The Levels

by Peter Benson

  My mother asked me where I was playing with Dick. ‘Around the place,’ I said. I went to see my father, working on trugs for a gardening shop in Bristol. They were made on a spinner, fixed by a bolt to the centre of the plank, with raised ends, so the base of the basket was curved, like a boat.

  ‘You been to Drove House?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Seen the ghosts? Eh? They’ll get you,’ he said. I said Dick was bigger than any of them and was waiting for them anyway, so they couldn’t hurt us. My father laughed, heaved himself off his board and went to the tank.

  ‘You taking me down there?’

  ‘I don’t think we’re going,’ I said. We had been there for days on end, and were going again the next day.

  ‘You got something you’re trying to hide, something you don’t want me to know about?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wouldn’t care what you get up to, just not trouble.’

  ‘No.’

  A week later, we went down there, Dick, my father, and I. Summer was a week on but the weather windy. We walked into it, leaves, torn from the withies, blew at us, rain flew in our faces, though it was warm and the sun bright between the clouds.

  My father asked Dick if he liked school.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because we can’t be playing in our — Yoow!’ I stood on his foot. ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ I was looking straight in his face, trying to stop him saying anything about the tree house.

  My father said, ‘What’s the matter?’ But Dick got the idea.

  ‘Trod on a stone,’ he said.

  If I was so clever, why did I make sure we didn’t say a word when it was visible for miles? I watched it in the tree for ten minutes before my father saw it at all, swaying in the wind, the door banging against a branch.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Our house.’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And yours?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dick.

  ‘Thank you for inviting me,’ he said.

  Dick didn’t say a word. His father was rough, and would never have sat half way up an apple tree in a chicken house, but mine climbed up and enjoyed it. The wind blew in the front door of Drove House and up the stairs to the landing, where it blew and rustled the curtains a little.

  He cared for everything he did. He helped us down and said he’d bring a better ladder.

  He didn’t breathe a word about this secret to my mother; but she would never go to Drove because no one lived there. She didn’t go anywhere without a reason.

  When winter came, a gale blew the chicken house down, and it lay in pieces in the orchard. I went over to look, but night came so quick, half past four in the afternoon and with the dusk, the rain, you couldn’t see your feet, and I wasn’t staying round there with the ghosts, so came home again.

  ‌3

  The first thing I remember about Dick is the first thing I remember about the first time I went in a harvest field, stalks of cut grass scratching our legs. In those days, no one grew grass for hay like now, not since the EEC gave money to drain land and rip out old withy beds for clean ground for more cows. Since the EEC milk quotas they’ve had to sell their cows and are going back to withies, but it takes years to establish a new bed; they burnt their boats.

  Dick and I helped a bale of hay onto the old cart. I still have the picture in my mind. Before tractor loaders, they had everyone from South Moor to Drayton helping in the fields. We boys larked around some bales and disappeared into the hedge to look at our scabs, and we dropped lines into rhines and caught nothing.

  Dick’s clenched fists were the size of oranges when mine were the size of prunes, but I had the brains; something like the perfect combination for the life of crime that never was. He knew it, so grew thick dark hairs on his arms when he was twelve. ‘What are we doing today?’ I heard him ask a thousand times, over and over again.

  I went elvering with him before my mother let me near the river. I’d say I was going nesting but end up on the bank with his nets. It was day time and we would pretend to catch them in bucketfuls, when anyone who knew anything about it went after dark, when we were in bed. Now, big men from Gloucester vacuum them out of the river for the French and Japanese. Elvers always turned me over; I never knew why we were doing it, other than to see animals die.

  We went to school, and sat next to each other in Mrs Freeman’s class. We thought when we went we would be smart, but there were other, smarter boys, who knew how to make bombs from eggs and mustard. I liked school, but Dick hated going for the lessons, though in the playground he found boys to thump. He was the boy I knew who pinched girls and then they wanted him to do it again. He was the one who looked after the school tadpoles when they got too big, and kept them until their legs were long enough to pull off. He was the one who tied Mrs Freeman’s dog to the bus stop. He was the one who said Africa was in Wales.

  We didn’t only throw stones at Chedzoy’s cows but at Albert Sweet’s and even walked beyond Langport to Aller Moor and threw them at some cows we didn’t know. On the way home we waited for a train over the bridge, but none came. My father said he went to the pub at Aller with a bag of fish and someone asked how he got such a bag. He said he and a mate went to a bridge and he held his mate’s feet so he was hanging upside down waiting for fish to swim by. When one did, he picked it out of the water. So the person from Aller got a mate and they went fishing. The person from Aller’s mate was over the side of the bridge, the person asked ‘Caught anything yet?’ his mate said ‘No’. Ten minutes passed and still they hadn’t caught anything, until the mate shouted ‘Pull me up! Pull me up!’ The person from Aller asked ‘You caught something?’ and the mate said ‘No, but there’s a train coming’.

  Dick was big. From when he was small he led me into trouble I had planned. Our mothers were friends, and went shopping in Langport together. We went too. R. E. Frazer ran a newsagents on his own. We asked our mothers if we could go, and meet them later by the bus stop, and if we were there at half past we could. They gave us each a penny.

  I had a plan, Dick the fearless head. I could do anything so long as it was behind the scenes or in a phone box. There was one opposite R. E. Frazer’s. I said to Dick, ‘I’ll go in the phone box’, but there was a woman in it, with a dog, waving her arms around. People were coming and going out of the shop. The vicar walked by, carrying a basket. He looked as if he’d just heard something but didn’t quite catch what. His head was pushed forward and cocked to one side. He wore wire-framed glasses. His eyes squinted out from behind them at the shop. He had a big basket and was going to fill it. We didn’t need people in the shop as part of the plan, the woman carried on on the phone forever.

  We went down to the bridge and sat over the river watching for ducks and throwing stones. Suddenly, she came round the corner with her dog; I got up and ran, the sun went behind the clouds, I looked around for our mothers. I told Dick what to do. I spoke slowly — though he’s not stupid, I wanted to make him think he was — but he said, ‘Why you talking like that?’ I only wanted him to understand I was the one with the plan.

  I told him to go over to the shop and see if there was anyone in it. I stood by the phone box. He crossed the road and went into R. E. Frazer’s. I waited. I couldn’t see him through the shop window, and he was there longer than necessary. I was worried in case someone came for the phone and got in front of me. When Dick appeared, and crossed the road without looking, and said, ‘There’s someone in it’, I said, ‘You took ages. You only had to look.’ ‘It’s not my fault, Billy.’ I asked him who was in it. ‘R.E.,’ he said. We were going to miss our chance, the telephone box was empty, R. E. Frazer on his own in the empty shop, I said, ‘Quickly! Get back in the shop!’ ‘Why?’ ‘That’s the plan,’ I said, and was going to remind him when someone came along and went in the box. I looked at Dick. ‘You should have st
ayed there,’ but he said, ‘Then how could I tell you R.E. was on his own?’ I didn’t know and looked at my shoes. They were too clean. I looked at Dick’s. They were clean. We looked at each other and trod on each other’s feet for a while, listening to the man on the phone talk about his car. No one went into R. E. Frazer’s. I looked at the sky. The weather was right for crime. The man put the phone down and left the box; I said to Dick, ‘Go in R.E.’s and wait for the phone to ring. When he goes out the back to answer it, grab something.’

  It was a crime I learnt from listening at the bus stop. The boys said he fell for it. R. E. Frazer had come from Scotland to be in Langport. They said he was big but soft, and didn’t know when they’d done it. I knew it was easy.

  I could see the outline of his body in the shop, going to answer the phone. I heard it click and the pips; I put the phone down and left the box to wait for Dick. I waited an age, before he burst out of the shop, yelling, carrying a bottle of lemonade and some sweets. He was yelling — Frazer, red hair streaming behind him like the flames of hell was in hot pursuit, waving a club of seasoned oakwood. We ran down the street and up the hill. Dick slipped on the pavement and dropped the bottle. He stuffed a sweet in his mouth, with the paper, and handed some to me. I pulled him up and saw R.E. behind us, coming up the hill, shouting, ‘You come here! Thieves! Come here!’ waving the club over his head. Some people in front saw us, and heard him. They looked at us and then R. E. Frazer, but while they hesitated, we dodged past, up to the church.

  We were in the graveyard a long time, listening for him to come. I took a sweet, and began to unwrap it behind a tombstone. It said, ‘In beloved memory, far sweeter with Jesus.’ I pulled at the paper. The sun was still behind the clouds. I could feel the first drops of rain on my face. The wind picked up, bowling off the moor. I shivered, knowing we had to be, at that moment, at the bus stop, waiting for our mothers. The sky grew darker; it rained. I looked over the gravestone for R. E. Frazer. There was no one in sight. Dick stood up, and started to walk back to the churchyard gate. ‘Stay there,’ he said, when I got up to follow. ‘Just seeing if we lost him.’ I watched him disappear around the side of the church. I was on my own, my sweets wet with rain. I wondered whether it was worth the trouble, but Dick enjoyed the chase. I could see our mothers’ faces but not him. Maybe this is how it always was with him, going straight into things without thinking. He came back, loafing.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘You see him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Saw his back anyway, down the road, walking down the road, back to the shop.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Look!’ he shouted, his face against mine, ‘He’s the only bloke round here with red hair.’

  I got a sweet out of its wrapper and put it in my mouth.

  ‘We ought to eat this stuff before we get back,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We never had enough money to buy all of them.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And we’ve got to get back now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ll miss the bus.’ I had to explain everything.

  We stuffed ourselves with sweets behind the gravestones, in the rain, in Langport — our mothers at the bus stop.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In the shop.’

  ‘He went out the back, I grabbed some stuff, but the phone’s been moved. He was out like a shot, soon as he knew it was a box. He had that club on a hook.’ If the counter hadn’t been there, Dick said he wouldn’t be now. ‘I ran for it; he was slow getting round the shelves.’

  I was angry when Dick said R.E. had moved the phone; I’d heard he was easy to do, now I thought a life of crime wasn’t a good idea. We sat with our heads against the gravestones, eating the last of the sweets, trying to keep the rain off, letting the minutes pass. I pulled my shirt over the back of my neck; my body shivered, then two huge hands, their knuckles covered with tiny red hairs, appeared over the top of the stone, and grabbed us, smothering our faces, one over me, the other on Dick. They just lifted us off the ground, our backs, rubbing up the stone, were pressed so tight against it I couldn’t breathe. When we were almost standing up, I felt the whole of my body go light, and I wet myself. Steam rose from the ground, and the hands changed from being on our faces to being on our ears. R. E. Frazer was shouting.

  ‘That’ll be one and three.’ I couldn’t open my mouth with all the sweets in. He looked at Dick. ‘The ringleader?’ he said. Dick always got called the ringleader, said he wasn’t, and no one believed him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh, laddie. I’ve seen you. One and three!’

  ‘Haven’t got it.’ Dick looked at me. He stayed cool. I couldn’t say anything. The sweets in my mouth had made a mass of goo and I was beginning to choke. Creamy pineapple spit was pouring out of one side of my mouth.

  ‘Then your father will.’

  Dick wet himself. We stood in the graveyard in the rain, R. E. Frazer holding onto our ears, with columns of steam rising all around.

  ‘Then your father will?’ This was a question. Dick couldn’t piss anymore. I wiped the spit off my mouth. I couldn’t help it and started crying. Dick looked at me. My ear was ringing. If my whole body had been as hot as my ear I would have been comfortable.

  ‘Our mothers are…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Waiting for us. At the bus stop.’

  ‘Bully for them, laddie,’ R. E. Frazer said. He had an odd way of talking, marching us out of the graveyard and back down the road. He had one of our ears in each hand. Some people were going to say something about him hurting us, but he just said, ‘Thieves’, and the people didn’t try to save us. My trousers had gone cold. At the bus stop our mothers were walking up and down and looking around. Dick’s mother saw us first and called mine over.

  ‘You these thieves’ mothers?’ R.E. said.

  ‘Thieves?’

  ‘Aye. They stole from my shop.’ He pointed down the road.

  ‘They wouldn’t dream…’

  ‘Maybe not. But they’d do it in broad daylight.’

  Our mothers looked at us and asked if we’d been stealing. I nodded. Dick kept still. His mother gave him a slap on the side of the face. He sat down. She was blue in the face. I thought she was going to die.

  ‘Did you steal?’ she screamed, picking him up and shaking him. A few people turned around in the street and stared at us, Dick, his mother, my mother and R.E. and his bristly fist on my ear.

  ‘Did you steal from Mr Frazer?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, very quietly.

  ‘One and three,’ said R.E.

  ‘One and three!’ repeated his mother, ‘One and three! That’s the last penny you get for a year! One and three!’

  Dick looked at me. I thought he’d say it was my idea. He opened his mouth but just as something was coming out I got hit, from behind, by my mother. I was thrown to the ground six feet away from Dick and his mother, mine had turned red, like R.E. who was standing with his jaw slack, staring at her.

  ‘Your father will…’ she screamed at me, ‘I’m so ashamed…’ and then she shook her head to get herself back to where she was. She scrabbled for her handbag and found some cash. There was a long thing with Dick’s mother as they insisted on paying each son’s share of thievery. We stayed on the pavement, very still, watched the money change hands. R. E. Frazer nodded his head without speaking, and walked away.

  ‘Get up! And be home by tea!’ our mothers screamed, getting on the next bus, leaving us standing with three miles to get home.

  We planned escape, walking on the moor south of Langport, down towards The Isle. Dick did all the talking, saying this way and that was a good hiding place, we could live in a barn by the canal at Hambridge; but I knew we couldn’t — he knew it too, I said.

  I left him on South Moor, and turned east towards Blackwood. If I had wa
lked three more miles towards Kingsbury, and climbed Higher Burrow Hill, I could have looked back towards home, as the night gloomed down and owls cried over the moor, long high sounds between the withy beds and rhines. In the distance I could have watched the lights come on at Blackwood, my mother clearing the table for tea, my father washing, drying himself, going into the front room for the strop, draping it over the back of the chair and sitting down. In with the cries of the owls would come a different cry, though as loud and high, coming from Little Creech, Dick’s home. Sitting beneath the single tree that grows on Higher Burrow Hill, amongst the sheep’s droppings, I could have saved myself for an extra hour, but soon the breeze would pick up to a wind and I’d have to go home. Other lights blinked on, shivering in the dark. Below me, there would have been Kingsbury Episcopi and West Moor towards Hambridge, and the ridge of hills with Curry Rivel and Langport. Behind, to the south, the land rose away towards Haselbury Plucknett and Crewkerne. Closer to me, on the moor below, Drove House brooded in the dark. I could have thought about what faced me at Blackwood, the moon would have risen high in the sky. I could have imagined my mother beginning to regret leaving me to walk all that way home alone with night approaching, my father starting to chide her, she arguing it was only what I deserved, a nagging doubt worrying her, ‘Is he safe, safe?’ I could have gone to the pool at Thorney Mills and torn my clothes and jumped in the water, lain in the mud and cut my legs on barbed wire, staggered in through the back, mumbling about a man who’d caught me on the South Moor, and I’d only escaped by swimming The Isle. It would have got dark enough to lose coal, I’d be sat by the fire with a drink and everything about thieving forgotten. ‘What did he look like, son?’ ‘Have you seen him before?’ I could have lied, dreamt of violent hands. In the night, the owls would have stilled, the river stopped running to the sea.

  But I’d left Dick on South Moor, and turned east to Blackwood, the afternoon cooling, night falling. As I walked by the side of the house and round the back, the kitchen light came on, and I watched her for a moment, putting a pan on, leaving the door between the kitchen and the front door ajar, so I could see my father’s knees in the light. I opened the back door.