Cryers Hill (3 page)

T
HE DEAD GIRL
had marks on her legs. Sean heard his mother say it to his father while she was submerging something in the kitchen sink. Sean was lurking in the hall, prodding the air bubbles that were gathering beneath the wallpaper around the doorway. Upstairs meanwhile, concoctions gurgled in the airing cupboard, all of them carefully organised and linked by rubber tubing – nameless liquids that lay still until they frothed and furred over with bitter-smelling scurf. Home-made beer. You could hear the hiss and bubble as it fermented in the buckets.

The dead girl had marks on her legs. Sean felt his skin cool. He waited, hunched out of sight, for more. His father said, 'What kind of marks?' Exactly the right question to ask. When his mum didn't reply, Sean pressed his face into the wall, flattening an air bubble between his eyes, waiting for the words to float out; hoping they would not be horrible: hoping they would be.

'Dunno,' she said. 'Sort of shapes, symbols, Chinese maybe.'

Nothing Chinese had ever happened in Cryers Hill, maybe not even in the whole of Buckinghamshire. Sean's frown mirrored his father's on the other side of the wall.

'Chinese?' His dad spoke it low, as though it intrigued him, unlikely as it sounded.

'Or Japanese, you know, Oriental.'

'Oriental?'

'Or Arabic maybe, Egyptian, I don't know.'

'Well, make your mind up.'

Sean's dad hated surprises, secrets, uncertainties, things on tenterhooks. He preferred Jim Reeves singing 'I Love You Because', and whisky and soda and Embassy No. 3 He had a good head of hair, Gordon Matthews did. He had quick blue eyes and a nose that had been broken twice.

Sean thought of the James Bond film he'd seen in High Wycombe. The baddies were narrow-eyed villains from exotic countries with horrible scars and cruel ambitions. They wore collarless tunics or a fez or an eyepatch and their weaponry was underhand and nasty, boomerang blades, sharks, that sort of thing. Sean couldn't fathom what such a person would be doing in Cryers Hill.

His mother, Cathleen, had a selection of wigs upstairs in contrasting styles. They were kept in a box labelled 'Cathleen Matthews'. Unknown to her, Sean had tried them all on over the years. Now her voice had grown shrill.

'Janet Davis said it was scribble and Colleen from the semis said it was symbols. Although someone, I can't remember who, said the police said it was something foreign.'

'A foreigner?'

They fell quiet. A foreigner. They waited, perhaps for a sound, as though, even now, the perpetrator of this exotic tattoo, this mysterious character of inexact provenance – this foreigner – was at large, spying or stealing or whatever it was foreigners did. They listened. Maybe listening hard would reveal fancy foreign footsteps picking their way around the Hillman Avengers and communal bins. Sean had heard that a great many foreigners were unable to read, write or speak English at all. They came from countries that were far away and generally strange in their outlook. Never mind that there were two men up there on the moon, the moon didn't count as foreign. You could see it every night for a start and sometimes during the day. It hung over the estate like an old friend, like leaving the landing light on, reassuring, not like the Congo or Ceylon or even Halifax. The men on the moon were Neil and Buzz and everyone knew their faces; if they were to turn up at the post office, or pop in for a quick half at the White Lion, no one would bat an eyelid. They were everyone's heroes, they were locals in everyone's local, and they had seen off the Russians good and proper. They had described their small steps and giant leaps with poetic polish, and the whole world heard it spoken in the English language and so now it was official. The moon was an English-speaking planet, which made it practically British.

True, the people opposite went to the Costa Brava every year and Sean's dad had visited Rotterdam, and yes, they were saving up to go to Gibraltar since Sean's brother hadn't managed to win a single family holiday competition with his foolproof genius eye, not even the one in Bournemouth, but still. Foreign was far away and strange, foreign was not to be trusted, foreign was foreign.

Finally his father said, 'Enoch was right.'

Sean was inclined to suppose this had to be someone from work, or the Bible.

'I worry about him.' His mother this time.

This was the thing about grown-up conversation: it was like a game, you had to fill in the gaps. This was why they talked so much; they gave away clues, nothing more, you had to do the rest yourself, it wasn't easy. Often the real meaning was the thing that was not said at all. Sometimes the thing that was said was simply not true. Even the adults themselves struggled to understand one another. You could hear them any day of the week, bewildered as the next man: What's that supposed to mean? I never said that. You're putting words into my mouth. What the hell are you on about? Am I making myself clear? No one knew what anybody meant. The whole thing was a minefield of tripwires and unexploded word bombs, of meanings, half-meanings and non-meanings. You had to get in between the words, a bit like the liar alphabet.

'He's not managing.'

Tough one. Sean waited. It was an utterly mysterious remark. Who was Enoch? Why wasn't he managing? Did he know the foreigner? The one who had killed the girl?

'Don't start. He'll be all right.' His dad. You had to pick out all the liar words.

'See if his teacher agrees with you then.' His mother's voice spiralling upwards again, his dad winding her tighter with his big key.

'Young girl like that? Just out of school herself, what does she know?'

'She knows her skirts are too short.'

His dad threw back his head and laughed. A joke. Someone wore a skirt. Enoch?

'Oh, I know
you
don't mind.'

'Any beer in that fridge?'

The key in her back twists a final inch. Now she was fully wound.

'I know what you're after, Gordon Anthony Matthews.'

Now she was clockwork. The words came whirring, while her feet rushed her to every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen.

'Cath, Cath. You don't even know the capital of Poland. Don't kid yourself.'

'Oh, that's right, I forgot. Your name's Albert Einstein.'

'Don't get your knickers in a twist, bloody hell. Can't a man make a joke?'

'Ho. Ho. Ho.'

'Little Raquel Welch number moved in at twenty-nine, I see.'

The fridge door slammed. A pause while Gordon cocked his head.

'What did she want then, the lady teacher?'

'What do you think she wanted?'

'I haven't got a crystal ball, Cath. Have I got a crystal ball?'

'A child could see it, Gor.'

'Are you trying to make me look stupid?'

Sean closed his eyes. What the bludyell were they saying? Now something else happened. Now his dad was angry.

'I saw that! Thank you kindly. I saw that! Cheeky cow.'

Whatever it was his mother had done, she was doing it again.

'It's called innuendo, Cath. It begins with an i.'

Women did things with their faces, complicated things. His dad reckoned he had it all figured out.
Have you ever watched a pair of pigeons on a roof, Sean?
Gor enjoyed natural history.
Have you? It'll tell you everything you need to know about the mating game.
His dad had learned to read the signals. A woman closing her eyes could mean you were a fool, a bore, a liar; or it could mean she loved you but couldn't say it; or it could mean she was having a bit on the side. This particular phrase cropped up regularly in Gor's conversation. Whatever his mother had done with her face it would have likely been fleeting, but his dad had learned to read the smallest messages in faces, especially his wife's.

'What do you know about Einstein, Cath?'

It was frustrating, the silence. Sean too wanted to know about Einstein. He needed to know whether he was connected to Enoch, whether the clues to this whole exchange lay in these two names. Still nothing.

'I'm waiting, Cath.'

Sean waited too. This was women all over. His dad had explained it more than once. They carried on their backs an invisible shell, he said. From time to time, usually without warning, a woman retreats inside her shell and will not come out. Sean had been amazed by this, though even in his stunned consideration of it, he realised he could recall examples and saw with clarity that it was true. Why would they want to do that? His dad seemed none the wiser on this. Because they can, was all he came up with. He said it sadly, without conviction, and Sean thought of witches and princes.

'You don't know a bloody thing about Einstein!'

Sean thought he couldn't blame his father for being upset. She had introduced this other person, called him by a funny name, and now refused to reveal who this other person was.

'I asked a simple question, Cath, a simple question.'

Silence. His mother had entered her shell. Neither he nor his father could winkle her out now. Bobbing in the silence were Chinese symbols, a dead girl, Bond villains, Miss Day, a foreigner and someone called Enoch. Sean flattened another wallpaper bubble with his teeth. His father burped. It had impact where the words had none. It was a sound that said, That's the end of it, like a bell.

Sean thought, what if the sun burns out? What if I become possessed by an evil spirit? What if an alien ship lands? And, what if I accidentally eat poison? Sean thought whatifs a lot. There were a lot of whatifs to think about. If you tried for the rest of your life you wouldn't get through all the whatifs that could be. These questions pressed down on Sean whether he liked it or not. He thought maybe this was why mad people were mad. This could mean that madness was just around the corner. What if people turned mad and didn't know it? What if half the world were, in fact, mad? What if these questions and all the others spun you about until you were rotating inside a vortex of whatifs? What then?

S
INCE BOYHOOD WALTER
Brown had tried to imagine the girl who would one day be his own. He tried to conjure her from the hawthorn hedge and stile. He daydreamed and night-dreamed her. Eventually he gave her gold hair and called her Cissie. At night he felt the whisper of her breath and the arch of her back. He decided she would be happy as Larry and love him all the time. He upset himself over how she would suffer at his funeral. He pictured her clinging and crying by his grave, while the mourners shook their heads at the pity of it all.

He thought about her when the rain was coming down and when the wind pushed him home, through the fields, from school. He thought about her when the heat of the coals in the teatime fire made his eyes smart and when the sun stroked down his back in the morning. Sometimes he wondered if thinking about her this much might bring her, just from the force of wanting and the pull of his imaginings.

So he waited for her but she didn't come. While he waited for the Cissie he'd made up in his head, he practised talking to live girls. He tried Mary Hatt.

'I saw a man get his head stove in once.'

These were the first words Mary Hatt spoke to Walter Brown in the yard at Cryers Hill village school. Walter nodded politely and tried not to look at her face for fear this would release a whole chain of events. In contrast to her elder sister, the graceful Isabel, Mary Hatt carried herself carelessly and released her thoughts directly from her mouth, without censorship or consideration. In 1930 this was not regarded as a desirable attribute in a girl.

'Yes,' she continued good-humouredly, 'kicked him when he was turned. His brains went in a bucket.'

Walter struggled to come up with a suitable reply. Mary did so for him.

'Never mind,' she said.

Walter could not think of a single thing to say. He stared at the slates and waited for time to move on.

'Mind you, I seen worse than that,' she continued pleasantly.

He listened to her shoe scraping the stone, her breath go in and out of her open mouth, loud as Doug Shaw's breeding bull.

'I'm sure you have.'

'I have.'

He was done for, he suspected. He didn't know why he thought that.

'Which d'you want to hear about?'

'None. Thank you.'

'Well. So, one had his arm off from a scythe and another one got his whole head taked off by a Marshall engine at threshing time. Dogs drunk all the blood off the ground. His legs went on all right, like a chicken's, trying to run.'

And she laughed a startled, good-natured laugh as if this were not so terrible as it sounded. Walter was grateful for the laugh that wiped from his mind the poor man's scrabbling legs. Now at least they wouldn't have to stand there in silent contemplation of the wretched fellow, headless as a Christmas bird, running everywhere and nowhere at all.

He looked at her and felt the shock of her bold blunt stare. When he looked away her face remained like an imprint on his eye, her wind-tangled hair and jumble of teeth, so that he saw it over everything, the Victorian brickwork, the drain gulleys, the sky.

'Something in there?' she asked, as he pressed his finger against his eyelid.

'Gone now,' he replied, not daring to glance again.

'Give it a rub then.'

He obeyed for something to do.

'My grandad had a glass eye he could take out. He swallowed it once, playing the fool.'

'Oh.'

'He got it back. Came out his rear, covered in plop.'

'Oh.'

'Yes. So, cheerio then.'

Walter stood there a while after she'd gone. 'Cheerio.' He didn't trust himself to think or move; almost as though
his
head too had come clean off his shoulders and
his
legs wanted to dash nowhere at all. Here then was Mary Hatt. True enough it was to say she was no Cissie.

Sankey and Walter stand together at the old gate on the Four Ashes road. They lean their backs to the valley view. Behind them are the forested hills, sharply angled farmland and flowing sky. They smoke. Walter is forbidden to light up at home until he is twenty-one. Sankey too is unable to smoke his pipe at his lodgings. The old gate on the Four Ashes road lay between their respective addresses. If it was raining or inclement they would shelter in Town Wood or retire to the White Lion. They will speak with each and everyone who happens along. Just now it is the road sweeper, Saul, trimming the banks and verges, carrying his mole traps – a shilling he would get for a good pelt, rats too. He was surprisingly effective with his catapult and lead balls. A menace rats were, in the feed rooms, corn ricks; Saul earned his fresh milk and cheese.

One year Saul got himself chased into the pond by wasps. He still talks about it. Chased him a good quarter-mile. A million of them he said there were afterwards, showing off his red swellings. 'Your arithmetic's off,' Sid Perfect informed him. Sid Perfect was an excellent darts player. He could tell you how many you needed and how best to score them before the last dart had landed. He was good at predictions. He could tell a woman whether she should expect twins. He could tell a person they were going to die a violent death. He was never wrong.

A million, Saul insisted again. He got upset about it. I'm no liar, he said. I know one million wasps when I see them. And he punched Tommy King in the head to prove it.

Walter sees the cattle on the hill have raised their heads. More curious than a cat, a cow. Tommy Castle said that. A natural with cattle he was. Something about those who nursed a grief a long time, made them good around animals, economical with their movements. Excellent with cattle, Tommy, in spite of his old age; milk yield never better anyhow. If you ask him about the war with the Boer he'll tell you. Go on, ask Tommy, they used to say. And he did tell, even to a very small boy, which Walter was at the time. Tommy's grief was over the mothers and babies, the ones who were starved, put in camps, fenced in like you would for animals. Tommy heard them crying still, here in the Chilterns. He couldn't stand it. He kept to himself after that war. They were removed, he said, the ones who had died, to make room for more Boer mothers and their babies to come and starve and cry and wait to die. The English this was, Tommy said, who did it, the British Army. Walter, who was just a boy then, didn't believe him.

Walter and Sankey lean and smoke.

'Here, I have a good one for you, Walt.'

'Ready and able.'

'Why is a kingfisher blue?'

'Why is a kingfisher blue?'

'That's it.'

'So that he may attract the lady kingfishers.'

Sankey waits. 'How did you come by that?'

'A little knowledge of the avian kingdom goes a long way.'

'Well, it is wrong. A kingfisher's plumage, my friend, is as blue as Our Saviour's eyes. An exact replication of the colour, in order that mankind may know what it is to be looked upon by the Light of the World.'

'God help us, Sank.'

'I'll drink to that.'

'A jar of ale will cure the ailment with no name.'

'You read my mind just then, Walter.'

Walter places two halves of ale before Sankey and slides into the chair beside him. Now that they are here at the Royal Standard he finds he is happy to taste the bitter froth on his tongue and half listen to the gargles of chatter filtering through the smoke.

'This is a marvellous day,' Sankey remarks. Walter says nothing. He does not wish to respond, fearing it is the introduction to a long, tortuous discourse. After a pause Walter fills his pipe and strikes a match and soon they are both shrouded by a dense fog.

A man enters with a cringing collie around his ankles. He nods and crosses to the bar.

Sankey raises his glass. You could join me, I suppose, at the church room if you so wished.'

The collie slips into the shadow beneath a table. It makes Walter think of stoats. Walter does not want to go to the church room. Sankey is always rooting about for a conversion. He does not reply. That is the end of that then.

From stoats Walter's thoughts drift towards ferrets. He fancied a ferret as a boy, but his mother would not tolerate one in the house. He suggested it could sleep outside in a kennel, to which she replied, 'Are you deaf?'

'Do you like ferrets then, Sank?'

Sankey looks hard at his drink while he decides. 'No. They bite and they smell, Walt. Canaries are nice.'

'They may give a playful nip.'

'They can draw blood.'

'Only if they're upset.'

'You can't upset a canary, they are a stable bird, Walt.'

'Not if a cat is about.'

'Morning, Jim. No, but generally.'

'I don't like the twittering.'

'They don't twitter, they sing. Good as any nightingale.'

'I'll take your word for it.'

'You should. Canaries are the ticket.'

'I'm not a bird man.'

'No, well. You might consider it, Walt.'

'So you say.'

'I do.'

'I shall sleep on it.'

'Good, then. Hello, John. That'll put hairs on your chest.'

'If you say so.'

'I do say, Walt. I do.'