by David Storey
For a while Leonard worked alone. He took down the screening round the Men’s and rolled it up. Then he sat under the hedge and waited.
Shaw was slow. When he came he glanced at the hessian screening the Ladies, and sat down under the hedge a short distance away and rolled a cigarette. He was old, and disinterested. His thick, square hands folded the cigarette and his tongue crept out from his angular face to lick the gum; the edge was pressed down, secured, and stroked flat by heavy thumbs. Then he lit the loose strands carelessly, the narrow cigarette flaming, and from his boiler suit pockets he brought a small piece of metal and a file. He worked with a peculiar delicacy at the metal, shaping it to some design embedded deeply within his broad skull.
Once, he glanced up the field to where Ewbank supervised the loading. Then he continued his filing. The smoke streamed past his eyes. After a while he said, ‘Thy mate’s pissed it up this time all right. We had a good twelve hours today and now we’ll be back before three o’clock.’ He put his file down and re-lit his cigarette. ‘Then he sends me down on this job.’ His fingers held the stub tightly to his mouth while he smoked it fiercely to a rind, worrying it with his lips, then throwing it away with a gasp as the heat touched his fingers. He spat out the shreds in the front of his mouth, and filed more carefully along the sharp edge of the metal.
Leonard stood up and went over to the latrines. Shaw glanced up the field once more towards Ewbank, saw the contractor gazing in his direction, and got up. He slid the file and metal into separate pockets, buttoned up his overalls completely, blew his nose through his fingers, stooped forward, and after a while followed Leonard to the screening.
The latrines seethed with flies. In the cubicles clouds hovered and droned over each zinc can: the air was solid, the liquid surface separate, composite nests of insects.
Shaw stopped in the muddy entrance, taken by surprise at the mechanical droning, his face screwed up, his hands rising to the sides of his head. He twisted round as if caught by his feet. Flies detached themselves to muzzle his face, settling on his shoulders and covering his hands. He pushed against the screening, mistaking the door, then fell back to the entrance and ran towards the hedge. He bent over and spat. Insects mounted like a curtain over his head. He doubled up and retched, then pulled a rag from his overalls and wiped his burning face. He sat down, drawing himself into the shadow of the hedge and wiping his eyes and his mouth. His hand was held against his stomach and he belched with a deep, stricken rasp. He shook his head and was sick between his legs.
Leonard sat by the hedge and waited. Unaffected by the insects he sat watching the older man, a hardness and resignation about him which, for that moment, made his figure seem in some way much bigger.
Shaw had pushed himself backwards, feeling in his pocket at the same time and bringing out another rag. He wiped his face then tried to clean his overalls.
‘Do you want any help?’ Leonard said. Shaw sucked hard at the air then held his arm coolly to his forehead and shook his head. He knelt silently for a while, self-absorbed, alternately wiping his eyes and his mouth. When he stood up he stared round unseeingly at the field and the valley with a perplexed look, coughing and pulling out his tobacco. He rolled a cigarette, then lit it, smoking quickly and fiercely. After a while he bent down and snatched handfuls of grass and wiped down his boiler suit. The stooping was too much; he sat down and did it more slowly.
Leonard went back to the latrine and unhooked the canvas doors from the cubicles, flinging them out over the screening. He worked his way back along the row, ripping the hessian from the tacks and bundling it in his arms until he could force it out between the laths. Soon there was just the bare scaffolding standing, held together by binding and stakes. Each can was full, spilled over, droning with insects. They hung in an unsettled cloud, black and pulsating in their murmurous rise and fall. The ground had been pulped into a brown grassless mud as if within the tiny space an hysterical herd had been endlessly confined. Leonard worked with quick, efficient movements, aided by a peculiar resignation to the place.
Shaw still sat under the hedge smoking, crouched forward in a forgetful, absent way.
‘You’d better move,’ Leonard said. ‘I’m going to pitch the cans in there.’
Shaw stood up and walked down the field towards the river; then he stopped, reminded of something, and turned to watch as Leonard picked up the buckets. He walked quickly, stiff-legged, staggering with the weight of the two cans and, flinging them forward, sprang back as the liquid splashed into the ditch. He pulled his boots through the grass, coughing, and wiped his face.
‘Come on, Shaw. You’ve to give me a hand.’
‘I’m not going near.’
‘I better tell Ewbank that, then,’ and he started up the field.
‘It’s my belly,’ Shaw called. ‘I can’t stand the smell.’
‘Are you going to help me?’
‘Oh, God.’ Shaw turned round and kicked the ground. ‘God blind these bleeding, dirty, sodding, stinking women!’ He fingered the metal parts in his pocket and with his free arm brushed the flies from his head.
‘I’m not doing it on my own.’
‘Aye, well.’ Shaw narrowed his eyes, drawing up emotion. Both hands now rested in his pockets. ‘That’s just like you. And don’t give me that. I know your sort. Soft-arsing it around to everybody who’s got a bit and when it comes to somebody like me – that!’ He spat out sideways and unintentionally it went a long way. ‘You and that Tolson pillock. He never took them tents down by himself – you’re nothing but a bloody liar, man.’
‘I’ll give you a minute to get the cans in your hand.’
‘I’m not frightened of work. Don’t worry. I’m a workman.’ He went over to them and tried to lift one in each hand. But feeling the weight of the first he contented himself with that, grasping the handle in his left hand while his right groped at the air. He stopped half way to the hedge, his face turned from the pollution. He changed hands, then tried to carry the can in both. When he tipped it into the ditch he kicked it savagely, pulling his feet wildly through the grass before he ran backwards.
Leonard returned, lifted two more cans and gasping with their weight walked stiffly to the ditch and plunged them in. He wiped his boots and sat down, nervously exhausted.
‘Come on, Shaw.’
‘You know what you can do, bloody hell.’ He felt round in his pockets but found nothing. ‘I’ll tell you how to get shut of these.’
He strode over to the cans, put his foot against the rim of the nearest and pushed it over. The flies roared up like a black flame. Before Leonard could move he’d done the same to the remainder, crashing them in all directions despite their weight.
The liquid spread in a slow pool round the posts and stakes, flooding the shallow declivities. Shaw had started to run back, but he stopped to watch it.
‘I don’t know why you didn’t do it with all of them,’ he said. He fingered the shapes in his pocket and stared at the expanding pool with blank fascination. Leonard had crouched forward over his knees: he stared at the fresh grass by his feet.
When Ewbank came, he stood gazing at the patch for some time, his black neatly dressed figure standing by it as if unaware of the cloud that throbbed round his head and threatened to envelop him. Then he said, ‘Who’s responsible for this?’
‘Shaw.’ Leonard had stood up; he had rolled the hessian into tight piles and now he watched Ewbank listlessly.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s down by the river. He says he feels sick.’
‘Sick … Christ. What an absolute lousy stinking bloody sodding shit.’ He seemed unable to drag his eyes from the odorous ground. ‘Why for Christ’s sake … God in heaven.’
‘He kicked them over before I could move. I tried to get him to help me.’
Ewbank glanced away over the fields to the line of hills. A saloon car rocked its way through the gate and into the field, accelerating alertly until it pulled up alongs
ide Ewbank’s Armstrong Siddeley. Wetherby got out with the two women who had accompanied him the day before. He was dressed in a dark lounge suit and the two women wore pale, flower-patterned frocks and silk scarves. It was a warm day. They had probably just come from church and were chatting amicably.
Ewbank went to meet them, turning away abruptly and calling back, ‘Radcliffe, get as much down as you can … Shaw.…’ He added something which Leonard couldn’t hear.
Ewbank met the party half way down the field and led them back up to where the trucks were loading. They stood talking and laughing, watching the men work.
Leonard dragged the upturned cans to the ditch and left them to drain. The scaffolding was difficult to dislodge; the knots and binding were so tightly pulled together that his knife wouldn’t sink through them. For a while he sawed at the lashings, then he stepped back, uprooted a guy-line and hauled the assemblage down.
It creaked, two wooden limbs cracked and the white splintered wood was left upright in the dark pool. The ropes groaned as the long wooden legs fell over, splayed out on their side, pointing gawkily into the air. The flies drove upwards in wild spirals. The structure lay in the pool, its long, stiffened limbs drooping slowly to the ground. Leonard tried to drag it from the pool, but under the surface of the liquid it was still secured. It wouldn’t move.
He went down to the river and washed his hands and arms, then his face. He rinsed his boots. Further along he could see the top of Shaw’s head as he sat in the long grass. He’d rolled another cigarette, and from the silent movements of his head he was working at the piece of metal with his file. Shaw had a hobby of making model railway engines.
Wetherby was standing by the site of the latrines when Leonard got back. The two women stood with him and from their attitude it was obvious that they’d come upon the pollution by accident. Ewbank stood away from it as if his distance served as apology. None of them moved as they stared at the wooden framework in the pool. Beyond, the men had started to drift towards them, drawn by the stillness of the four people and by the stench that had begun to spread across the field. No one spoke. No one looked at the spot directly but gave it sharp hurried glances, identifying the mounds of solid floating in the liquid, the stained pieces of cloth, and half sunken sheets of paper.
Soon they had all drifted to this part of the field. The flies were denser, gyrating over the expanding sludge with a drone that could be heard through the entire field. Wetherby had averted his eyes as if by his look alone he could escape from the scene. The men had begun to glance uneasily at the women, their looks moving from the pool to their two figures. One of the women smoothed down her flowered frock, paused as if she would go on standing there, then walked back up the field. Her companion returned the looks of the men. They peered at her heavily. For a moment she stroked her bare arm, then she turned too and suddenly walked away with particularly clumsy movements.
Ewbank strode across to Leonard. ‘This gentleman here tells me that Tolson was riding his motor-bike through the tents.…’ Wetherby had turned at the voice. His single eye looked out of focus, deranged.
‘There’s some ash,’ he said to Ewbank. ‘You can scrape it out of the ruts and spread it over.’ He started to walk lifelessly up the field. ‘Oh, and four of those cans are mine,’ he added. The two women stood waiting for him by the car.
Ewbank shouted at the men: he set two of them with shovels to cover the area and to dig out the broken scaffolding. Leonard went to the tent and started taking it down and packing his and Tolson’s things. Wetherby held the door of his car for the women to climb in. The door banged and the car jolted its way to the gate, a cork bouncing on the waves. In the middle of the field Ewbank was supervising the loading by signs rather than shouting, occasionally looking up without expression at the tent where Leonard worked.
When he called for lunch the men left the lorries quickly, jumping down and running to the 15 cwt. truck and taking their bags. They climbed over into the next field and bedded themselves down in the straw.
Leonard had gone into the long grass under the hedge by the road and lain down. He hadn’t any food. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. A shadow fell over him, and he found Enid standing there dressed in a suit slightly too large for her.
‘Where’s Vic?’ She held several flowers separately in her hand from which she plucked petals. ‘I had to go to church this morning. I came on as soon as I could.’
She stared down at him with the same curiosity as the night before; then she glanced at the lorries, deserted and strung across the field like animals grazing. ‘Where’s Vic, Len?’
She said it so emptily that it appeared to echo his own feelings and he sat up.
‘I think you better go,’ he said. ‘The men are here today. Vic’s gone.’
‘On his bike?… I got into a row with our Alan. But he didn’t know. Where I’d been, I mean.’
‘I think you’d better go.’
She stared down at him reproachfully, moving forward slightly as if she might step on his narrow body. ‘Why’s Vic gone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How d’you mean? Where’s he gone, Len?’
‘Look – go away!’
She stood watching him. Then she kicked him, but lightly as if in the middle of the blow she’d been suppressed. ‘It’s right what he said about you last night.’
He didn’t move, and she started walking slowly away. The smell from the lower end of the field had strengthened. It pervaded the whole of the showground. The girl’s head lifted.
‘Will you give him a message when you see him?’ she called back. ‘That I love him.’ She waited. ‘Will you tell him?’
Leonard lay back in the grass. Through the long blades he could see Ewbank in the front seat of his car, having his lunch. The white mask turned as the girl went to the gate. Another patch of white moved as he brought a sandwich up to his face, then the red of his Thermos.
Enid had reached the edge of the field. She looked back and saw Leonard still lying in the grass. She stood gazing in at the men in the next field, then walked on up the lane as a man called from the houses.
Shaw had come up from the river and taken his bag out of the truck. He sat in its shade, his back against the rear wheel. The sun was now very hot; flights of midges hovered round the edges of the field and in the shadows. As he ate his sandwiches he stroked his file over the pointed strip of steel.
‘What did I tell you?’ he said to Leonard who’d suddenly come down to stand near him. ‘Nobody puts one over me.’
‘I’ll have to try it myself next time.’
‘You?’ He ate his sandwich and from a lemonade bottle swallowed cold tea. He picked up his file. ‘I’ve watched you. You’ll get nowhere in life. You’re like an open book to me. So’s Tolson, the big ape. And that Jewish pillock over there.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘They’re all bleeding Jews. And don’t come with that. You’re an open book. You’re after one of these sandwiches, aren’t you?’ He laughed genially and pleasantly. ‘Well … how about this one?’ He held out an egg and tomato sandwich in the flat of his hand, and when Leonard moved to take it he screwed it up like paper. Tomato seeds and a yellow pulp seeped between his large fingers. ‘You can’t have it!’ He laughed. His teeth were set widely apart in his mouth.
‘I wouldn’t want it,’ Leonard said. ‘You’ve got that filth all over your hands.’
Shaw glanced at them briefly, then put down his file and the strip of metal and held out his hands. ‘I’ve washed them in the river, so that’s a lie for a start.’ He gazed up at him triumphantly. ‘They’re cleaner than yours, so you can’t catch me with that. God Christ, Radcliffe, you’re as thick as they come. What was that Ewbank said …?’ He laughed genially and casually, looking down for his file. ‘What’ve you been doing the last few days, then? Stuffing it into old Tolson’s chocolate box? Rooting it about amongst the raspberry creams?’
As he half t
urned away Leonard suddenly kicked the strip of metal under the rear of the truck. Shaw, turning back, felt for it. His fingers groped in the grass.
‘Where’s it gone? That bit of linking?’
‘It’s under the truck.’
Shaw bent down and reached for it quickly, with a surprising energy, his legs kicking out. Leonard picked up the packet of sandwiches and put them inside his shirt. As Shaw’s head came up Leonard said, ‘I’m going down to the river. Are you coming?’
Shaw shook his head smilingly at him. ‘Not likely. Not with all that mess down there.… Go on. You go. You’ll feel more at home with all that.’
When Leonard reached the site of the latrines he looked back. Shaw was standing by the truck, searching for his lunch. Leonard held the packet up for him to see.
Shaw started forward, shouting, then paused as Leonard went to one of the cans and with his foot tipped it upright from the ditch. He held up the sandwiches, picked out the first and dropped it in. Shaw didn’t move. The file and metal part were still in his hand. Leonard dropped in the sandwiches one by one, the slices of egg and tomato falling in separately as the bread came apart in the air. There was a small bun with currants in, and he dropped that in last.
Shaw walked slowly down the field. He went to the can and looked in at his sandwiches and the bun. He examined them in silence, his eyes moving slightly. Then he turned round and walked across to Leonard. He stepped through the pool of sewage, the flies rising lethargically round his head. His large boots collected wedges of black mud.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said, so quietly that at first Leonard didn’t hear. Shaw peered at him fixedly with strangely narrowed eyes. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ His head shook from side to side. ‘It’ll bring more trouble down on you than ever you realised. I’m sorry for you now.’ A heavy smell rose from him; it encased his words and breath. ‘You’ll be sorry. I’ve warned you.’ His face relaxed as if assuaged by violence.