by David Storey
In fact, when John witnessed the change that had come over Leonard, and when he discovered its cause, it gave him a peculiar sensation, a mixture of elation and alarm; as though somehow everything had been taken out of his hands. He went out of his way to walk through those parts of the estate where he now knew Tolson to live, recognising him easily enough one evening when he rode past on his motor-bike and dismounted at a gate some distance ahead.
When John reached the spot and looked down the gap between the houses he saw Tolson stooping over his machine in the garden at the back. There was about him the muscular confidence and assurance that had distinguished him as a boy. It was an aggressive and powerful head that hung down over the machine, dark, thick-necked, with a kind of unknowledgeable assertiveness. That his own incoherent and almost meaningless hopes should rest upon such a person, one whom he scarcely knew and of whom for some reason he felt instinctively afraid, filled him with renewed alarm. But whatever his feeling then, the change in Leonard himself was unmistakable: out of that dull opacity of character he saw his son come suddenly alive. Even his drawing had ceased, as though in some way his self-absorption had been averted and broken at last.
The two men continued to maintain the formality of their relationship with a shy, probing uncertainty, carefully pacing out the area in which they could manoeuvre, as though reluctant to relinquish the sense of accident and coincidence in their meeting. Leonard heard briefly of Tolson’s marriage, his conscription into the army, the several jobs he had tried since coming out, a restlessness similar to, if more determinate than, his own. There was in this casual exchange of information a bated, suppressed sense of relief.
One Sunday three lorries were loaded in the yard and the following morning, arriving an hour earlier than usual, twenty of the men, including Leonard and Tolson, crowded into the back of the truck and the various cabs and, followed by Ewbank’s car, set off in convoy through the town.
They travelled westward for several hours, gradually leaving behind the immediate signs of industry and habitation as they climbed steadily up a narrow winding valley. Broad escarpments of white rock and heavy moorland replaced the close embankments of houses and factories, and the dull swirl of the river that ran through the region gave way to a clear, sparkling luminescence occasionally visible through narrow belts of trees at one side of the road.
Later in the morning they arrived at a village in the upper reaches of the valley close to the summit of the upland. The lorries turned off the road and bounced down into a large field that sloped towards the river. Above this section of the valley, and perched on a darkening outcrop of rock, was the broken stump of a small castle. It was at this, rather than at the village beyond the trees, that the men gazed as they stiffly climbed out and lit cigarettes.
It was very hot. For the next hour they unloaded the vehicles, then broke off to eat their sandwiches, resuming work when the sun was almost vertically over the highest peak of rock. By late afternoon the majority of the tents had been marked out, their stakes driven in, and the principal marquee erected. It was inside this that the equipment was stacked, along with the sacks of tenting and the poles. As the men climbed back into the truck and the cabs, Ewbank took Tolson on one side.
For a while they stood talking in the shadow of the truck. Then Tolson suddenly looked up and crossed over to Leonard. He asked him a question, stubbing his boot toe into the earth.
‘But why? What for?’ Leonard said.
‘To look after the tents till the Show starts at the end of the week.’
Tolson watched him closely, bending forward slightly, his hands splayed on his hips. He was burned dark from the sun. ‘We’d have five days here, not much work to do, and we’d be on double time. I’ll bring the motor-bike, and a gramophone.’ He looked away, momentarily listless, then added, ‘We should have a good time.’ He glanced back at Leonard shyly. ‘What do you think?’
After a while Leonard nodded, murmuring his assent. That night he met Tolson’s wife and his two children.
The following morning Tolson’s motor-bike was loaded onto the back of one of the lorries, along with a portable gramophone and his luggage as well as Leonard’s. With a smaller number of men they returned to the site to complete the erection of the tents.
It was another hot day. People came down from the village to watch the men working. Amongst them was a girl of about fifteen, small and heavily built, with long dark hair that curled over her shoulders, her alert, ruggedly animated face exaggerated by heavy lines of make-up. A woman’s deliberation intensified her doll-like hardness. The men watched her impassively at first. As they hauled up the heavy sheets of canvas, laced them and secured the long ropes, they paused to stare at her kicking against the stone wall. Then they turned to smile at one another nervously.
Ewbank appeared to ignore her as he walked to and fro in the centre of the field, and when he told the men to break off for lunch they quickly dispersed in the fields and meadows around the site. The girl meantime had disappeared. It wasn’t until the men restarted work that they noticed her absence at all. A short while later they saw her drop down from the back of the 15 cwt. Ford and run off, with crab-like movements, towards the village. Pilkington, a squat, red-haired workman, climbed out of the truck wiping down his trousers with a rag. He was a stocky, bow-legged man of forty, and he walked past the men with a lurching undulation of his bowed limbs, smiling. They laughed awkwardly, half-shocked, and glanced across at Ewbank; the tall figure of the contractor shouted across at the men working on the farthest tents. Then he eased his hands in the small of his back and stretched.
By mid-afternoon the girl had re-appeared, standing by the wall with her arms folded and staring at the men with an authoritative look. She wandered slowly from group to group in the heat of the afternoon, confident, taunting.
The two teams of men worked slowly towards one another from opposite sides of the field, talking in tight, half-humorous voices, tense, watching her, then Pilkington, and calling out every now and then, ‘What’s your name, young’un?’
‘Enid.’
‘How old are you?’
She laughed back, not answering.
‘What d’you think to Walter, then?’
She shook her head, frowning.
‘What about old Shaw, then?’ They indicated an older man who laughed exaggeratedly at the suggestion: he was the usual butt of the men. She shook her head again, but laughing with them. They all stood back, amused by certain gestures of the old man as he thrust out his hips towards her.
‘Is he fitted out all right, then?’
She nodded, though pouting her lips dubiously.
‘How many of us could you take on, love? Do you think you could manage two of us side by side together?’
The men laughed, though they watched the girl shyly.
Ewbank, smoking a cheroot, sauntered about the field bending occasionally to roll up a guy-line or to retrieve a loose stake, but watching the men whenever they spoke and turning away to smile, then glancing back at the girl, his small red eyes tired yet furtively alert.
Leonard suddenly went across to her and told her to go. And in such a way that she stumbled back, then went, looking over her shoulder, murderous and hungry. He walked back silently past the men.
‘Why d’you tell her to go? Why did you do that?’
He said nothing, going back to his work. The men drew away. Tolson had blushed but said nothing, as though he’d scarcely noticed.
Ewbank watched Leonard intently, yet still cautious in the way he turned his head and smiled at the empty fields, the acute distance he kept between himself and his men. When they had walled and secured the marquees, hauled and pushed the lorries out of the dry slough of the field, the men sat in the back of the truck and watched Enid standing in the dusk by the stone wall, her sombre face full of contempt. She waved as the truck load of men swayed and jarred over the ruts and mounted onto the road. They lurched and jolted like a single body, si
lent and suddenly aloof.
Leonard stood by the small blackened tent at the top of the field watching her. He was perfectly still. Then he turned to gaze up at the castle, the stump of which protruded redly against the evening sky. A moment later Tolson came out of the tent and together they walked slowly down to the river. The girl stood watching them. The trucks had disappeared down the valley. For a while there was the distant murmur of their engines, then simply the stillness of the evening air. Leonard had reached the river. He gazed down into the water. When Tolson reached him he put his arm round Leonard’s shoulder, leaning on him slightly.
Later, there was a faint glow of a lamp in the tent and the distorted shadow of the motor-bike inside stretched hugely on the canvas. The soft sound of a gramophone whined in the night air.
Leonard woke to a strange sight. Moonlight filtered through the canvas above his head. The lamp had gone out. Tolson was kneeling beside him, stooped forward and apparently gazing at his body moulded in the thick texture of the blankets. Leonard closed his eyes. He lay perfectly still. It seemed only a few seconds, yet when he looked again he saw that Tolson was in fact lying in his bed on the other side of the bike. No longer frightened but considerably bewildered, he lay awake for some time. Then, lulled by the rhythmical breathing of Tolson, he slowly fell asleep.
The next two days and night passed without incident. An elderly night-watchman was installed in a small caravan at the opposite end of the field to guard the trade equipment which was daily brought into the ground. They finished the small amount of necessary work on the tents and rode up onto the moorland, where Tolson swam in the river. He seemed, if anything, bored. On the Friday, the day before the Show, it rained. They stayed in the tent most of the day, lying on the beds, and only venturing out to wander aimlessly through the empty marquees. In the evening it rained even harder and, unable to sleep, they lay listening to the heavy drumming on the tight canvas. Flashes of lightning produced brief, startling images on the stained fabric of the tent. Then the rain suddenly lightened and, some time later, Leonard fell asleep.
6
Leonard woke early. Turning on his side, he saw in the pale light Tolson’s face latticed by the spokes and frame of his bike; the smell was of some fetid monster that had stabled with them all night.
Tolson didn’t move. Even so, there seemed a certain awareness under the shut eyes, the black fans of the lashes alive as if concealing laughter. There was something stunning, deliberately ugly about the face, split into sections between the ribs of the bike, each part sullen and heavily relaxed. Tolson didn’t seem to sleep; he seemed fully awake, as though aware that Leonard was watching him.
Leonard stood up over the joist of his bed, his head stooped under the roof of the tent, bowed forward. At the end of the bed was Tolson’s suitcase, torn apart at the seams, his clothes spilt out like entrails. His footmarks were all over the tent, and on the roof which he’d been kicking, imprisoned by the rain the previous afternoon. Between the two beds were empty beer bottles, a guttered oil lamp and, spreading across the muddy wheel tracks, violet stains that had dripped steadily from the bike during the previous four nights. Tolson’s bed was surrounded by balls of paper which he’d crumpled up before going to sleep and, all over the ground, cigarette butts. It was as if he were just a piece of his own debris, his great steel bike as strong as eight horses skulking in the shadows of the tent like an intense part of him, waiting for him, watching for him, another segment of his huge body. Leonard lifted his clothes from the line by his head and pulled them on.
He slid his feet into his boots and crawled under Tolson’s hanging clothes to the flap. Crouching down he wound up the small portable gramophone. The handle creaked loudly in the tent. He moved the needle to the edge of the record and for a moment longer watched Tolson’s heavy face. Then, as it started to play ‘What do you want if you don’t want money?’ he squeezed out under the brailing.
The dawn air was live. The heavy rain of the night had left the air clean and the limestone hills on either side of the valley were shrouded in deep white mists, reddening and yellowing already where the sun splattered over the escarpment bank. The stump of the castle tower was now indistinguishable from the rock scars overlooking the dale.
The square of marquees surrounding the field were stiff and white. Like whales cast up on a beach, they lay about the field empty and disused, the carcases taut with rain and dew, the guy-lines strained at their moorings. Stakes had been torn out with the contraction of the canvas. He picked up a sledgehammer from a row standing by the blackened tent and, his slight figure curved to the weight, walked across the glistening field.
He slackened the guys and knocked the aluminium rods back in, his hands clenched round the hammer neck until the points were bedded firmly in the ground. His arm trembled with the weight.
He stood back and paused, his hands wrapped round the hammer-shaft. Then he swayed, half-folded, and swung the stone weight over his head and down on the penny-size top of the stakes. He worked slowly, the hammer swung over not by strength but by a nervous litheness that seemed to spring from his hips. It seemed an inner convulsion that manoeuvred the heaviness through the air.
Beyond a row of lime-trees a dog was barking, in the village, and on the moors curlews called with a strangled cry. Then the music stopped.
Leonard stood up, resting the hammer. For a second the needle wailed over the record, then silence. A minute later ‘Mack the Knife’ started. Leonard gazed up at the tent. He waited a moment. Then, hurriedly, he turned and walked down to the river at the opposite end of the field.
It rushed down from its mountain coldness, clear and hard, folding over and round the torn rocks. It had a quiet ferocity. He picked up a stone, clenched it briefly in his hand, then threw it in, almost lunging at the water which burst and sprang apart, the ripples arcing over the smooth surface, breaking against the rocks before they were absorbed in the deepening currents by the far bank. The river surged morosely between the grey rocks. Nothing moved but the water.
He lifted the hammer and swung it down on a boulder. He glanced up once more at the tent. He brought the hammer down again, more fiercely. The grey skin split to a yellow-brown core. The hammer cracked bleakly in the still air, the steel echoing off the stone surface, then crushing, slurring, as it bit between the fragments. The splinters flicked into the surface of the river. The boulder was crushed.
Then just as suddenly he bent forward. He coughed, then knelt down casually and half-supported himself with one arm. His breathlessness contracted his whole figure. He coughed heartfully into the grass, heaving forward so violently that eventually he lay down. His forehead rested against the wet grass. Again the music suddenly stopped. He hurriedly pushed himself to his feet and, without glancing up, scrambled to the edge of the river. He stretched his head out over the water, his hands thrust down into the pebbly bed. Then he drank with short, rapid breaths. When he climbed back up the bank the coughing had almost stopped. The air rasped in his throat and he spat out the phlegm awkwardly. He seemed angry.
He’d almost reached the tent when the motor-bike started and blue exhaust fumes drifted under the brailing. The engine revved explosively. Leonard immediately dropped the hammer and unlaced the flap.
Tolson sat astride the bike, his broad back curving, suddenly relaxed as he sensed Leonard’s entry. He exploded the machine in the tent, the metallic apparatus shuddering within its rubber frame. Its fumes shrouded the place. He throttled back the engine and, without looking up, began to heave himself and the machine out backwards.
His bare toes curled under the gear. The bike turned. For a moment his foot held the lever, trembling with the bike, his head twisted away from the acrid fumes, then he lurched forward. The rear wheel spun out a cord of mud.
The engine screamed as the bike disappeared amongst the empty tents, then moaned, fell back, as Tolson came up between the marquees and the stone wall. Suddenly the sound was muffled, swallowed up as the
bike ran inside the large beer tent. An intent insect, it shot out roaring, and made straight for Leonard. The engine opened up, the bike spinning over the mounds. Tolson’s face was concealed by the deep stoop of his body. He lay on the machine. The tyres seized. They skidded, ripping the grass, suddenly immobile. His foot came down, sliding in the mud, his body wrenched forward, the bike hurrying towards the tent with an impersonal momentum. It stopped within touch of Leonard. Tolson glanced up at him. Then he smiled, throttling the engine. His eyes were screwed up from the smoke of a cigarette.
‘How about a ride round the showground, Len?’
He looked down at the engine, fingering it as he tilted the machine between his thighs.
‘How about it, then? I see you’ve been round resetting the stakes.’
‘What about some breakfast?’ Leonard hadn’t moved.
‘We’ll get that. The Show won’t start for a couple of hours.’ Tolson shook the bike from side to side, swirling the fuel in the tank. ‘It won’t kill you. Least, it’s evens it won’t.’ He waited, twisting the throttle grip, booming the engine, and shivering slightly now as the early morning penetrated his thin clothes.
Leonard climbed on behind.
Tolson waited a second while he slotted his hands round the strut, then they were flung forward.
The machine sprang forward. It sprayed through the muddy earth towards the river. Tolson saw an avenue under a row of guy-lines and, ducking low, took the bike underneath.
Leonard crouched against his massive back, his mouth pulled open. The ropes clipped his hair. As they came out onto open ground Tolson’s shoulders expanded, the bike bursting forward, drumming over the tight grassy mounds and bouncing hugely under their weight. His body had relaxed, holding the machine beneath him, its rigidity vibrating into his body and into the limbs gripping his sides. They were one piece. The wheels bucked and twisted as they slid between the rows of stakes, then leaned over, the tyres driving, compressed, into the mud tracks, up and over the thick clay ridges and ruts, swinging from side to side, Tolson’s foot groping out like a discarded limb. The bike moaned into its madness, crazed by its own scream. It raced by the high stone wall, the buttress catching Tolson’s arm, glancing, and the frozen assemblage sliding and the engine wailing before the bike came round, thundered, splaying mud in wide screes, fanned out. Beneath him, Leonard felt the savage rip of the tyres burning against the wet grass.