She knits beside the pond while he experiences zero gravity at the bottom of it. He can still see the orange of the wool, hear the click, click, click of the needles, even down here in the slimy dark. The water is cold at first, then you don't feel it. His breathing tube is an unqualified success, allowing him to remain under for long periods if necessary, though he hates the brushing of reeds and God-knows-what against his legs; he doesn't want to look or feel, he doesn't want to see or hear or know anything at all. When he comes up for air it is the flash of orange wool among the green sedge that catches his eye first. She doesn't even look up, not even when he splashes extra loud. He thinks a knitting needle could be a very dangerous thing. He wonders how long he would have to drown for before she noticed. Would she, for instance, finish her row first? He pictures himself floating, dead, while she clacks away on the bank.
He remembered his dad saying, 'A woman's attention span in minutes is less than her shoe size.' He couldn't make head or tail of that. His mind just filled up brown and dead like the pond water when he tried. Nevertheless, he sensed it didn't apply where Ann was concerned, clickety-clack.
Beneath the water the noise in his head just stopped, leaving only heartbeat and dark and weightlessness. You get used to it, the astronauts said. You get used to feeling your heart in your mouth and your brain in your feet, and not knowing if you're the right way up or not. On TV they said the Soviet cosmonauts trained in giant water tanks, and Sean gasped to think he was doing the same. Nobody knew what the Americans did; it was secret. The space race they called it, as if everybody were ready steady go in their rocket ships.
The underwater plants reached up to touch him. When his feet found the bottom where it was shallow, he sent up clouds of silt as he panicked. He didn't want to know about the bottom, with its slime and stones and secrets. He didn't want to feel things that were in the pond and he didn't want the things to feel him either. They would leave one another alone, the pond and he. Laid to rest. He had heard those words spoken. He liked them. Some words made things better, like leave no stone unturned.
As he surfaced, Sean felt certain that she was gone. Sure enough, there was no sign of her or her orange flag. He looked up at the jet trails graffitied all over the holiday sky; they seemed to suggest just about everybody except him had buggered off.
As he climbed out Sean found himself overwhelmed by a furious, self-pitying grief. He opened his mouth to shout but only a squeak came out, the sound of which made him cry bitter tears for himself. After tears there was only anger left. He snatched at the reeds that grew in spiky clumps around the pond, though they resisted and fought back, cutting his palms and squealing their own fibrous protests. He tossed them behind him and they landed and drifted across the water. He trudged home. Though the sun was high, he remained soaked through. The birdsong seemed unusually loud, almost deafening, as if each bird had commandeered a megaphone for the job.
Ann was sitting on the wall by the school path at the bottom of George's Hill Road with a clot of other nitwit girls. Sean gathered himself, rearranged his walk, whistled something tuneless. She was throwing her orange rag about under everyone's noses, counting her stitches, showing off. The others were bent over it, looking up as they saw Sean approaching. He swung his tube and pretended not to see them until the last minute and then he had to make a pantomime of being all surprised. He overdid it, fakery wasn't his strength. Anyway, the girls laughed and so, encouraged, he laughed too. 'I never knew it was you lot, I never knew it,' shaking his head at the miracle of not knowing it. This made the girls laugh more and Sean thought things were going rather well, not too bad anyway, so he loosened his tubing and began to swing it in a big arc over his head. That shut them up; now they couldn't care less about stink knitting.
If you swung it hard enough the tube would make a weird noise, a bit like blowing in a bottle, ghostly, like something uncanny. You had to spread your feet and rotate it like a lassoo to get it going, and that's what Sean did, and it was this that collapsed the girls again. He heard them all right, but he reckoned the noise when it came would shush them, so he swung as hard as he could. Now the girls were clutching each other and laughing the way most people cried, with twisty faces and no breathing. Sean closed his eyes for concentration and prayed for the noise to come. But the girls' laughter was the only sound, snortier and gaspier, on and on.
Then the noise came. For a moment everything was just right. The sound pushed the air apart and hung there. Everyone was quiet, even the megaphone birds. It was just the noise calling, like the end of the world, and Sean's arms whirling wildly in left-handed circles, as if he were a human clock spinning backwards through time all the way to the beginning. Then they started, and it was hard to say who began because very quickly it was all the girls and their chant went: 'Spaz. Spaz. Spaz. Spaz.' Accompanied gradually by a stamp of feet and clatter of handclaps.
Sean heard the words and they seemed to fall in a loop with the revolutions of the tube until they were the same thing. And this, in a way, was fine for a while. Girls were watching, girls were clapping. If it wasn't for the S word this would be the greatest day of his life so far. Maybe for this reason, maybe to diminish the word, to spoil its impact, Sean began to chant it too.
By this stage you could hardly hear the tube noise over the Spaz chorus. The word had whipped up a spell, and it was expanding. It floated above their heads and mushroomed out towards the almost-houses and the Church of the Good Shepherd on the hill. Spaz Spaz Spaz Spaz. It bubbled and frothed and grew bigger and bigger until it hung with the dust in a dome over the estate.
Sean didn't feel his fingers release the tube, but he watched it go sailing over his head. He saw it twisting as it travelled, like one of the Dewell gang's sorry-faced adders. He walked away while the tube was still airborne. He was on the other side of the road by the time it landed. He discovered he no longer cared. What was the use of a breathing tube when you didn't deserve to live. It wasn't a question because he already knew the answer, and anyway who would he ask? The clappers and the stampers? The trick teachers with their liar alphabet? The smoky policemen in their short raincoats?
The word followed him. More chanters arrived. They came at a charge, hair flying, mouths stretched, tiddlers galloping at the back. A whole battalion of snot-faced spazzes, smeared and wild with shouting, coursing around Larkspur Way, surging up the hill. The word rained down on Sean like Lothian's arrows. He didn't want to think about whether Ann was there or not, coasting sideways in her crab run, baring her teeth, shaking her fist of knitting. He hoped she had stayed behind on the wall, finishing another row of stitches. Sean ran. He did his best style and pumped his arms. Free of his breathing apparatus, he could move as fast as the taller boys. He panted in time with his strides. Top. Executive. Fathead. Perk. He headed for the farm beyond the hill, the other side of Watchet Lane. He could see an arch of light on the horizon, pink-tipped, like dragon fire, falling over the busy A-road to Great Missenden. He sprinted for it.
*
Sean unwrapped the next letter in the same way Miss Day had, in flourishes, with careful fingers. This one had a different flaming flipping date. Once again Sean found he could sort of read bits. Again there were some words sticking out, good ones. These were: clem. tank. sad. mo. sold. perky. lark. bell. sting. The words he didn't recognise melted away.
14th October 1942, M.E.F.
Dear Mary,
What a joy to receive your letter! You mustn't apologise for it, Mary. It has made me very happy because, though short, it conveys a real sense of home. It was lovely to hear some news, though of course I was sad to hear that your parents remain unwell. I am sure Joseph will manage where he is, and try not to worry about Clem – at least he is not landed in a tank. I am glad to hear that Isabel's husband has found work at Naphill.
I had thirty hours' leave last weekend and went to a town some miles away, which made a nice change. A few of us went to an Arab picture house, which shows a different pic
ture each night for about 1/-, not bad, and anyhow while I was there in town, I had my photo taken. Shall I send you one? I can't tell if it is good or bad. I shall leave you to be the judge! Speaking of which, I should so much love to have a photograph of you, Mary.
By the way, I met an Australian lecturer and writer yesterday. I did enjoy that. He was forty and had been wounded three times. I wonder if, one day, he will write about all this. I should write about it (if I were he) without a doubt.
We had a parade today and some big chappie came to speak to us. Two and three-quarter hours in the heat – several young and sporty types fainted. The M.O. advises Eno's fruit salts each morning and foot powder too.
I was interested to hear that the ironmonger has sold his business. How did the tomatoes do? Here they manage three crops in a season! How did the beans turn out with that wretched blackfly? I was glad to hear about the harvest this year. You seem to have done exceptionally well, considering. You sound very pleased about all the land girls and the commotion they cause. Quite a lark, by the sound of it. Are there many flowers this year? In Alexandria the flower shops are crammed with roses and chrysanthemums – some an astonishing deep blue hue. You know how perky and confident a robin is in England? Well, here they are shy, always hiding. There are lots of wagtails too and plover-type birds and various types of hawk.
Did you know scorpions commit suicide? If caught in an impossible situation, it stings itself and dies instantly.
I almost forgot, there is a chap here, Frank Miller, who was born in Hazlemere! I thought the name rang some sort of bell. Please write when you get the chance. Everyone here is writing to their girls and wives. Are you my girl? I have told the others you are! Well, I must close. We are never still. Always moving on. Cheerio. Please remember me to people.
Yours, Walter xx
P.S. Hope you are able to get your shoes in next quota.
Sean liked the letters more and more. He reread the words he could understand. The others lay temptingly out of reach, fuzzy and peculiar. Still, you could build pictures: tank enos green MO wagtalls plovertip wivers waltr. too crossis. yoo get yur shoos, nex qoota. nex qoota. A neck scooter? There remained many mysterious unknowable things. A rich, varied, mysterious world, son. A mystery was meant to be solved, Sean knew that. Like the creature in the pond and the girl in the woods and the true alphabet beginning with ABC.
Twenty-seven
'I SPY WITH my little eye something that begins with M.'
'Myself,' grins Sankey.
'Don't be daft.'
'Marjoram,' says Walter, narrowing his eye.
'Where?' demands Mary.
'By the stile.'
'Not that, anyhow.'
'May Day parade,' suggests Sankey.
'May Day parade?' Walter sounds irritable. 'Where, pray, do you spy one of those?'
'I spy it in my mind's eye.'
'Play properly, Sank, or else clear off.'
Walter, Mary and Charles Sankey stop for a rest at the top of the hill, where meadowsweet, clover and heartsease grow. The wind sweeps off their hats and Mary chases after them, dipping and laughing after each as it blows along the cowslip bank. The cloud above them is stretched fleecy thin and the long grass is combed sideways in the breeze.
'Who says you may not spy articles in your mind's eye?'
'Come on. It's obvious.'
'Says who?'
'Muntjac. Muntjac? Muntjac!'
'Pride comes before a fall, Wally Wallflower.'
Sankey fancies a quick prayer, but he does not want the others to think he is all God God God, so he forgoes it. He takes out his tobacco instead.
'Where d'you reckon this baccy was grown then?'
'America of course. They have plantations, don't they, like cotton.'
Mary takes out her sampler: Mary Hatt is my name. And with my needle mark the same. And by this you all may see. What care I take with embroidery.
'America. There's the place for your preaching, Sank. I reckon you'd get a warm welcome there, I do. They like their worshipping, I hear. And I hear they like their grub and they aren't afraid of hard work to boot.'
'Well then. How do you know so much about it?'
'I must have picked it up, mustn't I?'
'Must've.'
Mary sings.
'Bishop Bishop Barnabee,
Tell me when my wedding shall be.
If it be tomorrow day,
Open your wings and fly away.'
She screams as her captured butterfly takes flight from her hands. She looks around. 'Did you see? I shall be married! I shall be married soon!'
'Now who's daft, eh?' Walter asks Sankey. Then he calls out to Mary: 'That's a good bit of news then!' Only to find Sankey is watching him with a plain face and no hint of a smile. Pitysake, Walter thinks to himself, if you can't have a joke, dear me.
'Look out, else it'll be you I'm marrying!' Mary slaps Walter's cap on to his head. She tosses Sankey's bowler to him and he lunges to catch it.
'Good throw,' he says. 'And a good catch by me.'
You've reminded me,' says Walter. 'They asked me to try out for the Hughenden eleven.'
'Bit of a cricketer are you now? enquires Sankey.
'I get by'
'Well, if they need a bowler, you might say I'm your man.'
You? A bowler?' Walter is amused.
'Do not mock, young man, unless you have good evidence for contradicting me.' Sankey adjusts his jacket and sniffs.
'Right then. Fair enough. Let's put it to the test.' Walter is already on his feet.
'Without a ball, Walt? Without bats? Do we bowl air, is that it?' Sankey and Mary laugh together. Mary laughs longest.
'Bowlair!' she shrieks, pointing at Sankey's head. You could bowl with a bowlair hat!'
'No, Mary,' Sankey laughs back. 'It is you who are the Hatt! Ha! Do you get that one? You who are the Hatt! Ha ha! Walt! Did you hear that? She said –'
Yes, yes, I heard it.'
Yes! And I said, It is you who are the Hatt! Ha ha!'
'And don't you call me a Mad Hatter, Charles Sankey!'
'Ha ha ha ha ha!'
'Right.' Walter has gathered some stones. He waits impatiently beside them. Sankey gasps.
'Ha ha, oh-dear-oh-dear, ha!'
Walter waits until he has their attention. He has a voice borrowed off the wireless: 'The first man bowls against the wind towards the valley. Here I have made a mark. The second man bowls next, and so on. The umpire then – I would thank you to stop grinning like an idiot please, umpire – will judge who is the winner based on points awarded for individual skill and style. Yes?'
Yes.'
'Aye aye, sir.'
'Right. I shall bowl first. Umpire?'
Mary scrambles to her feet and hurries towards Walter.
'No, no, back, back. Over there. Stand over there.'
Mary trots backwards. Walter chooses a stone from the pile, examines it, and walks away, loosening his right arm as he goes, holding up a finger to the wind. When he is ready he turns to face the valley. He tucks the stone under his chin and waits. Mary looks at Sankey and grins. A beat and then Walter bolts forward with great long spider strides. As he nears the spot he unravels his arm as if he might very well step off the hill and float right over the valley. Instead, he releases the stone in an arcing motion that starts in his shoulder, curls through, and fires the stone out of his hand. They stand and watch it sail into the valley. Over the greenness it goes, turning slowly in the empty sky.
'I can improve on that,' mentions Walter as the stone sinks out of sight, but still they wait as though they are hoping to hear the sound of the thud as it lands far below. The wind is the only sound, and then Mary's volley of handclaps.
Sankey tears towards the bowler's mark as if he has no intention of remaining on the hill a second longer. He has removed his glasses and it is possible he cannot see the mark, the valley, or the point at which his feet will leave the ground. As he releases the
stone Mary shouts a great cheer, and the stone and cheer are launched together into the void as Charles stumbles blindly out of sight.
Mary claps and calls out, 'Sank! Sank! He is gone for a burton!'
Walter laughs. The silly fool has indeed rolled himself down the hill. Walter is the winner. 'Hip hip!' he calls and answers himself, 'hooray!' They will have to go looking for Sankey. They will doubtless find him on his back somewhere, in maudlin conversation with himself, or communing with his long-suffering God.
'What a twerp, eh?' But Mary is not where she stood a moment ago either. She lies on the ground, stiffened, trembling, swallowing her tongue. Walter hurries to her. He knows what to do. Mary's mother, Ida Hatt, showed him, never once taking her eye off him as she demonstrated, leaving him feeling oddly culpable somehow, as though she doubted he would be spending any more polite time with her daughter now. It made him resolute, that suspicion that he lacked character, lacked pluck. They would see – her mother, his mother, and the others – what he was made of. They would see his bold heart, his steady hand and his poet's soul.
Walter did stray once, however, aged eighteen, while Mary was still at school. He watched her elder sister as she rode one of the Home Farm shires from the field. The sun had fallen behind the line of oaks that formed the boundary to the lower field, turning them black and scorching the sky over Spurlands End. He knew her well of course, but on this particular day Walter watched Isabel lay herself down along the broad back of the saddleless horse, so that she could watch the sky changing colour. She swung her legs to the motion of its walk, urging it on with a click of her tongue. Her hair, he noticed, fell down its flank.
There were stalls and country dancing and fancy dress when he saw her again at the Silver Jubilee celebrations held at Home Farm. Isabel was got up as Britannia. She was dancing 'Hey, Boys, Up Go We' and she clapped and stamped and picked up her dress. Walter stared until she smiled at him. When he got home he wrote:
Sunset tows her through the green,
On warm-breathed horses, like a queen,
Her feet shall tap the steps of time,
Cryers Hill Page 16
