A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  Another thirty-six hours and we’re past caring, all of us. I don’t give a tinker’s about anyone, not Jarvis and certainly not the others. I don’t care very much about myself, I just want to get by. Just let the bloody boat keep going, let’s get there before we die, or so we can die in a clean bed.

  I won’t go into it.

  But no—there’s some sort of hoo-ha with Arabs in a boat, a lot of shouting and gesturing. Why don’t they fuck off and let us get on with it? No, we turn round and head back the way we’ve come. Three thousand Buddhoos, apparently, though don’t quote me, waiting round the bend to tear us limb from limb.

  In Kut—again—there’s a bit of a clean-up operation, and a bit more water comes on board. Some sacks of rice! I don’t know which is worse, knowing there’s fuck all food on board, or knowing there’s some, and wondering if you’ll get a bit. Jarvis is worse off than me; being tall and gently reared, his body’s used to better things. I find myself wondering, cool as a cucumber, if he’ll make it.

  Both of us do, God knows how. Downriver it’s so shallow the ship keeps foundering on the mud banks and we lie there sweltering till the tide or any bunch of passing locals floats us off. I don’t like to think how many dead there are lying about, the flies are starting to outnumber us.

  Never mind, we’ll be in Basra by Christmas.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ashe was working on the end of the vicarage garden, in the wooded area. No-one had asked him to, he’d set himself the task. With her approval, of course. He’d brought her up here and outlined his ideas, which she had understood at once.

  ‘You’re going to make a Garden of Eadenford.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I can see it already.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better have a word with the vicar about it,’ he said flatly.

  ‘There’s no need. He trusts me, And I—’ Here she looked away for a second. ‘I trust you.’

  Ashe knew what she meant, and it wasn’t trust. She had not found the right word. Or more likely she had found the right word but found herself unable to utter it; which was as it should be. The space between them was growing shorter by the day. He had only to keep still, and she’d come to him, all of her own accord. Move too fast or too soon, say the wrong thing, startle her in any way and she’d be off.

  This afternoon he had set himself to clear away some of the scrub, brambles and ivy that sat like barbed-wire entanglements beneath the trees. Not all of it. He knew that part of the charm of this area, for both the Mariners, lay in its wildness, its air of not being tampered with. At the same time so much of it was not usable. He had a vision of a sort of glade, with paths, ferns and wild flowers. There was a storm-damaged elm, and on more than one occasion he had noticed one or other of the Mariners using the broken branch as a seat. The branch would become rotten in time, but rather than hack it off he intended to reinforce it, while still keeping its natural, rustic appearance.

  It was important that he use his initiative, and his imagination. He had no special artistic talent, but he was intuitive—he had an instinct for what would please people. In the mornings, or for as long as was necessary, he performed his prescribed tasks about the place: attending to the maintenance of the house, shed, garden, garage and motor car, and anything that needed doing over at the church. This last gave him a particular pleasure. There was a slinking satisfaction in being the ungodly attending to the house of God. Once he found a small bat, a common pipistrelle, in the folds of the curtain that screened the organist from the congregation, a scrap of crumpled grey leather on the faded red velvet cloth. He had removed it carefully and carried it up through the chancel to the sanctuary, where he repositioned it carefully on the back of the transverse altar-cloth where Mariner would be bound to see it. Though if he did it was never mentioned.

  He worked hard. He was often at the house before its occupants were up and about in the morning, and on fine evenings he didn’t leave till dusk. He became a presence about the place, not exactly one they took for granted, but which they became accustomed to.

  Hilda was the one he had to make sure of. She was altogether less predictable, being watchful and conscious of her status. She was disposed to like him, but equally determined not to have the wool pulled over her eyes. He had to be careful never to appear ingratiating, or presumptuous. He was still a newcomer, not just here but in the village. He was sure to appear quiet and industrious and to show, if not deference, at least the respect due between equals.

  Generally speaking he brought his own lunch and ate sitting on the grass at the back of the shed. If the weather was bad, he went inside the shed. Only if specifically invited did he join Hilda in the kitchen.

  Very occasionally she would offer him something, if there was extra from the joint, or a stew, or one of her exceptionally good summer fruit puddings. Ashe was not a big eater, something had happened to his appetite during the war and it had never quite recovered, but he could tell that Hilda was justifiably proud of her cooking, and he always expressed appreciation. Carefully, mind—a little flattery went a long way with a woman of Hilda’s naturally suspicious nature.

  At four o’clock on this particular afternoon he sensed someone coming across the lawn, the rustle of a woman’s skirt, but he didn’t look round. It was Hilda, wiping her hands on her apron.

  ‘Cup of tea, Mr Ashe?’

  ‘Well—’ He straightened up, wiped his brow with the back of his wrist. ‘I tell you what.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You wouldn’t by any chance have any of your homemade lemonade about the place?’

  ‘I think I very well might.’ Her tone was reproving, but playfully so, as if addressing a wheedling child. ‘Come along in when you’re ready and I’ll pour you a glass.’

  He continued to work for another ten minutes, chopping fiercely with the hoe at hawser-like ivy roots. Best not to appear too keen. When he went in, there was a green glass jug full of lemonade on the table, along with two tumblers and a plate of biscuits.

  ‘Sit yourself down,’ said Hilda. ‘I think I’ll join you.’

  He sat, and she poured them both a glass, and proffered the biscuits.

  ‘Have a Garibaldi—squashed flies, Mr Mariner calls them. He likes them, so I’ve always got plenty.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ashe helped himself to one and laid it on the table in front of him.

  Hilda sucked her teeth. ‘What am I thinking of?’ She got up and took a couple of tea plates off the dresser. ‘There you are.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ashe again, and placed the biscuit on the plate. ‘Quite a tea party.’

  ‘Well, why not. It must be warm work for you in this weather.’

  ‘I’m in the shade up there.’

  He took drink, and a bite of his biscuit. ‘Mm.’

  There followed a pause, which he allowed to stretch into a silence. He was perfectly comfortable with silence but Hilda was not, and felt compelled to break it. She engaged in one or two small, rustling preliminary gestures before doing so, and then asked:

  ‘So how are you getting on down in the village, Mr Ashe?’

  ‘Pretty good.’

  ‘Comfortable at the post office?’

  ‘It’s fair for the price.’

  Hilda sucked in her cheeks. ‘If you say so.’

  Ashe took another sip. ‘Is that not what other people say?’

  ‘She’s not known for her housekeeping.’

  ‘Maybe not—but then neither am I.’

  Hilda glanced at him to see whether or not this was a joke, and decided that it was.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Mr Ashe. A man with army experience can always look after himself.’

  He smiled and let another pause elapse, which this time he was careful to end himself: ‘I’ve often wondered why you don’t live here, the hours you work.’

  ‘I like my own bed,’ she said, and when he nodded as if perfectly satisfied with this answer, added: ‘Just as well.’<
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  He waited, sipping tranquilly, and was rewarded.

  ‘They don’t want anyone else around the place, do they?’

  He assumed, correctly, that this question was rhetorical.

  ‘I’m not one to gossip,’ she went on. ‘You’re the same I believe. That’s why they’ve taken to you the way they have.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘But I like the work here, and if they’re happy so am I.’

  ‘Oh, they’re happy, believe me.’

  He had now finished both lemonade and biscuit. He put the glass on top of the plate and got up to take them to the sink. Hilda’s next words were spoken with an air of abstraction, as though intended not for him, but for him to overhear.

  ‘No, they like their privacy . . . And I’d rather be under my own roof.’ She snapped back into the present. ‘Don’t worry about those now, Mr Ashe, you go and get on with your work.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He left the things in the sink. ‘Much appreciated. That’s wet my whistle a treat.’

  Back under the trees Ashe experienced a surge of renewed energy, seeing off the clump of roots that had been giving him so much trouble in no time. This was due only in part to the effort of exercising sustained restraint with Hilda. He was used to holding back and keeping his own counsel. Mostly he was energised by the sense of his plan going forward. And now that he’d seen Jarvis that plan had a focus beyond this small, stifling place with its equally small concerns and affectations. He’d do what had to be done here, get out ahead, and claim his free ride on Jarvis’s elegant back.

  He yanked out the last of the root and threw it to one side. As he rested for a moment on the shaft of the hoe, a swallow darted over the sunlit grass. Watching it from the shadows, Ashe set himself a target: When they go, I go.

  A few days later the weather turned. Conveniently for Ashe as it happened, though not for the farmers who were short of labour this year and now had another legitimate reason to grouse. After so much fine weather the crops had been standing tall, ripe and ready for an early harvest, but now the rain hammered down out of a gunmetal sky and flattened them so the fields that had been so golden and promising looked dismally dingy and brown, and partially flattened as though some enormous animal had plodded over them. The harvest that had been a sure thing was postponed for the time being. Gutters overflowed. The sides of the lanes gushed with rivers of muddy water, and the Eaden itself became a voluble, hurtling torrent on which the flustered moorhens bobbed like corks and domestic ducks were unable to swim at all. At Eaden Place it was just as well that numbers were beginning to fall, because the bath chairs and benches had to be brought in off the terrace and lined up in the already crowded conservatory, where the patients gazed out through the steamy, streaming glass like passengers on a storm-tossed ocean liner.

  About a week into the wet spell, Ashe arrived later than usual at the vicarage, and knocked on Mr Mariner’s study door just after nine o’clock.

  ‘Come in! Ah, Ashe.’

  ‘Morning, Reverend.’

  ‘Not much of a day for gardening.’

  ‘I was wondering whether there was anything I could do for you indoors,’ said Ashe.

  Mariner frowned, thinking. ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Any painting need doing? Anything need mending?’

  ‘You’re a man of many talents, I know,’ said Mariner. ‘I think you should ask my wife. She’s more au fait with these things.’

  Ashe hoped he’d say this, lie closed the door and sought out Mrs Mariner, who was writing letters in her room at the back. The dog was with her and immediately came over to greet him, weaving and wriggling enthusiastically.

  She blushed, removed her glasses, and made to stand up from her desk, before recalling herself and staying put, a little awkwardly Ashe thought. He repeated his query.

  ‘I’m sure there must be, let me see . . . Oh look at that foolish animal, he does love you so . . . why wouldn’t he, you’re his saviour!’ Ashe knew she was looking at the dog to save looking at him, but he did not return the favour: he kept his gaze firmly on her face. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you could you take him for a walk?’

  ‘I’ll do it now.’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, in this awful rain?’

  ‘It’s only weather.’

  ‘When you come back, I’ll have collected my thoughts—there’s the attic, it’s simply frightful, I hardly like to ask you.’

  ‘Anything that needs doing,’ he said, and slapped his thigh to the dog: ‘Come!’

  Saxon gazed down at the beginnings of a poem, his first in quite a while. He was attempting to capture his feelings about certain recent events: the memorial, Jarvis, the Clay girl. There was a common thread to the feelings which he was trying to pin down and he had nearly done so, but not yet. Perhaps a short break, to allow the subconscious to do its work. Superstitiously, he turned the page over before leaving the room and going in search of his wife.

  Vivien too was sitting at her desk, with a pen in her hand, staring out of the window, though from this room there was very little in the way of a view—part of the garage wall, a sliver of garden, the corner of the shed, all blurred by the downpour. A lighted cigarette lay across the ashtray at her elbow, its thin spiral of smoke like her daydreams.

  She started when he came in. ‘Saxon!’

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

  ‘No . . .’ She picked up the cigarette, drew on it, and stubbed it out. ‘I was miles away.’

  Now that he was in the room he couldn’t think why he was there. Had there been something he was going to ask her? Tell her? He walked to the window and peered out into the rain. He had simply wanted to know where she was.

  Almost absent-mindedly, she stretched out her hand, opening and closing it once, inviting his. He placed his hand in hers. They didn’t look at one another and in a moment her hand fell away.

  She said, brightly: ‘I sent poor Ashe out into the rain with Boots.’

  ‘He was looking for something to do indoors in this weather and I’m afraid I referred him to you.’

  ‘When he gets back I’m going to suggest he clears out the attic.’

  Saxon frowned. ‘We don’t want him rummaging in our things.’

  ‘He won’t rummage. I shall go up there with him and show him what needs to go, and where to put the other things. All those old suitcases and boxes of papers—’

  ‘I don’t want the papers touched.’

  ‘They can be put in a trunk so they don’t get any sadder and mouldier than they are already. But the main thing is, when the place is tidy he should be able to do something about the holes in the roof. And put more boards down so it’s easier to walk around up there.’

  ‘There are limits to Ashe’s capabilities. He’s a useful handyman, but I suspect a pitched, tiled roof is a job for an expert.’

  ‘We don’t have the Services of an expert at the moment, but we do have Ashe and we may as well make use of him. I’m sure he’ll tell us if it’s beyond him.’

  ‘Very well.’ Saxon decided that he sounded grudging and added: ‘You’re right, he’s a sensible fellow.’

  He leaned forward, peering, pointlessly, out into the rain, brows drawn together.

  ‘I must let you get on,’ he said, making no move to do so.

  Vivien removed her glasses and leaned back, her hands linked behind her head. ‘Hilda likes him, thank God.’

  ‘Thank God indeed. It struck him that he had sought out his wife for reasons that weren’t clear even to him, and they had spent the whole time talking about Ashe.

  ‘She says his digs in the village aren’t very nice.’

  ‘He can look for others. There must be plenty of families who’d like to let out a room. Think of all—’ He had been about to say, Think of all the rooms left empty by the war but changed it to: ‘Think of all the households who’d appreciate some extra money coming in.’

  ‘I think she feels sorry for him.’


  He said cuttingly: ‘Then perhaps Hilda herself could oblige?’

  ‘Saxon—you know what she’s like, she’s so starchy.’

  ‘They might suit each other.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it.’ Vivien dropped her glasses back on to her nose, and picked up her pen. He was about to leave, and almost didn’t hear her when she said: ‘Perhaps he could move in here.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘After all,’ she went on, ‘most houses of this size have someone living in. It’s only because Hilda prefers not to—’

  ‘We prefer her not to.’

  ‘It was a little of both. Anyway, I feel sorry for Ashe. He so obviously likes it here and one couldn’t ask for anyone less conspicuous . . .’ Her voice tailed away, but her cheeks, often so pale these days, were quite pink. It dawned on Saxon that this was no sudden outburst, his wife had been thinking about it. Now she got up and came over to him; he thought she might embrace him but instead she stood facing him, her arms folded.

  ‘What do you think, Saxon—really? This isn’t an idle suggestion, I believe it would work very well.’

  He held out his hand and after a second she laid hers in it, but would not be drawn closer. ‘Let’s think about it.’

  Back in his study he turned over the sheet of paper containing the poem, and looked at the lines without reading them. That had been a strange and unexpected little conversation with his wife . . . He picked up another piece of paper and began doodling, a childish drawing of a house, a tree, a car that was more like a steam engine . . . Ashe, live here? His old, familiar instinct for caution warned strongly against it; they did not need or want another person in the house, they valued their privacy. But the new Saxon, the writer of this poem, was of a more generous nature, surely. Vivien had always thought the best of him, but only he knew the worst. Here was an opportunity to do the right thing by a stranger, and also (this was by far the most important influence on Saxon) to bring the warmth and colour back to his wife’s cheeks, and the light to her eyes. To bring her back to him.