A Field Full of Folk (17 page)

Henry, standing there so alone and so self assured, irritated him. It was as if his sceptical intelligence were a scandal to him. On an impulse he went over to talk to him.

“Good afternoon, Henry,” he said pacifically.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“And what do you think of the proceedings, Henry?”

The boy turned on him an astonishingly intelligent smile and appeared to be about to say something illuminating but at the last minute as if out of good manners contented himself with saying,

“They seem to be going well, sir.”

“We do this, Henry,” said the minister, “in order to give everybody an outing at least once a year. I see that you didn't take part in the race.”

“No, sir.” The minister waited for the boy to volunteer some more information but Henry remained silent as if quite content with what he had already said. His self assurance and maturity were amazing. The minister felt in some way as if the picnic and himself and his church were all being judged in the light of an intelligence much superior to his own, and while standing there was amused by the spectacle of Kenny Foolish turning cartwheels on the other side of the field for the entertainment of the children. To the foolish all was revealed, though not necessarily to the bright.

Suddenly the boy said to him, “I was wondering, sir, what this had to do with the Bible.”

The remark fell so easily and almost casually from his lips that the minister was at first unsure whether he had heard right and he stood still for a moment looking around him. Many of the people were now sitting on the grass, eating their sandwiches and drinking their lemonade, while in the distance he could see the mountain and to its left the
sun, round and golden in the sky. A baby was crying in its mother's arms, David Collins was talking to Annie, his slightly unshaven face alight with interest in what she was saying. To his right he could see a boy and a girl walking into the wood which was on the opposite bank, the boy's arm around the girl's waist. He imagined them speaking lovingly to each other or remaining silent while they walked, while the leaves of the trees stirred in the slight breeze. He imagined them lying down in a glade somewhere in the half light and shadow of the wood, the boy perhaps spreading a jacket beneath the girl while they kissed each other and the only noises to be heard were those of the twittering of the birds and the murmur of the river.

It was as if a door had been slightly opened but not wide enough, for almost as soon as it happened the vision was gone, and he felt frustrated and bad-tempered again. For a moment there he could have walked casually through the door into a country which would have revealed to him once and for all the secret of life and of existence, but it had closed as suddenly as it had opened and all he could see was his wife and Elizabeth and Mrs Scott and Mrs Campbell at the table to which various people came for more sandwiches and lemonade, and their bodies were opaque and obdurate again. He noticed that John Murray and Chrissie were still sitting by themselves on the rim of the proceedings. Maybe he should go over and talk to them but he didn't feel ready as yet.

He turned towards the boy as if to answer his statement but found that the words would not form in his mouth. He might have said glibly that the connection between sports and the Bible was that the former were intended to bring the villagers together in a community which would attain a closer unity by them, but he felt that this was not a justification or indeed an explanation. I am like Wordsworth, he considered, I am ending my life in the light of common day. Once there was a radiance to which the rainbow and the rose and the worn hands contributed, now there is only the ordinary daylight on which the shadows of people fall without the poetry of ideas. And yet he felt himself on the edge of a revelation which however was not quite descending on him, as were not the twenty-four elders of whom Annie spoke. Why, even David Collins had often spoken of the angel of Mons which he had seen, according to himself, so many years ago from the shelter of the infested trenches. But all he could see as he looked around him were people eating sandwiches and drinking lemonade. There was Mrs Berry sitting beside her daughter Patricia, who had left the table for a moment while beside them sitting on the ground were Peter and Helen. There was the German and his wife, both munching contentedly, while the Jap and his wife and son were also eating as if that was the correct thing to do in a strange country. There was Kenny Foolish, upside down like a fool in a Tarot pack, doing his eternal handstands and surrounded by a ring of laughing children.

When he turned back to Henry he knew that he didn't have an answer to give him, not now at any rate, and for a moment he hated the closed smart sceptical intelligence, observing and watching, as if it were his own. The fact that the boy didn't take part in sports was another sign of his separation from the ordinary world, however powerful his mind was, and he suddenly felt like cursing his parents who had all the right ideas but not the right feelings. What was the use of being anti-nuclear, pro-sufficiency-farming if they did not feel the necessary pain and sorrow and joy which would only come from an immersion in the poor dumb meagre and sometimes marvellous world?

His gaze wandered from the boy to the buzzard perched on a fence near him and he saw as if with horror the eternally questing head, the absolute patience. They had all said that David Collins had been devastated by the death of his cat which had evaded for so many years the dangers of the traffic but which had at last by a curious random justice been killed by a motorist who hadn't even stopped. The cat had apparently died in David's lap, one eye hanging down, the other open and seemingly aware of where it was, or at least that was what David had said.

“It was as if he knew me. It was as if he was grateful that I was there.” When the minister wakened as it were from his speculations he found that the boy had gone as if impatient that the answer he had been looking for had not been delivered to him. But the people were still eating and drinking on the large plain which adjoined the water. They had completely forgotten him. Even his wife was talking to Mrs Campbell, possibly asking her about her foreign lodgers, while Mrs Scott was debating something with Elizabeth. He had never felt less like the shepherd of a flock.

“In the East,” Annie was saying to David, “they don't have strong feelings. They let the will waste away. I don't much care for this lemonade as it acidifies the stomach. I know that you don't like foreigners but you should forgive and forget. It is possible that you were a foreigner yourself in a previous existence. What it is necessary to see is that the Buddha sat under a tree, a tree just like that one,” and she pointed while her bangles dangled at her wrist, “and he told us that there must be no evil in our hearts. I wonder what kind of pâté they have on these sandwiches. It has a fishy taste. You see, as a former member of His Majesty's Forces you still have evil in your heart. Countries cause wars, not persons. Have you thought about that? Your cat which I hear died recently might go into the body of a man. It would not surprise me if he became like Mrs Campbell. The Egyptians worshipped the cat as I have read in the Encyclopædias. You cannot go through life with hatred in your heart though I can understand it, all those boys dead in Flanders. I think we should go over and talk to those Germans, if they have any English, and I must say that I don't approve of men wearing shorts. They are as bad as the kilt. This ridiculous idea of trying to make oneself look young when one is old, I find it disgusting. Let us go over and talk to them: they appear lonely. And in any case that man was not born when you were in the trenches among the lice and the flies.”

Masterfully she pulled David after her, her beads bouncing on her flat chest and her nose headed steadily towards the Germans.

It was, thought David, as if it was his mother's hand he felt in his own or perhaps the hand of Mary Macarthur long ago behind the school privy on a summer's day. The face of his friend Alasdair rose in front of him. He himself was running through the French wood, his rifle in his hand. Alasdair was lying there on the ground not yet dead but badly wounded. He should stop and save him but there was no hope, there was surely no hope. He ordered his feet to stop but they couldn't, they seemed to have a life of their own which didn't respond to his control. They were flying on regardless, away from the sun. He saw his boots among the leaves and now and again flashes of sheep on grazing land. Alasdair was hiding among the leaves and there were nest eggs everywhere, eggs the size of cannon balls, in the blue day. Let him find a nest and hide in it, a secret nest away from the guns, with brown speckled eggs in it.

He and Annie were now standing in front of the Germans who had risen to their feet immediately. The woman in a long decorated skirt smiled expectantly, the man was dabbing crumbs from his shorts. They were trying to frame words from their small treasury of English. Annie was going on and on. “Do you have Sunday School outings in Germany?” she was saying. “Of course they're quite useless. Of course Martin Luther is to blame for much that is wrong with the church nowadays. He should have listened more to the saints. It is only when we are thirsty and starved that we have revelations.” The German nodded vigorously and his wife smiled uncertainly, and David thought, “I never saw a German with lemonade stains on his shorts before. This man looks very clumsy.” He looked down at the lemonade bottle which was standing upright on the ground. The bubbles rose and fell ceaselessly like an escalator.

“And another thing,” Annie was saying, “the Buddha was against all forms of violence. And as for that Hitler I never cared for his moustache. Was it stuck on, do you think? It seemed to me that he was like an actor, that someone had stuck the moustache on his face …”

26

“I
THINK IT
is going very well,” said Mary Murchison to Mrs Scott, as she handed a sandwich to a small boy who had come up to the table. Mrs Scott said that it was. And indeed it was going surprisingly well. The field was filled with people of all shapes and sizes, and colours of clothes. It was rather like a painting that she had once seen in the Art Gallery in Surrey though she couldn't now remember the painter's name. It had been painted on perhaps such a summer's day, not, she thought, in Britain but in Europe, perhaps France. And there was Gerald standing with Murdo Macfarlane; she wondered what they were talking about. “And I've an idea for an ending to the day,” said the minister's wife. “It is always a good thing to end the day on a high note,” and smiled at her secret pun. It occurred to Mrs Scott that there might be a fruitful argument about the money that would be left over from the Sale of Work when the lemonade and the sandwiches had been paid for. She thought that perhaps it might be used for the petrol expenses of those who were doing the Meals on Wheels. She turned to say something to Mary Murchison but the latter had walked away and was talking to Elizabeth.

She stood there uncertainly, isolated at the table, apart from the minister who seemed to be lost in a dream after he had been talking to that strange boy Henry Allison. If she were in Surrey, now, what would she be doing? She thought that perhaps she would be drinking coffee with Isa Weaver in the tea shop over which that grey-haired woman presided. She tried to remember her name but couldn't and she was bothered by that. Her mind circled the alphabet alighting on a letter here and there but in spite of all her efforts she couldn't trap the name. Good Lord, she thought, what is happening to me. Not so long ago she would have been able to recall the name without difficulty and also the exact appearance of that thatched cottage that stood at the corner of the street with its small leaded panes. But she couldn't even remember what colours the panes were. Now, wasn't that odd? It must be significant in some way. She shivered slightly as if, in Mrs Berry's words, someone was walking on her grave. The proceedings had come to a stop for a moment and in that hiatus she stood miserably in the middle of nowhere half way between Surrey and the village, as if she were at a station from which the train had already departed. And then she caught sight of John Murray and Chrissie still sitting by themselves in a corner of the field, their two children among the others who were playing happily having forgotten the adults. On an impulse she went over to them, a sandwich and lemonade in her hand. Crossing the field she was aware of no eyes looking at her and was happy in her privacy. It was as if they had all accepted that she should be in the position she was in, authoritative and efficient. Well, wasn't she those things? Hadn't she been efficient all her days? All that she wanted in return was some recognition of her efforts. The shadows slanted away from her as she walked across the field, a harvest of shadows.

She knelt down in front of John Murray and his wife and said, “Would you like some lemonade and a sandwich?” Murray looked at her gratefully and Chrissie immediately took the sandwich.

“Thank you very much,” they both said.

“It's a fine day,” she said. “Isn't it fortunate that it has turned out nice? I had misgivings about the whole thing but I'm glad to confess that I was wrong.”

Now that she was beside them she didn't know what to say and kept her talk to the weather which at least wouldn't probe at raw wounds. She noticed that Chrissie was wearing a longer skirt than usual and that her hair was coiled at the back of her head in a bun. The ring was back on her hand. So she too was adapting to her new circumstances. The tribe must be placated, the mysterious price must be paid. The tribe was like a living organism which swallowed its components and waxed and waned accordingly. She saw it as a spongey jellyfish placidly drifting in briny water.

“I hear you're in the wheelbarrow race,” she said to John.

“Yes, I got myself landed for that,” he replied. She wondered what would happen to Chrissie while he was taking part in the sports and decided that she would stay with her.