The Road to Lichfield

by Penelope Lively

  ‘Wasn’t it all right?’

  ‘Oh, it was fine. Very nice indeed.’

  David said, ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘From?’

  ‘Originally. I mean, in Europe.’

  ‘Latvia. I am from Latvia.’ And the man began to talk at random of his childhood, a jumbled account of incidents involving flights, journeys, arrivals, periods spent here and there, unnamed places in unnamed countries. ‘My parents were farmers,’ he said. ‘Farming people. Rich people – quite well off. We had a big farmhouse, among fields – corn, some cattle. Very nice – a beautiful place, very good land.’

  Anne said, ‘Have you ever been back there?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘When did you leave, then?’ said David. ‘During the war? You must have been a child.’

  ‘That’s right, yes. Seven, eight … Nineteen forty-four.’

  Getting into the car, Anne said, ‘How strange to be someone like that. To have a childhood so removed in every sense – that you can’t revisit in any way, or that anyone else you know remembers. To be quite cut off from your own past.’

  ‘He certainly was. Because I think he was wrong about, it, anyway.’

  ‘Wrong? How could he be?’

  ‘Well – as far as I know Latvia was a part of Russia by nineteen forty-four so that it’s very unlikely that if his parents had been prosperous farmers they would have remained so then. They would have been collectivized.’

  ‘I see.’

  After a few moments she said, ‘Was he making it up then, I wonder?’

  ‘Probably not. Just distorting in a muddled kind of way.’

  ‘I suppose that’s what we do. Not so much preserve things as distort them.’

  A middle-aged Latvian long resident in Staffordshire remembers a farmhouse that possibly never was; I knew my father in one dimension only; in Cuxing people are prepared to go to surprising lengths to keep other people from knocking down a building that can never have been so valued before. She put her hand comfortably on David’s knee and said, ‘What a very nice evening.’

  ‘Wasn’t it …’

  Down in Cuxing, divided from his wife by the road to Lichfield and much else besides, Donald Linton ate hot pot at the kitchen table, following it with fruit salad and a helping of cheese. He then watched, with desultory interest, a television documentary on northern Ireland (which seemed to him some way away and not greatly his concern). While watching it he considered, briefly, telephoning Anne and then, remembering the cost of a call to Lichfield, decided against it. When, half an hour later, she telephoned him, he was mildly irritated and cut short the conversation. He returned to the television and listened to the news, in which an item on a collapsing insurance company reminded him of an intention to take out some additional insurance, and sent him to check his policy. He read the small print with care, and filled in a form which efficiently summarized him as to occupation, marital status etc. He was surprised, just a little, to note that he had only twenty-three working years ahead – one had assumed, somehow, that there were more. But that, after all – this expansion of time had and reduction of time to come – was something common to all and not therefore a personal problem, particularly. He signed the insurance form and went to bed.

  David said, ‘He reminded me, that man in the restaurant, of a friend of mine, a Pole, in the sense of being someone with an impenetrable – or almost unimaginable – past. This man got caught up in the war when he was in his teens, lost all his family, fought Germans when I was still at school, drifted from one country to another after the war, finally fetched up here. He makes me feel in some odd way inadequate. Short on personal experience. Apologetic.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s almost masochistic. To feel guilty for not having suffered.’

  ‘I daresay. But nevertheless I always find myself deferring to him, as though what he’s been through made him know more than I do about everything.’

  ‘I used to think that about my brother, just because he was two years older.’

  ‘Do you still.’

  ‘Oh, my God no!’

  ‘I could stay tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve kind of arranged things at home so it would be all right. If you’d like that.’

  ‘Like?’ she said. ‘Like …’

  ‘It won’t be long,’ she said. ‘It really won’t. Ten days. One does get through them. I know that now. There’s some absurd business on Monday over this cottage I told you about – they’re going to knock it down, or try to. I’ll have a tale to tell, no doubt, next time I see you.’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ he said. ‘What a disturbing person you are. You talk all night. Look at the time – after three.’

  ‘It’s a lovely time. I haven’t enjoyed three o’clock in the morning for years.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ he said. ‘If ever.’

  ‘Nine-thirty,’ said Sandra, on the phone. ‘Not later. Oh, and I should bring a thermos or something.’

  ‘A thermos?’

  ‘It might be a longish business, if things get tricky. I’ll see you in the morning, then.’

  The field beyond Splatt’s Cottage had been pegged out into rectangles, and trenches driven across it at intervals. In the far corner a bulldozer sat in the middle of a custard-coloured area of sludge and water. There was a cement-mixer parked by the edge of the lane and a mound of assorted pipes stacked in the ditch. From a green mobile but by the gate of the field three men peaceably drinking tea from mugs eyed the Splatt’s Cottage Preservation Committee and their supporters.

  Anne said, ‘Are they the ones who’re going to do it?’

  ‘That we’re not absolutely sure about,’ said Sandra. ‘Ah, here’s Hugh Sidey. Hello there!’

  ‘No action as yet?’ said the professor.

  ‘Not so far.’

  ‘Then I think we should take up a kind of waiting position and see what happens.’

  One banner was stuck up in the hedge and the other draped across the front of the Pickerings’ Fiat. The group, swollen now to about twenty-five or thirty, disposed themselves along the grass verges and in front of the entrance to the cottage, chatting.

  Anne said to Professor Sidey, ‘I gather you put in a formal protest to the planning people. I’m sorry I had to miss the last committee.’

  ‘We did indeed. It might, of course, have been more effective if we’d been able to get it in before the application was granted. As it is we got a fairly dusty answer, as we expected – except of course for vague assurances about the external appearance of the bungalows and what they’re to be used for. Which, of course, one has to regard with the utmost scepticism. Ah, now this, if I’m not mistaken, is our Mr Pym.’

  ‘The builder?’

  ‘The villain of the piece. Or one of them.’ The professor bustled away to consult with Sandra. What had he professed, before retirement, Anne wondered? History? Probably not, on the whole.

  The builder had left his car at the end of the lane, and walked briskly, now, towards the group. He seemed in no way perturbed. As he passed them he said, ‘Good-morning,’ and one or two people murmured ‘Good-morning’ back, and then looked away awkwardly. He picked his way across the field towards the workmen who had now finished drinking tea and were tinkering with the stationary bulldozer.

  ‘Mmn …’ said Sandra.

  The bulldozer, starting up, began now to erode the bank at the far end of the field. Mr Pym, deep in talk with one of the men, walked to and fro among the tapes and trenches, referring periodically to some papers in his hand. Mary Pickering came over to Anne and said, ‘Actually you would think wouldn’t you that they’d need more than just one of those yellow things to knock a house down.’ She wore jeans decorated with elaborate appliqué work and a thick hand-knitted sweater.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you would.’

  ‘I do hope we’re not here for nothing.’

  The small children accompanying some members of the group were playing happily now in a pile of building sa
nd beside the cement-mixer. One of the mothers said anxiously, ‘I hope that doesn’t matter. Timmy, don’t throw it about like that, it doesn’t belong to us.’

  Mr Pym had gone now into the mobile hut, and could be seen through the open door studying a large plan or map. The bulldozer was still busy at the bank, and the other two workmen were digging a trench in the distance. Sandra said, ‘Anyone like a cup of coffee?’

  It was now past ten. One woman had already drifted away, saying apologetically that she had to get into Reading before eleven. Sandra said to her departing back, ‘No skin off our nose, frankly, the weak might as well fall by the wayside. Who’s this now?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Brian Pickering, ‘it’s the photographer from the Reading paper. I rang them up and suggested they send someone along.’

  The photographer got out of his car and came towards them.

  ‘Look,’ said Sandra, ‘I should hang on for a bit. Nothing’s actually happened yet, you see. You’ll get a much better picture when they actually start doing something.’

  The photographer said doubtfully, ‘Yes.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Trouble is, I’ve got an assignment in Wallingford at ten-thirty. Could you sort of gather round, with the cottage as a background. And with those banners – yes, that’s nice. Just one more – thanks very much.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Sandra, as he drove away. ‘Still, it’s better than nothing.’ She turned back to look at the field where Mr Pym was now leaving the hut, shouting something to the trench-diggers as he went. He came out of the field and up the lane towards the cottage.

  ‘Off to get reinforcements, I imagine,’ said the professor.

  Brian Pickering said, ‘Well, I rather hope so, because I’ve got to be at the college by twelve.’

  Drawing level with them, Mr Pym now stopped and looked round at the group of people spread about the lane. He seemed curious rather than apprehensive. The professor said, ‘Good-morning, Mr Pym.’

  ‘Good-morning to you, sir. I don’t think we’ve met, have we?’

  ‘Sidey’s the name,’ said the professor tersely. ‘No, I think not.’

  ‘Newcomer to Cuxing, then?’

  ‘You could say so.’

  ‘Professor Sidey,’ said Sandra, ‘bought the Old Mill House last autumn.’

  ‘And good-morning to you, Mrs Butterfield. Ah, now I remember the Old Mill when it was still in use. That sets the clock back a bit, doesn’t it? You’ll have had to do a lot to it, sir, I imagine? It wasn’t ever meant for living in, not the way people like things now.’

  ‘What we would like to say to you, Mr Pym …’ began the professor, but Mr Pym was already speaking again.

  ‘ … Come to think of it, I daresay I remember more of Cuxing thirty, forty years ago than anyone else much in the village – more than anyone here, I’d reckon.’ He glanced amiably round the group, ‘You’ve been here, what? – nine, ten years? – Mrs Butterfield. And there’s a lot of faces here I don’t recognize at all. The village has seen some changes all right, but that’s the way things go, isn’t it?’

  Sandra began, ‘There’s absolutely no need for them to go quite …’

  ‘ … And I think it would be fair enough to say that none of us old Cuxing people think anything but that newcomers are a good thing. Ladies like Mrs Butterfield here’ve done a lot to put us on our toes’ – he grinned at Sandra– ‘And, mind you, most change I’ve seen has been for the better. Take my grandfather now – I remember him living with neither hot nor cold running water and a privy out the back …’

  ‘Possibly,’ said the professor, ‘But …’

  ‘Mr Pym,’ said Sandra loudly, ‘I think it must be clear enough to you what we’re here about. Are you intending to pull down this cottage today?’

  Mr Pym’s benevolent glance roamed beyond her to Splatt’s Cottage. ‘The old cottage? It’s a shame it’s been let go like that, isn’t it? My grandparents had it lovely – to look at, that is – with roses round the door and a nice garden.’

  Sandra said, ‘I had no idea your grandparents lived in Splatt’s Cottage, Mr Pym, and frankly I find that makes it even more extraordinary that …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the builder thoughtfully, ‘I don’t know …. Of course, it’s a pity it has to go – I remember playing in that ditch there when I was a boy, it was a lot cleaner in those days and you’d get tiddlers, sticklebacks and that.’

  Brian Pickering said, ‘We’re here to see that it doesn’t go, as a matter of fact.’

  Mr Pym, ignoring this, went on, ‘Of course my grandparents moved out before the war, soon as they could get one of the new council houses, and the place was bought up by Mr Taylor, up at the Hall. I think he had it in mind for one of his men but nothing ever came of that and it’s not been lived in, oh, forty-odd years now. Funny, I suppose, it should come back into the family, as it were, at the end.’

  ‘All this is a bit irrelevant,’ said the professor. ‘Now, we understand your intention is to go ahead with the demolition today?’

  ‘Today?’ said Mr Pym. ‘Oh no, not today. I wonder what gave you that idea, sir? No, that’s a job I’m handing over to a contractor, and I couldn’t tell you right now what his schedule is. Would you like me to keep you informed?’

  A murmur ran through the group, huddled attentively now around Mr Pym. Brian Pickering said, ‘God, what a balls-up.’

  ‘No, thank you’ said the professor coldly. ‘I must say I think your attitude …’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr Pym,’ said Sandra in strident tones. She stood foursquare at the gate of the cottage, the top of a thermos protruding from the pocket of her anorak. ‘Here you are busy destroying the oldest building in the village – one of the oldest – without so much as a scruple as far as I can make out. Don’t you feel you owe any respect to the past?’

  ‘Hear, hear’ said the professor.

  ‘I’d mind that path if I were you, Mrs Butterfield,’ said Mr Pym. ‘There’s a nasty old drain there that wants filling in. Been there donkey’s years. Ah … I should have said sooner. Are you all right?’

  Sandra, picking herself up, said ‘Perfectly … As I was saying, one feels the village is being betrayed by its own …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘I say,’ said the professor, ‘sure you’re all right? You came down rather hard, I’m afraid.’

  Mary Pickering, taking Sandra’s elbow said, ‘I’ll run you back to our place.’

  ‘Really no need,’ said Sandra.

  ‘I’ll have that drain seen to,’ said Mr Pym. ‘Hope there’s no damage done, Mrs Butterfield. Well, I’ll be on my way.’ He turned to the professor. ‘Nice to have met you. It’s good to have a bit of new blood in Cuxing, these days – you don’t want to have a place stand still, do you?’ He glanced cordially round at the group. ‘Good-morning to you’ – and walked away towards his car.

  There was a short silence.

  ‘I was assured absolutely,’ said the professor, ‘by one of the men on the site, that the intention was to knock it down today. I assume of course that we have been deliberately misled.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Brian Pickering. ‘He’s an absolute rogue, that’s obvious.’

  The supporters were moving away up the lane. The children, well established now in the sand heap, were detached with difficulty.

  Anne said, ‘Are you O.K., Sandra?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Stupid thing to do. But actually I think I will get back now and put my feet up for a bit. Can I give anyone a lift? Anyway,’ she went on determinedly, ‘we’ve made our point, I feel, whatever happens now.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mary Pickering, ‘it’s been well worth it.’

  Someone said, ‘Aren’t we going to turn up again, when the contractors’ men come?’

  ‘I suggest a committee on that,’ said the professor. ‘We may have to do a bit of re-thinking.’ He moved away with Sandra towards her car, talking.

  Anne walked up the lane in the wake
of the group. The Span houses, their windows glittering in the sun, rose from their squares of green turf. Behind, the bulldozer could be heard rumbling to and fro in the field. Between them, Splatt’s Cottage sat inscrutably behind its hedge. She looked into the ditch and thought: I should have asked that builder if there were eels as well as tiddlers and sticklebacks, now I’ll never know. She walked towards Cuxing, past the house where Paul’s onetime best friend lived, past the place where Judy in infancy feared a dog marauding behind a garden gate, past another house that Don had wanted, once, to buy. David accompanied her – his face, his way of walking, his voice, creating and re-creating themselves against this familiar background that he could not imagine.

  Graham came down for the weekend and seemed, she thought, subdued. He talked dispiritedly of his work when he spoke of it at all, and was a more passive guest than usual. He spent a long time with Paul, helping him assemble some stereo equipment, and said afterwards, ‘He must be quite nice to have around, that lad of yours.’

  ‘You always used to say you thought people were mad, lumbering themselves with children.’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong.’

  He seemed content to slump in armchairs, glancing through newspapers or dozing by the fire. On the Sunday afternoon Anne took him out, protesting, to walk on the downs.

  ‘I thought I was here for a rest, Annie. I notice Don gets let off.’

  ‘Don’s never been all that keen on walking.’

  The huge downland fields, fawn or hesitant green, curved around them. They followed a chalky bridle-path between bushes from which flights of small birds erupted. Overhead, the sky was full of larks.

  ‘I suppose it’s not so bad,’ said Graham. ‘Do me good, no doubt. I saw a chap about these stomach aches.’

  ‘Is there anything wrong, Graham?’

  ‘He didn’t think so. Said I should lose weight.’

  She stopped herself from laughing at the sight of his face, sombre and unsmiling as he trudged along the ruts of dried mud.