Marlford (12 page)

Ernest looked up into the ashen sky. ‘But if she marries you…'

‘Then Marlford will be secure. You'll be protecting it – keeping all the secrets. You'll have worked it out at last, the whole thing.'

Ernest's face hardened.

‘You're blackmailing me, Quersley.'

‘It's a simple matter of reputation, Mr Barton.'

‘This is ungentlemanly.' But he stuck out his hand nonetheless, touching Oscar's briefly.

Oscar blinked, raising his eyebrows in mockery of his own manoeuvring. That such a thing could be achieved so simply seemed a joke of some kind. He could not think of anything to say.

Ernest let his hand drop quickly. ‘The guns then, Quersley? You'll fetch the guns?' His questions came uncertainly; his voice had taken on the tremble of age.

Oscar shook himself. ‘They need stripping and oiling.' He was matter of fact. ‘I'll bring them up as soon as I can.'

‘It'll be for the best, Quersley, won't it?'

But Oscar did not seem inclined to discuss the squat any further. He returned to his toolbox, picking it up and swinging it once or twice, his arm straining. Then he walked away.

Ernest watched him disappear into the mouldy gloom beneath the stable arch. He looked around, lost for a moment. The rain drummed on the roof slates, ironic applause. In the polished leather of his shoes and on the soaked stones of the yard he saw his reflection many times: skewed and stretched, fractional, foreshortened, fairground illusions of a man who could not recognize himself or what he had done.

Oscar returned to the farm. He placed the toolbox in an old stone trough sheltered by the barn, slipped off his overalls, folded them neatly on top and rinsed his hands and face in a spray of cold water from the outside tap. The yard swilled with mud, the animals sulked in their stalls. Only the pigs ran to him, squealing their hunger; he pushed them away, glanced at the sodden cows in the near meadow, shook his head sadly at the slung weight of their full udders and moved on quickly along the edge of the field where the hay was flattened and grey, ruined.

His breath came in short, shallow bursts. He could feel the bounce of his pulse in his swollen fingers and aching brow; around him the familiar landscape of the old farm flickered, his vision blurring, his thoughts mired. He walked quickly, hearing only the occasional croak of the frogs. Something had happened – something marvellous and unconscionable. He could not quite grasp what it might be, only a joy and a regret, a kaleidoscopic longing. It was like rolling down a shorn bank on a hot day, tumbling over and over, faster and faster, glimpses of colour one upon the other, a brief scent of grass, a shard of sky, laughter and shrieks, tears, a pain somewhere hard and unwieldy, losing
the sound of everything, knowing only the unstoppable motion itself.

It was the distant creak of the frogs, coming to him faintly from the mere, that finally brought him round. He stopped and listened, letting the noise draw him, a comforting burr recalling him to duty and simplifying everything.

Thirteen

A
s night fell, a rumbling began, deep in the belly of the exhausted mines, rising slowly into the village. The cobbles began to skew, then to sink, the pavements cracking. After that, events moved quickly. As if anticipating disaster, the streetlights went out; a moment later, the road caved in with a sudden crash. Two buildings opposite the library slumped into the crater, tearing themselves from their neighbours on either side. Roof tiles scattered and window glass smashed; stone and timber gave way with an unpleasant groan; a parked car slid backwards into the hole, disappearing; the half-repaired fissure alongside the Hepworth Barton Bank burst open again, spitting rubble and swallowing the scaffolding posts. A number of dogs began to bark.

Braithwaite Barton, unscathed, oversaw proceedings with an avuncular smile. At the other end of Marlford, the nymph continued to pour clean water with careful precision into the blue basin at her feet.

The following morning, when Dan and Gadiel arrived on an expedition to the general stores, they gawped at the
crumbling hole, wary of coming too close: there was still the occasional noise of collapse, the groan of rock deep below.

‘Do you think… do you think it's safe?' Dan edged forwards, clinging to one of the makeshift barriers. ‘It smells disgusting – swampy.' He lifted his boot, gazed forlornly at the smeared leather and wrinkled his nose. A slime of brackish mud oozed around them.

Gadiel looked towards a group of men standing on the library steps. The building seemed to have sunk at one side, its doors were wedged open and a trickle of brine dribbled out, back down the slope of the depression into the worked-out pits that skulked below. ‘Do you think Ellie knows? We should tell her. She'd want to know,' he said.

‘It's like the whole world is hollow.' Dan tapped gingerly with his foot as if to test the theory. ‘As though we could just fall in. It could be a metaphor, couldn't it, man… about how the world's been eaten away by the forces of capitalism? Destroyed from within. Yeah, that's it – eviscerated.'

‘We should help.'

‘Man, this is such a cool place to have the squat. When the others come and they see the village and everything…'

‘No one's coming, Dan. I mean, you haven't done anything; you haven't told anyone—'

‘Yeah, but I will, won't I?'

‘But why would they come?'

‘Why? I've just told you, man – we can make such a cool statement. Even the ground beneath our feet is a statement. The past consuming the present, just like Marx says. Look at it.' He flung his hand towards the hole.

‘I'm not sure people will want to come,' Gadiel said. ‘I'm not sure they'll understand.'

‘Of course they'll understand.' Dan pushed his hair from his face and adjusted the balance of his spectacles with some care. ‘Gadiel, I can't believe you sometimes. You don't see things, do you? You don't see the wider picture – the history and the future.'

Gadiel did not answer. He ducked under the barrier and walked slowly around the crater. At the far side, he paused to speak to some of the men. They made slow, wide sweeps with their arms, marking the magnitude of something. The conversation went on, then one of the men laughed and shook Gadiel's hand.

He came back to Dan and offered him a cigarette. Gadiel smoked in long drags, stubbing the butt on the barrier. Only then did he speak. ‘They're moving it.'

‘What do you mean – moving it?'

‘The library, the whole thing. They're pushing it down to the end of the street.' Gadiel glanced towards the nymph, a distance of a hundred yards or more. ‘The land there's safer, more stable – not so much over the mine, that's what they told me. And the buildings were put up that way, apparently, so they could be shifted around.'

Dan frowned. ‘Don't be stupid.'

‘I'm not being stupid. That's the plan. They're moving it. I agreed that we'd help them – well, I said I'd help, anyway. It's something to do with pushing it onto rollers.'

‘You've been taken in, Gadiel, you know that?'

‘I have not been taken in.' Nonetheless, Gadiel glanced anxiously towards the men still lounging on the library steps. ‘It's true, apparently.'

Dan laughed briefly, little more than a smirk. ‘Well, then you stay and help them. I'm going back to the squat. It's only a squat as long as it's occupied. And this place' – he gestured towards the hole, the evidences of instability, crevices here and there, lopsided shops – ‘this place isn't worth any effort, man. It's not worth saving. Its time has come. They should let it rot and run coach tours here, that's what they should do, to show the decay of, well, of everything.' He grimaced and kicked at the deceptive ground.

‘Come on, Dan. It'll be way better than sitting around. And it won't take for ever. We'll just slide the library down.'

‘Gadiel – it's a distraction, man. We have a purpose here. A new world order.' Dan turned away. ‘You still don't see that, do you?'

Fourteen

D
an saw Ellie at a distance, coming into the village along the narrow path by the almshouses. He waited. ‘I've got something to show you.' He took a step or two towards her.

She looked puzzled.

Dan smiled. ‘You know you told us, when we came, about the village and your grandfather constructing it on the broken backs of the poor?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘You said it. You just didn't admit to it.'

Ellie kept on walking. ‘I have a few essentials to collect from the chemist. I'm afraid I can't dawdle.'

‘I'll go that way with you.' He trotted casually alongside her. ‘That's what I want to show you, anyway.'

‘The chemists? It's very kind but—'

He took her arm. ‘Come on, Ellie. Don't be stuffy, man. Let me show you.'

The creaks and groans of the village were subsiding. No new fissures had opened, and the wet mud in the streets was already hardening in places, holding footprints.
A plume of steam rose almost vertically from the chemical works; behind, a drift of ochre smoke cast a faint tint of sepia on the flayed land.

Ellie only slowly realized what had happened. ‘Oh, my goodness.' She squinted at the gaunt form of the old library. ‘Someone should tell Mr Quersley. He'll want to see to the books. He'll want to check everything's all right.'

‘There's no point, man. Apparently they're moving it.'

She stared at the building, seeing it already off balance. Dan was surprised to see tears falling steadily down her cheeks, her eyes wide and soft with sympathy, as though she was contemplating an injured animal. She could not speak.

‘Ellie, come on, man – this kind of thing was bound to happen sooner or later.' He spoke kindly enough but with an odd desperation, as though she had talked at some length, challenging him, and he had been forced to take up the argument. ‘It's a legacy of destruction, from the old mines.' He rested his fingers on the bridge of his spectacles so that his face was partly obscured. ‘You see – it's the carelessness of the past catching up with us. Dominant material relationships – that's what Marx called it – the way the ideas and actions of the ruling class affect everything – in the past, in the present and in the future.'

The sight of the library still held Ellie's attention.

‘Did all this happen – just with the rain?' she asked at last.

Her mournful glance irritated him. ‘Oh, come on, man – haven't you been listening? You knew about the mines.'

She was suddenly fierce in return. ‘Of course I knew about the mines. I'm talking about everything.' She gestured at the pit. ‘All this.'

‘Yeah, and the mines are only the symptom… Ellie, the disease is something deeper, more… more – what's the word? – pernicious. That's it, man, pernicious.'

Ellie rounded on him. ‘I hardly think this is the time for political generalisations. Your, your philosophy, if that's what it is – it's completely irrelevant. You don't understand, do you?'

‘Me? You're accusing me of not understanding? Man, that's rich. When I was trying to explain it all.' But he felt himself draw back from her. ‘Yeah, well, quite a shock, I s'pose…' He heard the spite in his tone but could not stop it, not with her looking at him in that way, as though he did not matter. ‘Quite a shock for the land-owning classes to discover the land they own has disappeared – zap – down a big, salty hole.'

He saw the little crease of dismay that flickered across her brow at his words and he was ready to defy her hurt, if that was what it took; he held his ground.

But Ellie's face cleared, her anger had already faded. She simply shook her head, sadly. ‘But, still… to have happened so suddenly.' She did, finally, look at him then, so gravely and openly that he could not face her. ‘And did you say they were moving the library? Is that what you said?'

Dan shuffled. ‘Yeah, man, that's what I heard. That's what Gadiel told me. I don't think it can be right, but—'

‘Oh, yes, it will be right. It was always planned that way. It's quite possible to slip it out and roll it down to a new location. Rather like moving the furniture.' She smiled at the idea, sliding her hand smoothly in front of him to demonstrate the elegant glide of a make-believe library.

Dan took off his spectacles and spent a long time cleaning them on his T-shirt. Ellie watched the rub of cotton between his thumb and forefinger, the occasional glint of the lenses; she felt as though she was balanced on the quicksand of the old mines, everything sinking, disintegrating, the structures of her world twisting, their shapes unfamiliar now, grotesque.

Finally, he lifted his eyes to her face with an expression she did not recognize and took her by the arm, so that they could turn their backs on the library, looking instead towards the unperturbed nymph.

‘Why don't we go for a walk?' He was quiet now, purposeful. ‘There's nothing going on, not for now – nothing to see. I can explain about the squat.'

The cottages here were undisturbed. Swifts swooped and screeched around the eaves, repeating time; the neat gardens were bright with geraniums and busy lizzies, draped washing and children's plastic toys. There was the sound of radios playing. In all her life, Ellie had rarely walked this part of the village – there had been no need – and she regarded it now with a detached, intense curiosity, as though it was important to record the smallest of details. She recognized the same thrill she felt when she was reading a new book: the prickling urge to take it all in; the lament, even at the very beginning, that too soon it would be finished, and she would know it.

Dan came closer alongside her; she felt the swing of his arm against her own as they walked down another street. It was short, no more than three or four cottages in a truncated terrace, the village ending abruptly, Braithwaite
Barton's vision unfulfilled. Beyond was just scrubland, shabby and flattened, sloping away to a small, stagnant lake of muddy water. Dried salt crusted at the edge of the shallows; another deposit – a tainted pink – seeped through an old pipe and dripped inexorably into the pool. The bulk of the works loomed close, its intricacy suddenly apparent: the grid of pipes laid out tightly ahead of them at ground level, steam hissing from the seams; loops of hawsers, heavy rivets, unmarked sheds, metal ladders; everywhere the ploughed ridges of corrugated iron; light deflected, decomposed, disordered.

They followed one of the worn paths, knocking dandelion heads, dislodging seeds which floated languidly around them, nothing more than thickened air. A brown cat slunk away and disappeared into the scorched grass. Dropping down a slope, they stopped short of the pool, sitting on a segment of ruined wall, its bricks crumbling; the ground was scuffed and trampled, littered with cigarette ends, sweet papers and lurid bottle tops.

From here, the view was of the rear of the works and the wasteland behind, hardening again into short streets. It was a workers' slum, a knot of makeshift houses, split and weary. The roofs and walls were coated in a fine, white dust, as though a perfect snow shower had gently settled, consecrating them, drawing the eye to the bruised brown and grey streets that sliced between.

Ellie only glanced across; she did not really see any of it. She fussed instead with her skirt as she sat down, trying to steady herself on the uneven brickwork, pushing her feet hard against the wall, jamming her legs tightly together, bowing her head.

‘It's not actually anything against you and your father as people – just what you represent, in the larger picture,' Dan was saying. He had been talking for a little while, looking at her intently, as though this might drive the lesson home. She found she did not mind it. ‘So when the others come to join us—'

‘Others? You've invited more people?'

‘Yeah, man – it's an open invitation. That's how these things work. Word gets around, man. We expect them soon. The place will gather momentum, you'll see.'

Ellie thought about this for a moment. ‘But why would they want to come to Marlford?'

‘Don't be dense. Marlford is an excellent example of the way in which power and wealth has been siphoned off for the benefit of the few. By locating the squat at the heart of it—'

‘But aren't you very cold up there in the old rooms? Isn't it rather damp?'

He pushed himself off from the wall. ‘No, look' – he screwed his face up, drawing his mouth tight – ‘it's not… you've got it wrong. It's not like that.' He flapped at a thistle in frustration, kicking at something in the grass and throwing such a pained glance at her that Ellie thought, for a moment, that he might just walk on and leave. But he just cuffed his hair roughly from his face and resettled his spectacles. He stood still then, and set his gaze hard on the cluster of unsteady houses behind the works. It was only after a long silence that she realized his pose was somehow a question, or even an accusation.

‘Look,' he said, finally. ‘Look at that. You see?'

When he turned to her it was a plea. If she failed to
understand, he would consider it his inadequacy more than hers; she saw that at least.

‘I… I'm not sure—' She tried to work out what the revelation might be. ‘If you mean the houses… we don't have anything to do with that – we don't own the works or the salt mines, not any more, not for years.'

‘You don't have to own them, man. Questions of power and necessity are not always as direct as that.'

‘Most of those houses have sprung up since our time. It doesn't look it, I know, but even the chemical works is quite new. It's nothing to do with Marlford – the old Marlford.'

‘And you don't ever ask why there's that, over there, falling apart – sinking – people living in rubbish houses, working in the factory, and you, back at the manor, swanning around?'

She giggled. ‘Is that what you think we do… swan around? When we're so poor…'

Dan came around in front of her. ‘Ellie, you are not poor.'

‘Oh, but we are. It's why Marlford is closed up, and why there're no servants, or gardeners even – no one to keep the place. Just Mr Quersley. All the money that my grandfather had, that all went long ago. Long before I was born.'

‘I know. Gadiel told me. But it makes no difference.'

‘Of course it does. Now… well, we're poor – really poor. It's just – if you don't pay attention – it might not look that way.'

He growled. ‘It's not just a question of money in your pocket, Ellie.'

‘No, but we don't own the village any more. We don't receive rents. We have no say in anything, no influence.'
She waved at the view he was obscuring. ‘You can't blame me for any of this. And, really, I don't mind at all about the squat,' she added, as kindly as she could.

‘But you don't see, do you? The squat's part of it, man. You just don't see the iniquities, do you – the inequalities? You're quite happy to let it all pass you by, to go on as you always have, to live in the past like some lady of the manor. Ellie, Marlford itself is… it's a temple to greed and exploitation.' He caught her arm. His desperation seemed odd, unnecessary, wasted on her.

She slid off the wall and pulled away, stroking the place where his touch had been. ‘Well, that's a new vision for the place, I suppose.' She smiled. She was tempted to argue with him again, but his frantic reasoning had an innocent charm to it, like the spring twitter of birds, and she let him speak.

‘Look at me, Ellie. Listen to me, man – I'll explain.'

She wondered at the unsteadiness of his voice.

‘Your grandfather's village – it's about reinforcing the hierarchies that keep the poor in their place. Don't you see?' He did not wait for her to answer. He went on, his hands and eyes in perpetual movement, as though he were performing a trick of some kind, a sword exercise that sliced through the damp air, dazzling. ‘It's part of a system of production where workers are just instruments, just things – they're estranged from their humanity, cut off from themselves – their real selves, their thoughts and their imagination – by the system and by the demands of other people.'

Ellie stared at him.

‘But at the time – surely,' she began, ‘surely what was
important was a basic standard of living. I think you're… I think your approach is anachronistic…'

He was mistaken and obtuse, outlandish too, poised in this way with outstretched arms, his feet apart in the dry grass. A glossy, red crisp packet had blown up against his boot, his hair was curling into his eyes, his spectacles sliding from the bridge of his nose, the wasteland stretching away behind, bleak and unpeopled. She should have laughed him out of sight, disdainful, but she found her erudite ideas skidding away like sprats in the shallows, nothing more than a glimmer, disappearing.

And she could not take her eyes from him.

Dan wondered if he had said too much, too quickly, confounding her with the quicksilver flash of his oratory. He searched for something simpler that might reassure her.

‘Wait.' He reached forward gently. ‘Cool, man – look. You've got a ladybird – just…'

He put his finger against her neck so that the insect could crawl onto it; the ladybird hesitated for a moment, moving sideways, trying to avoid the sudden barrier, before eventually creeping onto his nail. He bent down and tapped it onto a dock leaf. It crawled away and then, a moment later, took flight.

He seemed so grave, and so pleased with what he had done, that she smiled and did not shake him off when he touched her neck again, very gently.

‘I can help you understand. I really can,' he said. ‘You'll see in no time. You'll break free of the old ways, the outdated modes of living that bind you.'

She did laugh now; she could not help it. But she tried to be kind. ‘I'd like that.'