by David Storey
Tolson unfastened the tent-flap and held it up as Leonard pushed his way in.
It smelt of oil. He squeezed past the bike, crawling along his bed and feeling for the lamp. The wire handle caught against his hand; he pulled the globe up and struck a match and lit it. Tolson scraped his boots at the door.
The yellow flame gradually raised itself inside the glass sheath, tapering like a spear, then wavering. A thin jet of black smoke fled from its tip. Then the light steadied and spread around the tent. The place glowed.
Enid was sitting opposite him, crouched at the end of Tolson’s bed. For a second Leonard wasn’t sure that it was he himself who had let out a cry. It was so quickly muffled by the tent.
‘I guessed it wa’re her,’ Tolson said.
Her face was white, peeled back, featureless in the lamplight, no more than that of a doll. Leonard sat on the edge of the bed staring numbly at her, frozen, then up at Tolson by the door. He was lighting a cigarette, his eyes momentarily distorted over the brief glow.
‘What’ve you been stealing, then?’ he said.
‘Nothing. I just came.’
Tolson nodded his head at her heavily, unsurprised. ‘Ah, well. You better go now, then.’
She shook her head determinedly and glanced at Leonard. His mouth trembled with the cold and his body shook, held rigidly between his elbows. He might have been crying. The shadow of the bike was flung up against the roof, stretched and poised and animated by every quiver of the flame.
‘I better find her father in the village,’ Tolson said.
‘I only came to have a talk. There’s never anybody to talk to round here.’ Her face fell into the shadow of the bike. The spokes sent long lines curling across her mouth. She looked crabbed and ancient.
‘Why should I give a sod?’ Tolson pulled the flaps down and came in. He felt the bike a moment then warmed his hands round the lamp, sitting on his bed next to the girl. ‘How long are you planning on staying? We’ve had a long day today.’
The shadow fell on them both, uniting them in a frantic pattern of cuts and slashes. The girl hardly moved in the bizarre web of shadow.
Tolson leaned past her and wound up the portable and put the needle on the record he had played that morning. Leonard suddenly got under his blankets, lay down and covered himself. His face was almost concealed.
The girl asked Tolson for a cigarette. She lit it in the broad flame cupped in Tolson’s hands. They listened to the music a moment, then she said, ‘Can’t you play it softer?’ She smoked inexpertly, her mouth full of smoke.
‘It won’t go any softer, mate. Put a coat over it if it annoys you.’
‘No. It doesn’t annoy me.’ She poured smoke from her mouth. ‘It’s cold.’
Tolson lay down. ‘Come under the blankets,’ he said.
‘No.’ She stood up suddenly. ‘I’ll go with your friend.’
She didn’t look at Leonard. She sat quite casually on his bed and carefully pushed her legs down. At first he made some resistance to her intrusion, then she slid down quite easily beside him.
Tolson turned over the record, replaced the needle, and wrapped himself in his blanket. He hooded it over his head. The girl was looking across at him, holding her cigarette away from the blankets. ‘Are you married?’ she said.
‘I am.’
‘Is your friend?… Are you married?’
Tolson laughed. She turned to look at Leonard’s head beside her. It was scarcely visible within the shadow of the blanket.
‘What’s up with that?’ she asked. ‘Is he divorced or something?’
‘No. I was just laughing. He lives at home does Len.’
‘Do you, Len?’ she asked.
She moved her face against his cheek. ‘Don’t you like me?’ When he didn’t reply she added, ‘If you talk and I press me head against yours like this I can hear it inside your head. Have you ever tried it? You listen as I talk,’ she went on as Tolson laughed again.
Leonard didn’t move. She put her arm across him, moving it down beneath the blankets.
Suddenly the tent-flap moved, and the next moment it was clumsily flung back.
The girl cried out. She screamed. A figure stood there, leaning in. Strangely, Leonard hadn’t moved.
It was the old man. ‘Can you put your wireless down?’ he said bitterly. ‘I can’t get to sleep because of it.’
‘Sorry, love.’ Tolson leaned out of the blanket and lifted the needle off the record.
They were silent. They could see the man’s face now, old, like a rock. He stood in the darkness outside the tent for some time, and for a moment they heard the dog scenting the canvas somewhere close to their heads.
Tolson said, ‘Do you want to come in?’
‘No. No. It’s all right. I’m just off to bed.’ It was as if he’d forgotten his complaint.
They could see him for a moment beyond the tent flap as he moved away. The girl was sobbing.
‘It’s all right,’ Leonard said. His voice was distant and calm.
‘It’s the old lad from across the field,’ Tolson said. ‘He died last week but nobody bothered to tell him.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She was breathless. ‘Just coming like that.’
‘She thought it was her brother,’ said Leonard quietly.
‘Is it late?’ the girl said.
‘Nay, but you’ll stay the night now,’ Tolson told her.
‘But I can’t.’
‘It’s all right. We’ll look after you.’
‘I can’t. I can’t.’ She didn’t recognise his humour.
‘Len won’t mind. He’ll put you up.’
‘No. I’ll have to go. I’ve been sitting here an hour for you already.’ She drew up her legs in the bed, full of some private misery. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ She looked at Tolson.
Suddenly he stood up. ‘I’ll see you back,’ he said, then added to Leonard when it seemed he might get up, ‘No. You stay here. No good two of us getting cold.… Come on, I’ll see you to the gate, then you can run up from there.’
She climbed out from beside Leonard and smoothed down her skirt.
‘Good night, then, Len,’ she said from the door. Her voice was light, relieved.
Leonard lay back. He listened to the soft thud of their feet in the grass, the occasional slur as they walked through the ashes, then the quiet murmur of their fading voices.
The night was completely still. A soft illumination from outside flowed over the tent, draining the heavy shadow of the bike on the roof. The light on the tent paused, faded, and the roof sagged a moment in shadow. The canvas lightened as the cloud drew off the moon.
The bed creaked as he stood up. He listened, his hands clenched and his arms held stiffly by his sides. He moved to the door, paused, then hurriedly pushed his way out.
The field was vast in moonlight. He ran a few steps then spun round and stared at the tent as if it were an animal he’d flung from his back. The place was still and deserted. He walked up and down a few moments. All round him was a frozen sea, glowing with the soft light. The waves of the tents splayed up luminously and smoothly to the curving swell of the moors, looming and lined by the dark, ragged edges of the rock. The gigantic sea was drawn up to the sky, pinned by the moon, large and pallid. Nothing broke the stillness. It was a room.
The gate leading to the lane was open. White, and silvered with lime dust, the lane curved into the pitched shadows of the trees. It was deserted. He walked up towards the houses, his boots crunching like a giant, far off, walking on the moors.
Two strands of light glowed above his head. Long threads, they stretched delicately between and through the leaves, piercing the branches. Somewhere down the valley a vehicle had turned. Its lights caught the wires. The filaments burned in the darkness, quivering, then slowly disappeared. He stopped, and turned back.
The tents and the rocks crouched like monuments in the crook of the valley. He stood at the gate.
‘Vic!’
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br /> The sound burst and broke on the walls of the valley. Above the trees rose the stump of the castle, sharp and isolated on the shoulder of rock. Its broken pinnacle grazed the sky. Shadows poured across its buttressed wall as a cloud slid from the moon.
‘Vic!’
The sound rose like a scream. Out of the valley side, by the castle, a shape floated. Soundless, without a movement, it glided out and up, over the field, larger and blacker, formless in the faint light. It rustled over his head, a thin wafting sound, like wood pounding the air.
‘Vic!’
He ran back to the tent. The lamp smelt acrid, at the end of its fuel. He pulled the flap down, pegged it securely, and got into bed, covering himself with the blankets. The redness suddenly faded and the shadow of the bike, spreadeagled on the roof, wavered. The lamp went out. He closed his eyes and curled into himself, and after a while he no longer moved at all.
Yet he was not asleep when, some time later, Tolson pushed his way through the flap, tearing it. He swore.
‘What’ve you pegged the bloody thing for?’
‘Where have you been?’
Tolson groped about exaggeratedly in the dark, swearing to himself. He made a great deal of noise.
‘Where’s the bloody lamp gone?’ He was deliberately aggrieved.
‘It went out. Some time ago.’
Tolson pushed past his bike and reached his bed. His foot crunched on the gramophone. ‘Have you been asleep?’ he said, suddenly indulgent. ‘I took a stroll round after I left her.’
‘Didn’t you see her home?’
‘Just to the gate. Then she ran off like the wind.’
Tolson’s smell filled the tent. He lay down quickly, covering himself. The bike leaned between them.
Leonard, trembling and in tears, pulled the blanket over his head and turned to sleep.
9
The bell from the church was ringing for morning service as the three red lorries and the 15 cwt. truck, preceded by Ewbank’s Armstrong Siddeley, dipped into the field. They parked in a loose line across the centre of the arena. The men began to climb out and stare confusedly at the flattened field. The doors on Ewbank’s car, however, remained firmly closed.
The showground had been destroyed. Canvas, poles, screening, ropes and stakes were scattered over the grass and the beaten earth as though from some giant disembowelling. The men stood by their vehicles too astonished, it seemed, to approach.
From the single surviving tent at the top of the field Leonard suddenly emerged. For a moment he stood quite still, gazing round at the scene. Then, only gradually, did he seem to become aware of the vehicles and the silent crowd of men. The door on Ewbank’s car was slowly pushed open. A moment later the contractor’s tall, black figure uncoiled from the opening.
He looked up towards Leonard, waiting. The men had turned in his direction too. Leonard approached them very slowly.
‘Well?’ Ewbank said.
‘Tolson’s gone.’
Ewbank watched him. He made no attempt to examine the tents. The sheets of canvas flapped loosely in a light breeze, stirring against the ground.
‘He must have done this,’ Leonard added.
For a while Ewbank didn’t answer. He stared intently at Leonard. Then he glanced up swiftly, almost blindly, at the men.
‘You mean Tolson took all these down by himself?’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it. Not for a minute.’
The expression in his reddened eyes expanded. He gazed at Leonard a moment longer, struggling to interpret the feeling in that intensely pale face, then he looked away at the tents. The smoke from his cheroot curled idly round his eyes. The men began to gather more closely about their employer.
He felt in his top suit pocket and brought out his glasses, putting them on to regard each detail freshly through the frameless lenses.
‘And where’s Victor God Almighty Tolson now?’
‘I don’t know.’
He glanced sharply to the top of the field. Their small blackened tent billowed slightly in the wind. He took off his glasses.
‘How do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I haven’t seen him at all this morning.’
‘But what the bloody hell. I mean, what’ve you been doing all the time? What’s been happening?’ He shouted now the thing took possession of him.
‘The Show went off all right. But it was like this when I got up just now. When I heard the lorries.’
The men had drawn up in a half-circle. Some of them started to smoke.
‘He must have done it very early. I never heard him. He’s taken his bike and gone.’
Ewbank’s small hands unfastened the buttons of his suit jacket. He seemed imprisoned by his inability to understand.
‘And gone where?’
‘Home. Back to town. I don’t know.’
‘And what were you doing all this time?’
‘We’d a heavy day yesterday. We took down all the small tents last night.’
It seemed that Ewbank grew smaller, diminished by his rage. Desperate to take some sort of advantage he stood with his long legs firmly astride and his fist clenched round his glasses in some vague gesture of threat. Yet Leonard regarded him almost calmly, with a dark, blank look.
‘You expect me to believe that one man took all this down? God in heaven, what do you think I am, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Whatever’s happened I don’t see how all your shouting can help.’ There was now a torn grievance in Leonard’s voice.
‘You don’t!’ Ewbank’s figure sprang apart, his arms flung out at the tents, as though he had been plucked from the air. ‘I’ve got five … six thousand poundsworth of tenting laid up in this field and if there’s as much as a footprint laid on it I’ll make sure … you and Tolson.’ He stared desperately at Leonard, demandingly, unable to express the extent of his feelings.
‘I feel bad enough about it myself.’
‘You do.…’ Ewbank turned away. ‘I just don’t understand this. Nobody could sleep through a thing like this. Nobody!’ He stared at the fawn brilliance of his car with stifled rage.
‘We didn’t get to sleep until late.’
‘Till late. I see … I just don’t understand, that’s all. I employ a mindless bloody gorilla on the one hand and a mental defective on the other. And nobody tells me. How the bloody hell am I supposed to know? Why on God’s earth.…’ He put away his glasses, then took the cheroot from his mouth and dropped it in the mud. He examined it for a while, then closed his small shoe over it and spread it evenly over the ground. ‘Wait here.’
He began to walk over to the nearest stretch of canvas. He turned round.
‘That means all of you standing there. Every single one of you. Look where you’re standing, where your fucking feet are – now look! And bloody well stay there.’
He strode over to the canvas and lifted the nearest edge. He examined it carefully, peering round at the deflated surface of the tent then passing on, lifting and examining each section.
Leonard followed him at a distance, looking at the canvas. A gust of wind swept under the tenting and it throbbed into smooth, uneven waves, a flapping corrugation. Ewbank watched it come to life with the same impotent expression. He wiped his face and his neck with a white handkerchief, crisp and unstained. All this evidence of fantastic industry had to mean something.
Leonard passed each of the corpses and saw that there was no mutilation, no deliberate damage at all. Despite the impression of destruction, it was obvious that the tents had not been wildly collapsed but brought down methodically and with prodigious industry. Tolson must have worked with maniacal speed to lower each marquee uniformly, rushing from pole to pole to regulate the weight of descent evenly on the pulleys, unlacing the sheets of canvas and disengaging the guys so that nothing would be torn; the intensity and ferocity of his work lay everywhere, giant-like, purposeless, impossible. It was too huge, too carefully done.
‘It’s obvious enough,’ Ewbank sa
id more calmly. He recognised the skill in the work. ‘This is the work of a madman.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You admit you helped him, then?’
‘No. I only got up a few minutes ago. When I heard the lorries.’
‘All right, then.’ Ewbank took out a cheroot and lit it carefully, his eyes intent on the flame. He threw the match away with the same care. ‘If I believe that, then this is insanity.’ He stared at him demandingly, almost curious now. ‘You can’t tell me that that’s normal. Not any of it. It’s done by someone who’s insane, is that.’ He gestured aggrievedly at the sprawled mass of the beer marquee. The men had come up to examine the tents for themselves; they watched Leonard and Ewbank suspiciously. ‘Come on, then, I want an explanation.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘No. And I’m not surprised. I know what’s behind all this.’ He fed the men’s looks; they watched Leonard aloofly.
‘There’s no damage,’ Leonard said slowly. ‘The tents haven’t been harmed.’ His dark eyes had widened with reproach.
‘No.’ Ewbank stressed his leniency. Smoke drifted from his mouth. ‘And who do I have to thank for that?’ He waited some time for Leonard to answer. The men moved uneasily, glancing at the tents with new suspicion. ‘Come on. What have you and Tolson been up to here together?’
A man laughed and for a second Ewbank’s face relaxed, his eyes narrowing as though unknown to him they were smiling. He almost physically projected his distaste. Leonard’s face had taken on a claustrophobic expression. He seemed stifled, turning away.
Ewbank watched him walk back to the tent. He blew his nose, dabbing it cautiously with his crisp handkerchief. Then, turning briskly, he set the men to work packing the marquees and loading the trucks. They were on double time and half the day’s work had already been done.
‘Radcliffe.…’ Ewbank went over to the tent. He glanced in a moment, then stepped back alertly. ‘You better leave off packing your things and go down to the latrines. I see he didn’t bother to take them down. And no wonder.’ As Leonard emerged he lowered his voice and added, ‘Since you put them up you’ll know how they come down. I’ll send Shaw down to give you a hand.’ He had intended to sound lenient, but Leonard was already walking away.