Cryers Hill

by Kitty Aldridge

  At the height of its torment the village saw murderers at every creosoted corner. The woman at the post office and the manager from the bank found themselves leaning confidentially left and right all day till you wondered why they were called upright citizens at all. Everybody had an opinion to voice over a Campari and an Embassy Tipped Virginia in their almost-house and not-yet garden. To cheer himself up, Sean opened two letters in one day.

  10th January 1944, C.M.F.

  Dearest Mary,

  Well, Monty has left the 8th. We're still in the 8th, though attached to the 5th. I saw Abbott and Costello in Who Done It? at the cinema last night – amusing. There are hungry priests here with burst boots tied up with strips of rag. I haven't been out of my clothes for a week now. The soles of my boots are worn through and stones play havoc with the feet. Some Douglas transport planes have arrived. Our advance position is now secure. We have Jerries behind as well as in front of us. There is a lovely full moon, it makes me think of home.

  You won't believe it but in Naples young boy touts cry, 'Fish and chips!' And you are led through backstreets and eventually to a room containing a naked woman on a bed. If you look nonplussed they all cry, 'Clean! Clean!'

  Three of my pals have been killed. We have to keep jumping into holes like animals. A tank fellow went beserk and had to be knocked out for his own good. Mind you, Jerry never actually discovered our company. We were in pinewoods and he kept flying over us.

  Arthur Atkins trod on a mine under the snow last night. He lost his right leg and left hand and cheek. He just looked absolutely amazed and kept repeating unbelievingly, 'No foot! No foot!' and looking down as if he'd lost his wallet. It is icy cold. My right foot has chilblains, they burn and itch.

  The refugees are so upsetting. They are the same to Jerry as to us and forever on the scrounge. Villages like Sessa, Mondzone and Capri are nothing but stones and dirt.

  We are the most forward ack-ack in Italy and are all the time doing field shooting. It feels as though we've been with the 5th Army for some time now. I dream of roast beef, lamb with mint, steamy potatoes and horseradish.

  Well, chin up, Mary. Please write. I long to hear news. Keep smiling, darling. You are the world to me. There is nothing but you.

  Yours, Walter xx

  Sean notes that there are only a few letters left unread. He replaces the bricks. He wishes he had more. He will have to return to Mrs Roys. He must think of some kind of excuse. He wonders if he has nearly solved a crime.

  Forty-four

  THE DEAN FAMILY lived next door. Walter had been at school with Robert Dean. Robert was raised to bodging, all the men in his family were bodgers and if Robert had any opinion on it, nobody ever asked him for it. Robert's grandfather was also known as Robert Dean. He had started in the local saw pits at the age of seven. He had to sit for many hours a day on the shaving horse (his leg wrapped around to steady himself), with a spoke shave tool which he learned to work by himself. By the time he was sixteen his right leg had become permanently curved. He never mentioned it, to complain or otherwise. Being unable to read or write, having missed his schooling, his sign was a cross. Walter remembered him well; he recalled the cowboy bend of his leg, the sway as he came down the stairs and the sound of his sawdust voice. He remembered Robert's sister attempting to teach the old man to read. 'The Deans are an educated lot nowadays,' he said through the gaps in his teeth. 'I am the last who cannot tell his alphabet.'

  Their house was narrow and cheery with mess. There were kitchen smells and girls' noises and bright little pictures in every room. Walter liked it very much. He would have liked to live there and never go home. He wished he were one of the Dean children; he imagined he was, filled up with shouting, bread and gravy and loud mocking bursts of laughter. He imitated and learned to sound and feel like a little Dean. He tormented the girls and kicked the kitchen chairs and cursed his ancestors. When they flapped around their mother, he caught on to her skirt and apron too and let his head fall on her thigh and even as she walked away he left it bumping there until she peeled him off.

  There was a corner of the Dean household, beside the yellow window, and this corner was a place where a terrible thing had happened.

  Great-granny Martha Dean, the children's own relative, dropped her oil lamp on this spot and set fire to the carpet, table and herself. Her son James (brother to the cowboy-legged Robert) came hurrying at the sound of her screams, and he beat out the flames. His apprentice boy ran to Mr and Mrs Nash next door (the very same house Walter and his mother now lived in) crying out, 'Granny Dean is all aflare.' 'Oh Mrs Nash,' said Granny Dean as they dabbed her with oil and sweet lime, 'I am burned to death.' And indeed she was, as she died the following day.

  An awful thing for anyone's great-grandmother, and particularly incongruous for the happy Deans in their cheery yellow house. Walter stared at the walls and the curls of grime on the windows. He fancied he saw the tall flames and felt their heat too. He strained to hear the screams of pain and surprise. The Dean children liked to tell and retell what had happened here in this particular place. Here on this spot poor Granny Dean fell and cried, and here on this spot too she died. Walter crammed into the corner with the Deans and bowed his head and tried to feel their loss as his own. He wished more than anything he were a Dean. He wished his great-granny had gone all aflare and burned to death in a yellow corner. He wished he lived here in this house, all chock-a-block, sardines in a tin, here with the shouting and cooking and sisters, instead of the other side of the wall where it was quiet and still; where the walls grew long shadows that crept across the rug. Where his mother sat, her mending needle dancing in and out of his clothes, while her dreams withered, one by one, and fell to the floor.

  *

  Charles Sankey has his eye on Mary. Women, he knows, cannot be close to God the way men are, it is not the way. God Himself is a man, and men are made in God's likeness. Women, though they may be gentle and diverting, at times rejuvenating, comforting and ministering, are not the ticket when it comes to all things sacred. Sankey concedes this is a pity, highly regrettable, but there it is. It is not his design. Women have complications, pains, mysteries, childbirth and so forth. Mary is different, however. He has his eye on her. He would like to know what she meant when she said, 'Mind you don't fall into the flames, Sank.' She whispered it in his ear, like a sprite, giving him a wakeful night and worry thereafter. What could she mean? He was a godly man, true, devout, sincere, anyone could see. She was having a game with him, teasing. That could mean she felt fondly about him. On the other hand, why – when he had only ever acted, thought and spoken with her best interests at heart – did she provoke him this way?

  Sankey has not failed to notice that Walter and Mary spend a good deal of time together. He thought about this at work, sitting in one of his own freshly turned chairs, still blooming with the scent of beech, and through the smoke-filled lunchtime, and all over the chatter and cackle of his workmates, and over his mutton sandwich and slice of fruit cake, and he thought about it restlessly in his bed at night.

  At first he couldn't be sure what he hoped to secure as he crouched behind wych hazel and waited, sometimes all evening, for a glimpse or sound of them. He couldn't put his finger on his own motive until one Thursday afternoon, when he spotted them pressed against an elm at the north end of Gomms Wood, and knew immediately that he wanted to break the poet Walter's long lantern jaw.

  'Not Far, Not Far From the Kingdom' was a good one for the piano, as it contained plenty of bounce. Sankey played it with gusto, if not style, and though his command of the instrument was basic he had an arrangement of head bobs and grimaces that distracted well enough from this fact, while his pouncing hands moved up and down the keys. Walter and Mary sat together in the wing chairs, leaning in over the song sheet while the tune crashed out of the upright that had been in the Brown family three generations.

  Not far, not far from the kingdom,

  Yet in the shadow of sin;
r />   How many are coming and going!

  How few there are entering in!

  In the kitchen, the breeze from the back door wafts laundry hanging from the ceiling dryers. As it moves it reveals Hilda Brown sitting at the table by the range with a face as long as coal irons. Carrots, potatoes and apples lie unpeeled beside her hand and she closes her eyes against the pictures playing in her head. The sound of the piano has conjured Mr Brown in her mind. Poor Mr Brown: nervy and musical, dome-headed and clergy-faced, his freckled hands sidling up and down the keyboard like two broad-clawed crabs. He could play with or without music and withheld from singing along, which allowed Mrs Brown to do so instead in a faint, chirrupy voice after a brief pantomime of shyness. Music, she said, did the heart good. The angels knew that. Mrs Brown liked angels; she had a small collection of china seraphs, complete with dainty harps and lutes, arranged upon her dressing table, and she doodled angels on slips of paper, envelopes and other scraps. Angels, she said, when you thought about it, had the best of both worlds.

  Sadly there was no angel available during the scarlet fever epidemic of 1915 at the isolation hospital in Hazlemere. Here her two children, Walter and Alice Brown, were taken during the worst of the outbreak. Walter was not yet walking and appeared to have remembered nothing at all about it. Alice was just eight weeks old and she never came home again. They donated her crib and baby clothes to the church fund and, after her funeral, no more was said about it. In the Brown household angels were never mentioned, doodled or dusted again. The group on her dressing table disappeared, never to return. Walter had not asked about or even mentioned it. Hilda Brown had to assume he had entirely forgotten he had ever had a sister. It were better, she concluded, not to remind him, and better still not to remind herself. They would pick themselves up and carry on; that was the way things were soonest mended.

  Away in the dark and the danger,

  Far out in the night and the cold;

  There Jesus is waiting to lead you,

  So tenderly into his fold.

  But Mrs Brown had not forgotten Alice, and the grief was not mended but bitterly endured. What about all those other little girls? The ones she saw every day, whose hair grew long and wavy, the ones who learned to sing and skip, the mothers' little helpers. Why should she not feel angry? Where was her bonny girl? Where was her Alice? Hilda Brown could not bear to remember but neither did she wish to relinquish the memory of her only daughter, more vivid with time; the soft dark crown of hair, puffs of warm breath and curling toes. And she had been careful not to love so hard again, and especially where Walter was concerned. Because when you loved in that way you had to expect they might be taken from you. And so she had been careful with Walter, because, after all, you cannot be too careful, and he had not been taken from her.

  Not far, not far from the Kingdom,

  'Tis only a little space;

  But oh, you may still be for ever,

  Shut out from yon heavenly place.

  Forty-five

  'WHEN THE TRAP was quiet 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.'

  Jane Stevens is a proper little know-it-all. A weirdo. A git.

  'Very good, Jane! Yes! But that's quite, not quiet, isn't it? Good. Clever girl.'

  One day Jane Stevens will fall into a trap herself. Let's hope there's a good book down there for her to read. Let's hope she is down there a long time. Poor little Sean. That's what she calls him. She is freakishly tall, Jane Stevens. She has no need of the library step. Tall people think they are it. Anyway. She is a git.

  'Last one, Sean.'

  Oh God, wur. Sean clamps his hands over his ears, and steers his head towards the book. He has not switched his brain on. He is not ready. And she is always picking on him lately, Miss Day. He can't understand what has gone wrong between them. Before it was all precious blue letters and typhoid hugs, but now something's changed. Was it something he said? Does she like someone else?

  Outside the elm jerks to and fro in a bid to attract his attention. Sean looks at it in the distant hope it may semaphore the words. A man can jump and skip on the moon, so why not?

  'Sean? Are you deaf? Are your ears stuffed with cotton wool?' Everyone laughs, even Sean. She is still funny, give her that.

  There was a loud rustling and thumping going on in the lion trap and the branches were moving on the top. Tom pulled his hat down on to his nose, which made him feel braver.

  'there wass a lord rust lig and Thump gongon in the leon trap.'

  Genius. How is her face? Rudyell.

  'the branchees wer e mauv mauv mauving On.'

  'On the what, Sean?'

  'the top, Miss.'

  'The top, Sean.'

  'tom pullered hiss hat doo dow dowern dowern. Dowern?'

  Ann has informed Sean that she will marry someone tall called Tom. He will have long hair and a kitten on his shoulder. He will drive a red car with no roof called Triumph. They will laugh like drains and live to be a hundred. Tom will call her my darling. It is the love story of the century, even before it has happened. Sean hasn't got a hope in hell. No mortal man can compete with Tom. Ann has some words of comfort for Sean. They are: You'll get over it. She speaks the words solemnly and places her hand on his shoulder. This is the worst whatif yet. Except it is not a whatif, it is a when.

  Sean walked home the long route. He hoped something would happen on the way. He didn't mind what. Nothing did. He dragged his plimsoll bag behind him like a dead animal. If you forget your dinner money you can't have your dinner at lunchtime. He forgot his dinner money once, but they let him have his dinner after all. It was meat and gravy and hot cake with sauce for afters. A two-course meal! That's what his mum called it when he first started school. She sounded astonished, indignant. Clearly someone was being cheated here, but he never worked out who.

  At home they had a tea towel with words on. He couldn't tell what it said. Ty read it out for sixpence. It said: Life is not a bowl of cherries. When he finished reading Ty looked at Sean, as though he hadn't thought about it before. Then he chucked it and sloped off. Sean hung up the towel, and considered the cherry thing. Of course, there were cherries on stalks above the words. He hadn't recognised them. Did cherries grow on trees? He didn't ask his mum when she came in. He didn't know why. Lately she'd looked at him with mild surprise, as though she'd forgotten she had a youngest son. She had a lot on her plate, his dad said. No point adding cherries, then. His mum moved straight to the tea towel. Uncanny. She took it down and hung it back the other way: it must have been upside down. She wanted her Life is not a bowl of cherries the right way up in the morning. So that she could read it again and again and know.

  Sean's dead plimsoll bag scraped along behind him until it was all the colours of the nearly-houses. He was not the only one who could not read the true alphabet words. Lots of them could not do it. Not including Jane Stevens, but then Jane Stevens could probably read Greek, Igloo and Australian too. Adam Jacobs seemed to read the true words without difficulty also. And Debora Duke. I don't care; that's what Sean told himself. But an awkward thought stuck there, in the front of his brain. It went: I am short. My girlfriend doesn't love me. I am nearly nine years old. I can't read or write. I can't float good enough for space. I live on Mars. I am spaz spaz spaz.

  'Spaz!'

  No, no. He is not in the mood.

  'Spaz!'

  She is up on the bricks, high up. There is just her face coming over the bricks and a freshly painted sky behind. She comes along at his worst moments, always, only ever at the spazziest. She is that kind of girl.

  'Come up here now!'

  He ignores her. It is strangely liberating. He swings his plimsoll bag over his shoulder and picks up his pace.

  'Come. Up. Here. Now. Spaz!'

  This is nice. He should have done this years ago. He picks his knees up. He is a soldier, sailor, astronaut. The rest can bugga
off.

  'Sean! Please!'

  He turns, but only briefly.

  'LIFE is NOT a BOWL of CHERRIES!' There. That shut her up. He stamps on. He does not look back. He leaves her there, hanging in the sky.

  Ahh father,

  heart in haven,

  hallo . . .

  He couldn't remember the rest. There was a part about bread. The one that made you float. Nimble.

  19th January 1944, C.M.F.

  Dearest Mary,

  The Italian peasants around here are poor and diseased. Strangely, amid all this gunfire 60 per cent of the women are carrying. I gave a boy some meat, particularly as his eyes were diseased. I wonder whether he will go blind or what. He was wearing a German forage cap and he has stuck in my mind.

  There are no tranquil places anywhere. It is war, plain and simple, with its long trail of horrors. There is a lot we must not write of, and lots we cannot somehow bring ourselves to write of.

  We are, for now, on a farm – fairly battered. The scenery is better and the farm folk have been kind, though they're destitute. There is little room for pleasure these days, but I am quite cheerful. I think of you all each day and wonder what you are doing.

  Jerry has certainly vented his spite on these Italian peasants. Here and there, written in chalk on the crumbly battle-scarred buildings are still traces of 'Duce! Duce!' But how these people hate him. Heaven knows how all this will end.

  Naples was pitiful, but the locals there were knowing and cute. Here – as we go forward – we meet the country folk. They seem stunned and unable to grasp all these unpleasant happenings.

  By the way, you could slide down one of the rainbows here.

  Later:

  We have had a good dose of rain and the ground is like slush – sticky and slippy. One never knows what to expect in sunny Italy. There is a mist above the mountain tops.

  I keep changing pencils – sorry. I only wish I had a real black soft one. I wish I could send you some nuts and lemons. A fellow here has loaned me some ink, but none of my pens work now. Did you receive my last letter? There are no letters from you yet, though I had one from Mother. There was something I wanted to ask you, but I have forgotten what it was for the present.