A Pocketful of Rye

by Anthony Masters

  This morning he fumbled in his pocket for the new pipe—and began to plug it firmly with a pungent tobacco he had discovered in Birmingham. He felt a pipe lent more to his personal image—a large, rangy man, who smelt of tobacco and dogs, with ambition and imagination. Eric rather liked the picture and smiled cosily as he let in the clutch and coasted on down the hill.

  “He’s a good lad—is Eric.”

  She said it aloud and almost blushed at her own weakness. Good to his mother, but he could never fill her loneliness. The loss of Jack—she still thought in undertaker’s terms and avoided the word ‘dead’ as far as she could. When asked she would say that Jack had passed on, and talked loudly of ‘merciful release’ and ‘a happy end’. They would never know the living horror of the wasting man, bedridden for ten years, his continual whining and self pity, the fight for day-today existence in the tiny slate cottage, and especially the fight for Eric—everything for Eric—and her elation when he got a scholarship to Grammar in the city, then success upon success with art school on a grant, then architecture and eventually his wonderful job that was the envy of the terraces. For her son to be in charge of the biggest rebuilding project in the valley was incredible to her—and he grew immense in her eyes. Yet they still lived under the cold slate roof, even though Eric could well afford to buy a house on the other side of the valley. Twenty-seven and no ties—and only his mother to support. Just a small house—anywhere else but the terraces. She sighed and repressed these rebellious thoughts. After all they were still comfortably off—even if they were still on the terrace. The kettle boiled and she shook herself sharply. Eric was the dreamer—only Eric.

  Threading his way through the factory bulk on the valley floor, Eric saw beauty all around him. Industry fascinated and frightened him—he had never been far from its vastness and in the shadow of these buildings he felt unthreatened and cosily enclosed. He remembered as a child the horror of being alone on the great rolling moors above the valley. Quite often, when his father was well, the family would picnic on them—using great banks of heather as windshields and laughing as the breeze snatched papers from their hands and sent them tumbling yards over the turf. Even now he avoided certain thoughts about the moor—but they crowded him, jostling for space amongst his rosier pipe dreams. There was one—a living nightmare to him now—when his parents, childishly enjoying hide-and-seek, had left him on a great barren heathland. He had stood on a hillock and with mounting horror had seen miles of undulating heather around him, broken only by crags and boulders. A wind had sprung up and the heather moved, stiffly, stealthily. He could see far into the distance, and there was only more heather and bracken as far as the eye could see. The wind rippled great banks of high grasses and they stretched towards him, and he could hear the dry rasp of the sharp blades as they rubbed together. Boulders and bare high patches of ground were hazed by a fine dust as the wind gathered strength, and pollen was blown wraith-like in the air. The sky seemed fantastically vast to him and the moor a hundred acres of desolation and menace. The wind blew more fiercely and the heather bent towards him. Then suddenly it seemed to move, and to the accompaniment of Eric’s screams a patch of heather seemed to race up the hill towards him. He was almost stifled as it flopped down on top of him, and at once he saw it was his father camouflaged by heather tied on the back and round the middle by his thick leather belt. Eric’s mother arrived to find her husband distraught and choking from pollen and the boy vomiting with terror in the long grass.

  The car threaded its way through the factories and emerged on the flat valley floor near the site. Eric drove on to a rough track and pulled up by the foreman’s office. Even now he did not get out immediately, but was content to sit, drawing at the new pipe and contemplating the four or five acres of wasteland in front of him. Hundreds of tiny back-to-back houses had been pulled down at Eric’s command, and their occupants transferred to the new housing estate on the other side of the river. For a moment he felt a god, then smiled and sucked thoughtfully at the pipe—at least improvements had been made, but there were many more to come.

  In the centre of the waste stood a huddle of buildings on which leases had still to run out. There was a pub, still in business, a small shop, closed now through lack of surrounding custom, and half a dozen houses. Dotted around, in solitary splendour, were other houses with the same lease problem. There was also a small factory, dominated at one end by a huge heap of slag, the wastage which had piled high over the years. Cinders were continually being piled on top of it, which worked their way into the centre, making a continually smouldering core. Sometimes it became so hot that firemen were called out to douse it down, but it remained an ever-increasing menace to children, who were able to scramble over its cool outer crust, despite warning notices, little realising that should they fall through they would reach the hot cinders in the middle.

  Eric felt an encroaching sense of guilt over the heap—but to clear it would mean taking Roberts, the factory owner, to court, endless worry, and anyway, quite soon the lease of the factory would run out and both it and the heap would be cleared. He consoled himself with the thought that it was a matter of months before all the leases in the area terminated, the stubborn would be removed and site clearance completed. But when Eric left at night, he could see the glow of fresh cinders on the heap, could imagine them working their way towards the centre to rekindle the old, and he saw the children playing round its base on the rubble-strewn earth. Every evening seemed to be a parody of a muted bonfire night; the faint glare from the heap playing softly on the faces of the children who stared up at it. To them it was a smouldering volcano, dominating them, even further romanticised by the desolation around it. And as Eric drove back in the evening up the track pitted by builders’ lorries carrying away the last of the empty houses, he could see in the mirror the heap and the children around it, lit in a pinkish haze like an encampment before battle.

  This morning Eric wasted no time on his conscience, got out and locked up the Morris and opened the door of the hut. Inside was his assistant, Belling, who was reading Reveille and munching through a packaged breakfast. Another qualified architect, but without, thought Eric privately, very much ambition.

  Belling eyed Eric warily and said: “Seen this morning’s paper?”

  “Yes”—Belling was an amateur politician and usually mulled over the previous day’s political events for half an hour in the morning, which irritated Eric considerably. There were a number of small things about Belling that irritated Eric. They worked closely together, but Belling lacked the drive and imagination that Eric admired so deeply in other people.

  “No—I mean the local.”

  Eric took the paper wearily, presumably to read an account of a crisis in local government. Instead, across the page was a photograph of the heap and a banner headline demanding its clearance.

  “It’s up to the council.”

  “It’s on privately owned land.”

  “Compulsory purchase.”

  “They won’t bother—not if the lease runs out in a few months.”

  “They’ll have to bother—it’s a case of public safety.”

  “Eric—it can be up to you.”

  “Why the hell—why me?”

  “Because you’ve been on the site for two years— you know the heap—you know what’s inside it.”

  “So what—the decision’s not up to me.”

  “No—but you can go to the contractors, the council—Good God, you’re chief architect—you’re in charge of the site—at least they’ll listen to you.”

  “The local press has it in hand.”

  “They won’t listen to them.”

  Eric could see Belling was getting annoyed. He sighed—any cause, political or otherwise, and the man goes berserk.

  “Look, Eric—you can do something, and you bloody well ought to. Suppose some kid falls through on those cinders inside—he wouldn’t stand a chance, in a few seconds he’d be roasted.”

&n
bsp; “Look, Belling, old son, don’t you think it’s a bit early in the morning for all this?”

  Eric realised he had said the wrong thing. Belling was very white and he could see a bluish vein stand out on his forehead.

  “Look—are you bloody inhuman or something? You can’t just sit back and let that heap go on piling up.”

  Perhaps it was because it was early or perhaps Eric disliked Belling, but he suddenly lost his temper.

  “Belling, listen to me. I’ve spent two years on this site, clearing it! That’s all—just clearing it. We could have had the whole lot down in six months and laid the foundations for the project by now.

  Instead of that we’ve had to wait for leases to run out, more planning permission, materials—we’ve had labour trouble, hold-ups—and before all that half the people here didn’t want to move out of these slums at all. They preferred it, actually preferred to live like animals, crowded in amongst each other with no daylight and perpetual bad drainage and illness. The rooms were so damp the paper was coming off in great strips and there were two or three families to one house. And yet—you build a well-planned, artistically laid-out Council Estate on the other side of the river and it’s the devil’s own job to get them to go there.”

  Eric was much more controlled now but he still went on, with Belling watching him with almost arrant curiosity. It seemed to Eric that Belling was watching attentively, as if they had just met.

  “If the council take this up, which I don’t think they will, even if I went to them—they might bypass the discussions they are meant to be having this month on whether or not we can be allowed to extend this clearance right down to the river. Until we know that we can’t begin building here.”

  “But the heap can kill—will it matter if these people stay in the slums for another six months? I know they won’t mind.”

  “They should mind—we’re giving them a chance—they can make a fresh start on a brand new estate in a modern house.”

  “Tell me—are you keeping neighbours together?”

  “But you know we do it by allocation.”

  “Which will split neighbours.”

  “They’ll be on the same estate.”

  “But streets away.”

  “If you think that’s a valid reason for not moving—”

  “No—it’s a reason—one reason.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “Look—you’ve lived on the terraces all your life—you know people, or should do by now. Your mother—her friends—Mrs. Brown has lived alongside Mrs. Jones for years. They’ve bickered, squabbled, outdone each other and probably haven’t been speaking for years. But move them away from each other—and the fun goes out of life.”

  “Look—hypothetical examples, social comment—what are you, an architect or a politician? Look into the future, don’t be so small-minded. Look at what we’re going to build here—a modern clean city—wide roads, sanitation, maybe a theatre, art galleries and parks. We can give these people something they’ve never had.”

  “And you can talk like that—being one of them, living on the terraces all your life?”

  “Yes—because it’s what I’ve wanted—and what they’ll need. Haven’t you any faith in this scheme at all? What the hell are you doing on it if you think this way?”

  “I believe in it—but not your way.”

  Eric hated Belling’s smug assuredness. He wanted to shout out how much he loved the town, how he loved the industrial beauty around it. He wanted to tell Belling how he loved the glow of the furnaces at night, the slow humming of the huge dynamos, the raucous factory hooter sounding the day’s events. He loved the dun colours of the factory silhouettes at twilight and the magnificence of the power station by the river at sunrise. He could see the sun gradually creep up its tall chimneys in summer, clearing the mist away in strands until it reached the top. In all weathers the effects on the building fascinated him, but he was unable to describe them to anyone.

  He turned back to Belling. “I love this town—and the people in it. I love the industry, but I want to rebuild on this site—and quickly. That’s why I’m going to risk that heap over there—and get planning permission talked about in that council chamber first—not last.”

  With this final cliché Eric made a relatively effective exit. Left to himself Belling shrugged—and picked up Reveille. Work could begin soon….

  Hector stared up at the heap, took off his glasses, polished them, and put them neatly in their case.

  “Hector’s a fraidy.”

  The eight-year-old danced around him, scuffing up dust and tiny stones in his face. Her flaxen curls were secured in an enormous blue grip and her teeth were held back by strands of wire. Elfin-like, her matchstick legs danced continuous circles around him whilst he stood self-consciously trying to maintain his eleven-year-old dignity.

  “Hector’s a fraidy.”

  He thought of clapping his hand around her mouth to silence her before her taunts brought the others to him, but indecisive as ever he hovered, torn between cowardice and bravado. Another child was coming—oh and two more bigger boys.

  “Hector’s a fraidy.”

  “Why?” The others, curious, jostled the little girl and peered at Hector.

  “Why?”

  Conscious of attention, she decided to retain it as long as possible.

  “Why is Hector a fraidy?”

  Sharp twelve-year-old eyes made the ideal audience for her.

  “Shan’t tell.”

  “Come on—tell us.” A bigger boy stepped out of the gathering crowd of children.

  “Won’t tell,” she repeated a little less firmly.

  The bigger boy caught a strand of flaxen hair and began to pull.

  “Now—why is Hector a fraidy?”

  The answer came in a squeal of pain—“Because he won’t climb the volcano.”

  Furiously Eric stamped away from the foreman’s hut and began to walk over the rubble to the first house. But his good temper returned as he looked around him—soon these acres of wasteland and pools of stagnating water would be his dream city. What more could an architect hope for: acres of building land—and opportunity. All that remained was to tear down the rest of the old.

  The first house, should it disappear, would allow at least the first foundations of the project to be laid. As it was, it completely blocked progress and the lease had another six months to run. Eric regularly visited the house in the hope of persuading the occupants to leave, was treated as an old friend, given coffee and came away reassured that they would remain until the lease ran out. As a progress block he hated them—but as people he rather liked them.

  The house looked as isolated as if it had been a hundred miles from habitation, rather than a hundred yards; for it was now the only building left standing out of four streets of forty-five. The windows were covered with a fine dust from the demolition of its neighbours, and both outside walls carried the scars of the adjoining houses. But the front step was still perfectly whitened, leading down to the street which had been swept away.

  “Hector’s a fraidy.”

  The chant had been taken up and Hector was standing in the centre of a group of twenty-five children, around whom the elfin child still skipped, restored to good humour, chanting loudest of all. The smooth grey wall of the heap stretched above him, easy to climb, its surface pitted by the marks of the fresh cinders that had run down the side and burnt their way into the centre.

  “Hector’s a fraidy.”

  Eric sat in the Hasletts’ front parlour, stirred his milky coffee and as usual asked: “Well—I’ve got your house all ready on the other side. There’s a little garden, a boiler—what about it?”

  And as usual the old man opposite him shook his head and said: “I reckon we’ll wait till we have to go, sir.”

  They had both been retired for years and were eking out a very meagre old age. They had one Godson, Hector, a bespectacled, studious boy on whom they lavished all th
eir affection.

  Eric felt the antimacassar slip down the back of the chair behind him and trying to retrieve it dropped a little coffee on the worn carpet. He felt a flush creeping up the back of his neck as Mrs. Haslett’s reproving eye fell on him. She was silver-haired, tiny, petal-like, yet had a sharp tongue and a dominating nature. Men to her were to be kept in their place and given tasks around the home. Having noticed Mr. Haslett, under his wife’s supervision, cleaning out the entire lavatory plumbing system one week, Eric had a respectful terror of the old lady. Desperately he tried to control the spreading blush, and began to count under his breath. This was an old remedy and soon began to work, but he noticed to his annoyance that she had looked rather amused.

  The tiny parlour was crowded with photographs, oval shaped, fading and Victorian, and great leather chairs which were the most uncomfortable Eric had ever sat in. The room was obviously only for best and was hardly ever used. The atmosphere was musty and anyway he had a horror of old people. Their wrinkled, parchment-like skin set his teeth on edge, and their senility made him uncomfortable.

  Slowly Hector began to climb the heap. Dust particles and cinders flaked away under his feet and once he started a miniature landslide by dislodging a particularly large lump of coke. As he climbed higher the surface grew warmer to the touch.