Notwithstanding: Stories From an English Village Read online

  ‘Well, I’m a nob,’ says Sylv, ‘and I’d better get to work. See you later, boys. See you, George,’ and the men watch her leave, her loquacious body talking of happiness, and the door scrapes, and John says, ‘Lovely girl.’

  Alan grunts noncommittally, giving himself away, and John smiles to himself. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘you jus’ carry on digging the veg patch ’til it rains, an’ then you can come back in here an’ we’ll have some tea. I’m going to put some more daffs in the orchard. Seen the dibber? And did I ever tell you the secret of naturalising daffs? What you do is, you broadcast them.’

  ‘Like on the radio,’ says Alan, humour seizing his speech. ‘This is the BBC Outside Broadcasting Service. Today we are broadcasting daffs.’

  ‘You throw them out,’ says John, ‘with a backhand sweep o’ the arm, like that. And then you plant them exactly where they fell, see? And when they come up, they look as though they’ve been there for ever, an’ that’s how you seed grass an’ all. Broadcasting.’

  Outside in the damp day, Alan digs energetically, breaking for pauses of thought. A blackbird sings, and Alan is glad to exist. ‘… It’s funny how I like to be here, the open air, the birds, loading up twigs on the long-term compost, and the rest on the short-term compost, admiring the espalier. How many years does it take? It looks so magical, like something out of a Salvador Dali picture, all those branches growing into each other, tree to tree. And John with his sad face, and his big moustache for a tea strainer, acting the old codger. Wheelbarrows and mud and wellington boots and George the spider, and a robin taking the worms from under your spade, forks that make a note when you flick a finger at one of the tangs. The stable girls in their jodhpurs and brown boots, and the big horses. Mr Gull and his white Rolls-Royce. It’s like a village all in itself. I wonder what Dad would say if I told him, “Sorry, Dad, I’m not going to university, I’m staying at the stud farm and I’m going to be a gardener all my life.” He’d probably say, “How bucolic.” Mum would scream the house down, though. No, Dad would probably say, “That’s fine for now, but you won’t be happy if you don’t use your brain,” and I’d say, “But Dad, you have to be an encyclopedia to be a gardener,” and he’d just shrug and say, “You know what I mean, though.” If I was as rich as Mr Gull, I wouldn’t have horses. Just the stable girls. That Sylvie is so gorgeous, it hurts. Don’t think she’s even noticed me, though. When you see her on a horse, it makes you think of things that you wouldn’t admit to your mother. It’s getting dark, I think it’s going to rain.’

  The shed door scrapes, and John is there, the wheel of the barrow protesting. ‘Hello, George, it’s me again. Lifted the onions, thought I’d better afore it rains, and you know what, George? It’s about this time I like the best; a bit of dew on the grass of a morning, wasps in the apples, not too hot, not too cold, making sandcastles full o’ parsnips and carrots, leaving beans on the stalk for seed, making nice tight onion grappes. It was Harold taught me that. Forty-five years ago. Blimey, all that time working here, man and boy. I wonder how many tons I’ve barrowed in my time, how many clods I’ve turned. And poor old Harold, went mad and died, and here I am, same age as him when he went. Makes you think, makes you pause, eh, George? I reckon it was all them garden chemicals. Went yellow, went mad, and died. That’s why I went organic. Maybe his missus poisoned him. Old sourpuss. And something else, George; I reckon our Sylvie’s taken a shine to our Alan.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to tell this to anyone else, but when I look at Sylvie I feel sad. Reminds me of everything I can’t have any more. Everything I’ve lost. Such a lovely girl,’ and here John feels the beginnings of tears at the corners of his eyes and cannot know whether it is because he is sad, or whether it is because he is sentimental, or because to him Sylvie is entirely beautiful. ‘Better go pick up some damsons,’ he decides at last, ‘it’s the season of jam, returned.’

  The door scrapes, and John has gone. The door scrapes once more, and now Sylvie has come to lean on the earthy bench amid the flowerpots and morsels of string, and talk again with George. ‘Anyone at home? Hi, George, how’s it going? I’ve got to stop coming in here, I really have. I’m running out of excuses. Do you think I’m being too obvious? I mean, how am I supposed to make him notice me? Do you think he’s shy, or am I ugly, or what? And he’s off to university soon, and it’ll be too late. I’ve been watching him, he’s out on the patch where the lettuce was, digging it over, and throwing the worms to a thrush. I think that’s sweet, like John bringing you flies. And, while I’m here, you can tell me why big spiders only come out at apple time. I mean, one minute it’s summer, and there aren’t any spiders at all, and then the next minute it’s autumn, and you walk along the garden path first thing, and you get a face full of web, and you go, “Yikes, aaah,” and you flap your arms to get it off, and then your mum says, “Get some tomatoes, love,” and you find you can’t do it without making half a dozen whopping great spiders homeless …’

  Out on the vegetable patch John is watching Alan, who is working twice as hard as before, as if to prove something to the older man. ‘That’s going well,’ says John, and Alan sighs and wipes his brow on his sleeve. ‘Hard work, though,’ he says.

  ‘This idea of yours about burying horseshit one foot deep is all very well, BUT.’

  ‘You’re young,’ says John. ‘Get strong now, it’ll never fail you later. Kettle on?’

  ‘Is it time?’

  ‘It’s always time,’ and so Alan thrusts the fork into the dark earth, and together they go to the shed, where Sylvie is talking to George. She straightens up at the scrape of the door, and Alan says, ‘Hi there, Sylv, what’s up?’

  She turns and smiles, sheepish and sweet. ‘I’m skiving,’ she says, ‘you caught me.’

  John is scraping the door, back and forth, back and forth, wondering why with time it hasn’t worn to a free movement. ‘You any good at carpentry, fixing things?’ he asks, and Alan is modest. ‘Not so bad. Why?’

  ‘That door’s got to be rehung, and while you’re at it, I reckon on a new lock. We don’t want thieves again.’

  ‘Thieves?’ repeats Alan. ‘Didn’t know we’d had ’em. What did they take?’

  ‘It were twenty year ago,’ says John, ‘didn’t I ever tell? And a right to-do it was, with the police up.’

  ‘But what did they take?’

  ‘They didn’t take anything, that’s the queer bit. They broke down the door, and it in’t never been right since, and then they dunged in the kettle.’

  Sylvie gives a little squeak of horror, and Alan wrinkles his nose. ‘Dunged in the kettle?’ he says. ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible, I don’t believe it, in the kettle? That’s foul, it wasn’t this kettle, was it? I haven’t been drinking from it, have I?’

  John savours Alan’s disquiet and Sylvie’s wide-eyed disgust and then reassures them. ‘Oh no, I emptied the muck on the compost, no point in wasting it, and then I boiled the kettle twice, and then I left it with bleach in all night. And then I boiled it every half-hour and kept emptying and refilling it, and then the next day, first thing, I made a cup o’ tea, and I sat here in this very same place, just lookin’ at it, lookin’ and lookin’ and lookin’, and then I thought, “Here goes,” and I raised it up to take a sip. But I couldn’t. I just sat here lookin’ at that cup o’ tea, thinkin’ I couldn’t do it, and then I threw it in the chrysanthemums. And then I threw away the kettle, but then later on I got the kettle out of the bin again, and I thought, “What a waste,” so I stuck it in the hedge. It’s still there if you care to take a look. And the next thing I knew it had some robins nestin’ in it, with five little speckledy chicks, and I used to take ’em a worm or two, and I’d stick my head in that hedge and I’d chuckle and say, “If only you knew what I know about what’s been in that kettle, you little sods wouldn’t likely be so perky.” And anyway, there’s been two broods in that kettle every year for twenty, and I reckon by now it might be all right for brewing with.’ John sits back
and sucks his pipe, but it has gone out again, and he taps out the dottle on the edge of the bench.

  ‘But who’d do that?’ asks Sylvie, tossing the fair hair back from her eyes and over her shoulder, thankful to be part of this conversation, to be in the same shed as Alan and the old man. ‘Who’d break in and do a poo in the kettle? I mean, it’s a bit pointless, isn’t it?’

  ‘We never rightly knew,’ says John, ‘but I reckon it might have been Harold. The old head gardener afore me. Went mad enough, I reckon, to break in and do one in the kettle. Might have been them chrysanths. Nutty about chrysanths, he was. Had so many he couldn’t keep up. Worked all God’s hours, he did, and never could manage. It was the strain, see? And all them chemicals, more than likely. And he went potty, and anyway, there’s me coming into work one day, and lo and behold, there’s Harold’s wellies sticking up out of the rain barrel, and I have a look, and there’s Harold wearing the wellies, and he’s down in the barrel head first. And I pull him out, and I say, “Bloody hell, Harold, what do you think you’re a-doing of?” and he says, “I’m trying to drown myself, and now you’ve gone and buggered it up.” Anyway, they bunged him in the loony bin and when I go and see him, there he is, lying in bed, and all around him’s vases of his own chrysanths that drove him barmy in the first place.’

  Sylvie grows waggish, her eyes sparkle, her voice has a tease in it. She catches Alan’s eye and laughs. ‘The gardeners here are always mad, it’s a tradition.’

  John growls, ‘Cheeky scallywag,’ and then he reflects, ‘You know the sad thing? The first time I put that kettle in the hedge, it filled up with water from the rain, and the chicks all drowned stone dead and sodden, poor little beggars, so I cleaned it out and put it back with the spout downwards, so it wouldn’t happen no more, and I gave the chicks to the ferret, so’s at least they weren’t wasted.’ John remembers his regret at the death of the chicks, and stuffs his pipe from the greasy pouch he has had since before the war. ‘Or it might not’ve been Harold,’ he continues, ‘we never rightly knew. But I’ll tell you one thing; I said to the police, “You take that manure away and get it analysed, and you’ll find out everything there is to know about him who did it. Blood group, what he ate, everything. Do a forensic on it,” I says, “and then when a suspect turns up, you wait ’til he manures again, and you match it up, and you’ve got your man.” And the copper, it was Arthur Diss was the bobby back then, he says, “Come off it, John, it in’t that serious,” and I say, “Listen, son, if someone broke into your cop shop and dunged in your kettle, you’d think it was bloody serious,” and he laughs and says, “So I would, so I would, but I’m not takin’ that away and havin’ it analysed. I’ve analysed it already and I can tell what it is.” Anyway, I don’t know who it were, but I’ve an idea it was an Iranian. One o’ them Persian johnnies.’

  ‘An Iranian?’ repeats Alan.

  John looks at him levelly. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered why there’s tank traps all around this place?’

  ‘Tank traps? You mean those big white pyramids? I thought … well, I don’t know what I thought. I thought they were just there, like trees and fences and things.’

  ‘They’re tank traps. It wa’n’t that pop star who put them in. You know, the one I told you about. I grew his mushrooms for him. Always pie-eyed and drugged-up, he was, always getting pinched by the drug squad. Anyway, it wa’n’t him. He sold the place to the Shah of Iran, and it was him put in all those tank traps so that no one could drive in from Munstead in his little tank and be a nuisance. I said to him, “Your Majesty, there in’t any tanks in Munstead, and none in Notwithstanding neither,” and he says, “You can’t be too careful.” Anyway, he came to a bad end, the poor old sod. Died of cancer. Then it was Mr Gull bought this place, and I’ve been here all the time providing the house with organic veg and flowers. And anyway, I reckon it was an Iranian who did it, because it was some mohammedanny warrior, see, and he came here to assassinate the Shah. And you know how it is, when you’re all agog with nerves, it makes you want to relieve your bowels, and if you’re that desperate you’ve just got to do it in the first place that comes to hand. And I reckon that after he’d done it in the kettle, he was still all agog, and he ran away.’

  ‘Iranian poo in a Christian kettle,’ summarises Alan, but John contradicts him. ‘’Cept I’m not a Christian. God knows what I am. I reckon that when you think about God, He scrambles up your mind a bit, see? And like that you don’t ever come to no conclusion. The thing you got to know about God is that He don’t want us to work Him out. He’s like MI5. He’s like those folk who do all the benefits. Social security and the like.’

  Sylvie has a question, something she has to clarify, and she turns and looks at Alan’s face, her eyes betraying her anticipation of loss.

  ‘When are you going to university, Alan? You are going, aren’t you? Someone told me you were.’

  ‘Next month,’ says Alan. ‘I’m going to do English.’

  Alan feels uncomfortable about this university business, and John makes matters worse. ‘Sounds to me like you speak it already.’

  ‘It’ll be literature mostly,’ explains Alan, unsure if it really will be and knowing that he won’t be able to justify it all to the earthy John, whose practical, organic world makes Milton an anomaly. But John’s away on his own tack again.

  ‘You know what I like? I like them Latin names. I read ’em in the evenings, all those words. Erica tetralix, Gynu sarmentosa, Nepeta mussinii, Dianthus barbatus, Lilium martagon, Fritillaria meleagris, Cornus kousa, Chlorophytum capense, Peristrophe speciosa, Primula denticulata, that’s poetry that is. I like all that foreign stuff. It’s like I sometimes tune in on one o’ them French radio stations. Don’t speak a word o’ Froggy, but it’s nice to listen. You know the strangest thing I reckon I saw? We had a Frenchman living down the village, oh, about fifteen year ago, next to that Mrs Griffiths, the old sourpuss, and he had an Alsatian dog, and this dog knew all how to speak French. He knew “dindins” and “come here” and “walkies” and “lie down” and “sit” and “get in your basket” all in Froggy, and I said to Herbert, that was his name (the Frog, not the dog), I said, “Blimey, Herb, your dog’s a sodding genius, speaking all that French,” and Herbert he jus’ laughs and says, “Funny you should say that, ’cause every time I see a dog understanding English, I think, ‘La la la la la, what a clever dog.’”’

  Alan and Sylvie ponder the cleverness of dogs, and Alan says, pointlessly, ‘I could do a thesis on the poetics of plant names.’

  ‘Better than all that “O what a lovely flower” la-di-da soppy stuff,’ exclaims John, his face screwed up with the pain of so much lyric verse, and then he declaims: ‘I wandered lonely as a silly sod, Saw some daffs, and said, “Thank God I wasn’t sittin’ on the grass, Them daffs’d grow right up my arse.”’

  Sylvie and Alan laugh with real surprise and delight, and Sylvie applauds. ‘That’s brilliant,’ she says. ‘Did you just make it up?’

  John shrugs modestly. ‘Always could do rhymes, mostly silly stuff. My missus don’t like it, mind, so I don’t do it much. Can’t do serious ones. Anyway, lad,’ (and here he pats his thighs as if encouraging them into motion) ‘I’m goin’ to plant up the strawberry runners for the greenhouse, and then I’m goin’ to prune the climbers. When you’ve done the diggin’, you can net the pond to keep out the leaves, all right?’

  Sylvie suddenly recalls. ‘My mum says, can we have the windfalls to make scrumpy with?’

  ‘Course she can,’ says John, and Sylvie stays in the shed while the men go out and toil. Sylvie is breaking off her split ends and talking to George. ‘My God, I’m such a skiver, I’m terrible, really I am. Maybe I should have been a gardener instead of a stable girl and then I wouldn’t have a conscience about being in here. The truth is, George, I just like being in here because it’s where Alan sometimes is. That’s the chair where his bum goes, and I can sneak a look in his dinner box, and he’s having honey sandwiches
again, that he made himself. And his shoes down in the corner, all abandoned and lonely-looking. Do you think I’m stupid, George? I do. I wish I wasn’t so stupid. I mean, sometimes I look at myself in the mirror, like when I’m combing my hair, and suddenly I get a little shock. I think, “Sylvie, you’re so ignorant, you just don’t know anything, and all you think about is horses and saddle sores and bridles and martingales, and you’re nineteen years old, and life is just beginning, really.” And I just know that there’s a great mountain of life out there somewhere, but I don’t know where it is and I don’t know how to climb it.’ Sylvie goes to the window, whose glass is encrusted with lichen, and she looks at it rather than through it, leaning on the bench, always talking to George. ‘I get this feeling sometimes when I’m up on one of the horses, and it’s just after dawn, and the mist is lifting up from the grass, and the daddy-long-legs are like little helicopters, and I’m galloping the horse in all that chilliness, and the steam rises up from the horse’s neck, and I feel as though I’m flowing and flying, and the horse knows what I’m thinking, and I know what the horse is thinking. His mind is all full of alertness and interest, and there’s really nothing in there at all except happiness. Happiness about being a horse, and doing horsey things, like just galloping, and making the world roll underneath you, and looking forward to a bag of pony nuts. And for a few moments I know what it’s like to have perfect pleasure, and I feel so happy with the horse’s happiness that it makes me want to cry, and the horse’s hooves are thudding on the turf with a sound as if the earth is hollow, and the leather’s creaking, and there’s the musty smell of the horse’s sweat, and the horse is nodding its head up and down with the motion of galloping, and I think, “Yes, this is it, this is it, this is what it’s all about.” And then the moment’s over, and I’m just me again, and I’ve lost all that exhilaration and I don’t know when it’ll come back, and I feel stupid and silly.’ Sylvie picks up one of Alan’s shoes, noting the shape that is the ghost of his foot, and says, ‘I always wanted to count for something, and I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I’ll even be happy. ’Spose I’d better go and do some mucking out.’ She puts the shoe down, and shakes her head. ‘My God, look at me. When I’m not talking to a horse, I’m talking to a bleeding spider.’ The door scrapes as she leaves, and she says to George, ‘See you anyway.’