The Blind Light

by Stuart Evers

  ‘She’ll ask why.’

  ‘So tell her,’ he said. ‘Tell her about the warring neighbours, just as I told you. The housing development, all of that. She’ll soon see.’

  Yes, soon see. See through it, tell him that it’s a fool’s move. A plan about which he does not have the full information. And be right about that. Right about it and Drum not caring.

  He begins dusting the lounge. He should feel guilty for the meetings he’s missed, the pickets he’s abandoned. Should do, but does not. What good the struggle anyway, the constant battle? No good. No good at all. Too old for it now, to be keeping on with it. The endless in and out of it. The constant hope and its dash, the ache in the shoulders. The same faces through the same doors, the same talk and the same resolution. And all for what? To send Nate and Annie to the comprehensive? To breathe the same filthy air? To fear the estate at night? To worry on every penny? No matter how sketchy the plan, no matter how ill-considered, better than waking at fifty, facing another fifteen years without even the kids at home to make it worthwhile.

  Just before three, the telephone rings. No matter how long, the ring still surprising.

  ‘Hello, Drum,’ Carter says. ‘Just checking in. Are we set for Saturday?’

  ‘Gwen’ll be back later,’ he says. ‘I’ll call as soon as we’ve spoken.’

  ‘I’m counting on you,’ Carter said. ‘Counting on you to save the day, as always.’

  11

  Gwen opens the door on a silent house, no bone creaks or radio, no food on the stove, no feet on the stairs. Perhaps she wasn’t the only stop on Jenny’s rounds. For a moment, it feels like they’ve all gone; the children taken, driven away by Drum. But then she sees him in the kitchen, serious faced, set for a scolding.

  ‘Where are the kids?’ she says.

  ‘At Vi’s,’ he says. ‘We need to talk and I didn’t want them getting in the way.’

  There are new apples in the fruit bowl, new bananas. Not going anywhere. No one buys fresh fruit and then leaves. No packed suitcase, no stuffed holdall. Just the tea, which he pours, A Clubbable Woman open, just a chapter from its conclusion.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she says. ‘Still, serves you right. What time did you get back last night?’

  ‘Late,’ he says. ‘Carter put me in a cab.’

  ‘Earned your money then,’ she says. ‘The hungover hooker, right?’

  He looks up and if he knows, this is the time to say. She’s given him the perfect in. Well, you’d know all about being a whore, something like that. Easy to follow that conversational line.

  ‘I’ve been this close to throwing up all day,’ he says. ‘I’m out of practice.’

  She nods and takes her tea. No sympathy.

  ‘So what’s so urgent we have to banish the kids?’

  He puts his hands on hers. If they were not already married, she would expect a proposal. Something like the way Ray held her hand and told her his plan for Nuneaton.

  ‘I want you to know,’ he says, ‘that none of this has been agreed. This is our decision, yours and mine, and I need you to be one hundred per cent sure it’s what you want.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. Into strange territories here; Drum never one for abdication of responsibility. Always decisive, stubborn once a decision made. ‘You’re beginning to worry me, but okay.’

  He looks her straight in the eye, does not move his gaze.

  ‘You know the farm next to Carter’s place?’

  She nods. Should have realized. Carter. Who else.

  ‘Well, the man who owns it is selling up. Thing is, a property developer wants to buy it and build a housing estate. Carter’s furious about it, but there isn’t much he can do. There’s bad blood between the families. Goes back generations, apparently. A mutual hatred. Carter did tell me the reasons, but that part’s all a bit hazy. Anyway, Carter wants to buy the land, but the farmer won’t sell to him. Won’t even let him inside the door.’

  ‘Poor Carter,’ she says. ‘Someone he can’t buy.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Drum says. ‘But he knows the farmer doesn’t want to sell up to the developers. Not really. The farm’s been in the family for forever, so what he really wants is to sell to someone who’ll keep it on as a going concern. So Carter wants to buy the farm, but have someone else front the bid.’

  He looks at her, asking her to join the dots. She shakes her head. It sounds like a lie. Maybe the telling wrong, maybe details mangled by drunkenness and hangover, but a yarn this, a story.

  ‘You?’ she says.

  ‘Carter says if I can convince the farmer to sell, he’ll let us have the farm for as long as we like. The money we make will be ours.’

  She looks at his eager face, thinks of all the times she’s thought of moving home, moving away from Dagenham. It’s never seemed possible, plausible even. She’s never risked mentioning it for fear of the argument that would ensue. It does not make the whole thing any less insane.

  ‘What are we going to do with a farm, Drummond?’ she says. ‘What do you know about farming?’

  The right question, one for which he has clearly prepared. Tumbling out now, all the justifications. How it’s mainly a question of process, how there’s a farmhand to help, how he knows enough about machinery to master the milkers. The wide eyes. The excitement, the slight sweat of his clothes, the booze still working out from pores. He has decided. Already in his head, there he is, tending his cattle, pulling on boots, hauling oats and dung.

  ‘We’ll be closer to your family. The kids will grow up away from all of this filth and pollution. Fresh air and good food. A fresh start. A new beginning. A better life. A safer life.’

  And that the kicker, that what this all about. The bunker, the one Carter had at last installed.

  ‘Drum,’ she says. ‘If you think you want this you’re leathered.’

  ‘I’ve never been more certain of anything,’ he says. ‘You think I want to stay here? I don’t want to die in that factory and this is the only chance for me to get out. It’s all right for you in the library, but what about me?’

  She lights a cigarette, goes to the cupboard and takes out an ashtray. A choice once of Nuneaton or home. An easier conundrum that.

  ‘So I’m expected to be a farmer’s wife, am I?’ she says, laughing. ‘All apple cheeks and delivering foals?’

  ‘Daphne says she can get you a job at one of the local libraries. She knows all the right people.’

  Oh that face. Certain that he will prevail, confused at lack of enthusiasm. And what to stay for. Really what. A sight of Ray. The dour cold, the brown houses, the promise of the city they never now visit. What difference does it make? Here or there. Farm or council house. Near or far.

  ‘I’ll need to see it first,’ she says.

  Oh that face. Already organized. Already in train.

  ‘I said I’d go up on Saturday.’

  ‘Okay, so Saturday,’ she says. ‘We’ll all go up Saturday.’

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘All of us. All of us or not at all.’

  He looks down at the table. You never think your lies are as bad as others. They are explicable. She doesn’t know why she wants the children there with her. Just that she does.

  ‘I’ll have to check with Carter. He’s booked me a room at the Wolf, so—’

  ‘We can stay there. Annie and Nate can spend the night with the Carters. It’ll be fun for them.’

  ‘I’ll have to check with Carter.’

  ‘It’s that or nothing,’ she says. ‘Those are my terms.’

  He leans across the table and kisses her. She kisses him back.

  ‘I’m promising nothing,’ she says. ‘Remember that. Not a thing, you understand?’

  Another kiss, and then somehow then up to bed. Part of the plan this? Up to bed and him doing the thing she likes and her not caring she’s day dirty and hasn’t washed since breakfast. Don’t look for a connection. There is no connection. None at all.
r />   12

  Nate does not want to go to the Carters’ house without Mam and Daddy. He wants to stay with them at the inn, but Daddy tells him it’s a game and he has to hide out at the Carters’ house and pretend he doesn’t know Mam and Daddy if he sees them. A funny kind of game. Kind of game Tommy and Annie make up. The rules not always clear. The rules sometimes changing.

  The inn is nice. He likes the inn. He wants to stay with Mam and Daddy, but Annie says it will be fun. And don’t forget Tess the spaniel. She’ll be missing you, will Tess. And Annie and Tommy will play with Nate and Natasha the whole time. Nate knows this is a fib, but Annie is being kind, and she is happy and he wants her to be happy, so he dries his eyes and stands up as tall as he can and Mam gives him a big squeeze of a hug, and Daddy gives him a big squeeze of a hug.

  It is the first time he’s been in a car without Mam or Daddy and the car is a big car with seats that make a squeak when he sits. Annie says he needs a secret name, but Nate can’t think of another name except Tess, which is a girl’s name, and a dog’s name, so Annie says she’ll call him Norbert and in the back seat of the big car driving to the big house she finds this hilarious.

  When they arrive, Tommy and Natasha are at the front door, and Annie tells them to call Nate Norbert, and they all laugh and Tommy says, no, Nobby is better, call him Nobby, and they all laugh, and after a while it is funny and so Nate laughs too, laughs as they run up the stairs to the playroom and Tess is in the playroom, not that she is allowed to be there, and Nate fusses her, rubs her tummy the ways she likes and then gets out all the Meccano.

  Tommy and Annie are looking at him like he’s a baby, which is what they always call him, but it doesn’t matter; the house is warm, toasty warm, and there are dolls and teddies and a rocking horse and all the fun of the fair, and soon Auntie Daph is up with a jug of lemonade and a plate of biscuits.

  Tommy and Annie are plotting something, he can tell, but it doesn’t matter because Tess smells like hair and outside and is licking biscuit crumbs from Nate’s hands and trousers, and Natasha has opened the dressing-up box. The four of them laugh and drink the lemonade and later they will play out in the garden, hide and seek for real, play war, throw balls. When the rain stops. Yes. When the rain stops, they’ll all play outside, and they will all forget to call him Nobby.

  13

  It is the first car he’s driven that’s not a Ford, a Morris of all things, its steering column too high, the clutch heavy, the acceleration sluggish. Insisted on by Carter; just in case Garner recognizes Drum’s car, Garner more likely to remember a car than a person. Puffs and huffs as Drum drives the short distance from the Wolf, but he doesn’t say anything to Gwen; he is wary of negative mood, of creating an atmosphere before they even get to the farm.

  The rain has cleared, there are fretted clouds and the puddles dazzle. He has drunk too much tea, has driven for so long he feels he could sleep at the Morris’s wheel. Gwen is smoking a cigarette and he wants to tell her not to, to at least finish it before they arrive, which she does anyway. There are no mints in the driver-side door. He would like one himself.

  ‘You’re sure about this,’ she says, ‘aren’t you?’

  ‘Only if you are,’ he says. ‘Anyway, still got to convince him to sell. No guarantee there.’

  ‘I spoke to Daphne,’ she says. ‘She says we must be crazy.’

  ‘That’s what she said?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘Carter said she was excited about it. Looking forward to having you closer by.’

  ‘That man’ll tell you anything,’ she says.

  He taps the steering wheel, once, twice. A magpie on the road flies off as he approaches, both of them instinctively wave at it. A warding off of bad omens.

  ‘You know what to say?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But I’m not rehearsing this.’

  ‘We need to be believable.’

  ‘There is nothing believable about any of this, Drum.’

  He pulls up at the traffic lights, he grips the wheel, shuts off the tepid heater with a quick turn of the dial. She puts her hand on his knee.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ she says. ‘I love you. You have to remember that. If I hate it. If I don’t want to go. This is about this decision, not you.’

  He looks to her, she has her open face, the one that implores trust, same as on her wedding day, same as when they found out she was having Nate; but pulled slightly, as though an impersonation of something once glimpsed.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know it’s not been easy for, but . . .’

  The lights change and he drives the junction, unable now to finish what he was going to say. That he fears dying on the line, dying on a strike. More than the bomb, more than the Carter-predicted uprisings, just the common, everyday fear of death, an individual one, just his time coming up. He fears the lack he feels at the start of each day, either at the plant or protesting it. Fears slowly grinding into obsolescence, unable to provide properly, dependent on Gwen’s meagre wage.

  A plot of land. A place to call his own. To work at his own speed. The books on modern dairy farming, borrowed from Carter, pored over like pornography. A quick scholar, enough to muddle through an interview – enough, surely – and how it would feel to open the door on turf and mud, feel the warmth of cow hide, the softness of the udders, the teats. The agrarian life, the seasonal life. Safe and not minded by others. No longer told what to think, what ideology to follow, but just to follow the natural order, jobs cultivated over millennia, not created by Ford. No more line. No more shoulder ache. No more the fool.

  14

  They take the unfamiliar turn on the track, left not right, and Gwen looks to the big house, looks for her children, somewhere inside, somewhere in the gardens, down in the dell, out of sight. Rare this, for them to be so far away; only ever as far as Vi’s, close enough she could get them in seconds if needed. Daphne said it would be good for Tommy to have Annie around; he was a shy child, one who forms close kinships that easily burn out. Good for Annie too, Daphne said, though this said unsurely, as though testing whether it sounded right. Good for Annie, to move from all her friends, move from the school at which she’s doing well? Perhaps, yes, good, Gwen thinks. Better here, away from the smog and brick, the volume of the traffic and the volume of the people.

  ‘We’re here,’ he says.

  ‘So we are,’ she says.

  In front of her is the old stone cottage, one seen on so many occasions, but never minded. It is neither forbidding nor enticing, the most pragmatic of buildings: as strong as it needs to be, as big as is necessary. Not much bigger than where they live now, she guesses, a little bigger perhaps. Cold-looking though, no lights from inside. The cows are being herded back to the sheds in the late afternoon dusk, a man with a stick and a boy behind and she imagines Drum doing that one day, Nate doing that one day. The farmers she knew from the pub, the ones in fine cheer and those who drank as quick as they could, as long as they could. Always tell a farmer, her father said, the happiest or saddest in the bar.

  In the wellingtons she long ago borrowed from Daphne and never returned, she walks the mud track to the house. The door opens and there is Garner, a farmer if ever she saw one, instantly recognizable in dress and face: like a cragged bluff draped in waxed cotton. He holds up his hand in greeting, as though they might miss him, and Drum waves back. See his nerves in the wave, the deepness of the breaths. He is to be Carter, and presumably that makes her Drum. Gwen the convincer, Drum the roper. Read about that in a book about con artists; all the tricks of the trade.

  ‘Mr Moore,’ Garner says. ‘Mrs Moore.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Garner,’ says Drum. ‘But please call me Drummond. This is Gwen.’

  Garner sniffs, takes a handkerchief from his pocket, hands like lobster claws, blackly veined, fingers swollen. He wipes his red nose, puts the handkerchief away with some effort, then beckons them inside.

  They enter directly into t
he kitchen, one bigger than she expected, a huge table in its centre, a range cooker, a stained Belfast sink. It is the biggest kitchen she’s seen aside from Daphne’s, the warmest too. A working kitchen, she thinks: a kitchen at the heart of the home, a place for tea and for Sunday lunches, a touch of the Larkins to it; imagine a plump chicken in the oven, a ham ready to carve on the counter. A Christmas room, the slight scent of clove in the air, of orange peel.

  ‘Tea?’ Garner says, not waiting for an answer, with his claw hands filling the kettle, struggling with it to the stove, lighting the hob with an unsteady series of match strikes. Gwen wants to help him, but doesn’t, not appreciated, do not bring attention to the hands. Carter said that. Values his independence.

  ‘You’re from London, I hear,’ Garner says. ‘That’s a long way from home.’

  ‘I’m from Cumbria, actually,’ Gwen says.

  ‘A Lakes girl?’ he says. ‘Used to go there with Elsie when she were alive. Never stopped raining, but we loved it up there. You from the Lakes too?’ he says, pointing at Drum.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Essex.’

  ‘And you want to buy my farm?’

  ‘We’re certainly interested,’ Drum says.

  ‘You know I’ve had an offer?’

  ‘Yes, but I was led to believe that—’

  ‘Man came here the other week, saying he was led to believe something, turned out he was buying for someone else.’

  Garner turns to face them, smiling below a rosaria-pricked nose.

  ‘Buying for him, over the way. Carter. That skate. I could tell it straight off. All smelled wrong, it did. Came here from Oxford or some way. You’re not buying for him, are you? If you are, I’ll tell you the same as I told him. I’d rather sell the hole in my own arse than sell to that bastard. I ran that skate off the farm, you know, with me gun. You want me to get me gun?’

  ‘Mr Garner,’ Drum says, soothing, lowering his voice. ‘There’s no need for such language. We don’t know anyone called Carter, and this is very much for us. Gwen’s mother died, left us a little bit of money, not much but enough. And we’ve dreamed of this for years, haven’t we, Gwen? Our own farm, a place for us to raise a family, live a bit closer to nature. But if you’re not interested in selling—’