On the Pride of Bethlehem you had sheet steel, with anything from candy-bars to chapbooks and dime novels making up the ballast. By then, the United States was turning out more steel than Britain was, so that it meant as they could sell it cheaper, even with the cost of shipping it across. Besides, on the way back what they’d be bringing home was wool from Wales, so that the owners saw a handsome profit both ways on the journey. When he’d not been either hard at work or sicking up, Henry had passed his time in reading Wild West tales on the already-yellowed pages of pamphlets intended for the five-and-ten. Buffalo Bill had been the hero in a number of the stories, shooting outlaws and protecting wagon trains from renegades, when all he ever did was play the big clown in his travelling circus. William Cody. If there’d ever been a man more fit to be a stone face with just chimneys blowing hot air for companionship, then Henry didn’t know of him.
Black fields what had but lately had they stubble burned was on his right now, as he knew belonged to Grange Farm, just ahead. The white birds hopping from one scorched rut to another Henry thought was gulls, although these parts was just about as distant from the sea as you could get in England. Up ahead of him the road forked into two, where what they called Northampton Road branched off towards the village square of Denton. Denton was a nice place, but there weren’t much in the way of pickings. It was best if Henry only went there once or maybe twice a year, to make it worth his while, and he stuck on the right-hand track now so that he could skirt the village to its south and carry on for Yardley – Yardley Hastings what they called it. He was just past Denton when he cycled through a rain shower was so small that he was in one side of it and out the other without feeling more than one or two spots on his brow. The clouds above him had a couple towers of smooth grey marble floating in amongst the white now, but the sky was mostly a clear blue and Henry doubted if the downpour would amount to anything.
Way off on Henry’s left he could make out the darker patchwork of the woods round Castle Ashby. He’d been out there one time when he’d met a local feller couldn’t wait to tell him all about the place, how back in ancient London when they’d wanted two wood giants to stand outside they city gates, what was called Gog and Magog, it was Castle Ashby where they’d got the trees. The man was proud of where he lived and all its history, how a lot of folks round here was. He’d told Henry how he thought this county was a holy place, and that’s how come that London wanted trees from here. Henry weren’t sure about Northampton’s holiness, not back then and not now, not even after hearing what he had about the Reverend Newton and “Amazing Grace”. It seemed like it was someway special sure enough, though holy weren’t a word what Henry would have used. For one thing, holiness, as Henry saw it, it was a mite cleaner than what Scarletwell Street was. But on the other hand, he’d thought the feller had been right, too, in a way: if there was anything about this place was holy, then it likely was the trees.
Henry remembered when he’d first arrived with his new wife in these parts and the tree what they’d seen then, after he’d been in Britain no more than six months. When he’d come off the ship in Cardiff and decided there weren’t no way he could face another sea voyage home, he’d got himself a lodging at a place called Tiger Bay what had some coloured people living there. That hadn’t been what Henry wanted, though. That was too much like it had ended up in Kansas, with the coloured folks all in one district what was let to fall in pieces until Kansas was too much like Tennessee. Yes, he liked his own people good enough, but not when they was kept away from other folks like they was in a gosh-darned zoo. Henry had struck out for mid-Wales on foot, and it was on the way there that he’d met Selina in a place, Abergavenny, what was on the River Usk. The way they’d fell in love and then got married was that quick it made his head spin, thinking of it. That, and how they’d right away gone up to Builth Wells, for the droving. First thing Henry knowed he’d been wed to a pretty white girl half his age, lying beside her underneath a stretched out piece of canvas while the hundred thousand sheep what they was helping herd to England cried and shuffled in the night outside. They’d been upon the road for near as long as it had took the Pride of Bethlehem to get to Britain, but then at the end of it they’d come across what he knew now was Spencer Bridge, then up Crane Hill and Grafton Street to Sheep Street, which was where they’d seen the tree.
Henry had waded through the herd that milled about there in the wide street, meeting the head drover at the gates of what they called Saint Sepulchre’s, which was the oldest and the darnedest church he’d ever seen. The boss had given him his ticket and told Henry he should take it to a place they called the Welsh House in the market square, where Henry would be give his wages. Him and his Selina had set off up Sheep Street for the centre of the town, and it was in an open yard off on they right there that the tree was standing: a giant beech so big and old that they could only stop and marvel at it, even with the ticket for his pay burning a hole in Henry’s pants like it was doing. It was that far round, the tree, it would have taken four or five men easy to link up they hands about it, and he’d later heard how it was seven hundred year or more in age. You thought about a tree as old as that one looked, you couldn’t help but think of all what it had seen, all what had happened round it in its time. The horseback knights they used to have, and all them battles like in England’s Civil War, which had took place a powerful while before America’s. You couldn’t stand there staring like him and Selina had without you started wondering where every mark and scar had come from, whether it was from a pike or maybe from a musket ball. They’d only looked at it a while, and then they’d picked up Henry’s pay before they poked around the town and found they place in Scarletwell, what had its own amazing sights, but he believed that tree had played as big a part in Henry and Selina thinking they should settle here as any practical consideration. There was something in it made the town seem solid and deep-rooted. And there weren’t nobody hanging from it.
It was coming on for some while after two he got to Yardley. He went up the first turn on his left, called the Northampton Road just like in Denton, up into the village square, there where they had the school. It was a pretty building what had butter-colour stones and a nice archway leading to its play-yard, and he could see children through a downstairs window busy with they lessons, painting onto sheets of butcher’s paper at a long wood table. Henry’s business what he had was with the caretaker, so he pulled up his bicycle across the street from the main schoolhouse, near where this caretaker lived. It was a feller Henry had a good few years on, although he’d had the misfortune to lose nearly all his hair so he looked older than what Henry was. He answered Henry’s knock but didn’t ask him in, although he’d got a bag of things he’d saved what he brung through out on the step and said as they was Henry’s if he wanted them. There was two empty picture frames made Henry wonder what was in them once, a pair of old shoes and some pants made out of corduroy ripped down they backside so that they was near in half. He thanked the caretaker politely, putting it all in his cart alongside what he’d picked up from Great Houghton, and was just about to shake hands and be back upon his way when it occurred to him that he should ask how far it was to Olney.
“Olney? Well, you’re nearly there.”
The caretaker wiped dust from off the picture-frames onto his overall, then pointed back across the village square towards they left.
“See Little Street there? What you want to do is go down that onto the High Street where it takes you back onto the Bedford Road. Keep on it out of Yardley, and you’ll not go far before you reach a lane that drops off from the main road to your right. You get on that, what’s called the Yardley Road, it’s all downhill to Olney. I should say it’s three mile there and five mile back, considering how steep it is.”
That didn’t sound too far at all, not seeing how he’d made such good time getting out here. Henry was appreciative of the directions and said how he’d see the caretaker again ’fore Christmas while he climbed back on h
is bicycle. The two of them said they goodbyes and then he stood hard on his pedals and was sailing off down Little Street between the women stood outside its shops and such, dark bundles topped by bonnets, rustling across gold sidewalks through the afternoon.
He turned right onto High Street and it took him back down on the Bedford Road, just like the caretaker had said. He went out of the village past the Red Lion public house what they had near the turn there, where farm workers who was coming in already off the fields with mighty thirsts looked at him silently as he went by. That could have been his rope tyres what he had, though, and not nothing was related to his skin at all. It tickled Henry how folks here with all they clever ways of building walls and tying hedges and all that, how they all acted like rope on a feller’s wheel-rims was the most outlandish thing they ever seen. He might as well have had trained rattlesnakes instead of tyres, to hear folks going on about it. All it was, it was a trick he’d seen some other coloured fellers use in Kansas. Rope was cheaper, didn’t wear like rubber did or else get punctured, and it suited Henry fine. Weren’t any more to it than that.
Across the Bedford Road right opposite the High Street turn, the land all dropped away, and where the river tributary did too there was a waterfall. The spray what got flung up from this caught in the slanted light and made a rainbow, just a little one hung in the air, whose colours was so pale that they kept fading in and out of sight. He turned left on the main road and rode on about a quarter mile from Yardley, where he found the steep lane running down upon his right what had a sign said Olney, only saying it was steep weren’t doing it no justice. He flew down it like the wind, sending up glassy sheets of water where he couldn’t help but splash through puddles, such as on the soft ground near a third of the way down where there was ponds with gnats in a mean vapour hanging over ’em. Speed he was going at, it didn’t seem five minutes before he could see the village rooftops down the way ahead of him. He let his brake-blocks skim the dirt road, slowing down a little at a time so that he didn’t have no accidents before he’d gotten where he wanted. Back of Henry’s mind there was the thought that it was going to be an effort getting up this hill again, but he put that aside in favour of the great adventure he was shooting into like a bottle rocket, with his rope tyres sizzling in the dried-out cowpats.
Olney, when he got to it, was bigger than he’d thought it would be. Only thing he saw looked likely it might be a church spire was off down the other end of town, so that’s what Henry headed for. All of the people what he passed by on the street was staring at him, since he hadn’t come this way before and was no doubt to they mind a ferocious novelty. He kept his head down, looking at the cobbles what he pedalled over, being careful not to give offence. The streets was quiet, without much horse-traffic that afternoon as he could see, so that he was embarrassed by the noise his cart was making when it thundered on the stones in back of him. He looked up once and caught a glimpse of his reflection, racing by across the window of an ironmonger’s shop, a black man with white hair and beard upon a strange machine who passed through all the pots and pans hung on display like he was no more solid than a ghost.
When in the end he reached the church, though, it was worth it. Way down on the bottom edge of Olney, with the Great Ouse River and its lakes spread to the south it was a towering and inspiring sight. It being Friday it weren’t open, naturally, so Henry propped his bicycle against a tree and walked around the building once or twice, admiring its high windows with they old stained glass and squinting up towards that spire, what was so high he’d seen it from the village’s far end. The clock that was up on the tower there said as it was getting on for half-past three, or ‘five-and-twenny arter’ like they said on Scarletwell. He reckoned he could look around here for a while and still be home before it got too dark out and Selina started worrying.
He guessed that he was kind of disappointed there weren’t nothing on the church what told of Pastor Newton or “Amazing Grace”. It was just Henry’s foolish notion of how folks in England done things, he was sure, but he’d expected they might have a statue of the man or something, maybe standing with his quill pen in his hand. Instead, there wasn’t nothing. There weren’t even a bad likeness hung up near a chimney. Right across the street, though, Henry saw there was a graveyard. While he didn’t know if Pastor Newton had been buried here as well, he thought there was at least a chance and so he crossed the road and went into the cemetery by its top gate, off from a little path ran down beside a green. Things jumped and scuffled in the long grass near his feet, and just like in the Boroughs he weren’t sure if it was rats or rabbits, but he didn’t care much for it either way.
Excepting Henry and the village dead the churchyard seemed about deserted. It surprised him, then, when he turned round a corner in the paths what led between the headstones, right by where there was an angel what had half its nose and jaw gone like a veteran from some war, and kneeling there beside a grave to pull the weeds up from it was a stout man in his waistcoat and his shirtsleeves, got a flat cap on his silver head. He looked up, more surprised by seeing Henry than what Henry was by seeing him. He was an old man, Henry realised, older than himself and maybe close to seventy. He was still sturdy, though, with great white mutton chops to each side of a face sent red by sun. Below his cap’s brim he had small wire spectacles perched on his nose-end, what he pushed up so that he could take a better look at Henry.
“Good Lord, boy, you made me jump. I thought it was Old Nick who’d come to get me. I’ve not seen you round these parts before, now, have I? Let me get a look at yer.”
The man climbed to his feet with difficulty from the graveside, Henry offering a hand what the old feller gratefully accepted. When he was stood up he was around five and a half feet, and a little shorter than what Henry was. He’d got blue eyes what twinkled through the lenses of his spectacles when he looked Henry over, beaming like he was delighted.
“Well, now, you look like a decent chap. What’s brought you here to Olney, then, if you don’t mind me asking? Were you looking for somebody buried here?”
Henry admitted that he was.
“I come from Scarletwell Street in Northampton, sir, where mostly I am called Black Charley. I was hearing just today about a reverend what once preached here in Olney, name of Newton. It seems like he was the man what wrote ‘Amazing Grace’, which is a song as I admire. I was just looking round the church across the way there, hoping for some sign of him, when it occurred to me as he might be at rest someplace nearby. If you’re acquainted with this cemetery, sir, I’d be obliged you could direct me to his grave.”
The older feller set his lips into a pushed-out frown and shook his head.
“No, bless your heart, he’s not here. I believe the Reverend Newton is in London at St. Mary Woolnoth’s, which is where he went when he left Olney. Here, I’ll tell you what, though. As it happens, I’m churchwarden here. Dan Tite, that’s me. I was just tidying the plots to give myself something to do, but I’d be happy to come back across the church with you and let you in so you could have a look. I’ve got the key here in my waistcoat pocket.”
He produced a big black iron key and held it up so Henry could inspect it. Sure enough, it was a key. Weren’t no disputing that. Out the same pocket, the churchwarden took a clay pipe and his pouch what had tobacco in. He filled the pipe and lit it with a match while they was walking back towards the gates, so a sweet coconut and wood smell drifted out behind them through the yew trees and the tombs. Dan Tite puffed hard on its clay stem ’til he was sure the pipe was going good enough, and then resumed his talk with Henry.
“What’s that accent that you’ve got, then? Can’t say as I’ve heard its like before.”
He nodded while Dan closed the gate behind them and they started up the footpath back to Church Street. He could see the movements in the grass was rabbits now, they noses poking in and out of all the holes was dug into the green and all they ears like babies’ slippers left out in the dew.
> “No, sir, I don’t expect you would have done. I come here from America just twelve or thirteen years back now. It was in Tennessee where I was born, then after that I lived in Kansas for a time. To me, it sounds like I talk pretty much the same as folks around Northampton now, although my wife and childrens, they say as I don’t.”
The old churchwarden laughed. They were just walking back across the cobbled lane towards the church, where Henry’s bike and cart was propped against a tree.
“You want to listen to ’em, then. They’re right. That voice you’ve got, that don’t sound nothing like Northampton, and to my mind it’s the better for it. They’re some blessed lazy talkers, them round there. Don’t bother with the letters on the ends of words or even most of ’em what’s in the middle, so it all comes out like mush.”
The warden took a pause here, halfway up the path towards the big church door, and pushed his glasses back where they’d slipped down again so’s he could study Henry’s bicycle and barrow what it drug behind it, leaned up on that poplar there. He looked from the machine to Henry and then back again, then he just shook his head and went on to unlock the door so they could go inside.