Devil's Day

by Andrew Michael Hurley

  The priest greeted Angela and Liz when they got out and blessed Grace on her head as she fiddled with the buttons on the cuffs of her dress—a woollen thing with a pleated neck and a cracked belt. It was a size too small for her but it was the only thing she owned that was black enough and smart enough for a funeral. She looked no happier than she had the night before, and wiped away the feel of the priest’s hand when he wasn’t looking, but she was at least wearing the locket that Kat had given her.

  ‘It looks pretty on you,’ said Kat and Grace attempted a smile.

  It was clear that she was apprehensive about the funeral, and stood with her back to the hearse.

  ‘Sit with me, if you like,’ said Kat.

  Grace shrugged and Kat went over and put her hand on her arm.

  ‘There’s nothing to be worried about,’ she said. ‘Just try and remember the Gaffer how he was.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Grace.

  Kat bent down and rearranged her twisted collar. ‘What you could do,’ she said, ‘is to try and picture him laughing. That usually works.’

  ‘All right,’ said Grace.

  ‘You’ve got something in mind?’ said Kat.

  Grace nodded and unpeeled a corner of the new dressing that had been put over the wound on her palm. Blood had already seeped into the fabric.

  ‘Here, I told you to stop picking at it,’ said Liz, coming over and separating Grace’s hands. ‘It’s no wonder it’s still bleeding. It won’t heal if you keep fiddling with it.’

  She held Grace’s wrist firmly and pressed the edge of the plaster back into place.

  ‘We’re going in soon,’ she said. ‘So behave.’

  A glance at Kat and she led Grace away to where the others were standing.

  The priest turned back the sleeve of his cassock to look at his watch, as some of the girls from the abattoir who’d enjoyed the Gaffer’s company in the pub hurried under the lych-gate, their heels clicking on the pathway.

  ‘We’d best start,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve another occasion of solemnity to attend this afternoon and if I mistime the traffic . . .’

  ‘Are you ready, Mr Pentecost?’ said Burkitt and Dadda pinched out his roll-up and nodded.

  ‘You come with me, Katherine,’ said Laurel, taking Kat’s hand and kissing it. ‘Heavens, love, you’re freezing. Haven’t you got any gloves to wear? You don’t want that baby feeling the chill.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Kat. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘You’d better get used to her,’ said Bill. ‘She’ll mother you until you pop.’

  ‘Is that what you think we do, pop?’ said Angela.

  ‘Eight hours I were in labour with our Jeff,’ said Laurel.

  ‘I were twelve with Grace,’ said Liz. ‘I certainly didn’t pop.’

  ‘All right,’ said Bill. ‘It’s not a bloody competition.’

  ‘They know nowt do men, Katherine, love,’ said Laurel, putting a protective hand around Kat’s waist. ‘They’ve never been in proper pain. We have to stick together us lasses.’

  The previous night, Laurel had been the first to throw her arms around Kat and pet her belly. The first to offer advice. The first to worry when Bill kissed her on the forehead and lifted her off the ground in an ursine embrace that threatened to crush the baby. Dadda was exactly as I’d thought he would be and patted me on the shoulder with the same sort of congratulations I’d received at the age of nine, when one of our rams won second prize at the show where the man had been blinded by the horse. Angela had been happy for us, of course—the comb Grace had brought on our wedding day must have worked—but promised Kat that she’d curse those slim hips of hers when it came to delivery. And Liz had warned her about the hell of cervical insufficiency, perineal stitches, sleep deprivation, anaemia and bleeding nipples to come.

  And through the talk and laughter, Grace sat and said nothing. She seemed to find the fuss they were all making over Kat embarrassing and fended off the kisses that came her way in the general outpouring of affection around the table. But I could tell that she was more annoyed with herself than the others. She’d surmised that Kat was pregnant and had blurted out her assumptions too quickly and now she was upset that she hadn’t kept the deduction to herself. What she’d really wanted to do was ask Kat on her own and for them to have enjoyed the moment together.

  Perhaps Laurel was right about her age. I saw it every year in the First Formers at Churchmeads, that transition from happy innocents in new shoes to gloomy, gangling mutes or burgeoning sadists. The child in Grace was starting to leave and something else was taking over, a bully of a creature that broke things and got her into trouble or spilled secrets just because it hurt to do so. She was bored and frustrated, and friends had slipped out of her hands like fish for so long that it was easier just to hate everyone at school. It was only natural that she’d lash out. All children have it in them to be fierce. Even Adam had his moments when he was younger. He’d bite and scratch for no apparent reason. Sometimes he’d do it to himself too. It was nothing more serious than attention-seeking, of course. Look at what I’ve done. Now ask me why.

  It was the same with Grace. Liz and Angela were always busy with the farm and though Jeff was out of prison now, he was still away from the valley more than he was there. That was why she’d taken a hammer to her bedroom mirror. She didn’t want to be reminded that the only thing that noticed her any more was her reflection.

  ‘Come on, mard-arse,’ said Liz and waved at her to hurry up.

  Grace followed awkwardly, pulling at her dress again and rubbing the skin where the straps of her shoes were tight. At the lych-gate, Liz caught her sharply by the elbow and shook it, making her cry out and run past Angela, who was waiting for them at the door of the church. When Liz came to the porch she threw up her hands and Angela thumbed at her cheeks and kissed her. The pair of them brought out handkerchiefs and went inside arm in arm. They were thinking about Jim’s funeral, of course. Or trying not to. It had hardly been a happy farewell. Probably best forgotten. Despite eating soul’s cake for the Gaffer the night before, I couldn’t imagine that they’d ever really forgiven him for the way he’d soured the wake.

  All afternoon he’d been on the beer and the scotch and laughed too loudly at his own jokes. When the girls from the abattoir came in after work, he chatted them up and cadged a few more drinks off them in return for singing the filthiest songs he knew. Dadda and Bill had tried to move him into the tap room but he’d refused and when Jeff put his arm around him and suggested he went outside for a while, he’d taken a swing at him and knocked the glasses off the table. Thinking that perhaps the Gaffer was just missing Grandma Alice, Laurel offered to walk with him over to her grave, but he told her where she could go and made her cry. No one could stop him drinking and once he set the jukebox going, Angela and Liz went home.

  I’d been in my final year at university then and come up from Norwich on the earliest train I could get so that I could spend some time at the farm before the funeral. Dadda and I had drunk a tot of brandy in the kitchen but the Gaffer wouldn’t join us and found jobs to do that took him out to the workshed on his own. He didn’t speak to me as we drove to the church or after the burial and at the wake we didn’t really cross paths until he came into the Gents while I was washing my hands.

  He looked at me, in a fashion at least, and stepped up on to the urinal, putting his fag in the corner of his mouth while he undid his flies.

  ‘Why don’t I drive you back to the farm?’ I said.

  He ignored me and pissed with one hand flat on the tiles for support. Most of it still went on his shoes.

  ‘Angela’s gone now,’ I said. ‘I think the wake’s over, don’t you?’

  ‘They were still serving at the bar last time I looked,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll be drinking on your own,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s leaving.’

  ‘They can do what they like,’ he said. ‘I’ve two nice lasses to talk to.’
r />   ‘Why don’t you just have one more?’ I said. ‘For Jim.’

  ‘Who? St Francis of fuckin’ Assisi?’ he said. ‘I’m not drinking for him.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve forgotten about him,’ said the Gaffer. ‘I’ve removed him from my mind.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said.

  ‘He were weak,’ the Gaffer said, ditching his fag end into the trough with the blue cubes of disinfectant.

  ‘He wasn’t well,’ I said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘You don’t just give up, though,’ said the Gaffer.

  ‘It’s hard living here,’ I said.

  ‘And what would you know about it?’ he said, stepping down and holding the towel dispenser to steady himself.

  ‘I was here for eighteen years,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, well, now you’re not here, are you?’

  ‘I’ve not forgotten,’ I said. ‘I know what it’s like.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘I’ve not abandoned the place,’ I said.

  ‘I can hear someone talking,’ said the Gaffer. ‘But I don’t recognise the voice.’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ I said. ‘I’ve not changed.’

  And then he had me up against the wall with my tie around my neck, his forearm like an iron bar across my chest, his blue eyes on mine.

  I started to speak and he pressed the side of my face hard to the cold mirror above the sink.

  ‘Who is that?’ he said. ‘You’ll have to remind me, ’cause I don’t fuckin’ know him any more.’

  My breath clouded the glass and then he let go, opening the door to the smell of cigarette smoke and beer and the music from the jukebox.

  When I’d washed my face and rearranged my tie, I found that Dadda and Bill were putting on their coats. They’d given up on the Gaffer and we left him showing the girls from the abattoir a trick with a coin.

  I drove Dadda and Bill back to the Endlands through slush and filthy snow. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to talk about, I suppose.

  I don’t think anyone, perhaps even Angela, could say that they’d ever really known Jim. He’d always been there at Lambing and Gathering and Harvest, of course, like everyone else, but he was a watcher rather than a talker; happier when he was with his blue-eyed horse or working on the drystone walls with one of his stump-legged dogs and his own thoughts for company. Thoughts that weren’t always kind to him, as it turned out.

  One afternoon, a few days into the new year, he’d gone up to the moors and put a shotgun under his chin.

  ∾

  The Burkitts slid the Gaffer out of the back of the hearse and we arranged the coffin on to our shoulders.

  Being the shortest of the four of us, Dadda had been given a small folded towel to wear like an epaulet so as to level the box. But it didn’t seem to make any difference, and Bill and I had to walk with a stoop. The coffin itself felt unbalanced, the weight shifting as shoulders dropped or feet adjusted to the buckled paving stones on the path. Even on the smooth tiles inside the church, I felt the casket digging hard into my cheek as if the Gaffer had rolled over and were pressing against the side. But when we came to the gurney at the altar steps, Burkitt took the load off me with ease and placed the wreath Laurel had made on the lid before retiring with his son.

  Everyone came to the final lines of ‘Abide With Me’ and sat down in echoing coughs and creaking wood. From the row behind us, Clive Ward reached forward and put his hand on Dadda’s shoulder. The other pews of faces all held the same expression of grim resignation. Death is death but life goes on.

  They sat in family groups, some of them intersected now like Venn diagrams where sons and daughters had married, just as the Dyers and Beasleys had been linked by Jeff and Liz. Anderton, Abbot, Dewhurst, Parker, Beckfoot, Ward, Wigton, Earby, Thorpe. A hundred years earlier, the rollcall would have been more or less the same.

  ‘Nothing like a funeral to bring them out of the woodwork, is there?’ said Liz as Betty Ward clanked out an instrumental verse on the antique of a piano and the priest made his way to the lectern.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ said Angela.

  ‘Come on, Mam,’ said Liz. ‘Most of them wouldn’t have given the Gaffer the time of day.’

  ‘At least the bloody Sturzakers aren’t here,’ said Bill, turning back and facing the front.

  ‘They’ve got the decency to be honest about their feelings,’ said Liz.

  ‘Everyone’s just come to pay their respects,’ said Laurel. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘They’ve come for a gawp and some free sandwiches,’ said Liz.

  ‘Let them do what they want,’ said Dadda. ‘It doesn’t bother me.’

  He pulled at his collar, desperate to undo his tie. He’d never felt entirely comfortable in anything but his overalls and if it had been even remotely acceptable to come to the funeral in them he would have done.

  In the wedding album that had been unearthed the night before along with the others, Dadda looked stiff and awkward outside the church as he squinted into the sunlight on the August day he and Mam had married. But come the reception, the tie was gone and the waistcoat unbuttoned and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. Mam, on the other hand, looked pleased to be in a dress instead of her dungarees. And they were dancing, my goodness. His hands on her hips, hers on his shoulders. They were people that I didn’t know; people that could have been and never quite were.

  Their first undertaking as man and wife had been to bring in that year’s hay harvest, and there were photographs of them smiling with the same satisfaction and relief as those long-dead Pentecosts who stared from the wall of the Croppers’ Arms. My sinewy ancestors in flat caps and bonnets standing in front of a cart groaning with winter feed.

  I knew what Dadda was thinking as he and Mam stacked the bales in the hay barn, because I’d thought it too when I’d married Kat. He’d been thinking that the future might just leave them alone. That they might be able to slip through unnoticed and quietly get old in each other’s company. They, Tom and Jane, might be a constant that survived cold springs and deluged summers, ferocious autumns and long winters. They would remain, even if the animals perished. And if the valley thrived—as it had done that summer they’d promised to love, honour and obey—then so would they.

  ‘Aye, but a full barn brings an early winter, Johnny lad,’ the Gaffer used to say.

  It didn’t, of course, but none of the Endlands proverbs were meant to be taken literally. They weren’t predictions so much as an acceptance of life’s capriciousness. A good summer brings with it no assurances of anything. A blizzard can come from nowhere.

  It was years before Dadda told me what had actually happened to Mam, but by then she already felt like someone who had nothing to do with me. She’d been crossing the high street in town, he said, and a motorcyclist, taking the bend by the castle too fast, hadn’t seen her. They say these things are instantaneous.

  ∾

  Kat had made sure that she sat next to Grace and all through the service she gave her as much attention as she could, pointing to the right verse in the hymn book and smiling as she watched her playing with the locket during the sermon.

  It was an off-the-peg homily about Jesus as shepherd but delivered with great enthusiasm nonetheless. I suppose the priest thought if he performed well he might at least set one or two souls on the road to salvation. Although I thought his chances were slim here.

  They’d all passed this way: Methodists and Baptists, Congregationalists and Spiritualists. And it was the view from Pendle Hill across the Ribble Valley that had conjured up the vision of the great people to be gathered in George Fox and his Quakers. But none of these earnest men in their tricorns and frock-coats had ever really had much of a hold, especially in the Endlands. Yet still they came, and outsiders, at least, continued to find God here, just as Nathaniel Arncliffe had done.

  An architect by profession, he had helped design many of the mill
s by which the wool burghers of Yorkshire had made their fortunes. He was a wealthy man himself, but felt no richer in spirit than when he was out on the hills that overlooked his home in Keighley. He had been born into a devout Catholic family—two of his brothers were Jesuit priests at the college by the Ribble—and went to Mass each Sunday morning with his wife and children. By rights, he should have done nothing else but contemplate the mystery of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the rest of the day, but always justified his solitary Sabbath afternoon walks by thinking of them as psalms, each outing an opportunity to offer up praise or meditate on some spiritual puzzle. O Lord, why dost thou? What maketh a man?

  The journals he’d kept were all there at Brownlee Hall—a dozen green leather booklets each no bigger than a pack of cards, easily tucked away from the weather under layers of clothing. In forensic detail, Arncliffe had catalogued the buildings and curiosities of the various hamlets and villages through which he passed, and illustrated his descriptions of the heathlands and fields in between with sketches of natural springs and ancient trees, streams and wild flowers, birds and clouds. Always with a westward traction to his feet. A desire to walk, eventually, to the edge of the county.

  In those days, the Briardale Valley lay on the very edge of the West Riding—and still did when I was growing up. It was only when those men in smoky committee rooms took their scissors to the map in the seventies that we became Lancastrians.

  ‘We’re Yorkshiremen at heart, Johnny lad,’ the Gaffer said. ‘Yorkshiremen cast adrift.’

  Yorkshiremen, just. The old borderline was somewhere along the valley, but no one really knew where. Sullom Wood? Underclough? The Cutting? Perhaps that was what Nathaniel Arncliffe had been looking for the day he got lost on the moors above the Endlands.

  A cloudless summer afternoon had quickly turned—as they often do here—and the rain fell with such violence that it forced him to look for shelter. For a miserable hour, he said, he’d walked and prayed until he began to hear the cry of sheep and knew at last, at least, that he’d found pastureland.