Cryers Hill

by Kitty Aldridge

  26th March 1943, M.E.F.

  My dear Mary,

  I received your letter! You don't seem to have had much frost this year, kiddie? It sounds as though your farm girls are doing well enough, despite John's fears! How I wish I could have enjoyed some of that stewed rhubarb with you. Try not to worry about Clem, I am sure he is settling down wherever he is. Two of our guns are now out of action and I no longer have time to attend a church service. There are lots of skylarks here. I found 2 babies in a nest on the ground – hardly feathered. I pray they will survive. I wish you could see the huge beetles here. You know, these Italian cigarettes make a poor smoke.

  Sad to say but Bert Jones has died. I had spoken of you to him many times, and he told me of his adored wife and sister-in-law. Gunner Horner has been taken away with overheated mastoid.

  There are plenty of tortoises here. If you pick them up, they pee down your arm. Would you believe I've just brushed 100 ants off this letter. By the way, I have enclosed a few wildflower seeds in order that you should plant them and perhaps we shall see the same pretty plants each day. There is a limit on letters and I am therefore using my school exercise books to make longer letters and hope the sheets do not run out too soon.

  One of our fellows has not heard from his wife for five months. We have just heard Smith was taken prisoner.

  Later (April):

  We now have a hen. When we stop we tip it out of the lorry and it potters around and we feed it. It lays about 3 eggs a week. A funny thing, Sinclair was a bully during training and now he is a jelly. A good driver, but goes to pieces in action these days. Do not work too hard (though I know how gladsome harvest time can be when it comes).

  Ted Jarvis wrote to his wife suggesting the name Eric for their new son. She has called him Keith. It is too dark to write more.

  Later:

  We found a donkey almost buried under the sand, so we dug it out and it staggered to its feet. We poured some of our water ration down it and it revived and wandered off.

  Later:

  At last! A wireless! Bertha Willmott is singing 'Nellie Dean' on it and all the boys are singing. It's just been reported that 'Rommel has left Africa'. We were hoping to take him prisoner.

  The natives at Mahadia cannot believe we've come all the way overland from Egypt. They seem to think we have come from the skies by magic.

  The Yanks receive such wonderful parcels from home, gee. Every luxury you can imagine. They think the Tommies have a hard time. The cockney lads make good pals, though they talk the hind legs off a donkey. The New Zealander, it has to be said, has a heart of gold.

  We moved on at 0500 hrs through gold and mauve dog daisies. Monty is hugely popular. He has the one hundred per cent trust of everyone. We tickle the scorpions with grass and they sting themselves to death.

  Later:

  The 15th Panzers have surrendered! It is 130 degrees in the shade. I have a Jerry foxhole lined with hay, which is alive with field mice. Very comfortable. I met Zeb, a Slovak soldier. He talked me into the ground. We have 3 days' leave in Cairo.

  1800 hrs:

  We went to Benghazi but there was nothing open. Came back along the coast road – miles of nothing except locusts. I enclose a pressed red flower from one of the blossoming trees. Watermelons are 1/3- each here. The slices are so wide they wet your ears. We are still on the road. Many of the lads have been ill with septic sores; some have pleurisy or influenza, so now we're being granted 7 days' leave in Cairo – the first lot go tomorrow. I feel so alone sometimes. I made friends with a native who spoke good English. His wee eight-year-old daughter had rings in her ears and nose.

  I wish I could be a writer. I dare say poet is out of the question, but always I want to write, write, write. My thoughts are of you.

  (Soon it will be your birthday, now that it is May.)

  Shed helah. Allah yeb mek feek.

  Ma assalamah,

  Walter xx

  Sean holds the letter up so that the sun shines through it. Wur. He doesn't mind that he cannot read the words. He can see his fingers through the paper, then his whole splayed hand. He presses the letter against his face and smells. He decides he will tell Miss Day he is changeover'd from a letter. He doesn't care that it's a lie. Now he can nearly-read p'raps she will hug him again. P'raps when she hugs him he will tell her what he knows.

  At school they don't sing hymns or say prayers. Perhaps because it is not modem, Sean thinks. They sing 'Lord of the Dance' and 'Kumbaya', and 'Them Bones, Them Bones, Them Dry Bones', with Mr Turner on guitar. Mr Turner likes to strum with his fingernails, hitting the strings hard, turning his face beetroot. He slaps a rhythm on the wood too, and bobs his head like a pop star, making the girls giggle.

  Hymns and prayers are for church. Sean suspected it would be pointless to pray in a prefab. Proper prayers needed gold, hush and the chink of a collection box or else they would not go all the way up; they would hover and drift. Proper hymns and prayers needed stained glass and the swish of a dome-headed priest, whose entrance would roll the eyes of the Saints.

  Girls seemed to know lots of songs, all the words, the correct tunes. They sang together like thrushes; they liked to glimpse one another and sing through their smiles. It was a secret code, invisible as radar; a boy would understand nothing. A boy would rather not sing at all, unless it was a good dirty song and everyone cheered. A boy would stare at the ceiling and mouth nearly-words, and if he saw another boy smiling his way, he'd know someone had farted.

  Sean wears his brother's shoes. They are too big and too beautiful; black suede with pointed toes. Shoes you might solve a crime in. Not actual suede but lookalike suede, synthetic. Anything synthetic is sophisticated. The girl with the lazy eye in Barratt Shoes said so. She said it didn't stain and it didn't smell. It was modern. She finished talking and her lazy eye slid off up the wall, across the plastic boots and handbags.

  Ty bought the modern synthetic shoes there and then. He counted his money. Sean watched her good eye roll as the cash came down. When the till pinged, the drawer flew into her stomach and her eye floated off again. These were shoes you would see on Top of the Pops, on the shuffling feet of Cliff or Ringo. These shoes had panache, that's what Ty said. God knows how he knew that.

  Ty walked so fast Sean had to run to keep up. They sat down in the bus shelter and Ty put them on. He made Sean carry his old ones in the box. On the bus Ty put his feet up on the back of the seat in front so they could watch the shoes all the way home.

  Sean clops past the garages at the back of Ann's house. He gazes at the shoes as they lead him where they will. If Ty finds out that Sean is wearing the brand-new modern synthetic suede shoes, he will kill him. Ty wasn't going to find out.

  Sean waits by the fence to see if she will fly up. Nothing. He continues up the hill to the Wilderness. Not many there, just spaz tiddlers: Tim, Eg, Gerald and a toddler, naked except for a gun holster. Where is everyone? His shoes have been spotted. The toddler comes and squats to inspect them.

  'They're too big,' Gerald accuses, pointing at them like he is the shoe police, but Sean is already busy flopping back to the road.

  'Spaz, they an't mine,' Sean explains, brash on account of the toddler.

  'Because you stoled a person's shoes!' Tim is startled by the speed of his deduction.

  'Spaz, I loaned 'em, geddit?'

  The shoes are harder to control off the tarmac. Sean claws his toes.

  'Whose shoes wan't they?' demands Tim, alarmed.

  'They're too big,' Gerald insists, pointing them out to the aghast toddler. Sean throws his hands on his hips like Ty does.

  'Holy cow. These are modern shoes costing two pounds four shilling. Synthetic not suede you spaz. Pan ash, see? Now p'sof.'

  He almost gets the hang of the shoes on Hawbush Road. It is a flip-flop technique, pinching and relaxing your toes at the right moment, rotating your hips.

  His older brother had a thing about Hawbush Road. 'Hawbush, geddit?' Typhoid had sai
d. 'D'you geddit? Hawbush!' And he thrashed himself laughing. 'Geddit?' Sean told everyone. He didn't get it either, but they rolled off chairs laughing just the same, even the girls. Sean twinkled up at Miss Day. 'Haw bush, Miss, d'you geddit!' He was sent home. His dad knocked him against the TV with his swinging arm. Deputy Dawg was on. He got sent to his room with no dinner. They had to apologise to Miss Day together, Sean and his dad. Gor did the talking.

  What do you say to the lady teacher?

  Sean still didn't get it.

  Modern shoes were not an everyday sight around Cryers Hill. It was not a with-it place like London or High Wycombe. Never mind that the word GROOVY was scrawled in the bus shelter. Who were they kidding?

  Hello, lamp post, what you knowing? Glad to see your flowers growing. Songs flew out of the builders' transistor radios all day, loud as the drilling. You didn't talk to lamp posts around here unless you were the village loon, and then people knew to avert their eyes.

  Sean puts his hands on his hips and clops like a horseless cowboy. Some of the builders, he notices, are watching. He tries not to cringe, he forces his legs to swing, his body to sway. He wants to call out something funny, clever. All he can think of is Hawbush, geddit?

  He arrives at the skeleton frames of the newest houses at the top of the hill. Up here a desert wind whips the sand into your eyes. The houses make unfamiliar noises; they crack and hum and moan like injured souls when the wind flies into their pipes. Columbia, this is Houston, over. Ping. Houston, Roger, we copy and we're standing by for your e.t.d. Sean floats; it is harder in a wind. Ping. He claws his toes and the shoes come with him. Ropes of dust twirl, spraying fine particles into his eyes; sheets of plastic snap and the houses moan. This is Houston, loud and clear. OK, Neil. Ping. We can see you coming down the ladder now. Roger, Houston. Ping. We copy you. Sean pauses beside some freshly laid cement. When it is dry it will be a patio. Patios are the latest thing, everybody wants one. The smaller houses, Sean's included, don't have one. One day a family will sit right here on their fashionable garden chairs (plastic weave in get-ahead colours that last a lifetime) and they will celebrate their patio-ownership. A patio is stylish and with-it. A patio is for people who aspire to cocktails. A patio means you are somebody. Sean doubts, with a conviction that surprises him, that he will ever be the owner of a patio. The first step is indeed a small step, and though he cannot pretend it is for all mankind or anything, in terms off soothing his troubled, patioless soul it seems to do the trick. There is something satisfying about the sight of a panache shoe standing on an almost-patio. Here is a wearer of modern shoes relaxing on his new terrace. If only Ann were here to see this.

  Moon dust smells just like wet ashes. Neil Armstrong says so. To Neil Armstrong, up on high where the angels float, right there under God's nose, moon dust smelling like wet ashes is bloody marvellous, and the whole world agrees with him. Moondust. Wetash. Panash. Maybe all beautiful words are connected.

  It's creepy, the quiet. The builders must be on a break. Sean looks up through the grit at the wooden joists fanning out like dinosaur ribs to make the gabled roofs; torn plastic flaps like skin at the top. The houses look wild and dangerous to Sean, herded together, a sandstorm behind them, prehistoric.

  The Windsor-vowelled BBC voice remains characteristically calm; 'There he is now, putting his foot out. You can see him leaning on it' Sean waits calmly too, while the dust blows, while the world watches, while he makes history. Ping. Everyone waits while Neil thinks. It's one small step for man. Sean closes his eyes. One giant leap for mankind. Neil has spoken, amen. He is still speaking, wur. The surface is fine and powdery. Ping. I can pick it up loosely with my toe. Except it isn't loose, it isn't powdery. Sean attempts to lift a foot. For a terrible moment, like when someone forgets to speak on television, nothing happens. The shoe remains stuck to the fashionable patio, while somewhere across the estate a chainsaw cries a great wail of dismay. Then, as fear turns to panic, Sean crouches so that he can grasp hold of his knee and pull harder, wrench the bastard, so that the shoe is finally, suddenly, stickily, released. He stares at the footprint left behind. Here he once stood in a magnificent shoe. Sean woz ere. The village could remember it for ever, like Neil on the moon, like the baby on the hill, like the girl in the wood. Sean is history, the print makes it so. He looks up at the vacant sky and sees one lonely aeroplane, tiny as a pin, hanging in the heavens. Ah farther.

  The walk back is complicated. The sun is high, and with each step, as the machinery groans, the shoe gets heavier. Sean reminds himself he will feel this way upon returning to Earth. The BBC voice pronounced: 'Neil Armstrong's footprints will remain on the surface of the moon, undisturbed, for millions of years.' Truthfully, that is what the television said. It is because there is no wind on the moon. They are there now, Neil's feet. It is hard not to be impressed. They will always be there, in a hundred years, in a thousand, in a minute, for ever. Sean watches the cemented panache shoe as it swings its small steps. He is as good as dead; Ty will make it so. You can't make a giant leap in a concrete shoe. Sean wonders if anyone ever said that.

  'Are you going to the village-hall film?' he asks anyone, everyone.

  'What for?'

  'Dunno. Why not? Might be good.'

  'Nah. What for?'

  There are posters up announcing the screening tonight at the village hall. Sean cannot imagine why anyone would want to go. It is not a proper film like The Pink Panther or Dracula. It is bits and bobs as far as he can tell, like your Aunty Noreen's holiday snaps. It sounds like rubbish. He thinks he will go. He wonders if the murderer will be there, sitting at the back.

  'Are you going?' he asks his dad.

  'Village hall?' His dad repeats it as if each word is foreign, incomprehensible. Sean begins to explain, translate. Gor interrupts with, 'Take your mother.'

  Sean does not want to take his mother. He cannot be sure what effect the village hall will have on her. She might lock herself behind her eyelids and not come out.

  Ann was an altogether more complicated proposition. Sean would have to be on his mettle. He employed a decoy for his opener.

  'I'm not going tonight, are you?'

  'Where?'

  'Village hall.'

  'Why?'

  'See that film.'

  'It's rubbish.'

  'I know. Might not be.'

  'Stupid it's spazzes from the olden days who lived round here, that's all, you crip.'

  'I know, that's what I said.'

  It costs two bob to see the rubbish film at the village hall.

  'My dad's coming, he's paying,' Sean explains to the hair-lacquered women on the door. He gets in free. There are plastic chairs and a tea urn and some giant plates of iced biscuits. Sean takes a handful of the biscuits and sits down at the end of a row. There is a white rectangle on the wall and everybody sits down and stares at it. It is old people mostly.

  A man everyone calls Mr Deacon is fussing about with the projector. His fringe is stuck to his forehead and inside his square spectacles his fishy eyes are sliding, panicking, while his mouth complains about something in little gasps.

  Finally the lights go out and a cheer goes up that sounds so joyful it makes Sean laugh out loud. A bright light burns on to the white rectangle and the room is silent. A flash, a flicker, a face, then it's gone. The lights go on. A groan. Sean looks around. This is quite good so far. A younger group has arrived, older than Sean. They clomp to the front row and sit down. They look embarrassed. They nudge each other and cackle like strange birds. A few families have arrived. Sean waves to their neighbours. They are with another family and they don't wave back. Sean wonders if he goes to get some more biscuits, will someone take his seat? The room is quite full now, the biscuits will be gone. Maybe the biscuits are all gone already. Darkness. Another cheer, loud. In the front row a frantic outbreak of nudging and squirming. The beam of light burns through the dust on to the white rectangle. Dark flecks begin to jostle there. The youths in the front
row dart their arms up into the light to make rude shadow-shapes on the screen. Sean laughs and claps. A crowd of bobbing V-signs clogs the screen. Sean is glad he came. He will tell the others.

  'Sit down!' some of the adults are shouting. As they call out to the front row a face flickers on to the screen. The room begins to quieten. It is the face of a man. He is staring into the lens of the camera. Nothing else. He blinks a few times, that's it. He gazes out at the village-hall audience and they gaze back. The film bounces on the screen, but nobody complains or makes a tutting noise. Sean looks at the man, at his shirt collar and the space between his teeth. The man is talking again, chatterbox. He's wearing a funny round black hat, like the Homepride Flour men. There is no sound except for the whirring and occasional clack-clack of the projector. The man smiles suddenly, mouths something, and the audience laughs self-consciously. The man in the film is laughing too now, amused perhaps by his own remark, and the audience laughs a little more easily. The man is taking something from his pocket. He puts them on. Spectacles. Is he going to read? Could they read in the olden days? Probably. Probably they are cleverer. Nowadays they are thick but taller. His dad said that. True alphabet, liar alphabet, which? The man is still talking. He is reading out from a black book. He closes it and holds it up for the camera to see. Some people might be able to work out what he is saying, Sean thinks. Deaf people can see words on people's lips. He reckons if he was deaf he'd at least be able to do that. He glances around. The faces beside him are grey-lit, impassive. Hard to tell if it's a good film or not. The man removes his specs, grins, and is gone. There is a murmur of laughter in the audience. Specman. Wur.

  Another man now, younger. This man is wearing a cap. He takes it off and puts it back on and he smiles. He has a long sad face, even when he's smiling. He takes something from his pocket. A pipe! Ha! He puts it between his teeth. Everyone is laughing now in the village hall. Ha ha ha! The finger-shadows go up again on the screen, giving the man rabbit ears. The man poses with his pipe while the fingers get ruder. He is gone. I know you. Pipeman. Now on screen, a group of children are running down a lane towards the village-hall audience. Wur.