Cryers Hill (20 page)

Sorry to be so down and dreary, Mary. My head appears to be in a brain muddle for some reason and I don't want to put you off with my ramblings. I've been in the dumps but everything is OK now.

I can't remember whether I mentioned I found a jar containing a set of false teeth and a scorpion? Also, did I tell you I saw
In the Navy
with Abbott and Costello, in Alexandria? Anyhow, I killed a rat beside my bed last night.

I have no more light to write by.

Ana mamnoon lak for being you. I think of you all the time.

Yours, Walter xx

P.S. Did you receive my photo I sent you? Perhaps you are too polite to comment on it. Oh dear! Well, the dust and heat do make us all appear jaded.

H
ARRY STYLES OWNS
the brick foundry. He has no sons, though he does have a cine camera. There is a sign up outside the Grove Road Stores. It says:

To the Village Residents: You are Invited to Gather at this Spot at 9 o'clock on Saturday the 14th of June for the Purpose of a Village Photograph. Attendance is Optional. Filming by Harry Styles and his Cine Camera.

Harry Styles is a cine-photography enthusiast. He taught himself to use the camera and is now quite adept. In the beginning he filmed only the works at the foundry, reel after reel of black-and-white furnace heat, leaping sparks and faces gathered around a cigarette. Then he filmed each of his daughters as they came along, his dogs, and his hunting horse. Now he films things that don't belong to him, ordinary village things: children, arguments, bicycles and the sawing down of the diseased tree at Scratch Corner. Nobody has escaped the sleek eye of his mysteriously glassy contraption. He will film man, beast, machine and weather without a thought for who will want to watch this stuff.

There are those who do not wish to be filmed and some who reckon they will remonstrate with Mr Styles when he points his camera at them and their private business. Nobody does, however. Once they see Mr Styles with the thing to his eye and realise it is busy noting the best and worst of their attributes, manners and all, they soon come round. Most people smile, or pretend to. And there is a good deal of last-minute spit-licking and smoothing down. Everyone knows that appearance tells a story, and demeanour too. The camera will judge in an instant; it will identify the decent from the not-quite-so-decent and those from the God-awfully indecent. All in all the appearance of the cine camera is apt to produce the best in the residents of Cryers Hill, even as they are proclaiming not the slightest interest in the thing.

Harry Styles manages to carry his camera, his tripod and his lunch on his bicycle. He films the farrier in his dark, smoky forge. He films the plough horses leaning into the hills as they work. All ploughmen talk to their horses, some sing. A good horseman never has a problem with his team, he knows them better than his own family. A straight furrow is something to be proud of, true enough; nobody wants to look back and see a wavering furrow. A straight furrow is that man's mark on the land; it may as well have been his own name there for all to see.

Harry Styles films these plough teams as they criss-cross the hills. He thinks it a pity he has no way of recording sound, because he considers that one day – what with tractors taking over – the ploughmen's songs might get forgotten along with the hiss of wheat as it is cut, the jangle of harness and the chink of stones on the harrow. Harry is tolerated in the fields, ignored more accurately. But ignored is what a film-maker hopes to be, and Harry can often be seen walking backwards or sideways on the tracks and lanes while the giant horses wade towards him. He films in any weather. The snow-draped landscape looks very well, he thinks, on his black-and-white film, and he gets himself out to film winter feeding, as well as children toboganning on hemp sacks or sliding on frozen cowponds. He films at dawn as the carters lead their steamy-breathed horses into the mists that cling to the churches and farms. He films geese running down Windmill Lane, foraging white sows getting dirty in a winter field and the cowman tapping the dairy herds in for milking. Perhaps, though, his personal favourites are the films he takes of people. He has spools of farm labourers squinting through cigarette smoke towards the camera, talking-talking, never taking their eyes off the lens – laughing suddenly at a gibe; then the farrier in his apron, stock-still, jaw locked, arms hanging motionless at his sides, as if the slightest movement will spoil the film. There is Mrs Hurst taking her apron off for the camera while Dukes, the butcher, hurriedly puts his on. Then the Walker girls skipping with a long rope, Fred and Ernest Evans riding the same bicycle, Albert Hodge with the milk wagon and Albert Tilbury with the bread wagon, toddlers crying while their mothers laugh and little Archibald Perkins drinking from the horse trough. These are the films he loves best, the people that he has known for years held fleetingly in a wink of time.

He has tried hard not to favour one area of village life over another, or any particular inhabitant over their neighbours. For example, last evening he viewed some footage of the lay preacher, Harry Blagdon, and the fellow not of this parish, him from the Dorset coast in the bowler hat who found God while out poaching and makes Samaritan visits to the sick. Harry watched while the fellow tipped back his bowler and chattered as if the camera could hear him. Off came the spectacles next, while the chap grinned like a fool. A bit of a clown. Somewhere there is some film of his friend, the young man who lives with his mother, Brown. Some say the son did not earn his position at the Water Company in Wycombe. Walter Brown, that's it. Some say he loves Farmer Hatt's youngest daughter, Mary. Some say he composes poetry; inferior quality, Mrs Williams said of it. He is a sensitive-looking young man, bashful. Harry watched young Brown straighten his cap, take out his pipe, and wait – as if he were a man of note: an explorer you might be led to believe, or a writer.

Meanwhile, Harry has allowed himself to develop a penchant for girls on bicycles. His favourite of these is the Stevens girl, Edna, and her friend, the young Mary Hatt, riding their bicycles past the lush verges around the corner at Four Ashes. He had been obliged, on that occasion, to rush out and stop them and ask whether they would mind riding around again for the camera and they had laughingly agreed to reappear at the sound of Harry's signal, which as it happened was a duck whistle. On the film you see a butter-haired Edna Stevens first, cycling prettily past the stocks and foxgloves, her strong, freckled calves going round, followed by Mary Hatt, racked with laughter, losing her cloche to the breeze so that her hair streaks her face as she goes; and as she passes her face turns to the lens so that you see her rakish laugh and slanting eyes and silent words that she calls out to the camera before she is gone in a blur.

Harry Styles habitually threw up a sheet at home to view his footage. He had used to arrange chairs in two neat rows, but the number of family members attending viewings dwindled, and eventually the formal dining room became a lonely cinema for one. No other member of the family could understand what Harry saw in the repeated viewings of the black-and-white places and faces they saw every day – in colour. But Harry saw something. And what he saw kept him gazing up at the illuminated sheet most evenings, while other family members continued to wonder why he bothered. What he saw, it's fair to say, was time. Tick-tock. What he gazed at were the legs and ticking arms of a moving clock.

'D
ON'T TELL ME
you're still sweet on poor Mary. Poor girl. They run in families, you know, these afflictions.'

Walter did his best to ignore his mother. He busied himself with the apples, slicing his irritation into long coils of peel that ran and ran and eventually dropped into the kitchen bucket.

'Your great-uncle Herbert knew a lunatic once, in Oxfordshire I believe. Quite good pals they were for a time.'

Walter thought the apple peels were beautiful in their way. Coiling like that, spiralling on and on as they went.

'It all ended in misery of course, these things always do. The lunatic was removed to an asylum and Herbert got all upset about it. Your great-grandmother, God rest her soul, was very relieved. Well, anything could have happened after all. They say these things get passed on.'

Inside the bucket the peel was turning brown and sour.

'Your father was a strange man. Don't get me wrong, he was decent and good – I was no fool when it came to boys – but he had peculiar sides, Walter. Which I will not go into. Very peculiar indeed.'

Walter found himself concentrating on the
crex crex
of a corncrake in the field. She did this sometimes, delivered a sample, a titbit of something that promised to be surprising, revelatory, and then made a show of silencing herself.

'There's no easy path through marriage, son, take my word for it. It's all sacrifice and I should know. You don't know the first thing about it, not the first thing. Ha!'

'Right, that should do,' Walter said briskly. He stood up. He bent briefly to lift the basket of apples on to the table. He had intended to do them all; there was a good third left, but if he continued she would go on and he wanted her to stop.

'What about those, then? Aren't you doing those? Too sour for the table, they are.'

He had grown used to thinking on his feet; second nature these hurried lies were now. 'I promised the Denholms some, Ma, promised them yesterday.'

'Did you?' She picked her tooth with her fingernail and eyed him carefully.

'Can't let them down.'

'Not too much pride in that family, is there? Never too proud for charity.'

'I offered the apples, Ma. I can't let them down.'

'Funny woman she is. I reckon she's got a jealous streak. Always wanted a son, that's what they say anyway, I wouldn't know. She asks after you, always did. Never a good word about her daughters, mind. Begrudged me you, I think. I do think that.'

'I'll take these now before they sit down to their tea. I said I would.'

'Well, let her try and raise a son and see how she manages. Promised, did you? It's no picnic raising a lad, you know! I told her that once. People always think they could be better off. When did you promise her then?'

'What?'

'When did you promise her the apples?'

'I didn't promise. I just said I would take some round, you know, offer some because we had a surplus, that's all.'

'Well, she wouldn't know what
surplus
means, Walter.'

'Well, she knows what apples means, doesn't she? So I'm taking some round, Ma, and that's an end to it.'

'Oh, well, it's nothing to do with me. These are your private arrangements with Mrs Denholm, and I'm sure it's none of my business. Be sure to let me know if you sell the house or join the Foreign Legion.'

'I don't know what you're talking about. I'll get these round.'

'Your funny ways are all from your father's side. And your temper. You men have the life of Riley compared to us women, not that you have to worry.'

Sankey is on the lookout for signs. The Good Lord sends His messages whither which way, and it is important not to be looking in the wrong direction when He sends a sacred signal.

Mr Palmer, Sankey notices, is standing at the front window looking out. This is the corner cottage on Grange Road, so there is no gate or garden at the front and consequently the window is almost on the road. There is a postbox in the wall beside the window. Mr Palmer stands there, sentry-like, at all hours. He has a full white moustache, hinting at possible past heroism. He is a cripple, so he leans on a stick. Anybody wishing to post a letter must face Mr Palmer through the window glass. There are those who would rather not, and they post their letters after dark. It is as if the village letters are posted directly into Mr Palmer's sitting room. His disposition – aged, frail, exhausted – is suggestive of him having read them all.

Sankey touches his hat and Mr Palmer nods. Something about the way Mr Palmer stands there alone causes Sankey to recall that a man had walked off a cliff at Pevensey Bay. Yes, he'd seen the headline.
Pevensey Man's Fatal Clifftop Tumble,
it said. Quite a tongue-twister, quite a mouthful for the wireless newscaster. He supposes the chap hadn't thought about that when he threw himself off. Perhaps, thinks Sankey, he could have helped the fellow, guided him back to the fold. Bit of a hike to Pevensey, mind you. The chap will know comfort in the arms of Jesus by now.
I
will give you rest. Come thou, for there is peace.

If he is to commit himself one day to the job of village preacher, Sankey muses, then he will require a bicycle. There is a shop nearby in Hazlemere,
J
.
W. Money: Cycle and motor repairs: Phono and record stores: Cycles built of BSA Fittings.
Mr J. W. Money knew a thing or two about enterprise. Sankey stands at his shop window almost every day in order to enjoy the items displayed there. Mr Money had the agency for Sunbeam cycles. He could build any manner of cycle, including motorised ones, in his shed on Brimmers Hill. He had successfully constructed a motorised contraption like a backwards tricycle, with the pair of wheels at the front and single behind. Behind the saddle perched a smart leather bag for small items and at the front, between the mudguards, was a comfortable-looking armchair complete with footrest. If approaching head-on with a passenger, the impression given was of two people in a single easy chair, one growing out of the top of the other. Sankey pictured Mary in it. He would ride behind her, steering, amusing her with stories. A Bible and a hymnal would fit nicely inside the leather bag, and they would not struggle up a single hill but, due to the engine, only laugh and sing 'Do Believe!' into the wind. Together they would guide and save and enlighten across the Chilterns and beyond. Together they would enter the golden gates of Heaven and be ecstatically deafened by the flutes, lutes and lullabies of angels.

Mary likes muffins, Sankey remembers. She likes them toasted on a coal fire. The muffin man always came down Grove Road on a Saturday with his tray on his head, swinging his bell. Sankey decides he will buy her a muffin; where's the harm in that?