by Peter Benson
‘You coming up?’ She reached down to me. She looked beautiful. Her dress was white with blue stripes at the hem, neck and sleeves, tied by a cord of silk, printed with pictures of moths. The sun streamed in the window behind her, lighting the ends of her untidy hair. I took her hand as she led me into her mother’s room, through the door I’d stood behind and my mother had opened and into her room, with a view over the lean-to, towards the pound house and the Blackdown Hills.
‘My room!’ she said, and spread her arms. I looked at the bed and blushed. I couldn’t help it. ‘Blusher!’ she said.
‘I know; I can’t help it ... I ...’
‘You don’t have to,’ she said. I didn’t know what she meant. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘you’re lovely.’
There were photographs on her wall of a man, smoking a cigarette by a fence, and another, playing the violin. She sat on a cushion by the window. We talked about how I’d been bothered by a dodgy bloke selling jackets and she told me about a friend of hers who sold toothpicks and scraps of newspaper embedded in amber. He was someone for whom direction was meaningless and art pure paradox. I told her my father had knocked a lot of eggs onto the floor.
‘How’d he do it?’
I said, ‘He needed to walk down the aisle.’
We sat together. I didn’t know she wore glasses to read. She picked up a magazine and tossed it onto the bed.
‘I’m going to London.’ She wound a pair of socks around her head and threw them at a chest of drawers.
‘When?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
She’d be sat in a room with the traffic roaring beneath, with a bloke saying, ‘Art,’ pouring amber onto a scrap of paper printed with the words AFTER THE STRIKE WAS HALTED BY, ‘is pure paradox’. I couldn’t compete, looked at Muriel, but she was gazing out of the window; I didn’t think of anything smart to say. The more I thought, the worse it got.
‘You mind?’ she said.
‘Do I?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I mind.’ The beautiful weather never seemed so dull.
‘You jealous?’ she asked, throwing a shoe at the door.
‘Jealous?’
‘You are?’
‘Me? What of? Can’t be jealous of something when I don’t know what it is.’
‘You don’t know any of my friends.’
‘You don’t know any of mine.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but mine ...’ She stopped what she was saying. Her mother had packed her paints away and was walking down the hill towards us. As the sun dipped, the shadows raced, and it grew chill, she walked across the yard and in the door. I listened to her moving around downstairs and the sound of cups being rinsed and laid out.
‘Yours?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
I felt jealous. She was talking about them being different, but stretched across the floor to where I sat and took my hand. I looked into her eyes and watched the reflection of the sun move across them like a bug. She crooked the little finger of her other hand, ran it down the ridge of my nose, and squeezed. I leant towards her, she closed her eyes to let me kiss her lips. I felt her hand squeeze mine, she shifted her legs. Her mother called up the stairs to ask if I took sugar. I jumped, but Muriel said she didn’t mind. I couldn’t relax.
‘Relax,’ she said. I couldn’t.
‘I can’t.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘change the subject. You tell me something.’ I was when Anne walked in.
‘Two teas, no sugar both; biscuit?’ she said, bending down with a plate. ‘Feel free, plenty more in the cupboard.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I see your father’s famous!’ she said, passing a newspaper.
HUNT FOR RACOONKNAPPER CALLED OFF.
The hunt for a missing racoon was called off today after a local basketmaker found its body in the river Parret. A spokesman for the Ridgeway Safari Park said the animal escaped last Thursday and had probably been living off the land.
Muriel said she didn’t think it had been buying takeaways. Nor did I.I wouldn’t tell you about the tea. It tasted of antiperspirant, but I drank it, and imagined Muriel knew what it was.
‘Kiss me again,’ she said. Her dress slipped off her shoulder and hung over her arm. While we kissed I didn’t think about London, but did when we’d finished, stood up, and looked at the dusk from her window. If she could kiss me and ask me to kiss her, she’d be with him, pouting, getting him to put his pan of boiling amber to one side, his moulds and toothpicks, saying ‘kiss me’.
As my mother ladled a pile of damp cabbage onto my plate, she told my father that if he picked he’d get no pie. He picked, staring at his shoes, put by the back door.
‘Taunton Monday,’ he said, ‘all done?’
‘I spent the whole morning on them. You know I did. Why’d you always ask questions you know the answer to? Why don’t you shut up when there’s nothing interesting to say?’ I was upset. I’d been on my own all day, with my thoughts, in the workshop. I didn’t care though, it wasn’t my problem that Muriel had gone.
We went to Taunton. The old man sat in the van while I carried two dozen log baskets through the back door of a gardening shop, sneering at a queue of people waiting for a bus. He gave me a tenner, so when we got home, I sat in the van until he got out, then drove to Jackson’s garage.
‘Dick there?’ I whispered.
‘Dick?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Billy. You letting me in?’ The door opened enough, and Dick shouted, ‘The wanderer returns!’ I didn’t know what any of the people I knew were saying anymore.
‘Left you?’ he said. ‘Gone off with an old fancy man?’
‘You don’t know anything about it.’
‘That’s what you think!’ He poured some cider. ‘Forget her,’ he said. ‘Better off with a tart you know.’ He smelt of rancid butter and in the gloom, picked at the dim outline of the line of fuzz on his top lip. The drink was bitter and did not satisfy my thirst. I sat on a bench listening to him talk about Hector.
‘Got told off, told him, I said “You chase cows like that and he’ll have you”, but Hector, got a mind of his own, the boss gave him a thrashing, thought he’d killed him.’
I said, ‘I saw a dog stung to death by hornets.’
‘I’m telling you, he won’t be doing that again in a hurry.’ I said it was six hornets, six killed a sheep dog. Took three hours to die and two vets, writhed round the yard howling and howling, in the evening. They put him in a barn, but the howls echoed into the night like they were solid, like you could go out, grip one with your hand, cut a piece off. Chilling sound. Hornets got armour plating, built like tanks. Look like bombs. You can see their mouths moving, clicking back. They have slanty eyes set back on their heads. Though they have a deadly sting they use it reluctantly, so that dog must have really pissed them off.
I caught a length of jelly on my lips, no light filtered into that place. I felt the juice in my brain, and saw Muriel’s lips embedded in amber, pouting at me as they flew by. I touched my knees with my head. Tiny explosions went off all around me, the garage door opened and shut, names called out across a space of darkness, and an odd thump thump on some stairs.
I felt softness all around, and a dampness beside me, a woman shouting and the sound of a motorbike. Eight sad horsemen rode by, small women carrying pancakes left them in the fridge. I was comfortable in bed, I remember.
15
At Thorney Mills there is an old silted pool, where teal and eel swim; rayballing weather again, but I couldn’t go, I was working on laundry baskets for the domestic market. It was perfect, another clotting river, high, fast clouds, but it was gloomy in the workshop, an atmosphere heavy with loss. One of mother’s finest was laid up in a cardboard box under the window, on no account was I to touch her or make any surprising noises. She had coccidiosis; stood for a day on her own in the run, sick and drawn before the move, and
was being treated to a water fast for twenty-four hours. A laxative diet of barley and husks to follow with a clove of garlic for ten days. No other hen would go near her. If she didn’t recover, a hatchet would come between her and continued enjoyment of the orchard.
My mother shook her head, and didn’t know why she bothered. ‘Coccy’s deadly; look at this,’ she said, handing me a nugget of blood-stained chicken shit. ‘Kills the girls for no reason and all that science doesn’t make any difference. Might as well know how to cure coccy.’ She stroked the hen’s head with her nails, and tucked some straw around its body.
‘Don’t you worry about eggs,’ she said. ‘Just eat up, do you good.’ She nudged some food at the bird but it closed an eye with a ghastly cloudy lid, and blinked open only slowly. It opened its beak but nothing happened.
‘You watch her,’ she said to me, ‘and don’t shout at your work.’
There are many diseases of poultry that lead chickens to the cardboard box. Toe-pecking and pantothematic acid deficiency in young chicks, to egg-bind and plain boredom in laying birds. Many treatments are available. My father brought some tea, and while we drank, stood outside in the yard watching some teal, packed together like sardines, flying down to the river behind us. There are many things a teal enjoys, wading in mud, worms, but nothing more than the company of its own species. We have eaten them but they’re small and carry little meat. I would prefer a mallard from Taunton bus station, where they stroll out of the river around people, and are well fed on many fattening foods. I would put one of them in a sack anytime, still warm, plump.
‘See them?’ he pointed as they flew to the pools. ‘Scrawny buggers not worth a toss.’
I sat down. Plastics have taken the domestic laundry basket market and given it a boxing lesson, but there are still some people who prefer the sort of thing that ladders nylons and tears silk shifts to ribbon. Ribbon in her hair, scarf around her waist, stockings on her legs, a thousand freckles on her face, one hundred eyes turn to look, see Muriel, on a street where I could never live. We’d watched a television programme with the prize of a car, the woman hadn’t won. She got £800 with the champagne ‘Pick-a-trick!’ bonus prize, but looked fed up with the idea, and backed away when a smarming host tried to kiss her cheek. He’d bumped his chin on her shoulder, while the celebrity hostess stood behind them, holding an envelope. The old man said it was a laugh, but I didn’t care, I only saw the street outside the television studio, where men and women drove by on their way to Muriel’s.
I spent the afternoon making handles. The egg man arrived and stacked the pallets in his van, checking the invoice and making a joke about putting blown eggs in with the real ones. He had never learned not to crack it.
‘Find a blown egg and it’ll not be me who’s responsible,’ she shouted. The egg man was a bit thick. I never spoke to him about it. He lived in ignorance.
Around tea time the ailing chicken died of its own, spared the bloody steel. I took it to the house and put it on the kitchen table.
‘Take the thing away!’ she screamed. ‘I don’t want it!’ She didn’t care once they were dead, and a bird with coccy wasn’t edible. ‘Dig a hole for it,’ she said, ‘and burn the box.’
I dug a small grave in the orchard. I warmed my hands over the fire, watching the sun sink into a bank of streaky grey cloud, stood over the cardboard box until it was all gone. I could stand over anything until it was all gone. I stood next to my old man while he planted a row of peas.
‘I wanted to stuff that racoon,’ he said. ‘Don’t get the chance often enough.’
‘Stuff it?’
‘Why not?’
‘You ask them?’
‘They wouldn’t listen. It went for a post mortem; I could have saved them the trouble.’
He straddled the row with his feet, walking backwards, scattering the peas on the ground. His back was hunched. He stopped, put a hand to it, stood up.
‘It had a lovely face, beautiful eyes, tiny dog’s nose. I’ve always wanted to stuff an animal. Nothing to it.’
‘I’ll catch you a rabbit.’ He lifted his hat and scratched his head.
‘Always wanted to,’ he said. ‘Would you?’
‘If you want.’
‘It’ll have to be live.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll use a broody box. Tie the bait to a sprung flap, rabbit picks the bait up, shuts the door. Piece of string. Easy.’
‘Borax,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Borax. I’ll need some.’
‘Borax?’
‘And sulphuric acid, ammonia.’
‘You sure?’
‘Sure. I read it. Borax, sulphuric acid, ammonia, some salt. Sharp knives, and an eye for the natural pose.’ He took another handful of peas. ‘An eye for the natural pose,’ he said, moving down the row. ‘More than just important, it makes or breaks the whole effect, the pose.’ I had to find a rabbit willing. He had to avoid my mother. He would need a place to work. Could he get borax? Sulphuric acid? Are they dangerous chemicals? Can you drink them? Could I hear Dick ride by? My father raked some soil over his peas, the teal flew back the way they’d come. One of them laid a turd on his hat.
Muriel came back. She parked her ambulance in the yard and had brought me a present, but wouldn’t give it until we were on our own. It was great to see her. She was more beautiful, and talked to my father about how he’d manage on the underground.
‘Got to finish these peas,’ he said to her, though he had. He was just being nice.
Muriel and I walked along the bank and watched the sun set from the bridge over the Isle. The river Isle, which rises near the village of Dowlish Wake, to the south east of Ilminster, in Somerset. There are seven bridges over the river, which flows for about fourteen miles before joining the Parret near Blackwood. Isle Abbotts and Isle Brewers are its main villages. During the middle of the nineteenth century, the Parret Navigation Company built locks at Thorney, and cut a canal to connect Westport, near Drove House, to the Parret by way of the river Isle. You might think, ‘so what’, but the man who built the Westport canal was the same Walter Bagehot who became advisor to Disraeli when that man was interested in the Suez Canal.
We walked along the bank to the first bridge from Blackwood, sat in its shade and held hands. The history of canal building in Somerset is an interesting one. We could see the spot on the river where the Westport canal cuts in. It was romantic. She gave me a Dinky Toy ambulance, in a torn box, and I kissed her.
‘It’s very rare,’ she said. ‘Collectors pay tops for them.’ It was her ambulance. ‘I saw it and said “That’s it!” You like?’
‘I was expecting a toothpick, in a lump of plastic.’ She laughed.
‘He got locked up, rummaging in a policeman’s dustbin.’
‘Dustbin?’
‘They thought he was planting a bomb. When he told them he was looking for inspiration they locked him up. Prevention of Terrorism Act. Held incommunicado for seven days. Freaked out. Nobody knows where he is.’
I ran the toy ambulance up my arm, across my shoulder and onto hers. I drove down her arm and into her lap. She took my shoulders and pushed me onto the grass by the river, and we kissed again.
‘I’ll always keep it,’ I said.
‘And I hope you do!’ She wiped her face with a handkerchief. ‘London was so hot. I had to shower twice a day. It’s cool down here, air to breathe; last night was the only decent time I had. We went out, old friends from school.’ They drank cocktails and danced with each other. The evening ended at her mother’s flat, and they’d had a mad time.
‘I thought about you, standing with a drink, thinking. He’ll be somewhere with a glass of cider having just as good a time.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Did you miss me?’
‘Dick got me drunk.’
‘Drunk?’
‘Jackson’s garage. Green cider, I was ill. Saw things.’
‘What?’
‘Nightmares.’
‘That wasn’t my fault.’
‘No,’ I said. I only wanted her. I said, ‘Can I kiss you again?’
‘Yes.’ She held her body close to me. I ran my hands to her waist, and a strip of skin above her skirt, where I could feel it was smooth and tiny hairs grew, and the ridge of her backbone ended.
Chedzoy let his cows into the meadow, they walked to graze at the fence. The sun set behind them, Muriel and I sat up and rested on our elbows to watch. A swan flew across the face of the sun, a mile away, towards the canal. Times passed, we were still there, a fish bubbled in the Isle, cocks crowed. The scents of honeysuckle blew down on us in the evening, I took her hand, and we walked over South Moor, jumped the stream from Whitecross to the Isle.
‘Smell that!’ she said, and dropped my hand to run over the grass to Bob’s withy beds. She lost herself in them, and started calling for me, like a bird.
‘Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Billee!’
‘Muriel! Muur-eelle!’
‘Hello! Hello! Billee!’
I chased her down a row and we ended on the ground.
‘You’re pretty,’ I said.
‘And you’re so butch.’
‘Think so?’ She laughed.
‘No,’ she said.
‘What then?’
‘Handsome?’
‘Ha!’
‘Would I say so?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Believe what I say,’ she said. ‘Be bold.’
‘Be bold?’
‘If you like.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I love those eyes,’ she said.
I looked away.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ The withies grew around us like the bars of a natural prison, swaying in the breeze. Something moved in the grass, a bird or mouse, startled as evening shadows lengthened.
‘So quiet,’ she said, ‘after London, it’s so quiet. I forgot what it’s like, sleeping over traffic. All night, all day; when I got back here I sat on the bed and could still hear them in my head.’
‘I’ve never been to London,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t know.’