Sacred Country (36 page)

‘She was a sweet girl. Young and sweet and poor. She worked in the backroom of the shop, cataloguing what came in and what was redeemed. Anything worth a dime came into her hands at one time or another: instruments, of course, but a lot else. Weights, radios, wedding rings, brushes and combs, lockets full of hair. You name it.

‘She’d stared at me in the bar. I talked to her to stop her saying something. I thought she was going to say how ugly I looked.

‘She took me home to her place, where she lived by herself with this little dog, Pixie. It was a griffon. It was the size of a squirrel. She said: “Pete, meet Pixie,” and held its paws up for me to shake. Then she said: “Pixie’s alone all day and he likes to be with me at night. I hope you don’t mind?”

‘What could I say? I said nothing. I started kissing the girl and the only thing that was on my mind was getting inside her and letting go.’

Pete took a drink of whisky. He said: ‘Shall I stop? Am I shocking you?’

‘No,’ said Estelle. ‘Nothing shocks me. What did she look like, Annie?’

‘Oh, pretty and not. Mousy. Grey eyes. But lovely in all the important places. And so something started between us and I kept on seeing her. And it was all fine and sweet. Everything was fine and sweet except the dog.

‘I used to say, “Annie, put the damn little dog out somewhere while we do this. Lock it in a cupboard.” But she wouldn’t. She liked it there, climbing all over us. She said: “Dogs are the only loyal creatures on God’s earth.”

‘Then one night – and we were in ’39 by then and war in Europe was coming – when I was in bed with Annie, I felt this awful little Pixie scrabbling onto my arse. I looked behind me to push it off and then I saw its little red thing out, the size of a beanshoot, and it was doing something against me.

‘And I went crazy. It was so damn disgusting I didn’t give a thought to Annie’s feelings. I grabbed that disgusting Pixie by its scrawny throat and strangled it with one hand!

‘I shouldn’t’ve done it. I should’ve just got angry with Annie and made her put the dog somewhere else. But I was so angry, I wasn’t rational. It happens, doesn’t it? I killed the dog and threw its body on the floor.’

Estelle opened her mouth and laughed. She tipped back her white throat and choked with laughter. She said: ‘Oh sometimes, the world is a scream.’

Pete said: ‘This wasn’t a scream. I was a murderer to Annie.
And
to me, because I destroyed her and me in less than twenty seconds and I never saw her again. I used to walk past the pawnshop, but not go in. And I was sick with misery, somehow. And after a little while I thought, it’s over in Memphis, Pete. It’s over. And what happens to you now is the war.’

Estelle was still laughing. Then she stopped. ‘Is that what happened to you?’ she said. ‘The war?’

‘Yes. I came home and joined up. All I ever told Ernie was there’d been a bit of trouble with a girl and the word “trouble” got turned into the word “crime”. I don’t know how. It must have gone round Swaithey in a whisper and come out Chinese.’

Pete seemed very tired after the telling of this story. Giddy with drink and laughter, Estelle pulled him to his feet and walked him to the bed, where he lay down. She covered him with an old quilt he always claimed was his only proper souvenir of the American South; that and the hundred and nine dollars and all his memories of scarlet birds and scarlet trees.

She wandered home. She heard Sonny calling her name.

Towards the end of Timmy’s first year at Teviotts, he fell ill.

The infirmary was on the top floor of the main building, right under the roof. From its windows you could see the sea. It faced south and was a bright, airy place. The founders of Teviotts had believed that most illness was caused by despair and that light had curative powers.

David Tate climbed the narrow stairs that led up to the infirmary. He was accompanied by the Matron, who led him to Timmy’s bedside. In a dream, Timmy had smelled Dr Tate’s hair oil and then, when he woke, there was the man sitting on a chair looking down at him. He blinked and David Tate smiled. The Matron adjusted her starched cuffs and walked away.

Timmy knew why he was ill. He was ill because he couldn’t keep up with what Teviotts was trying to teach him. He was ill because Teviotts expected him to be clever. He was ill with struggling with Latin and Hebrew. The other students all seemed to be good scholars and Timmy was miles away from being a scholar at all. So he had fallen ill. ‘Fallen’ was the word. He had got up on a Wednesday morning and stood by his bed and fallen over. He heard someone scream and that was all that he remembered until he woke up again in the infirmary and saw a luminous brightness all around him.

When he saw David Tate sitting by him he tried to haul himself up the bed. He felt boiling hot from his sleep. His hair was damp. Dr Tate said: ‘Stay still, Timothy. Stay and rest.’

His illness had been diagnosed by the doctor as a virus. Tate said: ‘You have a virus. “Virus” is a useful word.’

Timmy tried to nod. He seemed to have no control over his heavy head.

‘You don’t have to talk,’ said Tate. ‘Let me talk to you for a bit, then I’ll leave you in peace and you can go back to sleep.’

David Tate took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve. Then he said: ‘The curriculum at Teviotts is reasonably
harsh. Men who go into the Church must at least know the Scriptures. The Church also considers a knowledge of Latin and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew to be valuable. This is rational and right. You have three years here. Two remaining. This is time enough in which to get to grips with these disciplines, as best you can.

‘The Church is also at a cross-roads. It has become more secular and more liberal and this is good in many ways. It has shown itself able to resist petrification and embrace change. But.’

He stopped here. He turned slightly and stared out at the sky. He let several silent seconds pass.

‘But,’ he continued, ‘there is a paradox at work. The Church has sought to re-define itself in order to counter the argument that it is no longer relevant to the needs of people in this very troubled century and yet in doing so it has also re-defined belief – thus undermining its primary relevance to all human existence. It has put belief on a vector. It has given belief gradations. It has made quantifiable that which cannot be quantified. And this I abhor. To me, belief
is
or it is not. You believe in Christ’s resurrection or you do not. It is central to faith.

‘And so I come to you, Timothy. When we had you in front of us at interview my colleagues were disposed to reject you on the grounds of academic weakness. I persuaded them to let us take you because what I saw in you was someone for whom God seemed to be as essential as air and water. I knew you would struggle with your studies. I knew you would do poorly at examinations. But I knew also, and I think I’m not wrong, that you will be a very good churchman. You will be one of the few with a vision and that
vision
will help people and bring them comfort. I’m not wrong. I know I’m not.’

Timmy turned to stare at Dr Tate. He saw him sitting there very calmly, his head slightly raised, as though he were watching a film in broad daylight. Timmy tried to say: ‘You’re not wrong, Dr Tate,’ but the words would let themselves only be thought and not said aloud. Nothing could be said aloud. This virus was a virus of silence.

*

On his last day in the infirmary, the Matron brought Timmy a letter. It was from Estelle:

Dear Tim,

Why don’t you write to me? I know that letters can get to and from institutions as easily as weather.

We miss you so. I am making a flag. I will tell you about this. It is my only thing, my work of art.

Sonny has been begging me to write. For weeks and weeks, he has been begging.

He wants me to say he is sorry for what he did. He didn’t mean to do it, to leave you on the road. Often we do what we don’t mean. He wants me to say, please forgive him and come to see us. Even a dog is no substitute for a person.

My flag is a Union Jack. I am making it all in silk. I have to make it twice and then stitch the two sides together to make one.

It is far bigger than the table. It is a present for Colonel Bridgenorth whom I met at Mountview, of the Royal Artillery. He was once a hero and now he believes he is a Sherpa. He thinks he’s on Everest. The flag is for him to plant on the summit. The Union Jack is the most complicated flag under the sun.

Must go.
Hawaii Five-O
is almost on. I love it. I love it when Jack Lord says: ‘Book him, Danno!’ It sounds so final. That’s why I like it. ‘
Book him
, Danno!’

Please write, dear Tim.

With love from your

MOTHER

Elm Farm,
Swaithey,
Suffolk.

Timmy folded the letter away. He felt weak, yet clear-headed. He thought, it’s as if none of us is anchored on the earth: Livia, Estelle, me. We’re genetically insubstantial. This is what Mary
was fighting and fighting. She was trying to keep herself on the ground. She was fighting the air.

When the term ended, he returned to Swaithey.

Sonny met him at the station. He said: ‘There you are, then,’ as though he’d been looking for him in the barn and found him somewhere else.

Tim said: ‘How are you?’

‘Alive,’ said Sonny, ‘if you can call this living.’

The dog was in the van, whining. Then when Timmy got in, it began to bark.

‘Shut up, Wolf,’ said Sonny, but the dog kept on barking so he said to Timmy: ‘You’re a stranger, that’s why.’

They drove the seven miles to Swaithey more or less in silence. The dog lay down and was quiet. Tim said: ‘How’s everything with the farm?’

Sonny took a long while to reply. Then he said: ‘House is mortgaged.’

Timmy looked out of the van window that was speckled with mud. It was a dark day with low cloud. The hedgerows looked drab.

Timmy said: ‘I’ll help you with the harvest.’

‘There isn’t a harvest,’ said Sonny. ‘Only sugar beet.’

‘Why?’

‘No combine. Things have a life-span. Everything does. Even the fucking Empire had a life-span.’

Sonny laughed and the laugh turned into a cough. He slowed the van. The dog stood up and scrabbled round in a circle.

Timmy thought, something has to be said, something that will make the coming weeks bearable. I will never make a good priest if I can’t console my own father.

But the thing that needed saying remained obscure. He didn’t even know how to begin it. It might as well have been a piece of Latin. And now it was too late: they were at the farm.

Estelle was at the open front door. She was wearing a summer dress and a grey cardigan and when the van pulled up
she drew the cardigan round herself, protecting her breasts and her sides.

Timmy got out and embraced her. Her cheek felt cold or his own lips too hot, one or the other.

‘The house is mortgaged. Did Sonny tell you?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Tim.

‘It wasn’t our fault. Things just happen.’

‘I know.’

‘But your room’s still there. That’s still there.’

‘Yes.’

‘All your swimming trophies. Everything.’

‘I’ll take my case up, then.’

Sonny drove off in the van, Timmy didn’t know where. He went up the stairs, carrying his case and Estelle followed him up and into his room which he knew was just as he’d left it and yet didn’t look like his room but like a reconstruction of his room, like a film set built to deceive him. It had no smell to it, no smell of the past.

‘See?’ said Estelle.

He begun to unpack his things. He laid his Bible and his prayer book on the table by his bed.

Estelle stood against the wall, wrapped in her cardigan, watching him.

She went up to him and extracted a hand from her cardigan and stroked his cheek.

He smiled at her. He had no idea how the smile looked to her or what it expressed.

At supper, Sonny drank and talked. For a long time, the only creature he’d talked to was the dog. Now he seemed to be addressing the whole world.

He’d sold one field to Grace Loomis. She’d put two more hen factories on it. Nine thousand eggs a week came out of them. All sterile.

No one would take the combine away. The scrap dealers were too lazy to come and take it apart. So it sat in the barn, in
its old place, still covered in sacking, rusting to pieces, slept in by birds.

Cord could have saved them from having to mortgage the house. He could have sold his house at Gresham Tears and moved into the farm, but he’d refused to do it. The old were selfish. All they thought about was saving time in which to do nothing.

The land in England was turning against the farmer. It was so tired it refused to grow anything unless you fed it with expensive chemical fertiliser. It had been on the side of the farmer for a thousand years and now it was on the side of ruin …

‘I’ve told him,’ whispered Estelle to Timmy. ‘Sell it all, then we could rest.’

Sonny heard her. He banged the table. One of his stout bottles fell over. ‘It’s not mine to sell!’ he shouted. ‘It’s Timmy’s. How many hundred times do I have to remind everybody of that?’

‘Sell it,’ said Tim quietly. ‘Sell it and save the house. You’d both be happier then and so would I.’

‘
No!
’ said Sonny. ‘No, no, no, no,
no!
’

He raised a fist at Timmy. ‘You little fucking saint!’ he shouted. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why do you come home and then call me a liar?’

‘I didn’t call you a liar.’

‘Yes, you did. You said the land isn’t yours.’

‘It isn’t mine …’

‘Yes, it is! Every furrow of it, every stone. It’s all yours. And if you walk out on me again I’ll make you
eat
it. I’ll make you eat up all the fucking earth!’

‘Sonny,’ said Estelle, ‘you don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘Don’t know what I’m saying? That’s good, coming from you! That’s beautiful coming from where that comes! Eh, Tim? That’s rich. Don’t you agree, little priest?’

Timmy stood up. He said: ‘Excuse me.’

He ran upstairs. The dog woke and barked. Sonny and Estelle heard Timmy being sick in the bathroom, above them.