Coming!’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘Billy?’

  ‘This afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, Billy!’ she interrupted, ‘that was quick.’

  ‘Quick?’

  ‘I didn’t expect you’d phone today. We’re only just back from Taunton.’

  ‘Your mother said.’

  ‘She bought a thing for making spaghetti.’

  ‘Lucky for some.’

  ‘Yeah!’ she said.

  ‘I was phoning …’ why?

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘To find out when you wanted me to show, well, go really, around?’

  ‘Show me the sights?’

  ‘What? It’s a terrible line.’

  ‘The sights! You’re going to show me the sights?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want.’

  ‘No, I suppose …’

  ‘You get a day off?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Wednesday, hang on. What time?’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘Ten? Eleven?’

  ‘Ten?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘You know the way?’

  ‘Ten?’

  ‘Wednesday,’ she said.

  ‘Muriel!’ I heard her mother say, ‘be a love and help a tick.’

  ‘I’m on the phone,’ she shouted, and then to me, ‘duty calls.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Got to run. Mum wants me.’

  ‘Don’t they always?’ I said, quite smart, I thought. She laughed.

  ‘Wednesday?’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘See you then.’

  ‘Bye,’ I said.