A Month in the Country (13 page)

Summertime! And summertime in my early twenties! And in love! No, better than that – secretly in love, coddling it up in myself. It's an odd feeling, coming rarely more than once in most of our lifetimes. In books, as often as not, they represent it as a sort of anguish but it wasn't so for me. Later perhaps, but not then.

I was married. Vinny had gone off with him but neither of us had done much about it. She'd shrewdly left the door open so that, if need be, she could slip back – before she went again. And Alice Keach. I was sure that she was a deeply religious woman: marriage for her really did mean ‘let no man put asunder'. Never forget this was 1920, another world.

So there it was and there it would stay until the day I would go. Then, for a year or two, perhaps we'd exchange a polite Christmas card and, after that, we'd draw further away. But now she was here and, unknowing, mine. Well, that's how I liked to think of it.

She came each day now, aware no doubt that soon Moon and I would be gone and Oxgodby the emptier. Our conversation ranged more widely. She knew about Vinny, the haphazard way we'd lived, what seemed to have gone wrong. We even talked about the chap himself and how, oddly, I still rather liked him.

‘I don't know how you can laugh at it, Mr Birkin,' she said.

‘Two months ago I wouldn't have laughed,' I answered. ‘That's what Oxgodby's done for me. If going off with him is what she needed, then why not? I'm not her jailer. We didn't really know each other when we married. Who does? For that matter, who knows all that much about anyone even after twenty years in the same house? We only show what we care to and so it's a bit of a guessing game, isn't it? And if the other person doesn't care to answer “Right” or “Wrong”, guessing it stays.'

But she didn't take this up. Instead, she told me of her schooldays in Hampshire, how she'd been very close to her father, went everywhere with him, and then he'd died and, a year afterwards, she'd married. And this time
I
changed the subject.

I recall her coming in the day after my trip to Ripon, when I still was
thinking over what I'd been told about Moon. ‘I think you're not listening to me, Mr Birkin,' she called up. ‘Would you like me to sing to you?' And she began in a fair approximation of broad Yorkshire,

‘For sinners sla-a-a-ain
For sinners sla-a-a-ain
Worthy is the Lamb for …'

and broke off into giggles, then delicious peals of laughter.

‘Be still,' I said. ‘That's a raw spot. Besides, I've something on my mind.'

‘So you're not working?'

‘Oh yes I am. I'm
looking
at it. You have to keep an eye on a picture or anything might happen. It might disappear again before your husband feels he's got his moneysworth.'

‘Don't, please!' she said.

‘You're right, sorry! Stupid thing to say!'

‘My husband …' she began and then was silent for a few moments. She tried again. ‘Arthur – in a village it's not easy. He's a very sincere man. He thinks that, perhaps, we'd fit in better further south. He has a sister and brother in Sussex …' It sounded like a cry for help. ‘I like the people here,' she went on, ‘but I'm not sure they care much for us. We don't fit in.'

‘Oh, you're wrong,' I said.

‘Do you think so? Really?'

‘I know many local folk would be sorry if you ever decided to flit.'

‘Flit?'

‘It's what they call moving house. Rather a nice way of putting it. Why, you're even a hit with the Wesleyans,' I said, feeling she needed a boost. ‘Mrs Ellerbeck says you're very attractive. Now what about that? From another woman at that!'

‘Attractive!' she said, as though this had never occurred to her or that no-one had told her so before.

I moved to the edge of the platform and looked down.

‘You
are
attractive,' I said.

‘Attractive?' she repeated helplessly. Many women would have
explored this. Not too far, but enough to leave room for retreat and come away unscathed.

All right Alice Keach, I thought, you're going to be pushed.
You
can lie awake in the dark too.

‘Many men would say you are more than attractive,' I said. ‘They'd say you were beautiful.' (I stopped short of ‘I'.)

‘Oh,' she said, looking wildly for succour to Laetitia struggling up from her tomb, knowing safety lay in retreat from the building but not how to decently withdraw. Then she rallied and counter-attacked.

‘And you?' she said.

‘Me! Well, I'm not an artist, but they gave me a diploma at LCA with a cast-iron guarantee that I could be relied upon to recognize Beauty whenever my eyes fell thereon. So, professionally, I must tell you, Yes, you're beautiful. Very.' And could she have made herself go that little bit further and given me the nod, I would have recited a catalogue of her charms – in detail – because my blood was up.
Delectissima, amantissima!

But fate in the preposterous guise of Mossop stepped in. ‘Ee, Maister Birkin,' he bawled, ‘ah've 'eeard thoo's at tag-end and'll be gannin yam enny daay noo.'

‘Would you like me to translate, Mrs Keach?' I called down.

But she'd gone.

Vale
.

I don't know what Alice Keach told her husband but, first thing next day, he was in the building when I got back from my mug of tea with Moon. ‘Mossop tells me the work is done,' he said before I'd scarcely crossed the threshold. ‘Yes, I see it is. Very good. So the executors have authorized me to make the final payment. It's here in this envelope. £13.15s. as we agreed.'

There had been a blank wall and now it wasn't blank. There had been the nuisance of a scaffold and a man living in his belfry who now could be packed off. Great God, the vast creative process was hidden from him. And us – the long-dead wall-picture painter – and myself, who'd laboured to drag his picture back into sight … neither of us had meaning
for him. It was that, as much as anything, that made me tell him that I should need the scaffolding for several more days.

‘But you have finished,' he said. ‘And now you have been paid.'

‘
You
said I was finished,' I answered. ‘And I didn't ask for the money.'

‘You have taken several holidays,' he said. ‘An entire day in the harvest field and another with the Wesleyans and, on several occasions when I've called, you've not been here.'

‘Look Vicar,' I said sharply, ‘I'm not being paid by the hour or the day and lucky for you that I'm not. The job's not finished.'

‘I shall have the scaffolding removed,' he said stubbornly.

‘Oh, will you?' I said. ‘Then I shall inform the executors that you've prevented me completing my contract and no doubt that will relieve them from forking out the thousand pounds Miss Hebron left to the church – conditionally.'

He got the message and that I meant it. ‘I should not wish to quarrel with you, Mr Birkin,' he said. ‘You will not be with us much longer so, if you wish the scaffolding to remain for a few days, it can remain. Doubtless you will be kind enough to inform me when I can ask the contractor to dismantle it.'

We faced each other for a few moments without speaking. My anger had gone; I just wanted him to go away. But when he spoke, curiously enough he used the same words as his wife. ‘It's not easy,' he said. ‘I wasn't always, well, not as I may appear to be.'

I tried to look as though I didn't know what he was talking about and, finding this not too successful, looked as though I was astonished that everyone didn't see him as a fine dynamic saintly fellow, venerated by his flock and marked for glorious ascension into canonry and even beyond. Again I can't have succeeded because he smiled. Bleakly – but it was a sort of smile. ‘I know how you see me. Moon too. That's how you want to see me, isn't it? You've made up your minds.'

To say the least, this was embarrassing. In part, because people one doesn't care for, even dislike, make most of us feel uneasy when they appeal against their sentence. And partly, because he was right: we
had
cast him in the role of a sour paymaster who we hoped would go away and be a long time coming back.

‘It's not easy,' he repeated. ‘The English are not a deeply religious
people. Even many of those who attend divine service do so from habit. Their acceptance of the sacrament is perfunctory: I have yet to meet the man whose hair rose at the nape of his neck because he was about to taste the blood of his dying Lord. Even when they visit their church in large numbers, at Harvest Thanksgiving or the Christmas Midnight Mass, it is no more than a pagan salute to the passing seasons. They do not need me. I come in useful at baptisms, weddings, funerals. Chiefly funerals – they employ me as a removal contractor to see them safely flitted into their last house.' He laughed bitterly.

‘But I am embarrassing you, Mr Birkin,' he said. ‘You too have no need for me. You have come back from a place where you have seen things beyond belief, things which you cannot talk of yet can't forget, but things which are at the heart of religion. Even so, when I have approached you during your stay here, you have agreed that it is very pleasant weather for this time of year, you have nodded your head and said that your work is progressing well and that you are quite comfortable in the loft. And you have hoped that I shall go away.'

All this time unusually he was looking directly at me. Then he held out the envelope and went. Christ!

That night as we walked back from the Shepherds' Arms I told Moon of Keach's visit. ‘Well, old boy, I can see his point,' he said. ‘After all, the building's his place of business and you've blocked off a good third of the working area. And besides he's right – you've finished …'

He didn't let me work up a protest. ‘Oh, come off it. Of course you have. You know you could do what's left to be done in a half-day if you cared to. One only needs to look at you, let alone the wall. For a week now you've been ga-ing roond like a hoond wi twa ta-a-ails (even Mossop's noticed). You're like anyone would be who finds himself landed with a tricky job and pulls it off without putting a foot wrong. Whatever you're hanging about for, it's not to finish
that
job. You can't make it last for ever.'

‘I don't need to be told,' I said.

‘For goodness' sake,' he said irritably, ‘I don't mean that and you know I don't, you cagey devil. I mean here, Oxgodby, the friends you've
made, this marvellous summer, the splendid job you've done. I mean the lot. You can only have this piece of cake once; you can't keep on munching away at it. Sad, but there it is! You'll find that, once you've dragged yourself off round the corner, there'll be another view; it may even be a better one.'

He looked quizzically at me. ‘You've dug in pretty deep haven't you? The Ellerbecks … Alice Keach …'

‘What about you?' I said.

‘Yes, it's time I was off too. I'll give you a couple of days' start just for the look of the thing. Anyway it will be autumn tomorrow or the next day: I can smell it in the air – summer smouldering.'

‘But you've not done what they'll pay you for.'

He laughed. ‘If I'd have done that we'd never have met, should we? Well, I've done what
I
came to do and all that's left is to write it up, which can be done later anywhere. So now it actually has come round to Piers's turn, and I really do believe dear old Miss H. is going to have her moneysworth.' He grinned. ‘As a matter of fact, I rather held my hand until you didn't have an excuse not to lend me one. Tomorrow's the day, my boy. Goodnight.'

Just before I bedded down I stood at the window. And he was right – the first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.

Next morning he routed me out, shouting that I was to have breakfast with him. And then, when we'd eaten, he produced what he called Dowthwaite's Divining Rod, a long steel shaft with a very sharp point the blacksmith had made for him. And, with a shoeing hammer and a grocer's box, we sallied forth.

‘The commonality were launched in a shroud,' he said. ‘Pure wool by Act of Parliament to bolster trade. But my man would rate a stone box. That's why we need our Dowthwaite Diviner; it's to take soundings.'

He had it all worked out and we took up positions at his best bet, the depression he'd claimed to see the day I'd first met him, a stride's length into the meadow from the wall's south side. ‘It's about as near as they could get him to the altar; I've had my tape-measure out. Well, man is
a creature of hope. Your turn first! Up on the box and don't buckle my rod.'

You know, it's quite exciting to watch a professional at work if you bother to look. I mean going at a job he does really well. You look at him with new eyes from then on. In this odd sort of way I was seeing Moon for the first time. You see he was amazingly right. First go! He let me do the donkey work, beating in his rod till it reached what he called the hope-zone. Then he took over, striking more gently and, after each blow, putting an ear close enough to hear vibration coming from below.

‘Mmmm,' he said, ‘I suppose it could be a boulder deeper than it ought to be' and tapped again. The rod whinnied. ‘Right, just let me chalk it at ground level, then we'll have it up and try a foot each way.'

A foot west the rod went down below the mark and no jarring tremor. A foot east we struck stone again and again a foot east of that.

‘This is highly satisfactory, my good man,' Moon said, rubbing his hands. ‘It only goes to show how much there is in folk-memory and let this be a lesson to you to listen to the world's Mossops. Just as it happens, I have a spade to hand and, as a token of my esteem, you shall cut the first sod. In pirate tales, they never know for sure if the treasure chest is there until they spot it. But I shall announce with utter assurance to you and the Waiting World that you will find Piers as deep as this spade is long.