A Month in the Country (14 page)

‘Doesn't it excite you?' he said. ‘Digging where someone dug five, six hundred years ago? No? Well, in my simple way, I find it just as enthralling as your undercover job next door. Ah well, perhaps it was too much to hope for. Like everyone else, you have been brought up to expect a pot of gold, or, at the very least, a doubloon. But we diggers keep our palates fresh; a mild deviation of soil tinge is all we need to stir the adrenalin. Pause, my friend: even you must observe that you are throwing up soil which should have been three spits deeper. Splendid!'

It was extremely hot work and I was very pleased when he lowered his rod into the pit and told me to come out. ‘You've shown yourself a true blue British workman,' he said. ‘Mossop tells me privately that he's giving up the grave-digging branch of vergering what with the rheumatics, dwindling custom and poor pay. With his support and a reference from
me the job's yours for the asking; you can grow old in Oxgodby.'

He lowered himself into the pit, crouched on his haunches and began carefully to trowel earth into a carpenter's tool-bag which, now and then, I was bidden to haul up. And so on and so on. ‘Get a move on,' I urged. ‘We'll be all day at this rate and maybe, at the end of it, find an old horse.'

‘We
shall
be all day,' he answered. ‘This is about where they'd drop things. Come on now, can't you see one of these peasants of yours on his way home, humping his estovers, stopping to have a squint? And, here, look! Something slips from his pouch. And a little lower – a grieving brother at the grave's brim tossing his last farewell with a handful of earth? Someone
must
have loved him. Surely you of all people, living for weeks up there in the air with them, must be thinking medieval?'

And so it went on all morning until we left off for our bread and Wensleydale and a doze in the sun. Then back again. On his way from the field Mossop rolled up and looked sceptically down. Moon explained that he was digging his own grave as he confidently expected to leave life on the following sabbath and Mossop, remarking that us southerners were fair cautions, went on his way. Kathy Ellerbeck came, the Revd. J. G. Keach came, half-a-dozen lads came, Mr Dowthwaite came, mad Mrs Higarty, dragging her rickety pushchair, came. But they found no more than a deepening hole and departed sorrowing.

When Moon found what he swore was a horn button, we took this as a sign from heaven that we should withdraw to eat the currant tea-cakes Mrs Ellerbeck had sent for me. ‘Fifteenth century!' he claimed. ‘Right on target!' But until he'd smoked a pipe he wouldn't press on. ‘Come, come,' he said. ‘Keep your shirt on. Whatever's there has been there a very long time; it won't run off for at least another twenty minutes.'

So it was close on six when he signalled the Final Probe by sending up his shoes and socks in the bag and, excitement getting the better of him, began brushing away with rapid strokes, so rapid indeed that you could say the stone swam into sight. A carved shaft branched gracefully into whorls of stone raised upon a convex lid, at its head a hand holding the sacramental cup, a wafer poised at its rim.

‘I think there's a name,' Moon exclaimed. ‘I'll winkle out the muck.
No, on second thoughts, I'll wash it out. Nip over and fetch me the kettle.'

When he'd moistened and swilled the stone he brooded awhile shaking his head. ‘Well?' I said. ‘Come on. Is it Piers or isn't it?' Instead of replying he climbed out and said, ‘No name. Well it would have been extraordinary if there'd been one, I suppose. Just “
miserrimus
” – “I of all men most wretched”, I suppose you might put it. Good God, they really had it in for the poor devil. Why, why, why? Ah well. I suppose we'll never know now.'

Then he fetched a camera and photographed it from all sides. ‘For publication!' he explained. ‘Against the day when I need a job at a university. They don't want to know if you're any good: just what you've published …

‘Now,' he went on, ‘let's have a peep inside before you round up the Colonel and make him sign a chit for his ancestor. It's only a matter of shifting the lid a few inches. The two of us can do it.'

So we slid into the pit, and I pushed while he pulled, until the great stone pivoted. Then we looked inside. There is nothing frightening nor even sad about the long dead, just desiccated brown bones and a little dust. What else should we expect after five hundred years? All the same, it's exciting to be the first to see again what has been long hidden, and Moon, pushing his face closer to the gap, blew gently into the trough. A puff of dust stirred. ‘The shroud!' he murmured.

Then he said, ‘Oh, come on; in for a penny, in for a pound. Let's push, both of us, and then tipple it against the pit side.' So we did and the lid budged inch after inch until we could see the full length of the collapsed skeleton. We crouched and peered at it.

‘Excellent condition! Really first-class,' Moon muttered. ‘It must have been absolutely air-tight. But look – see it – third rib down.' He bent lower and blew. ‘There!'

A metal thing swung from the rib-cage; he poked in a pencil and delicately fished it out. ‘Well, well, the crescent! So that was why they wouldn't let him into the church. He was a Muslim. Caught in some expedition and then became a convert to save his skin! Heavens! Can you imagine the ructions when he turned up in Oxgodby again! Now what's the Colonel going to say?'

He looked quizzically at me. ‘Too bad!' he said. ‘But what say that we let sleeping dogs lie, particularly heretic dogs?' and he eased out the chain, snapped a link and dropped it into a handkerchief. Then he climbed out, handed down a steel tape and had me call out measurements like a tailor's boy.

‘Now,' he said, ‘you round up Keach and I'll alert the Colonel and we'll show off our Exhibit A. Then we'll put the chain back and leave him with his reputation no worse than it was before. But first we'll climb your ladder and have a look at his face before it fell off.'

Do you know, until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that this bundle of bones was my falling man.

The next day was Saturday and, now that Moon was done, I decided to bring the job to its end. So I sent word that I shouldn't be able to umpire for the team at Steeple Sinderby and, after working through the morning, came down about two o'clock. I took my bread and cheese outside, half hoping Moon would be about. But he wasn't and, later, I found that he'd gone to York on the morning train.

So I sat on Elijah's tomb slab, and, when I'd eaten and smoked a Woodbine, fell asleep sprawled across the warm stone, one arm behind my head. When I awoke, Alice Keach must have been there for some time because she was smiling. ‘I thought I'd find you here,' she said, ‘when I saw you weren't with the cricketers waiting by the Shepherd. I've brought you a bag of apples. They're Ribston Pippins; they do well up here; I remember you saying you liked a firm apple.'

We talked about apples. It seemed that her father had been a great apple man. In Hampshire, they'd had a fair-sized orchard planted with a wide variety and he'd brought her up to discriminate between them. ‘Before he bit into one, he'd sniff it, roll it around his cupped palms, then smell his hands. Then he'd tap it and finger it like a blind man. Sometimes he made me close my eyes and, when I'd had a bite, ask me to say which apple.'

‘You mean d'Arcy Spice or Cox's Orange?'

She laughed. ‘Oh no, that would have been too easy, like salt and pepper. I mean apples very much alike in shape and flavour. Like – well
Cosette Reine and Coseman Reinette. I'm an apple expert. Apples are the only exam I could ever hope to pass.'

Then, quite unexpectedly, she asked if she could see my living quarters and we climbed there. ‘So this is where you spy on us during Sunday services?' she said, poking her head past my baluster and looking down. ‘What an elevating picture we must make!'

I told her that she'd been safe; I'd only been able to see her hat. ‘The light straw one,' I said. ‘That's my favourite. Particularly when you stick a rose in the ribbon.'

‘Stick a rose! Really! Let me tell you, sir, Sara van Fleet isn't any old rose. And it's late in the day to be telling me now. If I'd known, I'd have worn it each Sunday. I don't think Arthur knows what I'm wearing.'

Then she turned and went across to the south window. For a while she stood without speaking. Then she said, ‘So Mr Moon found it after all?'

Oh, why not? I thought. It's going to be published anyway. So I told her what he'd been doing and leaned forward to point out the site of the Anglo-Saxon chapel. She also turned so that her breasts were pressing against me. And, although we both looked outwards across the meadow, she didn't draw away as quite easily she could have done.

I should have lifted an arm and taken her shoulder, turned her face and kissed her. It was that kind of day. It was why she'd come. Then everything would have been different. My life, hers. We would have had to speak and say aloud what both of us knew and then, may be, turned from the window and lain down together on my makeshift bed. Afterwards, we would have gone away, maybe on the next train. My heart was racing. I was breathless. She leaned on me, waiting. And I did nothing and said nothing.

She drew back and said shakily, ‘Well, thank you for showing me. I shall have to hurry away; Arthur will be wondering what's become of me. No, please don't come down.'

Then she was gone.

I must have stayed alone there for a couple of hours, sitting on the floor, my back to the belfry wall. Once I heard Kathy Ellerbeck calling from below, but I didn't answer and she went off.

Next day, Sunday, she wasn't in church and I couldn't face Moon, chapel, or the Ellerbecks, so I set off across the fields, not following paths, but through gaps and over walls, towards the west. I'd never been that way before. There was warmth and ripeness in the air. Autumn was burning across the Vale, the beeches flaring like torches as the heat mist ebbed away from hedges and spinneys and from flocks grazing along the slopes of the faded fields. Yet, unwilling as I was to acknowledge it, I knew now that this landscape was fixed only momentarily. The marvellous weather was nearing its end.

It was dark when I got back, so late that there were no lights in the village windows. Even so, weary as I was, I knew that I shouldn't sleep so, turning past Moon's darkened tent, I stumbled off down the vicarage's tunnel of a drive. When I came out in the carriage drive-around and stood before the house, the moon had risen above the trees, flooding the scene with light. A bedroom window was open and, for a few minutes, it seemed that Alice was standing there in her nightdress, had caught sight of me and was waving.

But it was only a curtain caught by a gust of the night breeze.

I don't know what I hoped might happen, nor how long I stayed there, nor have I any recollection of returning to the belfry and to bed. Since, I sometimes have wondered if it was a dream.

Next morning I stayed in the belfry, on the boards, propped against one wall, staring at another. Once I heard Charles Moon calling me and, now and then, footsteps (but never hers) below in the building. Then, towards evening, I pulled myself together and thought, Well, usually there's a second chance for most of us; perhaps she's waiting there as I'm waiting here.

Yet, when I reached the carriage drive-around, I found it hard to approach nearer and, had I stopped, might have turned and gone back. Then I was standing on that absurd portico, within a pace of the door itself – and breathless as though I had been running.

How does one know that a house is empty? That house was and I knew it. I knew it even before my knocking was unanswered, even before I stooped to raise the flap of the letterbox to peer into a darkness so
concealing that only memory led me back along the stone-flagged corridors, into shuttered rooms, up uncarpeted staircases.

They're not here, I thought. They've gone. And I turned away. Then I remembered the bell, its mean little knob sagging from a hole bored through a doorpost, its rusting wire disappearing into the darkness and silence. And I pulled at it, hearing at first only a rasping scrape until, far-off, deep inside the empty house, a bell answered: it stirred the stillness for no more than a moment. Yet, high on some wall, it must have still quivered like a live thing.

What came over me? A sort of madness I suppose, because I gripped that knob more firmly and dragged at it again and again so that the bell's sound came hurrying along corridors, round corners, down staircases, echoing and re-echoing, spreading through the dark and empty house like ripples of her laughter. But now I knew that it was laughter calling to me from the past – clearly, playfully, yet poignantly sad. It was the worst moment of my life.

And I dragged at the wire again and again, savagely, despairingly. For how long I cannot say, but when, at last, I turned away and went, I knew that I should never see her again.

Somehow I got through the rest of the day and, during the night, a wind got up, threshing athwart the ash trees, driving in great gusts at the tower so that, for the only time I lived in that tiny room, the bell above me stirred. It was no more than a thin sound pared from its rim. Half-asleep, I wondered what its significance might be, but in the morning it had become no more than a sound heard in the night.

Then it was one of those marvellously clear days which come after a good blow. The trees had stripped down to their black bones and had heaped leaves in drifts against hedges and walls. Children played amongst them, tossing armfuls into the air, screaming in and out like swimmers at the sea's edge. I saw roofs and walls and gardens hidden from me before. It was astonishing, like looking for the first time at a map of a place one believed one knew well and now finding new holes and corners.

I looked down from the window for a long time; summer and autumn had gone. During the night, the year had crossed into another season.
In yards and gardens people were pulling up, burning, trimming, strengthening fences, scraping gutters. They had come out, answering a summons as naturally as the swallows gathering on the telegraph wires and the hedgehogs snuffling into hedge-bottom's rubbish to sleep out the winter. They were doing as their forebears, the men and women on my wall-painting, had done – battening down before winter's onslaught.