Walter stands with his hands in his pockets while his mother, Mary, Sankey and the others look at tapestry purses and fabric fans. The local ladies have turned out in force in their best hats and glass beads and their chatter rises right up to the tin roof. Sankey has been helping with the bran tub and even makes an announcement in his high voice, making some of the girls giggle. He is flushed with self-importance and keeps rushing up to apologise to Walter – 'Sorry Walt, I can't stop' – before whisking himself away again. Walter trails, like a little boy, after the women. His mother tolerates Mary's presence in public. She hopes her patience and goodwill towards Mary Hatt will be read as confidence in her belief that, in the end, the day will be hers: her son will be sensible and marry Sylvia.
The women are interested in the needlecraft and crochetwork, and also the two stalls devoted one to lace and the other to beaded items. They chatter without pause and Walter is overawed at their ability to both speak and listen at the same time. He knows when women get together plots are hatched. His mother purchases a hook-rug needle and Mary, he notes, buys a needlepoint pattern featuring the words We Mourn Our Loss.
At the bran tub Mary wins a necklace made of oval yellow beads and frightens Walter with her shriek of delight. The ham tea costs ninepence each and Walter is obliged to pay for his mother's and Mary's and her brother Joseph's as well as his own. To cap it all, Sankey, who is not entitled to a free tea, as he is not officially considered a circuit minister, presents himself as parched, starved and gasping, and Walter is obliged, grudgingly, to buy his tea too.
'This afternoon has been a great success!' Sankey declares over his cup, as though he is transformed into Mrs Coningsby Disraeli herself. 'Everybody says so,' he confirms.
Walter can't help feeling it has been expensive and diverting in a tedious way, though there is still the evening concert to come.
Walter watches Mary laugh at the ventriloquist's doll in the Children's Corner. She puts her hands on her hips and flashes her higgledy teeth. Walter suspects that when a man is deeply in love he is most likely unable to see anything derelict in the world at all.
Walter is becoming uncomfortable in his suit, such is the heat rising inside the Methodist chapel tonight. He squirms his feet inside his shoes and tries to swallow into his dry throat. The room is packed to the rafters for the Grand Concert, though Walter supposes there is not too much grand about it really, though it is well attended. His knee is pressed agreeably against Mary's. His mother sits on Walter's left. He did not want to bring her, but there it is. He told her she would not enjoy it, and so now he has proved himself right. She is stony-faced, though there is a glitter in her eye, which Walter suspects may be burgeoning psychosis. He hates himself for repeating, 'All right, Mother?' To which she bobs her head smartly once, as if to limit the amount of energy she expends on him.
Layers of smoke drift over the combed and curled heads of the audience and the smell of smoke combines with the pong of mothballs, jasmine eau de cologne and the faint bitterness of sweat.
A man who has been introduced as Eric is playing the violin. Walter is aware of the sound of a dog barking outside. Sankey, he notices, is swaying slightly to the tune the violin is playing and each time he does so he knocks against the felt hat of the lady on his right. Mary is sitting bolt upright with her mouth open and her hands clasped at her breastbone. Well, there's a turn-up for the books. Walter had no idea she appreciated music, he thought she merely tolerated it for the lark of a good saucy song. It was irritating, the thought that she might respond sympathetically to music while referring to his poetry as poop.
A woman has arrived beside Eric and received a big cheer. She has a powdery face and a tall blue feather on her head. Walter wonders whether it is a man. Mary nudges him sharply in the ribs.
'See look, Mrs Deacon!'
Not a man, though Walter still does not recognise this person. The draper is called Deacon; it must be his wife, or his mother. Mrs Deacon sings 'On the Sunny Side of the Street'. Mary bounces up and down slightly and so, Walter notices, does Sankey. Then Mrs Deacon sings 'Stormy Weather', and everyone sways as if they are on board ship, except for Walter and his mother. Mrs Deacon sings mainly of the weather; it makes her feather tremble. She finishes up with 'When I'm Calling You'. It isn't very good, which is a pity because she was doing reasonably well up to then. She clears her throat several times during the song and rises on her toes to reach the high notes as if they are up on a shelf. She receives a jolly good ovation anyway and off goes her feather again.
There is a long queue at the tea stall during the interval. Walter has barely sipped his and scalded his lips when it is time to go back in and sit down. His mother says, 'Mind my coat! Mind my shoe!' He is cheesed off with Sankey and Mary who stand leaning on the bran tub laughing like a couple of sailors. Sankey is dressed in an unlikely ensemble of black and white items, including a stiff-collar shirt. He looks ridiculous, like a bank clerk at a funeral, except that his bowler is dusty and faded and discoloured at the back. What on earth are they laughing at?
Back in the church room it is a little cooler, though the audience are somewhat chattier. As they settle a drift of pipe smoke rises and the ladies fan themselves with their programmes. A man introduced as Frank 'Frankie' Frost is next. He has a blacked-up face and startlingly white hands with which he occasionally strums a banjo. He sings 'Lily of Laguna', followed by 'Little Dolly Daydream', and he receives a standing ovation. Only Hilda Brown remains in her seat, obliging Walter to remain beside her in his, while every body in the room gets to their feet. Somebody behind them shouts 'Bravo!', which causes Mary to honk with laughter.
Finally, a group of people sidle on to stand beside Frankie Frost. The four women are dressed in matching blue velvet gowns and there are two more sleek gentlemen in tuxedos and of course Frankie, whose paint-caked face begins to look silly suddenly, surrounded by such elegance. One of the women is greying, but the others have plump, pretty faces and glossy hair arranged in thick brown curls. A bespectacled male singer begins. The light winks in one lens then the other. The others join in:
Oh, Susanna,
Oh don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee
They sing in different registers, like the variations in a single colour. Walter thinks it is the most beautiful thing he has ever heard. He feels his skin shiver and the hair on his neck move. They sing the harmonies slowly like a lament for a while and then Frankie Cake-Face lays into his banjo, making it sound speeded-up, like Charlie Chaplin running after a train. It is a sound like pure joy. It makes Walter want to leap to his feet and whoop and shout, but of course he doesn't. He sits perfectly still with his hands laid in his lap, heavy as two stones, and a slow tear in his eye.
Twenty-six
MISS DAY HOLDS the page as though it were made of water. She scoops her palms to make a bowl for it to lie in. As they stare, the blue mothwing letter trembles. Sean watches Miss Day's eyes as they follow the words. Invisible lines tow her gaze across row after row. Sean thinks this is a thing even more lovely than Ann raising her animal face against the Cryers Hill wind. Sometimes Miss Day's lips move with the words, and at the end of each row her eyes return, both at the same time, to the beginning of the next row, ready to begin the journey across. Hundreds of little journeys are undertaken by Miss Day's eyes across the blue. Maybe it is thousands, it is hard to pin down a thousand. Keith at school said it was what millionaires had. It occurs to Sean that now he almost knows how to read, his eyes must be going across too. He thinks he would like to watch his own eyes go across the way Miss Day's do. He wants to do everything the same as Miss Day. He decides on the spot that if Miss Day dies, he will throw himself into the pond without his breathing tube. There.
'These are very precious, Sean.'
Wur. 'I know, Miss.'
'Your grandfather has a very nice hand.'
'Yes, Miss.'
'Do your parents know
you have brought these to school?'
Yes, Miss.'
Miss Day looks carefully at Sean.
'No, Miss.'
Miss Day folds the letter in her hand as though it were made of air, as though she were miming it. 'These are nice family treasures, Sean. Do you understand?'
Yes, Miss.'
'They must be kept in a safe place, because in the future, Sean, people will want to see them and read them. Your children, perhaps your children's children. And so for the time being these letters must be put away safely. Give them to your mum and dad for safe keeping, all right, Sean?'
Yes, Miss.'
'Do you promise me?'
Yes, Miss.'
'OK then. All right then, Sean.'
Sean walks home with a light head. It is because I can nearly-read, he thinks. The words are growing in my brain, like the wallpaper bubbles. Perhaps this will create a black hole inside my head. Inside Miss Day's head, on the other hand, must surely be meteors and exploding supernovas. Your children, your children's children's children. This is typical of Miss Day. It was how she looked at the world, through a very long telescope so that she could see things that were far away, that had not even happened yet, that might never even happen at all. Miss Day would merely suspect them into being. It didn't matter that they never happened in a month of Sundays. Miss Day was full to the brim of whatifs. If you could imagine something, it was already a half-truth – from a whatif to a when.
For instance, Sean could not imagine Mrs Roys hurting a child, though he could see her wearing goggles. More importantly, why worry about children who weren't being born yet? This is a whatif for a loon. If she were not careful this kind of thinking would send Miss Day off her rocker.
Sean did not want to see telescope worlds, faraway things that might come along. He wanted to see planets in their proper places and the blue marble Earth, swirled with white, turning cheerfully on its axis. He wanted to hang in the black inside his silver capsule and wave at it. Yoohoo.
Besides, the end of the world was coming, the man on television said so. We were shortly going to be blown up by an asteroid. Even the vicar did not deny it. What good are letters when an asteroid is coming? Answer that, Miss Day.
PS You are beautiful.
Sean did not know what to expect. He had vaguely thought that changeover might involve darkness, or perhaps conversely, light, and that there might be a chant or a clap of noise or a cheer. But changeover offered none of these things. Changeover was the same as before, only worse.
'OK. Right. Next one. Sean?'
Oliver thought that lions were like cats. 'They always fall on their feet,' he said. When the trap was quite finished the three little funny ones climbed up into the tree so that they could watch the lion cub when he came along and fell into the trap.
Sean mashed his hands together and lowered his head down on top of the words in the hope they might suddenly become recognisable closer up. Somebody had come along and mixed up all the letters he had known perfectly well yesterday so that he no longer recognised them today. This was changeover. Some of the words, or parts of words, remained untouched, while others had been blown up and reassembled by a sightless troll.
'Oliver thog. that lie onz. werie lickie cats.'
Sean checked Miss Day's face. Not her cheeriest one. Odd, because he had read the words exactly as they were written. He glanced back at the words in case they had changed themselves. No, they were the same.
He had read them very well, hadn't he? Sean raised his eyebrows at Miss Day. Very good, Sean? Good boy, Sean?
'No? OK,' says Miss Day. 'Who can tell me what the sentence says? Steven? Julia? No, Sean, you've had your try. Anybody? Nobody?'
The moon swung teasingly high over his head, perfectly round in a blue daylight sky, watchful yet coolly impartial. Sean couldn't take his eyes off it. He crouched, waiting patiently at the top of a brick pile, until he was sure that it had moved a little to the right. At the other side of the sky the sun was burning blithely away. From the top of the brick mountain Sean could see far across the estate. He watched the other kids beneath him and felt pleased when he realised how insignificant they appeared. He didn't care if he never came down. Up here everything was just right. Up here there was nothing to puzzle over.
The space age they called it. It was now. Sean knew that one day he would be living on the moon and Earth would be small, like Beaconsfield, and the world would be space and space would be home. Aeroplanes would be rockets and clothes would be spacesuits and food would be drink (just add water). He couldn't wait for then. He wished and hoped for then. How marvellous it would be, you couldn't even imagine it. This world would seem lousy and plain; people would laugh about it, same as they laughed now at the farmers' boys with their dirt-splattered cows. In the space age everything will be just right and there'll be no trouble or wars or dying or bad news. There'll be happiness and clothes made from silver threads and you will see anyone you want to see from a beep machine in your pocket, and if your pet dies you will be able to make another one, exactly the same. He wished it was then now.
He lay down on his back and looked up at the giant sky. He scanned for the merest evidence of God, but there was only a small glinty aeroplane in the distance, silently chalking its white line across. Blue, as any astronaut will tell you, is the colour of home. From up there in the black, the Earth shines bright as a jewel. Ip dip sky blue, who's it, not you. Sean saw blue but he thought about black. The colour of magic and mystery and cold, cold space. Hung with a zillion planets, some hot and gassy and some bright as Christmas and circled with coloured hoops and stars and flashes of gold. Some dark and dead and waiting. He thinks by the time he is an astronaut he will be bouncing on planets far beyond the moon. His very own left foot might step, before anyone else's, on Venus, Mercury, Mars. And then he would have to think of words – true words – as good as Neil's. Ping.
Sean reckoned he would not labour on the farms around here, not in a million years. He'd have a nice job more like; get paid lots of money so he could buy a red roofless car. He'd seen exactly the kind of man he wanted to be in High Wycombe. Straight from school and into their brand new suits, narrow ties, wide sideburns. He liked the way they walked, with their hands in their pockets and shoulders up. He would be like them, he reckoned. You wouldn't catch them working on farms, standing around in the fields. Not bludwell likely. He'd seen them go to the pub instead to have their ploughman's lunches and their Embassy Filter-Tipped.
'Spaz!'
Don't move. She can't see you from there. Cheeky cow. Women have no patience, it is a plain fact. It is why they nag nag nag and yak yak yak. Gor said if you give them an inch, they take a mile. Perhaps this is why they are not allowed in space.
Vivid imaginations were not considered an asset. Children were befuddled, everyone knew that. Your only hope was to pay attention to the adults. If you didn't pay proper attention your life would explode with you inside it, and any chance of a happy future would be flung, along with the debris you allowed yourself to be distracted by, to the furthermost corners of the earth. It was called throwing your life away, it was a shocking waste, and daydreamers were the worst offenders.
Sean was one of those prone to imaginings, everybody said so. You're imagining things, they said. It's all in your head. It was true that he could see things in his head without closing his eyes. He could conceive thoughts and visions he didn't recognise as his own, including words he wasn't sure he understood. It was time-consuming and demanded that he spent hours of class-time listening to the stuff in his head and overseeing the flickering pictures as they presented themselves, rather than paying attention.
There were penalties for dreaming; these varied and were often accompanied by dire warnings of a life wasted, come to nothing and gone to hell. This was because a child left to the mess and whimsy of its own brain would warp itself and those around it in the end. Warped people were inconvenient and unstable, they were not team players, they
did not make good neighbours, you would not want to employ one. To live with your head in the clouds was thought of as a misfortune, like a gammy leg or a cleft palate, something requiring correction. Sean knew he was a dreamer even before he had been accused. Once he was identified as one of these unfortunates, he found himself charged with it daily. He lived in cloud cuckoo land, they said, he was not all there, he was away with the fairies, arrived from another planet. Sean learned that dreaming was of no practical use to anyone, least of all the dreamer; it was, he discovered, something to rid yourself of as quickly as possible.
Ann has taken up knitting. It is incredible that she knits, Sean thinks, while a murderer strolls in the woods. She has two thick white needles, like bones, and a ball of orange wool. She has knitted something maybe big enough for an insect to wear, Sean thinks. It is ragged and sloping, and you can see right through parts of it. Sean decides to say nothing. He watches carefully though for mistakes, or for signs of genius; above all he waits for her to give up.
Knitting has lent Ann a new piety; an air of devoutness hangs about her now that crushes Sean. The more she knits, the more saintly she becomes. There is no situation that doesn't demand the fetching out of her woolly new fetish. It has come between them, the knitting. Sean is undecided as to what to do just yet, so he bides his time and waits. He keeps a careful eye on the thing, as if Ann is knitting a big orange answer right there under their noses. There is a system with the wool. The needle must first poke itself in, then the wool is required to loop over before the needle slides through the other side and finally comes out again. In, over, through, and out. She mouths it to herself. He hates the way the needles point at him; point, point, point, spaz, spaz, spaz. He wants to have a go but she won't let him and she won't teach him how to do it either. He stares at her fingers, trying to pick up the sequencing, willing hers to fail, wishing it would all unravel so he could have her back again.
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