by Peter Benson
‘Bye,’ and she put the phone down. I stood in a pond of cigarette ends and small strips of paper torn from the directory, with the receiver in my hand, looking at the night. There was a knock on the door, peering in at me stood a very small, old lady.
‘You finished?’ she said.
Wednesday’s weather gave early promise, the sun glared off the river and the dew in the fields; calm, a clear, clear blue sky. I left my father in the workshop. He said, ‘Glad to have the place to myself.’
I didn’t always bother with the day off, and hung around, or went to Langport; taking the van for the day with a basket of sandwiches and beer for two was new. My mother made the picnic, ‘There’s no point taking a girl out if you don’t make sure she’ll be comfortable.’ She handed me the basket with a gentle look in her eyes; she’d just got into the habit of shouting.
‘Drive carefully,’ she said. She reached in her apron pocket and pulled out a faded stalk of lavender. ‘Pick her some flowers,’ she said. I mixed anemones from the garden with some honeysuckle from the hedge.
That sun, I can still feel it. When I pulled up to the front door, Muriel’s mother came out, smiled, walked over.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Anne.’ She offered me her hand, I took it. She was wearing a paint-stained apron and said, ‘Just dabbling.’ She had dark blue eyes, set deep in her face, and wore a scarf, like my mother, just done a different way. Long locks of grey hair hung out of it, and brushed her face as she walked me to the house.
‘Muriel’s talked about you,’ she said — I felt myself blush — adding, ‘Nothing terrible’ — noticing. She was alert, quick on her feet. Her daughter appeared in the doorway before we reached the step.
‘Good morning!’
‘Hello Muriel.’
She was wearing a pink cotton dress and a white shirt, and picked a canvas bag off the hallway table.
“Got any grub?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Me too!’ she said. ‘All sorts. You drink lager?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cheese and ham sandwiches, apple pies, bananas?’
I nodded. Anne stood between us, and laid her arm across Muriel’s shoulder, a smile creased her face. A tiny group of yellow paint spots clustered together on her chin, like a phantom beard.
‘Are they for me?’ Muriel pointed at the flowers.
‘Oh,’I said, ‘I forgot. Yes.’
‘Let me,’ her mother said, ‘I’ll put them in water. You two, off now, and don’t get back till late.’
‘Where to?’ Muriel asked, threw her bag into the back of the van and eased herself into the passenger seat spring position. We drove west, out of the valley of The Isle, through the lanes to Curry Mallet.
‘This is knackered,’ she said, ‘we could’ve taken the mini.’
‘Who’s showing you these sights?’
‘You are.’
‘My sights, my van.’ Something else I thought, then, smart, pointing to things along the way.
I know a hill, on the county border, where a line of trees climbs its spine and the locals burn fires. The weather, I knew it would, collapsed at midday, the wind strengthened, and a bank of grey cloud blew up from the west. Spots appeared on the windscreen. The wipers hadn’t been fixed. As the rain increased, and what Muriel talked about turned into what I talked about, we met a herd of cows walking from one Blackdown field to another. I slowed to a crawl, with my hands on the top of the steering wheel and my chin on my hands, staring at the farmer’s dog, chasing back and forth across the road, and I thought, a little, about Dick and Hector. It would be raining in Kingsbury, he’d be fretting over his bike getting wet, and the dog, who was beginning to take a back seat, would be laid flat under a lean-to, with a look in his eyes. ‘Cows. Let’s get them! Sod the bike.’
Muriel’s voice echoed around the van, the empty plastic sacks, an old basket, the small piles of straw, like a tune, whistled, when you don’t know you’re whistling. Steam rose off the cows, hot, damp, bugged, as they turned off the road into one of the fields overlooking the odd, wooded clefts of land that drop to Hemyock, and Honiton.
She leant across and tweaked my cheek. I felt her thumb and finger, warm against my skin, and she said, ‘You’re so ... nice and ... and, oh! I don’t know, there! You know? Picked!’
I didn’t, and thought she wasn’t very good at explaining herself, then neither was I, how could I talk? But she had had education, not like mine, though I had been interested, she had been brought up to know things to do with words, and to do with being able to act, as a girl, more like a man than most men do. Open. Strong and direct. She knew what she wanted.
‘This rain!’ she said, ‘Does it always rain like this?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘And aren’t we a long way from home?’
‘Yes, but there’s a hill I want to show you, perfect for a picnic. Maybe we’ll have to go somewhere else now.’
‘Why?’ she said, like it was a natural thing to sit in the rain. ‘Bit of rain never hurt anyone.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ I said.
‘Chicken.’ She said it. I’d sit on the hill if I froze to death, to show her. City girl didn’t know what it was like at three hundred feet. I had looked on a map. I knew. Exposed to wind from every direction, huddled beneath a scorched scar the locals had made.
I parked in the track above Bottom Farm, and we walked the quarter mile to the summit in drizzle, the first sign of cleaner weather behind us.
‘That’s amazing!’ she said, when we’d put our stuff on the ground, and with my hands in my pockets, and her dress, damp, pressed against the backs of her thighs, sat down.
She’d brought ham and cheese sandwiches the size of stamps, cut by her mother on a marble slab. Her mother painted pictures in watercolour of earth and sky. Muriel said they were monuments to nature, alive with the truth of their subject. I didn’t know what she meant, but said I’d look at them. We sat, facing east, as the grey clouds were blown away, down, like a curtain in front of us. The sun at our backs, propped on a blanket, I offered her a cigarette.
‘Thanks.’
We ate the picnic as the weather cleared, and the distant hills revealed themselves. North, the Brendons, climbing to Exmoor; the Quantocks, the Blackdowns in the south, and the villages and towns strung out towards Taunton. I grew hot, and the moisture, in the grass, in heating, released a sweet smell.
I made her follow my finger as I pointed out the border, following the course of a river, weaving along a hedge, through gates and farms. I did not bore her. For a moment, she laid her hand on my arm, to stop me as I talked, and asked about something I was pointing at.
‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘Where you’re pointing.’
‘The farm?’
‘Up against the barn.’
‘The machine?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know.’ She smiled.
‘It’s hotter than ever.’ She reached up and pulled off her jumper, tossed it behind her head and lay back. ‘Hotter,’ she said, and ran a hand over her forehead, while I stared at a herd of red cows, rubies in the grass, chewing the cud below us. A gull flew by, rooks, the ground softened and full of worms grazed the fields.
Muriel fell asleep, and I watched her in this, her body hardly moving, a whisper of hair blowing gently across her face. Her eyes quivered, and she made a small sound. I sipped some beer. I lit another cigarette. She said something in her sleep, but I couldn’t hear. Then she became restless, but that was all.
I finished the sandwiches, stood up, and left her, to walk to the crest of the hill and down the other side. In a sheltered corner of the field, growing from a banked hedge, primroses, in fat, yellow clumps. I collected enough to fill my fist, wandering along, spilling red earth out of the bank as I picked. Where the wind and rain had washed the place, the roots of hazels and elders had been exposed to the sun, and bleached white, like bones.
I carried the flowers back to where she lay, still asleep, I put them by her face, she twitched her nose, and brought up a hand to brush them away.
‘Ah,’ she went. ‘Mmm.’
‘Hello?’
‘Billy!’
‘I picked them for you.’
‘Primroses. Billy. Flowers and more flowers.’
‘You like them?’
‘Of course.’
‘You fell asleep. I picked them down there,’ I pointed.
‘You should have woken me.’
‘You looked so peaceful.’
‘So you left me to the mercies of the, the ...’ She spread her arms.
‘Sheep?’ I said.
‘Sheep?’
‘Mauled by a sheep. It happens all the time.’
I drove, Muriel relaxed, the van was hot, the drive home too short. I have memories, stored for future comfort, and these stand up to the best. Wheeling birds, golden leaves, a butterfly, warming itself on the bonnet. What a beautiful day. She rolled me a cigarette. I could scent her tobacco; we met a wagon of hay, the driver waved us past, and gave me a wink, like he was Cupid.
12
A thing to make my mother mad, hot weather. It was a hot week.
‘Weather for it!’ my father said, his arm around my mother’s waist, his head resting in her armpit.
‘Aagh!’ she let out, pushed him away, went to the store, the galvanized lid banged back and the chickens started. The egg man was ill, a different one got lost at Long Load. My mother had fifty pallets stacked under sacking in the workshop. She moved them in without a word; I didn’t mind. I was piling willow in the shed when Dick turned up. Chedzoy had given him a job: go to Langport and buy three buckets. Chedzoy had made a joke. He said Dick could wear the buckets on his head on the way home. Dick rode into the yard with three buckets on his head.
‘Aaagh!’ yelled my mother, as he slewed to a halt beside me.
‘Hey!’ he said, ‘I’ve come from Langport like this!’ Taking the bend at Huish, the buckets had slipped down the helmet to cover his eyes, but he hadn’t cared, and rode into a wall. His front mudguard was tied to the seat with a piece of string.
‘You’re a bloody mistake,’ I said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Hey!’ my mother shouted, he swivelled round, ‘Yes, you!’ She disliked the sight of Dick. She didn’t like his motorbike putting the chickens off.
‘And you!’ she pointed at me. We didn’t like this, and for once, united in approach.
‘You ...’ she took Dick by the collar, ‘won’t ride your bike on the property like that.’
‘No.’
‘Because if you do, riding a motorbike will become, for you, painful, in the future.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you!’ she grabbed me by an ear, ‘never use that language near me again.’
‘Language?’ She was a bloody hypocrite.
‘You know, don’t play with me. I heard.’ As we walked away, she hit Dick on top of his crash helmet.
‘Oi!’ she shouted, ‘remember!’
‘She’s mad,’ he whispered, picking up his buckets.
‘I know.’
He sat by the workshop window. ‘What’s this then?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I saw you!’
‘When?’
‘Wednesday? Thursday? Last week, the day it rained. Wednesday.’
‘So?’
‘I saw you!’
‘Where?’
‘Isle Brewers, come on,’ he said, ‘you know what.’ He winked.
‘So what?’
‘She’s from Drove House. I went up there too.’
‘What?’ I shouted, ‘what you doing there?’
‘It’s a free country. I can go where I like. Took Hector out.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yeah, he hadn’t been out for a day. All right?’
I didn’t like the idea of his nose in it, now I knew someone he didn’t, and had done something I didn’t want to tell him about. Needn’t either.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘everyone knows about it!’ Which they didn’t.
‘Look!’ I pointed a finger. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘Oh!’ he yelled, ‘aren’t we the one.’
‘Oi!’ came a voice, my father, ‘where’s the scrap?’
‘He’s going on,’ I said, pointing at Dick.
‘I only asked where he went.’
‘Minute ago you knew.’
‘We’ve all been doing that,’ my father said. ‘Didn’t get any sense out of him. Got a girl though. Pretty.’
‘Shut it,’ I said.
‘Ha!’ went Dick.
‘And to you.’
‘Start again and I’ll fetch mother,’ said the old man, ‘you’re a couple of kids.’
‘He might be ...’ I said.
‘Enough of that,’ said Dick, ‘I know what’s going on.’
‘I hope not,’ said the old man.
‘What’s going on?’ screamed my mother, looking over my father’s head, a silence falling upon the workshop, as the temperature climbed and the air filled with pollen. To be in the cool grass on Higher Burrow with a girl like Muriel; with Muriel. I wanted to argue with her, not with all these same people. The crop of swallows flew around the yard, singing at the insects.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Sounds like a lot of it,’ she shouted.
I stood, ‘He,’ I yelled, ‘is getting up my nose.’ I pointed at Dick. My parents blocked the door. I wanted to leave. I shouted ‘Excuse me!’
I climbed the bank behind the workshop and sat by the river. A mad poet, Coleridge, said the river Parret looked as filthy as if the ‘Parrots’ of the House of Commons had been washing their consciences therein. I said this to old man Chedzoy when I was ten, on the way home from school where I’d learnt it, and he’d said, ‘Bugger off.’ In the heat, I lay on my back, closed my eyes and listened to Dick wonder where I was.
My mother shouted, ‘Sulking up the bank?’
‘Mooning after his bit of stuff!’ yelled Dick. ‘I’m off. I’ve had enough.’ He had buckets to deliver, I could lay on the bank all afternoon, if I wanted. I was my own man and didn’t have to be anywhere. Goodbye, Dick.
I liked Muriel. She had grown irregular teeth framed in moist, marshy lips. However quickly I pictured her in my mind, it would not be soon enough before my mother screamed, ‘You lying on that bank all day? Slocombe’s not waiting all week.’ I was glad Dick had gone. But when I got up and looked down at the yard, he hadn’t. One bucket had fallen off his head, and he’d run it over. My father was talking.
‘Hear the one,’ he said, ‘about the fireman and the cat?’ We had. ‘Old woman’s cat got stuck up a tree, so she called the fire brigade. They turn up, climb the tree, rescue the cat. Old woman says, “Oh thank you so much! Do come inside and have a cup of tea.”’
Dick was trying to squeeze the bucket back into shape. ‘He’ll kill me,’ he was saying, ‘no!’ He looked worried. It was hot. The bucket was split in one place and bent in three.
‘Tell you what,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘He’s going to kill you.’
‘After tea, they were backing the fire engine down the drive and ran the cat over. Killed it. Just like that bucket.’ The old man pointed. ‘You’ll never get it fixed.’
‘He’s going to kill me.’
‘More than likely.’
‘Ha!’ I laughed.
‘Laugh?’ shouted Dick.
‘You!’ screamed my mother.
‘Thank you,’ said my father.
13
At Thorney Mills there is a silted old pool where teal and eel swim, sheltered by the old building. A cast iron wheel hangs on the wall beneath its eaves; the river Parret, a drain of a river, is a better place than any to catch eels. Like the poet Coleridge, we learnt about eels at school. Nobody knows why they travel over 3
000 miles from a sea of weed in the Atlantic Ocean, after breeding with American cousins, to arrive in the Parret at Thorney’s silted pool. There are many ways to cook and many ways to catch eel. Smoked, they are delicious, boiled, poached, baked? Nets, traps, line, rayballing? The river was thick, clotting, perfect weather, two days of sunshine turned muggy, then a series of thunderstorms. Rayballing weather. Eels, four or five years old, swimming in the pool. Their adult eyes, though not fully grown, and their long golden bodies, swivelling through the dark water, feeding before their stomachs wither and they swim, swollen with fat, away and against the currents to the weedy sea again, where they were born, to birth their eggs. In nine months they will be dead, far away. Cunning fish, to live so long and travel so far to somewhere so small without anyone knowing how.
‘Hello?’
‘Billy?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was wondering when you’d call. Happy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Going to ask me out again?’
‘When?’
‘Take me fishing. You know how?’
‘Rayballing?’ I said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Don’t you know what rayballing is?’
‘No. You going to tell me?’
‘I’ll show you.’
We went rayballing one Saturday. The eels never knew we were coming. They swam in their pool, I took a tin bath off the workshop roof, and spent the morning digging.
‘You dig any more of them and there’ll be none left,’ my mother shouted. ‘Worm’s good for it, the gardener’s friend, you know?’
‘You want eel pie?’ That shut her up.
When I had twenty worms, that was enough, little piles of earth round the garden, I put them in a honey barrel. The eels waited. Some of them were so old they had been rayballed before, and escaped; no other method of fishing reduces the odds so much. No daylight penetrated the pool. An eel could not see its own tail. It smelt for other fish, cruised at them with a fleshy purpose. I walked to Drove House. The van had been misfiring. I didn’t blame it. I walked through the orchard, Muriel’s mother was sat painting.
‘Morning!’ I said. She jumped, and made an odd noise.
‘Hello Billy, making me jump!’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ I looked at the painting. The canvas was covered with thin lines of green and brown paint beneath a big washy block of blue.