by David Storey
They rose, curled over, shuddering on the even mounds of the lower field, then dipping. The bike turned, dropping, stooped over the slipping grass and braking into the broad front of the beer tent. Their bodies were crushed together, bent down, turning across the length of the trestled bar. Tolson edged the bike round with his bare feet and in the gloomy interior revved the engine. It shuddered a moment in the clutch, then drove them past the tent poles and screening. Leonard closed his eyes: he clung to the figure between his legs, the crescendo of metal throbbing on the canvas behind him. Then they were in the daylight again, and the cold air.
Tolson cut the engine and the bike moaned to itself, softly; it jolted and slowed towards their tent. He braked quickly and Leonard’s head creased against his back. He got off and went into the tent. A moment later he came out with the Primus stove and the fuel can and started to fill it. He was breathing heavily, almost panting, his crouched legs trembling as he stooped forward.
Tolson watched him a while. Then he pulled the bike onto its stand and took the stove from him and lit it. His pyjamas and feet were spattered with mud, his right foot bloodied from fumbling with the gears. He squatted down leisurely and pumped the stove. The bike moved slightly on its stand, its front forks turning a moment like a limb at rest.
Tolson’s thick hands waved over the flame, and his face, reddened now under tight, black curls, turned up to Leonard. His eyes had a curious, half-startled look; then he stood up. His stare was suddenly diffident, pointedly casual, and he glanced back at the stove.
‘Did you bring the bacon?’
‘I couldn’t find it. It’s somewhere in your mess.’
‘Oh, yes?’ He held his hands together for warmth. ‘I’ll have a look, then. It can’t be far.’ He stated it quietly. ‘You can fetch some water if you like.’ He went into the tent and started searching amongst the debris of his belongings.
Leonard picked up the pan and walked down to the river. He was trembling. Out of the hill-mist taut sails of pink cloud bulged into the overhead blueness. On the road down the valley a man cycled slowly, looking over the stone wall at the show-ground.
In the grass by the river was the shape of his body pressed out in the short, broad blades. He stopped, gazing down at it for some time: it was narrow and small, crumpled. Then he stepped in the centre of it and dug in his boots, tearing them across it. He worked intently. In a short while the grass was squashed and torn, the pressed shape quickly trampled out of all recognition.
Tolson was hunched over the stove as he came back with the water. From half way down the field he could smell the bacon frying and see Tolson sawing the bread into large, square blocks and laying them out on a newspaper. Tolson picked up one of the wedges in his thick fingers and dipped it into the sweet-smelling fat, chewing it while he worked. The muscle was taut and mobile in his face. Leonard let his shadow lie across him.
‘Your bike’s sinking in the mud,’ he said after a while.
‘It’s all right.’ Tolson gave it a quick look as though he knew it would never betray him. He turned the sizzling bacon over.
Then he glanced up at Leonard shyly. He’d flushed. He stared round at the deserted hills and the moor, then he stood up. ‘Shall we leave this, then?’ He leaned forward slightly, his eyes intent. ‘Shall we?’
Leonard didn’t answer. He frowned, and glanced down at the fire. As he turned to the tent, however, he saw Tolson stoop swiftly and remove the pan from the flame. Then he felt his hands across his shoulders.
‘We better get undressed,’ Tolson said. He secured the tent flap and turned quickly, staring at Leonard in the faint interior. ‘If we take everything off we’ll be as warm as anything under the blankets. Shall we do that?’ He begun to take off his thin, mud-stained pyjamas, watching Leonard closely, almost threateningly. Slowly Leonard began to remove his jacket, still gazing down at the ground.
A moment later, naked, Tolson came and touched him. ‘Hold me. Hold me!’ he said, his lips buried in the hair behind Leonard’s ear.
7
Wetherby was early, it being the day of the Show. Leonard, working near their tent, didn’t hear his car drive up but was suddenly aware of the lean, well-dressed figure in the middle of the field stooped on its shooting-stick, its black eye-patch turned towards the sun. For a while the Colonel watched the showground people coming out of their caravans in the next field then, as he drew up his stick and walked across the central arena, he noticed the bike tracks that ran in and around the marquees and across the reserved area of the show-ring. He glanced in the direction of the contractor’s tent and saw Leonard watching him. He walked briskly across and, noticing the ugly pile of clothes and belongings laid in the mouth of the tent, stopped a short distance away and called out, ‘Is that your motor bike there?’
‘No.’
‘Oh? Whose is it?’ He waited. ‘Somebody’s been riding through the bloody tents … and across the show-ring. Do you know anything about it?’
Leonard didn’t answer. Wetherby stared across at him uneasily. ‘I hope you’ll have your tackle here tidied up before the Show starts. It’s frightfully scruffy.… There’ll be a lorry along any time now to fill up these ruts with ash. I’d be obliged if you’d tell your work-mate not to ride his bike across here. It’s not a public thoroughfare.’ He waited to examine the effect of his words, and when Leonard turned away it was several seconds before he heard the Colonel’s feet slur through the hardening mud, picking their way back to the firmer part of the field.
Leonard watched Wetherby go round the marquees, unlacing the smaller trade tents to peer in at the equipment, and occasionally lifting his head to glance back at him. As he went out of the gate he met Tolson, half-stripped, coming up from washing in the river. They stood close together, Tolson listening and staring soberly at the Colonel as he gestured at the bike tracks; then, in response to something that Tolson demanded, the Colonel appeared to forget his complaint and talked animatedly about the tents, pointing out two in illustration. Then he shook his stick free of mud and nodding agreeably got into his small saloon car by the gate and drove off.
‘Nay, you don’t want to get him riled,’ Tolson said when he came up. He rubbed his chest and back vigorously with his stained towel, staring at Leonard.
‘No … I know.’ Leonard glanced away.
‘The poor sod only wants you to call him “sir”, then you can burn them down for all he cares.’ He looked at Leonard more purposefully.
Leonard stared back. Slowly Tolson’s face relaxed into a smile. He wiped his hands concealingly over his reddening cheeks. Then suddenly, together, they burst out laughing.
The day brightened. People had begun to flood into the field, unloading farm machinery and industrial samples, assembling hoardings and trade stands. Wetherby, in jodhpurs and a hacking jacket, returned an hour later with four workmen in his car. He supervised the erection of white posts round the show-ring and the threading of a long white rope, held preciously away from the ground by a line of men. In the next field herdsmen and labourers were bringing in cattle and sheep from the surrounding farms; the road along the dale held a regular line of trucks, vans and the first cars; the track winding down from the moors was marked now by odd, silhouetted figures and, in the distance, a tractor pulling a loaded trailer. Behind the larger marquees caterers were setting up a field kitchen, and steam already rose from its tall rusty funnel. A brewer’s lorry had bounced its way across the showground to the beer tent, and barrels were thumped down into the soft earth and rolled under the canvas. The marquees and the lanes between them gradually took on the appearance of a busy city.
Leonard and Tolson moved leisurely round the showground and, as the tent contractor’s men, re-arranged doorways and walling, checked the guy-lines and stakes, and erected a small twelve-by-twelve tent for the St. John Ambulance. People from the village had come to watch the growing activity. Amongst them Leonard recognised Enid, familiar from five days before.
She’d come into the field with several boys, and he watched for a while as she moved amongst the tents and trade stands, the men turning to stare at her noisy procession. Then she disappeared amongst the larger marquees and he could only hear the occasional cries of the accompanying boys marking her progress round the field.
He turned away. Tolson was working beside him, securing the stakes down one side of the largest tent. Stripped to the waist and sweating in the sun, he swung the sledge-hammer above his head like a stick, drawing his body sharply away from the descending weight as it struck the stake, forcing all his pulled strength into the stroke. The men had stopped in their work to watch him: the steel swinging over his head and flashing onto the slim necks of the stakes. He never missed. He rested the hammer a moment on each stake to judge its distance, set his feet, and swung with a supple undulation of his back and shoulders. He scarcely paused.
In the centre of the show-ring Wetherby had leaned casually back on his stick. For a while he’d been shouting orders to the men who were lifting jumping gates and hurdles onto the unmarked grass, but now they worked under the impetus of his directions and he watched with some detachment as the final details of the showground fell into place around him.
Enid had suddenly re-appeared alone and stepped into the arena. She stood a short distance behind Wetherby, watching several men arrange a red and white jumping gate. Wetherby, his eye-patch turning slowly from the sun in a casual inspection, momentarily noticed the girl with a slight upwards movement of his head. For a while the circular motion of his head continued then, briefly, he glanced back at her and a moment later drew up his stick and moved slowly away. Just as it seemed he would walk past Tolson, he stopped and watched the regular rotation of the hammer head as if he were consulting a clock. He seemed lost for several moments as he followed the powerful oscillation of the steel and the odd suction of the earth as the rods were driven in. Round each stake was a ring of liquid, forced up as the metal burst into the ground.
He reached out his stick and arrested the hammer at the summit of its swing. He pointed down towards the river where the latrines stood and, giving some instructions which he made Tolson repeat, left the showground for the second time that morning and drove off in his small car.
Leonard and Tolson had gone down to the latrines and, removing one side of the screening, had begun to extend the structure. A few moments later Enid entered the gap in the screening and stood watching them work. She stayed by the entrance, motionless, her hands clenched together and hanging in front of her, watching Tolson hammering up the screen. She was deeply tanned, her mouth lined with pale lipstick. Black lines exaggerated inaccurately the contours of her eyes; they seemed to be set disjointedly in her head.
‘If you want to use it you’ll have to wait,’ Tolson said.
‘Why did you shout at me last Tuesday?’ she said to Leonard, yet not looking at him, rather regarding her hand, the fingers of which she laid across the ‘Ladies’ sign by her head.
Tolson worked indifferently to her, standing on one of the cans and banging in the tacks with a hammer head clenched in his hand. He carefully measured out the laths and planned their intersections, Leonard handing up the pieces for him to assemble. He worked with a great dexterity and precision.
‘You! Why did you shout?’ she said, suddenly turning to Leonard.
Tolson looked down; Leonard didn’t answer. He was white. Tolson said, ‘Go on – you better run off before you get hurt.’
‘What’s up with that man with the black patch, then? What’s the matter with his eye?’ She diverted Tolson’s interest, watching Leonard now through cautious, narrowed eyes.
‘I’ve told you, love. You better go,’ Tolson said.
‘I’ll stay if I want to.’
Tolson climbed down. It seemed it was her clown-like intentness that incensed him. As he caught her she grasped the nearest lath, and when he tried to tear her away the whole structure of the latrines shook.
‘You better get off me, mate,’ she warned him.
Leonard watched them in silence. Tolson started to break the girl’s hold as he might have stripped a tree, ripping down her arms; but before he could drag her out, Wetherby came round the screening.
‘How near are you to being finished?’ he said. He was irritated. He stared directly into the faces of the two men as though the girl were not there. In the doorway behind him were four latrine cans which he had just put down.
‘Can you ask this girl to go, sir?’ Tolson said, flushed and dark now that his violence had been interrupted. ‘She won’t leave us alone.’
Wetherby glanced at the girl briefly with his clear eye. It was several seconds before he spoke. ‘Get out!’ he said. It was virtually a cry.
The girl winced slightly. The single eye was quite still. ‘Get out! And don’t let me find you in here again.’
She seemed about to slip past him. But in the same movement she stepped inside the nearest cubicle and, lifting her skirt and lowering her knickers, placed herself securely on the can. She paused there a moment to an accompanying sound of jetted liquid, then re-arranging her clothes and without a glance at either of the three men, except for a brief frenzied smile at Leonard, she squeezed out between the four cans standing in the doorway.
For a moment Wetherby didn’t move. Then, as though he had mistaken the incident completely, he smiled at the two men, and taking the shooting stick from under his arm pushed back the canvas doors of the completed cubicles. ‘You seem to have done a good job, men.’ He glanced at them separately and unsmilingly, then shook the structure with his foot. ‘It’s firm.’ He nodded and went out.
Tolson had burst out laughing. ‘Well, I’ll go fuck a duck,’ he said, bending forward, then straightening suddenly as Wetherby returned.
‘By the way, I’ve four what-have-you’s outside. Borrowed them. Put them in the end there, the east wing, then I’ll know exactly which ones they are.’
The sun had flooded into the dale, and the whitened rock and hedged fields trembled and pounded upwards. The ground ate up the heat, and the river was the only live thing, boiling and frothing through its grey-rocked bed and past the bare scars on the hillside.
The castle above the village was now part of the rock; its stone rubble melted into the hill, and green and brown and grey had filtered into a hazy glare. The ridge had drawn away and the valley grew out of the rock embrace.
Along the road running like a nerve through the centre of the dale cars were parked two deep, trucks and farm vehicles sidling between them; and in the fields on either side of the showground the cattle stalls were surrounded by neat rows of vehicles. All morning smartly-dressed men and women had crowded into the site, the flowered dresses moving restlessly between the white flanks of the canvas until, as the heat and density increased, the women, illuminated by their bright colours, appeared to seethe and drone in the packed lanes. Tolson, his hammer draped over his naked shoulder, moved amongst the glowing fabrics and polished leathers, accepting drinks at the stalls and watching the neatly jodhpured figures mounting horses and trotting into the show-ring, his muscled figure growing familiar to the crowds as the day wore on.
8
Leonard had climbed the limestone scar to the castle. It was a small ruin, its one original tower now broken. He found a crevice on the front wall and, crouched there, stared down into the valley. Almost motionless from this distance and height, the river flashed intermittently between the smooth fields, the light glinting remotely from the baler parked at the Fordson tent, its forked elevator turning slowly in the sun. The riders were no more than targets now, moving round and round, occasionally dropping down or stopping.
Behind him a small apron of grass lined the yard of the castle, the soft velvet stretching up to the grey wall from which fierce tufts of longer grass escaped. A net of ivy had grown over the stone, scrambling up the crumbled surface of the square building to its jagged summit. The rutted socket of the tower had, like its clinging pl
ants, grown out of the rock.
These impressions enfolded Leonard as he crouched there, a pebble in its worn façade, a part of its slow erosion. Beyond the smooth grass and the tower stump, thorn trees leaned from the prevailing wind and thrust out branches like hands plucked from the south. Frozen in their long siege, they fought the building’s aggressive immobility, their structures withered like bone. Over the moor, and over the twisted rocks to the broken lip of the valley, shapes grew and writhed until they reached the stone of the castle. And within the coils of bracken and bramble, and the ragged belt of rock scar, was laid the square patch of grass, even, short and delicately trimmed.
A broad shadow had begun to move, the blackness creeping out from the tower and turning the green into a deep blue mould. The heaviness moved slowly across the lawn, absorbing the blades, the specks of wind-blown debris; then a moth, yellow and russet brown. Its pale meandering towards the stone of the tower burned for a moment, then faltered, and was extinguished like a flame.
Tolson burst out of the shadow.
‘What’re you doing up here, then? I saw you from down yonder.’ He put his foot on the parapet and looked down at the tents. ‘I thought we could get some of the smaller ones down tonight, then we won’t be hanging around so much with all the others tomorrow.’