Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  The third dog of the trials was a Bearded Collie. It stood still at its master’s side until, at a muttered command, it took off across the field, running easily but fast towards the three sheep waiting at the far end.

  ‘Oh, doesn’t he run fast, Bill,’ Ruth Hoggin cried.

  Her husband grunted non-committally and then shouted, ‘I’ll lay two to one on this one! Quid!’

  ‘Done!’ a man a few paces away in the thin crowd called.

  The Beardie had reached the sheep and started them towards the first pair of hurdles, running silent wide on their outer flank. ‘That’s the secret,’ Bill Hoggin said. ‘He’s got the buggers running fast, see, but they’re not frightened.’

  ‘Don’t use that awful language, dear,’ Ruth muttered. She felt a flush rising in her neck. Bill was a darling – so strong and sure, but he hadn’t been brought up proper. His mother was a dreadful old woman, coarse as a pig, and pure cockney. It wasn’t Bill’s fault.

  The sheep trotted between the two hurdles and swung right, heading for the next gate, as the Beardie came far enough forward for them to see him out of their left eyes. Now, as they came close to the next gate, one of the three broke away and made to pass outside. Bill muttered an imprecation under his breath, and the shepherd, watching intently from the starting position, raised his crook and made as though to shout; but the sheepdog had already seen, and acted, and was on the straying sheep’s flank in a flash. With a short low bark he turned it back to join the others as they hurried through the gate.

  ‘Lost a point there,’ Bill said. ‘He could ‘a done it without barking. He’s young.’

  The Beardie took the sheep through the remaining two gates and into the final pen in fine style, the shepherd dropped the last hurdle into place, and the judges bent their heads together in confabulation.

  ‘That’s the best so far,’ the man who had taken the bet called across to Bill. ‘But wait till you see this ‘un.’

  The next dog stood waiting, its master a little behind it. Like all the other contestants except the third, it was a Border Collie, but taller than the rest. It stood, shivering a little, one forepaw raised. It dropped that paw and lifted the other.

  ‘This is the best dog in Kent,’ the other man said, ‘I seen him on the Downs.’

  ‘No good,’ Bill said, ‘too nervy.’

  ‘Garn!’ the other man said. ‘He just wants to get on with the job.’

  Bill felt in his pocket, found his pipe and tobacco and began to stuff the bowl of the pipe. Ruth watched the dog with the same breathless interest she had felt from the first time … not just the first time this year, the first time she had ever watched the sheepdog trials at the Sheep Fair. The Fair used to be centred on the buying and selling of the sheep – the sheep themselves, their lambs, their wool – that used to graze on the Downs. But since the industrial revolution reached the North Weald, much of the land had been enclosed for the parks of rich manufacturers, the sheep had been dwindling in numbers, and in her own lifetime of thirty-three years the sheep part of the Fair had much lessened in importance. Only last year her father, Bob Stratton, had said, ‘I don’t reckon we’ll see many more sheep markets or trials at the Fair …’

  She had protested, not wanting to believe him, for to her the trials were the best thing about the Fair. What wonderful dogs! But she knew he was right. The rest of the trappings of the Fair went on, increased even – the hurdy-gurdies, the coconut shies and side shows, the stalls loaded with cheap cotton goods and shoes; at night the garish ragtime music from the clanking steam engine, which also provided power for the merry-go-round, and the electric lighting … the young people dancing on the soiled grass under the lights strung on wires between tall poles, the smells of gin and beer and tobacco, and at the edge of light, the dark figures on the grass, the heaving and whispering …

  Three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was flaying down as it had all summer. She mopped her face every few minutes and wished there were some shade at the trials, but at the Fair there wasn’t much shade anywhere except inside the big tents where the peep shows were, and the food and tea marquee.

  The last dog ran its course. A few minutes later, Bill’s choice was declared the champion. ‘That’s it,’ he cried triumphantly. He walked over to the other man, through the dispersing spectators – “and over, mate.’

  The man pulled out a sovereign and slapped it into Bill’s hand. ‘There goes my month’s drinking money. I was bloody sure that other tyke, the tall one, would win.’ His eyes held a begging look that he did not have the courage to put into words: give me back the money, or half of it, anyway, the eyes said, let’s pretend there wasn’t no bet.

  Bill said, ‘If you can’t stand the cold, keep your hand in your pocket, mate.’

  He turned away, pulling Ruth’s arm through his. ‘Silly bugger,’ he said. ‘’Ow do you feel? No more puking?’

  ‘I’m over that,’ she said, blushing. ‘Why, Bill, I’m … nearly three months now.’

  He reached across with his other hand and laid it on her belly. She whispered, ‘Bill! Everyone’s looking!’

  He growled, ‘Wot the ’ell’s that to me?’

  He stood, looking at her, a fat strong man in his mid-thirties, straight black hair brushed carelessly across a big bald spot, black hair dense at the wrists of his shirt, the eyes blue, a little bulged. He stabbed a thick forefinger at her, ‘We’re going down to Lovers’ Bank, and if anyone sees us they’ll think I’m going to poke you, and they’ll be right, see?’

  ‘Oh, Bill!’ she cried, in fearful expectation.

  He said, ‘An’ if it’s your mother she’ll yell “Stop that!“’ He broke into a falsetto, ‘“What are you doing to my darling daughter?” And I’ll say, “Up yours, Mrs Stratton!”’ He raised one middle finger in a short strong gesture, ‘“Up your ’igh and mighty Stratton arse ’ole!” They look down their noses at me ’cos I’m a barrow boy, an’ my mother doesn’t know ’oo the ’ell my dad was, but what are the Strattons, eh? Mechanics! Mechanics what ’ave made a bit of money by being ’ere when Rowland started ’is fucking factory. Come along now.’

  She said softly, ‘Wait a minute, Bill. Are you sure that … doing that, won’t harm the baby now?’

  He tossed back his head and laughed. ‘At three months? Why, the little bugger’s about this size – ’ he held his fingers an inch or two apart. ‘When he’s seven months, perhaps his daddy’ll give him a punch in the eye now and then … Don’t you worry about it.’

  ‘Anne’s going to have hers in October. Do you think that Frank … you know … still does it?’

  ‘More fool he if he doesn’t. Some other sod will … Come on.’

  Jane Stratton shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and fanned herself restlessly with her big flowered hat. When Bob got the Sheep Fair committee to agree to his running a motor car gymkhana, as Mr Harry called it, four years ago she’d been pleased for his sake. But she had not realized how many hours a gymkhana went on for. There were never enough places to sit down at the Fair, but before the gymkhana came she didn’t have to stay and watch anything – she could sit under a tree by the river, or in a tent, and rest for half an hour before going to look at something else. After all, she was not as young as she used to be – sixty-four now … Bob ought to get some benches put out, he really ought. She’d speak to him about it, and …

  ‘It’s too hot,’ her daughter-in-law muttered beside her. Anne was looking every day of her six and a half months, which was natural as this would be her third; but she was looking well, too, considering the heat. It was the woman on Jane’s other side, her own youngest daughter, who was not looking well – and she was not pregnant, as far as Jane knew. She tapped her on the arm. ‘You’re looking peaked, Ethel. I thought so this morning when we met you at the station, but now you’re worse. Is anything the matter?’

  ‘Nothing, Mother,’ Ethel said in a low voice, ‘I’m just … not feeling very well today. I�
��m all right,’ she added hastily, as though she expected her mother to press some unwelcome remedy on her.

  Jane turned her attention back to the motor cars. They growled and banged through the intricate little course that Bob had set up, backed between coloured flags, stopped on an artificial ramp, started again, raced down the short straight towards her. Goodness, they went fast … they must be going thirty, forty miles an hour near the end. What would happen if they couldn’t stop? Well, many of them were Rowlands, and that would never happen to a Rowland.

  With an effort of will she closed her mind to the cars, and thought of her daughter … Something was the matter with Ethel. It was that Italian husband probably. No use beating about the bush, especially with Ethel.

  She poked her daughter suddenly in the ribs. ‘What’s Niccolo doing to you? Eh? Come on, Ethel. I’m your mother.’

  Ethel burst into tears. The men and women huddled near them by the gymkhana course looked curiously at the weeping woman for a moment, then away again. Jane said, ‘Come, let’s go for a little walk. We need to stretch our legs. You come too, Anne, walking’s good for the baby.’ They moved together away from the gymkhana crowd, and across the fairground thronged with people, dogs, children, each following her own personal trajectory, heedless of others.

  ‘He gambles,’ Ethel sobbed, half leaning on her mother’s shoulder, ‘and he doesn’t make enough money as it is.’

  ‘Or doesn’t bring it home,’ Jane said grimly. ‘Them waiters make plenty in tips, but how’s the wife to know? Gamblers – pah! I hate them worse than anyone.’

  Ethel muttered, ‘An’ he beats me when he’s had too much wine … because I don’t have a baby.’

  ‘Lots of people don’t have babies in the first two years, however hard they try,’ Jane said firmly, ‘and who says it’s your fault?’

  ‘It can’t be his,’ Ethel whispered, ‘he … does it all the time, till it hurts.’

  ‘Filthy dago!’ Anne said angrily.

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything, how often he does it,’ Jane said, ‘but it only goes to prove that you shouldn’t have married him. None of us could see what you saw in him. Well, what can’t be cured must be endured, but Dad will have a word with Mister Niccolo and then I don’t think he’ll beat you any more. I wish he was here now. I’d give him a piece of my mind … Calls himself an Englishman just because he got naturalized! He’s no more an Englishman than the Pope of Rome!’

  ‘He says he’ll divorce me if I don’t have a baby soon. A boy, it’s got to be, he says.’

  Her mother stopped, hands on hips, staring at her. They all three stopped. Ethel mopped at her eyes. She was a mousey woman with a small sharp face but big breasts and hips.

  Jane Stratton said, ‘Who does he think he is? Where does he think he is? He thinks he’s in Timbuktu, not England, that’s what! He can’t divorce you for not having a baby! He can only divorce you if you have a fancy man.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Ethel sobbed. ‘Never! I love him, but he says he can get the marriage washed out, made like it never happened.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ Jane said. ‘Now, wipe your eyes and let’s find Mary Gorse and the children, and have a nice cup of tea.’

  The brothers Frank and Fred Stratton stood at the edge of the crowd watching the gymkhana. Frank, the elder by five years, was two inches the shorter of the two, and had much the bigger ears; but otherwise there was a strong family resemblance – both men in their thirties, stockily built, hair sandy to ginger, eyes wide set, big work-hardened hands. Frank’s expression was open and pleasant, Fred’s rather hard.

  Their father, in charge of the proceedings, was wearing a blue suit and a bowler hat, clip board and pencil in hand, his steel-rimmed glasses glinting in the sun, sweat trickling down the side of his face into his short, square-cut pepper and salt beard. Frank had seen his mother nearby a few minutes ago, with Anne and Ethel, but they seemed to have gone. Bored, probably. Dad certainly wouldn’t have spent any time with them. Nothing and no one else existed when he was dealing with motor cars, except Victoria, the motorcycle he was building at home to break the world’s speed record.

  Fred said, ‘How are they doing? I haven’t been paying attention.’

  ‘All right. It looks as though the Works Ruby’s going to win. Smithie from the paint shop’s driving it.’

  ‘Dad’s not judging, is he?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t be fair for him to judge Rowlands … Hey, you know what I saw, just before I came over here?’ He dug his elbow into his brother’s ribs, and his voice dropped, ‘In the bushes, on Lovers’ Bank … Hoggin banging our Ruthie!’

  Fred laughed shortly, ‘And she with a bun in the oven!’

  ‘Couldn’t wait till bedtime,’ Frank said.

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Fred said, ‘even though I’m not married. But I don’t think that’s why Hoggin did it here. He does things like that to show us what he thinks of us.’ He raised a middle finger, the back of his hand towards his brother. ‘He’s a rude bastard.’

  ‘That he is. But he loves our Ruthie, I think, in his way. And she worships the ground he treads on.’

  ‘Fat sod! Ruthie’s much too good for him. Same as Ethel for that wop.’

  Frank began to say something, then cried, ‘Hey, look at that!’

  A car, its driver hauling ineffectively at the steering wheel, had failed to take a curve, and was mowing down the marker flagpoles. ‘Brake, brake!’ Bob Stratton bellowed. The driver reached for the handbrake and tugged mightily. The blue-and-yellow-painted car slowed sharply, but not before it had struck and knocked sideways a big man in workman’s clothes, standing close by one of the flags, who had been looking the other way.

  The man stood up groggily, patting himself in a cloud of dust. The driver jumped down from the stopped car, dustcoat flying, and ran towards him, tearing off his goggles.

  ‘Hey, that’s Willum,’ Frank said.

  He made a move forward, but Fred said, ‘He’s all right. And Dad’s there.’

  They saw their father take the big man’s arm and speak to him; and the man shake his head, feel himself all over, grin, their father clap him on the back, and point. The driver returned to his car, and the big man set to replacing the flags that had been knocked down.

  Fred said, ‘Dad might ’a got someone else to do that, after he’s just been knocked down.’

  ‘Willum Gorse likes being ordered about, that’s the truth of it. He likes to do things for people, too – then he knows they need him. If Dad or Mary didn’t tell him what to do, he’d just stand about, like a horse, for ever. He’s simple, that’s all. That’s why we can’t use him except to sweep out the shop floor, though he’s a good enough workman, and he’d work twenty-four hours a day if we’d let him.’

  ‘Well, I won’t,’ Fred said in a hard voice. ‘And that’s why I’ll likely not be staying much longer at High Staining.’

  ‘Mr John work you too hard? I thought you liked the farming life.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right, and so’s John Rowland, I suppose – though Mrs is always looking down her bloody nose at me. I thought I was going to like farming, but it was really anything to escape from Rowland’s, and making motor cars, and that’s a fact. Farming’s not so pretty as it looks. It’s hard, boring, same things again and again … lonely … not enough money … tied down … the cows have to be milked at five o’clock in the morning and half-past three in the afternoon every bloody day. They don’t stop giving milk just because you need a holiday.’

  ‘Fred, you ought to get married,’ his brother said firmly. ‘Then you won’t find yourself one day paying some fast girl seven and six a week … or having her dad stick a twelve-bore in your ribs. Seriously, Fred, there’s nothing like it … if you’re lucky. I don’t know how I’d live without Anne … nor she without me. It’s not only what we do in bed, though that’s great. It’s being together, having her to go back to every night, and her knowing I’m coming back. She
needs me, I need her, we have each other, and we’re both better for it. I like my work, but there are times when I couldn’t stand it, without her.’

  ‘I don’t want to get married,’ Fred said shortly. ‘I want … something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know, man! Lord, if I knew, I’d be going out and getting it. You know what you want – to be Works foreman of Rowland’s. And as soon as Mr Harry and Dad retire, you’re going to get it. But I don’t know what I want. I’m looking … Here, let’s go and have some tea.’

  ‘Sit down, Dad,’ Fred said, moving up a place on the bench. ‘Have a cup of tea. You look hot.’

  ‘Thanks, Fred. I’ll bring another pot.’

  Fred looked round. The whole family was here, in two long rows at a table in the big marquee, except for Ethel’s husband, Fagioletti. Ethel didn’t look well; but Ruthie did … perhaps because of what Frank had seen on Lovers’ Bank. His two sisters were very alike to look at, except that Ruthie had small tits and Ethel big ones; and Ruthie wore glasses and Ethel didn’t. And there was Mary Gorse earning a shilling by looking after Agnes and Lily, Frank and Anne’s little girls; and that meant that Mary had brought her own four younger ones. And, as Mary was here, so was Willum, sweating, beaming on the world, rushing to do everyone’s bidding, bringing tea, buns, milk, mugs. Being knocked down hadn’t hurt him a bit. More likely, he’d bent the car’s mudguard.

  Fred said, ‘I’m going to have a pint. Shall I be getting you one, Anne?’

  She shook her head. ‘You know I don’t touch liquor.’ Her voice and expression were virtuous, and Fred hid a smile. His sister-in-law was careful not to take any alcohol when Dad would know about it, because their church didn’t approve of drinking: but in fact both Frank and Anne took a drop now and then, at home. Time was when Frank, too, pretended never to touch the Demon: but this last year he seemed to be paying less attention to what Dad thought … getting more independent at last.