“Where’d you get them all?”
“Whenever a Fenman wants to get rid of a guilty secret, he do throw it in the Ninety-foot Drain. Specially deserters. I got more Lee Enfields from 1917 than… you can have one if you’re interested. Fenmen were never ones for war—got too much sense and more things to do. I mend tackle for fishermen and eel-trappers, and I don’t overcharge. So when they dredge something up, they bring it to me.”
“Marvellous.”
“So the gennelmen from Cambridge and London do keep on telling me. Sold a few things to the Imperial War Museum—whole Vickers machine gun, once. God knows how that got in the Drain. That’s another reason I do have to go up to London.” He shuddered at the memory.
“This one’s in good nick,” I said, taking down a revolver.
“Aye, that’s one that’s never been in the water. Smith an’ Wesson. My grandfather brought it back from D-Day. The poor American who was a-carrying it had no more use for it, an’ Fenmen can’t abide waste. There’s a pouch of ammo goes with it. …”
“Tried firing it?”
“No. An’ you’re not a-going to, either. Here, we mend things, we don’t kill things.” He looked at me very sharp, for quite a long time. I could almost have sworn he guessed about old Vic Huggett, and the two Paramils. I tried to return his stare innocently, and I couldn’t. So instead I said, “What’s that?” pointing to a grey cylinder that hung next to the Smith and Wesson.
“Incendiary bomb—Second World War. Jerry Heinkel got jumped by a night fighter an’ dumped his load into the Forty-foot. Didn’t do him no good, though—he crashed at Welney. Got hundreds of them things, can’t find no use for ‘em. Ugly little beasts—neither use nor ornament.”
Joan came bustling in. “Peter, it’s time you be out to Marsden’s. Once old Marsden be getting on they phone, I can’t get him off. An’ I’ve got washin’ to do.” She saw us holding the guns, turned to Keri.
“Men!”
But there was no spite in her voice; she made me feel like a child that needed cosseting. Keri was all pink and beaming, too; she was going to help Joan bake bread.
“If your wife can’t cook,” said Joan, “you’ll waste away to nothing.”
“I’m not his wife,” said Keri, ominously.
“You don’t a-want to bother about a bit o’ paper from the vicar, dear,” said Joan, motherly. “You can be a wife without a bit o’ paper. Can’t you, Peter Yaxley?”
I don’t know who blushed most, Pete or Keri.
“From now on,” said Pete, starkly, “this gennelman is
my second cousin from Ely, come to help me with the business. An’ you’re his wife an’ you better not forget it, if you want to steer clear o’ the inspectors.”
“Yes,” said Joan. “There do be enough odd folk in Ely for you to get lost among.”
Chapter 19
“It’s about time you’m got yoursen to work, Kit Kitson. You can’t sit there drinking tea all morning. You’re worse’n my Peter. They’ll be awaitin’ to have that old notice mended, up at they Bird Reserve. …”
I groaned luxuriously, took another swig out of one of her bottomless pint pots. Sitting in her kitchen had become a habit. Sniffing at the drying herbs round her fireplace, tracing every whorl and scar of her well-scrubbed tabletop, watching her peel potatoes. Even her nagging was part of the pleasure. It was never spiteful, a soft worrying at the secure boundaries of her world. The garden fence collapsing, and Peter mending every fence in the district except his own. A baby born premature, and how would it fare in this wicked world, poor mite? She lived in the middle of a web of mothers and sisters, cousins and odd-habited neighbours. Gave out more news to the hour than any telly.
“Go on, Kit. Look at your Keri—she been up since six—don’t know how I ever managed without her. …”
I looked out of the open window, which was letting in fat bees and the rich smells of roses and manure. Keri, in an old washed-out skirt of Joan’s, was organising the hens into eating their breakfast. Any more bullying and they’d probably stop laying in protest. Her rabbit, Crankshaft, followed her everywhere, like a dog. She said he was as intelligent as a dog, only nobody expected rabbits to be intelligent. He had certainly learned to climb fences in pursuit of her.
“She’s not my Keri!”
“Be patient, Kit. She’m changing. …”
I was changing, too. I’d let my hair grow, lank and greasy, Fenman-style: only slicked it back when I went to the pub at night. My arm muscles, laid comfortably on the table, were getting Fenman-massive. I’d had them tattooed; a satisfyingly hideous design of a dragon riding a motorbike; a heart with H.K. and K.R., much good it did me!
All protective camouflage against the Est birdwatchers who thronged the district…
I was changing inside, too. Sleeping deeper, eating more. I had an incipient Fenman paunch. I pulled at it with my finger and thumb, under my dirty T-shirt, half in sorrow and half in pride. Another Fenman habit, like lifting your voice at the end of every sentence.
“Kit, if ee don’t get to work this instant, I’ll take a broom to ee!”
With another enjoyable groan, I went; piling my tools onto Pete’s old Velocette. We never used Mitzi now. Kept her hidden in a shed, fully charged, against emergencies.
When I reached the Reserve, Grannie Gotobed waved from her bedroom window. She kept the Reserve keys. “Will thee see to letting them in today, Kit? Me back’s bad again.” Lazy old thing; her back seemed to get bad every time I came to mend something. She was spry enough, shopping around the village…
I unlocked the great birdwatching towers of the Reserve that looked over some rather skimpy wader pools to distant Manea. When I’d first come, the towers had oppressed me, reminding me of estates and Wires. Now they were only empty wooden huts on stilts, where swallows flew in and out to build their little hanging mud-pie nests. Full of sunlight, fresh breezes, and the cluck of duck.
Then I began to mend the entrance notice which, planted in swampy soil in the full face of the northeast gales, blew down with monotonous regularity, whatever I did to it. I’d complained to Pete.
“Stop thinking like a Tech,” he said. “That notice board’s your living, lad. They’re paying. …”
I worked, stripped to the waist, the sun strong on my back. The Est families came and went, clad in the correct green anoraks, carrying hampers and bottles of wine and huge binoculars round their necks—even the smallest children. The fathers carried cameras with huge telephoto lenses, called me “old chap,” and grandly tipped me a credit. I said, “Thankee, sir,” and touched my forelock. I’d spent weeks building up a clownish Fenman act, which the other Fenmen found riotously funny, as I acted out the Est parts as well. But the Ests took me deadly seriously, walked away saying I was typical Fenman. “Centuries of fornicating in the mud, my dear, and it shows!”
It was a good day, full of wind hissing through the reeds and the piping of waders. By teatime, I’d repaired the notice as well as was humanly possible. I went to lock up the birdwatching towers. There was often something worth having among the abandoned litter; a copy of The Times or a Bradenham ham sandwich. But this time I found something different: a radio with telescopic aerial and numbered buttons. A child’s toy in blue and yellow plastic. Called a Fenlistener Mark 3. I tapped experimentally on the numbered buttons; no Tech can ever resist buttons…
The first radio station I got only gave the sound of a canary singing. On and on. I tried again. Sounds of running water, somebody washing up and whistling. Again, on and on. The next one gave only silence. And the next, the sound of a distant tractor… What extraordinarily boring programs, each obtained by tapping out a four-digit number…
Then a voice came through, so startlingly loud and clear it might have been in the sunlit, windswept hut with me.
“Get off they table, Tigger! Ee shan’t have my supper. Get off this moment, I say, or I’ll cut your tail off!”
Granny Gotobed, ta
lking to her cat on 7683. I tapped out more numbers, all starting with 7. I tapped a long, long time. Got Razzer’s mum, telling him to stop mucking about with they filthy great bike and come and have his tea. Got Joan, telling Peter not to muck about with her while she was cooking… The whole village of Manea, settling down for the evening, clear as crystal. All on a child’s plastic toy, bought for a few credits; a minor Christmas present for an eight-year-old.
The Ests didn’t come to the Fens birdwatching: they came people watching. With binoculars and Fenlisteners, the whole life of the village was open to them. The Fens weren’t just a market garden, they were a zoo.
It had nothing to do with the Paramils. The Fenmen weren’t regarded as any kind of security risk. The Ests were keeping them as pet animals, for fun. … It was Ests using the flypaper microphones, not Paramils.
At first, I felt relieved—about the Paramils. Then I felt sick. I remembered, when I was small, my father making a remark about people who Fen-listened; a disparaging remark, putting them on a par with people who drank gin before lunch, or shot birds for a hobby. He’d disapproved; but he hadn’t tried to stop it. And I’d not listened properly, and forgotten about it. I didn’t know about Fen-listening, like I didn’t know about polo or horse breeding, or archaeology. How much more was there that I didn’t know? I felt sick with the Ests for being Peeping Toms, and I felt sick with the Techs for making it possible.
There was a tape-recording facility; I taped a bit of Joan and Pete, to take home. Pete had an old tape recorder…
Then I wrapped the Fenlistener in sandwich papers and a plastic bag and gave it to Granny Gotobed, in case the family came back for it. If they didn’t, I added, perhaps old Peter Yaxley could find some use for it.
“Oh, yes,” said Granny. “Peter Yaxley do like they sort of thing.”
“What do be souring thy milk, Kit Kitson?” asked Pete as I walked in. “Sunstroke? Ee’ll be all right for the play rehearsal tonight?” he added, anxiously.
I groaned. Peter’s flaming play, this evening, was really a bit much. I glanced hatingly at the flypaper. “You’ve not dipped your new one in treacle, have you?”
“Been busy. What do it matter, anyway? Ee sound more Fenfolk than we do now.”
But Keri’s eyes, suddenly fearful, returned to the flypaper.
“I’ll show you why it matters.” I put the tape in his old recorder, pushed the buttons viciously. I played them their own voices; told them where they came from. Keri looked relieved. But Joan went upstairs and brought down her bedroom flypaper and smashed it to smithereens in the cold hearth with the poker. “Eight-year-olds,” she said. “Any eight-year-old.” She was white and shaking.
“What do it matter, love? We don’t know they …”
“Thee’ll find out why it matters, when thee gets to bed tonight. …”
“I’ll go and pick some salad for tea,” said Keri, tactfully. “C’mon, Kit.”
After a silent meal, an even more silent washing-up, I walked down to the rehearsal with Pete. We rehearsed at the pub, which helped the flow and ensured a good attendance. The play wasn’t much: a Fenland version of the old hero-combat play performed in every village before the First World War. In which King George, in his scarlet soldier’s coat, fought and killed the Black Prince of Paradise. Who was miraculously restored to life by the Quack Doctor. Who was played by me, complete with Victorian morning suit, beard, stethoscope, alarm clock, hammer, and knife.
Pete was playing the Black Prince this year. I’d been given the part of the Doctor because of my Fenman clowning, and because it wasn’t a popular part. The Doctor had more beer thrown over him at rehearsals than anybody else, even the Horse. It wasn’t a long part; it wasn’t a long play.
“In comes I, who never cometh yet, the best Quack Doctor you can get!”
“How earnest thou to be a doctor?” “By my travels!”
“Where hast thou travelled?”
“Icaly, Picaly, France, and Spain and back to England to cure disease again.”
“What disease canst thou cure?”
“The Hump, the Grump, the Ger, the Gout, the pain within and the pain without. In my black bag I’ve got spectacles for blind bumblebees, crutches for lame mice, plasters for broken-backed earwigs. I’ve lotions and motions, also fine notions, that have carried my fame o’er five oceans.”
“Cut,” said Pete wearily. He turned his back on the assembled company and drank heavily from his ale. His thin back, under a bright yellow T-shirt, heaved with the gulping.
I didn’t blame him. The play, which had begun to take off at the last rehearsal, had thumped back into the mud like a shot quail. Joan was playing the Black Prince’s mother like a blue-robed zombie, and glaring in between at the rest of us like we’d been personally responsible for inventing the Fenlistener Mark 3. Even Razzer, fearsome in King George’s red coat, was wilting. Tommo, as the Horse, half-blinded by his costume, had fallen over bar stools three times…
“Let’s pack it up for the night,” said Pete, with a narky look at Joan. “Maybe we’ll all be a-feeling better tomorrow night.” He spat in the sawdust of the floor, slung his coat over his shoulder, and stalked out. Expressing solidarity against all bloody-minded females, I grabbed my own leather and followed him.
“I really thought we had a chance this year,” he said, after we’d walked half the length of the meandering village street. “You’re the best Doctor we’ve ever had.”
“A chance of what?”
“A-going to Cambridge?”
“Cambridge?”
“The fair. …”
“What fair?”
“The medieval fair in October. The best playactors always get asked to the fair—from all over the Fens— fire-eaters and sword-swallowers, jugglers, fiddlers—the inspectors ask all the best ones. We came second last year, but second’s nowhere. This year I was sure we’d make it, but now …”
“Oh, that fair!” I’d gone to it the year before, wasting three hours that would’ve been better spent on spectography. Most Techs went to laugh. Not at the Fenmen, but at the Cambridge Ests, tarted up in medieval costume, fawning on the Fenmen, slapping them on the shoulders, patronising them. Like the pseuds they were. The Cambridge Ests needed the Fenmen, like a hated man needs his dog. Techs needed nobody’s love.
“Oh, well,” said Pete. “No harm in dreaming… Mebbe next year. …”
I put my hand on his thin shoulder. “Pete, old mate, we’ll do it this year. I know what Ests like—a little touch of bawdy—they’ll fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. Joan’ll come round. …”
Pete stopped and looked at me, his face intense under the streetlamp.
“Get me to Cambridge, and I’m yours for life.”
I always remembered him saying that, afterward.
Five nights later, the night before the Harvest Supper and our play, a wind, a real black Fenland special, blew down the Reserve notice board again. Pete sent me up, told me to be quick about it. The wind had knocked slates off half the houses in Manea and blown over our little outdoor stage, and he was rushed off his feet. Joan had recovered her good temper (Fen people have short memories—they’re too happy to bear long grudges). She and Keri, pink-faced, were baking for the Harvest Supper, flogging themselves to death and singing as they worked. There was a harmless, sexy mischief in Joan that morning, in all the women, young and old. It made me bubble a bit inside. So as I went up to the Reserve, I shoved six spare flypapers in my pocket. I’d play the Ests at their own game…
Granny Gotobed waved from her window, keys in hand, dead on cue.
“Did those people come back for their Fenlistener, Gran?”
“Not they. They do have more money than sense.”
“I’ll take it for Peter Yaxley now, then, eh?” The family wouldn’t miss it till they came Fen-listening again. By then, they’d have forgotten what Reserve they left it at.
I unlocked the tower hides. Opened up a few old swallow’s nes
ts gently, slid a blue plastic cylinder into each. Then plastered up the entrances again with a bit of spit. They looked quite innocent by the time I’d finished. I kept the Fenlistener in a haversack hung on a fence post, got on with mending the notice board and touching my forelock. Enjoyed listening in to silly Est chatter all the morning. I mean, who but a female Est would describe a small, spotty, brown duck as “ravishing”?
But there were two guys after lunch who interested me a lot more. Inspectors. Not your humble, Tech-type inspectors, in their cloth caps, white coats, and green wellies, posing as men from the Milk or Egg or Carrot Marketing Boards. No, these were Ests, from the Fen-land Culture Survey, doubtless come to inspect our play tonight, and whiling away the time. Bulky men in white riding macs, with well-brushed silver hair and blue eyes that relegated me to the rank of inanimate object, an ill-painted inanimate object at that. I christened them Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Tapped my buttons, and caught them in the West Hide.
“Look at that fat beggar in the vest, under the big chestnut tree, left of the church. Scratching his arse. Looks so natural.”
“Considering all the bother we’ve gone to, to keep them natural, that’s just as well. How’s the Fenland birthrate?”
“Still rising. Fifty per thousand, last year. That last drug has doubled the number of twins. Some triplets, too.
“Amazing. Who’d have thought, thirty years ago, it’d have gone so well? We’ve got a lot to thank Scott-Astbury for. In fifty years’ time Fenmen will have re-populated England.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d got it wrong again. The Fenmen weren’t just pampered pets: they were being bred like cattle.
“Pity about Scotland. I go up fishing there a lot. I could use a willing ghillie, who knew his place.”
“I’m afraid I can’t agree.” The second voice had gone cold. “As you know, I worked very hard in committee, to get Scott-Astbury’s Scottish scheme… scotched. You can’t export these people. They’d start putting two and two together straight away. We’d get troublemakers—the mistakes of the twentieth century all over again. The way we’re doing it—by natural emigration— does them no harm at all. Expand the Fenland Wire by a few miles a year, leave the land derelict and the farmhouses not too knocked about, and these Fenmen just naturally move in and squat on the new land. They actually think they’re pulling a fast one on us. Oh, we’ve no problems here. The point is, can your people clear out the Unnems in time?”
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