The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore

by Paul Burman

  “Wake up, Elin,” I say, shaking her slightly.

  “What time is it, Robinson Crusoe?” she groans.

  “Time to wake up. It’s almost dark.”

  “It’s not morning?”

  “No.”

  “Thought it was.”

  “We fell asleep; longer than we meant.”

  “Nice though,” she croons. “Put water on to boil, eh. You make a brew and I’ll cook tea.”

  “Okay, sleepyhead, it’s a deal.”

  “Mmm.”

  In the last of the day’s light, I find dry wood scattered among the trees and start building a real fire; a fire to sit over and feed against the dark uncertainty of night.

  Crouching on haunches, with the billy swinging in its own nest of heat, the flames erupt into a beacon of spear-jabbing, dancing brightness and molten darkness, and I glance over my shoulder at the woodland.

  Darkness has its own form of shadow. There are shadows among the trees that grow like ivy and mistletoe. Each standing stone is pitted where shadows attach themselves daily, season after season, age after age, creating footholds for lichen. If I stay here forever, I’ll be robed in a cloak of shadows too. And yet the fire’s brightness creates new folds of darkness, beyond which I’m blind.

  Am I a part of this world or apart from it? Familiar or at odds?

  But the warmth of the night and the whispering of the grasses and the singing of the fire comfort me into stillness. The night is at bay and I won’t be a stranger to it.

  “I think I’ve caught the sun,” I say, as we sit on a log I’ve rolled into position.

  Elin cracks a second egg into the pan and scrapes shell away from several rashers of bacon and the heap of fresh mushrooms. The mushrooms hiss and bubble in their own juices, which trickle into the spitting egg white, turning everything grey-brown.

  “You should’ve worn a hat like I suggested,” and she’d wag a finger if she wasn’t busy. “My, you’re a stubborn bugger at times.”

  “Yes, Mother. It’s mainly my neck and arms. I can still feel the heat there. A hat wouldn’t have helped.”

  “Like a mule.”

  After we’ve eaten supper, we feed the fire until it swells and its crackling laughter natters with the night, then we stand and dance a few brazen, clumsy steps among the shadows, letting ourselves know there’s nothing to fear. And because it’s still and we feel strangely euphoric, and because there’s few opportunities in a lifetime to do such things, we undress one another as we dance, until we step out of our clothes and dance naked across the dark.

  As we dance, my gut tightens into a knot. I ignore it for a few steps but it rises to a lump in my throat, and then, as quickly, transforms into a lightness which spins through my head, disorientating the moment and startling consciousness. I stumble.

  A swan’s trumpet call and the slow beat of wings. The trees shift and the earth spreads wide and moist.

  The grass is wet with evening dew and cold against my back and bum. She lies next to me and I turn, turn, turn to kneel between her legs.

  “Yuk,” she says, “it’s wet.”

  I roll with her until we’ve changed position and I’m on my back again, gazing across at a forked tree, which stands sentry in front of the spinney. She’s above me, wearing the galaxy like a shell. The moisture is refreshing and welcome now.

  Now that I’m burning.

  She presses up and peers down.

  “Are you alright? Your forehead’s sweaty.”

  “Never better. Just hot, that’s all.” Then, remembering, I laugh until I’m giddy and can’t hold the silence any longer: “Babies!” I shout. “COMING UP!”

  “Ssh,” she laughs.

  Lying prone, arms spread, I’m a swimmer doing backstroke. These limbs stretch wide across this cool ocean of grass, clawing deep. Splashing out and ripping handfuls of grass with each stroke, I rub them down Elin’s back, roll the grass against her thighs, push the bruised wad into the hair where our pubic mounds meet.

  “Mons veneris,” I say. “Mound of Venus.” ,”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  She’s salty with the sweat from two days walking. Our bodies are earthy, peaty; her hair tastes of wood smoke.

  Crying out, she scratches me and, knowing I can’t, I groan, “Hold on!” Looking across at the tree, in one swimmingly long instant I notice everything I’ve failed to notice before:

  In the altar of the shadows, braced wide against his own proportions, stands a phallic tree god: Phallus dei. This god has a penis almost as tall, erect and solid as himself, and he leans back to maintain balance, and leers at us from the corner of one eye. He is timber and stone and fifteen-feet tall. He owns a wooden grin and his teeth are sharpened flint points; he has knots for eyes and a crown of leaves for hair. He is anchored to the earth, who is his mother, but he lusts after the sun and the moon, day and night. His penis is a maypole for the seasons to dance by… and there’s a figure standing close to him, watching us.

  The figure of a woman.

  Hold tight to Elin. Mustn’t lose myself.

  She’s little more than a silhouette, but I can tell who she is by her stature and the way she sways her hips slowly to a music only she can hear, arching her arms above her head and making a fan of her fingers. She’ll have long chestnut hair and pale skin, and eyes of glistening burnt umber; her lips will be as full and glossy as a polished olive, warmer than sun-baked terracotta at the end of day and… I’ll know every inch of her, from her smile and her sadness to her loganberry nipples, all the way to her one clear it or is of life – as she knows me.

  We’re still connected.

  I almost say her name, but bite on my lip.

  And corn-blonde Elin is wearing a shell, and Phallus dei stands sentinel, close by, and gawps and laughs and is rooted to the spot. And Elin smiles and I come and, strangest of all, don’t lose my erection.

  Evening glory.

  “Don’t go,” I say.

  “What?” she says. “Where?”

  The shadows change shape and I lose sight of Kate, but Elin’s closer than ever. She’s deliciously close, straddling the altar she’s turned me into. I’m about to retch, but breathe deep, until the scent of torn grass fills my lungs, and then it’s alright again.

  “Tom, are you alright?”

  “Never better. Just hot – so hot. Never better.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What?”

  And I fall out of one world into another.

  There’s a gash in the landscape, out of which I spin. Her womb is moulded from clay and rain, hollowed by the seasons, lined by leaves, baked by the sun; her eyes are the wind singing. Phallus dei sprouts a long tongue, like a white snake, from his flint-toothed grin, and then becomes a tree again.

  “Lie still,” a voice says.

  I twist beneath her – Elin – and spew into the grass.

  “Take a deep breath.”

  When the sky stops accelerating and the gash vanishes, Elin’s kneeling over me and a fire flickers at the edge of my vision; semen trickles down my thigh and a string of vomit dribbles from my mouth.

  “ – something you ate,” she’s saying. “Perhaps one of those mushrooms. Or heatstroke. You passed out – fainted. Twice.”

  “Think I’m going to be sick again.” And am.

  When the craziness has passed, she steers me back to the tent and zips me into a sleeping bag. All I’m left with is a sore head and a pain-wracked stomach and a nervousness about sleeping; little of which stops me from drifting into a sleep which is deep enough to be dream-free, but not immediate enough to purge my memory of events.

  In the morning, the headache and stomach pain will be gone, replaced by a huge thirst, but the visions will linger and live on in a peripheral world.

  As we pack the tent away, I’ll say: “This is a beautiful spot. I might come out here again sometime and plant a couple of our spruce saplings down in that spinney. It’d be a goo
d spot for them.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not? We’ll never afford a place with a garden big enough to take them. They need to grow somewhere.”

  “It is a beautiful spot,” she’ll agree.

  “I’d like to stay here forever. It’s unspoiled.”

  “And live off berries and nuts and mushrooms?” she’ll tease. “All tainted by years and years of insecticides, pesticides and herbicides.”

  “I’d make an enclosure for animals – goats, poultry, sheep perhaps – and sow a few crops.”

  “And reinvent the wheel, then the car, then the motorway?”

  “Even so,” I might add.

  “Poor Robinson Crusoe. I’ll think of you from afar, and especially during winter. If you’re lucky I’ll send you a letter or two – by pigeon post, of course – to see how you are, and if you’re ready to escape the past.”

  “Even so.”

  *

  Martin Reynolds is a sneaky shit, but in Class Six we have to do a group project on a foreign country and he teams with Gazza and me. We draw China out of the hat and begin making a plasticine banquet of Chinese food, we copy heaps of notes from two books, make a poster about the Chinese calendar and zodiac (drawing a picture of each year’s emblem), and I get the brainwave of making a ceremonial dragon mask using papiermâché.

  “Walters has got gold paint in his desk,” Gazza says. “We’ll paint the face gold and red, and have ping-pong balls for eyes.”

  “And red crêpe paper coming out the mouth like flames,” I add.

  As we work on our pictures representing the Year of the Rat, the Year of the Monkey, the Year of the Rabbit, the scale of our dragon grows bigger.

  “We’ve got an old bedspread in the garage,” Martin Reynolds says. “We could use that for the body. It’s got tassels on it.”

  Me: “We could get some more of those smoke pellets and have clouds of smoke shooting out its nose.”

  Martin: “What smoke pellets?

  Gazza looks at me and I concentrate on tracing the outline of a rat from the encyclopædia.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  He may be a sneaky shit, but he ain’t stupid.

  “What are you talking about? Have you got smoke bombs? Tell me.”

  “It’s nothing,” Gazza says. “It was something we were talking about, that’s all.”

  “You did something. I can tell. What did you do?”

  “It’s a secret,” Gazza says.

  “I can keep a secret. We’re working on this project together, aren’t we?”

  It isn’t the same. We say nothing.

  Then he puts his hand up and calls across the classroom: “Mr Walters.”

  “You say anything and I’ll flatten you,” Gazza snarls. He’s the shortest of the three of us, but height has sweet nothing to do with the will to scrap and the will to hurt.

  “I can keep a secret.”

  “You better.”

  When Walters gets to our table, he says, “What’s the matter, Martin?”

  “Can we make a Chinese dragon and do a parade in front of the class, Sir?”

  “That sounds like a bright idea. Who thought that one up?”

  He hesitates. “Gary did, Sir.”

  I hope Gazza’ll flatten the creep, but Gazza beams and Walters smiles at him the same way he did when he brought the flint side-scraper to school.

  “And would we be allowed to make it breathe out smoke, Sir?”

  “Not with fireworks, I hope.”

  “No, Sir. Gary knows a way of doing it.”

  Walters looks at him and raises his eyebrows, the way teachers do. “Well?”

  Gazza pauses, considers, then says: “Greenhouse fumigators. My uncle’s got some.”

  “Interesting,” Mr Walters says. “Make the dragon first and we’ll see about the smoke. We’ll have to do it in the playground, if we do it at all.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The following Saturday afternoon, we’re standing with our backs to a market stall selling cheap china, furtively glancing across at Thorby’s Hardware & Garden Supplies. It’s like we’re planning to rob a bank and I don’t want any part of it, but it’s my big gob that got us here. At least Martin Reynolds isn’t looking so cocky now.

  “Tommo, you wait by the seed stand, like you did before, and, Martin, you stand outside.”

  “Forget it. I’m not staying outside. I’m coming in with you two.”

  “It’ll look too obvious if we all go in,” Gazza explains. “It’s not half as busy as it was last time.”

  Me: “I’ll stay outside. Someone’s gotta.”

  Gazza: “Nah, you’re my watch-out, Tommo.”

  Martin: “I can do that.”

  Gazza: “No. Tommo knows what to do. He’s done it before.”

  And I feel a moment’s pride, even if he’s only saying it because he doesn’t trust Martin Reynolds, who he eventually agrees to let come in with him.

  By the time we get into the shop there’s just five other customers. Gazza and Martin walk to the back and make a show of looking at lawnmowers, while I stand by one of the seed carousels and pick out a couple of packets. I pretend to read the instructions, as if I’m some pint-sized professional gardener researching the growing techniques for prize nasturtiums.

  As Gazza and Martin edge towards the fertilisers and begin studying the insecticides on the shelves above the fumigators, there’s something wrong. One of the shopkeepers stops tidying the hose nozzles to watch them. The shop’s too empty, too quiet. Maybe the police have been tipped off and there’s a whole squad waiting to rush in and arrest us. Should I stroll over to Gazza and tell him, or shout and run?

  Gazza and Martin huddle closer and Martin reaches out and slips something into his jacket. The shopkeeper stands upright and begins marching towards them. He puts his hands out to grab them by the collar and I croak: “Gazza!”

  Gazza turns, sees what’s happening, ducks the man’s arm and runs the length of the shop in two seconds flat. I’ve never seen him move so fast. Martin Reynolds stands there gawping with his gob wide open, held tight, and so I follow Gazza.

  We run down the same side-alley we used before and dash across the car park. Gazza doesn’t slow down for me to catch up, so he must be scared big-time, but when he finally stops and, like me, bends double to ease the stitch in his side, I can tell he isn’t scared but pissed off. We’re back at that same demolition site we found our way to before.

  “We made it,” I say, panting for breath, trying to stand upright.

  Instead of thanking me for warning him, he snarls, “Are you bleeding thick or something?”

  “What? Why?”

  “You called my bloody name out.”

  “Oh,” and I crease over again. “I had to.”

  “They got Martin.”

  “He was too slow,” I say.

  Gazza pauses, takes a deep breath, and his tone changes. “Yeah, he messed everything up. Talk about bloody obvious. What an amateur. I bet you he gives them our names.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. He’ll squeal like a stuck pig. The moment they get a cop there he’ll pooh himself.”

  “But you didn’t take anything.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I been in trouble too many times.” Gazza bends down, picks up a brick and throws it across the site. “He’ll blab how we took the smoke pellets last time, if only to make us seem like the real trouble-makers. We’re in trouble whether we like it or not.”

  “Just because he put those pellets in his jacket doesn’t mean he was gonna steal them,” I point out. “Don’t they have to wait until you’re out the shop before they can nab you? He might have been going to the counter to pay for them. Who’s to tell?”

  “He will. He’ll spill his guts. You’re right, they nabbed him too early, but he won’t think of that.” Then he looks at me and grins. “But they didn’t get you, did they?”

  In my hand are the two
packets of seed I was holding when Gazza did his dash.

  “Shit,” I say. “Bloody hell.”

  “What are they?”

  I read the label on each packet. “Nasturtiums and tomatoes. These ones are called Money Maker.”

  And he begins laughing.

  “Should we take them back?” I say.

  And he laughs louder. We cack ourselves laughing.

  “Nasturtiums,” I say.

  “Tomatoes!”

  When we stop laughing, the packets are still in my hand and nothing’s changed.

  “What’ll I do with them?”

  “Get rid of them,” Gazza says.

  There’s so much rubble and rubbish around, it’d be easy to lose two packets of seed, and I’m about to post them into the cavity between several broken bricks and chunks of concrete, when I have a better idea. Tearing the packets open, I empty all the seed into the palm of my hand, and share this out with Gazza.

  “Here,” I say, and begin running round the site like a mad bastard, leaping over broken tiles and bin bags, sprinkling tiny amounts of seed as I go.

  “You’re crazy,” Gazza shouts, then starts jumping around too.

  When I get home, Martin Reynolds’ dad has already been on the phone, and Mum and Brian are waiting.

  It’s easier to play innocent than I’d thought.

  “I don’t steal,” I shout back. “I never have done. It was Martin Reynolds who wanted to go into that shop today. Gary and me didn’t want to.”

  “What about last time?” Brian demands. “It was just you and Gary Fletcher then.”

  “I didn’t take anything then either. I’ve never stolen anything. That’s stupid.”

  “You stay away from Gary Fletcher,” Mum says. Her voice is thin and sharp, like a knife. “He’s trouble. You’re not to play with him, do you hear?”

  I stare mutely at an invisible point somewhere between and beyond them. How can they say such a thing? They don’t know him.

  “Do you hear your mother?” Brian shouts. “If we hear you’re still going around with him, you’ll be banned from going out for a month. You’ll stay in your room. Do you hear?”

  He takes a step in my direction and I sort of nod. But there must be something in my expression he doesn’t like, because his voice gets louder and he’s all red in the face.