The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

by William Nicholson

  ‘It’s my turn! It is!’

  His mother weaves the Volvo past the other cars, exchanging friendly waves with fellow parents, looping round the school porch and out towards the main road again.

  ‘Carrie’s upset, Jack. Be more sympathetic.’

  ‘No she isn’t. What’s she got to be upset about?’

  ‘She’s been having problems with Naomi. You know that.’

  ‘No she hasn’t. I saw them playing together in break. They were just fine.’

  He had, too. That is, he had seen them talking together, heads bent and close, and no one walking away.

  ‘Well, I think that’s Carrie’s business, don’t you?’

  ‘But she’s lying!’

  ‘I am not!’ Carrie bursts into tears.

  ‘All right, darling. Jack, please leave her alone.’

  Jack feels helpless in the face of his sister’s outrageous manipulation. How can his mother not see it?

  ‘It’s still my turn,’ he says, clinging fiercely to the one undeniable truth.

  ‘Jack. I don’t want to hear another word. Now tell me how your day has been.’

  He says nothing. She doesn’t want to hear another word. She just said so. He was going to tell her about the Dogman, but not now.

  ‘Did Mr Strachan hand you back your composition?’

  Silence.

  ‘So did he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jack hasn’t given one single thought to his composition since getting it back. Life has been too full.

  ‘Did he like it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jack catches a small note of dismay in his mother’s voice. All at once it strikes him there is ammunition here. There is the opportunity for a counterstroke. He makes his voice small.

  ‘He wrote on it, You can do better than this.’

  ‘Oh, darling. I was so sure he’d like it.’

  ‘Me too.’

  His voice is so small now his mother can hardly hear him. The strategy is working.

  ‘Sweetheart! What a beast that man is. He’s wrong. It was a wonderful composition. Daddy was terribly impressed.’

  ‘Was he?’

  Now his sad little voice is breaking her heart. She pulls the car into the side of the road. She turns round, reaches out a hand.

  ‘Were you terribly disappointed?’

  ‘Sort of.’ He feels his eyes fill with tears. His mother’s sympathy is so delicious that the required emotions rise up in him without effort on his part. He finds he has been hurt by Mr Strachan’s dismissal of his dream. He had hoped for praise. Instead he has been rejected. A tear rolls down his cheek.

  ‘Oh, darling.’ His mother dabs his cheek. ‘Carrie, why don’t you climb in the back and let Jack come by me?’

  ‘But Mummy—’

  ‘We’re halfway home already, darling.’

  So Carrie goes in the back and Jack goes in the front and for the next ten minutes his victory is doubly sweet, because it has been won after an initial reversal. He knows Carrie’s submission is only temporary, but it is his turn in the front, not hers, she deliberately set out to violate the treaty, and now order is restored.

  ‘I’m going to tell Daddy about this,’ says his mother. ‘It’s just not good enough. It makes me angry. It really does.’

  She turns the car off the road and down the short drive to home.

  16

  Martin Linton manoeuvres the ancient mud-encrusted Landrover down the farm road, weaving round the deeper pot-holes, banging into the shallower ones, his dogs yipping softly in the back as they smell home. The road has not been resurfaced by the Edenfield Estate for twenty years now. He receives the repeated hammer-blows to the suspension with a bitter satisfaction. His life has been so punishing for so long that he has come to source his pride in his ability to endure hardship. The jolting ride sings a song to which he has words: ‘Do your worst you’ll never—, do your worst you’ll never—, do your worst you’ll never—, knock me down.’ He recalls the sight of the Underhill boys pelting away across the field in terror.

  Should have shot the little shits.

  To the end of the track and into the yard. Nettles grow in the cracks where the concrete paving has buckled. The old flint walls of the great barn are beginning to crumble. Wind and rain have scratched at the lime mortar and etched it away so that now the flints stand out like teeth. Here and there the roof tiles have slipped, letting in the weather to rust the farm machinery stored within. Only the barn’s timber frame is sound. Posts, beams, rafters, purlins all oak, the original timbers cut and slotted over three hundred years ago, and still too hard to knock a nail into without bending it. From a practical point of view the steel and aluminium Atcost barns in the storage yard do a better job, being virtually maintenance-free and entirely weather-proof. However those modern structures draw no envious glances from passing walkers; whereas the handsome old barn beside Home Farm causes them to stand and stare, consumed with covetousness.

  The dogs jump out as soon as the Landrover stops, and bound up to the back door of the house. Martin always comes and goes by the back door. The front door looks onto the village street, and has an eighteenth-century portico, and a brick path leading to a pretty iron gate. It’s so little used that the hinges have rusted, and ground elder covers the front step.

  ‘Down Bess! Down Sal!’

  The dogs stand back to let him through. The door opens into a dark back kitchen, where he eases off his boots and his damp coat and washes his hands in water from the cold tap, the only tap above the big chipped white sink. A trug of new potatoes stands on the table, the black earth still fresh on the egg-white skin. He relishes the chill of the cold water on his hands. From the kitchen next door come familiar sounds: the shrill squeal of his daughters’ voices, the racket of the dogs running round and round the table as they always do on arrival, the soft admonitory tones of his wife.

  Jenny is sitting at the table, a newspaper spread open before her. The girls see their father in the doorway and come running. He picks them both up, one in each arm, and they rub their noses against his stubble, and wriggle and squeal at the delicious prickliness. Jenny looks up and manages a smile for him.

  ‘You shouldn’t be digging potatoes,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, well.’ She’s over nine months gone now, and permanently exhausted.

  ‘Daddy Daddy Daddy,’ sing the girls.

  He lowers them carefully to the ground. They’re both in nightdresses, barefoot, ready for bed. He opens his hands and receives one small hand in each big hand. This is the ritual.

  ‘Kiss Mummy.’

  Poppy goes first, three years old, round face and blue eyes. People exclaim when they see her, ‘A cherub! An angel!’ She has a fierce and stubborn will, which her father traces back to himself, but her beauty, her sweet manipulative charm, is all Jenny’s.

  ‘There, darling. Don’t squash Bobby.’

  The baby is to be a boy called Bobby.

  Lily follows her sister in her mother’s arms: Lily the silent, Lily the grave. At five years old she has a reading age of eight. She reads My Naughty Little Sister stories over and over. Her father knows she is unusual, and will grow up to be a remarkable person, and will do great things.

  Then up the stairs they go, hand in hand, step by step, all silently counting the steps as they go. Fifteen to the half landing, fourteen more to the top. Pad-pad-pad go the bare feet along the carpetless boards of the landing to the girls’ bedroom, the pink-walled heart of the house.

  ‘Into bed, now. Cuddle up.’

  He sits in the rocking chair between their two beds and reads them their story. He dearly wants his cup of tea, and then his bath, but this nightly self-denial is one of the ways he is able to feel, as a bodily sensation, his intense love for his daughters. The book must be held on his lap just so, so that each of them, squirming under bedclothes, can hang out of the beds’ sides and follow the pictures. The stories are ba
by stories, for the benefit of Poppy, but Lily doesn’t mind. They remind her of when she was young.

  He reads Goodnight Moon. Their lips move as they follow the familiar words with him.

  ‘Goodnight comb. And goodnight brush. Goodnight nobody. Goodnight mush. And goodnight to the old lady whispering hush.’

  Poppy’s finger touches each item as it’s named. Martin reads slowly, because this is bedtime, and soon they’ll be asleep.

  ‘Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.’

  He kisses them, kneeling on the floor so that he can rest his head beside theirs on the pillow. Out goes the reading lamp, to leave only the soft pink glow of the night light.

  ‘Sleep tight, my darling ones.’

  ‘Daddy Daddy, what shall I dream about?’

  ‘Dream about—’

  He scours unvisited corners of his mind, all the more available notions long ago exhausted. His eyes fall on a rarely-worn pair of fluffy slippers.

  ‘Dream about slippers. A family of slippers. And they have a birthday party.’

  There’s usually a birthday party, or a wedding.

  So he leaves, pausing for a moment in the doorway to look back on the two heads, already snuffling into sleep. This is his treasure.

  Downstairs, Jenny has made his cup of tea, aware to the second how long it will take him to tuck up the girls. She is back studying the newspaper, the property pages of last Friday’s Sussex County Chronicle.

  ‘Listed historic farmhouse,’ she reads out to him, letting the emphasis fall gently but devastatingly on the last word. ‘Five bedrooms, outbuildings, mature garden, tennis court, swimming pool, nine acres. One million three hundred thousand.’

  He drinks his tea and savours her soft-spoken contempt in silence.

  ‘Rare opportunity to buy a substantial family home in sought-after Downland village. Period farmhouse modernized to a high standard. Nine hundred and fifty thousand.’

  She closes the newspaper. Again, she looks up and smiles for him, because she’s almost too weary to smile.

  ‘How’s it been today?’ he says.

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Can’t be much longer.’

  ‘Lily was two weeks late. If I have another week of this I’ll, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m peeing every five minutes.’

  Martin feeds on the sight of his pretty wife, so pink-cheeked and bonny, the very picture of a wholesome country lass.

  ‘I saw lordy about the rent today,’ he says, using the name by which Billy Holland is known across the Edenfield Estate. ‘He said there’s nothing he can do. I’m to talk to Shit and Fucker.’

  ‘What a surprise! Why didn’t we think of that? He’s as helpless as we are. He can only sit there with his mouth open while his agents stuff him with cash.’

  Martin listens, his good temper restored by his wife’s soft stream of venom. Theirs is a good marriage, cemented, as so many good marriages are, by a shared hatred of their enemies. Over the years of their union, which has coincided with a decline in farm revenues, they have armed themselves for what has become a state of siege in an unending war. The enemies are the townies who have relocated to the country, and now form the majority. The townies are frightened of cows, and object to the mud left by tractors in country lanes, and think rabbits are cuddly pets, and seek to preserve the habitat of wild flowers. They have children who are shocked by the sight of animal carcasses and call themselves vegetarians but eat burgers and sausages. They have a townie religion according to which nature is holy, and man, the perverter of nature, is the source of evil. They think of the English countryside as an unspoiled natural environment now under threat, unaware that it is the most intensely farmed landscape in the world, and that everything they see and love has been fashioned by the hard labour of men. Born and bred in regions of tarmac and paving stones, they have no inkling of the raw power of the land, with which civilized man has been doing battle since the dawn of time. Let the despised farmers withdraw from their ceaseless vigilance and within a few short years the wilderness would return, in all its monstrous abundance. Not stately groves of beech trees, not waist-high meadows of flowering grasses, but bramble and nettle and thorn, thistle and ragwort and bindweed. In this desolate wasteland toxic chemicals will be dumped, drug addicts will ply their needles, and rapists will lie in wait for children playing truant from school.

  ‘Put on some water for the potatoes, will you?’

  Martin does as he is asked, and more. He will gladly wash and scrub the potatoes, halve the bigger ones, nick out the eyes, put them in a pan, and check them as they cook. New potatoes spoil if over-cooked, they go soft and disintegrate. Fifteen minutes in boiling water, and they should come out sweet as nuts.

  ‘Caught those bloody boys chasing the cows again.’

  ‘Shoot them,’ says Jenny.

  ‘God knows I’d like to.’

  ‘Really they should all be culled when young. The population of bankers is out of control.’

  Martin bends down and kisses her, lingering to feel her swollen belly.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s a damn wriggler.’

  Martin can feel the baby moving. The sensation of touching his wife and his unknown child all in the same moment overwhelms him. The water in the potato pan starts to bubble, rattling the lid.

  The front door bell rings.

  Nobody uses the front door. Frowning, Martin goes out by the back door, to the side of the house, and calls, ‘Who is it?’

  Shortly two middle-aged ladies appear, making their way with uncertain steps into the farmyard. They both wear cord britches, thick socks, serious boots. They both clutch extendable ski-poles. They both have very small rucksacks on their backs. They are ramblers. This is bad enough in itself; but they are in his yard, and that is unforgivable.

  ‘I do hope we’re not disturbing you.’ The one who speaks is tall and has grey hair. ‘We’ve been following the South Downs way. We’re putting up in the village pub for the night. Such a pretty village! We were wondering if we could take a peep inside your lovely barn. It is eighteenth century, isn’t it?’

  Martin stares unblinkingly back at her. He speaks with no inflection of any kind.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like a guided tour.’

  ‘Oh, well! If you could spare the time.’

  They give each other quick excited looks that say, Aren’t we lucky! Martin contemplates their rainproof jackets, the straps on their ski-poles, the maps in clear plastic pockets dangling on strings round their necks.

  ‘Follow me.’ He crosses the yard towards the barn doors. ‘This entire complex of historic buildings is what used to be called a farm. Using entirely traditional methods, the farm workers used to manage the land in order to produce food. Of course, today the raw material for food is shipped in from cheaper countries, processed in factories, flavour-enhanced and packaged for the convenience of the modern consumer.’

  They have reached the barn doors. The ramblers are exchanging nervous glances.

  ‘Why! Here’s a surprise! The barn is still being used to store animal feeds! Can this farm be caught in a time warp? Are we seeing ghosts of the past?’

  ‘I do hope we’re not a nuisance—’

  ‘As I expect you’ve already guessed, what we have here is a working model, staffed by trained historians who take on the roles of farm workers in order to bring the past to life.’

  ‘I think we should be going, Louise.’

  Puzzled by Martin’s absence, Jenny appears at the open back door.

  ‘There! The farmer’s wife, looking out into the authentically-recreated farmyard. If we’re lucky, we’ll see her feed the happy hens who peck and scratch the organic soil, ranging freely where they will—’

  ‘You’ve been most kind. Come on, Louise.’

  Martin’s voice rises, becomes a little more shrill.

  ‘You will note that the farmer’s wife is in calf. Traditionally all farm
animals are mated in the early autumn and calve in the spring, in time for the new grass.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear.’

  He pursues the now thoroughly alarmed lady ramblers up the track towards the lane, his voice rising once more, to a helpful shout.

  ‘And here we have another traditional figure, going about the Lord’s affairs. Yes, it’s the village parson, the friend of the poor.’

  The rector is passing, on his way to the church. He is accompanied by Mrs Huxtable, another impossibly tall older woman, who leans sideways and wags over the little rector as they go, no doubt telling him his business, as is her habit. Martin is now in full flood.

  ‘I can only apologize that the authentic game of cricket on the village green has been cancelled, following accusations of match-fixing, and pending the results of the drug tests.’

  The grey-haired lady rambler throws a frightened glance back at Martin.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.

  Martin too now stops. Those timid eyes chasten him. He draws a long breath.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ he says. ‘We’re all sorry. We live in a sorry world.’

  He bows his head, and turns back down the rutted lane to his farmhouse. The potatoes will be ready, and must be taken off the stove and drained. He must run his bath. He must update his accounts. He must feed his dogs. He must stand in the bedroom doorway and look on his girls, asleep in the rosy light.

  17

  The Reverend Miles Salmon agrees with Mrs Huxtable on the matter of Trick or Treat. Although this seems to be what she wants, which is his assent, his endorsement of her views, his actual answer does not satisfy her.

  ‘That’s all very well, Miles. But for evil to triumph, it’s only necessary for the good to remain silent.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘I know it’s all supposed to be fun for the little ones. But what lesson is it teaching them? That witches, and devils, and bad spirits of all kinds, are a joke. Are they a joke, Miles?’

  ‘Yes. Quite.’

  ‘No, I’m asking you as a minister of the Christian church. Are the powers of evil a suitable subject for children’s games?’