The Lie (2 page)

‘Here and there,’ I said. I asked her if I might make a shelter from corrugated iron and canvas, on the edge of her land. She nodded. She told me where the spring was, and that I should dig myself a latrine. She had no doubt I’d know how to do it, having been in the army. Neither had she any hesitation in mentioning such things.

‘Come in when you want a warm,’ she said. She’d made the sage tea in her black kettle, and even that tasted of smoke. She moved surely, feeling for things. I wondered how much sight she had left.

‘I went to see your mother before she died,’ she said. I started as if electricity had gone through me. By the time I’d come home, my mother was already in the grave we’d visited together every Sunday throughout my childhood: my father’s grave. The wind used to pucker up the grass, and the sun shone on her hair as she knelt to tidy and tend. Below us, the sea glittered. I never remember it raining: perhaps she only took me there on fine days. She would talk about him sometimes. That’s how I learned most of what I know about my father.

When I came back, the grave was narrower than I remembered it. I couldn’t see how there would be space for me there, as well as them. I wanted to know what my mother had said and how she’d looked before she died, but no one would tell me. The doctor said she died peacefully. I didn’t believe a word of it.

‘I found some buds on that rose of hers, and put them in her hand,’ said Mary Pascoe. She said nothing more on the subject, then or ever. She stirred the sage tea and said that it could do with sweetening. Even with her milky eyes she still seemed more like a bird than a woman. We used to call her a buzzard when her cloak flapped in the wind. Now she was hunched and silent. I was glad that the humanness in her seemed to have been parched away, so that she was light enough to fly.

That was five months ago. She never ventured as far as my shelter. I dug myself a latrine pit, and boiled water from the stream. I knew it was pure enough, but I had army habits now. I dug a trench around the back of my shelter, to carry away the winter rains. I had money. My mother had saved as much as she could from the pay I sent her. She put it away in the tobacco tin that belonged to my father. If she hadn’t saved it, she would have been warmer and better fed, but the doctor said it would have made no difference. The valves of her heart were damaged by the rheumatic fever she had when I was a boy, and it was her heart that killed her.

I never went into town. I would walk to Tremellan, or Senara. On market days I walked as far as Simonstown, to be there when prices dropped at the end of the day. I fed Mary Pascoe’s hens for her and soon I was taking care of them entirely. She said I should have the eggs, because she couldn’t stomach them now. She still drank the goat’s milk, but there was plenty of that for both of us. I remember when she used to make goat’s cheeses, wrap them in nettles and sell them, but such things were beyond her now. All the time, I was thinking about how the land could be used. She had been famous for her vegetables once. The sweetest and earliest potatoes came from Mary Pascoe’s patch. She grew white lilies and sold them in the church square. But now, the hill was taking her land back to itself. Much of her hedging had disappeared. The fencing around the chicken run was in poor condition. Bracken, furze and briars were swallowing her land, and stones were breeding in it like rabbits. I began to clear it. Of course I knew that I would be observed. This is my country. I know how many eyes it has.

On the afternoon of January the fourteenth I heard her calling to me, her voice high and wild. She was like a curlew, I thought, because I was still trying to put a name to the kind of bird she was. I ducked my head and went into the black cottage.

She lay in her nest of rags. She looked up at me, but her eyes were now skeined over with milk, and completely sightless. She wanted water, so I fetched her a cup and held it while she drank. She was hot. I took her wrist and felt her pulse, which was rapid but light as a thread. I’d seen the doctor do this with my mother.

‘Shall I fetch the doctor?’ I asked, but she moved her head from side to side: no. I saw that she was gathering her strength to speak. I gave her more water and told her I’d mended the fence of the chicken run. I was glad, really, that she didn’t want the doctor. He would come, and then more people would come after him. She was gathering herself for an immense effort. She took more water, coughed, and then said, ‘I want to lie here, not under a stone in the town. You’ll do that for me, Daniel.’

When I say that she said this, I mean that she brought it out between deep, harsh breaths, and twice a coughing fit stopped her. I was afraid she would die saying it. There was sweat all over her face.

‘You’ll stay here after me, Daniel,’ she said. I nodded, then remembered that she couldn’t see me, and said: ‘I will.’ It was enough for me, to hear her say that. After this she was exhausted and slept for a while. I stayed with her because I was afraid that if I went back to my work she might be too weak to call me. The fire was nearly out, so I put more wood on it. Smoke was better for her than cold. Outside, the light was going, and it began to rain. I thought of the pliers I’d left outside, at the chicken run, but they would still be there tomorrow and I could oil them before they had a chance to rust. She opened her eyes and looked about blindly. I thought she wanted more water and I held the cup to her lips, but she moved her head away.

‘Is it Daniel?’ she asked. I nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see me and said, ‘Yes, it’s Daniel.’ It seemed as if she were searching my face, and then looking to my side and beyond me. I knew that she could see nothing. She said, ‘Who have you brought with you?’

2

Dead, disposal of: Bodies of dead men will be taken right away from the trenches to be buried.

It will frequently happen that substantial buildings are found close to the selected line of defence. The question then arises whether to occupy them or to demolish them.

I BURIED HER
at the very edge of her land, at its highest point. I knew what she wanted, and there was no sense in waiting. If my mother had been alive, I would have gone to tell her, but I couldn’t think of anyone else in the town who would want to come to Mary Pascoe’s burial. Or would have any right to come. I dug down, always expecting to strike a shelf of granite, but the soil was deep enough. I dug her a decent grave, and lined it with dry brown bracken and branches of the rosemary bush that grew close to her door. I wrapped her in a piece of the army canvas that I hadn’t needed for my shelter. The smell of her was bad when I lifted her, like a bird that you find crawling with lice and maggots after it has gone away to die in the foot of a hedge. But I didn’t mind it. I had worked all day on her grave and I was sweating in spite of the cold. After the burial and the infilling of her grave, I stamped the earth down to settle it. I rolled a granite boulder to the head of the grave. I knew how quickly green would cover the turned earth.

The stream was running full after the heavy rains we’d had. I filled a bucket, took it to the outhouse where the goat was tethered, and stripped off my clothes. I thought that every pore of my body would be black with dirt, but my skin was white where my clothes had covered it. My hands and wrists, neck and face still held the tan of exposure. I washed myself with household soap, and when I was finished I sluiced the bucket over my head and over my entire body, until I was shaking with cold. I had one full change of clothes, and I put them on. That was when it came to me that I wouldn’t sleep in my shelter that night. I would sleep in the cottage.

I told no one about Mary Pascoe’s death. At first I didn’t know who to tell. She never went near church or chapel. The people who used to visit her to buy vegetables, eggs or goat’s milk had fallen away. My mother was her friend, perhaps, but I couldn’t think of another. If I told the doctor, he’d say that I should have called him. He would have come, I’m sure, because he was known for treating those who couldn’t afford to pay him, while he took his guineas from the big houses. There was nothing he could have done to help her. Mary didn’t want him anyway. She wanted to die under her own hedge. She’d have feared the workhouse most, because it’s said that if you die there, your body is taken for dissection. I don’t think Dr Sanders would have sent her to the workhouse, but some busybody in the parish might have thought it a duty to have her conveyed to the infirmary.

After a few days it was too late to tell anyone. She had lived indoors for long enough that she wouldn’t be missed. I couldn’t remember the last time she had walked into town.

The cottage was my first task. I had to get the smell out of it. I opened the door wide, but the two windows that fronted the cottage had cracked or broken panes, and their wooden frames were rotten. I pulled out the rags with which Mary Pascoe had stuffed the broken panes, and examined the glass and wood carefully. I could bodge the sills. In time I could buy new panes of glass, and putty. For now I replaced the rags, and left the windows as they were.

The chimney wanted sweeping. I would do this first, so that the soot could fall and be cleaned away with the rest of the dirt. I had Mary Pascoe’s broom, and an old ladder with rungs that didn’t look rotten. The ground at the back of the cottage was higher than at the front. I scythed and trampled down the brambles that hooked from the hillside to the cottage wall, set down the ladder and tested it. I was well hidden. I grasped the side of the ladder with my right hand, and the broom in my left, and mounted the rungs to the top. First I cleared the guttering, which was packed with moss and rubbish. I needed to get higher, on to the roof itself. The slates had fallen away in parts and the roof had been patched with corrugated iron, rusted now. I would patch it further.

I tested the guttering with my hand and it held firm. Besides, it wasn’t so far to fall. From the top of the ladder I could push myself up, twist sideways and get my foot into the guttering, but I had to be sure that, having climbed, I could get down again. I thought that I could.

It was easier than it looked. The guttering cupped my foot as I spreadeagled myself on the roof, and pushed upwards. The corrugated iron gave me another foothold, and then I was there, grasping the ridge piece, and in another moment I was astride. I was strong, I knew it, with the life I’d had, two years of it, and then the miles I walked each day and the ground I dug. The chimney was squat. I grasped it and looked out.

I seemed many miles higher, rather than the fifteen feet or so that I had climbed. I gripped the roof between my thighs as if I were riding a horse. There was the brown, bare, sinewy land running down to the cliffs. There were the Garracks, and Giant’s Cap, and the Island. There was the swell, like a muscle under the sea, moving in long, slow pulses to Porthgwyn. I looked west and saw rainclouds, damson-coloured and making a bloom of shadow on the sea. It was a cold, still day and eastward the land humped and widened from the lighthouse to St Anne’s Head.

I looked towards the grey huddle of the town. My eyes began to hurt, and I turned away. I must sweep the chimney. I didn’t want anyone who might be working on the land or walking the paths to see me up on the roof. I got hold of my broom, awkwardly because of the angle, then gripped it lower down the shaft and plunged it into the chimney.

It wouldn’t go down cleanly. I poked and prodded. I twisted the handle round so that the broom would drill itself down into the darkness. The rain was coming closer and I didn’t want to clamber down from the roof when the slates were slippery with wet. I felt the broom grating, grinding almost, as if against something more solid than a bird’s nest.

It broke through. The broom brushed against the sides and then dabbed into the void. It was as much as I could do, and my arm ached with the effort of raising the broom and plunging it up and down. I lifted it for the last time, black and thick with muck, and threw it down the roof, clear of the gutter to the ground. I cursed myself for not having thought of chicken wire. I could have brought some up with me, and covered the chimney top to keep birds out.

It was raining hard by the time I’d climbed down and put away the ladder. I went into the cottage, thinking of shelter, but the filth drove me outside again. It seemed impossible that so much dirt had come down one chimney. I took breaths of the rainy air, then forced myself back inside.

Crushed and broken birds’ nests lay in the fireplace, some of them caught on the chain where the kettle hung. On the grate lay a mess of white bones and feathers. Soot was caked and lumped all around, and a finer, sticky coating covered floor, furniture, walls. She must have burned coal for years, in the days when she was strong enough to push her handcart down to town. Later, she’d burned wood and furze and anything that came to hand.

I touched the table and my hand came away black. I couldn’t think where to begin. For the first time I thought of leaving the cottage, dismantling my shelter, packing up the canvas and making my way to another place. I didn’t know where.

I needed hot water to scrub away the filth, but until I could light a fire there would be no hot water. I didn’t want to make a fire outside. It’s the kind of thing that draws attention.

Very well then. I took the broom and washed it in the stream, until the water ran black. I brought it in, wet as it was, and began to sweep out the wide, craggy granite fireplace. Time after time I washed the broom, swept, washed the broom again. I was wet with sweat, and glad of the coolness each time I went out into the rain. It fell so thick now that it had blurred into a mist, wiping out coast and town.

The tethered goat was noisy in the outhouse. I had forgotten to milk her. I washed my hands again, up to the elbows, and went in to her. She was agitated, rolling her yellow eyes at me and kicking out, but I knew how to deal with her and she was used to me now. She ought to have been pegged out at the far end of the land, but I had left her in all day. I milked her and drank some of the milk. There was a tang of wild garlic in it, from the bundle of greenstuff I’d brought in to her that morning. I couldn’t remember why it was that I hadn’t pegged her out. She was calmer now.