What a Carve Up! (19 page)

…
L’oiseau chante avec ses doigts. Une fois …

Then I would lie in bed, half-asleep, half-awake, listening for the postman’s footsteps on the staircase. For some reason I have never lost faith, not since I was a young child, in the power of letters to transform my existence. The mere sight of an envelope lying on my doormat can still flood me with anticipation, however transitory. Brown envelopes rarely do this, it has to be said; window envelopes, never. But then there is the white, handwritten envelope, that glorious rectangle of pure possibility which has even shown itself, on some occasions, to be nothing less than the threshold of a new world. And this morning, while I gazed with heavy, expectant eyes into the hallway through the half-open door of my bedroom, just such an envelope slid noiselessly into my flat, carrying with it the potential to transport me, not only onward into an unsuspected future but at the same time backward, back to a moment in my childhood more than thirty years ago, when letters first started to play an important part in my life.

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Messrs Bulb, Plugg and Sockitt,

Electricians since 1945 (or a ¼ to 8),

24 Cable Crescent,

Meterborough.

26 July 1960

Dear Mr Owen,

We must apologize for the delay in connecting the electricity supply to your new home, viz. the second cowshed on the left on Mr Nuttall’s farm.

The truth is that we have been somewhat amp-ered in our attempts by the failure of our latest recruit, a bright spark if ever I saw one, to turn up for work. As a result, we realize that you have now been without electricity for several weeks, through no volt of your own.

Watt are we going to do about it, you ask? Rest assured, Mr Owen, that your supply will be connected a.s.a.p.,
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and in the meantime please accept this small gift as a token of our goodwill – a month’s supply of current buns (enclosed).

Yours sincerely,

A. Daptor

(Head of Complaints).

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Once upon a time, a short walk from my parents’ house along quiet roads would bring you to the edge of a wood. We lived at the point where Birmingham’s outermost suburbs began to shade into countryside, in a placid, respectable backwater, slightly grander and more gentrified than my father could really afford, and every weekend, usually on a Sunday afternoon, the three of us would set off for this wood on one of those long, mildly resented walks which have since become the nucleus of my earliest and happiest memories. There were various routes available, each given its own functional (but at the time intensely romantic and evocative) designation: ‘the glade’; ‘the ponds’; ‘the dangerous way’. But I had a personal favourite which, though we must have taken it more often than any other, never failed to exert its pull of (even then) nostalgic glamour. This was known simply as ‘the farm’.

You came upon it suddenly. The walk took you around the periphery of the wood, along a path which was broad and well-established but never seemed to be much used: in my memory’s version of events, at any rate, this vision of heaven was always offered to us in utter seclusion and privacy. For heaven it was: looming into view just when you least expected it, after a series of turns, dips and rises which seemed to be leading you ever deeper into the dark heart of the forest, a nest of redbricked barns and outhouses and, at their centre, an ivy-covered farmhouse of impossible charm. An orchard flanked one side of the house, its trees dappled with yellowing fruit, and we would later discover that behind it, screened from view, was a tiny walled garden, divided up into orderly chessboard squares by gravelled paths and miniature box hedgerows. Best of all, near to the wire fence which marked the boundary between public land and property, there was a little muddied pool where ducks swam and the occasional waddling goose came to drink. On subsequent visits we never failed to bring a brown paper bag filled with stale bread which I would throw at the water or sometimes, in a fit of daring, dangle through the wire until the geese approached and snapped it from my outstretched fingers.

‘This must be the farm you can see from the road,’ said my father, the first time we chanced upon it. ‘The one I go past when I’m driving to work.’

‘I wonder if they have a shop,’ said my mother. ‘I bet it would be cheaper than in the village.’

After that she started using the farm to buy all her eggs and vegetables, and before long this arrangement began to take on a social as well as practical aspect. Showing once again her aptitude for striking up friendships with relative strangers, my mother lost no time in gaining the confidence of Mrs Nuttall, the farmer’s wife, whose lengthy, colourful monologues on the pains and pleasures of the bucolic life meant that a good half hour had to be set aside even for something as seemingly uncomplicated as the purchase of a few potatoes. To offset my boredom on these occasions I was introduced to a farmhand called Harry, who would let me follow him around as he went about his duties, sometimes even allowing me to feed the pigs, or to sit aloft on the driver’s seat of a combine harvester. And over the next few months Harry’s guided tours seemed to get longer, more frequent and more elaborate, until I became a familiar figure on the farm, well known to everyone who worked there including Mr Nuttall himself. It was round about this time, too, that my parents decided I was old enough to ride my bicycle unaccompanied along the local roads, and after that I became an even more regular visitor. Sometimes my mother would make me up packets of sandwiches, and I would eat them sitting in the orchard, or by the duckpond, before setting off to explore the buildings by myself; always remembering to take a look at the calves – my favourites among the animals – and to climb the bales of hay stacked at the back of the largest barn, where there was usually any number of lean, sleepy tabby cats to be found. I would lie on the hay beside them, puzzling over the deep mystery of their purr, hypnotized by the impenetrable half-smile which always made me envy them their dreams.

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I was in love, at this time, with a girl called Susan Clement, who had the desk next to me at school. Her hair was long and blonde, her eyes were pale blue and I think, in retrospect, that she was fond of me too, but I was never to know for sure because although I passed many weeks, perhaps even months, consumed with longing for her, it would have been easier for me to fly to the moon than to find the right words in which to express my feelings. But I remember vividly the night I woke up to find that she was in bed beside me. The sensation at first was not entirely unfamiliar, for I had shared a bed with Joan earlier that year, when our families went on a camping holiday together: but I had never wanted to touch or be touched by her; had shrunk from the idea, in fact. And yet with Susan, the first thing I knew – almost fainting with the joy of it, the amazing, palpable reality – was that she was touching me, that I was touching her, that we were dovetailed, entangled, coiled like dreamy snakes. It seemed that every part of my body was being touched by every part of her body, that from now on the entire world was to be apprehended only through touch, so that in the musty warmth of my bed, the curtained darkness of my bedroom, we could not but find ourselves starting to writhe gently, every movement, every tiny adjustment creating new waves of pleasure, until finally we were rocking back and forth, cradle-like, and then I couldn’t stand it any longer and had to stop. And no sooner had I stopped than I awoke, alone and desolate.

This is my earliest memory of sex and one of only three dreams from my childhood that I can now recall with any accuracy.

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Joan lived a few doors down the road from us. It was when our respective mothers had been pregnant that they first became friendly with one another, so we could truly claim to have grown up together. We went to the same school, and even at this age had the reputation of being slightly on the intellectual side, which was another factor in determining the closeness of our relationship. By now not only had I made up my mind, somehow or other, that I was destined to be a writer, but my first book had already appeared, in a limited edition of one – designed, illustrated and handwritten by myself. In a narrative peppered with cheerful anachronisms, it told of several episodes from the casebook of a Victorian detective; my hero being modelled, without much regard for the restrictions laid down by copyright law, on a character from one of the many comics which formed the backbone of my reading matter during this period. Joan had literary aspirations as well: she wrote historical romances, usually concerning one or other of the wives of Henry VIII. But in my opinion – not that I would ever have been so blunt as to tell her this – her work was immature. The characterizations were thin, compared with my own, and her spelling wasn’t up to much. None the less, we enjoyed showing each other our stories.

Joan and I would often ride out to Mr Nuttall’s farm together. It was a short ride, not much more than ten minutes, and contained a fabulous stretch of road – downhill but not too steep, just enough to get a bit of speed up, take your feet off the pedals and coast forward with the wind skimming your face and rushing through your ears, sweet tears of excitement welling at the corner of each eye. Of course, riding back was a different matter. We usually had to get off and push. Being conscientious children – unnaturally so, I would think now – we knew that our parents would begin to worry about us if we were gone for more than a couple of hours, which meant that our visits at first tended to be breathless, episodic affairs. We’d take books and pens and paper and things to eat, but usually, through lack of industry, would end up spending most of our time with Harry and the animals. That’s my recollection, anyway, of how things were in the spring and early summer of 1960: before Joan and I took the momentous step of setting up house together.

A word of explanation, at this point. For some weeks now I had been keeping my eye on a cowshed which stood empty in one of the outbuildings and which was, as far as I could see, going begging. I nagged my mother about this with some persistence, until finally she caved in and made a polite inquiry as to whether it would be possible for me to use it. ‘He’s writing a book,’ she explained with reluctant pride, ‘and needs somewhere where he can get peace and quiet.’ Clearly Mrs Nuttall was quick to pass this information on to her husband, who was so impressed that he took personal responsibility for the matter: and when I next rode down to the farm and opened the heavy, rust-hinged door on to the cowshed’s dark interior, I found that my new retreat had been supplied with a desk (actually, I think, an obsolete workbench) and a little wooden chair, and that the naked bulb which hung by a wire from the roofbeams was now tastefully veiled with a faded green lampshade. And that was just the start. As the summer went on I moved all my favourite books and ornaments out of my bedroom and into this gloomy haven; Mrs Nuttall provided me with two vases and a regular supply of irises and chrysanthemums; and Harry even managed to fix up a makeshift hammock, attached to the wall in a corner of the shed by two sturdy nails which were presumed (rather cavalierly, if you ask me) to be capable of bearing the weight of my recumbent body. I had, in short, acquired a new home, and it seemed to me that no happiness could be more complete.

But I was soon to find out that it could. One morning, early in the school holidays, I arrived at the shed to discover that a white envelope had been pushed underneath the door. It was addressed to me, in my father’s handwriting. It was my first letter.

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The Nuttall Farm Residents’ Association,
Poultry Place,
Much Clucking in the Yard,
Cropshire.

19 July 1960

Dear Mr Owen,

May I just say, on behalf of all my fellow-residents, how delighted we are that you have decided to take up the tenancy of Mr Nuttall’s vacant cowshed.

This news has caused general rejoicing all over the farm. Some of the animals have even come out in goose-pimples, and can’t wait to come and have a gander at your new house, while the cows are simply over the moon. As for the horses, they, of course, are especially pleased to have acquired a new neigh-bour.

You may find at first that some of the smaller birds have a tendency to grouse, or even snipe. But you must bear in mind that many of these animals, far from being as educated as yourself, can only be described as pig-ignorant. In short, I hope that you won’t be cowed by any of the remarks you may have herd.

Don’t hesitate to drop round for a chat whenever you like, as my wives and I are always happy to receive visitors. We get sick and tired of being cooped up in here, as the atmosphere is positively fowl.

Yours sincerely,

Bertie Rooster

(Cock of the Walk).

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The next dream that I remember is the briefest of the three, but was so vivid and frightening that it had me screaming at the top of my voice until my father came running from his bedroom to quieten me. When he asked me what was wrong, all I could say was that I’d had a nightmare, in which a man had been bending over my bed, staring into my face so intently that I was sure he was going to kill me. My father sat down beside me and stroked my hair. After a while I must have fallen asleep again.

There was one other thing I might have told him – except that I didn’t really grasp it myself at the time – to explain why the dream had been so terrifying. The truth is that I had recognized the man bending over the bed. I had recognized him because it was me. It was me, as an older man, staring back at my own young self, and my face was now ravaged with age and grooved like an ancient carving with the traces of pain.

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Photography was one of my father’s hobbies. He had a little, leather-cased box camera and a home-made flash unit, and in lieu of a darkroom he would cover up the bathroom windows with black paper and fill the bath with developing fluid until one day he miscalculated and burned off all the enamel and my mother forbade him to use it ever again. Before that happened, though, he came down to Mr Nuttall’s farm to make a photographic record of Joan and me at the height of our domestic bliss.