A Month in the Country (12 page)

There was a throaty smell blowing off the bilberry shrubs and withering heather when we disembarked on a sheep-cropped plain high up in the hills. There was no shelter from the sun, but it was dinner-time and the women and girls unpacked hard-boiled eggs and soggy tomato sandwiches wrapped in greased paper and swaddled in napkins. It was Mr Dowthwaite (for you laboured for your prestige amongst the Wesleyans) who built a downbreeze fire of twigs and soon had tin kettles boiling. Then he struck up the Doxology and, when we'd sung it, we settled to some steady eating.

Afterwards, most of the men took off their jackets, exposing their braces and the tapes of their long woollen underpants and astonished their children by larking around like great lads. The courting couples sidled off, the women sat around and talked. So eating, drinking, dozing, making love, the day passed until evening came and the horses were led from their pasture. Then, as the first star rose and swallows turned and twisted above the bracken, our wagons rumbled down from above the White Horse and across the Vale towards home: the Sunday-school Treat was over.

And, when we reached Oxgodby, we heard that Emily Clough had died that afternoon.

Ah, those days … for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest. And being young.

If I'd stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvellous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.

I only left Oxgodby once – to visit Ripon. Of course, I had meant to see its Minster while I was in those parts, but doubt if I'd have made the trip if Mr Ellerbeck hadn't made me stir myself. It happened because the Trustees had painfully agreed that they could just about afford to replace their harmonium with an American organ. ‘Actually, it was hearing tell that Church lot are going to have a new pipe organ,' Kathy told me confidentially. ‘It's alright for them; they don't have to forever be raising money to pay their minister like us,' she said bitterly. ‘
Their
money comes from Away.'

‘We'd be more than obliged if you'd join us Mr Birkin,' Mr Ellerbeck said. ‘You have a real eye for quality, there's no doubting it; that anybody can tell. And we want the best; well, put it this way, we want the best we can afford. There'll be only the four of us, Mr Dowthwaite, you, Kathy and me.'

We went by train and found Mr Baines's Piano and Organ Warehouse in a back street off the Market Place. He had an impressively comprehensive stock; there must have been thirty pianos, as many American organs and harmoniums and a couple of pipe organs. ‘It's t'Deputation frev Osgodby Wesleyans come about t'organ,' Mr Dowthwaite said, bending forward nervously. ‘Mr Baines knows all about us; Mr Ellerbeck here wrote a letter to say we were coming on the 2.15.'

‘Mr Baines isn't with us any longer,' a well-turned-out young man said, ‘I am the new proprietor.' He priced our raiment and added, ‘I suppose it is a
pedal
organ.'

I was cast down to recognize a London accent; he had made it sound so shameful a transaction. Then he led us briskly along the gangways between his parade of instruments.

‘It's all show,' Kathy whispered. ‘They make folks pay through their noses for all these mirrors and brass candlesticks. Whereas it's the noise that's all-important. We've got to watch out for the wheezing you get when the bellows are perished.'

My murmur can't have been agreeable enough because she continued shrewdly, ‘And we'll have to be particularly watchful because he's a blinking southerner.' Mercifully she didn't add, ‘like you'.

The proprietor was rattling off some dubious technical jargon while cleverly managing to imply that he was casting pearls before swine without actually saying so. Frankly, the choice was too lavish, like pushing a feast under a starving man's nose; one moment he is dying of hunger, the next of anxiety. But the descriptive flights became briefer, then downright brusque. Eventually he said brutally: ‘I expect you're wanting something second-hand.' We nodded in shame.

‘Then you should have said so,' he said dismissively. ‘You'd better have a look behind that lot over there. We took them in part-exchange from go-ahead churches. I don't know what you'll find. Not much I expect. And please note we do not give any guarantee.'

‘I suppose it's in order to try one or two out?' Mr Dowthwaite asked deferentially.

He was not answered: the proprietor was already gliding away to greet more promising customers.

Now, once this grand person had gone, Mr Ellerbeck became himself again. His eye brightened and a note of decision returned to his voice. ‘Now let's have a look at these price-tags,' he said, pushing briskly into the corral for despised and rejected instruments. ‘It's no use trying anything we can't afford. Spread out and then report back.'

And we did.

Five minutes later he announced. ‘Then that's settled and we can get on. It has to be one of these three – this one, the yellow-looking one
and that one there. Kathy lass, fetch yon music-stool and let's hear you sound 'em out, one after another.' And, having arranged her long hair and jamming her hat on more firmly, that's what she did, vigorously putting all three organs and ‘All people that on earth do dwell' through their paces. And, whilst she pedalled away like mad, trying combinations of stops and swells, Mr Dowthwaite crouched with his head pressed to the organ's back. ‘I'm no musician Mr Birkin,' he explained, observing my astonishment, ‘that I freely admit to; but wind, that I do understand and let no man deny it, bellows being, as it were, my business.'

As far as I was able to tell the three candidates sounded much alike, and my sole contribution was to point out that one vibrated when worked hard and that a second smelled odd. I therefore was gratified when it was decided that the third was the favourite and thus must be tested to its very limit. However, at this moment, the other customers must have decided on a similar course and began releasing peals of thunder and strident fanfares from what announced itself to be a large, very expensive pipe organ.

‘Go and enquire how long he's going to make that din for, Mr Birkin,' Kathy ordered, so I sidled out from the cast-offs and, skirting several thickets of music-making impedimenta, emerged into a clearing reserved for grander clients. And these were the Keaches.

I stopped in my tracks but before I could melt back guiltily into the friendly jungle, Alice Keach turned. At that moment the better to conduct his pneumatic investigation, Mr Dowthwaite mounted a chair, thus explaining my presence. Her eye brightened. For a moment I believed that she would burst out laughing. Perhaps she did. But, at that moment, the proprietor released another blast on his organ and, under cover of its barrage, I retreated.

‘They've just about finished,' I lied. So, unwrapping the paper parcel he'd been carrying to reveal the Wesleyan Hymnal, Mr Ellerbeck said, ‘Well, if we're going to catch the 4.7 we'll make a start. Here Kathy, let's have No. 264, “Low, He comes with clouds descending once for guilty sinners slain”. It's got plenty of go in it.' And with her knees cleverly pushing out both swells and her feet pumping up and down like a sprinter, she produced a very respectable counter-blast.

‘I think this is it, Mr Dowthwaite,' the Stationmaster said. ‘What about
you, Tom? Still, before we finally plump for it, let's see how it sounds with a bit of singing – after all, you only hear an organ on its own twice, when you come in and when you go out. Here – No. 119, Kathy, “Worthy is the Lamb”.'

And off they went; Kathy leading off in an unusually strong soprano howl, Mr Ellerbeck's exaggerated tenor almost harmonizing with the blacksmith's basso profundo (both mighty hands across his waistcoat) whilst I examined the ceiling, wondering what Alice Keach was making of the din.

‘Worthy is the Lamb,
Worthy is the Lamb,
Worthy is the Lamb for sinners slain
For sinners sla-a-a-ain
For sinners sla-a-a-ain
Worthy is the Lamb for sinners slai-i-in.'

It was a splendid noise and they were well into verse 3 before a maniacal yell choked them off: it was the proprietor, beside himself with rage. ‘Here,' he shouted, ‘stop that row. You can't have a blasted choir-practice here. My other customers can't hear themselves.'

The three songsters tailed off into shamefaced silence.

‘We'll have this one,' Mr Ellerbeck said. ‘I'll have it collected by NER.' And Mr Dowthwaite recovered his aplomb with splendid élan. ‘Any discount for cash?' he asked, taking out a pile of soiled notes and a bag of silver. ‘Let's say a couple of pounds off, cash down.'

Business was business to the Oxgodby deputation and, leaving the flabbergasted vendor, off they went to catch the 4.7, dragging their reluctant organ-player with them. But I excused myself, feeling that I couldn't decently leave the place without admiring its Minster. So off I went down the hill to the great rambling barn of a building. But for an ancient verger pottering about, I had the great forest of stone all to myself and, for an hour, pottered and marvelled with him.

Then I shambled back to the Market Place and had buttered teacakes in a room behind a baker's shop. And it was a very good pot of tea, hot and freshly made. I remember the cake too, seedcake, first rate. Now that's something you'd be lucky to find in London, either then or now.
It was a comfortable place to eat, had a well-used feel about it, the sort of place you could sit back in without someone hovering to snatch away the crocks or fill your chair. I lost myself, going over the afternoon, marvelling that I'd been asked to help pick an organ, uncomfortably wondering what Alice Keach had thought, hoping that perhaps, against all the odds, she might slip in here for tea or travel home on the 6.20.

I lit a Woodbine. Someone, a customer, another man, came in, but I didn't turn until he spoke. ‘Well, would you credit it? Do you live here?'

At first I didn't recognize him. ‘Milburn,' he said – ‘Sergeant Milburn.' I knew him then; he hadn't been a bad chap. I believe he was a Kitchener volunteer, not a conscript like me. I'd last seen him in a roofless billet at Bapaume. ‘Last time I saw you they were carting you off,' he said. ‘Let's see – shell-shock, wasn't it? Advance signaller weren't you? Not many of you chaps came through.'

He moved over to my table and told me he was a commercial traveller in ironmongery and had good steady connections in the north-east. I told him what I was doing; he sounded amazed that I'd been at LCA before I was called up. ‘Never would have guessed,' he said. ‘Just took it you were some sort of clerk.'

Then I mentioned Moon.

‘Moon!' he said. ‘A stocky chap, reddish faced, spoke lah-di'-dah?' He saw from my face that he had the right man and laughed. ‘I bet they knocked hell out of him in the glasshouse,' he said. ‘His sort always got it worst. A corporal, who had it in for him, gave the game away: the MPs found him in bed with his batman. Poor bugger! I suppose he was born that way.'

It was like a blow in the face but I didn't think that he noticed.

‘They really shat on him at the Court-Martial, Crucified him. “Corruption of young men” … “Dishonour of the King's commission” … that sort of balls. His MC made it worse. Can't understand that.'

‘He's never mentioned an MC,' I said.

‘Immediate award. Brought in one of his chaps from the wire. Went back when he heard another screaming, even though he must have known it was all up with him.'

Then he said, ‘Perhaps I shouldn't have told you. Well keep it to yourself. Better not mention we met. Well it was nice running into you.
Don't suppose it'll happen again.' He pushed out a hand and went.

Knowing Moon was homosexual didn't upset me, though of course it wasn't something I could forget. It was the idea of an independent man, a proud spirit, being shut up like an animal in a military prison and having to put up with the ghastly crew who always seemed to grope their way in to run those places – that's what appalled me.

Of course, it didn't end there. Don't ask how but, from that day, Moon knew that I knew. Next day, for no reason at all, he said, ‘Sex! It's the very devil. Quite merciless! It betrays our manhood, rots our integrity. Isn't it, perhaps, the hell you were asking about, Birkin?'

And from that time on, things were never quite the same between us.

For a few days now I'd been having a second look at the picture's north side, the last stretch, the glad souls whose virtues had outweighed their iniquity in Michael's scales and now were streaming uphill to their reward. A smug, uninteresting lot they were too, with none of the liveliness of their brethren condemned to the torment. And they hadn't worn well either; their seraphic blues must have started fading during the first twenty years.

So, by and large, the work was near enough done and, if I'd gone off on the instant, no-one would have known the difference, not even old Joe Watterson unless he'd borrowed a ladder. But to satisfy myself, I had to gather up the whole, lightening here, not taking off all the grime there – leaving some to give body to an outlined limb or to contrast more starkly hair and face. In our business no-one has ever come up with an instrument that pings when you've cleaned off the grime of time's fell hand and just another touch will shift the hand itself. So I had to fall back on good old rule-of-thumb. It really amounted to looking long and doing little.

The anxious time was over; I was in calm water now. The weather, those long warm days, went on in majestic succession right through August. The front gardens of cottages were crammed with marjoram and roses, marguerites, sweet william, at night heavy with the scent of stocks. The Vale was heavy with leaves, motionless in the early morning,
black caves of shadow in the midday heat, blurring the sound of trains hammering north and south.