The Green Gauntlet (15 page)

He found pleasure in brief conversations with others, particularly adults who could tell him something new, or clarify some process that puzzled him, but on the whole he preferred his own company and could pass a pleasant afternoon watching and wondering and weighing one thing against another. He did not quarrel with the regimen of school, recognising it as a kind of obligatory penance imposed upon everyone once they reached the age of six. At school one could pay attention in certain lessons—history, English, geography, and basic science—and dream one’s way through periods devoted to algebra, geometry and French. Schoolmasters as a whole, he decided, were well-meaning bores, and teaching was one profession that he had deleted from a long list of possibles, along with any other work that would confine him indoors. There were, however, a host of alternatives and time enough to make a deliberate choice. He could be an archaeologist-explorer, a zoo keeper, a painter in the style of anyone from, say, Renoir (whose pouting little girls fascinated him), to that Dutch chap with an unpronounceable name who specialised in crowd scenes of tiny figures beetling about vast, open landscapes. He could, he supposed, be a squire like his father, or a farmer like Rumble Patrick or old Francis Willoughby over at Deepdene, but these occupations lacked variety and every fresh holiday, when he could do as he pleased for as long as he pleased, promised more and more variety in an ever expanding field of possibility. It was an exciting prospect this growing up, but lately he was approaching a stage where he found comfort in the knowledge that years must pass before he had to make a final decision. In the meantime, the thing to do was to explore and experiment, to circle the perimeter of every new experience and this, more or less consciously, was precisely what he was doing on this fine August morning, with something like four hours freedom in front of him and no questions asked on his return home.

He crossed the hedge dividing the last Home Farm meadow from the river road, stopped a moment to examine a tuft of cat’s ear and wondered how it had acquired its name, studied a large yellow iris growing on the very edge of the Sorrel, and then wandered eastward beyond Codsall bridge, peering among the streamers of pond weed that old Martha Pitts called ‘Jinny-Green-Teeth’, hoping to spot a trout or grayling. Seeing none he settled his equipment more comfortably on his shoulders and pottered up the hill to the crest of the moor where the huge camp came into view, the sun catching the bayonet of the guard patrolling the wide, clover-leaf approach that led to the guardhouse and gate through the wire.

He stood for a moment watching the scene below, wondering if the usual truckloads of khaki-clad figures would emerge and make for the assault course where he could follow on and watch men descend the death-slide like encumbered Tarzans but none did. Far away, across the parade ground, an N.C.O. Discip. could be heard warbling commands half an octave beyond his pre-war range. A sergeant in shirtsleeves stood on the guard-house porch polishing a boot. The sentry continued to pace ten steps left, ten steps back and it was only for want of something more entertaining that John gave him his full attention, noticing that there was something a little odd about his turn-out. He continued to stare unblinkingly until he discovered what was amiss. The man’s cap badge had dropped off his beret and a moment later John spotted it, shining like a silver star directly in the man’s beat.

It was curious, he thought, that the sentry did not notice it for every twenty seconds his boots came crashing down within inches of it but then, John reasoned, it wasn’t curious after all, for like all good sentries he marched with his eyes on the middle distance. Watching, John saw trouble approaching. A staff car came slowly up the main avenue of the camp and the sergeant, throwing aside his boot, moved towards the gate to let it through and John saw his chance while the attention of the officer in the car was on the sergeant. He moved forward, unslinging his camera and, at the same time, side-kicking the badge towards the sentry who had faced about and was in the act of slamming his butt in salute.

The man saw the badge and the officer saw John’s camera in the same split second. The officer sprang out and doubled round the car, shouting, ‘Hi, there!
You,
there! You can’t take pictures here, sonny!’ and the sergeant, determined to get in on the act, roared, ‘You can’t take pictures here!’ but John understood that although both sounded fierce and emphatic they were also amused at his effrontery, and that this was a fortunate thing for it gave him an opportunity to occupy their attention long enough for the sentry to scoop up his cap badge, clip it on, and resume his rigid pose. This, in fact, was precisely what happened for the officer, a heavily-built middle-aged man suddenly became waggish and pointed to a security poster on the camp notice-board. ‘You’re old enough to read, aren’t you? What’s that say up there?’

‘“Careless talk costs lives”, sir,’ John said, equably, and then, as a polite qualification, ‘I wasn’t talking, sir.’

The officer looked baffled but then decided to laugh and at once the sergeant joined in, saying, ‘You live around here, don’t you?’ and John said, very politely, that he did, and that his father was Squire Craddock who owned the land as far as the River Whin, behind the camp.

At this the sergeant laughed first but straightened his face at once as the officer said, ‘Well, I’m sorry about that, but you still can’t carry a camera around the camp. Nobody can! It’s against regulations! Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The sergeant, wishing perhaps to atone for his premature laugh, said, ‘Er—those binoculars, sir.’

‘Yes by George! It’s a regular spy outfit, sergeant. Do you suppose we ought to clap him in the guardhouse?’

‘No, sir,’ replied the sergeant, who was reckoned a bit of a humourist. ‘If we did his dad would give us notice to quit,’ and at this the balance of joviality was restored and they both laughed very heartily indeed.

John let them enjoy their joke. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the sentry’s cap badge was back in place so that when the officer said, ‘Run along then, and don’t bring that kit round here again, there’s a war on,’ he replied, ‘Yes, sir’, and the officer climbed back into the car while the sergeant returned to his boot polishing.

When the car had disappeared John and the sentry exchanged grins but it was not until he was at the extreme end of his beat that the man said, ‘Thanks, chum. Nicely managed,’ in a stage whisper. It was a more than adequate acknowledgment John felt, enlarging both of them at nobody’s expense, and he turned and plodded away over the lower crest of the moor having crossed yet another profession off his list, for who, in his senses, would want to be at the mercy of a little tin badge and superiors who indulged in Second Form jokes? It was not even worth the glory of dying on a bloodstained cloak like General Wolfe and whispering ‘Thank God!’ when the aide-de-camp cried, ‘They run, sir! They run!’ This was a future he had conjured with after seeing a colour-plate reproduction of ‘The Heights of Abraham’ in his school history book.

III

F
eeling that he had derived something worthwhile from the encounter he crossed the track at the point where it met Hermitage Lane and here, with a pant and a wriggle, Henry Pitts’ aged Labrador, Nosey, ran up to him. John and Nosey were old friends and John foraged in his knapsack for a sandwich that the dog swallowed at a gulp. Anticipating more he trotted at John’s heels when the boy tackled the steep slope up to French Wood and here, surprisingly, he encountered David Pitts, son of Henry and master of Hermitage contemplating a rusting tractor. John had a scale of intimates in the Valley and David was about half-way up the scale, several notches below Rumble Patrick, Mary and old Henry, a long way above the new people at High Coombe, who persisted in treating him as a five-year-old. David, a slow-thinking, serious man in his late thirties, said, ‘Wot be ’at then? Bird-watchin’?’, and without waiting for an answer went on, ‘Bide a minnit, I seed a yellowhammer yerabouts a minnit zince!’

They stood quite still by the bonnet of the tractor and John carefully unslung his binoculars and handed them to the broad-shouldered man at his side, who trained them on a section of hedge. Presently he said, ‘There ’er be. On thicky low branch, this zide o’ the gap,’ and passed the binoculars back to John, who ranged the hedge for a minute before getting the bird in focus.

He studied it lovingly, for the yellowhammer was one of his favourites and not often spotted. The nape, head and belly were like slivers of lemon peel but the duller wing feathers were the colour of the rubbed guinea that old Francis Willoughby wore on his watch fob. ‘It’s a male, David,’ he said, as the dog Nosey flopped and the bird, alerted, skimmed the hedge and dipped into the wood. ‘Is there a pair nesting up here?’

‘Not as I know of,’ said David, ‘but I’ll keep a look out. There was last year, with five eggs in but I didn’t tell ’ee, I was afraid you’d raid ’un. I likes them yaller-boys. They eats a rare lot o’ pests. Be ’ee goin’ backalong for a cup o’ tay wi’ Mother?’

‘Tomorrow,’ John said, ‘I got to make the rounds today.’

‘Ah!’ said David understandingly, ‘that’s as it should be. Time was when Squire made ’em regular, once a week. Twice sometimes, depending on what was stirring but he’ll be busy so I reckon he’s glad to have you backalong.’

It did not strike him as odd that an eight-year-old should take himself seriously. He was a serious man himself, rooted in tradition, with very little of his father’s sense of humour. He watched the boy climb through the gap and not until he had been swallowed up by the summer foliage of French Wood did he permit himself to exclaim.

‘Gordamme!’ he said aloud, ‘if he baint a chip off the old block! Tiz like old times just zeein’ ’im.’ He made a mental note to describe the encounter to his wife and ensure that she did not miss the symbolism of it, but the past had no meaning for John so that he forgot about David by the time he had crossed the protective paling of the wood put there to keep out the deer. Then, on the far side of the coppice he saw two Red Admirals playing at falling leaves on a shaft of sunlight and waited for them to settle so that he could get a closer look at the chain of islands decorating the scalloped margins of the wings. They looked, he thought, like a map of the Hebrides and he had never before noticed that the spots were precisely balanced, as though put there by a painter with a passion for symmetry. It was the same, he reflected, with the four ‘eyes’ on the wings of the Peacock butterfly, each pair being carefully matched, so that you could never mistake a hind wing ‘eye’ for a fore wing ‘eye’. The arrangement impressed him. God, he reflected, must be an extremely busy person, with a wonderful eye for detail. There was absolutely nothing it seemed, he was likely to overlook once he had rolled up the sleeves of his nightshirt and got busy after his winter holiday. So far, try as he might, John had never been able to catch him out and find a piece of botched work, although he was disinclined to take things for granted and had hopes that one day he would chance upon a celestial error of one kind or another.

In the meantime, the butterflies having resumed their aimless saraband, he made his way down from the escarpment and into Shallowford Woods where he found a stump half-way down the wooded slope and ate his snack whilst contemplating a heron doing some leisurely fishing among the reeds at the eastern end of the Mere.

It was hot and still up here, with tree-talk reduced to the kind of whispers people exchanged in church. The only sounds that reached him, apart from the hushed tissing of the beeches, was the deliberate plop of a fish, or perhaps an otter, and the high undertone of bees searching the bells of foxgloves that grew in great straggling clumps beside the path. He did not worship trees, as his father obviously did, but he could understand his father’s reluctance to cut one down, for they surely took many lifetimes to grow to this height and to fell one was to make a change. He was like his father in that respect, wanting everything to stay as he remembered it, and thinking this he wondered if he wished it was always summer and that he could stop growing up. There were certain advantages, he thought, in remaining a boy and obvious disadvantages in growing as old and sad faced as his father, or as big around the rump as his mother, or, for that matter, as bristly as the officer at the camp, or as wheezy as old Francis Willoughby over at Deepdene. Ruthlessly, and with a certain relish, he considered the physical penalties of old age, among them the tiresome necessity of soaping one’s face and scraping it with a razor like his father and his eldest brother Simon whose whiskers sprouted like tares. For a man as old as his father, however, he judged Paul pretty active, particularly on horseback, but the older women grew the more they seemed to spread and a tendency to acquire a fat belly was not confined to the impossibly old, like Martha Pitts. Even his sister Mary, whom he considered only middle-aged, had recently put on a great deal of weight and was already walking clumsily and inclined to breathlessness.

He was considering this, and trying to equate Mary’s present girth with his earliest memories of her at Periwinkle, when his eye was alerted by a flutter of white seen through the snarl of branches between his stump and the Mere, and on looking more closely was surprised to see Mary sitting about a hundred yards below him on a mossy log, opposite the islet. He was not a person to contain curiosity and hitching his gear he drifted down the slope to ask her why she was there but he must have moved more silently than he intended, for when he emerged from the trees she gave a gasp and crammed the pages she was reading into her handbag. He was puzzled by the implied guilt of her action and wondered what it could be that she was reading, and then he remembered that a fat letter with an American stamp had been lying by her plate at breakfast and that she had made a poor pretence at ignoring it until everybody had finished eating and had then slipped away, taking the unopened letter with her. He noticed something else about her that puzzled him. Her eyes glittered as though she had been crying and it occurred to him that the letter must be from Rumble Patrick and contained bad news of one kind or another. He said, with the terrible candour of youth, ‘Who’s dead? It isn’t Rumble is it?’