by Rosie Thomas
Selwyn was exhausted, Polly could tell that from the way his shoulders sagged. She wanted to kneel down and fold her arms around him but he wouldn’t welcome that while he was working. She said on impulse, ‘Won’t you come with me? Ben needs a bit of sorting out. We could all of us have a couple of evenings together. Go to see a film and have a pizza, something cosy like that.’
Selwyn shook his head. ‘Poll, I can’t. I’ve got to get on with this. Why don’t you bring Ben back with you for a few days? Miranda won’t mind.’
Polly put down a handful of cutlery. It clattered faintly on top of the tools left on the trestle table. ‘Why would Miranda mind? This is our house. We can do what we like in it.’
He didn’t look up. ‘I know that. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know yet. Two, three days, perhaps?’
She scooped up the cutlery once more and carefully dried it, then stowed it piece by piece in a clean jam jar. Selwyn finished his measuring and stood upright, hands pressed flat to the small of his back.
‘That long? You’ll miss the Fifth.’
‘I’d like to be there. I expect it will be the same next year, though, and plenty of years to come.’ The way he stood turned aside, not looking at her, ignited a spark of jealous irritation in Polly. She said in a sharp voice that was unlike her, ‘Anyway, you’ll be able to go with Miranda, won’t you?’
Selwyn let his steel measuring tape snap back into its casing. He didn’t say anything.
The evening of the Fifth was overcast, damp and chill with spits of rain in the air. In Meddlett village the foggy air was thick with the sulphurous smell of gunpowder and the acrid stink of burning car tyres.
Miranda was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. Engrossed, she shouted, ‘Come in,’ when someone banged on the back door. When she did look up she screamed.
‘Good, eh?’ Selwyn said.
He was dressed up in a rough hooded cloak made from a couple of the sacks that Miranda’s logs were delivered in. His face was blackened.
‘For God’s sake. What’s that on your face?’
‘Burned cork. It’s called entering into the spirit of things. Come on, aren’t you ready?’ Selwyn shook the leather pouch that hung from a strap across his chest. ‘I’ve got Chinese firecrackers. Very unhealthy and totally unsafe. A bloke was selling them out of his van in the Griffin car park. Roaring trade. I was lucky to get these.’
‘You are insane,’ Miranda said. The face blacking made his eyes and teeth glimmer at her. She wanted to kiss him, as if that would enable her to absorb some of his wild vitality.
Selwyn went to look at himself in the mirror in the downstairs lavatory, then came back again.
‘Where the hell’s Amos? Let’s go.’
‘I’m not coming. Which part of that don’t you understand?’ She was laughing in spite of herself.
There was more thudding on the back door. Miranda sighed.
Amos was wearing a black ski parka with the hood up. He was carrying a fence pole.
‘I thought this would do as a pikestaff. Are we ready?’
Selwyn took the newspaper from Miranda and laid it aside. He put his hands to her elbows and helped her to her feet. He murmured in her ear.
‘Please come, Barb. Vin told me, only people who live in the parish can officially walk in one or other of the processions. And if you can, you should, don’t you think? If Amos and I, even you, don’t identify ourselves with the place we’ll never belong to it.’
Amos was surprised. ‘And I thought it was just about letting off a few fireworks.’
‘I’ve been here for twenty years. I don’t have to bend over backwards to belong,’ she protested.
But then Miranda looked into Selwyn’s eyes. He had already won her over. She wanted that sense of belonging here to be branded right through him. ‘All right. Just for an hour.’
The car park at the Griffin was crammed, and the green was a surging mass of people, most of them in costume. Police cars were parked at both ends of the street and several grimly smiling policemen threaded through the mob.
A hot dog stand and a fish and chip van competed against each other via the sweat-scent of fried onions and the greasy stench of boiling fat. Smoke billowed overhead and rockets shrieked skywards, shooting powdery trails of sparks into the air. Screaming children in toyshop masks ran between people’s legs. Surges of singing and taunting swept through the Green and Mauby contingents massed on opposite sides of the duck pond.
The Greens swelled around their figurehead, a fat man dressed in breeches and a jerkin. Their pikestaffs bristled through the smoke like a forest of ravaged trees. They were chanting, Here’s health to our King, boys, for he shall not be forgot. Amos and Selwyn skirted the edge of the pond to join them, slithering in the scum of weed, mud and greasy chip papers. Miranda pulled her hat over her ears and shrank backwards against the sheltering wall of the Griffin.
The Mauby crowd massed around a younger, thinner man. His white shirt stood out in contrast to his thoroughly blackened face and throat. His supporters yelled out, Poor Guy went to the wall, the wrong house but the right idea to end the Commons brawl. Miranda remembered these were the words to a Jethro Tull song. This was a new addition to the rituals of the Fifth.
A huge rocket screamed from the car park and exploded into a canopy of stars and coloured balls. It was the signal for the Greens and the Maubys to begin their separate winding routes through the village streets. The singing grew louder and the crowd jostled to watch as the hooded men streamed away. Amos tugged at Selwyn’s sleeve.
‘See that?’ he shouted.
There was a third, smaller group gathered at the far end of the pond, framed by the bare trailing arms of weeping willows. A full-sized Hallowe’en skeleton was hoisted on a pole and its plastic bones did a macabre dance as torches wove a skein of lights around it. Banners and placards waved in the air.
The Meddlett People’s Princess, they declared. Save our Heritage, Honour our History. No to the Grave Robbers and No to the BM.
Two or three of these people were dressed in what passed for prehistoric garb, mostly tattered skirts and throws held together with rope and leather belts. Selwyn’s teeth glimmered in a wide grin. He turned to look for Miranda, and caught sight of the pale half-moon of her face. She too was staring across at the skeleton.
Ahead of the Green men a sudden fusillade of firecrackers spat and zigzagged scarlet through the darkness like a dozen demented snakes. The column of men zigzagged too, banging on the locked and bolted doors of every weekend cottage lining the lane.
‘Open up in the King’s name,’ they shouted. ‘Here’s health to our King, boys, for he shall not be forgot.’
Amos and Selwyn had joined the rush of men.
‘This is utterly mad,’ Amos yelled, jumping away from a rogue snake as it fizzled over his boots. Selwyn was groping in the recesses of his leather bag. He pulled out a firecracker and lit it.
Miranda realized that there was no possibility of going home yet – the green and the roads leading to it were now so packed that it was impossible to move. She watched the princess people and their skeleton’s marionette dance. They were handing out leaflets to the largely uninterested crowd and she wondered uneasily if the protestors might turn up at Mead and picket Amos’s house. There wouldn’t be much point, she decided with a renewed flash of outrage at the theft, since there was nothing left there. They might as well go and demonstrate outside the police station for the rapid return of the stolen goods, or picket Christopher Carr’s offices until he handed them back the torc and the shield. Perhaps then they could put them on display in the shop, would that be local enough?
Through the windows of the pub she could see Vin Clarke passing a steady stream of sloppy pints over the bar. Out here there were a lot of young people, hooded and studded, with a touch of the Goth about them. They were drinking cider
, jeering at their friends and letting off bangers. Cigarette smoke hung around them in a heavy pall, mingling with the chip fat and fried onions.
A hand descended on her arm.
‘Good evening, Miranda.’
She turned to see the vicar. He was a patient, pedestrian man who had long ago stopped saying that he hoped to see her in church next Sunday. They exchanged shouted pleasantries about the size of the crowd and the progress of the processions. A scuffle amongst the Goth teenagers sent several of them cannoning backwards, crashing into Miranda and colliding with the vicar.
‘Steady on,’ he remonstrated. He took Miranda’s arm. ‘Come on down to the barbecue field with me.’
Miranda hesitated. If she went down to the barbecue field that would give her the best chance of meeting up with Selwyn again, since the procession routes ended there.
Over their heads another huge firework exploded in a chrysanthemum of falling fire. Fundraising for the Fifth celebrations went on all year round in Meddlett. Miranda always sent a cheque.
‘Yes, of course I’ll walk down with you,’ she said.
He beamed at her. ‘Good, good. Well done.’
They struck out together through the swaying mass.
One of Meddlett’s back lanes was no more than a cobbled passage that threaded between overhanging walls. As they surged through this stone bottleneck the Green men began to run in earnest, rattling their sticks on the walls. Amos was carried forwards, breaking into a trot with all the others because he was afraid that otherwise he might stumble and be trampled underfoot. As he hurtled past a cottage window he glimpsed three young children, half hidden by the folds of a curtain, staring out at the procession that had now become a mob. The village’s past, hunters and hunted, seemed trapped in the alley too, thick as the smoke. Down here the original Green and his men would have rampaged, watched by terrified women and children. He felt their presence all around him.
Selwyn had let off one gratifying firecracker but he had quickly seen that it was too dangerous in the confined space between the stone cottages. He put his head down, secured the leather strap of his bag across his chest, and concentrated on keeping his footing on the uneven cobbles. There was a streetlight on the corner of the alley and the beam shone briefly on his face as he passed beneath it. To his relief they soon swung out into a wider road. Here was a broad grass verge and the fences and hedges of a row of gardens. Spectators were milling on either side as the costumed men poured past with their staves held aloft.
One group was a little detached from the others. They had staked out a redoubt under the twisted branches of a big old oak tree. They were young, and like the Goths outside the Griffin they had bottles of cider and cans of beer. They were laughing at the procession as it slowed up and spread across the road. Traditional taunts were exchanged and a black dog yelped hysterically from the kerb.
Selwyn couldn’t see Amos anywhere. The dog was barking at his knee.
The Hallowe’en skeleton danced on its pole a few yards away. The small group of protesters, most of them now visible as middle-aged women or elderly men, had taken a shorter route towards the church field and were emerging into the road at an angle to the Greens’ progress.
‘Look at them lot,’ a voice jeered.
‘Fuckin’ ridiculous,’ someone else called.
‘Let ’em off, Damesy. Let ’em ’ave it.’
Selwyn heard that. Seconds later there was a hiss and a banshee wail, then a crackle of fire as several fireworks exploded from beside the oak tree. The dog howled and a boy yelled, ‘Shut up, Raff. It’s fireworks.’
‘No to the grave robbers. No to the BM. And no to all fuckin’ losers and their sad little signs,’ a boy guffawed from inside a hoodie.
Headed by the sprightly skeleton, the third procession was heading away. Selwyn glimpsed substantial backsides, sober anoraks, even a knitted bobble hat or two. He half-turned to the fireworks crew, feeling more solidarity with their noise and jeering and intending to give them a thumbs’ up, or something of the kind.
The next thing he knew was a point of red light, some confused shouting, then a rush of heat and stink of gunpowder. He had a split-second’s certainty that he had been shot. Sparks fizzled and there was a sickening whoosh as his head seemed to catch fire. He collapsed to his knees, hands up to the hood of his makeshift cloak. There was a hideous smell of singeing hair.
Selwyn slapped at his head with his bare hands. The smell and the red glare of the rocket branded into his retinas convinced him that he was ablaze. He needed to beat out the flames, so he threw himself to the ground. His next thought was for the heavy bag, slung from his shoulder, the strap threatening to choke him. He wrestled it off and hurled it away from him, filled with terror at the idea of twenty cheap Chinese firecrackers exploding next to his chest. Hearing his own thin wail of terror, he rolled over and over in the dank grass.
He closed his dazzled eyes, saw a fierce crimson star, opened them again on revolving, greenish darkness. There was no burning, no expected rush of pain. He lay absolutely still, like a dead man.
His vision slowly returned. Three or four pairs of legs appeared in his line of sight. Two pairs concertinaed as the owners crouched down beside him. Hands descended on his shoulders, pulled at the charred remains of the hood.
‘He’s all right, I think.’
‘Can you sit up for me, dear?’
Selwyn let them hoist him into a sitting position. His right temple and his ear began to throb dangerously.
Amos reached the gate to the church field in the vanguard of the Green men. The tail end of the Mauby contingent was dawdling in, and the two streams mingled, teasing and jostling each other. He stepped to one side, wishing that Selwyn would catch up so he might joke with him about the smoke in the alley, and a momentary, clearly mentally deranged impression he had had of terrified hidden watchers behind the windows of the old houses, and throngs of other silent figures mingling in their procession.
He was rather sharply aware that there was no one else except Selwyn for him to look out for. In the weeks he had lived here he hadn’t met anyone who actually came from Meddlett.
There was a bonfire in the middle of the field, a sheet of brisk flames with the dark figure of a guy collapsing into its heart. People eddied around it, driven into a circle by the glaring heat. On the left against the hedge stood a row of tented booths selling food and drink, in the farthest corner a huge barbecue pit and a roast pig’s carcass was tended by professional caterers, and the thick crowds of people in between occupied themselves with paper plates heaped with food, and plastic beakers of drink. Pushchairs contained sleeping toddlers. Bigger children on the brink of exhausted tantrums ran about while their parents sat down to eat and drink on hay bales arranged in sociable groups.
Amos felt rather out of it. He couldn’t remember what Miranda had said she was going to do. He decided to see if there was anything half decent to eat or drink. Katherine was away, so he might as well forage for some dinner here. He parked his fence pole against the hedge, beside some of the makeshift banners saying No.
The first tent was an outpost of the Griffin. At the doorway he looked again for Selwyn. A pair of hands clapped over his eyes.
‘Hi,’ a girl’s voice said in his ear. A pair of breasts nudged against his back, which cancelled out his irritation at being forcibly blindfolded.
‘Who is this?’
She had slim wrists and small, strong hands, whoever she was. He lifted them away from his face and turned to see.
‘Hi?’ she said, somewhat less confidently. ‘You knocked me off my bike. I’d have thought you’d remember that.’
He did have one acquaintance in Meddlett, he remembered.
‘I didn’t knock you off your bike. I swerved to avoid you, thus in all probability saving you from serious injury.’
Jessie snorted. ‘I’ve never ever met a person who really, actually in the flesh, uses words like thus.’
‘You
lead quite a restricted life, then.’
She grinned up at him. Under a short dark-coloured coat she was wearing several haphazard layers of clothing that gaped open to reveal the rather substantial cleavage and a few fronds of the evidently much larger tattoo. He wondered what the complete design might be.
‘I bloody well do. D’you want to buy me a drink, Amos?’
He was flattered that she remembered his name. She had already had several drinks, that was quite clear, but he let her take his arm and draw him into the grassy hum of the pub tent. He bought her a vodka with Red Bull, whatever that was, and a large whisky for himself.
‘Ta,’ Jessie said. She drank half of hers at a gulp, then stood on tiptoe to give him a voluptuous kiss on the lips. He was quite sorry when it ended. She downed the remainder of her vodka and stroked the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘I really liked your car. I thought it was beautiful. Will you take me for a proper ride in it?’
‘Do you want another of those? Is that an, um, professional question?’
‘You’re fucking rude. Are you trying to suggest I’m a prozzer?’
He said cautiously, ‘No, just aiming to establish the parameters.’
Now her eyes rolled. ‘Here we go again. Parameters? I’ll have that other drink, though. Cheers.’
They took their plastic beakers outside and found themselves a hay bale in the sheltering darkness. The bonfire was big enough to give the illusion if not the reality of warmth. Amos felt that the unpromising evening was looking up dramatically. Jessie hooked up her knees, rested her chin on them and scanned the crowd.
She told him that she had just worked a ten-hour shift at the Griffin, straight through lunch to dinner orders, and finally that slave-driver Vin Clarke had said she could go at nine o’clock. So she had come down here because her ex – that world-class wanker, by the way – had promised he’d bring the dog down here and hand him over, after he’d kept him quiet indoors while all the fireworks were going off.
