The Levels

by Peter Benson

  ‘There’s other places.’

  ‘So there are,’ I said. He got up, let out a long, high whistle, and walked up the hill, kicking at the ground. He was almost out of sight when he called back.

  ‘Hey, Billy! Come here!’ I was thinking about getting up, following him. ‘What?’ I said. He pointed the way we’d come, and when I reached him, looked and saw someone, walking our way.

  ‘Want another?’ he said, passed a fag, and sat down.

  ‘Thought you were going.’

  ‘I’m watching.’ He was bored. The person came nearer, a girl, brown hair, shirt, trousers. ‘Who’s that?’ ‘I don’t know.’ She walked with a straight back, her head up and a deliberate step. She didn’t see us, reached the orchard, wound through the trees, stopped at one and put her hand on its trunk. She rubbed the bark and put her head against it.

  ‘Nutter,’ he said.

  She went over to the woman organizing the removal men and said something; we were too far away to hear what.

  The men finished. They stood with the woman and the girl.

  ‘We should have stayed down there,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  I didn’t reply.

  The boss shook hands with the woman while the other two loaded some sheets onto the lorry. They closed the ramp, climbed into the cab, and after reversing by the foot in the yard, missing the orchard wall, the lean-to twice, and the front porch, drove off, down the road to Curry Rivel.

  It was quiet a moment, as we sat on the hill, and I watched Drove House and beyond; Dick, bored.

  ‘Now what?’ he said.

  I was very angry, ‘How should I know?’ I shouted. ‘Why’d you want me to tell you what we should do! It’s all the time!’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘It is. You know it is. Ever since, I don’t know ...’

  He got up. ‘I’m going to Kingsbury.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘I will.’

  He set off up the hill, I walked down and when I looked back he was gone. When I reached the hedge, I walked through the trees myself, until I found one with a long, low branch, screened from the house by a pile of stones, where I could sit, lean back and not be seen. Nothing happened until the woman and the girl came from the house with a tray of tea, to sit in chairs in the garden. The girl put the tray on the lawn and sat down, let out a sigh I could hear, a sigh high and breathy, like a bird. Neither said anything, they looked straight ahead, the air was filled with the sounds of singing insects, cockerels crowing, back and forth, far away, the gentle hum of bees, the noise of tractors in the lanes, and passing cars.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ the girl said, suddenly.

  ‘Yes. Strange, at first,’ the woman said, ‘shall I be mother?’

  They drank their tea, it was getting late. They hadn’t said much, just tat about the removal men and the damaged cupboard, the woman really didn’t mind. I got up to leave, but my legs had gone to sleep and I stumbled; but they weren’t talking, I made a noise, and when I glanced up from my hiding place, they were looking at me. As my head appeared, I saw the girl stand up and say, ‘There’s someone there.’

  It was getting late, spring evenings were deceptive, suddenly the light gone, and the warmth. I looked up, and saw clouds blown in, the sky darkened.

  I ran up Burrow Hill, and down the other side to the Kingsbury road. It had cooled, I was there in short sleeves, but felt safer on the road with its high hedges, bluebells in the orchards. When I reached the village, I was passing an old garage when I heard a voice call, ‘Billy!’ I turned to look but there was no one there, just two old ladies by the shop and some kids I didn’t know, throwing a ball. ‘Billy!’ again, ‘Over here!’ I looked and saw Dick, framed in a door on the other side of the road.

  ‘What’s on?’ I said.

  He laughed. I crossed over, he let me in, pushing me in the back as I went by, and closed the door. It was gloomy, the only light came from a dirty window in the roof, but as my eyes became accustomed, I could see a workbench, old barrels, engines, lumps of broken machinery.

  ‘Who’s this?’ said another voice, but I was not afraid.

  The garage stank of cider. The owner of that voice leant out of the shadows — Mr Jackson who’d worked at Chedzoy’s years ago, still went up there, but spent more time in his well-known drink shop.

  ‘It’s Billy. My mate,’ said Dick.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I told you, Billy! From Blackwood!’

  ‘Billy from Blackwood,’ Jackson said, ‘Well! Sit down whoever you are, Billy from Blackwood. Have a drink!’ He was drunk and passed me a mug of green cider, strands of undissolvable clear jelly floating in it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Drink up!’

  ‘You ought to open that door,’ I said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Let some light in.’

  ‘And everybody in the street?’

  ‘Two old ladies and a couple of kids?’

  ‘Appearances aren’t everything.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said ...’ he tried to say the words but gave up. ‘Never mind.’

  Dick didn’t look very well, held his head between his legs, moaning.

  ‘They saw me,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They saw me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That woman, and the girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Where?’ He jumped off the bench, spilt his drink and fell over.

  ‘Come on, Dick.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Home? I’m staying.’

  ‘You’re coming.’

  ‘Make me.’

  ‘You know I couldn’t.’

  He pulled himself up. ‘Okay,’ he said.

  Jackson didn’t care and mumbled about kids. Dick said he’d see him later, or at the farm, but I led the way, and the fresh air made him sick.

  ‘Better?’ I asked as I led him back to his direction. He nodded, but wasn’t; he would need to be by the time he got home. Dick’s father was not particular.

  I left him on the road and walked to Blackwood as the moon rose over a new summer night; when I reached the house I watched my father through the window walking into the front room with a basket of logs. He put them by the fireplace, straightened, and put a hand to his back. I heard my mother in the chicken run. ‘You girls,’ she shouted, ‘you girls will be the death of me.’

  ‌‌7

  We drove to Bob Wright’s for some willow. The van had never sounded so bad. My father sat on his hands to keep the springs out, pressed his feet against the bulkhead and gave me directions along lanes I’d known since I could walk. When we got behind another, dawdling ahead, he leant over, pressed the horn, jumped up and down, shouted, but they didn’t let us pass, even by Muchelney pull-in, they just swerved into the middle of the road without looking.

  ‘Peasants!’ he screamed, waving a fist at them. ‘Move over!’

  ‘We weren’t going any faster before we met them,’ I said. ‘They’re probably doing us a favour.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  I told him what I thought of the van.

  ‘Heap!’ he cried. ‘It’s older than you.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You want me to buy something flash that’ll be a pile of rust in a couple of years?’ I took my hand off the steering wheel, and peeled a flake of metal from the dashboard.

  ‘Like this?’ I said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That not rust?’

  ‘Paint bubbling, happens on old cars,’ and he tossed it out of the window.

  I drove to Langport, then along the main road through Oath Lock, where the lane runs beside the river on one side and the railway line on the other, to Stan Moor. Wright lived in a riverside house with sixteen acres of his own withy beds and ten more rented. He grew Black Maul on all his own land, and five
of the rented, but was ripping out five acres of Black Spaniard to replace with New Kind, the best working withy of all time.

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Slocombe.’

  ‘Ha!’

  He was in the stripping shed, whitening.

  ‘That,’ he said, pointing at the van, ‘deserves a medal.’ He took me to one side and said, ‘I’ll have a word.’

  ‘What about?’ said owl ears, springing up and rubbing his hands where the springs had impressed red circles into the skin.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You will be.’

  Wright looked cow eyes at my father.

  ‘What you going to have a word with me about? My van?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Think I’ll be needing a new one?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Take that look off your face. Find us our stuff.’

  ‘You whitening?’ I asked. We always ask people if they’re doing something we know they’re doing.

  A pair of swans flew as far north as Burrowbridge Mump before losing height and landing on a spit of land beneath the walls of a water board house. Bob Wright, a bachelor, led us to his store shed.

  ‘Tea for anyone?’ called his mother.

  ‘Tea?’ Bob asked.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Wright. You’d like some, wouldn’t you, Billy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She disappeared and the door flapped shut on the shed, my father looked over the willow with an expert eye and congratulated Wright on sheen, straightness, etc, etc.

  We carried the bundles and stacked them in the van, before walking up the bank and staring down; the river was low and grey, the shelving mud thick and shiny. The swans took off, three hundred yards up-stream, Mrs Wright came out and called us in for tea.

  The front room, where my father sat down and counted bank notes, was dominated by a long, brightly-lit aquarium. Tiny fish darted behind plastic castles and rubber weed, and Mrs Wright, when she’d poured tea, stood beside me and said how much each one cost. They were tropicals and required the water at an exact temperature.

  We sat round the table with small cups of tea but huge buns and pastries. My father’s hand hesitated over a cherry cake.

  ‘Just tuck in,’ said Mrs Wright. ‘You boys have been working hard.’

  We were full and leaving by the front door when Bob said for us to come out the back door so we could go down through the yard to the pound house.

  ‘I’ve got some stuff burn holes in your boots.’ In one corner of the house stood two barrels of cider, laid in cradles with tiny china cups hanging beneath the taps. He lifted one of them off, tossed its contents on the ground, and poured three mugs.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ my old man said, and it was good, deep amber.

  ‘Sure,’ said Bob. ‘Mind, it’ll kick you on the way back.’

  ‘Change from Jackson’s,’ I said.

  ‘Jackson?’ said Bob.

  ‘What you know about him?’ my father turned round on me.

  ‘I see him around,’ I said, ‘met Dick at the garage, the other day, drunk.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Both of them.’

  ‘I’m having a word with the boy’s father.’

  When we drove home, back towards Langport, I turned back on the main road, just another way home. You drop down into Drayton, and past the church. There’s an ancient house with leaded windows, you take a sharp corner, the road straightens to the north of South Moor, and runs towards the old railway, the river and Muchelney. It seemed suddenly very hot in the cab, as the sun streamed in at us. I looked at my father, he had turned off-colour, like the bloom on an unripe sloe. I took one hand off the wheel, I felt unwell myself, and shook him. He went, ‘Grrr.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Mmm… grr.’

  I had to stop the van anyway, I was feeling strange, pulled in by the railway embankment, came over hot and cold; I needed fresh air, the hot cab, the smell of chickens and freshly boiled willow. I opened the door and flopped out onto the verge. I lay in the grass for a moment, before pulling myself up and staggering round to the passenger door. I tapped on the window.

  ‘Wake up, hey!’

  He looked very ill, more like someone else than a person. I opened the door, and he dropped out of his seat like a sack of potatoes, until he hit his head on the ground and jumped up, shouting, ‘Where am I? What’s going on?’

  ‘We’ve stopped for a minute.’

  ‘Stopped? Why? What for? We’re not home yet…’ but then he grabbed his head, wheeled around and was sick. He looked up from this, wiping his mouth, sheet white, mumbled about Wright’s cider being a boot of a brew, before staggering off towards the embankment where he slumped down, on the slope, amongst the primroses. I joined him for a minute, until we looked at each other, got back up and walked towards the road. Holding onto the van, we were both sick, I first, he again, while the girl from Drove House cycled by, her hair streaming out in the breeze she made, humming a tune, breaking from the melody only to wish us good afternoon. I couldn’t say anything, as a stream of illness was occupying my mouth, but my father was polite enough to say, ‘And to you’, before spraying the windscreen.

  I managed a sideways look, distorted by the angle of my head to her, as she disappeared in the direction we’d come. I saw her two brown legs glistening with sweat beneath a pair of white shorts, and the arch of her back humping at the bike as she pedalled, but felt ill again, and saw no more.

  My old man worried, ‘Mind this doesn’t get any further,’ he said. I pumped the windscreen washers.

  ‘You kidding?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what about her?’

  ‘Who’s her?’

  ‘The girl on the bike.’

  ‘Foreigner, student. Right here, take the fork, careful on the bend.’

  ‘She’s not.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘She’s living at Drove House.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dick and I saw them move in.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Dick and I.’

  He told me when to take the left to Blackwood, and before we turned into the yard, I slowed down to look in the mirror, smoothed my collar, straightened my hair, but when we pulled up my mother appeared, shouting,

  ‘You took your bloody time.’

  I didn’t feel too bad.

  Tea was a quiet affair, the old man and I picked at our food, while she stared at us shouting ‘What’s the matter with you?’ and other things too obvious to answer. She flustered with her apron at the plates. Then she shouted, ‘The chickens’ll be grateful’, and swept them away. ‘Don’t suppose your lordships will want the suet pudding?’ We shook our heads. She ate enough for three, so none was wasted.

  ‘Get out of my sight. Do something useful,’ she screamed. My old man went to the kitchen garden and sat in the tool shed with a geographical magazine. I went to Drove House.

  I didn’t phone Dick, just set off, not wanting him bored on me, as the sun went down. When I reached Burrow, I walked round the hill and into Drove orchard, and in dimming light sat beneath an apple tree. A downstairs light came on, and I watched the older woman walk into the front room with a box, put it on the table, and leave. I could see half-unpacked tea chests and piles of books, while I shivered at a cold gust of wind that blew through the apples.

  A sound rose above the noise of the gathering storm and distant hum of traffic, rhythmic clanking from the lane to the house, before it reached a pitch and the girl came cycling round the corner, to stop at the front door. She swung her leg over the saddle, propped the bike by the porch, and disappeared. I got up, watched her swallowed by the house and crept closer in the dark, so close I could read the spines of some of the books stacked in the lit, but empty front room:

  There.

  Fortunate to be around: Ruth Baxter’s life in pictures.

  The pond.

  Zen explains baking!

 
Correct your faults? Don’t. Expand on them.

  These were some of the titles. I saw a glass-fronted cabinet of dark wood, and a collection of shapes, mainly pieces of stone cleaned and polished, on a chest of drawers. Some pictures stacked against the wall, the top one of the pile, a grey scene of a lake, with rows of breaking waves stretching as far as the eye could see. I had pressed my nose against the window pane, trying to read the words Collins etymological and reference dictionary, when the woman came through the door to the room, followed by the girl, carrying cups. They threw some boxes and blankets off a sofa, sat down, and I heard them moan.

  I turned away from the window and stood in the yard, watching for a few minutes, as the night drew in. Did they know about the ghosts? They didn’t look nervous. I couldn’t stand and peep. I decided to leave, went through the orchard and up Burrow Hill. When I reached the tree, I looked back at the house, the single light twinkling in the dark, and stood there until it blinked out, and another light came on upstairs.

  The lane to Kingston was a long dark tunnel in the night, the branches of overgrown willow and hazel thrashed in strengthening wind as I walked past the turning to East Lambrook, and rain began to fall. She didn’t look like any girl round here. Had she read those books? Should I feel threatened? Should I have studied harder? Was there any point in going near Drove House again?

  A line of light streamed from Jackson’s garage, and above the sound of wind and rain came the noise of people drinking green cider. Someone had a radio turned up, an argument was brewing. I didn’t join them.

  ‌‌8

  The wind and rain of the night turned to storm, the sky became a scream of hard, grey clouds; rain lashed against my window as I got out of bed, walked across the landing, and found someone in the bathroom.

  ‘Busy!’ shouted my mother. ‘Go and let the hens out.’ To think it was May; I crossed the yard in boots, the dust of a day before turned to mud, and when I opened them, the chickens just stood in the door of their house, staring out at the rain, like they knew they weren’t fish.

  By the time I got back to the bathroom, my old man had taken up residence, I wasn’t going to wait half an hour, so went down again, and washed in the kitchen sink, before mother appeared with colanders of eggs.