The Levels

by Peter Benson

  ‘Get your face out of my sink! Eggs to wash!’ I went outside, and watched as a distant stand of poplar bent in the storm, and young leaves, ripped off before their time, flew in the wind.

  ‘Stormy day,’ I said, sitting at the table, breakfast cooking.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re doing. It isn’t ready yet. Your father’s not down …’ The scarf she wore, to keep her hair out of the chickens, was at its best first thing. Neatly tucked in, little rolls of material, a V at the back, pushed underneath a huge bun of hair, she fingered it with a free hand and shouted, ‘Make yourself useful. Wash some eggs.’

  The postman saved me, as I heard his weary tread, the click of the letter box, and the gentle pufftt as two letters dropped onto the mat.

  ‘I’ll get them!’ I said.

  ‘You’ll not get out of it,’ she screamed, but by the time I was back in the kitchen, my father was at his place, eating.

  One letter was a postcard from Uncle Ray, my mother’s younger brother, the only person who knew how to get her to talk quiet; but he was in Scotland, so of little help.

  ‘It’s from Uncle Ray!’ she yelled, ‘A picture of Scotland!’ ‘A Brave Piper of The Glens’ stood beneath a lake-bound castle, a banner reading ‘Greetings from Bonnie Scotland!’ printed across the bottom of the picture. She read the card, and said, ‘Listen to what he says. “I am staying at Mrs Robert’s again, food good as usual though so far four days rain. Went to the castle yesterday but didn’t see this chap! Love from Uncle Ray.” Isn’t that interesting?’ she shouted. ‘What Uncle Ray says!’

  The other letter was a bill from Stan Raymond for the car, when the exhaust fell off. My father stuffed it in his sock.

  ‘Anything?’ she screamed.

  ‘No.’

  I went to load up for a trip to Exeter, twenty-five log baskets, a dozen trugs and fourteen oblong shoppers, all a week late for Sanderson, Wrigley and Butt, Ironmongers of Force Street. My mother came out to the yard with a saucepan of peeling and crusts, steaming in the rain, for the chickens.

  ‘Is he ready?’ I sat in the van, staring at the weather. He came out of the house ten minutes later, slumped in the passenger seat and said, ‘I’ll drive.’

  ‘You won’t,’ I said, and before he had a chance to try anything, had it running, and was out of the yard, waving at the old girl stooping over her chickens, as we turned left and into the road.

  ‘Whooo! All right,’ he said,

  As I drove, towards Ilminster, I was thinking about the old man’s ways, learnt from his apprentice years, and how they irritated me. They went round and round in my head, arguments with no end. I always had to leave the inside ends for him to trim, even now, while he’d make that an excuse to go round the basket with a ruler. He sat in the van, sucking his gums. He removed his top plate and began to pick pieces of bacon from between the teeth.

  Out of Ilminster, travelling west, the land rises so you can see as far as the eye can see, but not today, nothing but cloud and rain, and as the old man didn’t want to talk but just stare out of the window, I was thinking about Dick, and how he was the type to end up picking meat out of his false teeth. Something about his way of walking, down the road to Chedzoy’s.

  ‘Want one?’ he offered me a cigarette.

  ‘No thanks.’

  The wipers couldn’t cope; they barely got across the windscreen. I drove with my chin resting on the steering wheel, as rain dripped in through the roof. A lorry overtook us on the stretch outside Honiton, threw up gallons of mud and water, while a car tried to overtake it, and we were pushed towards the verge.

  ‘Bloody maniacs.’

  He stared at the wet scenery with a gloomy face, our breath steaming the glass, doodled in the condensation with a finger, smoked another cigarette, and again said ‘maniacs’. He’d always thought he’d make something of himself, more than a basketmaker, cut ice, but it was something he’d never had any choice in. He was a boy when the school children in Somerset were given time off to hand-strip willow, he was a baby in the withy beds, sat by a cradle of cider and bread, no choice. He had visions, he claimed, where he saw things and was able to see that same thing somewhere else later, like at the pictures, on the television, or on a walk; he said he wished he could paint. The only picture in the workshop is called ‘In the basketmaker’s shop Widow Garson found Sammy, with her arms around little Sue’s neck, trying to comfort her’. A whitehaired man with a beard, sat on a chair, with a basket between his legs, his eyes closed, worked a border, while a dog watched, two small children and the widow in the doorway watched; a crude watercolour, but my father would have painted it cruder. He was never out of the starting blocks, he was never even given a pair of running shoes, in the free country of his youth, he would never do anything but what was coming. I have had better chances but chose this, but only these days, because there is nothing else to do. I was wondering what the girl from Drove House had done to deserve her blessings when there was a crack from the engine, the van jolted, and I was forced to steer into the verge to avoid a coach.

  ‘What happened!’ the old man jumped in his seat. ‘Why we stopped?’ He’d been asleep.

  ‘Something went. I thought you had it fixed.’

  ‘The exhaust …’

  ‘It was in the engine.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Fan belt?’

  ‘No.’

  He didn’t know the first thing. We watched the rain fall, the traffic thundered past.

  ‘I suppose I’ve got to,’ I said.

  ‘Well done. You’ll have it fixed.’

  Ten minutes later, and a new belt, I climbed back into my seat, soaked, lucky to be alive, so I could listen to him crow.

  ‘Lucky I kept a fresh one in the van,’ he said.

  ‘You thought it was something else, you wouldn’t have a clue.’

  ‘Who thought of carrying a spare?’

  ‘It got left by mistake when they fixed the exhaust.’

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The new exhaust. Quieter. A good run, like this, do it the world of good.’

  Of the three, Sanderson Wrigley and Butt, the last Wrigley had died in 1947, nobody knew where Mr Sanderson was, and Mr Butt was definitely out for sandwiches. I was met by a sub-manager, a small man with the habit of picking flesh off the edge of his thumb with an index finger. Tiny pieces of dry, white skin dropped to the floor, as I told him we were outside with the baskets.

  ‘About time,’ he said, rudely. ‘They were meant to be here last week. What’s been going on?’

  ‘You didn’t get a phone call?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then someone’s let you down …’ I paused to read the name on the plastic tag pinned to his chest, ‘Mr Podmore.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Someone here,’ I said. He looked doubtful.

  ‘My father phoned to say we were waiting for white sevens.’

  ‘White sevens?’

  ‘Seven foot, white.’

  ‘Seven foot, white?’

  ‘It’s willow.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So we were held up, nothing to do with us. We can’t tell what’s available all the time. Not our fault.’

  I gave him our invoice, he told me to stack the order in the back. I went out to the van, we unloaded the baskets, and left them with a surly boy who said, ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘If he says anything,’ I said, ‘about a phone call, just say you did.’ Mr Podmore tried to give us a cheque, but the old man insisted on cash; no reason, he was in one of those moods. The journey had upset him.

  ‘I’ve no cash here.’

  ‘Then get some.’

  ‘I can’t. Not till Mr Butt comes back from his sandwiches.’

  ‘Sandwiches?’

  ‘He always gets them. Calls it his little foible, the boss doing the office boy’s job.’

  ‘We’ll wait.’

  ‘He’ll be half an hou
r.’

  ‘We’ll be back in half an hour,’ my father said, and with an arthritic wave left the office, calling me over his shoulder, ‘Come on Billy, we’ll get a pint.’

  An hour later, in the van, a wad of notes, still warm from Mr Butt’s hand, tucked close to my father’s chest, we were travelling in a dangerous manner along Exmouth Road, towards the motorway. With five pints of cider down his neck my father was driving.

  ‘I can drive on an M5!’ he shouted, though he never had before. We didn’t need to go that way, but there lay the challenge, and as we drove down the sliproad, and the traffic increased, my old man took on a determined expression and headed for the lane carrying the least number of vehicles. We hadn’t got two hundred yards before a car came up behind us so fast it had to swerve to avoid a collision, the driver flashing his lights and waving a fist. I was not going to say much to my father, but did manage, ‘You’re in the wrong lane.’

  ‘They’re all going the same direction, I can drive down any lane I like.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  A coach bore down, flashing and hooting, swerving into the middle lane, the passengers leaning over in their seats, expressions of fear and alarm on their faces. My father watched a kestrel, hovering over the verge, the sun broke through scattering cloud.

  ‘Motorways give you time to really look around,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is point in the right direction.’ He turned and smiled at me, ‘We’ll come this way every time.’

  ‘This is the fast lane.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘there are three lanes to each carriageway.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pull over,’ I shouted, pointing.

  ‘But they’re going slowly.’

  ‘So are we.’

  Another car.

  ‘Please,’ I pleaded, in the end, pulling at the steering wheel.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said, but hadn’t finished, he didn’t look over his shoulder or in the mirror, it was hard down with the left hand and across two lanes of traffic. Lucky to be alive, again, but the old man sucked his teeth, asked me to light a cigarette, and got lost outside Bridgwater.

  We didn’t get home till seven, the egg man was at Blackwood, and as we climbed out of the van, heads dull, my mother screamed, ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’

  The egg man, whose name was, I think, Brian, but I’d heard him called Steve, was carrying a bucket from the store.

  ‘Len’s had to help me,’ she pointed at the egg man.

  ‘We got lost,’ said my father.

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘Outside Bridgwater.’

  ‘Bridgwater? Doing what in Bridgwater?’

  ‘Not in, outside.’

  ‘Outside!’

  ‘He missed the turn on the motorway,’ I said.

  ‘What were you doing on a motorway?’

  ‘Trying to get home.’

  ‘Trying to get home?’

  It continued, my mother repeating everything my father said, only as a question; the egg man stood in the doorway of the store shed with a bucket in his hand, while I corrected errors of fact. The sun set in a blaze of diagonals, shafts of red and orange light burning long stripes into the darkening sky above the shed and the egg man’s head. An owl called from an oak tree, single flowers closed for the night in the rustling hedgerows. Sober people in fast cars drove into the night to get pissed. Children slept. The two women at Drove House sat in their front room surrounded by broken cardboard boxes full of kitchen utensils.

  Next day, my father came to the workshop first thing, to help me sort. He was moving bundles of willow to a spot where I didn’t want them. I had sat down, and was working, when he said, ‘Beautiful day.’ It was. The storm had cleared, leaving stacked blue skies, the odd fleck of cloud brushing the west, but the wind had veered south, a wood pigeon flapped by, and in the distance, the clack-clack of Chedzoy’s machines clacked off, the sun rose high in the sky; that was how it was.

  ‌9

  Dick got a motorbike, so I could hear him coming for miles, given a calm day, like a paralytic bee. Life changed, a new love in his life; I didn’t care, he took me pillion down an old drove, it was all right, but I never had his passion, I drove a van.

  Disco time. Friday night. Burrowbridge Hall, ten miles away beyond Stan Moor and the Glastonbury road. I stood in the yard while Dick revved his motorbike.

  ‘Coming?’ He wasn’t asking. My old man appeared round the corner from the orchard, whistling ‘The Sun Shines Bright On My Old Kentucky Home’, a dead racoon slung over his shoulder.

  ‘All right, boys?’ he said. ‘Nothing like it.’

  My mother sailed from the back door with a bucket of potato peelings, yelling, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘You coming, you listening even?’ Dick said, slipping into his crash helmet.

  ‘I suppose so, I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘On that?’

  He gave it some throttle. My mother looked, came over, ‘You put my hens off laying,’ she screamed, ‘and I’ll have that motorcycle.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. I shrugged, I didn’t care, the time had long gone when I was responsible for the ideas we had; brawn had ousted brains, not that we really ever had either.

  I was cleaning my teeth when my father shouted Dick was waiting.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll ask.’

  ‘You coming?’ He was in the house, shouting up the stairs, ‘Why you cleaning your teeth?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Come on. Get some clothes on.’ I hadn’t thought since the last time it was mentioned. I hadn’t thought about anything except whether a greengrocer in Taunton would mind his baskets late. A few days before I’d gone for a walk towards Martock, and seen lapwings in huge flocks. I hadn’t remembered it was Friday night and my presence expected on the back of his motorbike.

  ‘I’ll bring the van,’ I said.

  ‘Father’s using it.’ Screamed.

  ‘Am I?’ came a small voice from the front room.

  ‘Hurdles from Chedzoy!’

  ‘Oh.’

  The men were forgetting things in the house.

  ‘You’re coming with me to the disco?’ He spelt the words. I resigned myself to going, spat toothpaste, washed, and dried with slow, deliberate and relaxed actions.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘just sit on the wall for five minutes.’ I displayed five fingers.

  ‘Mind you don’t,’ my mother shouted.

  I sat on the bed and stared at the view of South Moor and the valley of The Isle. The Isle is a leak of a river, but a ribbon of clear blue in the dying day. A pair of swans flew in the gentle evening wind, their long necks bobbing in rhythm with their wings; pfftt, pfftt, pfftt. I tied my bootlaces, to meet my chauffeur.

  Dick’s style of motorcycling was interesting; I got this idea that I was going to fall off. He raced down to the bridge, took the right to Stathe, the bend at Wick, past the houses, throwing old ladies back from their doorsteps, dogs from the middle of the road, and opened the throttle to take the long stretch to Oath Lock. I shouted ‘There’s no hurry’, but he turned round in his seat, swerved in the road and said ‘I know’. He asked if I wanted to get there any faster. What I said made no difference. We flew the railway bridge and the straight between the tracks and the river, he accelerated past a pair of cars on the road through Stathe, and I felt the taste of apricots come up. My mouth was dry, I saw a water rat in the river, swimming from our bank to the other. A crow, startled by the noise, exploded out of an orchard tree. It was night when we came to the crossroads at Burrowbridge.

  The Disco car park was filling with many different cars of similar styles, Cortinas and Escorts with badly riveted flared wheel arches. It was never me. I left Dick to find his mates, and went into the hall for no reason at all. Things were warming up; some Greasers were thr
owing beer at girls who liked this. Loud music was coming from speakers on the stage as an arrangement of coloured lights played patterns over the walls. People sat in ranked steel and canvas stackable chairs, the crowd by the bar hatch grew, a blue haze of tobacco smoke floated in the air, like a heavenly floor all around us.

  Dick slapped me on the back, ‘Enjoy yourself,’ he said. ‘There you go.’ He put a glass in my hand and took a gulp from his, like he was eating it. His eyes looked wild, his untidy hair its blackest, another gulp, punch to the arm, ‘Got to go!’ and a wink, he was off, back to his friends. I watched him urge one to drink a pint in one, then he did the same with the rest of his, pushed through the crowd and ordered more.

  Two girls stood up and danced together, the greasers watched with quick, shy glances, looked at their glasses, drank some more. The girls moved awkwardly in their clothes and shoes, like lame flamingos in clogs or badlyfitting slippers. I didn’t see anyone I wanted, so took my drink into the night and stood for a minute with my back to the river, the sky filled with a thousand stars. I heard a few more cars arrive, a motorbike, an owl call, the thump thump thump disco beat sound, and the odd yelp of dancers.

  ‘Finished that yet?’ Dick staggered out, two pints drunk, shirt unbuttoned to the waist to display three curly black hairs around his navel.

  ‘Drink up,’ he slobbered, ‘We’ve serious …’ and put an arm out to steady himself on my shoulder.

  ‘Dick?’ I said.

  ‘Your round.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘I know, you my grandmother?’ He spilt some beer on my boot. ‘Sorry.’ He went back to the hall. I propped myself against the door to watch the moon rise, as a car pulled up, the driver got out, and in the shadows, I could see her, the girl from Drove House. She stopped in passing, stood by the door, and looked at me, for a second, in the half-light, like she knew me from somewhere neither of us had visited.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello,’ she said, and walked into the hall. I followed her to the bar, leant over the crush and tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Buy you a drink?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  It had taken a little courage to get in there, but the refusal was expected. In the lights of the disco, a band of freckles pulsed across her nose. She waved the barman a note, and shouted over the heads of three other people. She carried her glass to a bench by the door.