Before All Else Page 15
Ben nods forlornly. Oh for goodness’ sake, Ben, Ned pleads with him mutely. Don’t cry. How would I explain that to your mother? “There’s a good lad.” He pats him on his meagre back. “Off you go.” As Ben collects his barrow to resume his rounds, Ned and Jim exchange a glance and shake their heads.
“Right, everyone. Tea break,” Ned shouts.
“It’s alright, mate. We’ll carry on, if that’s OK with you.” Already the Sunday Supremoes have cleared a wide swathe of land between the field’s edge and the river bank. The ground is bare except for a sprinkling of dried leaves, the stumps all level with the ground. Another couple of hours’ work and a good raking, that entire edge will be complete.
“Sure. Well done, lads.”
Ned seeks out the Doughty Ladies. Last he saw of them, they were organising themselves pretty well following on behind the Rubble Diggers, filling in the holes with earth collected from molehills or tussocks of grass levered away by the enthusiastic path-edging team. The paths are inching their way across the face of the field, like the route of an advancing army, despite a skirmish that had broken out between the younger members, hurling newly liberated divots at each other.
“Tea break,” he shouts again to the workers, having spotted the Doughty Ladies, fine respecters of their own comfort, already sitting on their upturned buckets and tucking into something steamy and, no doubt, tasty. His stomach surges, with nothing more than a few crumbled Weetabix to satisfy him at breakfast. Another conversation with Mandy is possibly upcoming, along the lines of the division of domestic duties. That old chestnut again. Perhaps the happiest lionesses haul the tastier carcasses back to the homestead; the unhappy ones just bring back bones.
If he wanders up to the little group sitting on their tuffets, one of them might take pity on him and offer him a doughnut. A cry, “Watch out!” goes up. The ladies scatter like startled hens as a flying divot knocks over a thermos and particles of earth splatter into a mug. “Just you bloody behave you.” Ned turns away, disappointed.
He wanders towards the Rubble Rabble, amused to see that Cecily has tipped her barrow on its nose and is sitting in it. Disappointingly she seems to have just polished off a sausage roll; he can still see the drippings of brown sauce on the white serviette she scrunches up, calling over to him, “Not shirking, just having a sit down.” He is about to playfully remonstrate when he finds himself obliged to rearrange his features in time for Marcus to take a photograph of ‘Our Good Leader’, as he is later to be flagged on the Facebook page.
“Right, everyone, don’t get too comfortable.” Ned claps his hands and flaps his arms as if moving a flock of recalcitrant sheep. “You know what will happen. If you sit down too long, you won’t get up again.”
A good-natured groan goes up but people stir and stow away their wrappers and containers for the short interval till lunchtime. Lunch! He can’t bear to think of lunch. Even last night’s chips had been a disaster. Raw on the inside, fatty on the outside. His stomach lurches painfully again.
Nonetheless, the calorie intake has imbued the group with renewed purpose and vitality. The landscape is changing before his very eyes. A good portion of the field is now flattened; the paths are stretching straight and true to the opposing corners; the river is running freer without its overhanging branches.
For the next couple of hours, warmed by the emerging sun, serenaded by the birdsong, comforted by the rising smells of burning wood, warming loam and released blossom, even Ned feels moderately content.
Again, it is the Doughty Ladies who call time on the morning. Lunch is an even more sumptuous affair, pulled from baskets and wicker hampers. A couple of the Sunday lot slink out of the field to seek refreshment in the Red Lion. Others pull packets wrapped in greaseproof paper or silver foil from pockets of coats or duffel bags slung on rampant spades.
Ben, who has applied himself usefully all morning, lopes towards Ned. “Alright, Ben. We’re stopping now for a bite to eat. Have you got anything?” Ned is aware that even this simple enquiry into Ben’s wellbeing has a plaintive twang to it.
“No, Mum said she was going to bring me dinner. Here she is. Mum! Over here!”
Ned turns to watch Ben’s mum make her unsteady way across the field. She is carrying a grocer’s cardboard box. “Looks like she’s brought you twenty cabbages, Ben.”
“’Ope not. Hate bleedin’ cabbage.”
“Only joking. Let’s go and give your mum a hand there.”
The two of them set off towards Ben’s mum, walking unrhythmically beside each other. Ned cannot take his eyes off her. The box threatens to unbalance her. He watches her feet taking tiny steps in her characteristically oversized boots. Today’s are black with more buckles and studs than are purely functional. Her slender, black-clad legs remind him of a crane or a heron. Perhaps, if she flew high in the sky, she would hook one ankle over the other as she trailed her legs behind her. He is familiar with her waxed jacket. It is the one she always wears to bring Ben to the nursery and to collect him again. He usually studies the innermost hole in the belt, the unfinished, ragged one that looks like it was made with a sharp point; a compass, perhaps, through which the pin is inserted. More and more he finds recently he cannot not raise his eyes to her face.
“Hi, Ben. Hello, Mr Gallagher,” she calls.
Ben runs towards her, reaching for the box. “Mr Gallagher said you’d brought cabbages for my lunch. I told him I don’t like cabbages.”
Ben’s mum laughs. “Don’t be a numpty. I’m sure Mr Gallagher was just teasing.” She holds the box flat while Ben rummages within. “Careful, Ben.” Ben pulls out a packet of sandwiches.
“Are these ham?”
“Of course.”
“Cheers, Mum.” Ben, with quick steps and then slow steps, takes his bounty off to lean against a nearby wall.
“Would you like some? There’s plenty.” Ned can barely restrain his grateful enthusiasm and wishes he could rummage in the box as Ben had.
“Are you sure?”
“Can’t seem to cater for small portions, certainly not for small appetites. Hang on a minute.” She balances the box on one hand and lifts items for Ned’s choice and approval. “Sandwiches. Cheese. Cheese and pickle. Plain ham. Jam. Various cartons of juice. Crisps. Battenburg. Chocolate Fingers.” She looks up at him. “Goodness. You look starved. Here, you. Put your hands out.” She drops the box at her feet and loads up his outstretched arms, naming each item, as if he couldn’t already taste them and relish them inside his mouth. “Finally, a piece of kitchen roll and an apple. Dah dah.” She steps back and laughs.
“I can’t take all this.”
“Don’t be daft. After everything you’ve done for Ben.”
He tips his cache onto the floor in front of him and, spreading out his coat as a rug, settles down for a feast. “Will you join me?”
“I’ll go and sit with Ben. Think he’d prefer that.”
Picking up the box, still not empty, she makes her way to her son. They lean together against the wall, Ben peering into the various packets she opens for him and either adding them to the growing pile beside him or rejecting them. Ned watches her bite into an apple.
Oh dear, he thinks to himself. Oh dear. Oh dear.
Within half an hour, all have eaten well and several look as if they might fall asleep in the yellow sunshine. He doubts whether the shore party will return from the pub but it doesn’t matter, there are still enough people to finish the job. He walks over to where Ben and his mum are playing noughts and crosses with twigs and pebbles. He fingers a stone he found earlier and placed in his pocket. “Thanks for lunch. A life saver.”
“I’ll call for Ben at four o’clock, if that’s alright. He’s got Chess Club later.”
Ned’s attention is snagged by a shout. “Before you go, can I take your photo?” It is that new guy, Marcus, who has spent most of the mor
ning taking irksome shots as people work. “Come on then, budge up. Get in close.”
Ben stands in the middle, Ned and his mum on either side. Her arm rests lightly on his behind Ben’s back. The shutter closes before Ned could look to camera. “Fabulous.”
Mid-afternoon and the pace of work is definitely slowing. Despite the morning’s golden glory, the weather is changing. A sickly green light fills the newly created spaces. The sky thickens. A few drops of rain pattern the stone wall.
At quarter to four, those hardy souls who have stayed the course are gathered around Ned, hair tangled, faces smudged. “I can’t thank you enough.” He won’t mention that he is fairly sure he saw Major Welding drive past in his gas-guzzling four-by-four and, although he couldn’t swear to it, somebody remarkably like Chris Eveans was in the passenger seat. Doubtless they will be along later for an inspection. “Hurry home, everyone, before the rain starts. Again, many thanks for a sterling effort.”
The crowd disperses, patting each other on the back, turning back to look at the results of their handiwork. As Ned makes his way to his trailer, he drops the stone from his pocket into the nearly empty lunch box that Ben’s mum brought. Other bits and pieces have found their way there, he assumes, from Ben’s forays with the barrow.
Where is Ben? There had been a couple of occasions during the day when he’d turned to look for Ben and just couldn’t quite see him. A few moments later, he’d look up again and see Ben trundling his barrow across the field, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in the other. Whatever momentary panic he felt abated until the next time he disappeared. Somehow, though, Ben always just slid into view before outright alarm set in.
A rough breeze lifts and shakes the alder branches arching over the river. There is a definite change in the air. If Ben’s mum doesn’t hurry up, he and Ben will have to shelter in the van against the oncoming rain. Where is the woman? He should be annoyed. What does she think he is, some kind of unofficial babysitter? But his level of annoyance is low, almost non-existent. Goodness knows she has a time of it with this lad of hers.
“Come on, Ben. Give us a hand getting the last of these bits and pieces into the van.”
“Righto, Mister Ned.”
The lad is willing enough. Clumsy but dogged. Has a habit of wandering off. Loves his mum, that much is obvious. But that love is sometimes inappropriately expressed. There is sometimes a haunted look in her eye.
“Mum’s here. Am off now. Ta-ra.”
Ned waves to Ben’s mum, standing over by the gate as Ben crane-walks over the near-perfect pitch. She waves back. He wants to tell her that her son pulled an absolute blinder today but she is already pulling her collar up about her ears, urging Ben to hurry up before the rains come.
11
Ned
By four thirty, the rain starts to fall in earnest. The fat splots that earlier fell percussively on the steel barrows and turned the piles of pebbles into ore, give way to sharper, more spiteful points of rain.
The field is now empty save for a few scuds of litter. The grass will quickly grow back over the bare patches where molehills were flattened and squirrel diggings and rabbit and rodent holes were filled in. The brutal flaying of the overgrown hedges will soon temper in colour. The ash from the still-smouldering bonfires will lift into the air and blow away in due course.
It is doubtful the Sunday Supremoes would ever call upon his services, all being of the ‘Well How Hard Can It Be?’ school of tricky undertakings. It is possible one or two Doughty Ladies might call him at some time but, to a woman, they all seemed eminently practical and capable, reducing their gardens down to a few herb pots and the odd hanging arrangement once the putative male of the house had shuffled off in his carpet slippers to the greater golf course/betting shop/bird hide in the sky.
The paths are neat and clearly marked, the widest one linking the gate to the rise in the bottom left corner of the now open field, with lesser paths branching off towards the river bank or continuing to a dead end in the hawthorn hedge. Maybe, at one time, there had been a bridge across Black Brook linking this field to Abbeyclere, the former religious house, now just a vast mound hunkering under agricultural land otherwise stretched flat and taut as far as Ned’s eye can see, the tumble of stone blocks softened by centuries’ accumulations of turf.
Several crows lift themselves into the freshening air from the copse in the next field. Alders and willows follow the river as it meanders off towards the low horizon. A line of poplar trees stands sentry against the sky. He’d heard the village legend that the trees were an unclaimed dowry, the bride-to-be preferring to hang herself than marry her prospective husband.
Ned drives out onto the road and jumps down to drag the warped and misshapen gate into place, securing it behind him. All in all, not a bad day.
Marcus
Walking back from the Town Field through the village, Marcus feels slightly harried after a day of working in the open, as if the cascade of roofs, the small unseeing windows, the miscellany of doors are a jostling crowd pushing into him; as if the houses, the workshops, the garretts, like the people who occupied this village over generations, are clamouring for his attention.
He passes the wide, generous door to Cecily’s house. A bare light bulb is visible in the half-moon glass. He wonders if one day he could just knock.
What would he say? Would he ask if she can hear the voices too? The shouts of the warriors, the well-drivers, shoemakers, tailors, saddlers, grocers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, corn millers, farmers, ministers, publicans, glovers, fullers and lavanders, combers, tenterers, weavers, dyers, revenue men, potters, poets, painters, composers, horsemen, brick makers, shepherds, flint flakers and knappers, thatchers, millers, government commissioners, colourists, swedebashers, navvies, pilgrims, fashioners of gold and bronze, lime burners, saints, swordsmen, ship builders, ritualists, doctors, ploughmen, conquerors, dialectologists, martyrs, wherrymen, airmen, barons, bishops, masons, carpenters, pilferers, staithesmen, bell casters, stone pickers, toad catchers, Pharisees, witch finders, dissenters, drovers, sail makers, labourers, shearers, breeders, stockmen, high stewards, brewers, soap boilers, abbots, bishops, merchant adventurers, poulterers, drapers, mercers, spicers, tanners, skinners and ironmongers, cheesemongers, whitening makers, sextons, basket makers, beggars and swains, clock makers, yeoman, cottagers, squatters, maltsters, farriers, hurdle-makers?
Where are they all now?
He walks stiffly up the flight of stairs to his flat, emitting small groans with each rise. The chill that heralded the rain must have got in under his precautionary thermals and made straight for his knees. Although, maybe it is his lower back that is on the point of imminent seizure? He grabs the hand rail and pulls himself up the remaining steps, leaning against the archway into the kitchen while he catches his breath.
Rain patters against the kitchen window. He flicks a switch on the boiler. The surging flame seems to match a surge in his heart. Not arrhythmia, heaven forfend, but a feeling of fellowship, community, purpose. He’d felt nothing like it, really, since, well, he didn’t know; maybe it was that time of the power outage on the Underground when the entire carriage had joined in with the charismatic West Indian vicar in singing hymns line by line. But that had only been for about fifteen minutes, the experience slightly marred by the French girl opposite him who seemed to be suffering from an attack of the vapours or at least a high degree of agitation.
Marcus hums to himself as he moves around his space, putting on the kettle, powering up his laptop, pulling the curtains tightly shut should the night become increasingly wild. No time like the present. He would eschew the pub tonight – bound to be some tins in the cupboard – and spend the evening uploading today’s photographs.
Ned
Ned bumps his van down the track leading to the farm watched by Jasper the donkey in the middle of the paddock, chewing lugubriously on a
pile of thistles, tenderly removing the spiky leaves and discarding the stalks like a trail of pick-up sticks. Ned parks the van and walks over to the fence, removing from his pocket the apple that Ben’s mum had given him earlier. “Here you are, lad. Saved it for you.” Jasper looks up from his pile, still chewing, considering his now augmented options. “Come on. Apple.” His brown fringed ears swivel semi-independently at the sound of Ned’s voice and he half walks, half runs towards the fruit balanced on Ned’s outstretched hand. The donkey lifts his front lip to reveal brown scored teeth before biting into the apple. Juice and pulp spray with each chewing motion. Ned turns the apple round in his grip, the squelch and the crunch magnified by the creature’s long muzzle. “Good boy.” Jasper rears his head away from Ned’s touch and returns to chewing and plain considering until he has finished the core. He smells of warm hay.
The farmhouse looms large in the near dusk. No lights on. Geoff would still be tending the fields or whatever Geoff does and Kate would still be at the bookshop. As he opens the door to the barn that he rents as a secure lock-up, dogs start barking in the conservatory, a Doberman licking rapaciously at the white smear of dried spittle left from his attempts to get at the previous intruder whilst a mottled shape that is the Jack Russell pogoes itself into a frenzy, like a night at the Wigan Casino.
Within half an hour, he has dismantled, cleaned, sharpened and stowed his kit. Time to go home. He returns down the track, the lights from the van hokey-cokey through the dusk as it bumps into and out of the potholes past Jasper, standing there with the patience of time and the poise of youth. Where did those spades go? Did some bugger pinch them?
Marcus
The kitchen warms as the tomato soup on a slow heat heaves and, expelling a large bubble, falls back in on itself. Marcus cuts bread and smears it with butter. Licking his fingers he tilts his laptop this way and that to find the – port, was it? – to attach his camera.