Cryers Hill (25 page)

The Windsor-vowelled BBC voice remains characteristically calm;
'There he is now, putting his foot out. You can see him leaning on it'
Sean waits calmly too, while the dust blows, while the world watches, while he makes history. Ping. Everyone waits while Neil thinks.
It's one small step for man.
Sean closes his eyes.
One giant leap for mankind.
Neil has spoken, amen. He is still speaking, wur.
The surface is fine and powdery. Ping. I can pick it up loosely with my toe.
Except it isn't loose, it isn't powdery. Sean attempts to lift a foot. For a terrible moment, like when someone forgets to speak on television, nothing happens. The shoe remains stuck to the fashionable patio, while somewhere across the estate a chainsaw cries a great wail of dismay. Then, as fear turns to panic, Sean crouches so that he can grasp hold of his knee and pull harder, wrench the bastard, so that the shoe is finally, suddenly, stickily, released. He stares at the footprint left behind. Here he once stood in a magnificent shoe. Sean woz ere. The village could remember it for ever, like Neil on the moon, like the baby on the hill, like the girl in the wood. Sean is history, the print makes it so. He looks up at the vacant sky and sees one lonely aeroplane, tiny as a pin, hanging in the heavens. Ah farther.

The walk back is complicated. The sun is high, and with each step, as the machinery groans, the shoe gets heavier. Sean reminds himself he will feel this way upon returning to Earth. The BBC voice pronounced:
'Neil Armstrong's footprints will remain on the surface of the moon, undisturbed, for millions of years.'
Truthfully, that is what the television said. It is because there is no wind on the moon. They are there now, Neil's feet. It is hard not to be impressed. They will always be there, in a hundred years, in a thousand, in a minute, for ever. Sean watches the cemented panache shoe as it swings its small steps. He is as good as dead; Ty will make it so. You can't make a giant leap in a concrete shoe. Sean wonders if anyone ever said that.

'Are you going to the village-hall film?' he asks anyone, everyone.

'What for?'

'Dunno. Why not? Might be good.'

'Nah. What for?'

There are posters up announcing the screening tonight at the village hall. Sean cannot imagine why anyone would want to go. It is not a proper film like
The Pink Panther
or
Dracula.
It is bits and bobs as far as he can tell, like your Aunty Noreen's holiday snaps. It sounds like rubbish. He thinks he will go. He wonders if the murderer will be there, sitting at the back.

'Are
you
going?' he asks his dad.

'Village
hall?'
His dad repeats it as if each word is foreign, incomprehensible. Sean begins to explain, translate. Gor interrupts with, 'Take your mother.'

Sean does not want to take his mother. He cannot be sure what effect the village hall will have on her. She might lock herself behind her eyelids and not come out.

Ann was an altogether more complicated proposition. Sean would have to be on his mettle. He employed a decoy for his opener.

'I'm not going tonight, are you?'

'Where?'

'Village hall.'

'Why?'

'See that
film.'

'It's rubbish.'

'I know. Might not be.'

'Stupid it's spazzes from the olden days who lived round here, that's all, you crip.'

'I know, that's what I said.'

It costs two bob to see the rubbish film at the village hall.

'My dad's coming, he's paying,' Sean explains to the hair-lacquered women on the door. He gets in free. There are plastic chairs and a tea urn and some giant plates of iced biscuits. Sean takes a handful of the biscuits and sits down at the end of a row. There is a white rectangle on the wall and everybody sits down and stares at it. It is old people mostly.

A man everyone calls Mr Deacon is fussing about with the projector. His fringe is stuck to his forehead and inside his square spectacles his fishy eyes are sliding, panicking, while his mouth complains about something in little gasps.

Finally the lights go out and a cheer goes up that sounds so joyful it makes Sean laugh out loud. A bright light burns on to the white rectangle and the room is silent. A flash, a flicker, a face, then it's gone. The lights go on. A groan. Sean looks around. This is quite good so far. A younger group has arrived, older than Sean. They clomp to the front row and sit down. They look embarrassed. They nudge each other and cackle like strange birds. A few families have arrived. Sean waves to their neighbours. They are with another family and they don't wave back. Sean wonders if he goes to get some more biscuits, will someone take his seat? The room is quite full now, the biscuits will be gone. Maybe the biscuits are all gone already. Darkness. Another cheer, loud. In the front row a frantic outbreak of nudging and squirming. The beam of light burns through the dust on to the white rectangle. Dark flecks begin to jostle there. The youths in the front row dart their arms up into the light to make rude shadow-shapes on the screen. Sean laughs and claps. A crowd of bobbing V-signs clogs the screen. Sean is glad he came. He will tell the others.

'Sit down!' some of the adults are shouting. As they call out to the front row a face flickers on to the screen. The room begins to quieten. It is the face of a man. He is staring into the lens of the camera. Nothing else. He blinks a few times, that's it. He gazes out at the village-hall audience and they gaze back. The film bounces on the screen, but nobody complains or makes a tutting noise. Sean looks at the man, at his shirt collar and the space between his teeth. The man is talking again, chatterbox. He's wearing a funny round black hat, like the Homepride Flour men. There is no sound except for the whirring and occasional clack-clack of the projector. The man smiles suddenly, mouths something, and the audience laughs self-consciously. The man in the film is laughing too now, amused perhaps by his own remark, and the audience laughs a little more easily. The man is taking something from his pocket. He puts them on. Spectacles. Is he going to read? Could they read in the olden days? Probably. Probably they are cleverer. Nowadays they are thick but taller. His dad said that. True alphabet, liar alphabet, which? The man is still talking. He is reading out from a black book. He closes it and holds it up for the camera to see. Some people might be able to work out what he is saying, Sean thinks. Deaf people can see words on people's lips. He reckons if he was deaf he'd at least be able to do that. He glances around. The faces beside him are grey-lit, impassive. Hard to tell if it's a good film or not. The man removes his specs, grins, and is gone. There is a murmur of laughter in the audience. Specman. Wur.

Another man now, younger. This man is wearing a cap. He takes it off and puts it back on and he smiles. He has a long sad face, even when he's smiling. He takes something from his pocket. A pipe! Ha! He puts it between his teeth. Everyone is laughing now in the village hall. Ha ha ha! The finger-shadows go up again on the screen, giving the man rabbit ears. The man poses with his pipe while the fingers get ruder. He is gone. I know you. Pipeman. Now on screen, a group of children are running down a lane towards the village-hall audience. Wur.

28th July 1943, M.E.F.

My dearest Mary,

I was delighted to hear that Isabel had a baby boy! William is a fine name. And you are become an aunt! I hope this finds you well. Are you looking forward to your birthday? How I wish I was there to wish you many happy returns. I try not to think of the hedgerows at home coming into flower – here is just sand, heat, fleas, bugs.

Also, I have had a gippy tummy, typical of this place! Lime juice is the only thing I can drink. When you order a drink in Cairo you have all kinds of bits included. Lots of the lads are going ill – septic sores, bladder trouble, flu. At the moment I can see two sparrowhawks flying about. We went 10 miles beyond Tobruk (oh the blueness) then Whadi la Knif – wild, rocky, steep – on through Bazleaze and Toor Pass. We hear Mussolini is no longer in charge. I hope it's true.

Sgt Dove and I talk for hours at a time. We discuss everything from philosophical matters to the strange varieties you find in the animal kingdom. I have been reading
The Insect Man.
Did you know certain types have 8 eyes and females eat the males after marriage? The other day we found a sultan lying on the sand. On to Burat.

Later:

The water is salty, the ground stony to sleep on, but lovely lilies abound. My bivvy is under date palms. The dates hang in bunches like walnuts. Now we are in the 10th Corps of the 8th Army. There are boy bird-scarers here for the crops (takes me back). The boys yell out each time a bird flies overhead, so the birds therefore rarely settle.

We are by the sea and bathe every day now (I am quite the Esther Williams lately). Sadly one of the boys who bathed at night was drowned. You have to be careful. I do not swim out ever. Another fellow of ours accidentally offended an officer and was punished severely. He was told to nail a can to a post – but there was no post there. Then he was ridiculed and humiliated. The tragicomedy of the army!

Later:

The bivvies are small and unbearable in the summer heat. The officers have shade rigged up and drink rum and cognac. You wouldn't believe the queues for meals – 8,000 men waiting at each meal. It smacks of poor organisation and inefficiency. I saw two ships blow up at sea today. Our letters are passed in for censoring at 9 a.m., so I'll close now and get this one off. Lots of mail is stolen before it reaches us, alas. Please remember me to everyone. Cheerio and keep smiling. Did anyone ever tell you you're beautiful? They have now, darling.

Yours, Walter xxx

PS. Some of the lads found Bert Jones's grave and came to tell me so that I could let his wife know. It is beautifully kept, they say, and one of them took a photo of it for her.

P.P.S. The shooting stars at night make me think of home. I can't think why.

F
ARMER JOHN HATT,
father of Mary Hatt, has had to let some of his dairymen go and his head carter is unhappy, they say. It is not clear how much longer he will be able to go on. He is not alone. Stanley Smith's farm has fields lying fallow and his herd is already depleted; it will not be long for him. His sons are working on farms as far away as Penn Street. He is waiting for someone to make him an offer. No one has. Already people are speaking of the old days – stockmen preparing for show, local growers in competition, ploughing matches, that sort of thing. Bill Woods was finished off last year by the harvest storm. No warning either, a fine week previous, then the heaviest rainstorm of the year, a real burster, flattening most of his corn to the ground. John had got his in only a couple of days earlier. He had jokingly asked Bill when he was going to stop admiring his and get on with it and Bill had laughed heartily because it was a very decent-looking crop indeed. No one really saw Bill again after that. The word was he had troubles to start with and the storm finished him off quickly. The rain continued all week and anyone with corn out suffered, including another farm that went under at Naphill.

Next thing is a cow has slipped her calf at a farm not six miles away. John will wait to hear, but if another goes the same way, he will know what to expect. It has happened before. It's possible to lose an entire herd this way. He was a young man at the time and in those days with application you could recover and restock. These days an outbreak was about the end of the matter. John put goats in with the herd, three billies, and hoped for the best. He left the praying to Mrs Hatt – she was in charge of prayers and second chances.

Young Mary Hatt on the other hand had little time for prayers. What was the point of praying for a few dead calves? Animals were always busy getting born and killed, it's what they did. Animals were blood and muck and trouble, and if you want your living from them, get used to it. Her father had said it to her as soon as she could walk in her first boots, and she had taken pleasure in rattling it off ever since with just the right air of grim-faced conviction.

Mary couldn't understand her father's squeamishness when it came to laying men off. Dairymen, ploughmen, pigmen, carters, there was no shortage of them, let them go and come and never mind about it. After all, it was not as though they were going to vanish off the face of the earth for ever.

Sometimes, she reckoned, a man's no good for his own advice. One day, when the farm belonged to her brothers, as it eventually would, she would give a hand, get it done proper and decent, and then they would see. She would show everyone a thing or two about blood and muck.

Cattle didn't move her anyhow; matter of fact, Mary was fondest of pigs. As a girl it had been her job to watch over them as they grazed for corn ears in the harvested stubble, a job that kept you standing as the stubble was sharp, and a lie-down in a corn stook would earn you a walloping. Though they could be affectionate, she admired more their lack of sentimentality and bent for enjoying themselves. 'A pig has a knowing for enjoyments,' she said. They are partial to a lark.'

Like many, she disliked the back-breaking fieldwork: planting, hoeing, singling and most of the hand-picking (except for peas, which she didn't mind because at least you could sit and clack with the other women). The rest you could keep, the beets, mangels, onions, cabbages, sprouts, spuds and all – in particular on a finger-cold day – keep the buggers.

Harvest time though, now that was different. The way the scythesmen swung their sickles made hand-reaping look restful, though it was no such thing. Like boatmen they swayed through a standing tow of corn; the rhythm, like a weave loom, would make you drift. John Brock threw his sandwiches ahead of him and scythed towards them to keep himself travelling.

Mary's other partiality was reserved for Lyons Corner Houses. She had never in her life visited a Lyons Corner House, but she knew they existed. She had spied a photograph in a magazine. At any of these establishments you could order from a Lyons Corner House menu. One of their waitresses, a Nippy, would serve you. Lyons Nippies were famous. They were smartly dressed in immaculate uniforms that were sewn together with a particular scarlet thread, and beautiful as film stars. If you lost a button the replacement had to be secured with replica red cotton. Mary had never heard of anything so extravagant, so stylish. There were things Mary had in mind, like Lyons Corner Houses, private things, personal.
It is for you the nightingale sings her song.
She had found it in his pocket the night he wrapped his jacket around her shoulders to keep out the cold. He loved her, now she knew it. She wasn't telling. Not on your nelly, no. She would wait for him to go down on one knee.