by A. L. Barker
Owen said, ‘What happened to the mountain bike?’
‘Gave it to the old lady.’
‘Your mother?’
‘I’ll be giving her this –’ he revved the engine – ‘soon as I get me a car.’
‘Very filial.’
‘You kidding? She can’t wait to ride it.’
Owen suspected he would be the loser in their exchanges, and turned to the garden. ‘Do you think you can manage this?’
‘No problem.’
‘What will you use?’
Kevin tipped his helmet over his face. ‘Be back tomorrow with a couple of goats.’ A kick-start exploded to a shattering roar and he was away.
‘I haven’t much hope of Mrs Latimer’s progeny,’ Owen told Elissa, ‘he’s a whippersnapper.’
‘She says he’s jokey, it’s the only thing she’s got against him.’
‘I don’t like his attitude.’
‘If he’s as good a worker as his mother we can overlook the rough edges.’
‘He’s no horny-handed son of the soil.’
Elissa shrugged. ‘Drive me into Truro tomorrow?’
‘What for?’
‘The curtains we brought from Wimbledon aren’t right here. I must find something different.’
‘He’s coming to cut the grass tomorrow.’
‘You don’t have to be present: better if you’re not. Your attitude is prejudicial.’
*
When they returned from Truro the next afternoon, Owen stopped the car and sat staring. Where there had been a blossoming prairie was a rectangle of shorn grass encompassed by a naked fence: a suburban patch.
‘Happy now?’ said Elissa.
‘I prefer the prairie.’
She slammed the car door and went into the house. Owen thought about the fence. Half obscured, it had been both barrier and ethical factor: stripped and fully revealed it looked uncommonly like a pen for penning animals.
Kevin Latimer was raking up the spent grass. ‘Get yourself a little Flymo and you’ll be able to keep this lot down.’
‘What did you use?’
‘Billhook and ergocomics.’
Owen looked round. ‘Where’s the billhook?’
‘Mam took it home to peel the potatoes.’
Owen sighed. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘Let’s see. Five hours at eight quid an hour—’
‘What!’
‘If you don’t believe me, ask her next door. She’s been watching me, never took her eyes off. Bit of a pain. I mean, you’re not always looking for it, are you? I like a bit of tail, don’t misunderstand me, but not when it’s on special offer. I prefer to make the running myself – stimulates my gonads.’
He leaned on his rake, gap-toothed and happy; no qualms, no reservations, no offence – it was impossible to take any. This was ignorance, and doomed.
‘I was querying the rate, not the time.’
‘My mam and your missus agreed it. Besides, it was hard graft. I sweated blood.’ He held up a finger wrapped in rag. ‘Forty quid suit you? Including VAT and doctor’s fee for anti-tetanus jab?’
*
‘You have a visitor.’
Elissa shepherded James before her. He announced, ‘I’ve come to live with you.’
‘Isn’t it nice?’ said Elissa.
James sat in her chair. Owen laid aside the crossword. ‘What is all this?’
‘She said if you like them so much, go and live with them.’
‘It should be fun,’ said Elissa.
‘James, what’s this about?’
‘Why are you wearing those glasses?’
‘It’s rude to answer one question by asking another.’
‘We had a row, a real one.’ James spoke with pride. ‘About the same old thing.’
‘What old thing?’
‘His coat.’
Owen said patiently, ‘Whose coat?’
‘My father’s fur coat. He used to put it on and we’d play at bear hunts. He was the bear and I was the dogs. I had to go for his throat and try to kill him before he could hug me to death.’
‘I thought you didn’t like that sort of thing.’
‘She didn’t like it.’ James shrugged. ‘She used to run out of the house: she won’t let me keep the coat. It’s his. I’ve hidden it.’
‘In memory of your happy romps?’ Elissa said dryly.
‘I said I’d go away if she didn’t let me keep it. She said I didn’t have any place to go and I said I had you.’
‘Whatever she said would be in the heat of the moment. We don’t always mean everything we say, it slips out, we’re sorry afterwards. She’ll be sorry already.’
‘I’m not.’ James came and stood at Owen’s knee. ‘I like it with you.’
‘We like having you but we can’t take you away from your mother. It’s against the law, we’d have that policeman here again and he’d lock us up. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’
James hid his face on Owen’s chest.
‘Stay to tea,’ said Elissa.
After tea, and slices of Elissa’s strawberry cream sponge cake, he flatly refused to go home.
‘Your mother will be worried, wondering where you are.’
‘She knows where I am.’
‘She can’t be sure.’
‘She won’t care.’
‘Look here, young man,’ Owen said sternly, ‘I don’t know where you get this idea that your mother doesn’t care about you. It’s wrong, and it’s hurtful. You’ll know how hurtful when you have children of your own.’
‘I won’t never have children.’
‘Why not?’ said Elissa.
‘I won’t never have a wife.’
*
Angela said, ‘I knew you’d come.’
She took his hand, held it to her cheek. James watched with a brow of thunder.
‘We knew you’d be worried. Elissa gave him tea and cake.’
‘In that case he can go straight to bed.’
‘No!’ James hung on Owen’s arm, pulling him and Angela apart.
Owen seized him by the shoulders and held him. ‘Will you do as your mother wishes?’
‘If you’ll read to me?’
‘Not tonight.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Promise!’
‘If you go and get ready for bed.’
James went gracelessly. From the door he turned to command, ‘Cross your throat and prepare to die.’
She whispered, ‘Can’t you stay?’
‘Better not.’
‘You’ll come tomorrow?’
‘I promise.’
*
Mildred had found her stroll along the shore dispiriting. On some days, depending on the direction of the wind, the tide deposited shells, arranging them on the sand for all the world as if they were for sale. She had made a collection of cowries and cockles, fan-shaped scallops, striped whelks and some sweetly pretty turret-shells. She found it quite absorbing to wander along, window-shopping, as it were, for half-buried treasure.
But today the tide had brought in much that she would rather not have seen: human detritus from the holiday beaches, broken sand-shoes, orange peel, beer bottles and things the purpose of which was worse than dubious. Obliged to concentrate on her footprints which were immediately obliterated in the wet sand, she fell prey to a mood of dejection, reflecting how little impression she had made on life generally.
After her father died, taking his disappointment with him, there was no one to ask anything of her. I am as I am, she had told herself. Taking her finicalness as strength and her thin skin as a virtue, she had been reasonably satisfied. Overtures she did not encourage. People, on the whole, she found were motivated by reprehensible aims – mercenary, material, sordid. She conserved her deepest feelings.
Was anyone possessed of a pure, generous nature? She was prepared – eager – to give to Piper the benefit of that doubt, for his was the only list
ening ear. His gentleness reassured her, his good sense sustained her and his understanding went beyond mere comprehension; it lifted a burden she had carried all her life.
How gallantly he had risen to her defence in that dreadful ordeal with the policeman. Kindly, yes tenderly, he had taken and held her hand in both of his. ‘There is nothing to fear. And as to your father, you need have no regrets. You are, if I may say so, a personable young woman. This is your life, accept it, embrace it …’ He had opened his arms and for one dizzying moment she had thought he was about to embrace her. ‘Live it to the full!’
When he looked into her eyes, for another dizzying moment she had thought his meaning plain. Then he had sighed. ‘Regret is the thief of love.’
Mildred had echoed his sigh. ‘I wish …’ but did not know what she wished or how to say it.
He released her hand, reshuffled the papers on his table. ‘I must return to London for an editorial discussion.’
‘You’ll come back?’
‘Indeed.’
One took that to mean yes, verily. He had spoken so gently, chiding her for an unnecessary question. One might trust his manner, but not the word, for she realised that she had often heard it spoken in vexation, mockery – disbelief.
She turned to find the tide spreading like a shawl across the inlet and was forced to dodge an oncoming wave to reach the cliff path. She would say, ‘May I ask a favour? Will you bring back for me a copy of the Spectator? I am unable to obtain it in the village and I do miss keeping up with the theatre and book reviews.’ That way she would be sure of his affirmation.
The door of his room was ajar. She heard him moving about and her heart beat faster. She tapped lightly, called, ‘May I come in?’
Senga had up-ended the wastepaper basket on the floor and was sorting through the contents. Shocked, Mildred said, ‘Mr Piper’s not here?’
‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘He must be halfway to London by now.’
‘Did he say when he’ll be back?’
‘He’s not coming back.’
‘But he must be coming back! He’s left his work—’ Mildred had seen sheets of typescript on the table.
‘Discards. He squeezes the clichés till they squeak.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘I’m doing a piece about him for my magazine, an in-depth inquiry into his nature.’
‘He is a good man.’
Senga perched on the corner of Piper’s table and lit one of her inevitable cigarettes. ‘At present I’ve nothing much to work on – apart from the usual frisson about ambivalent sex.’
Mildred said weakly, ‘Sex?’
‘He claims to have a wife and child. Did you know?’
‘I – no—’
‘It’s a sine qua non. To counsel, he’s got to know it all, including the husband, father, family man with his problems kept under his belt. D’you see?’
Mildred was trying to.
When Senga drew on her cigarette her freckles glowed briefly. ‘Mind you, he has a love nest in Pinner and that’s another part of it.’
‘Pinner?’ Mildred couldn’t bring herself to say ‘love nest’.
‘With little brown Sambo to minister to his needs.’ Senga held up the brass fly. ‘He left this.’
‘It’s a paperweight …’ Mildred’s voice dwindled.
‘Benares ware. A gift from his little brown lover.’
*
Eashing wrote to his solicitor and friend: ‘I am going to look over the parish church which by all accounts has some promising features. It is but a short distance from the hotel and the girl can take me. She is useful in the way of a willing horse rather than the companion I hoped for. Her world is alien, she is cut off from so much of mine, or perhaps I should say I am cut off from hers. I have had no contact with young people and this poor child has been misused. She tends to adopt a high hand with me, addresses me as “Mister”, which I don’t care for, but cannot think of any other designation which would be suitable between us. She is as unsure of me as I of her. It leads to some unexpected exchanges.’
He had been reading to her from Oliver Twist. She was much taken with the character of Fagin, declared Oliver ‘stuck up’ and Fagin ‘kind’. ‘He wouldn’t harm a fly. “My dear,” he says, like he loves everyone.’
‘It’s not necessarily a term of affection. Dickens employs it in this connection to illustrate Fagin’s devious nature. He is a manipulator.’
‘What’s that?’
‘He handles people so as to make them do what he wants.’
‘People make me do what they want but they don’t talk nice like him.’
‘Fagin’s a scoundrel: you’re not supposed to admire him.’
She said fiercely, ‘Nobody calls me “my dear”. It means somebody loves you.’
*
She was looking forward to their outing and arrived while Eashing was still finishing his lunch.
‘What’s she doing here?’ Mrs Clapham set damson pie and cream before him.
‘Bettony is taking me out.’
‘We’re going to church,’ said Bettony.
Mrs Clapham turned to Eashing. ‘You realise she can’t go inside? Dogs and dummies aren’t allowed in church.’
‘Despite certain disadvantages, Bettony is a young woman with a capacity for learning.’ Eashing pushed his dessert aside. ‘If you’re ready, Bettony, we’ll go.’
‘Wait while I put this on.’ She produced a straw hat trimmed with swags of orange blossom. ‘It’s my wedding hat, it was give me by a girl who got stood up at the altar. “You have it,” she said, “no one’s going to stand you up.”’ Bettony rammed the hat on her head. ‘I know not to go in church uncovered.’
Mrs Clapham went out, banging the door.
*
‘What are we going to church for?’ Bettony said as she heaved his chair down the steps.
‘I want to look round. Have you ever been in there?’
‘I went to chapel till they stopped me.’
‘They?’
‘They said I sang too loud.’
It still rankled: she spoke with righteous anger.
‘You mustn’t mind so much what people say, or don’t say. None of us choose our words with due regard for how they sound to others. If we did, there’d be much less talk and we’d all be a lot happier.’ Platitudinous, but true, he thought.
‘It’s all right for you, mister, you’re educated. Anyway, you’re old.’
He said sharply, ‘Getting old is a nasty business. There’s nothing to commend it, certainly not the illusion of learning. I have spent a lifetime familiarising myself with one small sphere and I am constantly disconcerted and mystified by my own ignorance. The acquisition of knowledge is illusory.’ He heard his bitterness, corrosive self-pity. ‘Don’t be deceived by talk of tranquil old age: one is not cured of strong emotions. The most ignoble remain.’
‘You ought to write that down. I bet you could write good as Dickens if you wanted.’
Eashing twisted round in his chair to see her expression. It was unenlightened; she meant what she said, had no notion of absurdity.
He had glimpsed the church when he was being driven to the hotel. It had a broach spire, and in the churchyard quite a fine Cornish cross. He had written to his friend: ‘The Cornish cross, I am told, was discovered late in the nineteenth century buried upside down as a prop for the west wall of the nave! I believe this trip will be more than a mere exploratory venture.’
He wanted to touch the cross, feel the granite, the grit, under his fingers – it was one of the obscure compulsions which he observed in himself from time to time. So much was denied him now in the way of physical experience, minor episodes had to be savoured to the full. He said, ‘Take me to the cross.’
‘What for?’
‘Never mind what for.’
She bumped his chair over the graves without respect for them or for him, and stopped
at the cross. He stretched out his hand, laid his palm on the stone, rolled the detritus of centuries under his fingertips. ‘Feel how warm it is, from the heat of the sun, the heat of thousands of suns.’ She was silent, uncomprehending. He sighed. ‘It is so very old.’
‘You don’t know where it’s been.’ She seized his hand, briskly scrubbed it on her skirt, and hauled him away over the burial mounds. She put her shoulder to the heavy door of the church porch. As it swung open he noted the wagon roof and was cheered at the prospect of further discoveries.
She wheeled him to the nave. ‘Where d’you want to go?’ She spoke well above a church whisper. Eashing looked about, hoping there was no one else present. He would have preferred to be alone, and was having to accept, yet again, that privacy meant independence, and his was irredeemably lost. ‘Take me to the chancel steps and leave me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like it here.’
‘You’re not required to like it.’ He added, more kindly, ‘It’s no part of your duties.’
She said something which he did not catch, and pushed him, fast, along the nave. He cried to her to wait.
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘I should like to look at the font.’
‘What for?’
Never mind, he had said, never mind what for, because there was no way he could explain his longing to touch the old cross. Now he heard himself say, with total irrelevance to this girl, ‘I believe it is late Norman.’
‘What’s it say here?’ She tapped with her foot on the floor of the nave.
‘It’s a memorial tablet: “To a Beloved Wyfe, God grant her sweet repose”.’
‘We shouldn’t be stood on it!’
‘We can hardly do otherwise. I imagine such tablets were put here in the church to ensure the dear departed a good place in Heaven.’
Bettony sat down in one of the pews. She took up a prayer book, turned the pages, made great pretence of reading for Eashing’s benefit, and gave him one of her gap-toothed grins.
His attention had been caught by the carved bench-ends. The design varied for each pew: intertwined foliage and fruit developed from plain English oaks to arabesques of exotic flowers, vines and wreathing serpents. Eden, he thought, must have been a forest.
