‘Me? You’re accusing me of not understanding? Man, that’s rich. When I was trying to explain it all.’ But he felt himself draw back from her. ‘Yeah, well, quite a shock, I s’pose…’ He heard the spite in his tone but could not stop it, not with her looking at him in that way, as though he did not matter. ‘Quite a shock for the land-owning classes to discover the land they own has disappeared – zap – down a big, salty hole.’
He saw the little crease of dismay that flickered across her brow at his words and he was ready to defy her hurt, if that was what it took; he held his ground.
But Ellie’s face cleared, her anger had already faded. She simply shook her head, sadly. ‘But, still… to have happened so suddenly.’ She did, finally, look at him then, so gravely and openly that he could not face her. ‘And did you say they were moving the library? Is that what you said?’
Dan shuffled. ‘Yeah, man, that’s what I heard. That’s what Gadiel told me. I don’t think it can be right, but—’
‘Oh, yes, it will be right. It was always planned that way. It’s quite possible to slip it out and roll it down to a new location. Rather like moving the furniture.’ She smiled at the idea, sliding her hand smoothly in front of him to demonstrate the elegant glide of a make-believe library.
Dan took off his spectacles and spent a long time cleaning them on his T-shirt. Ellie watched the rub of cotton between his thumb and forefinger, the occasional glint of the lenses; she felt as though she was balanced on the quicksand of the old mines, everything sinking, disintegrating, the structures of her world twisting, their shapes unfamiliar now, grotesque.
Finally, he lifted his eyes to her face with an expression she did not recognize and took her by the arm, so that they could turn their backs on the library, looking instead towards the unperturbed nymph.
‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ He was quiet now, purposeful. ‘There’s nothing going on, not for now – nothing to see. I can explain about the squat.’
The cottages here were undisturbed. Swifts swooped and screeched around the eaves, repeating time; the neat gardens were bright with geraniums and busy lizzies, draped washing and children’s plastic toys. There was the sound of radios playing. In all her life, Ellie had rarely walked this part of the village – there had been no need – and she regarded it now with a detached, intense curiosity, as though it was important to record the smallest of details. She recognized the same thrill she felt when she was reading a new book: the prickling urge to take it all in; the lament, even at the very beginning, that too soon it would be finished, and she would know it.
Dan came closer alongside her; she felt the swing of his arm against her own as they walked down another street. It was short, no more than three or four cottages in a truncated terrace, the village ending abruptly, Braithwaite Barton’s vision unfulfilled. Beyond was just scrubland, shabby and flattened, sloping away to a small, stagnant lake of muddy water. Dried salt crusted at the edge of the shallows; another deposit – a tainted pink – seeped through an old pipe and dripped inexorably into the pool. The bulk of the works loomed close, its intricacy suddenly apparent: the grid of pipes laid out tightly ahead of them at ground level, steam hissing from the seams; loops of hawsers, heavy rivets, unmarked sheds, metal ladders; everywhere the ploughed ridges of corrugated iron; light deflected, decomposed, disordered.
They followed one of the worn paths, knocking dandelion heads, dislodging seeds which floated languidly around them, nothing more than thickened air. A brown cat slunk away and disappeared into the scorched grass. Dropping down a slope, they stopped short of the pool, sitting on a segment of ruined wall, its bricks crumbling; the ground was scuffed and trampled, littered with cigarette ends, sweet papers and lurid bottle tops.
From here, the view was of the rear of the works and the wasteland behind, hardening again into short streets. It was a workers’ slum, a knot of makeshift houses, split and weary. The roofs and walls were coated in a fine, white dust, as though a perfect snow shower had gently settled, consecrating them, drawing the eye to the bruised brown and grey streets that sliced between.
Ellie only glanced across; she did not really see any of it. She fussed instead with her skirt as she sat down, trying to steady herself on the uneven brickwork, pushing her feet hard against the wall, jamming her legs tightly together, bowing her head.
‘It’s not actually anything against you and your father as people – just what you represent, in the larger picture,’ Dan was saying. He had been talking for a little while, looking at her intently, as though this might drive the lesson home. She found she did not mind it. ‘So when the others come to join us—’
‘Others? You’ve invited more people?’
‘Yeah, man – it’s an open invitation. That’s how these things work. Word gets around, man. We expect them soon. The place will gather momentum, you’ll see.’
Ellie thought about this for a moment. ‘But why would they want to come to Marlford?’
‘Don’t be dense. Marlford is an excellent example of the way in which power and wealth has been siphoned off for the benefit of the few. By locating the squat at the heart of it—’
‘But aren’t you very cold up there in the old rooms? Isn’t it rather damp?’
He pushed himself off from the wall. ‘No, look’ – he screwed his face up, drawing his mouth tight – ‘it’s not… you’ve got it wrong. It’s not like that.’ He flapped at a thistle in frustration, kicking at something in the grass and throwing such a pained glance at her that Ellie thought, for a moment, that he might just walk on and leave. But he just cuffed his hair roughly from his face and resettled his spectacles. He stood still then, and set his gaze hard on the cluster of unsteady houses behind the works. It was only after a long silence that she realized his pose was somehow a question, or even an accusation.
‘Look,’ he said, finally. ‘Look at that. You see?’
When he turned to her it was a plea. If she failed to understand, he would consider it his inadequacy more than hers; she saw that at least.
‘I… I’m not sure—’ She tried to work out what the revelation might be. ‘If you mean the houses… we don’t have anything to do with that – we don’t own the works or the salt mines, not any more, not for years.’
‘You don’t have to own them, man. Questions of power and necessity are not always as direct as that.’
‘Most of those houses have sprung up since our time. It doesn’t look it, I know, but even the chemical works is quite new. It’s nothing to do with Marlford – the old Marlford.’
‘And you don’t ever ask why there’s that, over there, falling apart – sinking – people living in rubbish houses, working in the factory, and you, back at the manor, swanning around?’
She giggled. ‘Is that what you think we do… swan around? When we’re so poor…’
Dan came around in front of her. ‘Ellie, you are not poor.’
‘Oh, but we are. It’s why Marlford is closed up, and why there’re no servants, or gardeners even – no one to keep the place. Just Mr Quersley. All the money that my grandfather had, that all went long ago. Long before I was born.’
‘I know. Gadiel told me. But it makes no difference.’
‘Of course it does. Now… well, we’re poor – really poor. It’s just – if you don’t pay attention – it might not look that way.’
He growled. ‘It’s not just a question of money in your pocket, Ellie.’
‘No, but we don’t own the village any more. We don’t receive rents. We have no say in anything, no influence.’ She waved at the view he was obscuring. ‘You can’t blame me for any of this. And, really, I don’t mind at all about the squat,’ she added, as kindly as she could.
‘But you don’t see, do you? The squat’s part of it, man. You just don’t see the iniquities, do you – the inequalities? You’re quite happy to let it all pass you by, to go on as you always have, to live in the past like some lady of the manor. Ellie, Marlford itself i
s… it’s a temple to greed and exploitation.’ He caught her arm. His desperation seemed odd, unnecessary, wasted on her.
She slid off the wall and pulled away, stroking the place where his touch had been. ‘Well, that’s a new vision for the place, I suppose.’ She smiled. She was tempted to argue with him again, but his frantic reasoning had an innocent charm to it, like the spring twitter of birds, and she let him speak.
‘Look at me, Ellie. Listen to me, man – I’ll explain.’
She wondered at the unsteadiness of his voice.
‘Your grandfather’s village – it’s about reinforcing the hierarchies that keep the poor in their place. Don’t you see?’ He did not wait for her to answer. He went on, his hands and eyes in perpetual movement, as though he were performing a trick of some kind, a sword exercise that sliced through the damp air, dazzling. ‘It’s part of a system of production where workers are just instruments, just things – they’re estranged from their humanity, cut off from themselves – their real selves, their thoughts and their imagination – by the system and by the demands of other people.’
Ellie stared at him.
‘But at the time – surely,’ she began, ‘surely what was important was a basic standard of living. I think you’re… I think your approach is anachronistic…’
He was mistaken and obtuse, outlandish too, poised in this way with outstretched arms, his feet apart in the dry grass. A glossy, red crisp packet had blown up against his boot, his hair was curling into his eyes, his spectacles sliding from the bridge of his nose, the wasteland stretching away behind, bleak and unpeopled. She should have laughed him out of sight, disdainful, but she found her erudite ideas skidding away like sprats in the shallows, nothing more than a glimmer, disappearing.
And she could not take her eyes from him.
Dan wondered if he had said too much, too quickly, confounding her with the quicksilver flash of his oratory. He searched for something simpler that might reassure her.
‘Wait.’ He reached forward gently. ‘Cool, man – look. You’ve got a ladybird – just…’
He put his finger against her neck so that the insect could crawl onto it; the ladybird hesitated for a moment, moving sideways, trying to avoid the sudden barrier, before eventually creeping onto his nail. He bent down and tapped it onto a dock leaf. It crawled away and then, a moment later, took flight.
He seemed so grave, and so pleased with what he had done, that she smiled and did not shake him off when he touched her neck again, very gently.
‘I can help you understand. I really can,’ he said. ‘You’ll see in no time. You’ll break free of the old ways, the outdated modes of living that bind you.’
She did laugh now; she could not help it. But she tried to be kind. ‘I’d like that.’
And he pulled her to him, kissing her, wrapping his arms so tightly around her shoulders that she was enveloped.
It was too late then, to say anything sensible.
He pushed gently, encouraging her backwards until she brushed up against the broken wall, his lips still fixed to hers. Anchored now, he unwrapped his arms, moving his hands to her waist and holding her there, finishing the kiss slowly.
Ellie could not help but lean into him. She nuzzled against the sandpaper skin of his jaw and let herself rest there against him. It seemed magical, for a moment, as though the world had dropped away, suspending them in space.
Fifteen
The books had been piled into cardboard boxes and crates from the grocer’s, and taken to one of the empty almshouses to be stored. A carpenter had removed the shelving. Panels of bricks had been knocked from the wooden frame with a modest wrecking ball.
Gadiel swept debris into sacks and barrows, wheeling it through the slosh of a muddy alleyway and dumping it out of sight on a slope that banked down to the river and the chemical works. In no time at all, the library became skeletal, the flesh stripped from its weathered bones.
No one in Marlford had actually moved a building before, but it was common knowledge that the feat could be achieved in a day, with organization. So, now it came to it, there was little fuss. The village was placid, ordinary: shoppers stepped round the muddy puddles; boys rolled stones under the boards and into the pit; a bus pulled up beyond the bank, its engine idling.
A lorry manoeuvred awkwardly in front of the Assembly Rooms and reversed down Victoria Street. Men began to gather in anticipation, sloppy in their work clothes, and soon there were more children, older women in pairs, the vicar flanked by parish councillors, someone with an ostentatious camera. The 3rd Marlford Boy Scout Pack and the Barton Infantry Volunteer Brigade formed an uneven cordon. The lorry dropped its tailgate with a clank and the delivery of logs clattered down, splashing onto the muddy road in front of the fishmonger’s.
The operation went smoothly for an hour or more. They hoisted the rollers and packed them close, creating a track that ran from the front of the library across the boarded crater to the far pavement. The logs sat snugly in the layer of damp mud that coated the cobbles. Braithwaite Barton offered stoic encouragement.
Gadiel took up a position alongside one of the ropes. In front of him were two infantrymen, attentive, and to either side there were two more lines of volunteers, talking companionably. The ropes lay slack.
A Boy Scout handed out cotton gloves, beige and floral, too small for broad hands. Then a policeman gave a signal, ceremoniously, holding his handkerchief above his head and dropping it into the briny sludge, and they began to heave, digging their heels into the ridges between the cobbles, bending their knees, leaning back and resisting the burn of the rope on their skin.
After a few minutes there was a shout. Gadiel looked across and saw the men on one of the other ropes standing up, relaxing their hold. He, too, released his grip. Those around him were coughing and massaging sore hands. The spectators still waited, optimistic.
It was impossible to tell what was happening to the building. At the front, two or three men were on their hands and knees examining the footings; after a few minutes, they went to the far corner, repeating the investigation. Someone stepped forward with a copy of the plans and held it up, a blueprint of possibility. Discussions went on.
Another Boy Scout emerged with plastic cups of orange squash. The ropes lay dormant in the mud.
Half a dozen volunteers began digging around the perimeter of the library, their spades clanking against stones and rough support timbers. After ten minutes, the chug of an unsteady engine heralded the arrival of a small, red tractor, an earth shovel attached to the front, bouncing. It came from the cricket ground at the far end of the village, manoeuvred around the nymph and approached warily over the cobbles, like a small boat negotiating a rocky inlet in a spring tide. Several children ran to greet it. The men with spades straightened, leaning heavily on the handles.
The crowd parted just enough to allow the tractor to pass. The groundsman who drove it touched the peak of his cap in thanks, lowering the shovel when he reached the library.
For several minutes there was the pleasing growl of the engine as the tractor moved backwards and forwards; the hopeful scrape of the shovel extension; a spray of brine, sand and mud anointing the spectators.
The tractor worked diligently but slowly. The lines of men along the ropes disintegrated, children lost interest. The afternoon peeled away. Behind the works’ chimney, the clouds were stained with colour and the chill of evening began to coagulate around the cracks and fissures, clinging to the damp mud that was slung across the street. The clatter of machinery seemed too loud for the escaping day.
With the ground loosened finally, they tried to pull one more time. The tractor made its way to the back of the building, where it could lever and push. The ropes were aligned again; the men set themselves with care. Gadiel resumed his place, feeling the tug of effort already stiffening in his shoulders. Those who had remained to watch pushed forwards.
The library moved, timbers creaked, groaning in complaint; the tra
ctor engine could be heard whining with effort – but there was definite movement. Nothing perceptible: no jolt or collapse, nothing more than a slight change of tension on the ropes, but enough to be encouraging. A tremble of delight animated the spectators, sending children cartwheeling. Gadiel, in unison with the men ahead of him, took a small step backwards and continued to pull. At the front, a rhythm was called out with anxious enthusiasm, choreographing each heave. They took another step back, no more than six inches – but progress, nonetheless. A shout from someone on the left rope forewarned of too much force on that side as the corner of the building slid onto the rollers, gathering pace, tilting the frame. On the right rope they attempted to redress the balance, putting extra weight into their efforts; more men fitted into the lines to help, one of them pushing in front of Gadiel. They tried again, pulling until their eyes bulged.
By dusk the tractor had run out of fuel. Its wheels had worn trenches, which quickly filled with water, stranding it: it would have to be towed away. The groundsman kicked disconsolately at its tyres, sending stones and mud skittering into the ruts.
The library had been pulled only slightly out of place, its frontage balanced askew on the logs, its rear dragging in the mud and seeming to have sunk even more. Like a crooked tooth, it jutted awkwardly, poking from the neat row of buildings on Victoria Street with defiance.
Gadiel stepped away from the worst of the mud and rubble, finding a quiet place below the bank. He leaned against a wall, weary and aching, staring at their achievement.
‘Why is it stuck out like that?’
He started at Dan’s question.
‘What? What are you doing here? I thought you were at the squat.’
‘I just came to see.’
‘Now that it’s all finished for the day, is that it? When you wouldn’t have to help?’
‘No way, man – I’ve been busy.’ Dan sent a quick, narrow glance towards his friend and then looked away to the library. The last daylight teased webs of shadows through the empty structure.
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