Terroir
Page 5
Her father said things that she’d heard no one else say. How all men were born equal until they were made unequal, black and white alike. How ‘nigger’ was no name for a black man and how he’d not bear it said. He’d fought men over that, because God was everywhere and nowhere, in everything and in nothing.
One day they brought the negroes up on deck for air, chained at the ankles in groups of five. One group started to sing, doing a kind of war dance, stamping in their shackles. When the mate brought the lash to tame them, they jumped over an ill-rigged rail into the sea, dragging each other down. He watched them sink through the clear upper waters into the gloom below, their arms and legs still moving in their chains, air bubbles bursting to the surface. Aye, that’s how much freedom means, Ellen. Freedom is everything to a man. He told her how he’d wanted to join them, to jump for liberty, even if it meant certain death by drowning or sharks. He told her how huge and restless and bright the green Atlantic was, how he’d seen coconuts and pineapple trees in the Indies and women walking around naked to the waist. How the island been set in the sea like a jewel in a crown. As soon as they’d docked in England he’d taken his pay guiltily and stayed sober, slinking past the press gangs, heading north to Yorkshire by country lanes and hedgerows. How he met her mother was never told. She wondered if he’d lain with black women before that. She didn’t care.
After marriage, he became a lead miner, walking three miles to work and back. Starting at five-thirty and getting home at seven. When she lay in bed between her mother and brother she liked the peaceful feeling of him moving about the house in stockinged feet. She’d hear him taking the bowl of oatmeal from the hearth where it had soaked overnight, then putting on his clogs at the back door, trying not to make a noise. Easing the privy door because it creaked on its hinges, then lighting the lantern he had to carry in winter and greeting the other men of his gang in whispers as they tried not to wake their women. If times were good, they came down to a fire he’d got going from last night’s embers. A cold hearth meant things were bad, even though they were never spoken of. When the hearth was dead you learned not to ask for more than there was.
It was mid-March now. Fells and fields were still pale brown. Winter had been hard, freezing the pump in the yard. The sheep were almost starving for lack of new grass, though she’d seen ransomes and dog’s mercury spearing through in the woods. The weather was so cold that rabbits had gnawed the bark from the young trees, leaving bare white trunks as high as they could reach. The farmers had come out in gangs to shoot them. Sometimes they put turnips out for the cattle and sheep and she’d sneak down and bring a couple home under her shawl. She roasted them over the fire until they softened enough to eat. Then she’d get the wild shites and spend hours freezing in the privy, emptying her guts.
There was a crack in the thin window glass where droplets of rain were coming through. Mist blew over the fields below the church and the river had disappeared. The dray horses passed again, dragging the cart away with its load of empty barrels and firkins, the driver hunched into his cape, dangling the whip over the team as if he hadn’t the heart to use it. She wondered where her father was. Van Demons land. The curate told her that was near Australia in the world’s southern half. All she knew was that it would be hot. When her father had pleaded to the court that he’d served his country as a soldier and a sailor, the magistrate joked that the voyage wouldn’t make him seasick then. He was a known poacher and would be made an example of. He ought to be grateful that he wasn’t to be hanged. That was what Billy Crapper had said. Not that you could trust much that came from his mouth.
When her mother and Ben died, she wrote him a letter, telling him everything, saying that surely they would send him home now? She’d sent it care of the magistrate’s court, but she heard nothing. He had three more years to serve. He’d come home to a grandchild and two graves, if he came at all. That thought of the child eased her grief sometimes, allowed her to go on.
Ellen was hungry now that the pangs of early sickness had passed. She took a knife and cut the crust and a thick slice from the loaf. The fire had just enough heat in it. She took a long fork from a nail on the wall and held bread over the glowing coals. She had a scraping of beef dripping from the butcher to spread on it. It was delicious – bread and dripping and coal smoke all mixed together. The bread would last her two days. After that, she didn’t know what she’d do. The Poor House was always a risk for pregnant girls, but they’d never take her there. She was determined of that. She had her father’s gun and knew how to load and fire it. There was enough powder and shot to see to things. She’d rather end it now than live as a slave, just as he’d said. Then one sin would be taken over by another.
Ellen dozed and woke and dozed again in front of the fire, only half conscious of the ebbing day, slipping light, of rain ceasing against the window. She dreamed of dark mine shafts where a scaled beast was turning under the earth. Then of a great sea, bright as scattered emeralds and black men casting out nets from tiny boats. Then Michael and Ben were in the nets, fighting for air, their hair stuck down with salt. Then her father helping sailors pull the bodies to shore. Her mother weeping and wringing her hands because her father was taken. Everything broken and mixed together and broken again, sense and nonsense both.
She woke hungry to an ashen fire. The church clock was tolling seven o’clock. She’d taught Ben to count that way when they were children. The rain had cleared and a big moon was pushing its face between clouds that were scattering and blowing away. She stood at the window, watching the moonlight come and go on stone walls that separated the fields, then opened the door to feel the air. Winter was on the turn at last; the night was warmer than most. She thought of the dead bird in the porch of the church, of her mother and brother buried under low mounds at the far side of the graveyard. A line of lanterns passed on the road below, bringing the heavy tread and low voices of miners on their way home.
Ellen closed the door suddenly and barred it. She climbed the stairs, changed from her dress and shawl into a shirt, then rooted out her father’s canvas trousers. She’d washed and dried them, but they were still stiff as boards. She had to leave the top button open where she was swelling. She managed to push her feet into his boots and fasten the leather laces. Next she stood on a chair and pushed up the hidden flap of wattle in the ceiling. She reached inside to find the rifle wrapped in an old singlet. The powder and shot were in a tin close by, still dry. She drew them out and let them fall to the bed, then stepped down and took them into the room where the fire was glimmering. In the tin were flasks of oil and powder, a paper packet of ball shot and wadding and some flints. Wiping the rifle on the singlet, she screwed the barrel to the stock. Then she oiled the hammer, smearing oil on her hand which she worked into the walnut stock until it gleamed. She cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger, watching a spark jump at the pan. Then she took the gun apart again, hanging the barrel in a special loop in the trouser and concealing the stock under her father’s thick cotton jacket that he’d brought back from sea.
Before Ellen left the house she pulled on her father’s cap and tucked in her hair. Dragging the door to, she noticed stands of snowdrops beside the path. The moon was hidden now and she made her way through the churchyard limping slightly, the cold metal of the gun against her thigh. At the road she turned right and down the hill to the river meadows. There were cattle gathered there where the farmer had put down beet or swedes the day before. There was a chance the fodder would bring out hungry hares and rabbits.
In the field she could hear the river singing beyond the broken willows that lined the bank. In summer it was a good spot to see kingfishers, their blue lightning blinding the eye with speed, as if they were never real. She pulled out the gun and assembled it, fumbling in the dim light, working by touch. She loaded it with ball and a measure of powder, then tamped in the wadding, then primed the pan, pulling back the oiled hammer. Then she crouched behind an iron roller that had been dragged
and left there. The moon peeped and glimmered and disappeared again, showing the gnawed swedes scattered on the grass like golden skulls. There were beasts gathered in the far corner of the field, a mass of shadow. She could hear them, not see them. Their guttural breath shunting the air, their heavy tread, a hoarse cough, sometimes a lowing moan. They moved at the edge of her vision like the beast in her dream. Ellen slipped her hand under the shirt to feel the small swelling in her belly above her pubic hair. She moved her hand lower, shivering with pleasure and with cold. She remembered Michael’s breath on her neck, his tongue at her breasts, then the heavy sigh as he came into her. She rested the barrel of the gun on the roller and waited.
The hare appeared at last from the dark end of the field, coming through the scattered cattle towards her. They ignored it as it slunk and hopped, pausing to lower its ears then raise them again. The breeze was blowing away from her, carrying her scent back to the village. The moon glowered through a gap in the clouds and the hare came on, bounding easily over the cropped grass. It stopped to sniff at a swede and then another. It seemed to disdain them or perhaps had already eaten its fill. The hare came within ten yards of her and sat with its ears pointed and swivelling. She could see the dark marking on its face, the gleam of its whiskers. Its eyes were treacle. The gun was already balanced. All she had to do was slowly swing it around so that the hare was in her sights. She squinted down the barrel, remembering all her father had said. How she must squeeze, not pull, how to keep her elbows close to her body. The rifle cracked and the hare’s face lit up in the spurt of flame. There was a smell of black powder. A drift of smoke obscured things for a moment and she thought she must have missed when the hare took off. It ran for twenty yards and then collapsed onto one side and lay still.
Ellen hid the gun under the roller. Her father had taught her never to take it to the kill. A dead hare was one thing to be found with, but a hare and a gun couldn’t be explained away. The ball had gone through the hare’s chest and out through its shoulder. Its fur was dark with blood and its face was resting on the grass. She could see a tiny white moon reflected in its eye and was glad when the clouds gathered to hide that. She took up the long body and wiped its face gently with her hand. Then she put it inside her shirt, around her waist, and buttoned it there, feeling its heat next to her own, next to the child inside her.
Ellen walked home awkwardly with the dismantled gun and the dead hare lolloping inside her clothing. She could feel it oozing against her ribs and caught the thick scent of its blood. She clicked the catch of the cottage door quietly and dropped the hare into the stone sink where it could drain. Taking off the smeared shirt, she shivered with her feet on the flagstones. She lit a candle and washed her belly clean, using a rag and the bucket of water beside the stone sink. Her body was pale in the flickering light of the candle. The hair under her arms and between her thighs dark. Tha’ll do me, lass. She remembered Michael again, how he’d kissed her and caressed her neck with his calloused hands and put himself into her and released the seed that had made this life that burned in her.
When she was dressed, Ellen cleaned the rifle and stowed it back in the eaves, then drew the curtain at the back window and took a candlestick and a knife to the sink. She held the hare and made a long incision from just under the ribs to its anus. It was a doe. When its guts fell away she saw that it was carrying three leverets, tiny pale ghosts that spilled from its womb. Ellen cut off the intestines and ran her thumb down the bowel so that pellets of dung squeezed out. She reached under the ribs and pulled away the lungs and heart, then cut off the head and paws, pressing the knife though bone that crunched and gave. Then she pulled the skin away from the neck and body until it was naked. She took the guts, the head and paws and the tiny foetuses and buried them in the midden where they couldn’t be seen. The fur would make a cap for her baby. She left it on the hearth to dry. She poured water over the carcase to rinse away the blood, then quartered it and dropped it into the cooking pot for tomorrow’s fire. She poured water in, salted it, dropped in some sprigs of thyme that were hanging from the roof beam. Then washed her hands, smelling the rich, earthy scents of the hare, half sick at what she’d done.
Ellen climbed the stairs and changed into her mother’s nightgown. It was white cotton with tiny violets embroidered over each breast. A wedding present from her father that came with the bed and three copper pans. She took the candle to the window that overlooked the graveyard and the river. Lead on the church roof showed as a dull gleam. The clock struck ten. She’d been a long time in the fields. Now she saw herself in the cracked glass, cupping the wavering flame, pale skinned, dark haired, shadows smeared beneath her eyes. Her hands and wrists had grown thin and were red from the cold water. There was blood under her fingernails. She’d done what had to be done to live. Her father would have been proud of her, the way she’d known how to load and shoot. And she’d been quick, merciful. She thought of the bullet striking the doe, the way it had drowned in its own blood and died running. Died making for freedom.
Remembering the way the day had started with rain, the church porch, a dead starling with folded wings, she pinched out the candle so that her reflection disappeared, then put her face to the cold glass. Her brother and mother were huddled under green mounds close to the churchyard wall, without headstones or words to mark them. In the flat valley bottom the river was coursing over stones and strands of weed to the sea. The sea she’d never seen except in dreams and probably never would. She thought of her father in chains and where he was and whether it would be night or day. He’d lost his freedom to the Queen’s pleasure, to the might of an empire where all men were born equal then rendered unequal. He’d been made an example of and so would make his way home to grief and sorrow. She knew that. One day, not too distant. One day where the future lay, waiting to happen.
Someone sluthered across the flags of the square in clogs, then coughed, retching their way through the yard. A door slammed and there were raised voices for a few minutes. The man’s slurred and drunk, the woman’s shrill with anger. Then her voice stopping halfway through something she was trying to say. That was the way of it. Man and woman. Fist against tongue, tongue against fist. Silence trickled back to fill the space the woman’s voice had left. Ellen put the candle down and sat down on the empty bed, hugging herself, feeling the chill on her legs, letting her cold fingers stray to her belly. She put her hands together to pray and the light of the moon brightened again, casting shadows from the headstones in the graveyard, tearing clouds open, looming, unstoppable.
THE SHOEMAKERS OF NAKASERO
The call of the Imam woke me. His voice was distorted by the speaker system, like the bit on that single by Cher where she sounds like she’s singing down a drainpipe. What was it called? Another blank one. I lifted my head. The pillow was damp. Jesus. No aircon in the university guesthouse but the room was pretty cool. My tongue felt like last night’s pit latrine. I couldn’t remember much about how we’d got home, just the taxi lurching over potholes and someone spewing out of the back window. McKenzie. My clothes were crumpled on the floor like a man hunched into a foetal position. They looked how I felt. I took a swig from the bottle of water beside the bed and dozed off again. When I woke, my head was banging. I searched for my watch, but I was still wearing it. The hands glowed in the light that filtered through the mosquito netting. Eight-thirty. Fucking hell!
This was supposed to be a rest day. Saturday morning in Kampala. I wondered what Helen and the girls would be doing. It was still early in the UK. They’d probably have breakfast then pile into the car to see her parents at Saddleworth. Her parents who’d never liked me. I wondered if she was still seeing that guy from the Building Society. Gary? Gordon?
When I tilted my head, a pain shot from side to side as if I’d just touched two wires together. I let it sink slowly back to the pillow. Believe. That was the name of the record. Weird, how things come back.
I must have dozed for another hour and was
woken by the sound of a croaky American voice using the phone in the guesthouse lobby. I love you too honey. Give my love to the kids. Yeah, yeah. Love you too. Sometimes he was on the phone at three in the morning, calling his family in Colorado, driving me nuts. Always the same droning accent. And love, love, love. He’d been out here for a couple of months fitting a new X-ray system at Mulago Hospital. Long enough to get lonely. I was just back from three days up country with McKenzie and we’d got wrecked at Al’s bar, firing down Nile Specials and playing pool with the young prostitutes. I had a vague memory of McKenzie dancing on the table to Queen with his arms round a nineteen-year-old called Grace who had a bare midriff, small breasts, and was high on ganja and free beer. Another one bites the dust.
We’d been taking readings and rock samples from the river below Jinja where they were planning a hydro-station a few miles down the White Nile to sort out Kampala’s knackered power supply. There was already a dam at the Owen Falls, but that wasn’t enough any more. We’d spent three nights in a tent, McKenzie moaning about the heat, mosquitoes eating us alive. I told him how the crocs crawled out of the river at night and could take a young antelope in one lunge. How they dragged and drowned their prey before eating it. That quietened him a bit. I saw his wind-up torch flickering at night through the tent fabric. Fortunately we had a tent each – me, McKenzie, and James. James was the driver and cook: tall, elegant, and a genius on pot-holed roads. He was from western Uganda, near Mbarara. Cattle country. He spoke Runyankore, Luganda, and Swahili and three or four other dialects, including English of course, so he was pretty useful.