It all depends on whether you trust the past. They
knew things then that we don’t know now. I’m not saying they knew better. I’m
saying they knew different.
There’s always been clever people, and there’s
always been stupid ones. But nowadays maybe there’s more stupid ones that think
they’re clever than the other way about. If it’s old, knock it down. Why?
Because it’s old:
Don’t bother to build anything to last,
Because things nowadays change far too fast.
Do they? Does nothing stay the same? That’s right. Nothing
stays the same. But we don’t like to think about nothing, do we? That’s why we
always have to find something to think about, something to do, something to
hear, just to avoid the silence that lies behind everything and will, in the end,
engulf us – unless we learn to swim on its surface, to dive into its depths and
re-emerge. But we won’t do that unless we admit it’s there, and, like Peter,
we’re strong on denial.
In Little Bickering there was a custom to do with
the mowing of the big hay-meadow that lay at the centre of the village and
sloped down to the river. From time immemorial, the meadow had been divided
into thirteen irregularly shaped but essentially equal pieces, and the dozen
inhabitants of the village who were entitled had drawn lots to see which part
of the crop they would get. The lots were drawn in the church on the first
sunny evening after the middle of June, an hour before sunset itself. Those
inside the church knew when that would be, because they had a kind of sundial.
There was an old wall painting, which they’d covered up discreetly when Pevsner
came, representing the Last Supper it was assumed, leastways there were
thirteen shadowy figures, and for the last hour of the day, from a week before
midsummer till a week after, a thin beam of sunlight slanted in past the
dangling ivy, through a dusty leaded pane, and fell on the face of the
thirteenth figure, standing apart from the rest, looking across at a scene
which could now be barely discerned, obscured as it was with time and grime,
and all those other accretions that life leaves behind it. But no one had ever
tried to clean it. It remained undisturbed, in its pristine condition.
Nothing disturbed the hay-meadow, either. The river
made a big loop here, and the canal-builders had cut through further to the
north, shortening their route and avoiding the complications of a decaying
water-meadow system whose hydraulics they didn’t understand. Brunel had been
persuaded to run his line parallel to the canal, so the clatter of the distant
trains, though audible, moved the grasses, as they waited to be cut down, no
more than the susurration of a grasshopper, the flight of a moth, the wing-beat
of a butterfly, or the twisting of the air above an eddy on the river.
But, like virginity, peace is a commodity much
sought after by those for whom possession means destruction.
It never did become clear how Miles Bartlett, the
entrepreneur, came to hear about the place. There had been no photographs in Country
Life, no features on Radio 4, no articles in the county magazine, no
mention of any substance in the standard guidebooks, whose authors, one
fancied, had been put off actually visiting the village by the alarming
steepness of the descent from the chalk escarpment, the narrowness of the road,
the hair-pin bends, the unexpected ford whose depth it was so hard to gauge –
if only they had known that Harry Bramhall, at the age of ten, back in 1940,
had driven the depth-marker four feet further into the stream-bed with his
father’s, the blacksmith’s, mighty hammer – as his contribution to the
war-effort and the confusion of the potential German invader!
The tiny halt on the main line, with its little
loop, had withered into a clutter of groundsel-covered ballast-heaps and
tumbled sleepers well before Beeching.
Writers of guidebooks, if they bothered with the
place at all, relied on the Reverend Augustus Symonds’ anodyne account from
the1860s, in which that clerical gentleman failed to mention that he had never
even visited the village himself, but had all his duties carried out by a
consumptive curate, whose stipend he paid six months in arrears. It was left to
the villagers themselves to raise a collection for the unfortunate gentleman to
travel to warmer climes, but he failed to recover his health in Menton, and is
buried there, close to the rather more famous William Webb Ellis, whose fate
was similar.
The villagers denied that Miles Bartlett, with his
reputation for ruthless takeovers and asset stripping, could be a native of the
place. They concluded he must have been an evacuee during the War, perhaps
mishandled by Harry Bramhall and his friends, and was now returning with a
grudge, determined to destroy the village.
His large chauffeur-driven car monopolised the car
park of the village pub, to the detriment of trade. The constant presence of
the burly, grey-uniformed chauffeur in it deterred the locals from more
adventurous manoeuvres that might have secured them a space. However, Farmer
Barton’s arrival one day, with a load of muck to spread, and his clear
insistence on a right of way through the centre of the car park to his
field-gate, reduced the inconvenience by confining Mr Bartlett’s conveyance to
one side only.
In the pub itself, Mr Bartlett struck up
acquaintance with the locals, who only worried about motives after they had
enjoyed what was on offer. In these lengthy and laughter-filled conversations
he found out what he needed to know – namely, who was entitled to draw lots for
the mowing of the meadow. It was harder to discover than one might imagine –
rather like trying to work out the rules of one of those Central European
card-games just by watching what goes on – a combination of family
relationships and residence: if you lived in this house and were
descended from those people, or in that house and married to this
family – in the end he gave up trying to discern the principles and contented
himself with discovering who would actually be drawing lots on the next
occasion. He had first appeared in the village in the autumn. He gleaned the
last piece of information he required at 2 am on New Year’s Day, under the
mistletoe in the back bar. After which he vanished from the village.
Once upon a time, perhaps, there would have been
distressed maidens after his departure. But not nowadays. There is progress in
some things. It is possible, for example, to listen to what people say on their
telephone, without their knowing, to discover where their money comes from and
goes to without their being aware. Lives can be traced and secrets uncovered.
Meanwhile, the grass was growing, but not under Miles Bartlett’s feet.
On June 15th he re-appeared, taking all
the rooms at the pub, just so he wouldn’t be disturbed. He knew that he could
afford it. He knew the profit to be made from executive-style desirable
residences. Perhaps he would even be able to re-open the station for commuters.
The 15th and 16th were rainy.
Dogs dripped and smelt in the public bar, grass seeds evident in their coats.
The 17th was grey and misty and muggy, but the 18th was
fine, and the clouds that the sun’s heat had drawn up in the afternoon
dissipated by six, leaving an empty sky of Wedgwood blue.
The church wasn’t far, but he had himself driven
there. The car wasn’t just a means of transport. It was a statement – an
assertion. And so was the hefty chauffeur, in his grey uniform, just in case
there were problems – resentment of change, perhaps. Useless to resist the
inevitable, of course. But resistance could be unpleasant. It was the
chauffeur’s job to make that clear to those concerned.
The church was open, as always. No vandals in Little
Bickering. Miles Bartlett was a little surprised to find that all the twelve
were already there, sitting in two adjacent box pews, looking up at the wall
above them, watching the passage of the only sunbeam that still fought its way
into the church.
“Not long now,” said Vic Bramhall, Harry’s younger
brother.
“No,” said Miles Bartlett, stepping up to the group,
but clearly not joining them, and certainly not about to sit down. “Shall we
sort out the business before the lots are actually drawn? I take it you have
the bag?”
Violet Rush, who was sitting against the wall, held
up a crumpled and moth-eaten-looking collection-bag on a stick. She seemed to
have a slight tremble – Parkinsonism? – and it rattled. Miles Bartlett wondered
for a moment exactly what the lots looked like. Well, he would find out
shortly.
“Violet,” he said softly, “would you mind passing
the bag to me? I shall be drawing your lot, instead of you. You know why. If I
were to tell the others, that would rather spoil the point of our whole
agreement, wouldn’t it?”
There was some uncomfortable shifting among the
group, though no one actually stood up or changed place. The bag was passed
along the line, as if in a church service, though no one put anything in or
took anything out.
“Now for the rest of you. Vic – you used to own a
certain car, with a scratched wing.”
“You know you can take my lot, Mr Bartlett.”
“Tom Summers – when you worked at that children’s
home – ”
“And mine, Mr Bartlett.”
“Nancy Mason – ”
“We agreed, Mr Bartlett – ”
“So we did, Nancy, so we did. And Mr Wooler and I
agreed, too, did we not, Raymond?”
“That was my understanding, Mr Bartlett,” said the
retired solicitor with the little gold half-glasses, pressed against the wall
in the second box-pew.
“And it was quite right, too. I was very grateful
for your advice on the legality of what I intend to undertake here. And that
hint you let fall about the Planning Officer. I certainly shan’t have any
trouble there. Nor, I imagine, from you, Fred Greenslade.”
“No, sir,” said Fred, a big lumpy man with a florid
face and wispy grey hair.
“Oh, Fred!” said Violet Rush.
“I thought if there was one of us he couldn’t – deal
with – then we’d be all right. Them strips is so complicated, the way they
cross over each other – ”
“Quite right, Fred. I needed you all. And I have you
all. Bert and George and Archie – least said, soonest mended, eh? I can see you
all nodding. Does that go for you, too, Roger and Philip and Marjory? Good,
good. Is it time to draw the lots, yet? I don’t want to go against the good old
customs, you see. By the way, where’s the map that shows which strip is which
and where they lie? Not that it matters, since I have them all, but still – out
of curiosity, you know.”
“It’s on the wall, sir,” said Raymond Wooler,
“painted. Just here.” And he tapped the wall above his head.
“Tomorrow, then, with a torch. Yes, tomorrow will be
time enough.”
“It’s time now,” said Fred Greenslade, standing up
and walking out of the box pew. He held the door open for Violet Rush. “You can
take our lots, and we’ll leave. I’m sure the order doesn’t matter.”
“No, I’m sure it doesn’t,” said Miles Bartlett, as
he rummaged in the bag. He pulled out two of the hard, irregular objects and
held them in his palm. They were small bones, he didn’t know from what, with
black symbols on them that no doubt corresponded to the map. Twelve symbols, he
thought – perhaps the Zodiac...?
One by one, the others stood up, said their names,
and that he could take their lots, and went out of the door. Finally, he was
the only one left in the church. And there was one more lot left in the bag.
Secure in his triumph, he looked at where the
sunbeam fell, the last light of the day. The thirteenth figure seemed to be
some sort of armed and armoured man. At least, there was something shiny where
his face should be, and a curved blade glinted beside his head.
Miles Bartlett put his hand into the bag. His
fingers closed around the thirteenth lot, and as they did so he looked across
at the painting again. Only now it was clear to him that what he had thought
was a metal helmet was actually a skull, and that the curved blade was that of
a scythe.
The burly, grey-uniformed chauffeur, sitting in the
car, with the windows open because the evening was close, heard the scream. The
twelve people his master had blackmailed and cheated were stood all around.
They didn’t try to get in his way as he ran towards the church, but they didn’t
do anything to help, either. It didn’t matter. He was strong enough to carry
his master on his own, to snatch him off the cold stone floor where he lay with
his eyes wide open and staring, to put him back into the car, strap him in and
drive off as fast as he could to the nearest hospital, where they told him how
vain all his efforts had been.
Violet Rush picked up the twelve scattered bones and
put them back into the bag, with the thirteenth which was still there. Then she
knelt down with difficulty behind the stone altar, lifted a loose mediaeval
tile, slipped the bag into the darkness beneath, and put the tile back just as
it had been.
“I think we need a new custom,” she said to the
other eleven, stood there before the altar. They all nodded.
“For the poor of the parish,” said Tom. They all
nodded again, and filed out. The sun had gone. The dew was falling. Thus the
new custom began, though they said it was an old one.
But whatever the custom was, and whenever it
started, it made no difference to the grass of the hay-meadow, neither that
night, as the dew fell on it, nor the following week, when it was all cut down.
Started at 9 am,
finished at 12.30 pm, August 14th 2002