by Tim Pears
‘I don’t want to fight you,’ Wilf replied in a sing-song childish voice. ‘I thought we was friends.’ He slapped the boy’s cheek. ‘Put em up.’
Leo stared at the stockboy’s hobnailed boots. He knew he must not cry yet he wanted to. He shook his head.
Wilf slapped Leo’s other cheek. Now both cheeks stung. The old shepherd had come out of the granary. He did not intercede but watched mutely as he might two ram lambs.
Why was this happening? Leo did not know. He took a step back. Herb Shattock’s stable lad. The maid Gladys, who was his cousin. Lottie herself, for her own amusement. His father. The gypsy boy, Thomas. The gypsy rider at Okehampton. Now Wilf Cann. Perhaps there was some oddity in his manner that provoked people. Something of the runt about him, of the hen-pecked or nag-ridden.
Or maybe that was not it at all. There was nothing peculiar about Leo Sercombe. It was simply that there existed more violence in the world, in man, than he happened to feel within himself. For it always surprised him. He made his hands into fists and raised them.
Wilf Cann grinned. He put up his own hands and from the waist began to jerk and sway, side to side, as if trying to see around Leo’s hands into his eyes. As if one lad was playing some kind of peek-a-boo game with the other. Leo waited. Wilf tossed his left fist out to the side and leaned after it. Leo leaned the other way, to his own left, away from the stockboy’s left fist. He watched it hover in the air then drop as Wilf let it fall to his side and took one step back, then another.
Leo didn’t realise he’d been hit at first. He’d not seen the blow coming. This pain in the left side of his jaw seemed random, not necessarily connected to the lad stepping away from him, smiling. Perhaps it was coincidental. A wasp happened to have stung him at that moment. A wasp in December? Or the old shepherd had for some reason joined in, pitching a stone in their direction that had struck his face.
It was only when he tasted blood in his mouth that he understood how Wilf had feinted to the left but slugged him on the blind side. Caught him with a knuckly punch. With his tongue Leo discovered in the blood a loose object. As he identified it as a tooth so Leo saw that Wilf had ceased retreating and was coming back at him, jittering and weaving, hands in compact fists rolling before him. And in the instant that Leo found the tooth so a fire was lit within him. A furnace. His belly was an oven and the heat roared through his body to his brain. He bent his head and, yawing some formless word, ran forward.
The boy caught the taller youth unprepared. Wilf tried to punch Leo’s head but it was already through his guard and he staggered backwards. He tripped and Leo fell with him, the two boys locked together as one, rolling, tumbling, towards the pond. On the far side the ground sloped so that animals could walk in to drink but here there was a bank, a foot or more clear of the water.
For a moment the boy and the youth seemed to cease competing and instead collaborated, slowing their momentum, until both were on their knees. But once they had done so each fought to propel the other into the water yet keep themself from it. Such was the conundrum with which they grappled on the lip of the pond. Leo grunted and heaved in his fury. He had his arms around Wilf’s body, his hands locked, his head wedged against the larger boy’s armpit, the rough material of the suit jacket against his bruised cheek. He could smell Wilf, his fresh and his stale sweat mingled. Wilf could not punch him except on the bony back of the head. And Leo would not let go. Never. Nothing could make him. He could smell the water. He was desperate to force his opponent in. He sweated, pushed Wilf in the direction of the water, pulled himself back. As Wilf did the same to him.
What sent them rolling over the bank together and into the pond? They splashed in the cold water and the shock of it loosened their grip and each floundered separately until he had retrieved his balance. When they stood, the water came above their knees, almost to their waists. Each boy looked down at himself, then at his adversary.
‘You looks like a drowned rat,’ Wilf said, gasping.
‘You looks like a drowned cat,’ Leo replied.
The stockboy examined himself once more. ‘I does, don’t I?’ he said. He began to laugh, then so did Leo, even as the cold water made him shiver.
‘You is cracked, boy,’ Wilf said. ‘Or crazed, if you prefer.’
‘What do that make you?’ Leo asked him.
‘Come on,’ Wilf said, ‘let’s get us out of here.’ He climbed out and gave Leo a hand and pulled him up. The old shepherd had changed position in the yard and stood suspiciously close to where they had wrestled.
Wilf grabbed Leo in a headlock and held him tightly there as they stumbled across the yard. He could have strangled Leo to submission or worse, yet Leo understood that this hold was not martial but a gesture of affection. While also making clear to him Wilf’s superior strength. He had finished the fight on a whim or from an impulse of mercy or even admiration, but it was he who had let it finish all the same. He could continue the fight at any moment and could hurt Leo if he wished. But Wilf did not wish to. This hold was an embrace, and it had a meaning, clear as words, in the language of men.
They sat around the stove in the barn to warm their flesh and dry their sodden clothes. Leo had no other suit and Wilf only one, and that was his best. He asked Vance Brewer if he had pushed them in.
‘I did not,’ Vance said. ‘But my foot might have.’
When Cyrus returned, Vance told him that the lads had had a little bate or squabble. Cyrus said that most lads wait to have their baths in the brook or the river come summertime.
‘I never seen the pond used in winter,’ he said. ‘But there you go, Vance, that’s life. The young has their own ideas, there’s no helpin it.’
4
On Christmas Eve after supper Juliana cut all the men’s hair, beginning with her husband then continuing with their workers in order of age. She gave each man the same look, hair cut close to their skull all round. When it was Vance’s turn he sat with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. Afterwards the old chap preened in front of the flawed mirror Juliana held before him. He said she had a talent for the work and could have done well for herself in Launceston or Bude, though he was glad that she had not.
Christmas Day proceeded the same as any other, save for the fact that at breakfast Juliana Pepperell told the men that she would pray on their behalf and afterwards walked out of the yard, presumably to attend church or chapel thereabouts. The men worked as usual. Leo did not notice Juliana return.
Old Vance Brewer was a bachelor and Wilf an orphan, and like Leo had no other place to go. But even before it grew dark Cyrus Pepperell told the men to finish up and come inside. There he poured them a glass each of what he called his best cider. Before he could drink any, Leo had to swallow the saliva in his mouth, caused by the rare smell of meat cooking.
‘This be zingin stuff, gaffer,’ Wilf said.
‘Don’t think it means I’m getting soft,’ Cyrus said. ‘Tis but a Christmas treat for you lads.’
The men smoked. Leo sipped his cider. Juliana peeled vegetables at the table and pulled a pan sizzling with lard out of the oven. She poured the chopped vegetables into the pan, and stirred with a wooden spoon till all were covered in the hot fat, then returned it. Cyrus Pepperell said that there was much sense expressed in the Cornish Echo. He explained that there was one reason and one alone for the decline of agriculture, and it was what politicians who regarded themselves as lords and masters nowadays pursued at all costs. ‘There’s only one word for it, lads,’ he said. ‘Free trade.’
Cyrus called his trio of workers ‘lads’, though one was twenty years older than himself.
‘I’m a doin my mathematics,’ the old shepherd said, ‘and I makes that two words.’
Cyrus ignored him. ‘The Huns? The Frogs? Do you think they opens theirselves up to free trade? No, lads. They’re protectionist and I don’t blame the bastards. Excuse me, Juliana. No, we depends on Germany for wheat, flour, even sugar beet.’
‘That�
�s wrong, gaffer,’ said the old shepherd. ‘We should be feedin ourselves.’
‘Aye,’ said Cyrus. ‘Still, I spose there’s one good thing about it. At least tradin partners don’t fight each other.’
Juliana called them to the table and they ate as they had not done since the boy arrived. Roasted goose. Roasted potatoes, carrots, parsnip. Brussels sprouts. A thick, dark gravy. This feast was like some kind of mockery of their usual meagre sustenance. They drank the cider and the gaffer refilled their glasses. Vance Brewer said he was having trouble with his water and went outside to piss in the yard.
‘You lads might not believe this,’ Cyrus said upon the shepherd’s return, ‘but Vance here was a wrestler in his time. One a the finest in this district.’
The old man nodded modestly, but Cyrus said, ‘You don’t believe me, lads, do you? Look at him now, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t neither. Show em, Vance. He was a young heller, lads. Show em.’
Vance Brewer grimaced in apparent reluctance but bent forward and pulled up his trouser legs to reveal the blue scars of the kickings he’d received, thick upon his shins, such that Leo had never seen the like.
‘All right, old lad,’ Cyrus said. ‘That’s enough showin off. No need to put Wilf and the tacker here off of their suet puddins.’
Leo gazed upon the scars. He could not see them well, for the old man appeared to have four legs. The boy blinked and there were once more two, only for his vision to swim again. He blinked once more, and the shepherd had two heads. He looked up at the ceiling and saw it turn around in a full circle, somehow, then the wall came above him, then the floor, and so he slept.
5
Cyrus Pepperell came inside from pulling mangolds on chill winter days with his hands full of deep sore cracks. In the evening, sitting before the fire, he rubbed ointment from a small tin into them, methodically. It smelled of eucalyptus. Out in the field with sacks tied around his legs, another tied around his shoulders for a cape, he was like one of those Syrian hermits who condemned themselves to life atop a pillar or standing motionless or shut in a cell. So Cyrus Pepperell worked himself to his own deluded benediction in the Cornish wilderness.
Juliana did the milking of their cows. ‘The gaffer says er’s got kind hands,’ Wilf told Leo. ‘Gets the last drop a milk from them teats. Won’t let me near em to learn.’
Leo had seen Juliana in the milking parlour, her posture an insecure squat on a three-legged stool, the bucket pinched between her knees. She had a widespread walk on bandy legs, and a stoop that made her look even more subservient to her husband.
‘If tis true about her hands, they’s the kindest part of er,’ Wilf said. ‘Whatever old Vance thinks.’ He looked at Leo, saw his quizzical expression and said, ‘Did you not realise? Old Brewer’s in love with the missis.’
Leo did not say anything but he allowed that disbelief might be writ upon his face.
‘He says er beauty do not come from the paint pot,’ Wilf explained. ‘He says it come from within and do make her glow.’
‘He said that?’
‘One time after too much cider.’
Leo shook his head. ‘Do the gaffer not mind?’
Wilf shrugged to show he did not know the answer to this question. ‘Perhaps it do amuse him. I’m not even sure that Cyrus and Juliana Pepperell is man and wife.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They might be brother and sister, I reckon. They looks somewhat alike, would you not say?’
‘Perhaps a husband and wife grow to resemble each other.’
‘But can you imagine them two ever couplin?’
Leo considered this proposition, and said, ‘I cannot imagine any folk so doin, if they does it as beasts do.’
*
One cold, sunny Sunday Wilf walked Leo around the perimeter of the farm. He said as they walked that he was sorry for their fight. The truth was that the boy had done nothing wrong, it was just that Wilf loved fighting. ‘I always have,’ he said. ‘Don’t get no opportunity here.’
Leo said that he accepted the apology despite its taking a month to arrive.
The perambulation took all morning and into the afternoon. The extent of the holding was far greater than Leo had realised. There were fields unused. Crops gone to seed. Grazing turned to tufty wilderness. They sat on a log at the highest point of the top field and looked down into the gloomy coombe.
‘The gaffer don’t know what he’s doin,’ Wilf said. ‘He’s a landskimmer. Old Brewer reckons the soil was plum once upon a time. Not that he’s any good.’
Wilf rolled a cigarette and gave it to Leo, then he rolled one for himself. ‘Take them sheep,’ he said. ‘I know I ribs the old fellow but this farm is sheep-sick. Why do you think they suffers so many parasites? Worms and fluke. You just watch and see how many lambs you lose next month. Dysentery.’ Wilf felt in his pockets, patted his jacket. ‘The old boy don’t move the sheep around enough. They need shiftin from one field to another. That’s why they get restless, them ewes. The grass is always greener. They need fresh grazin. They’ve not been up here for years. Ever since it’s pained him to walk. Damn it,’ Wilf said. ‘Someone’s took my matches.’ He stood up, and cursed loudly at the sky. ‘Come on, boy. We better get back. I wants a fag.’
Leo rummaged in his own pockets. ‘Here,’ he said, and passed Wilf two red-tipped matches.
Wilf grinned and took them. ‘Good lad,’ he said. He put his cigarette between his lips, sat back down and struck one of the matches on the bark of the log. The flame took and he cupped it in his hands and lit his cigarette. Leo leaned towards him and lit his in like manner.
Wilf exhaled smoke and took the cigarette from his lips. ‘What else you got in there?’
One after another Leo emptied the pockets of his trousers, jacket, waistcoat. A knife. The stub of a pencil. He put the contents on the log. Wilf shook his head. Thin copper wire, twine, nails of different sizes.
Wilf ruffled Leo’s hair. ‘You’re a funny one and no mistake,’ he said. ‘Come on, boy, let’s get back.’
*
In January rain fell, and turned to sleet. One evening Leo went out to use the privy before bed. As he came back to the house he looked up. White chips of snow floated down from out of the grey clouds, flakes of ash from a fire so far away it was long frozen, alighting upon his suit and his skin, and upon the ground.
The snow fell long and thick and stayed upon the earth. All motion stopped. Time floated and drifted. Dusk fell seemingly at random. Dawn likewise. Nothing moved but rabbits, their mouths and teeth all white for there was no grass and they lived off chalk.
On the snow in the mornings were the prints of animals who’d journeyed in the darkness. The slots of deer, scat of rabbit. Badgers’ paw prints, fox trails. Leo hitched the white colt to a small cart and took hay to the field, the snow creaking beneath him. The first day he stood on the ground to fork the hay out but the ewes in their hunger overwhelmed him and he fell amongst them. The sound of their bleating hurt his ears as their bodies pounded and squashed him. He grabbed hold of fleece and pulled himself up, and with the fork fought his way out of their midst. Thereafter he stood upon the cart and distributed the hay from on high.
At the end of January, the temperature rose and it rained but then froze again. Trees groaned. An ice storm caught and held rain on to the branches in the wood. At night the weight of the ice broke them off, and they fell with a sound like waves crashing on the shore. In the morning pheasants flew down from their roosts leaving their tail feathers stuck to the branches. The boy found a mute ruddock glued by its frozen feet to its roost. He took out his knife and chipped it free. The tiny redbreast rose and circled above him, and with a shrill cry flew off towards the house.
6
In the second week of February, Vance Brewer prepared his maternity ward. He partitioned the big barn with hurdles, and spread straw. Bottles of medicine and disinfectant were lined up on a shelf beside the stove, along with paraffin la
mps. Wilf brought him a cartload of chopped wood and dumped it. The old man spent hours stacking the logs carefully against the wall. He also carried the wicker chair from his room, and dragged the mattress off his bed. These he placed either side of the stove. Leo asked if he should do likewise, manhandle his mattress down from the loft and sleep here in the barn.
‘I would rather you did not,’ Vance Brewer told him. ‘My ewes and me gets along fine. Strangers bother em.’
The boy rode out on the white horse and brought the pregnant ewes to the barn. He slept in the attic and had his breakfast in the kitchen, but most of the day he spent in the barn. He did not believe he was any longer a stranger to the sheep but anyhow the only way for them to become accustomed to him was by his quiet presence among them.
The shepherd closed his eyes and dozed sitting in his chair, a slumber so light the slightest noise from a ewe could wake him. Then he limped among them, holding up a lamp in the gloom, studying their behaviour. One ewe refused to come to the trough. Another stood in the corner of her pen, looking bewildered. Each morning that Leo came to the barn it was to the sound of fresh bleating. The ewes chose to give birth at night. On the third evening he returned to the barn after supper and remained. While Vance Brewer sat in the chair, Leo lounged upon the old man’s mattress. Thus they stayed in silence. The smell of the sheep mingled with that of paraffin and woodsmoke. Leo’s eyelids drooped of their own accord. On occasion the old man spoke and woke him.
‘There’s some who shear their ewes prior to lambin,’ he said. ‘Or crutch em, which is shearin just around the udders and vulva. I never have. You only has to feed em more to make up for their heat loss.’
He gave the boy further advice on shearing sheep. He said the beast should be laid on its rump, and the wool shorn from its neck and fore-shoulders, then laid upon one side and the upper side sheared, then turned. Care must be taken not to cut the skin or the teats. ‘If you makes a wound, apply a mix a tar and grease,’ he said. ‘And one other thing. If you put em out after shearin, make sure they have shelter. The sun can give naked sheep blisters summat awful.’