The Everlasting Sunday

by Robert Lukins

  Following a hedgerow that became a tall thicket at a valley’s floor, they rounded a corner and a river of green glass came into view, twenty yards across at its narrowest point. It was a mirror threatening with honesty; snow pushed right to the edge, leaving a dark cuff of soil for the last few inches. Radford had known only the Thames and when that slowed to reflect its city it could never stay a clear picture. Always a pre-emptive blur of motion.

  Brass barked against the silence and the troop gathered at the armless trunk of a downed tree.

  ‘Pass, pass,’ he said and the bottles went around.

  ‘No.’ Rich knitted himself. ‘We wait ’til we get there. We always wait.’

  ‘Christ’s sake.’ Brass brought an uncorked bottle to his face, squinted through the mouthful and let out a pained, operatic aah. ‘This is proper rank.’

  Rich replied with a clown’s gesture.

  ‘He has a little man in the village,’ West said, tapping Radford. ‘Fixes us up.’

  ‘Top shelf.’ Rich examined his bottle and had a secret sniff. ‘Real deal.’

  Radford took his turn and had to summon all his will to keep from ejecting it across the unready ground. His breath kept the smell of petrol and old flowers. In time the pain, though, turned to warmth and ran the length of his body, pooling in his boots.

  ‘Well, I’m waiting ’til we’re there,’ Rich insisted, retucking his arms and walking ahead along the bank.

  They corked and fell in behind.

  From high above, where fates were decided, these boys appeared as helpless as they truly were. Winter’s show was so great and rare it too could only wonder at what it was getting away with. These lonely humans here, these children, were like currants to be pressed into the cake’s surface.

  Winter explored its creation, in every direction white, flying on its arrows through the spaces in trees and animals. The molecules of the air grew slow, longing to dance no more. Blood and sap tightened. Now would be the time for charity, for the granting of hope, but these were the same prideful mortals that took pleasure from defeating Winter so mercilessly. They were so quick with their fire and salt and showed no regret. These boys imagining themselves conquering miles, they pushed only deeper into the trap. Winter wondered who would miss them and how long it would take for others to follow with their shovels. Yes, it could bury them now and perhaps that would be the form charity would take, putting an end to their troubles.

  Or it could have these boys prove themselves. Their own people saw them as errors. What would these children make of the true cold – would they still think it something to be corrected?

  Winter would watch on for now. There was no risk of missing its chance, for Winter always returned.

  Radford had been eyeing the flight of a curious bird that had escorted them the last hundred yards. It would skit back and forth, inches above their heads, landing in the crook of a branch or beside a slushy pool. The field flattened and the bird flew ahead, perching at last on a dark headstone that rose from the snow. A cemetery materialised.

  Rich strode over the knee-high fence. It was solemnly rusted and missing in several places and Radford followed over its hopeless spikes. The others became animated at the arrival. Snowballs flew once again and applause rose as Rich failed to resist one down the back of his jacket.

  ‘Always me,’ he said, shaking the ice free. ‘So predictable.’

  Brass lit a cigarette and offered it. Rich looked on dubiously, but accepted it and made sounds of hardened thanks as another was lit and matches passed. Walking around a leaning cross, only fairly sure he was between the graves, Radford waited for someone to explain. No headstone remained true, with all fallen or on their way to it, and made more derelict by the clean snow.

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘A wake,’ West said, lowering the bottle into Radford’s hands. ‘Like we said.’

  West scamped along the row and bent himself to the inscriptions, straining at their scratched letters. Ahead, Lewis called out.

  ‘Fanny Glenacre?’

  ‘Done her.’

  ‘Norman, ah. Norman Green?’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Richard Pecker?’

  Lewis and Rich faced one another, unsure.

  ‘Yes, done the chap,’ Brass said drearily through his cloud. ‘Lewis called him Dick Pecker. It was a riot, I’m surprised you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Abraham Butcher,’ West said. ‘We haven’t done Butcher.’ He waited for confirmation, the others shrugged, so he rubbed hard at the stone. ‘Abraham Butcher. Asleep. May the 2nd, 1856.’ He uncorked and looked into the distance as if in a pantomime. ‘Abraham,’ he started, redirecting his gaze downwards and shaking his head solemnly.

  Radford cursed and stalked back through their footsteps. They could keep their wake and its private joke and he would give not one ounce of a damn. As he reached the fence his haste managed to snag his trouser. Yanking against what must have been the only stable section of the miserable relic he was sent facewards into the drift. Laughter sprang from behind him, joined by the crunch of footfalls. Hands lifted him upright and it was West, brushing his chest.

  ‘Don’t take offence. It’s a game.’

  ‘I’m not offended.’ Radford pulled again at his ankle and the fabric tore with a gratifying rip. ‘I just want plain speaking.’

  ‘I’m sorry, look.’ West flung his arms out, crucifying himself against the air. ‘It’s just a silly game and you’re part of it, not the butt.’

  Radford let his brow fall into slow acquiescence and they returned to the group.

  ‘It’s an act of kindness.’ West took his place at the top of a rounded headstone, his boot heels dangling against its inscribed face. ‘These poor devils are left out here alone. All unremembered, forgotten.’

  ‘So we drink.’ Brass raised his bottle.

  ‘We commemorate,’ West corrected. ‘We celebrate and in doing so we remember them.’ He addressed Radford again. ‘We tell the plain stories of plain people, gone untold for too long. Abraham Butcher, as Rich was about to remind us, was an honourable man.’

  Rich peered fretfully skywards, rubbing his upper arms. ‘We should go back,’ he said. ‘It’s turning.’

  There was the moaning of unsympathetic cattle.

  ‘Jesus, okay,’ Rich said. ‘Abraham Butcher was … well, a great man.’

  An ovation of screeches and saluting. West imitated a horn. Brass held three cigarettes between his lips.

  ‘A courageous man,’ Rich continued. ‘Though modest, of course. Take his exploits at the battle of … the battle of …’

  Radford was visited by a slideshow: the motorway drive with his uncle, the humiliation of the piano, Teddy’s false Oak, the game these boys held out of reach. Impulse had tapped the juice of Radford’s anger too easily. He would remember that his defence lay in retreat and he would deny himself to all others but when he deemed it profitable. He would show himself now, all so his absence could be more keenly known.

  ‘Patootie Ridge,’ Radford said, finishing Rich’s thought.

  Small laughter sent eavesdropping birds into flight. Rich waved his hand to signal that the floor was on offer.

  ‘The battle of Patootie Ridge,’ Radford affirmed.

  ‘Which war, remind me?’

  He spoke in a full and strange voice. ‘The Boer,’ Radford said. ‘The second of the Boer Wars. He’d been dead for, what, forty years by that point? Precisely why his exploits were just so remarkable. And worth remembering.’

  The audience raised their drink.

  ‘He’d been on the sauce too,’ Radford said. ‘That’s a fact so few realise about Abraham’s actions that day. Hot as hell in Africa, especially for a Midlands man. Couldn’t start the day without a gin and tonic and on this particular one he’d dealt with the best of his platoon’s sha
re before the sun rose to forty-five degrees. Proper elephant’s trunk he was and that’s probably why he was brandishing all three of those rifles and wearing two helmets when he led the unexpected first charge over the peak.’

  Even Rich was applauding now between glances into the murderous sky. Brass lost all pretence and West’s eyes turned to water. Radford was going to give them both barrels.

  ‘They didn’t expect it,’ he said, now standing, the battle re-enacting. ‘The Republicans. They had not counted on our Abraham prancing over the hill, arms full of guns, wearing no trousers. Caught them off guard, it did. Must have been an exalted sight, Abraham, all red-faced and bare-bottomed. He’d taken out fifty men, three horses and one unfortunate aardvark before the enemy even considered a counter-attack. They reacted too slowly, too conventionally.

  ‘By the time options were weighed and orders given, our twin-tin-hatted champion had already legged it back over the ridge. One retaliatory shot, that’s all they got in. Our beloved Abe, his right bum grazed as he tripped over a well-concealed boulder. The author of his demise was dull old sepsis.’ Having dived over the stump of a headstone, Radford slowed his performance and walked carefully back to sit beside West. ‘Abraham Butcher,’ Radford finished. ‘Drunk, hero, Englishman.’

  ‘Drunk, hero, Englishman!’ the others recited. They cheered and all was deemed too fantastic.

  Brass stuck his drink under his arm and gave rowdy, endorsing claps. ‘I thought you was the shy one.’

  Over the forthcoming half-hour, to begin the proof of his point, Radford plunged a hand into his outer coat’s pocket, took smoke after smoke and the endlessly proffered drinks, and proceeded to say not a single word. The others made noise in his place and became an increasingly dizzy loop. It was all haze and ash and dipping foreheads, time surrendered without notice. The group grew quiet and content: even Rich was lost in contemplation. Radford and West exchanged glances, easy and unafraid.

  A bird shivered to rest on the arm of a leaning cross and in that act the world became one of consequence again. It became cold like Radford had never known. Rich made renewed threat of returning to the house and the others finally deemed him sensible.

  They were hard-going, those first steps. The boys were drunk. Abraham Butcher drunk. West had his arm around Radford’s head.

  ‘It’s all jokes, see. You’re part of it. Friends play, so we play.’

  Invisibly, Radford battled and rejoiced. To hide or confess. He gave a parting salute and hurried on as nimbly as his tragic legs could manage.

  Travelling as one, they stumbled, raised their fists and chanted.

  ‘Drunk, hero, Englishman!’

  The afternoon was spent secreting their condition from the household. When challenged they would blame their brilliant cheeks and uneasy gait on having been caught by the blizzard while attending to repairs of the chicken house. Lillian had scolded them as they tumbled gaily on the floor of her kitchen.

  ‘The state, let me smell you. Pigs, you’ve fallen in the vinegar barrel. Get away, shower and change. You offend me.’

  She had attacked Brass with a wire brush and the group dispersed. Hours later they had turned expressionless. Most hid in their rooms while Rich, unable to contend with the coop, was asleep on the floor at Radford’s bed. It was not the first time: come night Rich was passed around and protected, sleeping at the feet of beds, though in the day he had adopted a stubborn pride in occupying his quarters. Radford sat against the wall, unable to lose consciousness. His ears were hot and his muscles failed to rest. What to do with a changing mind – of intending one thing at departure and finding the vessel altered at arrival?

  The tide of night rose over the house and the sorry ones coalesced in the dining room. Radford took an aspirin offered by Brass from across the table. Foster came by as if to say something, but as he did he hit the edge of their table with his hip, spilling water from their glasses.

  ‘Damn it.’ Brass flamed with an anger that was too strong.

  Foster first apologised but then grew in courage. ‘Forget you.’

  ‘Likewise, easily done. Honestly, why can’t you vanish? I mean disappear forever.’ He brought a fist to his mouth, allowed it to blossom and blew.

  ‘Is that what you’d like?’

  ‘It is. Truly, I would be in heaven.’

  West made to start at some nursing peace but Brass shouted it down. The others turned weakly away, like this was a tired scene. Foster looked to be making some calculation of how much this would be worth as Brass rose, making an artificial climax of it.

  ‘The end of you, Foster, would be ecstasy.’

  Knowing he had lost, Foster deliberated only briefly before taking Brass’s drinking glass and smashing it against the wall. No-one but Radford flinched at the firework of water and amber shot. The explosion took with it the room’s tension as Foster retreated and Brass raised his fingers in a V, returning to his beginnings of a cigarette.

  Radford could make no decision on Brass. The boy was difficult and enviable but when it came to this elusive Foster he was cruel. There seemed to be nothing Foster could do: it had to be something already past, something corrosive between them.

  The room filled as the lusty fire lured more boys to it. Radford was with each spent day becoming more aware of the other house groupings. A boy he recognised from Manny’s lesson and five others with long, untidy hair were one. They stood in corners and talked of music, always a record in hand. They would turn it over, pointing to names on the sleeve, making claims, disputing in falsettos.

  Another clan, larger and more consuming, was staffed with boys of a striving, physical bent. They jogged, never walked. One would have a ball and the others seemed occupied only with the desire to become that boy. They would stage destructive matches in the upstairs hallway. The previous day, one of them had taken an elbow to the face and this had left a gush of blood the length of the first floor to the toilet. He was now sat close to the fire and holding court, a rim of dark purple still visible around his nostrils. This group hung from each other, their names attached to other names. Leeroy and his Devils. The Slattery brothers, walking forever down a hallway, talking forever about the Blues. Radford had to his credit only those short weeks when he had attached posters of footballers to the wall space above his bed. They had been tolerated, encouraged, until that day they were torn down amid all the screaming.

  A boy called Rabbit was standing on the centre of a table, weaving and ducking, shadow boxing and building to the delivery of the great knock-out that licensed his gang to erupt.

  He had won, Rabbit.

  Rich arrived, holding his back and temple. ‘I can’t continue. I cannot sleep on another floor or freeze out there with the bloody chickens. I’m finished.’

  He went beside Brass, who obliged with the miming of a pistol under his chin. The trigger was pulled and Rich flopped dead onto the table as Teddy stamped in.

  ‘Pigs, boys, now.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Give me quiet this one time.’ Registering the uncommon seriousness of Teddy’s tone the room turned still. ‘I am tired. Tired of boys coming to me with complaints of debt. We have spoken on this matter, you all know me on this. This house does not respect a loan. You do not lend, you do not offer security. You have obligations – great, whopping ones – but these are never financial. The making of debt mocks your duty to each other.’

  The fire roared on, hissing as its flames discovered moisture. Eyes drew down and Brass gave Teddy a discomfited blink of concession.

  ‘As of now,’ Teddy said, ‘any debt you boys are currently holding between each other is doubled. Hear me? Doubled. And reversed.’

  Cries and protestations.

  Teddy only reaffirmed his command, waving down the noise. ‘Any not abiding can pack a case. Let this be the bloody end.’ He left for the stairs.

  Brass ran his fingers through Rich
’s hair. ‘That splendid whisky, how much did I owe you?’

  Rich pushed one fist into the table, the other into his mouth.

  It was three in the morning: three hours, Radford reminded himself, into the reincarnated New Year. Midnight had come with subdued but contented revelry, Teddy having lightened. He allowed a nip for each resident from two dusty bottles of King’s Ginger that he had presented ten minutes out from twelve. It was strange, spicy stuff but the boys took it graciously, all relieved that his earlier huff had cooled.

  Outside, the wind was wrathful and keeping the house in a constant shake. Tiles and shutters kept up an unremitting chorus as frigid air rushed through the rooms, having found some new and stealthy way inside. Despite this, Teddy had been convinced by Lillian that postponing the New Year for a second time would set an unhelpful precedent. He grew steadily merrier as the night proceeded until in a flash of shushing and excitement he called for all to gather around. He went to the side of the fireplace, where on a small table was a reel-to-reel machine and his radio.

  ‘Manny very kindly made a recording of last night’s broadcast. Seems the rest of the world carried on.’

  Careful adjustments were confirmed. Manny pushed a button and the room was called to attention by a loud clunk, then a beginning of static.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, in a few moments you can hear Big Ben ringing out the old year and ringing in the new.’

  There was the tune of Ben’s chimes and its dozen bongs, separated by a reverential pause. Teddy struck a fist into the air with each, as though this were all a plan of his devising and going fabulously. After the twelfth note the recorded choir started desperately into ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Teddy tried to enlist an ensemble but the boys booed the proposition and returned to their conversations and the last residue of King’s Ginger. The adults joined Teddy’s song. Lillian, Manny and those staying to give lessons: the historian and the accountant. Farmer Gall was tending the fire, the man now properly steeped and turned sweet.