Judgment Day

  Clare lit a cigarette. Watched Sydney and Keith Bryan talk, saw Sydney's gesture in the direction of her house, sensed his distaste for the man, noted the renewed vigor of his sweeping. Watched Keith Bryan cross the Green, approach her own front gate.

  She opened the door. “Well, well. We meet again.”

  “Eh?”

  Agreeable, to see the jaw drop (they do, at least not so much a drop as a sideways shunt}. Interesting, the visible process of a man first nonplussed, then shocked into remembrance, then massively disconcerted.

  “We meet,” said Clare, “again. My car, fortunately, is not around at present. How's yours? Which I so vividly recall.”

  He looked slantwise over her shoulder, licked his lips. “Look, it was all a bit of a mess-up, that. You caught me on a bad day. I didn't know you lived in Laddenham, either.”

  “That would have made a difference?”

  “You know how it is, you get a run of things going wrong, someone needles you…”

  “Oh, quite,” she agreed. “And naturally you feel the urge to pass it on.”

  He shifted his gaze over the other shoulder, sullen now. “Look, no hard feelings? Sorry about it. You had a point.”

  She beamed. “I did indeed. And now, I take it, you've come for a word with your son.”

  “That's right.” He was all confidence and confidentiality; matey, back on his feet. “The thing is, I've got to take off up north for a week or two—business assignment that's cropped up. Truth to tell, it may last longer than that, there's chat about a promotion, between you and me. So with Shirley having to pop up to town to see her sister, old Sydney Porter next door's been keeping an eye on the boy, apparently. And he told me he was over here with your two, so I thought I'd just look in and tell him goodbye in case I do stop up in Liverpool for a while.”

  She held the door open. “You'll find him in the garden,” she said coldly. “Down those steps.”

  When he returned she was in the sitting room. He put his head round the door. “Cheers. I'll be off now. Too bad about your smash, by the way—I hear you never made the Air Show.”

  “Martin,” she said, “had been looking forward to going to it with you.”

  “Ah. Yes. Pity about that. It wasn't on, as things turned out.” He glanced round the room. “These older houses look quite good when they're done up, don't they? Not a bad investment. Personally I prefer a modern development like we're in but I must say you've made something of this.”

  She stared at him.

  “Yes, well, I'll be off then, as I said. Cheers.”

  She watched the Capri drive off and went out into the garden. “Listen, I'm going over to the church to see about the lighting for the pageant. You can stay here if you're sensible. Martin—you're in charge, as eldest. See they don't do anything silly.”

  He nodded, pleased.

  “I'll be back in half an hour or so.”

  Crossing the Green, she thought it odd that she was finding this whole ridiculous pageant business stimulating. Her own role had become that of practical woman and entrepreneur—negotiating with electricians about how to provide spot lighting for the various features of a building only minimally equipped with electricity, tracking down and sorting out renters of costumes, synchronizing the activities of others. The actual devising and production of the dramatic episodes had been handed over to a local lady with pretensions in the world of amateur theatricals. Casting sessions had already been held; enthusiasm had been gratifyingly—and perhaps surprisingly—high. There was competition for starring roles, and offense taken. There were complaints about the paucity of good female parts. Miss Bellingham, with satisfaction, pointed out that she had already said it was the wrong kind of history to have chosen; “Elizabethan, or Restoration, and you could have had maids of honor and dancing and the little girls in pretty frocks. But of course Mrs. Paling and Mr. Porter were set on the depressing side of things.” Clare retorted tersely that history had this tendency to be both male-dominated and short on happy endings. Miss Bellingham, with a sniff, turned her attention to promoting discord between rival contestants for the part of the Cromwellian colonel responsible for the Leveller executions. The successful candidate in the end, aptly perhaps, was a local butcher. In a determined attempt to introduce a feminine interest he had been provided with a historically unauthentic wife pleading for clemency, a role undertaken with panache by the barmaid from the Crossed Keys, a popular piece of casting. The parts of the three Levellers were won by a young master from the primary school, the dentist, and the newsagent's son. Enthusiasm to play the nineteenth-century landowner against whom the Swing riots were directed rather hung fire until the splendors of the costume were pointed out: then, after brisk competition, the part went to Ray Turnbull, proprietor of the hairdressing salon in the High Street, Giuseppe of Rome.

  The committee, naively perhaps, had had the notion that it might add piquancy to the event to have the rioters played by actual descendants of the transported men, if such could be found. George, familiar with the parish register, pointed out that in two instances the names were still around: a Karen Binns had married only last year, a Wayne Lacy had been christened at Easter. But no one auditioning for the parts claimed or indeed would own to descent. It was Mrs. Tanner who remarked succinctly that you couldn't expect them to, could you? This comment had been reported to Clare, who, disturbed, had taken the subject up with her, standing on the pavement outside the vicarage. The point is, she explained, that yes, they were technically criminals, but nobody feels that nowadays; today people feel they were entirely justified, they were more or less starving, sympathies have swung in quite the other direction, it's an ancestry to be proud of, I'd have thought. Mrs. Tanner, staring at her as though at an evangelical preacher of some feckless sect, remarked with unswerving cynicism that there was no smoke without fire, and you couldn't expect people to do other than keep quiet about something like that.

  Clare's visit to the church this morning was to check on numbers and positioning of spotlights before inviting estimates from a couple of local firms. She stood in the aisle, holding a clipboard and a rough plan, making notes, and trying to work out distances. Dust tumbled in shafts of sunlight; a stone mask of entirely pagan inspiration grinned down from a capital; the mythology of two thousand years glowed from the nave windows. And furthermore, she thought, ridiculous as it may be, I am more than happy to do my bit for such a place. Prop it up for a while longer. Entirely, of course, according to my own unbelieving lights. A double spot above that pillar, to cover the pulpit and the Doom painting, singles each side of the nave, one in the chancel for the altar…

  George Radwell's voice made her jump. “What? I didn't realize there was anyone there.”

  “I said, anything I can do to help?”

  “No, no. I'm fine.” She wished he wouldn't stand right by her like that, breathing. Admittedly, people have to breathe.

  “Good of you,” he said, “to get so involved.”

  “Not at all. I'm enjoying it.”

  He padded behind her. “Not being a churchgoer yourself.”

  “I've got a feeling,” she said, “we've had this conversation before. Perhaps you'd just hold the end of the measure for a minute. Does it matter if I stand on the pew?”

  Her breasts, thus, were at eye level, less than an arm's reach away. The shirt thing, as she stretched upward, came out of the waist of the skirt, leaving a strip of bare skin. She looked down; he stepped back.

  “Please don't bother. I can quite well do this on my own. I'm sure you're busy.”

  She made him think of gooseberries. When he was a child he had never known if he loved them or hated them; that acid compelling taste, the way they furred your mouth. He didn't know if he wanted to hit her or grab her. She was sitting now, scribbling on her pad; he was dismissed.

  What's wrong with the man? she thought. Trailing around, when he can't stand me.

  “No after effects I hope?” he said. “The accid
ent.”

  “Absolutely none, thanks.”

  “It shakes you up a bit.”

  “It does indeed.”

  “Some people might feel like offering up a prayer.”

  “I daresay they might.”

  He had had another of those dreams about her, the night before. The same sort of stuff: knickers and writhings and then suddenly she'd just got up and walked off. Laughing.

  He had a rush of blood to the head. “I don't see how you people explain that kind of thing. A deliverance of that kind.”

  “It doesn't seem to me,” she said, “to require explanation.”

  “The world isn't that haphazard.”

  “Some people feel it is precisely that.” She got up, determinedly. Please, she thought, don't go on. The awful thing is that I realize now, and you are not dreadful, but sad. Please stop.

  He crashed on, booming in the silence. “The hand of God…”

  She stood still. “Mr. Radwell. George. If the hand of God twitched my car out of the way of that lorry yesterday, then it also threw an aeroplane on top of six other people including a three-year-old child and a pregnant woman. If there is someone around who does things like that, then I want no part of whoever or whatever he, she, or it may be.”

  George?

  “I believe,” she said, “insofar as I believe anything, that we are quite fortuitously here, and that the world is a cruel and terrible place, but inexplicably and bewilderingly beautiful.”

  George.

  “And I believe that people are capable of great good and great evil, and ought to be good. And I believe that the capacity for love is the greatest we have. Every land of love. Kindness or charity or tolerance or whatever you care to call it.”

  “You sound like a Christian.”

  “Oh no. Because I believe that when we die we die and that is that. And I also believe in language.”

  Sydney Porter came into the church and saw the vicar and Mrs. Paling at the far end. They were standing face to face and for a moment he thought they were having some sort of an argument. Mrs. Paling made a remark he didn't catch, and then the vicar snorted that silly laugh of his and said something about Christian and then Mrs. Paling spoke again and then they just stood there as though they'd got to stalemate. Sydney, embarrassed, cleared his throat; he didn't want to be a witness to anything that might be better not witnessed, nor did he want to get drawn into any kind of discussion of religious things, if that was what they were talking about. He hadn't thought Mrs. Paling a religious person, though, and Radwell wasn't given to talk of that kind except in the line of duty, as it were, confirmation classes and sermons, and his sermons weren't what you might call particularly theological.

  They heard him and turned round and he saw now that the vicar was very red in the face and Mrs. Paling looked put out. But she pulled herself together quickly and began talking about the electrical problems, and presently the vicar muttered something about things to see to and went away. Mrs. Paling then asked about Martin and if he'd seemed upset by the accident at all, and referred to his father turning up just now. She didn't care for him, that much was obvious.

  “He could always sleep over with us, you know. He and Tom seem to be very thick at the moment.”

  “No need,” said Sydney quickly. “It's no bother.”

  Mrs. Paling looked at him and nodded. “Fine, I'd better get back.”

  Sydney tidied up the vestry and did a round of the churchyard, removing three Coke cans and some crisp packets. It was hot and sunny and there were wild flowers in the rim of long grass around the untended graves at one side—the older gravestones whose inscriptions were nearly indecipherable. A pink climbing rose showered down the wall. Butterflies danced above the buddleia in the corner. It would have been a pleasant place for a nice sit-down on a bench with the newspaper; there was something companionable, cozy, even, in the carved names all about. But once he had come in the early morning in winter during a heavy snowfall and it had seemed a place of the utmost desolation. He had stood just here, by the lych-gate, with the tombstones in front of him, ranks of blunt shapes capped, each, with white, the snow thick underfoot and falling still, unstoppable, part of the inevitability of things, shrouding all trace of life, no footsteps, no sounds. And the tombstones had been like observant presences, gaunt and waiting; he had felt as though he were faced by the dead themselves, as though he alone stood warm in a cold world, as though he were watched and warned. And for a few minutes he had experienced loneliness as seldom before—as seldom since those weeks and months in 1941—he who rarely sought company, who could manage nicely on his own.

  Back in the house, he took from the fridge a packet of frozen beefburgers and studied the cooking instructions with a mixture of perplexity and suspicion. The boy had said they were his favorite thing. He consigned them to the frying pan and put another pan on for chips. Peas from the garden were already prepared and ready to cook, and carrots too, plenty of good fresh veg might get him looking a bit less pasty.

  Sydney set the table: knives and forks, spoon for the boy's ice cream, bottle of this Corona stuff he fancied. The beefburgers sizzled promisingly; there was a good smell of minty peas. In the normal way of things he wouldn't bother so much about a hot meal in the middle of the day, but a growing lad needed it. He put a couple of plates under the grill to warm, checked the table, looked out of the window and saw Martin crossing the Green; it would all be nicely ready as he came in.

  Chapter Ten

  She had new clothes on and she'd done something funny to her hair, it had streaks in it and looked tidier. She'd brought him a model aircraft kit and a Blue Peter annual.

  She kept on about Dad. When had he come? Did he go in the house? What did he say? There was an edge to her voice; she didn't say “Dad,” she just kept talking about “him.” Martin felt as though he were in some dark room with murky shapes you couldn't quite make out, presences you'd rather not know about. It was worse than lying in bed hearing them shouting at each other. He said, “What's wrong, Mum? Why's Dad gone away? He will come back, won't he?” She went upstairs and when he followed her she snapped at him not to trail around after her, it got on her nerves. Later, from the garden, he looked toward the house and saw her face at the window, and it was all screwed up and red, as though she were crying. But she couldn't be, grown-ups don't cry. After a while he climbed over the fence to Mr. Porter's and played in the shed that Mr. Porter had cleared out for him. Mr. Porter was going to put some shelves up when he could get hold of some wood, so he could set up his models there. Mr. Porter said maybe there'd be a bit more space than back in his own room. It was true, there would. Actually, Martin realized, Mr. Porter hadn't ever seen his room, he'd never been into their house, which was funny since he'd always lived next door. Martin didn't think he'd want him to, in fact; it would be embarrassing, somehow.

  The house was all right again now she was back, it didn't lurk any more, it hadn't that frightening empty feeling. In the evening, when they were watching telly he said, “You aren't going to go away again, are you, Mum?” She was eating a chocolate (she was always eating chocolates, since she came back, she kept saying, “Christ, I'll get so fat,” and then she'd reach for another}. She didn't answer for a minute and then she said I dunno, maybe, I've not thought really, maybe we might go for a holiday in Spain with Auntie Judy, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? “And Dad?” he said. “When Dad comes back, d'you mean?” She didn't answer. Have a choc, she said, holding out the box, go on, before I hog them all.

  School would start again tomorrow. He didn't suppose he and Tom Paling would be friends at school, you couldn't really, with Tom only being seven and a half. But he hoped they'd go on playing at home, it was better than being on his own. The Palings' house was funny: it was all bright and light and Mrs. Paling sang when she was doing the washing-up, songs he'd never heard of, not pop, peculiar songs. And she talked to Anna and Tom—and him, come to that—in a funny way, as though they mattered,
as though they weren't just children. He wasn't sure if it was embarrassing or nice.

  * * *

  Sydney washed up the breakfast things: one bowl, one plate, one cup and saucer, spoon, knife, teaspoon, teapot. He saw Martin go past, heading for school; he saw the Paling children scurry across the Green; he saw Sue Coggan pausing to adjust a daughter's drooping sock. He swept the kitchen floor, ran the vacuum over the hall and the lounge. Then, it being overcast but fine, he went out into the garden: carrots to be thinned, hoeing, some rough edges that needed a going-over.

  Halfway through the morning Shirley Bryan appeared at the fence. “Thanks ever so much for keeping an eye on Martin.”

  Sydney inclined his head. “That's all right.”

  “No, I mean it, it was really kind. It took a weight off my mind, I can tell you.”

  Sydney made a vicious stab with the edge-trimmer.

  “I said to my sister, well, one thing, I don't have to worry about Martin, with Mr. Porter being so kind. He'll be all right.”

  Sydney, his back half-turned, shoveled loose earth and grass roots into the trug. He lined up the string against the edge and stabbed downward once more.

  “At that age,” said Shirley Bryan, “they don't take in a lot, do they? Just as well. I'm feeling a bit better in myself now, I'm sleeping all right and frankly if Keith walked in this minute I'd as likely give him a clip about the ear as burst into tears. My sister said, look, Shirley, face up to it, you've been at each other hammer and tongs for years now, this has been coming for a long time, let him go off with his fancy piece and good luck to him…”

  Sydney picked up the trug and began to walk down the path toward the compost heap.

  She moved along the fence parallel to him. “… Not that I see it quite that way, I suppose it's pride as much as anything. And if he thinks I'll go fifty-fifty on the house he's got another think coming. Anyway, the thing is, I'm a lot better in myself, my morale's up a lot”—she patted her hair, tweaked at her dress—“like Judy says, I've got my life in front of me, there's no point in sitting about weeping. And Judy's going off to Marbella on a fortnight's package with Rick, that's her boyfriend, and this other bloke, and they said why not come along, bring the kid too, it'll take you out of yourself.”