The Blue Field (21 page)

However, as Sammy Hunt said, if Woody Bourton were satisfied, we were more than satisfied. Sir Gerald, especially, despite his bruises and the loss of his glasses, felt like a conquering hero. Alfie remarked that the whole thing restored his faith in the House of Commons.

When we had changed, and Woody Bourton, still puzzled, grumbling, but morally a defeated side, had climbed into their bus and driven away, Mr Chorlton lit his pipe and observed to Halliday between long puffs.

‘That was a very remarkable decision, if I may say so. Solomon himself could hardly have made a fairer one. But I wonder if you happen to know what the rule really is?'

Halliday shook his head.

‘Nor did Woody Bourton, apparently'. said Mr Chorlton.

‘Unless I'm much mistaken there's a note
(a)
in small type under Rule 26:
It should be noted that it is the striker who is out if this law in infringed'

‘Good Lord! Then they weren't both out?'

‘Of course not. Two men can't be out at once.'

‘I'm frightfully sorry,' said Halliday. ‘I learned the rules by heart, but I must have missed the note. What a rotten umpire.'

‘Not at all. A jolly good umpire: you won the match. Let's go along to the Horse and Harrow,' said Mr Chorlton, ‘and celebrate it.'

We drove to the pub in my car: Halliday, Vicky, Mr Chorlton, Sir Gerald and myself. On the way Mr Chorlton broached the subject of William Hart and Halliday listened attentively, asked sensible questions, and jotted down brief details of the case in a diary which seemed to be more full of engagements than any diary I had ever seen before. ‘Obviously,' he said,' it would be monstrous to turn the old man out in the circumstances. Our job is to make bureaucracy humane. It isn't easy, within a few years, to turn glorified clerks into benevolent despots. But aristocracy wasn't always humane, was it? What about the dispossessed crofters in the Scottish deer-forests?'

‘True enough,' said Mr Chorlton, ‘but there were sanctions against aristocracy. If a landowner was wicked enough you broke his windows and burned his ricks—'

‘If you dared,' interrupted Halliday swiftly. ‘And then you were deported to Australia. But I agree with you to some extent. Public opinion did count for something. The man in his office in Whitehall is insulated against public
opinion. Much too often he doesn't feel which way the wind is blowing.' He paused and said almost wistfully: ‘There's no wind there,' as if he often longed for a breath of the wind and a sight of the sky. The storm, which hadn't yet spent itself, seemed to please and even excite him, for he looked gayer than I had ever seen him before and when there was a particularly loud crack of thunder he glanced at me and grinned: ‘The weather is something you miss, in London.'

We got to the Horse and Harrow before opening-time, but Joe, like most people in Brensham, never locks his door, so we went into the empty bar. I hammered on the counter for Joe, while Vicky once again examined the absurd vegetables on the mantelpiece, which never failed to irritate her. ‘Like a harvest festival dedicated to the Devil,' she said.

‘Hallo!' exclaimed Halliday suddenly. ‘What on earth's this?' The object stood in the shadows at the back of the bar, among the tins of snuff and the pipe-cleaners and the sets of darts; for even Joe, with his easy-going view of what constituted a good joke, had not seen fit to display it to the public gaze. But Halliday happened to notice it and now he leaned over the bar to take a closer look, for at first, I suppose, he thought that some trick of the light had deceived him. This, however, was not the case. William Hart, in one of his most mischievous moods, had been minded to give Joe a present. Liking the sound of Joe's laughter, and knowing well the sort of thing which would make him laugh loudest, he had carved for him a somewhat fanciful and greatly exaggerated version of the Long Man of Elmbury.

The Long Man, I must explain, was the creation of a furniture and curio dealer called Mr Parfitt, who kept a shop in Elmbury. After a holiday at Cerne Abbas, he had been inspired to invent the legend of a monstrous figure which, he said, had once existed on Brensham Hill but had been ploughed up long ago at the instance of a puritanical
parson. For years he had made a profitable business out of carving models of this Long Man and selling them to gullible visitors; and in the end the legend had found its way into the learned books of the folk-lorists and the archaeologists, so that Mr Parfitt in his humble way had actually made history. The naughty little figure had greatly appealed to William Hart, who had carved his own lively version of it whenever he laid hands on a piece of wood which had the sort of shape which suggested it.

‘Good God,' said Halliday. ‘Look at this!' He stretched across the bar, picked it up, and set it on the counter in front of him.

There was a brief silence, while the thunder rumbled and the rain lashed the windows and the Hallidays stood and stared without speaking at the outrageous little statuette. The Long Man, in an attitude halfway between menace and frolic, and with an expression halfway between a grin and a leer, uncompromisingly stared back at them.

‘At Cerne Abbas in Dorset,' said Mr Chorlton, ‘there is one rather like it carved on the side of a hill . . .'

Sir Gerald, who without his glasses was very nearly blind, leaned down myopically to examine the figure, then suddenly straightened himself and said: ‘Dear! Dear!'

Vicky, meanwhile, regarded the figure with studied unconcern. She was extremely well educated and believed that nothing could embarrass or shock her; I am sure she must have read the whole of
The Golden Bough
before she was nineteen. She put the Long Man in his place with a cool stare. It must be admitted, however, that for a moment she had looked slightly startled; and now she gave a kind of snort, expressing her disapproval of the monstrosity. ‘Put it away, Maurice,' she said. ‘It's disagreeable, and if I may say so, rather silly.'

Halliday, however, seemed to be in no hurry to put it
away. With his hands in his pockets and a rare smile on his face he stood and contemplated it. William Hart had thrown all his boisterous mischief into the carving of the figure; and because he had dedicated it, as it were, to Joe Trent-field, he had contrived to mix a little of Joe's rough humour with his own. In truth it was his masterpiece. There was fun and frolic and laughter and lust in it, and even the lust was a sort of comprehensive lust of life. The sideways-glancing secret eyes beneath the heavy lids reminded me of a picture which had often come into my mind when I was reading the Classics at school: behind the printed text and the solemn notes, behind the dull glossary, behind Liddell and Scott, there had often appeared a cool green glade dappled with sunlight, with a crystal stream reed-girt running through it; and the reeds swaying in the wind were furtively pulled apart by brown hairy hands, and between them when they were parted peered out the secret eyes of the ancient, the Goat-Footed One. Like that were the eyes of William Hart's wooden idol; but no, not quite like that. For they were a man's eyes nevertheless, dreams as well as desires in them. As they followed the light-treading nymph they would discover the lilt of a piece of music in her movements and make the soft curves of her breasts into a sonnet. The wide, loose, slanting mouth, the long lips parted, might equally utter a jest or a love-song, or dare to shout a challenge to the high gods themselves.

Halliday, I think, saw much the same things as I saw in the little statue. He was a person, as Mr Chorlton said, who had suffered all his days from a serious lack of fun. All the more boisterous manifestations of life had passed him by. The furrows on his forehead grew deeper, his hair became tinged with grey, his eyes had wrinkles round the corners from reading late into the night; and when he had spoken of London he had said with a queer wistfulness: ‘There's no
wind there.' Well, here was a high fierce wind of mirth and mischief, fun and frenzy, man's divinity and man's devilry! Strangely stirred by it, he continued to stare at the manikin which William Hart, bellowing with joy, had carved one uproarious midnight when he was full of wine.

‘Fertility rites,' said Vicky, and added rather impatiently: ‘Do put it away.' Halliday picked it up and stood it again in the dark shadows where it belonged. As he did so the wind got up, grew loud for a moment in the chimney, and rattled the windows with a new flurry of rain. One could almost fancy one heard in it the ancient laughter and the huge halloo.

Soon Alfie Perks and Sammy Hunt and the rest of the cricketers came into the bar, and we all sat together along the benches by the window and drank pints of beer. I don't know how it happened that the talk got round to the subject of William Hart; I think Mr Chorlton must have engineered it. At any rate, we found ourselves talking about his young days, and his skill in carpentry, and Jaky Jones who'd been his pupil told us how he used to make the yellow wagons and about his favourite motto which no carpenter, said Jaky, should ever forget: Measure Twice and Gut Once.

‘Aye, he allus took pains,' said Joe, ‘whether he was making a wagon or a coffin or a toy for the kids or something like
this'
– and he indicated the Long Man standing in the shadows among the snuff-tins.

Halliday became interested at once.

‘Why, is William Hart the man who carved that figure? We noticed it when we first came into the bar.'

Joe nodded.

‘You spotted it, did you?' he laughed. ‘As a matter of fact I usually hides it behind the snuff. It might fright the wenches else. I hope the lady warn't frit?'

Vicky said nothing, but looked rather insulted at the
suggestion that she might have been frightened by anything so silly, and Joe went on:

‘'Tis supposed to be a sort of charm; though I don't believe in heathen idols myself. Gets you children, they say; but I keeps it because it makes me laugh.'

‘You seem to have plenty of grandchildren,' said Halliday, who had no doubt seen and heard a good deal of Mimi's and Meg's numerous babies when he spent the night at the Horse and Harrow.

‘Eight,' boasted Joe. ‘That's to say, three at the police-station – my eldest girl married the bobby – and five in this house; and two more coming. It's always neck and neck between Mimi and Meg. Mimi had a good start when she took up with the Count, but then Meg married a local lad, Alfie Perks' boy, and first go off she had twins. But in the long run I'd back the Pole.'

‘Old William,' said Jaky Jones, ‘he didn't need no charms. He'd scarce so much as look at a maid and it was how's your father.'

‘He had a lot of children?' smiled Halliday.

‘Bless you, yes,' said Joe, ‘and most of'em out of wedlock. And mark you, most of
those
are proud of it. That's a funny thing,' he added reflectively,' they're most of'em proud and open about it, aren't they, Jaky?'

‘William's a proud man himself,' Jaky nodded.

‘Very proud and boastful of his ancestry he is,' agreed Joe.

We explained to the Hallidays about old William's absurd belief that he was descended from Shakespeare: a belief that went strangely with his own inability to read or write. ‘Well, he's got the right name, anyhow,' laughed Halliday. He seemed very interested in William, and Mr Chorlton winked at me. ‘What's he like,' Halliday asked, ‘this strange old fellow who's brightened up the view from my windows with his field of flax?'

‘Well . . .' Joe looked puzzled. ‘It's difficult to put into words, but the thing I always think about him is that he's full of life. Not in any ordinary sense of the words, either. He's like a new barrel of beer which you can't draw off in half-pints because it froths so; and you feel he'd bust if you corked him. I've never known anybody so full of life in all my time, have you, Jaky? ‘Course, I'm talking about his younger days now; we haven't seen him down in the village since he got so lame.'

‘Like weeds he was,' said Jaky, rather obscurely; but Joe understood. ‘That's it!' he said eagerly. ‘Like weeds. I've got a rough and unruly piece of ground which I ploughs and hoes and disc-harrows and cultivates but it's so full of life that the weeds always come up in it fierce and free. It's got a sort of demon in it. Last spring I thought I'd lay down a patch of concrete to make a stand for the horse and dray; because in wet weather it's so mucky that they're like to get stuck. But would you believe it, a little dock, no bigger'n my finger or an asparagus-top, poked up and forced its way through the concrete and cracked it, and then more docks and thistles and nettles, till all the concrete was busted and now it looks like crazy pavement with weeds growing in all the cracks! In the same way, if you can understand me, life was fierce and forceful in William Hart in the days of his youth. There was a demon in him; and yet you couldn't say he was wicked any more than weeds are wicked. They
has
to sprout and riot; and so did he.'