CHAPTER 10
After a hefty downward press of his boot, Merton swung back the fork and lifted an abundant root of potatoes, shook them vigorously to the soil, then cast the useless tops aside for Brian to load on the small red barrow.
Brian didn’t yet know how hard he worked, was enjoying himself, having been in the garden since breakfast, unplugging weeds and nettles and gathering broad beans for one o’clock dinner. He pronged up potato-tops in Merton’s wake with his own quick-working fork, piled them high on the barrow, then fixed himself into the shafts — like a pit pony, as Merton said. He ran a sleeve across his forehead, brought it down mucky with sweat and a couple of squashed thunder-flies. The hot days had lasted a long time, making his face red, then brown, below his close-cropped threp’nny haircut whose front scrag-ends dipped over, turning his normally high Seaton brow into a lower Merton one and falling almost to his angled blue eyes.
With dug-in heels the barrow was heaved from a self-made rut, drawn between flowers and marrow patch towards a dumping ground by Welltop Hill. A series of lorry-like manœuvres sent the wheels climbing a mount of weeds and heads already brown from the sun. Every weekend Merton started a fire under them with a sheet of newspaper, and Brian stood back with him while flame and grey smoke rose, then returned to see the circle of black ash at dusk. He charged like Ben-Hur back to the garden, taking corners at full speed and axle-catching the gatepost as he went by, to see that his grandfather had scattered more tops and carried several buckets of potatoes into the arbour-shed.
Merton leaned on his fork to watch Brian fix another load on to the barrow. He liked to have Vera’s lad with him, working strenuously yet not breathing hard, thrusting the fork under a load of refuse and testing its weight to make sure it wasn’t too heavy before swinging it on to the barrow. Each sure movement was recognized as an unconscious work-rhythm that he, with his oft-lotioned back, was beginning to lose.
He smiled widely at Brian, who did not know he was observed, admiring him for a good worker, a quality that made him fond of anyone. Yet he recollected him in the kitchen at evenings, head down over a book or pencilling an imaginary map, pastimes he couldn’t reconcile with the innate good sense of toil exhibited by the Brian now before him. It was an amusing combination that did no harm, and he didn’t suppose it could, as his grandson in yellow shirt, short trousers, and burst plimsolls loaded more weeds and potato-tops.
“Come on, Nimrod,” he called, standing erect and shouldering the fork, “stop doin’ that for a bit, and we’ll go and cut some rhubarb. ’Appen yer gra’ma’ll mek you some custard wi’t for your tea.”
After dinner he was equipped with brush and scraper to clean out the pigeon hut, a job he didn’t like but accepted because — apart from it pleasing his grandfather — he’d been promised a penny at the end of the day. A scraper-blade in his teeth, he crawled through the low opening and out of sunlight. Letting the scraper fall, he used his mouth for breath after the first force of the smell brought water from his eyes. Gradually he was able to see and move about, pushed his scraper along half-rotten boards, heaping excrement and feathers towards the far wall. He gave up trying not to dirty his clothes, and sat down whenever he felt tired. Working open-mouthed from corner to corner, he isolated the large central patch; then he cut lanes through it and gradually enlarged the island of clean-scraped board in the middle, until only a broken perimeter of filth remained. When this vanished he pushed the scrapings from the door with a dustpan dragged in from outside by his muscular sleeve-rolled arm.
On Sunday afternoon the Arlingtons and Lakers trooped out of their woodside cottages and came over the Cherry Orchard, passing the Nook on their way to Sunday school. Brian leaned over the fence, sleepy from an excess of dinner, waving and calling out. When they returned at five o’clock he would join them as far as the end of the Cherry Orchard, hearing talk about what the teacher had read from the Bible. He couldn’t understand why they went to school on Sunday, when five days a week was more than plenty for him. Besides, there seemed something shameful about going to church or Sunday school, a place you went to only if you were a sissie, or if you were posh. His grandmother said he should go. “Why do people go to Sunday school?” he demanded in a tone of contempt.
“To worship God,” she told him. “Besides, if you’re a good lad and go every week the teacher’ll gi’ you a book.” Even this didn’t shake his obstinacy. It was a rainy afternoon and he sat in the kitchen, competing for some hearthrug with the cat. Merton had shed his best boots and gone up to bed, leaving his wife to make bread and cake at the table. A saturating drizzle sent water down drainpipes and splashing into waterbutts, and the obliterated landscape edged the whole house slowly to sleep. Even the pigs left off grunting; the dog dozed in its kennel, and the silent cocks were petrified on their perches. Only the rain had energy, suddenly pitting at the windows. “Why do we have to worship God?” he asked in the same tone.
“So that He’ll love you.”
“What does it matter if God loves us?”
“Because if He does,” she catechized, “you’ll grow up strong and wain’t ever come to harm.”
“I don’t want God to love me,” he said.
“Ay,” she ended it slowly, “you don’t now, but you might some day.” He stood up and walked into the parlour.
The first light after the ending rain would be seen from there, and while waiting for it he put “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” softly on the gramophone. He looked at the picture above the mantelshelf. “If you love me as I love you, nothing will ever part us two.” He used to think the boy and girl were his grandparents when they were young, but now it looked as if the girl with the auburn hair could be Brenda Arlington in a few years’ time, and as if he might grow into the youth who was trying to give her a bunch of flowers. But not likely. They didn’t live in his world, had no connection with his brain just vacated by “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” were people who lived beyond his boundaries of school and tips and house and Nook and the swivel-eyed dole-packet that kept him alive and kicking. And while he gave his brain over again to the green-hearted spinning rhythmical record, the sky grew lighter, and beyond the window huge clouds were marshalled away like obsolete continents by the wind, and the sun like a drowned rat asserted itself over green and dripping fields.
Like the sun, the dog dragged its chain and came out of the kennel, and cockerels were letting it rip from behind their high wire. Mary took bread and cakes from the oven, and went out with a shovel for coal before the fire went too low. Merton pulled on his shoes and fed the grunting pigs. Brian sat down with them to salmon and cucumber and lettuce, rhubarb and custard, and jam pasty.
Merton said one morning: “They’re comin’ to mow the field nex’ week.” Blue flowers lay around the hedges, and corn was ready for cutting. The weather was dry and hot, and Brian had stayed at the Nook the whole five-week holiday.
“Are you gooin’ to ’elp lik yer did last year?” he asked, having seen him, tall, strong, wielding a long scythe, the high corn falling heap on heap in front. Merton’s white-spotted handkerchief wiped tea from his mouth. “Nay, Nimrod, I shan’t. Not this year. They’ll cut it wi’ a machine and when it’s finished all they ’ave to do is pick up the stooks an’ stak ’em, then wait for ’osses to cum an’ tek it away.”