A Field Full of Folk (16 page)

From behind the table the minister spoke briefly.

“I'm glad,” he said, “to see so many of you here. As you know, this is a Sunday School picnic but we have extended it so that as many as possible of the villagers will have the opportunity to be present. I haven't seen my wife for days now as she has been preparing sandwiches”—they laughed politely—”and I am glad to offer my thanks to all those who have prepared the food and drink. I think we can start now.”

“What is he saying?” Mary Macarthur asked Annie.

“He is saying that the races can start now,” said Annie. “He is praising his wife as usual. I see that Chrissie Murray is here. Do you notice her sitting over there beside her husband?” Annie had recently taken to wearing strings of brown beads, and bangles round her wrists, and was dressed in a brown frock.

“Yes, I see her,” said Mary Macarthur, “maybe we should go and speak to her.”

“Not just now,” said Annie, “I am not sure that I wish to speak to her at this moment. Later perhaps I shall speak to her.”

She watched the children lining up for the first race while the janitor tried to keep them in a reasonably straight row. These were the youngest children and among them was Mrs Berry's grandchild Peter, and Mrs Campbell's son, Malcolm. The Jap had raised his camera and was focussing it on them, as they giggled among themselves and looked down at each other's feet. Annie was sure that competition was not necessary in Eastern religions.

The janitor said, “Ready, steady, go,” and they were all running in a disorderly manner towards the minister who was standing at the other end of the field, some with teeth gritted as if they were running in an important race such as they had seen on TV, and some with careless steps as if in a dream of their own. Two of them fell on the grass and rolled over and over shrieking with merriment, while the first to reach the finishing line was Peter.

“How is it that Peter always wins the race? He did the same last year,” said Mrs Drummond to Mrs Berry.

“His grandfather was the same,” said Mrs Berry abruptly. “He was good at running and throwing the caber. He was very strong.” The children had now disentangled themselves from the confused mass they had formed at the finishing line and the minister was announcing the winner. Mrs Berry felt in her bones the pride she had felt once in her husband's running and feats of strength. Why, when his own brother had once challenged Angus to a fight the latter had beaten him with ease, though his brother, Iain, had been two stones heavier.

“I don't wish to see his wife gloating over you,” she had hissed at him. “I can't stand her. She thinks the sun rises in her backside. Have you seen the new watch she's wearing? She's flashing it at me every time she can. You go in there and beat him.” And the two of them had wrestled in the garden, she remembered, with the flowers all in bloom around them. At first it had seemed that his brother would beat him but then she had seen Angus's face reddening and the veins standing out on his forehead like thin ropes and he had made a tremendous heave and thrown his brother like a sack of potatoes across the lawn to land among the rhododendrons. She had turned and looked his wife straight in the eye and that had been the sweetest revenge of her life. And then there had been the other time when he had taken part in the races in Mull …

Peter came running towards her, the ten pence piece clutched in his sweaty hand. “You've done well,” she said proudly. “You've kept up your grandfather's reputation,” and he stood in front of her like a little sturdy boxer. Mrs Drummond and her husband had already left and were now standing beside Annie and Mary Macarthur. She knew perfectly well that the only reason that they had gone was because they were jealous of her grandson winning the race: they themselves were childless.

As she stood there with her hand resting on Peter's blond head she saw the Jap crossing the field towards her. He walked with short quick steps and his moon face beamed at her.

“Please,” he said, pointing at the two of them and then at the camera. “Please.”

She was reminded of the black man who had used to sell clothes out of a suitcase many years ago when she and Angus had been young. He had laid out on the floor socks, cardigans, handkerchiefs, pyjamas, nightgowns, and she had stared at them enviously and then said to Angus, “No, they're no good,” though she had in fact liked them, but she couldn't afford them. The Jap was smiling uncertainly at her as if he were one of those people who expected to be
rebuked when he asked for a favour, but then of course this was not his country, and how would she feel if she was in Japan?

She took Peter by the hand and she smiled at the Jap, at the same time telling Peter to stand still and look at the kind man who was taking his photograph. They said that those Japs were very clever and worked hard and copied our whisky and our tweed but after all it was a Sunday School picnic and God intended us to be kind to all his creatures even though some of them were yellow and some were black. She smiled, the camera clicked, the Jap bowed as if she were a queen, and then walked back with his quick steps to where his tiny wife was waiting with her unnaturally polite son.

By this time the second race had been run and Helen had come in second last and Hugh, the butcher's son, had won it and Alisdair was crying and stamping on the ground with his feet.

“I won it,” he was shouting at the minister. “I won it.” His mother ran out and hauled him back among the crowd lining the field, her face red with embarrassment but Alisdair was still stamping the ground crying.

“You bad boy,” she was saying while the people turned away. “You bad boy.”

“I'm not, I'm not,” said Alisdair through his tears. “He's always winning, getting …”

And he couldn't continue with whatever he was going to say, for at that moment Elizabeth ran up with a bag of sweets from which she gave him one. Meanwhile Kenny Foolish was running by himself in a corner of the field, throwing his hands in the air, in a grotesque imitation of someone running a race on TV.

“He gets …” And Alisdair choked on the words while his mother slapped his bottom and made him cry louder. “When I get you home,” she was saying, while Elizabeth offered him a striped sweet thinking how Alisdair's trousers had a patch on them and his mother had brought him up on her own after her husband had been struck by lightning while sitting on top of a telegraph pole, for he had been a Post Office engineer. But Alisdair was spitting the sweet out of his mouth and still shouting as if he was in some kind of fit. He danced on the ground with rage, his face swollen. “He'll be all right,” said Mrs Mason to Elizabeth. “He'll be all right … It's just that …” And her voice trailed away. But the spectators had turned to the last of the three races in which the older children were taking part.

“There's another race to come,” said Elizabeth to Alisdair. “You can dress up and then we can see if you will win. See, you can get into the wheelbarrow and John Murray will wheel you along and we'll see if you can win. Aren't you looking forward to that?” Alisdair suddenly stopped crying and smiled at her and Mrs Mason was jealous of this girl who had so easily quietened her son. But she didn't say anything as Elizabeth continued,

“And you'll get lemonade and a bun. You'll like that.” And she walked across the grass to where the minister was standing at the table.

“We used to have races in the Army,” said David Collins to Murdo. “One unit would be running against another unit. We called them units. That was in Aldershot.” Already he was growing tired of the races and thinking of other things.

Murdo pretended not to hear him. He was tired of the Angel of Mons, the trenches, the guns, the Germans. He should never have come among these parents with their families, who was himself only a bachelor, and had never had a child in the cleansed and polished house in which he lived with his mother all those years.

“In Aldershot, that was,” David Collins repeated, wiping the sweat from his face, “before we went off to France.”

And it seemed to him that those days belonged to someone else, someone much younger than he was, someone totally different whose photograph, brown and blurred, he kept on the sideboard in his living room. Sometimes he would look at that photograph and think, “That's not me at all. It is a boy whom I used to know.” He swiped angrily at a midge and thought, “The bloody Japs and Germans are everywhere. They are taking over the world.” The Jap's camera had disturbed him. For a moment there when it had whirred it was as if he were hearing a hissing sound like a lit fuse running back to its source, the dangerous snake.

“Hullo, Alisdair,” he said awkwardly. “Is it yourself? You should have won that race right enough.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a hard white sweet. “You take that,” he said. “You eat that.” Alisdair wonderingly took the sweet and then ran away on little fat legs. In a short while Murdo saw the two of them—Hugh and Alisdair—talking animatedly to each other. Nothing lasted long at that age, sunshine was followed by storm, storm by sunshine.

I'm not feeling too well, the minister thought, I should really sit down. I should be a different man for this job, I should be like the previous minister. No wonder the congregation preferred him to me. He was hail-fellow-well-met, a big red-faced man like a farmer who shouted at the congregation, “You are all rotten apples, you are bad potatoes.” And then he would stalk about the fields, commenting on the state of the fruit and the vegetables, and they loved him. I on the other hand was never a sportsman, I never won a race in my life. I never took part in the cricket games in my school, the PT man was a brutal fellow who had played rugby for a first class team and he used to tell the boys the best methods of bringing someone down. “Don't be frightened,” he would shout at them, “or I'll have your guts for garters.” All those bony knees, dirty stockings, tiled washrooms. No, to be a minister one must live in the world, there's a way of talking that a congregation understands.

He passed his hand across his eyes, watching the crowd of people, seeing Chrissie and her husband sitting by themselves. There was a rightness about that too, the others would be leaving them together till she had adjusted to
being home. They had their own tact which was instinctive and mannerly. In front of him he saw the Saxons with their wall of shields while the Vikings approached them in the white frosty morning. They were being cut to pieces but one of them was standing there and shouting, “The spirit will grow stronger”, as the shields fell, as they yielded inch after inch. They are running towards me and I should receive them. Suffer the little children to come unto me …

Mary was standing beside him now and she was saying, “I think you should announce that the sports will stop for a while while we serve the lemonade and the sandwiches and the buns.” He made the announcement and watched them forming themselves into a queue while some of the children were spinning round and round, chasing each other and falling on the grass. What energy they had at that age, what unclouded vision.

He removed the paper from a sandwich and began to eat it. As he was doing this his eye happened to catch that of a spectacled boy who was standing by himself at the edge of the field. He knew at once who it was, it was the Allison boy who was supposed to be the most brilliant scholar the school had ever had. His father and mother were rather odd people, incomers of course, who had a large untidy house a good bit out of the village, and who, according to local rumour, spent their time painting and sculpting and generally messing about with aesthetic materials. As well as this they ate only health food. Curiously enough they came to church every Sunday in an old battered car which was filled with bric à brac of various descriptions, and wearing clothes which reminded the congregation of those worn by hippies. The father who was English (as was the mother as well) was supposed to have been a scientist and to have invented a device from which others had got the benefit. Though they came to church they kept themselves to themselves and left immediately the service ended. They had however on one occasion organised a Bach evening which the locals had attended more out of curiosity than anything else but which afterwards they had criticised as not being, in their opinion, at the correct level for ordinary people.

Their son Henry was a spectacled boy with a bulging forehead who was a bit of a problem since he didn't mix with the other children, but who had the ability even at the age of twelve to discuss painting and music when the opportunity arose and whose knowledge of the geography of other countries which his parents had apparently visited was wide and detailed. In fact he frightened teachers for he was clearly so well in advance of the other pupils that it was rather embarrassing. However it appeared that his parents' views were such that they regarded a private education as out of the question, being firm believers in the comprehensive system and a ‘normal' development for their child, ideas which they had pronounced with much eloquence at a Parents-Teachers' meeting.

It seemed to the minister as he watched the boy that Henry was studying the proceedings with a rather sceptical expression which he immediately hooded behind his round glasses when the minister looked at him. The latter was not surprised that the parents were not present nor that the boy had not taken part in any of the sports even though his age group had already run their race. He wondered vaguely what was going on in the boy's mind as he had often wondered in Sunday School when he had been explaining some passage in the Bible, for example the story of the Prodigal Son. The boy had been quite animated in maintaining that the father in the story had been rather unfair since he had so easily accepted his son back and even thrown a party for him when the older son had been so neglected. It occurred to the minister to wonder whether in fact Henry's father kept pigs. He certainly kept hens and sold their eggs. The boy had not been convinced by the minister's explanation that the story was not meant to be taken literally but was rather symbolic of man's relationship with God. The minister remembered the occasion very well as it was the only time that he had ever been forced into quite a hard argument, since the other children in the Sunday School were only there because their parents forced them to attend and were shy and reticent.