Cryers Hill (24 page)

Let not the songbird fail:
She travels from Africa,
the bold, intrepid nightingale.

Her gentle songs do ne'er betray
her will to conquer squall and storm;
until, at last, her darkest night gives way
to bright and hopeful dawn.

Keats to Rome. Byron to Malta. Shelley to Switzerland. Wordsworth to France. At night Walter dreamed of deserts with wide golden tides rolling like ocean waves. And hillsides of olive groves, blooming with wildflowers, tinkling with the sound of goat bells. He dreamed of a fjord, high as a building, and himself at its crest with his pipe and his pen, and his beard (for he would grow one) frosted and his cheekbones mauve. And he dreamed of a volcano that burned away his clothes and, as he fell into its furnace centre, he dreamed that her voice was calling him. And he dreamed that he died there, burned to ash, and he saw them clearly – his teeth and his pipe and his sturdy pen – in the dust before the snow began to fall, and they were covered over then, flake by flake, as though by the laying of thousands of tiny cold wreaths.

'And what will you live on, thin air?'

It was not for Walter Brown to explain to his mother that a poet must eat and sleep where he can, and not bother too much about his animal needs.

'Or perhaps you will eat your words, young man. Ha! Imagine, if we all lived by our fancies, where would it lead?' Her laugh squeezed her till her eyes watered. 'Nothing, my son, not coal in the grate, food on the table, or roof overhead, is materialised from a young man's whimsy, or where would we be?' The laugh is replaced by a quiet, threatening formality. And a warning stare. 'Hard work puts things in their place, Walter Frederick Horace Brown, and don't you forget it.'

That night Walter dreamed he found Mary in his loop snare. She was naked and he shot her. She screamed and kicked like a doe. Her eyes watched him as they filmed over. He was looking at her breasts, rose-brown tipped and mottled with cold. He wondered if he should skin her. God Almighty. The next morning he could not look at himself in the mirror to shave. The previous night he had dreamed her arms grew longer and longer until she could tap him on the shoulder from half a mile away.
Wally Wally Wallflower, growing up so high.

Serpent or no serpent, the water pool by Cockshoot Wood is Sankey's favourite pond. In this July heat it is a dark oasis, trembling with insect life. He is standing in it up to his neck for there is no one about – man, woman or meddler – to pass comment or demand that he remove himself. Folk are far too willing to interfere when they should be minding their own business. Today at any rate he is alone save for a family of little grebe and the occasional startled flap of woodpigeon.

'What shall I do to be saved? When the pleasures of
youth are all fled:

And the friends I have loved from the earth are removed,
And I weep o'er the graves of the dead?'

The song skates across the water and rises up into the hornbeam trees.

Sankey wonders whether it is Tuesday or Wednesday. If it is Tuesday he will collect his paraffin from Grove Road. If he forgets he will have no light or heat tonight and moreover he is intending to cook an egg and piece of mutton for his supper. Perfect would be in his cups by now, or attempting to lighten his load; game birds were two shillings these days. A bird would be nice, roasted with thyme.
Behold,
he muses, to take his mind off food,
here is Light. Here in this sanctuary I have seen thee.
Sankey raises his arms and notes how brightly the drips of water glitter. My
soul waiteth upon Him, From Him cometh my salvation.
Sankey closes his eyes. He smiles. Everything is splendid. In his heart is comfort and everlasting love. Here is the Almighty, here in the pond, and in everything reflected therein, thereof.

'My
soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee, now and for ever. Amen.'

Sankey opens his eyes. A conversation would be nice. Young Walter will be busy in Wycombe. The Water Company must keep the water flowing or else. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, Walt. At evening time it shall be light.

When at last the sun sinks behind the Chilterns' widest hill, he wades out and lays himself down on the bank. His head is filled with colour as he shivers. A marvellous feeling this, better than any food or lust or winnings or fiery drink; gone now was his paraffin, his egg and his mutton chop.

'Behold, I stand at the door and knock!' Sankey calls up at the navy sky, darkening now with night cloud, for at last he knows that only He is his rock, his salvation, his defence. I shall not be greatly moved, he thinks. And falls asleep.

Sankey had only one real memory of his mother. The rest was a wash of longing and some hotchpotch pictures his mind had constructed for comfort. His real memory though, like the photograph in his pocket, was a bright living thing. It remained in his mind sleeping or waking and sometimes drifted into view uninvited as he engaged in conversation or cut firewood or assisted Father Blagdon. In this real memory she is bending down to him. Behind her the sunlight is so dazzling it is hard for the young Charles to focus, but he can make out eyes, lips, teeth, revealed by her widening smile – the smile she has for him. She is talking, but he doesn't understand what she is saying. He doesn't care because he has the best part, the golden light of her attention, the evidence of her delight in him, and the cool softness of her hand on the back of his neck. He remembers her touch on his neck, on his head; it is sacramental, merciful, it is laid there to bless him, forgive him, protect him, it is laid there still. He looks up at her, into her brightness, and here, blinding him, is the love he dreams of now and has dreamed of always. He would like to say a prayer to that love but can think of none, save for the one he learned on her knee:
Mary, Mother, all the day, Close beside thee let me stay. Keep me pure from sinful stain, Till the night return again.

Close beside thee. Let me stay. Though he had spoken it morning and night like a good boy, no amount of praying had kept her. He had padded around her sickbed restlessly, counting her fingers, humming the hymn he knew, and when he grew sleepy he stood at her shoulder and rested his cheek on her arm. When she finally went away she did so quiet as a bird, though she had resisted for several weeks because she worried for her boy.

'My poor Charlie,' she said to her friend Evelyn. 'What'll happen to him?'

He saw her face. She was asleep. My boy, my darling boy, my darling little boy. These were her words. She said them whether she was dying or not. She held his face in her hands and he watched her tears make their long journey to her pillow. She stared at him as if to remember his face. She would have to wait a long time perhaps until he arrived at the gates. She would be waiting. They would be reunited then. My boy, my darling boy. I shall wait for you.

When she died she said nothing at all. Charles ran to her bedside to show her his stone in the shape of a shield and found she had slipped away.

Evelyn did her best with Mary's boy. 'Oh dear,' Charles commented. It was all he would say. Nobody could get any other words from him, not even a prayer. It upset the older ladies, the pity of it, until finally it was the ladies themselves that required comforting. Evelyn did her best, she dressed, bathed and held him, and still he continued: 'Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.' Evie thought, well, it will soon stop after a day or two, but it did not. After a while, her charity used up, it began to grate on her.

He had no memory of his mother's funeral. He could not be altogether sure whether he had been there, buttoned up in a dark coat, or not. He went to live with the draper's widow, whose own children were almost grown, and there he settled down and did his lessons at school and, once he learned to read, attended to the two books in the house, the Holy Bible and Ira Sankey's
Sacred Songs and Solos.
He visited his mother's grave in his short trousers, long trousers, and finally in his working boots. As he learned them he sang her the hymns from the book, though it was breezy at the churchyard on the hill. And this way Charles Collins became Sankey, or Charles Sankey for formal occasions, after the revivalist Ira Sankey's collection of hymns and sacred songs. They christened him in the schoolyard and it remained. A name his own mother would not recognise.

Mary Hatt and Walter Brown were married in Gomms Wood by Charles Sankey around the time of Mary's seventeenth birthday. They placed their hands on the Holy Bible and exchanged flowers for rings. They sang 'Jesus, Beloved of My Heart'. Sankey had not intended to marry them but found himself, to his astonishment, offering to do so the day they discovered him close by, behind a holly bush with a ladies' hand mirror. He offered to charge them nothing – owing, he said, to the fact of his being an apprentice preacher at this stage. Walter and Mary saw no reason to refuse. It was a fine blowy day and Sankey had his Holy Book with him and everyone loved a wedding, so. More than this he volunteered to share his good tobacco afterwards.

During the ceremony, as Sankey drifted, directionless, between sermon, homily, advice and admonishment, he fancied he felt the heat of God on them, all three. He found the spell of his own words deeply moving as he blessed the happy couple, blessed the day, blessed the cathedral of birch, beech and oak in which they stood, and blessed himself.

You have gone off the topic,' Walter Brown pointed out impatiently, but Sankey had inspired himself with a blizzard of wisdoms. Some considerable time passed before Mary and Walter were able to find themselves conjoined by God. Afterwards they shared the pipe tobacco Sankey had been saving, and Walter was violently ill over his shoes.

God's men, men of God. What Sankey wouldn't give to be counted among them. He wished he had learned more about reading and writing. He wished he could wear the collar and the wide-brimmed hat and that way be a salve and a salvation to the people who would come to him. The men of the cloth; it was they with all the answers and the final say, they with the power and glory for ever and ever, Amen.

'A
great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.'

Sankey's voice drifts thinly out of him. He has always had a high voice, like a girl. Something was coming, he knew that now. The trumpet would sound. He was ready for the labour, for the Light. Difficult to find his preaching voice, to practise, with this cough. Sankey reckons it is walking up these hills that's done it. That and the damp in winter.

When he began to lose his appetite he suspected it was the Lord, lightening his load to ready him for action. No good being a slowcoach when it came to God's own work. Others said it was the wood dust at the chair factory (worse than the solvents some said) that got inside the workers' throats and lungs. These were exotic woods imported from Africa. Some of the men developed chronic headaches and asthma and some of these men suspected a connection, but they were reassured by their own good doctor, Dr Summer, who could not confirm any link whatsoever between the imported wood and the symptoms.

One day in the near future, during a time of turbulence in Europe that could not yet be imagined, it would be noted that the men in the area who were dying of throat and nasal cancers had, at one time or another, all worked at the chair shops.

T
HE LINE-MARKER MAKES
no comment, it just draws the line. Sean discovers that it is very satisfying to draw a line and walk away. Sean draws the line. So long as the wheel is turning the paint pours itself in a careful stripe. It pours steadily, consistently. The smell of the paint, Sean thinks, is how the space shuttle must smell: new, fresh, white, scientific. Where Sean goes, the line goes. Sean is God. The line-marker squeaks with each revolution, it is the sound of progress. It dictates the rhythm of Sean's steps, so that each is perfectly synchronised with the other. The line-marker leads him, as if it knows where it would prefer to go. He follows it across Windmill Lane, down the path skirting Lower Field at Widmer Farm, where the nettles are taller than him, past the tin bath where insects float and down North Road for a while. At the sound of a car the line-marker hurries him behind a tree until it is safe. It is, however, a giveaway, the way the paint stops suddenly beside a large object. Peep-peep, off he goes again. Sean thinks this is the best thing he has ever done in his life. He is making his mark on earth. Here and there he stops and listens, waits for trouble. But there is only the chattering of birds and the constancy of the lonely fireball sun.

At the top of Cryers Hill Lane he takes a rest. Behind him the line stretches all the way down to Bottom Farm. It waggles a bit between the giant chestnuts, where he had looked over his shoulder to see behind him, and there is a deviation to the side further down, by the house with the low roof, where he had craned his neck for a glimpse of the old codger who lived there without electricity, and it had made him swerve. In spite of these lapses the line runs down the hill like a line on a map, jinking a little as map lines do, but swift and purposeful, as if it knows where it's going. Certainly it will lead him back; this line would lead anyone, it is a good line. There were lines on the stones in the classroom collection drawer; wispy they were, like feathers. Sean told the teacher that he did not know what they were. Bones, Miss Day replied. Yes, they are of course bones. Fossils, she said, to be precise. Miss Day is always precise, she never takes her eye off the ball. Miss Day told the whole class then, announced in her best sing-song voice, that the markings on the fossil stones were the bones of the dead. No one believed her for a second, but it was a good reply.

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 said. '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.