Cryers Hill (30 page)

H
IS FACE FRIGHTENS
her as it floats out from behind the big elm by Cockshoot Wood. She screams and dances into the air while Sankey clasps his hands in apology and bows his head.

'Mother most pure,' he murmurs.

'Shut your face,' she replies. 'Shut your cakehole, Sank, d'you hear?'

'Yes.'

Sankey cannot bear to look at her, but longs to look, all the same. When he does he smiles, knowingly, fondly, and tears well in his eyes.

'Daft. Not daft, mad. Peeping Tom. Weeping Willie. Keep away or else.'

Sankey kneels before her, closes his eyes. He raises his palms to the sky.

'Keep away! Keep away!'

Sankey is surprised, hurt. Why does she persist in this way? She is ungrateful, truly. He does not deserve this, no indeed.

'Mary,' he says. 'He won't marry. Not you, not anyone. I think you ought to know.' There. She had it coming.

'Keep away, Charles Sankey. You're not the full shilling.'

'You are mistaken if you think he loves you.'

Mary cannot swallow the air squeezing up in her throat. It escapes behind her eyes and makes quick hot tears.

'What do you want? Clear off! Go on!' Her voice is an angry squeak.

'Don't be annoyed, Mary. I only want to talk to you.'

'Well, I do not want to listen.'

'It's only that I want you to be happy'

'Well, I am not happy, so bugga you.'

'Mary.'

'Bugga you!'

Sankey watches her go. She runs like a little girl, he thinks, stumbling and crying. He wonders why she shuts him out when he only wants to help. Why does she do this? After all, it is he who understands her, he who can assist her, he who cherishes her;
he.
It is a poor show. It is he, after all, who is come to protect her, to guide her, to save her.

Mary runs. It is at first fear, then anger, and finally grief that drives her across the field and over the stile towards Grange Road. In the bag on her shoulder is the food she said she would deliver to Miss Ford for the Sunday school chapel. If it is spoiled she will have some explaining to do. She runs anyway. It is a small price to pay. A man who sees the Messiah's own mother when he looks at you, a man who waits for you in the woods, who begs and kneels and carries on and on. A man like this is worth fearing.

Sankey stands at the edge of the wood, waiting while he remembers why he has come. Nearby a bird speaks. Ah! it says. There is light the colour of rust filtering through the trees and a smell of dug earth. A cloud directly above Sankey's head slides back to reveal a soft ball of late sun. He waits. There is something between the forest and the sky and Sankey, a type of entanglement. He stands stiffly with his hands at his sides and his head fallen back, while the sky rolls out its secret messages for him to translate. It is a grave responsibility, this. It is not a lark or a lampoonery; it is not for Perfect or the others. It is for him, Charles. Poor young Charles, whose mother is with the angels. And what a good boy he is in truth. He shall be rewarded in heaven, yes he will. It is for he, Charles Sankey, an ordinary man to all intents and purposes, for whom an extraordinary task lies ahead. It is for him and him alone. Sankey is not ashamed to note that he has moved himself to tears.

He has a way of knocking. You know it's him. Walter waits until his mother has moved into the kitchen before he opens the door.

'The Virgin is here. Lord have mercy upon us.' Sankey says, matter-of-factly.

'Who is it?' Mrs Brown calls.

Sankey stands in a haze of dust. Mayflies bounce around his head.

'I am cleansed,' he says. 'She is come, Walter.'

Walter replies, You don't look well, Sank.' He realises, as he says it, that it is a dampening thing to say, a bucket of cold water over his friend's newly arrived Virgin. But Sankey continues brightly, unaffected.

'A vivid light brought her, Walt. White as the light of Heaven. You cannot look directly in actual fact. Like this it is.' And Sankey screws up his eyes, throws up his arms and twists away to demonstrate brightness, it will blind you, you see, if you look directly at it. You must look to one side, this way.'

Walter's mother has drifted up and bumped softly against her son's elbow. 'That man has got a parasite,' she comments. It is not the first time she has diagnosed infestation in Sankey, but he is always polite.

'Good afternoon, Mrs Brown.'

'You haven't the sense you were born with,' she replies, 'but it's too late now.' And she drifts away again, soundless as a water snake.

'Perhaps it were natural phenomena,' Walter tries, shifting to distract Sankey from his mother's words. 'A trick of weather perhaps.'

Sankey leans in to whisper, 'This was no trick, Walt. Not weather neither. This was the Queen of Angels.' Sankey grasps his friend's hand. He arranges his features as best he can for truth, for convincing. And Walter fancies as he looks into Sankey's face that he can detect something tormented, ecstatic, not entirely natural, bordering on the unsound. It makes him think of the religious scenes, painted mainly by Italians, that hung in great galleries; the faces wrung with rapture.

'She is with Mary,' he says. He whispers, but still it leaves spit on his chin, a darkening in his eye. 'She is come unto Mary, Walt. You must believe that it is true.'

H
E CAN SEE
them, clear as day, through the trees. The one standing and the other kneeling with her dotty leaves and flowers and samesuch nonsense. On and on they talk, as if they are both of them women, thinks Sankey. He tries to follow their conversation. A lot of it is a muddle, he decides. If he talked this way he would expect nobody to reply, ever. What on earth is it all for? He sighs. What a waste of the Lord's time, and his time too. Walter pauses to glance over towards Sankey's hiding place in the ferns. Sankey hunches lower.

'What goes up comes down and what goes down stays down, is all I'm saying.' It is her speaking. Heaven knows what about.

'I'm afraid, Mary, there are perhaps things in science you do not understand.'

'I understand it all. You lump, you daft man. Try me.'

'It is you trying me, Mary. Ha ha ha.'

'That's a madman's laugh.'

'Only you would know it.'

'Come here and say it.'

'Daft.'

Walter moves. Sankey must adjust to keep him in sight.

'Come here.'

He has said it to her. This is precisely what happens. She is moving now. He has his arms around her, one arm; it is enough. It is how it starts. Shenanigans. That is what Dorrie Penn calls it when a man and a woman get up to things. Shenanigans. Because it is the female race who started it. Interesting how the Lord puts clues in words, in nature. It is His own remarkable mysterious way. Just yesterday Sankey had seen a clue in his fingernail, the letter J. Clear it was, unmistakable. Now he was waiting for J things to happen. He had his eyes and ears out and his wits about him. He wondered about it. Jerusalem. January. Jam. He would have to wait. He was waiting now. They are still talking but he cannot hear what they are saying. Speak up! It occurs to him that life is a long waiting game. Waiting for the kingdom, waiting for the gates to open. Waiting for Mary. Talk about gates; there was a pair of gates he saw in Regis years ago. Beautiful. You had to crane your neck to see the decorative finials at the top. He hoped Heaven's gates were like that, just like that, then it would be worth the wait. They are kissing. Oh, he has missed the part he should be noting. They have broken apart. Thank God. Uncomfortable crouched this way, his foot is numb. Pity any of this was necessary. They are doing it again. A tedious thing, kissing, if you are on the outside. Hurry up. Perhaps now, before it goes too far. Needs must. Not the easiest position to rise from, this, not with a sensationless foot to boot. Better to lean out to the left and swing up.

'Oh, who's there? Who is it?'

Keep down, keep hidden. He will assume it is an animal and resume. Better by far if you are a policeman in these circumstances and can say, 'What's going on here then? What do you think you two are up to?' The Lord's work is not all glory and hallelujahs, indeed it is not.

'Tut tut tut, Sank. Dearie me. Peeping Tom. Who'd have thought? Not I. Not on your nelly no no.'

'Is that you, Mary? I thought I was alone. Oh, and Walter too.'

'Sank! What the devil do you think you're doing?'

'He's not the full shilling, are you, Mr Sankey?'

'I must have slept. I thought it was an animal. Are you well?'

'Let's have an answer then.'

'He's got none, have you? Not on your nelly no-no.'

Sankey opens his Bible, a sudden stagy movement. A card marks the place. He clears his throat.

'Peep-peep peeping Tom, mind you keep your breeches on,' chants Mary.

Sankey considers them for a moment before lowering his Bible, abandoning his original plan, and rushing at Walter, swinging a left hook firmly into his face. Walter is aghast. When he looks up Sankey is coming again. There is no single punch this time, but a flurry of hits, slaps, a flailing of arms, a windmill delivery of blows; and Sankey, his face anguished, is finally able to unburden himself of the envy and frustration of so many months and years.

Walter is obliged to defend himself. He slaps his friend on the neck and ear. 'Ow!' complains Sankey.

Mary waits, hands on her hips, like any ringside referee. 'God sees you, Sank,' she warns. Sankey hesitates and turns to her as Walter swings his fist into his friend's nose and breaks it with a single cracking split.

Walter is standing on the railway station platform. He has his coat over his arm and his suitcase at his feet. He has bought some cigarettes and he is smoking one with great commitment. He feels as though he has at last recovered from a long, protracted illness and is returning with a clean bill of health to a happiness he once knew. He checks his ticket one more time and his fingers, he sees, are trembling. He looks up and down the platform. He blows smoke up at the clock. Though nobody knows it yet, Walter is leaving. He gave his notice at the Water Company. It was assumed there he was trying to escape conscription, which they say will come along, sure as eggs, but Walter has no thoughts of conscription or war or death or duty or anything like that. Walter is interested only in life and how he can obtain some. He is going to try his luck. That's what he says. 'I'm off to try my luck!' He makes it sound as jolly as a funfair.

He has decided he will write to Mary, far kinder that way. Poets always return. He will not be gone long, a few months perhaps. See the world, try his luck. When he returns he will write it all down, his rare experiences. She will be waiting and he will swing her off the ground. When he returns he will tell her that he loves her.

'If I die while you are on your holidays, I'm sure I don't know what will happen.' His mother's words. He never once suggested he was taking a holiday, much less used the word, but he did not argue her use of it now. Perhaps it was how she would comfort herself, with anger at his selfishness. He realises it is what she has decided to tell people. Her resentment over his departure from the Water Company gives way now to bitter tears.

'Everything will be all right, Ma,' he says and squeezes her shoulder. She feels, to him, tiny as a child, a bird in his arm. He, in contrast, has grown huge, inflated. He has to turn sideways to get himself and his suitcase through the door, so big has he become since making his decision. 'Everything will be all right, you'll see,' he says. These are the words that get spoken on the eve of disasters, great and small.

S
ANKEY HAS DEVISED
a plan. It involves Father Blagdon, but that cannot be helped. It is, Sankey knows, the right thing to do. He will speak with him this morning at the church rooms. He has shaved, cleaned his nails and washed behind his ears. It is a fine blue morning. Pasture and coppice hold still in preparation for the church bell, whose clang-te-clang tilts the sky and loosens the trees in the ground. Iron on iron like hammer on anvil, the sounds that tell you God is in His Heaven and men are at their work.

Sunlight squeezes songs from the hedgerow, livestock falls into a doze. The only eye-catching movement in the landscape is the top of Sankey's bowler travelling rapidly along the top of the hedgerow. His thoughts propel him along. Father Blagdon will weep when he realises the truth. He will embrace him. He will praise his fortitude and so on.

When Sankey arrives he is breathless and tearful with anticipation. In his agitation he knocks the prayer books from their pile on the table and they crash portentously to the floor. As he kneels to collect them Father Blagdon says with a sudden bounce in his voice, 'Well, Charles, well now. As I may have mentioned before, we have someone starting on Friday, Harold Rice, from the parish of Hazlemere, and so your assistance will no longer be required here for the time being. All right with you?'

Sankey tries to grasp the slippery prayer books. He looks up at Father Blagdon while he waits for him to admit he is only joking. But Father Blagdon admits nothing.

'Of course, yes, I expected that. Glad to be of some small usefulness meantime.'

Father Blagdon smiles, relieved. 'That's a good fellow. Whatever have you done to your nose?'

Sankey has a grip on the prayer books. He stands up and is surprised how light he feels, as if he weighed nothing at all.

'The Lord God is in my head, that is where He resides. The Lord God is in my heart, that is where He shall stay. I am on important business, the Lord's business. You must excuse me, I have no time to talk.'

Father Blagdon blinks patiently back. 'Yes, of course,' he replies. 'May the Lord always reside in your heart, Charles.'

At the door Sankey turns, blocking out the haze of sunlight. 'The Virgin is arrived in Gomms Wood. Her vessel is Mary Hatt. You are the first to know.'

And Father Blagdon, fearing all his suspicions about Charles are now, at last, about to be confirmed, says, 'Oh, thank you, Charles. Thank you very much indeed.' And when Charles Sankey is gone, he moves to lock the church-room door.

Sankey has bought Sid Perfect a half of ale. He has him cornered by the fireplace, away from the dartboard, in order to extract some advice. Sid is supping his half-jar quickly, however, and Sankey will find himself up at the bar again if he is not careful. He must get to the facts and be quick about it.

'Mary Hatt is visited by the Virgin, Sid. Don't argue, I have proof. It is a fact.'

Sid sups his beer. Though he raises it slowly, Sankey notes, the ale drains quickly away between his lips. His advice will equal the cost of a pint jar, whether Sankey likes it or not.

'What proof?'

'Many kinds. Numerous.'

'For example?'

'Light, Sid. For one. Not just any, not electrical, a brighter source than that.'

'What else?'

'Fainting on the feet. In an eyeblink she is gone, and the doctor says it is not caused by any ailment he can think of.'

'Has he examined her then?'

'No need. It's apparent.'

'And?'

'Her strangeness, Sid. She's not your usual type and moreover she's odd.'

'Dropped on her head, that's all. What's the game with your conk? Go on then, another quick one.'

Sankey digs into his pockets at the bar. He is anxious. Sid hasn't cottoned on at all. He is beginning to wonder why he is bothering with him. Perhaps the second half of ale will deliver an answer. On the other hand perhaps it is he alone who will see what is transparent. Perhaps nobody else will be blessed. Is it possible he alone will receive her light? He experiences a chill.

'Look, Sid, no mucking about. The Virgin more than likely has come to Mary. She is more than likely chosen – for why we do not know and who are we to argue? The Church must be informed.'

Sid takes a long draught of his drink.

'Right, well. Is that it?'

Sankey puts his pipe in the ashtray.

'Sid. Sid. Do you understand? The diocese must be involved. Interviews will be requested. Bishops will come, Cardinals, Archbishops!'

'Shut your fool mouth, Charlie. There is nothing coming except a war.' Sid's tone is surprisingly perfunctory. 'Nobody cares about this type of thing any more.' The smoke from Sankey's pipe curls in a rising noose. 'You've always been a bit of an idiot, Charlie. Shut up and join up, that's my advice.'

'I'm a passfist, Sid.'

'Shut up about that and all. Piece of advice? Shut up.'

Sankey stares through the smoke. He opens his mouth to release his argument but none emerges. He searches his brain for the devastating remark that will crush Sid, annhilate him, force him to apologise. It must have been this way for the Apostles. It is not easy to find yourself unexpectedly at the centre of a miracle.

*

'He has gone, Mary, to another town. Near or far, hard to say. I do not know.' There was more he could have said, but did not. He forced himself to meet her eye, though it shivered him to do so, because even now he could see her light, her shine, the thing – divine or otherwise – that was hers alone. He pretended to see nothing.

Mary looked at his burst nose, bent like a spoon, crackling as it breathed.

'Sank.'

He regarded her steadily, as cheerfully as he could, so as not to startle her.

'D'you see light?'

Sankey crossed himself.

'I do.'

'Well then,' she continued evenly, 'you'd better kneel.'

She spoke it plain enough, though Sankey thought the words sounded lovely as the Psalms.

'You'd better, Sank.'

And so he did. And felt no shiver when he looked up at her this way to meet her eye directly.

'Mary, Mother,'
he said. His tears surprised him, but he pressed on.
'All the day, close beside thee let me stay. Keep me pure from sinful stain, Till the night return again.'

'There now,' Mary said gently, and smiled. 'There now.' And stroked her hand over his head.

31st March 1944, C.M.F.

My dear Mary,

Sorry for the long absence. I have been unable to write until now I'm afraid. How marvellous it was to receive two letters from you on the same day! Thank you for the catarrh pastilles, they were very good.

I wonder whether you've changed. I try to imagine your voice speaking the words you have written. Thank you for the pressed buttercups, and no, they did not make me sad at all, on the contrary. I have them safely in my pocket.

Well, lately I have had a few days' leave and I enjoyed my visit to the ruins of Pompeii – extraordinary. I feel not too bad just lately.

Jerry is fiendishly ingenious, you must be careful what you pick up. An explosion came the other day and a woman wailed. An Italian boy was staggering about with his arms torn off, a chest hole gaping, his face battered. He died in seconds while his mother wailed. I never pick anything up, not even a cigarette carton.

Ensa Rep Company did
Rope
the other night – quite a tonic! I wish I could get something for these chilblains. I have just soaked my boots in dubbin anyhow. The ground after rain is mud and more mud – one never knows what to expect in sunny Italy. The courage of these men and boys is a marvel to see, be it Yank, Pole, French or British. The men who lie beneath these crosses – very few enjoyed even the hopes of victory, and yet it is mostly their sacrifice that has made victory certain.

I have to close. I have spent so long looking at your picture these many months that when I close my eyes your lovely happy face is still there behind my eyelids. Are you my girl, Mary? Please tell me that you are. I'm sorry to ask but you say you feel 'not much' for Eric Hobbs. Does this mean you feel anything for me? I sometimes think my feelings for you appear to be stronger than yours for me. I am sorry to be gloomy. Everything becomes distorted through the hall of mirrors that is war.

Yours, Walter xx

P.S. Please don't mind when I say I love you.

Sean pushes the letter into his pocket. The line-marker has not moved. It lies on its side at the exact spot where it fell. A pool of congealed paint is gathered beneath it. Sean approaches cautiously. It could be a trick, or a trap. The line-marker makes no judgement; it will draw the line for a madman, murderer, loon or spaz. Sean is glad to see it again, he has missed drawing the line. There is still some paint left, he notices.
Peep-peep.
It still goes, good as new. He will draw the line, Sean decides, and lead the murderer in. He will find him, though the police did not. He has been clever with his blue moth-wing letters and stone-turning. He will catch him with his shining paint-line and he will be a hero then for ever and ever.