A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  However, there was no fixed time for her arrival and she often dawdled on the way. Excitable sounds came from the field opposite the vicarage which was being harvested. The gate stood wide open and she went and stood with her hand on the post, watching.

  When she saw what they were doing she didn’t really want to stay, but something kept her there and she found she couldn’t move, Most of the field had been cleared, and the stooks collected into sheaves, some tidier than others—the village missed its quick, strong, dexterous young men. The remaining area of wheat looked like an island in the sea of jagged stubble. The boys with their sticks, and even one or two of the wilder girls, stood in a big circle around the island. They’d been stone-picking: the fruits of their labours were dotted around in neat piles, like ammunition, and some of the bigger boys had armed themselves with these as well.

  The four farmhands—three young lads and Hubie Dawes, a big middle-aged man who had something in common with Susan—had put their scythes to one side against the shadiest hedge. Hubie had sat down alongside the scythes, and the lads, also now carrying sticks, were walking back to the centre of the field, to the island. The calling and chi-iking that had drawn Susan to the gateway faded away. It was so quiet she could hear the crickets in the grass at her feet, and the whining buzz of a worker bee hovering over the hedge.

  The farmhands fanned out round the island of standing wheat. The boy nearest Susan had realised she was there and sent her a wolfish grin and a wink, tapping his homemade cudgel in the opposite palm.

  ‘Ready?’

  She shook her head. Not that he was interested. He made a swiping movement with the cudgel; it swished through the air.

  ‘Better stand aside!’

  The farm lads stooped forward and held out their arms like cockerels about to fight. Then they began to move forward, slowly, legs apart, towards the standing wheat, tapping the ground with their sticks as they went. With each step they let out a ‘Ha!’, which started low and got louder, and was picked up by the others until the air shook with ‘HA! HA! HA! HA!’ and Susan had to put her hands over her ears. The angry noise made her eyes water, but she was too frightened to turn her back on this dreadful war dance in case something should come after her.

  The lads were in the edge of the wheat now, but not bothering about trampling it underfoot, or banging it down with the sticks . . . Then, suddenly, a shout went up.

  ‘AWAY-AY-AY-AY!’

  And the first rabbit shot out of the wheat, ears up at first, startled, looking for an escape, which way to go. It streaked towards the gate, a big boy thrashed at it with his stick, just catching its back leg, slowing it down, the next boy threw himself on top of it with a bloodcurdling yell, and the first one joined him. Now there were dozens of rabbits, bursting out of the dwindling cover of the wheat, so many that some of them ran straight into the legs of the beaters and were snatched up and their necks wrung before they made the open ground. Some of the boys were good marksmen; Susan saw two of the rabbits leap and twist in the air as stones caught them fair and square. Others weren’t so accurate, and the rabbits lay squirming and palpitating on the ground until the smaller boys, or the giggling, flailing girls, shrieking like banshees, finished them off. The frantic death-screams of the rabbits, thin and high, were plainly audible above the clamour. Tears poured down Susan’s face; her whole body heaved with sobs she felt but couldn’t hear. It was horrible, horrible!

  At least it was quick. In a very few minutes the fun was all over and the murderous yelling replaced by a busy, cheerful chatter as the killers collected their haul. The sticks had another use now: the boys took string from their pockets, tied the back legs of the rabbits together and then lashed them to the stick. Some had as many as three corpses flopping around, their little grey-white scuts like pussy willow, their pretty ears pricked by gravity, like the leaves of lords-and-ladies.

  The boy who had winked at Susan was an expert. He had two rabbits on his stick already, and was picking up another. He came over, the body swinging by its ears from his hand.

  ‘Hey, Susan Clay, what you crying for?’

  She shook her head, just as she had to his first question, but they all knew her and didn’t mind her ways. Besides, he was a good-hearted boy.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He held out the rabbit. ‘You can have this one.’

  She looked askance, flinchingly, at the rabbit, which was quite small, a young one, and had been alive so recently that its eyes had not yet clouded over and were still bright with alarm. There was a funny taste in her mouth, and she covered the lower part of her face with both hands, shaking her head dumbly for a third time.

  The boy gave the rabbit an enticing flourish. ‘Go on, Susan. Your mother’d like him. Nice stew for supper, eh?’

  This was too much for Susan, the contents of whose stomach threatened to lurch up into her throat. The fear of being sick in public, in front of this boy and all the others, was almost as great as her revulsion at the sight of the baby rabbit. If she hadn’t been struggling so fiercely to hold down her breakfast she might have seen the boy’s expression change as he backed away. As it was she spun round, hands still clamped over her mouth, and bumped into Mr Mariner who was standing right behind her.

  Then several things happened at once, all of them unpleasant for both parties.

  Saxon had been finding it hard to concentrate on the parish finances. They constituted an area where his imprimatur was required but which he took largely on trust from the estimable parish treasurer. Still, it was important to go through the accounts, and to have understood whatever implications they had for the coming months. Today he was finding this task even heavier going than usual. Vivien had begun having wakeful nights and last night had been particularly unsettled. To avoid discussion, he’d feigned sleep a good deal of the time, not dropping off properly until some time after three. Consequently he’d overslept, and woke to find that Vivien had breakfasted early and gone out, he didn’t know where.

  As a result of all this Saxon felt distinctly jaded. So at first it was only dully that he noted the goings-on in the wheat field. He knew of course that these things happened; this particular activity was one of the harsh, heartless rural activities that made a nonsense of the lyrical Wordsworthian view of the countryside. This showed nature red in tooth and nail, displaying the human animal (in Saxon’s view) at its least prepossessing. But the same small, unedifying drama would be acted out in almost every field in the neighbourhood over the next couple of weeks and it was not his business to stop it even if it had been in his power to do so.

  It was Susan’s arrival that arrested and disturbed him. Since she had been helping at the church he had got to know her for the simple, gentle soul she was; as one of nature’s Christians. She might be a country girl, born and bred in Eadenford, but she was a friend to all living things. He had seen himself the infinite care with which she carried butterflies, birds, spiders, even bats, out of the church, and the tenderness with which she placed them on the grass outside, or released them into the fresh air. Now he literally shuddered to think of what she was about to witness even if, as in all probability, it wasn’t for the first time.

  Once the anxiety about her had taken hold, he couldn’t shake it off. When the shouting and thumping began—for all the world like some bloodthirsty pagan rite—he tried to turn a deaf ear to it. But as the noise reached a peak, he got up to close the window and caught a glimpse of Susan, her hands to her face, looking wretched. This picture stayed in his mind as the tribal chanting gave way to the shrieks and yells of random slaughter. Saxon could stand it no more. Impatience and bottled-up irritation overcame him and he marched out of the office, and the house, and down the driveway. The mayhem was beginning to die down, but as he crossed the road he could see Susan in an attitude of despair, the boy advancing with his wretched haul, another limp corpse dangling from his outstretched hand . . . Saxon accelerated his pace and as he caught the boy’s eye assumed his mo
st withering expression of disapproval.

  The boy retreated. Susan Clay turned round blindly and stumbled. To prevent her from falling Saxon had no alternative but to put his arms round her. As he did so, she made a choking sound, which was accompanied by a horribly familiar rank smell and a warm, wet sensation penetrating his waistcoat.

  Saxon only kept his own stomach in check by assuring himself that this was a true test of Christian charity. He had come over here to make sure Susan was all right, to rescue her in effect, and this extra travail of hers made the rescue all the more important. Keeping one arm firmly round her for both their sakes, he steered her back over the road and towards the kitchen door.

  Hilda’s concern had been all for her employer and the appalling lèse-majesté to which he’d been subjected. She had taken charge at once, sitting Susan down with a glass of water, a problem to be dealt with in a moment, when she had helped the reverend remove his waistcoat and given him a damp cloth to remove the worst excesses from the rest of his clothes, and his shoes. She then sent him upstairs with strictures as to where and how to leave his dirty things.

  When he’d gone she turned her attention to Susan, surveying her with hands on hips.

  ‘Well, missy, and what are we going to do with you?’

  Susan, still green at the gills, looked wanly over her glass. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I should think you are!’

  ‘Can I go home?’

  ‘I think you’d better had!’ Hilda sounded a good deal more spirited than she felt. She rather balked at the prospect of accompanying Susan down the High Street in her current state, but she could scarcely send her off on her own, for the same reason. Her face crimped with distaste, she rinsed out the cloth and dabbed with sharp pecking movements at Susan’s dress. It wasn’t as bad as the reverend’s waistcoat, anyway . . . Hilda sucked her teeth. Edith Clay was going to be mortified—mortified!

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  Ashe had appeared at the back door, come out of nowhere as he was wont to do, and just at the right moment.

  ‘It’s Susan here, she’s not well.’

  ‘I can see that.’ Ashe came in. He addressed Susan: ‘Saw you coming over with the vicar. Poor old rabbits, eh?’

  Tears oozed down Susan’s cheeks.

  Hilda tutted again and raised her eyes heavenward for Ashe’s benefit.

  ‘I don’t know where Mrs Mariner’s got to this morning—’

  ‘Taken the dog out,’ said Ashe, and then to Susan: ‘Why don’t I walk you home?’

  At once, rather unsteadily, she got up.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got yourself a job,’ said Hilda. ‘I’m afraid her mother’s not going to be too pleased.’

  Ashe winked his good eye at Susan. ‘We’ll see to her, won’t we?’

  Susan nodded. Ashe took herelbow—extremely gentlemanlike—and steered her out of the door.

  ‘Back in a bit.’

  Baffled, Hilda watched them go. She washed her hands for a full two minutes and returned to her pastry with a sense of relief. That was quite enough surprises for one day.

  It was almost lunchtime when Vivien returned, and the scent of apple pie was wafting through the house. She let the dog off his lead in the hall and he galloped away to the kitchen in anticipation of scraps, his paws skidding waywardly on the polished floor. The study door was ajar but when she looked in she found the room empty; the drawing room also. There was no sound from the floor above. She went to the top of the stairs and called down to the kitchen:

  ‘Hilda! Have you seen the vicar?’

  ‘He’s in the garden, ma’am . . .’ Hilda came to the foot of the stairs, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘There was a bit of an accident with young Susan.’

  ‘Accident?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘But what sort of accident?’

  Hilda lowered her voice, brows drawn together to indicate the extreme delicacy of the subject. ‘She was taken very poorly. Poor Mr Mariner—he was in a mess.’

  ‘You don’t surely mean that she was sick?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘But what had that got to do with Mr Mariner?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Unwilling to elaborate, Hilda waved her hands in the air, as if it was all beyond her. ‘Anyway, Mr Ashe took her home and the vicar’s sitting outdoors.’

  Vivien was baffled. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  She did not, as would have been logical, go down the stairs and out into the garden that way, which was the shortest route, but retraced her steps via the front door. This was to allow herself time to prepare a suitably sympathetic manner for Saxon, and to stifle the disappointment into which she’d been plunged on learning that Ashe was not in the house. She could almost taste the sourness in her own mouth. It was terrible to realise, and to acknowledge, that she was jealous of poor, fat, simple—and now sick!—Susan Clay.

  Edith Clay’s embarrassment made her brusque.

  ‘I see. Well, better go and get out of that dress, girl. Thanks for bringing her back.’

  She would have closed the door but Ashe remained standing on the step.

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ he said. ‘They were flushing out the rabbits in that field by the vicarage, It turned her stomach.’

  ‘That’s nothing new.’ Edith’s hand was still on the door handle. ‘She shouldn’t have been hanging about there.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Mariner was with her.’

  Now he had her undivided attention. ‘The vicar? What was he doing there?’

  Ashe shrugged; his turn now to look as if the conversation was over. ‘They’re friends.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘He likes your Susan.’

  ‘I dare say.’ Edith’s eyes flicked over Ashe’s face, trying to gauge the weight of what was being said. ‘She’s a willing, well-brought-up girl and she works hard, but that doesn’t make them friends.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Ashe. ‘She’s willing.’

  There followed a short pause.

  ‘Right then.’ This time Edith was firm. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  They parted company. Edith closed the door. Her expression as she did so, and that of Ashe, walking up the High Street, could not have been more different.

  There were some things that you did for no other reason than the simple, perfect one: that you could.

  ‘How on earth did it happen?’ asked Vivien.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No, but I’m interested.’

  He sighed and rubbed his face wearily. ‘They were killing rabbits in the field. I saw she was watching. It didn’t seem like a good idea, so I went over to tell her to come away, before she became upset. Unfortunately, I was too late. With the results that you now know about.’

  Vivien looked at him doubtfully. ‘It was very kind of you, Saxon.’

  ‘Not really. The poor child wouldn’t be coming here if it wasn’t for me. And the Clays are an extremely nice and respectable family who deserve help.’

  ‘You used to find her rather a nuisance.’

  ‘Did I? She’s not a nuisance now, quite the opposite. In fact I’d go so far as to say I’ve grown genuinely fond of her.’ He looked down at himself with a dark little smile. ‘What’s a waistcoat between friends?’

  Vivien could tell that he intended these as the last words on the matter, and it was nearly one o’clock so she let it lie. Besides, her mind was elsewhere.

  Where was Ashe?

  After lunch, unable to settle to anything, she set off round the village on her bicycle. Her pretext was making calls, but in reality she wanted only to get out of the house. As she pedalled out of the driveway she encountered the parish treasurer coming the other way, his files beneath his arm. She gave him a cheery wave but didn’t stop. Poor Saxon, he hated money matters . . . And yet his servitude lent extra savour to her freedom, and sped her wheels down the High Street.

  She rode as far as the school, for no
other reason than that it was a good distance from home. Once there she got off the bicycle, opened the gate, closed it after her, and strode purposefully across the schoolyard. Anyone noticing her would say they’d seen Mrs Mariner dropping in at the school in her own time, and attribute to her any of a wide range of exemplary motives.

  Behind the gabled, grey-brick school house was a small garden where the children, under direction and supervision, grew simple flowers and vegetables. In theory these were supposed to be watered during the summer holidays, with a rota for the purpose, but in reality only the hardiest plants survived.

  Vivien fished cigarettes and matches from her skirt pocket, and lit one.

  But it was not the smoking of the cigarette that brought her here this afternoon; however much Saxon disliked the habit he would not have dreamed of forbidding it. She simply wished to be alone with her thoughts, which these days were strange, wild things that it was quite alarming to let loose. A short time ago, no more than a few months, there had been a pattern to her life, a rhythm to the present and a shape to the future. She shared the pattern with her husband. She and Saxon, whatever their differences (the differences that fuelled and fanned their intimate moments), had forged a durable partnership. They’d taken a certain unspoken pride in this, and in each other: they moved forward together. To Vivien, that picture of her marriage had become a strange one—a curiosity, like an old photograph lit by the baleful glare of hindsight. She barely recognised it, or herself. Every minute of every day she was taut with the anticipation of some momentous external change that would mirror the one inside her.

  No, thought Vivien, Ashe had done nothing to advance himself. He had simply cast a spell, and they had done it all themselves.