A Month in the Country (9 page)

Good Lord! What a picture! Utter stillness and then this frightful uproar as he banged from side to side clutching at nothing, first smacking down that door and then crashing with it into the black living-room, maybe a chair splintering beneath the avalanche. Then some strangled grunts, then his appalled family staring at the still blue eyes.

‘Yes,' he went on, ‘of course I'm against drink, dead against it. But not to my wife's extent.'

After that, I used to look at Mrs Ellerbeck with a more speculative eye. Before, she'd been just a pleasant homebody. But now – well, think of it. Cooped up in two or three rooms with this bearded giant who, when he was boozed up, became an unpredictable stranger, her mother struggling to conceal fear and contempt. Then this shattering end in the darkness! Remembering that silly romantic song, I felt terrible. And how lightly the poor woman had let me off because, when I put a hand into my coat pocket, I found a packet of beef sandwiches!

And, at the next gathering around that organ, she mercifully offered me redemption. ‘Oh, Mr Birkin,' she said, ‘we did enjoy that tune you gave us. Can't you change the words round a bit?' And, to salve my soul, this I did –

‘There sat one day in quiet
In a tea-shop by the Rhine …'

Only Kathy seemed to see the comical side of it, but she was a merciful girl and never used it against me.

By this time, the apex of the arch and its left-hand side were almost uncovered. The notabilities had been given notable treatment; he'd even used gold leaf on the clothes and, astonishingly, cinnabar to gladden lips and cheeks of the supporting seraphic cast. In fact, here and there, the willingness of whoever had put up the money had gone to his head and he'd been staggeringly prodigal with the expensive reds and almost prohibitively priced leaf.

But once he'd begun (as I was now beginning) on the damned souls dithering on the brink of the flames or hurtling headlong into them, he'd switched to the cheap stuff, red earth and iron oxides. Even so, this concentration of similars saved it from odious comparison with the no-expense-spared Michael and his bloodthirsty furnace-hands. And he'd compensated too by his vigorous treatment: he'd really warmed to the work. Up at the top he'd done an extremely competent job, well, more than that, because he was master of his trade and couldn't have done anything but a great job. But now, coming to this lower slope, he'd thrown in the lot – art and heart.

So, each day, I released a few more inches of a seething cascade of bones, joints and worm-riddled vitals frothing over the fiery weir. A few wretches were still intact. To these he hadn't given a great deal of attention; they were no more than fire fodder. All but one. And he, I could have sworn, was a portrait – a crescent shaped scar on his brow made this almost certain. His bright hair streamed like a torch as, like a second Simon Magus, he plunged headlong down the wall. Two demons with delicately furred legs clutched him, one snapping his right wrist whilst his mate split him with shears.

It was the most extraordinary detail of medieval painting that I had ever seen, anticipating the Breughels by a hundred years. What, in this single detail, had pushed him this immense stride beyond his time?

So there I was, on that memorable day, knowing that I had a masterpiece on my hands but scarcely prepared to admit it, like a greedy child hoards the best chocolates in the box. Each day I used to avoid taking in the whole by giving exaggerated attention to the particular. Then, in the early evening, when the westering sun shone in past my baluster to briefly light the wall, I would step back, still purposefully not letting my eyes focus on it. Then I looked.

It was breathtaking. (Anyway, it took my breath.) A tremendous waterfall of colour, the blues of the apex falling, then seething into a turbulence of red; like all truly great works of art, hammering you with its whole before beguiling you with its parts.

One evening, I was so lost in it that I didn't hear Moon climb the ladder and yet wasn't startled finding him by me. When, after a few moments, he spoke, it was plain that he, too, had been lost in it.

‘Of course, you know this is going to make a stir when the word gets around?' he said. I nodded. ‘Is there anything anywhere else like it? In the same league?' No, I told him, there wasn't. Once, yes. But no longer. Croughton, Stoke Orchard, St Albans, Great Harrowden – they'd all been splendid in their day. But not now.

‘Look,' he said. ‘Look at the faces. They're oddly alert. You could swear they're real people. Well,
were
real people. Those two herdsmen angels, the ones with the whips: I swear they're dancing. Amazing! Do you know, in some ways, it brings back the whole bloody business in France – particularly the winters. Those red evenings when the barrage was starting up and each man wondered if this was to be the night…

“And he shal com with woundes rede
To deme the quikke and the dede” '

I didn't see it like that. No doubt I didn't want to. Oxgodby was another world: it had to be. To me, this was just a medieval wall-painting, something peculiar to its time and nothing more. Well, we all see things with different eyes, and it gets you nowhere hoping that even one in a thousand will see things your way. So I just told him that, if this one was different, it was because it had been painted by one man, as compared say with Chalgrove where it is believed the drawing was done by the master painter but the colouring had been filled in by assistants. I don't think he was listening.

‘I feel terribly smug,' he said. ‘Just the two of us knowing about it before
The Times
's art critic catches on and signals that here's an iconographic wonder for the academic parasites to suck out the magic. Now it's just ours –

“And we each one as we ben here
In body and soule both I fere
Shal rise at the day of dome
And be redy at Hys come …”

You know I think I might have stomached religion then; it was grittier stuff.'

‘There's Alice Keach,' I said. ‘I think she knows too.'

He glanced curiously at me and said, ‘I rather hoped there might be
something coming on between you two. No? Pity! She's wasted on Keach.'

‘I let her come up a week ago. After all, she comes and sits by the door every couple of days and shows an intelligent interest.'

‘In this? Or you? You've never told me – are you married?'

I told him about Vinny and that she'd gone off with another chap. I didn't tell him that she'd almost certainly bedded down with other men while I was overseas. Nor that she'd left me once before.

‘Fair enough!' Moon said. ‘Feel that we know each other well enough for you not to mind my asking. I've never met the right one myself.'

We didn't speak for some time.

‘There's a couple of details here might interest you,' I said and pointed to the falling man. ‘He was covered over years before the rest.'

Moon shuffled forward and examined him with lively interest. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘I see what you mean. This crescent scar – one could swear he was meant to be identifiable. But your painter never would have dared. Too bad! It's a riddle without an answer for you, Birkin.'

He turned away and stared backwards along the roof, the falling man perhaps forgotten. ‘Those roof-bosses,' he said, ‘I still stand by my theory that they're not
in situ
. They're from somewhere else. Old Mossop's great-etc.-grandad – do you suppose that he had his ear well down in the 1530s – cut off the best bits from an altar-piece and nailed them out of harm's way before the official vandals visited? And while Mossop's in mind, what does he think about your picture?'

I laughed. ‘He hasn't said, but not much I fancy. But he agrees that, after a couple of months, the congregation will scarcely know it's there. And I'm pretty sure he thinks Keach will have it whitewashed out as soon as I'm on the train. Mossop has a low opinion of his fellow men.'

‘How does he get on with Keach?'

‘Oh, he can answer that for himself. “Aye weel, Maister Birkin, tha knaws, lad, t'parson gans an' anither cums but us yans clag on 'ere.” '

Then we climbed down and, when I'd had a swill at the graveyard pump, we went across to his tent and brewed up. It was about seven o'clock and so still I felt that, if someone had spoken a mile away, I could have answered him.

We sat in the warm sunshine: he smoked and I thought about Alice
Keach. What with being absorbed in my work and her being
Mrs
Keach, I'd never thought of her except as a charming woman I enjoyed talking to and, given an excuse, looking at. But Moon's speculative enquiry had changed that, and now I found it pleasantly disturbing to consider the possibility of wandering off with her to some quiet room, eating supper, taking her hand, touching her, kissing. An upstairs room, its window open to the smell and sounds of an orchard and, beyond that, fields. And turning towards each other in the dusk. Well, we have our dreams …

‘Oh God, here he comes,' Moon muttered. ‘He carries a depressive blight around.'

‘Good evening!' Keach said, looking uneasy when neither of us answered. ‘I was just passing. Have you found anything yet, Moon?'

‘No,' Moon answered.

‘Well, I don't suppose for a minute there
is
anything to find. Poor Miss Hebron was not quite herself towards the end.'

Moon didn't reply. Keach looked helplessly about him. ‘Mmmmm,' he said half-heartedly. ‘Complete and utter waste of money!'

Moon gazed into the distance.

‘It's disgraceful—' this quite savagely. Then he went off.

‘However does the charming Alice put up with him?' Moon said. ‘Imagine having to eat at least three meals a day and
have
to listen to his bleating. And then share a bed!'

‘Perhaps he's different at home,' I said. ‘In fact, he
is
different. Anyway,
I
have to listen to him, labouring as I do in his vineyard.'

‘What does he go on about?'

‘Well, for one thing, the church stove.'

‘You've told me about that. And it was weeks ago; he can't still be talking about it.'

‘I don't know. No, really I don't know. I know that he's talking. But about what I'm not sure. He doesn't seem to expect any answers. In its way, it can be rather soothing.'

Moon giggled. ‘You're a queer devil, Birkin,' he said. ‘What are
you
like at home, I wonder?' (Now that made me think.) ‘But hasn't he a nerve? “Poor Miss Hebron – she wasn't herself at the end”: I bet there was enough of herself to settle him into his place, because he still resents it. Mossop told me she had him weighed up and, right from the start,
gave him no change. Come on and I'll show you our benefactor's lair.'

We walked along the stream and then across a footbridge, down a lane, turned past a gate covered with a rind of green mould and off its hinges, into an unkempt drive. The house itself, early Victorian, was immense, its walls full of windows and downpipes. It stood amid rose-beds that had become briar patches, rough grazing once lawns, bushes become trees and trees, thickets.

‘Miss Hebron is described as greatly resembling her house,' Moon murmured. ‘She either threw her clothes on or slept in them. Mossop tells me she bought several outsize thick skirts at a jumble sale and, one after another, wore them out over several years.'

‘You'll have to do better than that,' I remarked. ‘You make her sound no more than a bundle of old clothes.'

‘Very pale eyes – grey I imagine. Her hair kept changing colour I'm told; once it was orange. Very long thin nose. Her teeth, that's what people mention most. They were extra large and when she smiled … Mossop says he found her frown less alarming.'

I looked at the decaying house. There must have been thirty rooms, maybe more. And long corridors, staircases, box-rooms, cellars, attics. Poor woman! At night she would have had to go about with a candle, fumbling in the creaking blackness when draughts blew it out.

‘She had a sister living with her once, I'm told – Miss Hetty. She normally would have been in an asylum but Miss Hebron wouldn't let anyone examine her.'

‘And now the Colonel's left on his own?'

Moon nodded. ‘What are your feelings about growing old, Birkin?'

It wasn't an inconsequential question: I could tell that he really wanted an answer, a second opinion.

‘I can't imagine,' I said. ‘I mean I can't imagine it happening to me,' I said. ‘It's too far away now. Well, do you wonder? You know what it was like. There can't have been many of us who thought we'd need to worry about growing old.'

‘Or what comes after that?' he said.

‘ “Whoso has don well schal go to blysse
Whoso has don evil to peyne I-wysse”?'

‘Oh come on,' I said irritably. ‘We went in and we came out. That's good enough for me. We're here on borrowed time, and I'll take what's to come as it comes.'

Day after day that August, the weather stayed hot and dry. These days we call it real holiday weather but, then, only the well-to-do in those parts went far afield and even a week at Scarborough was remarkable. Folk stayed at home and took their pleasure from an agricultural show, a travelling fair, a Sunday-school outing or, if they had social pretentions, a tennis party with cucumber sandwiches. Most country people had a deep-rooted disinclination to sleep away from home and a belief that, like as not, to sojourn amongst strangers was to fall among thieves. It was the way they always had lived and, like their forefathers, they travelled no further than a horse or their own legs could carry them there and back in a day.

And this steady rhythm of living and working got into me, so that I felt part of it and had my place, a foot in both present and past; I was utterly content. But I didn't know this until, one day, Alice Keach said, ‘You're happy, Mr Birkin. You're not on edge any more. Is it because the work is going well?'