The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (13 page)

He scours unvisited corners of his mind, all the more available notions long ago exhausted. His eyes fall on a rarely-worn pair of fluffy slippers.

‘Dream about slippers. A family of slippers. And they have a birthday party.’

There’s usually a birthday party, or a wedding.

So he leaves, pausing for a moment in the doorway to look back on the two heads, already snuffling into sleep. This is his treasure.

Downstairs, Jenny has made his cup of tea, aware to the second how long it will take him to tuck up the girls. She is back studying the newspaper, the property pages of last Friday’s
Sussex County Chronicle
.

‘Listed historic
farmhouse
,’ she reads out to him, letting the emphasis fall gently but devastatingly on the last word. ‘Five bedrooms, outbuildings, mature garden, tennis court, swimming pool, nine acres. One million three hundred thousand.’

He drinks his tea and savours her soft-spoken contempt in silence.

‘Rare opportunity to buy a substantial family home in sought-after Downland village. Period
farmhouse
modernized to a high standard. Nine hundred and fifty thousand.’

She closes the newspaper. Again, she looks up and smiles for him, because she’s almost too weary to smile.

‘How’s it been today?’ he says.

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Can’t be much longer.’

‘Lily was two weeks late. If I have another week of this I’ll, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m peeing every five minutes.’

Martin feeds on the sight of his pretty wife, so pink-cheeked and bonny, the very picture of a wholesome country lass.

‘I saw lordy about the rent today,’ he says, using the name by which Billy Holland is known across the Edenfield Estate. ‘He said there’s nothing he can do. I’m to talk to Shit and Fucker.’

‘What a surprise! Why didn’t we think of that? He’s as helpless as we are. He can only sit there with his mouth open while his agents stuff him with cash.’

Martin listens, his good temper restored by his wife’s soft stream of venom. Theirs is a good marriage, cemented, as so many good marriages are, by a shared hatred of their enemies. Over the years of their union, which has coincided with a decline in farm revenues, they have armed themselves for what has become a state of siege in an unending war. The enemies are the townies who have relocated to the country, and now form the majority. The townies are frightened of cows, and object to the mud left by tractors in country lanes, and think rabbits are cuddly pets, and seek to preserve the habitat of wild flowers. They have children who are shocked by the sight of animal carcasses and call themselves vegetarians but eat burgers and sausages. They have a townie religion according to which nature is holy, and man, the perverter of nature, is the source of evil. They think of the English countryside as an unspoiled natural environment now under threat, unaware that it is the most intensely farmed landscape in the world, and that everything they see and love has been fashioned by the hard labour of men. Born and bred in regions of tarmac and paving stones, they have no inkling of the raw power of the land, with which civilized man has been doing battle since the dawn of time. Let the despised farmers withdraw from their ceaseless vigilance and within a few short years the wilderness would return, in all its monstrous abundance. Not stately groves of beech trees, not waist-high meadows of flowering grasses, but bramble and nettle and thorn, thistle and ragwort and bindweed. In this desolate wasteland toxic chemicals will be dumped, drug addicts will ply their needles, and rapists will lie in wait for children playing truant from school.

‘Put on some water for the potatoes, will you?’

Martin does as he is asked, and more. He will gladly wash and scrub the potatoes, halve the bigger ones, nick out the eyes, put them in a pan, and check them as they cook. New potatoes spoil if over-cooked, they go soft and disintegrate. Fifteen minutes in boiling water, and they should come out sweet as nuts.

‘Caught those bloody boys chasing the cows again.’

‘Shoot them,’ says Jenny.

‘God knows I’d like to.’

‘Really they should all be culled when young. The population of bankers is out of control.’

Martin bends down and kisses her, lingering to feel her swollen belly.

‘How is he?’

‘He’s a damn wriggler.’

Martin can feel the baby moving. The sensation of touching his wife and his unknown child all in the same moment overwhelms him. The water in the potato pan starts to bubble, rattling the lid.

The front door bell rings.

Nobody uses the front door. Frowning, Martin goes out by the back door, to the side of the house, and calls, ‘Who is it?’

Shortly two middle-aged ladies appear, making their way with uncertain steps into the farmyard. They both wear cord britches, thick socks, serious boots. They both clutch extendable ski-poles. They both have very small rucksacks on their backs. They are ramblers. This is bad enough in itself; but they are in his yard, and that is unforgivable.

‘I do hope we’re not disturbing you.’ The one who speaks is tall and has grey hair. ‘We’ve been following the South Downs way. We’re putting up in the village pub for the night. Such a pretty village! We were wondering if we could take a peep inside your lovely barn. It is eighteenth century, isn’t it?’

Martin stares unblinkingly back at her. He speaks with no inflection of any kind.

‘Perhaps you’d like a guided tour.’

‘Oh, well! If you could spare the time.’

They give each other quick excited looks that say, Aren’t we lucky! Martin contemplates their rainproof jackets, the straps on their ski-poles, the maps in clear plastic pockets dangling on strings round their necks.

‘Follow me.’ He crosses the yard towards the barn doors. ‘This entire complex of historic buildings is what used to be called a
farm
. Using entirely traditional methods, the farm workers used to manage the land
in order to produce food
. Of course, today the raw material for food is shipped in from cheaper countries, processed in factories, flavour-enhanced and packaged for the convenience of the modern consumer.’

They have reached the barn doors. The ramblers are exchanging nervous glances.

‘Why! Here’s a surprise! The barn is still being used to store animal feeds! Can this farm be caught in a time warp? Are we seeing ghosts of the past?’

‘I do hope we’re not a nuisance—’

‘As I expect you’ve already guessed, what we have here is a working model, staffed by trained historians who take on the roles of farm workers in order to bring the past to life.’

‘I think we should be going, Louise.’

Puzzled by Martin’s absence, Jenny appears at the open back door.

‘There! The farmer’s wife, looking out into the authentically-recreated farmyard. If we’re lucky, we’ll see her feed the happy hens who peck and scratch the organic soil, ranging freely where they will—’

‘You’ve been most kind. Come on, Louise.’

Martin’s voice rises, becomes a little more shrill.

‘You will note that the farmer’s wife is in calf. Traditionally all farm animals are mated in the early autumn and calve in the spring, in time for the new grass.’

‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear.’

He pursues the now thoroughly alarmed lady ramblers up the track towards the lane, his voice rising once more, to a helpful shout.

‘And here we have another traditional figure, going about the Lord’s affairs. Yes, it’s the village parson, the friend of the poor.’

The rector is passing, on his way to the church. He is accompanied by Mrs Huxtable, another impossibly tall older woman, who leans sideways and wags over the little rector as they go, no doubt telling him his business, as is her habit. Martin is now in full flood.

‘I can only apologize that the authentic game of cricket on the village green has been cancelled, following accusations of match-fixing, and pending the results of the drug tests.’

The grey-haired lady rambler throws a frightened glance back at Martin.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.

Martin too now stops. Those timid eyes chasten him. He draws a long breath.

‘I’m sorry too,’ he says. ‘We’re all sorry. We live in a sorry world.’

He bows his head, and turns back down the rutted lane to his farmhouse. The potatoes will be ready, and must be taken off the stove and drained. He must run his bath. He must update his accounts. He must feed his dogs. He must stand in the bedroom doorway and look on his girls, asleep in the rosy light.

17

The Reverend Miles Salmon agrees with Mrs Huxtable on the matter of Trick or Treat. Although this seems to be what she wants, which is his assent, his endorsement of her views, his actual answer does not satisfy her.

‘That’s all very well, Miles. But for evil to triumph, it’s only necessary for the good to remain silent.’

‘Oh, yes. Absolutely.’

‘I know it’s all supposed to be fun for the little ones. But what lesson is it teaching them? That witches, and devils, and bad spirits of all kinds, are a joke. Are they a joke, Miles?’

‘Yes. Quite.’

‘No, I’m asking you as a minister of the Christian church. Are the powers of evil a suitable subject for children’s games?’

‘No, no.’

‘Then surely you must say so.’

‘Yes. Indeed.’

‘When will you say so?’

‘Well, you see, in a way I’m saying so now.’

Mrs Huxtable smiles. She has extracted from the rector an implied disagreement. She knows from her long experience of committees how important it is to provoke the opposition into revealing its true colours. The reason so little ever gets done is that the English middle classes are crippled by politeness. Face to face, they will not confront each other, and so their conflicts are rarely resolved. Of course once a disagreement is flushed like a frightened pheasant into open view, a less aggressive strategy becomes appropriate. Careful handling is called for. The pheasant must be chivvied into the path of the guns.

‘Miles, I do understand your position. You don’t want to appear a killjoy. You don’t want Christians to be seen as killjoys.’

‘Just so. There you are, you see.’

‘But you must say something.’

She smiles again. It’s her duty to give him some of the super-abundance of her own strength, so that he can do the right thing. Duty and strength. And love, of course.

‘From the pulpit, Miles.’

‘Ah, yes. You think so?’

‘This Sunday. Halloween is six months away. I doubt if anyone will be thinking much about it, one way or the other. But once stated, clearly and unequivocally, the ruling, as it were, will be on the statute book. Then Oliver and I and Margaret and the others can spread the word.’

This is Mrs Huxtable’s plan. She is fully aware of the rector’s shortcomings. All she requires is his statement from the pulpit, to which she can then refer. It wouldn’t do for people to say that the ban on Trick or Treat originated from her herself. She is to be no more than the agent of enforcement.

‘Good,’ says the rector, seeing her turn to leave. ‘That’s settled, then.’

‘Thank you, Miles. I’m sorry to bother you over this.’

In the church door, just before passing from view, and following another of her precepts learned in the committee room, she pauses to summarize the meeting’s conclusion.

‘Just so there’s no confusion. You have agreed to speak against Trick or Treat from the pulpit this Sunday.’

‘That’s the thing,’ says the rector.

With this, Joan Huxtable decides to be satisfied.

Miles Salmon, left alone in the chilly church, moves slowly down the aisle making sure that all is as it should be. The church is not beautiful. It was over-restored in the late nineteenth century, and the dark oak with which it was then lined and decorated is ornate without being delicate, lending to the long shadowy tunnel of the nave the saddened air of a guildhall built for some long-declined trade. A colourful banner, stitched by the members of the Mothers Union for the millennium, proclaims JOY TO THE WORLD in irregular scarlet letters on a yellow ground. The joy makes little headway against the gloom. The church is not listed in the guidebooks, and is of no special interest to anyone, except perhaps to the local families whose many generations are remembered on wall plaques and brasses, and in the undistinguished nineteenth-century stained glass windows.

Nevertheless, St Mary’s Edenfield does receive occasional visitors, and these visitors do not always respect its dignity. The rector has found sweet wrappers, empty cider bottles, even used condoms between the pews. For himself, he takes no offence at this. If people come to his empty church to eat sweets, drink cider, and make love, he’s happy that the building is proving useful. But there is a view in the parish that the church should be locked except when in use, and he doesn’t want to supply evidence for this case. All four church wardens, whose job it is to clean the church, and who therefore resent any activity that disturbs the dark and polished silence, are stalwart door-lockers. So every evening the Reverend Salmon cleans the pews himself.