Mr Golightly's Holiday

by Salley Vickers

  Luke finished his pint and asked if he could return the compliment. It seemed impolite to refuse. The conversation had brought up thoughts in Mr Golightly of whether he mightn’t have bitten off more than he could chew. There was comfort in comradeship, the young man’s company was agreeable and another pint would hardly detain him for long.

  Mary Simms said, ‘It’s the mire I’d be worried about if I were him, poor soul.’

  There had been an escape reported from Dartmoor prison and Sam Noble and Barty Clarke were discussing the news with whoever wanted to join in.

  ‘What’s he in for, then?’ This was Paula’s mum who had popped in for a word with Paula and was taking the weight off her feet with a half of sweet cider and some cheese-and-onion crisps.

  ‘Child molester,’ said Barty Clarke.

  Barty, a tall man with a yellow-white moustache and mild blue eyes, was the local auctioneer, who also published his own newspaper. Called the Backenbridge Review, and known locally as the Backbiter, its chief purpose was the vicious promulgation of local gossip.

  ‘No, it was rape, my Brian told me.’ This was Cherie Wolford, the prison officer’s mother, who lived next to Paula and her mum in Rabbit Row. Although Wolford had his own house over at Princetown, near the prison, he was a frequent visitor to Calne, where his mother still kept his old room for whenever he chose to stay. Brian, as Cherie was fond of telling everyone, had been to university, where he had been popular at student parties with his disc jockey skills. He had even toyed with becoming a disc jockey full-time, his mother said, but in the end the prison service offered a pension and more stability. Great Calne – Cherie Wolford anyway – was proud of his achievements

  ‘Same difference,’ insisted Barty, piqued that his role as the fount of bad news was being usurped.

  Mary Simms tried to draw Luke into the conversation. ‘Listen to them,’ she said, putting her copper-coloured head on one side. A boy she’d been out with once had said she looked winning when she did that. ‘You’d think they’d never been in trouble theirselves…’ Mary’s was a soft heart. She didn’t like to think of those men all shut away in that nasty cold prison with no one to give them a cuddle.

  But Luke was too preoccupied with the problems of art to care about a real-life drama. ‘The way I see it,’ he was saying, ‘is that once you get the plot blocked in you free yourself up for the dialogue, right?’

  Mr Golightly had no notion of whether this was right or wrong. The truth was he felt a little out of his depth. The young man seemed full of enthusiasm but also full of unfamiliar terminology. And around him the conversation plucked worrying chords.

  They were all chatting, eagerly now, about the escaped prisoner. Colin Drover remarked that in his view it all came about through lack of corporal punishment for the young; Paula’s mum said it was a shame you had to discipline children but look what happened when you didn’t; Cherie Wolford said in her son Brian’s view all rapists should be castrated; and Paula, who had popped out for a word with her mum, said there would be no need for that if he came anywhere near her!

  Only Mary Simms, who had said, to no one in particular, that she didn’t like to think of anyone coming to harm, listened when Mr Golightly remarked, ‘Hatred is like alcohol or cigarettes. We don’t know how dependent we are on it till we try to give it up.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said eagerly, leaning across the bar. ‘It’s true. But, please, why is that?’

  Mr Golightly turned to look at the barmaid. Mary Simms had green eyes, and the midday sun, which was storming the window panes she had polished that morning, made bold bright gleams on her copper hair. Look on this, it said, and rejoice!

  ‘Perhaps we underestimate the powers that can destroy us,’ he suggested.

  One sad thought generally leads to another. Mr Golightly’s mind, dwelling on the human taste for disaster, had also brought up the image, never far beneath its surface, of his own boy who, like the pretty barmaid, had also been such a one for saying ‘Yes’. That had been half the trouble, the boy’s disregarding unequivocal affirmation, which had led to the catastrophe.

  It was three o’clock when Luke and Mr Golightly finally left the Stag and Badger. He had lingered beyond the time he had allowed for his lunch break; but the exchange with Mary Simms, and the lurking thoughts following in its wake, made the prospect of a return to solitude a bleak one.

  ‘Coffee?’ he suggested.

  Luke was on for a cup. He had a few more ideas about the Myth of Creation to run past his new friend.

  Together they walked down the hill towards Spring Cottage. Clouds, passing over the face of the sun, raced long combs of rippling shadow over the green fields. Mr Golightly, observing nature’s gentle chiaroscuro, felt the beginnings of a restoration of the peace which the conversation in the pub had disturbed. The natural play of light and shade over the landscape was restful after the brooding thoughts.

  Though they weren’t unwelcome; they were as welcome as the rainbow, for was not any memory of his son the purest sunlight and water?

  11

  THE BRAKE OF THORN BUSHES GAVE NO substantial cover but it provided a screen of shadow along which the man ran. As he ran he bent low, in a kind of creeping lope, more like a driven creature – a beaten dog, a mangy tiger escaped from a rackety travelling circus, or a wolf from a down-at-heel zoo – than a human being. The light was still low and the mist made weird shapes in the depressions and hollows of the moorland terrain.

  The man was making for the beacon which had begun as a dark speck in the misty distance and now looked to be just a short run ahead. Yet each short darting burst he made seemed to bring him no nearer to reaching it. His breath scraped in his throat, like gravel in danger of being sucked too deeply into his struggling lungs.

  At the far edge of the long thorn brake he stopped and cramped down his big body into the smallest bundle he could make of it. His ears, like those of any hunted beast, were super-alert, and he had caught, more a feeling than a sound, the faintest tremble of movement on the air.

  As he crouched, his ears pinned, his heart contracted to a painful pulse, he felt, as he had felt before, the desire to walk out of the cover and give himself up to whoever or whatever was approaching his hiding place. But he did not surrender to the impulse. He had lived night and day with the serpent voice which offered him the solace of betrayal.

  Sunday was a day when Mr Golightly, from long habit, was used to taking a break from administering his business. Though when he woke on this particular Sunday morning, in the small cold bedroom of his holiday home, he hardly felt that a rest was what he deserved.

  Another twenty-four hours seemed to have slipped by without him writing a word. He had enjoyed doing what Luke referred to as ‘chewing the fat’ yesterday afternoon, over several cups of coffee and, on Luke’s part, most of a packet of Silk Cut, till it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to stroll back with the young man up to the Stag and Badger for an early evening pint which had somehow extended to another one.

  Looking out of the window at the back, he saw Samson dancing around an audience of rooks. Luke had referred to a gym down at Newton Abbot. He could do with a spot of exercise himself.

  It was chilly outside. The houses of Great Calne lay comfortably asleep beneath a soft blanket of white mist. All the residents appeared to be abed too except for Ellen Thomas’s dog, Wilfred, who was already out patrolling the hedgerow for voles but eagerly abandoned this activity with the offer of better adventures.

  Along the lane, Wilfred continued to make bounding sorties after scuttling shapes of fur and bone. Beside the cattle grid, which marked the boundary to the moor, stood Lavinia Galsworthy’s house where Luke Weatherall rented his studio flat, but Mr Golightly did not consider calling in. It was too early for a social call and for the time being he’d had enough of human nature.

  Wilfred, devout in his discipleship of tooth-and-claw, raced ahead in the hope of rabbits. Mr Golightly walked sedately, follo
wing the muddy track between the gorse bushes. He observed, in passing, the line of ghostly lichenplated thorn trees, bent, like a unanimous jury, in the direction of the prevailing wind.

  The man, sweating in the cold morning air, stayed hunkered down as the dog lumbered lightly forwards; a black dog, like the one his aunt had said she could see on his shoulder when he was a boy. Gingerly, he put out his hand and the dog came towards it and stood, his pink tongue lolling across the cruel teeth, staring with brown, unworldly eyes. The crouching man and the Labrador dog faced each other. Then the dog, making some oracular choice, licked the man’s hand and moved away from the thorn.

  ‘Good dog,’ Mr Golightly said absently as Wilfred bounded back. If answers to unanswerable questions were to be found they might be found on the moor, where nature worked away without need of human encouragements.

  And as if to demonstrate this inhuman industry, suddenly, from nowhere, the sun appeared and, borrowing from the swept sky, dashed down into a puddle a reckless sheet of sheer blue; a peacock butterfly, confused in its dates, fluttered crazily past, its brilliant raggedy reflection erratically flickering in the mirror of the peaty water; and somewhere a yellowhammer offered a future mate ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’.

  The other birds, scornful of the yellowhammer’s humble courtship offering, began to sound their own invitations to prospective partners, setting up a tuneful chain of eager pre-nuptial clamour.

  The man behind the thorns heard the birds’ song and paused, allowing himself a fractional remission from the consuming fear. The birds themselves, afire with the ruthless drive of procreation, forced this respite on him, their thin, sweet voices pinking at his ear, drilling holes which let in, momentarily, the vast invisible space which encompasses the limits of this world and where music is forever playing.

  Mr Golightly heard the same music and paused on the boggy track. People sometimes asked what the point of a thing was – for him it was the very pointlessness of the birds which filled him with satisfaction. Wilfred had come to a halt beside him, the gleaming rabbit pellets on the track suggesting that the objects of his own worship would not be far away. The dog waited patiently, recognising that here was another creature caught for a moment in its peculiar form of praise.

  The Reverend Meredith Fisher had finished her sermon and the congregation had given voice, somewhat thinly, to the final hymn: ‘We plough the fields and scatter / The good seed on the land…’ She had taken the prospect of the hymn as an opportunity to speak in her sermon about the dangers of unprotected sex. For a while now she had been waging a campaign to have a vending machine selling condoms installed in the Stag and Badger, but Colin Drover’s wife, Kath, had been brought up Roman Catholic. She was lapsed herself but it had given her principles.

  The Reverend Fisher – also from principle – was averse to all aversion, especially of a sexual kind. Her programme of enlightenment discouraged the notion that any physical act between consenting adults could be distasteful. However, there were realities to consider – Aids and venereal diseases were contingencies no modern Christian could afford to overlook.

  She had put this thought to the drowsing congregation which this morning had consisted of Paula’s mum and her Auntie Edna, who’d come for a weekend’s country air to get over the death of Uncle Ron, a couple of the old bell-ringers, who turned up because Rector Malcolm had told them, before he became incoherent, they were to ‘mind’ the new incumbent and they owed him that at least, and Tessa, Nicky Pope’s daughter. Tessa was going through a religious phase and had had a vision of the Virgin during a lesson on Bosnia and, as a consequence, had been sent to the sick room to lie down.

  And there was also Barty Clarke, the auctioneer and editor of the Backenbridge Review.

  It was as well, the Reverend Fisher thought, that Mr Clarke was there. His distinguished form stood upright among the more recumbent members of the congregation. He ploughed the fields and scattered in a vigorous bass, and he paid flattering attention to the sermon, apparently taking notes.

  In following her vocation, Meredith Fisher had bravely set her face against disheartenment. The path of a modern Christian, particularly a female one, was bound to be uphill. Had our Lord been a woman Himself He could scarcely have been set a more challenging one to tread. Nevertheless, it made a welcome change to have a member of the congregation take such an interest as Mr Clarke.

  Barty took the vicar aside at the end of the service after she had shaken hands with all her parishioners – which to one of a less optimistic turn of mind than hers might have seemed to take dispiritingly little time – and questioned her about her pronouncements on gay sex. He seemed impressed when she explained how they were all born of her own experience. It was encouraging to the vicar to encounter a fellow pilgrim – a man as well – on the hard road to enlightenment.

  Up on the moor, Mr Golightly was sitting on the high granite bench of the tor, with Wilfred beside him. The moss made plump emerald pillows on the rocky outcrop, and the delicate leaves and petals of the saxifrages formed fine-cut cameos at his feet. Mr Golightly smelled the moist earth and let the clean light bathe his eyes. He surveyed the scene before him: the green and brown and gold chequered moorland floor, the reservoir ahead, where light shone like polished silver on the water, the steep fall below, where humps of trees and glowing brambles tumbled to extinguish themselves in the rampaging River Dart.

  All this, he observed, was good. So what was wrong? Why were nature’s creations so gracious and vital compared to humankind? Humankind was part of nature too. But unlike the rest of nature it seemed so prone to litter the world with error and blunder, with noxious insinuations and captious demands which could never – surely reason would say so? – be fulfilled. Reason was supposed to be the prerogative of human beings but, of course, all really important things had little to do with reason.

  He returned to Spring Cottage in low spirits to find a call registering on the answerphone.

  ‘Hi there, Boss! Got your call, I’ll give you a bell later. Cheers!’

  Drat! He had forgotten all about the wretched e-mail. He wondered whether he could be bothered with it. These modern systems of communication seemed to be two-edged swords – they were tiresome to administer and exposed you to unwarranted intrusion. He went over to the gateleg table and opened the laptop. This time the e-mail started up with no trouble and within seconds the ‘Inbox’ displayed the news that there were three messages waiting. The first was from Mike.

  boss – keep trying with the server – it goes AWOL from time to time but don’t you fret – I’ll give you a buzz – mox

  Yes, well, more of the same. Nevertheless, Mike was right, the wayward server had righted itself.

  The next message was from Martha who said she wanted to ‘do diaries’ over some future engagements.

  The third said:

  as for darkness, where is the place thereof?

  12

  MORNING CLAXON, OVER TO SPEND THE weekend with Hugh up at ‘Nutkins’, was out, that Sunday, for her morning run. Like Mr Golightly, she did not attend the service at the village church. Morning was a pagan and it was rumoured that she had danced naked, to see the sun up, on Widecombe Moor last midsummer. Gossip also claimed that the stone circle where she danced was the one put up by Jackson, when the people from Channel Four wanted a location for a film about Satanic rites.

  Morning was broad-minded and sympathetic towards the Christian faith. It was her belief that Jesus was really a pagan, and she had been thrilled to hear in a lecture, given at Totnes, that one of the Gnostic sects – which it was widely believed, in Totnes, that Jesus belonged to – had been in the way of consuming a sacred drink, made up of menstrual blood and semen. Known to be a favourite among pagans, menstrual blood and semen had not yet hit the taste of Great Calne where communicants still favoured the more familiar wine and wafer; though, even for these, takers were somewhat slender, as the Sunday’s congregation showed.

  M
orning paced herself going down the hill where you could turn an ankle. Passing the church she was in time to see the Reverend Meredith talking to Barty Clarke. A pity when women didn’t keep up appearances, Morning ruminated, raising her pace as she came down on to the flat. The vicar would look so much better with more fashionable glasses and eye make-up.

  A barking Labrador bounded towards her.

  ‘Wilfred!’ reprimanded Ellen Thomas, who had come out into the street to look for her dog.

  The black Labrador had made his way under the barbed-wire fence into the garden of Spring Cottage. Mr Golightly, finding the dog there after their walk on the moor, was returning him for a second time.

  Morning pulled in her stomach muscles and lengthened her spine, conscious that good posture shows a woman’s breasts to advantage. A man of late middle age, altogether unremarkable in appearance, was not the stuff to bring out any special response in her. Still, a man was a man, and no opportunity to further her plans should be wasted. She had not given up the fight to transform the tearooms to an alternative health centre and was hopeful of instituting a Pilates class.

  Mr Golightly’s was a nature adapted to finding pleasure wherever pleasure was honestly to be found. He enjoyed the sight of a shapely bosom and his eyes now rested on Morning Claxon’s, much as, a little earlier, he had paused to admire a crop of shining yellow celandines. ‘Good morning,’ he said. Had he had a hat he might have raised it, so statuesque was the young woman who stood before him.

  Morning Claxon smiled on her elderly admirer. ‘My friends will tell you otherwise but if you can’t be good be careful, I always say!’

  Mr Golightly looked politely puzzled.

  ‘My name’s Morning,’ explained his new acquaintance. This was not strictly the case: her given forename was Maureen but this had not translated well to the alternative culture of the South-West.