The Rye Man

by David Park

‘P7 are very busy, as I’m sure you realise, with preparations for the Transfer Test.’

  ‘I appreciate that, but a change of activity would be good for them.’

  ‘Don’t forget, Mr Cameron,’ said Mrs Haslett, ‘that since the Troubles fireworks have been banned and many of our children won’t ever have seen any.’ Her head quivered almost imperceptibly. It was clear she thought she had found an Achilles’ heel but he saw it only as a final, rather pathetic throw.

  ‘Think of it, Muriel, as an exercise in imagination,’ he said, smiling at her.

  Before she could think of a response he thanked them for their time and attention, and as she attempted finally to say something her words were lost in the scraping of chairs and the opening of locker doors.

  The corridors smelled of disinfectant and were still wet as he locked his office door. Hugging the side of the wall, he stepped as lightly as he could, but when he reached the general office he turned round to see his footsteps following him, grey prints of grime. He feigned a grimace to Mrs Patterson as she put on her coat. It had been a long day and he was glad to be going home.

  As he took the ten minute drive down country lanes he felt strangely empty. The softening strands of light dulled the ragged blossoms of the hedgerows into a smear of sameness. Behind them, ridged backs of ploughed fields smacked into each other at awkward angles. A half-hearted attempt at a scarecrow lolled sideways, its stick arms bereft of clothes. As he drove on automatic pilot he saw a glimpse of the future – an arbiter of petty feuds, a dealer of small cards, an apologist for things he did not believe in. What should have felt like a beginning suddenly felt like the end of something.

  On the skyline a tractor snail-trailed a line of shimmering sod. He slowed the car to take a corner. A gate into a field was half open and behind the metal bars was a child’s face. It was the girl with the blonde hair. He waved his hand instinctively, but she dropped her eyes behind a bar, her knuckles clenching tightly. He looked back in his mirror, but saw only a flock of gulls falling like snow into an open field.

  As he turned into the driveway of the house they had bought three months earlier, he had to brake hard to stop running into an emerging cyclist. Tom Quinn was a local handyman-cum-gardener who had done some work for them – a bit of re-plastering and pointing, replacing cracked roof tiles. They had also called him in on several occasions when their purchase of the former rectory had seemed like an act of reckless romanticism, rather than a sound financial investment. He got off his creaking bike and leaned in at the driver’s window. He was in his late fifties with a tight cap of wiry grey hair and blue eyes light against the dark creases of his weathered face. His broad stubby fingers rested on the ledge as he shook his head slowly from side to side in a wordless expression of bewilderment.

  ‘The septic tank again, Tom?’

  ‘Aye, Mr Cameron, your wife called me this afternoon. I still can’t fathom where it’s coming from.’ He drummed his fingers on the ledge. There were neat curves of cement under his fingernails.

  They had noticed the smell several weeks after they had moved in – it seemed to seep slowly into the bathroom, barely noticeable at first, a faint scent of sewer, then gradually it inflated the whole room until it was stretched taut with a septic stink. They closed the door. There was a trace of it in the kitchen. Sometimes they imagined it in other parts of the house and went about sniffing like people with heavy colds, never sure if they themselves carried the smell into new rooms. Then, as suddenly as it came, it would disappear. They made jokes about the Amityville Horror house but the joke was beginning to wear thin.

  ‘There’s obviously something wrong with the tank, Tom. The system’s not working somewhere.’

  The heavy fingers rose and fell as if playing notes on a piano. ‘I don’t understand it. I’ve had the manhole covers up and I can’t see a blockage anywhere. Mrs Cameron flushed paper down and I watched it shoot through clean as a whistle. I put two new traps in the bathroom last week and sealed them, so I just can’t see how the smell’s getting back in.’

  They both shrugged grimly at the unsolved mystery and then, as Quinn wheeled his bike out through the gate, he drove up to the house, the loosely-gravelled driveway scrunching and squirming under his wheels. Emma was standing in the doorway of one of the outbuildings, her T-shirt and cut-off jeans splashed with paint. She had pinned her hair up but a blonde wisp trailed forward like a question mark. She had sounded up in her phone call, but he could tell from his first glance that the mood had evaporated. As he walked towards her he was about to make some joke about flushing toilet paper but thought better of it. When she gave him her cheek to kiss he noticed the stipples of paint on her eyelids, and then without asking him about his day, she went in and gestured round the room with the paint roller. Two of the walls were now white but they looked rough and uneven and in need of more coats of paint.

  ‘I wanted to get it finished today to have it done for you coming home, but by this afternoon the smell was back, as bad as ever. I asked Mr Quinn to come over. He’s very nice but I don’t think he knows what to do. I’ve spent half my day flushing yellow toilet paper down the loo and shouting out of the bathroom window but I don’t think he’s any the wiser.’

  ‘I know, I spoke to him at the gate.’ He looked round the half-painted room. ‘It’ll be good when it’s finished,’ he said, trying to cheer her up, but the words sounded trite and unconvincing.

  The couple of outhouses were one of the features which had attracted her to the house. She wanted to turn one into a studio for her art work and he had encouraged her, encouraged anything which would keep her busy and positive. During the summer they had installed new windows, opening it up to good natural light, and fitted some electrical heating so she would be able to work in the winter. But now she slumped on to a wooden chair and watched as the roller she was holding dripped gently on the newspaper-covered floor. For a few seconds he felt resentful of her, begrudging the time and energy he would have to invest in restoring her to better spirits. It should have been his day for special attention, some gentle pampering to ease away the stresses of a new job, but she was slipping further into herself, and for the few moments it took to fight off his disappointment the only sound was the steady splat of paint on to newsprint.

  As more months went by, sometimes he could not help thinking her selfish. She was so self-absorbed, preoccupied with her own pain that it left no room for an acknowledgement of his, an unspoken assumption that the loss was entirely hers. It had been a boy. She had carried him for four months, losing him without warning in one of those moments that convinced all those without the comfort of faith that fate chose often to be both personal and malevolent. They had tried for a child for a long time with no apparent reason for earlier failure. Perhaps it was always this way whatever the circumstances. He preferred to shut it away in that part of himself which was hidden, just as he had packed away all the clothes and objects which were to have been for the child in an old suitcase, and lodged it in the darkest corner of the roof-space. He had placed them in the cheap brown case they had bought for their honeymoon, and stored it out of sight the night before she had come home from hospital. Jumpers his mother had knitted in the neutrality of lemon and white, their neat rows of tiny stitches small enough for some child’s doll. A musical mobile with prancing circus horses. The goofy soft toy she had bought the day the doctor told her she was pregnant. Other bits and pieces they had gathered or been given by friends who no longer needed them. A memorial to something that had never existed except in the future images they had conjured and painted in the privacy of their imaginations. Alone in the house he had felt only a sense of numbness as he searched vainly for some emotion that was recognisable, or even appropriate, but there was only that clinging sense of coldness clasping him tightly, like the way the early morning mists layered the sleeping fields. He had tried to cry, tried to get drunk, but it felt too much as though he was acting out a part in some cheap film, smacked too
much of self pity. Perhaps it would have been better if she had seen him cry, maybe then she could have shared her own pain more openly, rather than hugging it tightly to her like a phantom child. But he knew he could not have cried in front of her because to do so would have altered the way he thought about their relationship. She was the fragile one, he the stronger, and the evidence of his love for her was the responsibility he assumed for her well-being. She was like one of his children, entrusted into his care forever through a ceremony and the exchange of rings.

  He knelt down beside her and eased the roller out of her hand, then rested it on the paper. ‘I’ll be able to help at the weekend. It’ll not take long to get it in shape with two of us working at it.’

  ‘I wanted to have it finished for you coming home, but it’s a bigger job than I thought – the walls don’t take the paint very well.’

  He took her hand and felt the paint stick their palms together. ‘After you’ve finished I want you to bring your magic roller and give the school the once-over – staff included. Everywhere and everyone from top to bottom.’

  He coaxed her now, eased her out of her depression by talking to her about his day, making things seem funny, exaggerating and colouring, leaving out the bits that lingered even now like a bad taste on his tongue. He wanted to tell her about assembly and the rows of sun-washed faces, about break and the undulating waves of play but knew he did not have the words, and was unwilling to risk damaging the few warming memories he had salvaged from the day.

  Things would get better. She herself had instigated the idea of buying a house in the country, of leaving their suburban Belfast semi and the social set she had lost interest in. At that time he had gone along with all her ideas – giving up her administrative job in the Arts Council, going back to her painting, setting up a studio and small gallery at home. Even if it did not work, in the long run it would occupy her time and energy, help salve the pain.

  Inspired by months of looking in magazines devoted to soft-focussed pictures of country life, all washed in a kind of pastel-coloured pastoralism, she had plumped at first sight for the old rectory, and he had been prepared to subdue his more prosaic concerns about practical matters with the knowledge that the price was reasonable, and the location brought him back to his old heartland. Familiar territory carried with it a feeling of security, of re-entering that safe world he identified with his childhood, and if sometimes it made him uneasy to think of how close the rectory was to a darker place in his past, he shrugged it off. Really the only doubt in his head was whether she would sustain her new-found enthusiasm for country living. As much as she loved his mother, she had always found anything longer than a short stay an obvious strain.

  He thought of the first time she had met his family which, despite his best efforts, had assumed all the rituals of a formal introduction – best table-cloth and china, his mother bullying his father into his Sunday best, the dog ousted from the kitchen, his two older, bantering brothers dispatched to jobs in far-off corners of the farm. Even in the most subdued of her art college outfits she had looked startling amidst the staid and sombre tints of the parlour. He remembered the gaping lulls in the conversation, extenuated by the ponderous tick of the clock, his father’s persistent rubbing of his finger round the rim of a tight collar. Just when he was worried they would mistake her quiet self-containment for something worse, his mother had taken her into the kitchen. He had strained in vain to hear what was being said over his father’s insistent poking of the fire, the rustling of his newspaper, the gush of water into a kettle. And then, through a side window, he saw them walking in the garden, his mother linking her arm and pointing across the field. They both were laughing.

  ‘Aye well that’s that then,’ his father had said, glancing up from the paper, relief evident in his face. A few minutes later the paper dropped to the floor and he headed off to find his working clothes.

  His mother’s open acceptance of her helped to bridge the gap between their two families but could never totally blur the distinctions. She was an only child of well-off parents who had sold their family business, taken early retirement and spent their time playing golf or enjoying frequent holidays abroad. Affable, generous parents but a world away from his own background. He got on well with them and listened politely to their advice about good investments even when he didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Emma tried hard too, but never fully unravelled the intricate web of relationships which bound an extended rural family – the pecking order, the taboos, the standing jokes. She was a private, shy person and she found it hard to enter into the small-talk centred on local trivia which was the main medium of personal exchange. He knew several of his aunts thought she had ‘airs and graces’, but his mother understood her best and tolerated no open criticism.

  They had been married for five years. She was six years younger than he was. There was still time to have children. They would try again and maybe they would get lucky. They had not made love since it had happened. She showed no sign of wanting anything other than the simplest forms of affection and he preferred to suppress his desires rather than appear insensitive. When he thought of sex it made him feel guilty, predatory.

  By the time the evening meal was over and cleared away she had slipped into better spirits and asked him questions about his day. He hid all his negative feelings from her and was up-beat and optimistic in his responses, talking about Mrs Haslett and making her more of an ogress than she really was, sharing the intimacy of the creaking car seats. He told her about the missing jotters and as he talked his flippant, humorous tone soothed some of his own apprehensions. The future would be what he would make it. Everything would work out the way he had always conceived it.

  As they walked in the garden together he listened with concealed amusement to her plans.

  ‘I thought we’d have a mixed border in front of the hedge and a border sweeping up to the house with herbaceous plants – maybe shrub roses as well,’ she said, gesturing with her hand as if focussing it in her imagination was enough to make it a reality. ‘Do you think we should try to grow something up the front walls of the house?’

  He nodded and suggested she should draw out her plans, translate some of her ideas into small sketches, but restrained himself from commenting on the potential cost of the practicalities involved.

  Afterwards he did some school-work, reading some of the new proposals for assessment. They depressed him in the same way the school foyer or Haslett’s classroom had depressed him. They were written in the language of the new mandarins, smugly self-confident, full of bland vagaries, an acronymic cant printed on glossy paper. He tried to wade through it, underlining sentences in fluorescent pen, wondering how he would be able to translate it into any kind of recognisable reality for his staff. But his mind grew increasingly tired and like wheels stuck in sand the words went nowhere, spinning endlessly round in his head. He found he had read the same paragraph two or three times without taking it in and he tried finally to focus his full concentration on it. Still it made no sense and the more he read it, the further removed it seemed to be from the world of teaching children.

  Emma came into the study. She had been watching television. He put the marker down and stretched in the chair. She rested her arm across his shoulders and, glancing at the document he was reading, simulated a yawn of boredom, then kissed him on the top of his head and went on up to bed. He sat on for a few minutes before packing it all into his briefcase, then turned off the silent television she had been watching and went to check that the doors were locked. He stood staring out into the dusk for a few minutes. Years of city living had made him forget the peculiar patina of country light, the way the dark rolled in across the fields to beach soundlessly against the lines of the house, the feeling it brought of being isolated from the rest of the world but secure and solid in the sanctuary of the shadows.

  A black pulse of speed quivered in the sky. A bat? The last swallow of summer? He was not sure, but it made him s
hiver and he locked the door and climbed the stairs to the bathroom. A bedside lamp shed an arc of light on to the landing. He entered, closed the door and sniffed. He could smell it, the faint septic scent, not pronounced or intrusive but lingering somewhere, hidden, waiting to unwind itself and filter silently into the vents and crevices of the house. If only they could find the source they would be able to do something about it. He got down on all fours and sniffed round the outflow pipe at the back of the toilet, his hand unwilling to touch the webbed and leprous skin of paint behind the washhand basin, around the tiled base of the shower. He felt like a dog sniffing round a lamp post but he kept going, lifting his head from time to time and holding it alert in the air. He moved up and down along the side of the bath and then, taking a screwdriver which Quinn had left on the window ledge, unscrewed the panel and looked at the new trap which had been fitted. He pulled at it gently but it sat snugly, wearing a tight collar of sealant. Then, screwing the panel back on, carefully using the same screws in the same holes, he stood up and dusted his knees.

  When he entered the bedroom he could tell that his wife was already asleep. Turning off her light, he undressed in the dark and quietly got in beside her. He lay still and silent for a few moments then got up and went back to the bathroom. The cistern moaned and water spurted through buckled pipes. He closed the door tightly and went back to bed and hoped he would not dream.

  *

  ‘Mr Cameron, you understand that Mr Reynolds clearly promised me that I could have the use of the hall on a Friday afternoon. I don’t know where Miss McCreavey got the idea that she had booked it.’

  School had not started. Outside his window he could see the children being left off by their parents. ‘Perhaps she got the idea from Mr Reynolds,’ he suggested.

  ‘But he clearly told me I was having it.’

  He had to spell it out for her. ‘Perhaps he promised the same thing to both of you.’