by Laurie Lee
Spring Comes to Slagtown
Forswearing, for once, the usual fragrant haunts of the season – the primrose banks of Sussex, or the daffodil fields of Newent and Grasmere – I went to meet Spring in a most unlikely region; the soot-choked valleys of Slagtown, in the north country.
I found it, of course; but cloaked in the most curious disguises, both fascinating and forbidding. It was as though someone had smothered Sandro’s Primavera in a suit of coal-tarred overalls – yet left the blue eyes clear.
I went up from London in a train the colour of an ash-cart, riding a dingy wagon whose condition was my first intimation of the land to which I was heading. The southern morning was bright and lively, suburban gardens jingled with flowers and washing, the home-county fields were sharp with growing wheat, woods and copses hung tassels of golden palm, were white with blackthorn, and brilliant with breaking buds. And the sun lay smooth and gentle over all.
Lulled by the warmth of train and landscape, somewhere – not far from Rugby – I fell asleep. I slept long and dreamed deeply of parrots and tropic jungles. Then suddenly I awoke to find I was chill and stiff, and that my parrots were lodged in the throat of an old man sitting beside me, a man who, wracked with coughing, squealed and squeaked like a birdhouse. I wiped the steam from the carriage windows and peered forth. I saw that we were no longer among the gentle fields of the south. We had arrived in Slagtown – and a nether world.
When I left the station – a building squat and black as a fireless grate – it took me some time to get my bearings. Where was the sun? and where the spring? I set off and wandered through the outskirts of the town and at first saw nothing but the chaos, rubbish and sediment of centuries of industrial processes, which had turned these Lancashire valleys inside out. The land was flayed, pocked and pitted; it smoked with the dull residue of a thousand drawn furnaces, it stank with the acid wastes of gigantic chemical actions. Every blade of grass and every possible green thing seemed as impregnated with soot as a flue-brush. What chance had spring here? Surely this was underground, the land of Pluto, with Persephone ever chained beside him?
Yet, no, the sap was rising – though at first I didn’t know where to look for signs of it. The sap was rising, not through the boles of willows or flowering chestnuts, but through eyes and talk, gestures, and the games of boys.
But first, before I could see this, I had to work through the outward crust and digest the metallic exterior of this inky world. It was all new to me. Wherever I looked was corruption and smouldering saturnine eruptions. Mountains of slag and slate, like pagan pyramids, shuttered the sky and buried within their heaps a hundred years of light and labour. A derelict bridge of purple brick stepped from one hill to another, the archaeological ghost of some bankrupt highway, its visage bearded with weed and grime. On every hand, raggedly welded together, stood grey-walled factories, with fierce black chimneys, like inverted drains, spouting their smoke into the oily taste of the air. And over all the half-daze of dream, the hanging haze, mist, soot and steam, the smell of gas, boiled fish and washing.
Then slowly I grew attuned to this special climate. Through the murk I heard chickens, children and the chatter of women. I realized, in fact, that this was no desert, but a world of homes, a place alive and busy. For the valley hummed with work; looms buzzed and rumbled, furnaces roared, lathes squealed and shunting engines piped and trumpeted, blowing bright bubbles of steam into the sky. The day warmed up, the heavy air lightened from grey to gold.
It was at this moment that I saw my first legitimate sign of spring, such a sign, perhaps, as one would see nowhere else, but genuine as a cuckoo. In a long damp street, whose sooty walls had transformed it into a deep channel of darkness, a row of lamps flared suddenly, like yellow crocuses, their gas jets lit and bubbling. And standing alternately between them, of the same height and colour, was an avenue of trees, stunted, black-stemmed and lopped, but likewise alight with jets of sharp green leaves. With such shadowy symbols to cling to, my eyes began to focus, and then at last I saw Slagtown in its own spring light.
All the next day I wandered about, and the town’s own carbon copy of itself unrolled before me. I toiled up and down hills, under a lattice of trolley wires, past innumerable co-op shops, and mission halls full of throaty singing. I walked a hundred streets of square black houses, past stained-glass doors, and doorsteps washed bright yellow. Through a hundred front windows I saw the broad leaf of the perennial aspidistra (that household ikon of pagan green). Through a hundred others I saw high teas laid out upon their tables, a ritual of sausage, lettuce and hot meat pies. And in the back streets by the station I saw the markets piled with the crated fruits of springs of other lands: South African grapes, Italian peas, Canary tomatoes, Dutch cucumbers, azaleas, wallflowers and potted tulips – the death-spoils of winter, and all for Slagtown.
But that was not everything. On my way about, of course, I met some people. The season shone through them too.
These were not faces I had seen before. They were northern faces, craggy, more friendly than most, the faces of craftsmen, spinners, weavers. Little men with cloth caps and short black pipes, with sulphurous skins, bird-blue eyes, and a manner of talking that was a joy to listen to. I saw handsome girls, in brilliant coats and scarves, crowding, with airs of carnival, the buses outside the Cloth Hall. I saw old women, in knitted shawls, debating, through the plate-glass windows of a dress shop, the styles of the Easter brides on show within. And two boys in the street, dithering with bat and ball, while a third painted wickets on the gasworks wall. Spring, willy-nilly, was here.
And there was more to prove it. From the stir and mass of the milling town you could break off a short scene, chew it, and taste most readily the tang in the air.
An old man with short legs and a scarlet waistcoat, cocky as a robin, led his granddaughter to a piece of waste ground behind the mill. He was finished with the mill for good; he and the child carried a kite between them; it was playtime now forever.
‘Aye, it’s been a grand winter, son,’ he said. ‘Real grand. Easy on the bones. And spring’s early. Me ’ens are laying like mad.’
And he gave the kite to the girl and she ran off with it on her red legs and it rose with a swoop into the yellow air and he watched it.
A carrot-haired woman in a bun-shop took twopence from a tobacco tin to buy a bottle of vinegar.
‘Me old man’s been cutting his lettuce,’ she said, ‘and I’m going to make us a salad. Gave me three ’a’pence for the vinegar. But that’ll never be enough – as I told him.’
A young blond innkeeper, home from the navy, looked over the bar and said in a strangled voice:
‘Slagtown! Awful place. They bin and changed all the bus stops. I – I can’t bear it.’
The barmaid looked at him from brown eyes smothered with love.
‘It’ll be all reet, Jim,’ she said softly. ‘It’ll be all reet …’
A bunch of brushed youths, in belted mackintoshes, stood outside the cinema, and their talk mingled sport with fancy.
‘Why are all the females around ’ere such whoppers?’ asked one. ‘They’d make a reet good football team.’
‘Aye, they would that,’ said another, and added sadly, ‘but I wouldn’t mind being the football …’
A stiff-backed weaver was walking beside me up a long steep road.
‘I like these ’ills,’ he said warmly. ‘I reckon they’re real luvly. Can’t do wi’ level country, lad. I tried it once. Couldn’t get a bit o’ breath. I was yawn, yawn, yawn, all the time. But I loves the ’ills. ’Specially in April. They freshens you up like a filbert …’
Then out in that no-man’s-land, past the end of the trolley buses, where the stone road rises to sheep walls and little blackened farms, I found Jasper, aged seventy-two. We were raised to the tops of the valley chimneys, above the steam clouds, looking down on the slag heaps, the starch-blue stagnant pools, the sweating railways and custard-thick canals.
Jas
per was shovelling soil out of a bank into four buckets. He wanted it for his garden. As soon as I spoke to him I knew he was no ordinary man.
‘I’ve the longest memory in the valley,’ he said. ‘And I see the future of the world.’
‘Tell me the future,’ I asked.
Jasper grew close, and struck his hands together. He grinned grimly, and roared like a preacher, in full rich periods beautifully timed and chanted.
‘I’m old,’ he said, ‘and I thank God I’m getting out of it! Greed! It’ll reduce this world to ashes. What with supersonical waves and silent sound – we could be standing here, lad, and they’d knock us down like mice.’
He talked for two hours, with the mills thumping in the valley and the sparrows screaming around his head. Then, suddenly, the spring hit him, too, poor Jasper, and he clapped his hand to his mouth with a cry of anguish.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘It’s me gums, lad,’ he said. ‘The worst thing I ever did. Had ’em opened up top and bottom. Thirty-eight X-rays – thirty top and four deep – wi’ cockaine injections too numerous to mention. But they ’as me beat. The spring air’s cruel to ’em – makes ’em jump and jangle. I could keep you talking all day. But it’s me gums. They’ve gone bitter. Now I’ll ’ave to take ’em ’ome and warm ’em. Besides –’ and he loaded a barrow with his buckets of earth ‘– I’ve got to catch this weather with me taters.’
So I left Jasper and climbed up on the moor above the chemical works. It would soon be time to take the train and return again to the south. What had I gathered from this steamy cauldron, these endless, similar valleys of clotted streams, stone mills, sharp men, jaunty girls, and graves with rare, archaic names? Well, it was spring; bitter, brave, submerged – but irresistible.
I sat on a rock and looked for the last time on Slagtown. The haze had not passed, but was still dream-like, almost Chinese. Sounds rose; the rattle of trucks, bark of dogs, cry of children and flutter of homing pigeons. The sun rolled through the steaming air as white and slippery as a ball of mercury. But it was Saturday afternoon, and there was a smell of green and a feel of holiday. I heard a brass band tuning up. Shouts came from an invisible sports field. Men were scratching hard, like hares, in small black gardens; while boys and girls sailed forth on shining bikes.
It was not what I expected; but as I sat there, the picture fell into place before me, genuine and vivid. Slagtown had met the season full tilt, and in its own way.
Meanwhile, on the moors above, among the raw dark rocks, the sheep were dropping their dusty lambs. And out of the black sour grass skylarks went spinning, singing into the clouds.
Conversations in the Sun
No artificial fertilizers of wireless or television ever interfered with its scrubby growth. Hard- or soft-rooted, the talk lived or withered under the beer’s celestial dew.
Charlie Moss, eighty-six, dipped his whiskers in it, then blew them out like wings. ‘I ain’t seen thee since the spring of the year, charming the birds ’long the edge of the wood.’
That would do for a start; he was always a bit fancy. He lived alone and acknowledged no one. He handed round walnuts he’d grown himself and giggled, for they were all of them rotten.
The Sun public house stands in a steep western valley, has a horse-trough and a perpetual spring of sweet water. Its cellars inside are full of local-brewed beers that keep the same temperature, winter and summer. The building dates back to the sixteenth century but looks as old as the valley itself, from whose gaping hillsides its stones and tiles were all originally ripped.
Mr Moss continued to giggle in his corner. There were also present Albert Hawkes and the landlady.
‘I was born in a pub and got married in jail,’ she said suddenly. ‘What you think you’re doing?’ Nobody was doing anything much, but Mrs Uley liked this announcement. She was the daughter, in fact, of a Gloucester innkeeper, and had married a warder from Bristol Prison – enough to claim special knowledge of both beer and the law, and to give her the whip hand over her customers.
‘… And then I got me orders to blow me whistle because the peace had been declared.’ Mr Hawkes, the egg-seller, was back in the Canada of 1918, remembering no other time since then. He spoke in a Cotswold-Canadian accent, was eighty-four, and wore a black homburg hat. ‘Ah called to the engineers to give me more air and watched the gauge slowly comin’ up. Then ah went to me whistle – it was off a big lake steamer an’ you could hear it twelve miles away – and ah pulled on the rope, an’ tied it round a stanchion, an’ kep’ it blowin’ fer twenny-four hours.’
Bertie Bates came in with a goldfish bowl, accompanied by Wally Silver, the farmer.
‘Fill ’er up,’ said Bates, slamming the bowl on the bar. ‘She’ll ’old at least a gallon.’
‘Hallo, me darlins,’ roared Mr Silver. ‘Lord, ain’t I glad to see you! Listen. Listen ’ere … I got summat to tell ya. Now don’t you say nothin’. Listen …’
‘It tipped with rain while I was comin’ up,’ Bates said. ‘I spilt that there fish in the pond.’
‘Listen, me dear. Bide quiet an’ listen. Listen what I goin’ to say …’
‘I still got me budgies. They half drive me crazy. They kick up ’ell with the radio on.’
‘Listen,’ begged Silver, whirling his arms about. ‘Last night I didn’t half scream. There was all them courtin’ couples up in the quarry. Listen what I was going to tell ya … I come up quiet. I was mounted on rubber.’ He showed the heels of his plimsoll shoes. ‘Well, I caught ’em proper. I bursted out laughin’. That did it. Lord, I died.’
He’d retired from his farming and moved into a cottage, and was bright-eyed and much on the loose.
‘See this straw ’at? Cost me seven and sixpence. Oh, yes.’ He yelped. ‘Ain’t I wunnerful? I be have three young ladies to tea today. Served ’em me £30 tea-set, with salmon.’
‘’E could drink like a goldfish, too,’ said Bates. ‘Tich Williams – you remember ’im? One night ’e got drunk, we tied a foal to ’is bike. “Drat you! Get away! Stop followin’ I!” Up the road ’e went, zigzag …’
‘All the Lords and Ladies of Stroud,’ cried Silver. ‘They be all a-comin’ to see me. They’re wantin’ to put me on the telephone. I can ’andle government to perfection.’
What water had he got in his fine new cottage, which some said was falling down?
‘Why, the beautiful main-water what the Lord put on ten thousand year ago, better by far of high degree than that council drizzle from Stroud.’
The beer on the bar was now standing in regiments, rough brown, the colour of beechnuts. Quoits were flying about the room, and Mrs Uley was getting the spikes. In came the Doons, short father, tall son, as they did every night of the year. Dad was powerful as a donkey-engine, the son fair, loose-limbed and handsome. He had round eager eyes and adored his father. They were both of them black with soot.
‘Evenin’ all,’ they said in chorus. ‘Chock us a Cotswold, missus.’
‘Badgers,’ said Dad, ‘is the cleanest animal there is. They live in deep. They got proper ’ouses.’
‘They got proper ’ouses,’ echoed the son. ‘True as I’m standing ’ere. Front room, bedroom, nursery, kitchen, top floor and bottom floor!’
‘Can’t ’unt ’em with dogs though. Dogs is just helpless. They’ll scratch ’is parts right off.’
‘Why ’unt ’em at all then? They bin takin’ yer chickens?’
‘They’d have to be ’ard put to it to take a chicken. They’d ’ave to be ’ard put to it, you. They’ll take blackberries, now; they like blackberries, you. But they wouldn’t take a chicken. They like grubs an’ slugs an’ beetles an’ that. If they finds a bees’ nest, they’ll take that’n, too …’
‘Dad; he says why trap ’em, then?’
‘For the skin an’ the fat. Worth a lot that is, you know. They makes what’s-its, what-d’you-call-’ems, shaving brushes with the ’airs. Worth a lot that is, the fur
. And they ’as all that fat just unner the skin. Shift anything that will, you. Just rub it across the back of yer ’and an’ it’ll come right out through the palm. Rub it on yer chest an’ it’ll go right through. Shift anything, that will, you.’
‘It’ll go through steel,’ said Gerry, the son. ‘Shift anything, badger fat. Used to catch ’em early mornings, didn’t we, dad? Boil ’em in a gurt iron copper. Fat used to sweat right through the copper an’ come out the other side. Very good for rheumatism. Go through anything. Shift anything that will, you.’
Father Doon, who was now the gasworks’ stoker, had once been a prodigious poacher.
‘Few young ’uns knows how to trap a rabbit. Couldn’t set a long net for their lives. I reckon young Ayres was the last one I learned. Nearly got shot in the back fer me trouble.’
‘Remember when you went out shootin’ rabbits and shot that old mule instead?’
‘Well, they got the same ears,’ said Dad.
It was bottled beer now, and a game of darts, but the older men wouldn’t play.
‘Darts?’ said Bates. ‘Me and ’im were champions. Both lost it, just like that. One night I got six treble-twennies in a row. Next day I couldn’t do nothing.’
‘Same with me,’ said Doon. ‘Used to play for the League. Can’t get nothing no more. Picked up a stone to throw at a bird one day. Thought me arm ’ad come right off.’
‘Old men can’t do it. Nor the married ’uns. They get the shakes an’ then they’ve ’ad it. Like Sid, from the works, with all them daughters. He was in bed one night, one of his girls came ’ome, switched the radio on full wallop. He shouted turn it off. The wife turned it off. Another daughter came in, switched it on again. Father got up, fetched his twelve-bore gun, walked down to the kitchen, shot the wireless to pieces and made a bloody great ’ole in the wall.’