The Levels (13 page)

I felt ill on Friday. Friday. I remember Friday. When I told my mother I was going to Taunton, she wanted to come, and sat in the van with a bag on her lap. She wanted a tin of Poultry Spice, a powder with the smell of licorice, fed to chickens in their usual mash, one teaspoon for every ten fowls; in cold weather a little more may be given. I told her I could get it but she insisted. I could not stop her. She sat in the van the first chance she got, to keep out of the rain, while I washed up. The old man was in the front room counting raindrops, poking at the fire, with a pile of geographical magazines and a bottle of beer.

‘You be all right?' I said.

‘Get on! Don't get back till late.'

‘I can't promise.'

‘The quiet will be a change.'

I drove to Curry Rivel and over the hills to Taunton. The roads were empty. My mother didn't have the same passenger habits as the old man, she just sat there, staring ahead, her mouth shut and her hands holding each other so tight the knuckles turned white. Rain dripped in through the roof and fell on her head. She didn't wipe it off. She wanted to be dropped off outside Debenhams. I told her she couldn't, but that I'd park the car and walk her there. I did. She took my arm, turned up her collar, and said she'd buy a tea to warm herself up with. I lied when I said I had to see the saddlemaker about some hamper straps. I lied when I said I wanted to buy the old man a book about tropical fish. I lied when I said, ‘Goodbye.' I did not mean it. I would see her again. Some people do not lie when they say ‘goodbye'.

‘Billy, don't move the van.'

‘I wasn't going to.'

‘You move the van, I won't know where to find you.'

‘Mother! I've got one key. Here it is. You have it.'

‘Billy?'

‘You can use it to open the door.'

I walked through Taunton in the lull between the office workers going back to work after lunch, and the schoolkids getting out of school. Some drunks leant against a wall and asked me the time. I said I didn't know. They called me a fascist. I didn't know what they meant. I felt left out again. I got younger as I grew older. Soon, even the things I still knew would be sucked from my body. But I did not care. I would ignore society and see if it noticed.

Taunton. Taunton has an ancient history. Shopping is a big industry. Private schools are a big industry. Rich children stalk W. H. Smith's and shoplift. Car parks are important centres of activity. If they are not being parked in, driven out of or looked for, someone is building a new one or digging up an old. Small car parks are reserved for particular people in particular cars, residential roads for miles around are lined with cars whose owners don't carry change. Traffic flow analysis is a popular leisure activity. Sometimes, one-way streets are redesigned or even relocated, so a familiar row of houses might suddenly appear where they didn't seem to be before. My old man reckoned Taunton Council built themselves a nuclear fallout shelter with an outside loo.

Taunton. Taunton is also important on account of its connection with the Great Western Railway; Brunel's big one. Brunel believed the valley of the Isle suitable canal-building territory, but never made the impact there as he made in Taunton. Taunton, where Muriel leaves the county. Trains are unstoppable. Once someone's on a train there's no turning back. The last sight of them is the one that sticks. Stations weep goodbyes from every brick, girder and waiting room.

I stood on the platform and watched a gang of men carrying a sleeper in the rain. I bought a cup of tea and waited for the train. A pair of lovers, he with the suitcase, she with an umbrella, stood beneath an advertisement for holidays in London. She nibbled his ear, he pinched her bum, they laughed. I stared at a hoarding so long the letters didn't seem like letters at all. The train was late. It was twenty-five to three; but I had all afternoon. Mother could talk to the feed merchant for hours. She wanted to know why ferrous sulphate was the most important active ingredient in Poultry Spice. He would keep her happy. I would wait. I could buy another cup of tea. I smoked a cigarette. Some schoolboys threw sandwiches at each other. I remembered something Muriel had said. A Russian writer had died in a railway station waiting room. He had been the conscience of a nation and breathed his last in solitude. His beard had been a marvel, his eccentric ways a source of misunderstanding.

She didn't appear, I had miscalculated, she wasn't going to catch the train. Never mind, it had been a change of scenery. I hadn't lost out completely. I could walk back to the car and lie about the saddlemaker.

The rain poured. Groups of people huddled in doorways and stared at the weather. No breaks appeared in the cloud. It was set. They might as well get wet. They'd have to, eventually. Groups of people thrown together out of a desire for nothing more than dry conditions are doomed. I wanted to tell them, but didn't care.

I stood at the junction of Station Road and Priory Bridge Road, waiting for the lights to change. I watched a lorry, a bus, and as my shoes filled with water, Muriel appeared, driven by her mother, swung right, the lights changed, I turned round, watched as neither of them saw me, and ran back the way I'd come.

She was carrying her suitcase through the doors, past the booking office and up the stairs to the platform. Her mother held her arm, they were talking, laughed, found a porter and asked him to help with the luggage.

I found a ticket collector, ‘What time's the next train?'

‘Where to?'

‘London.'

‘Three thirty-five. Platform one.'

‘What's it now?'

‘Twenty past.'

I ran through the tunnel and up the stairs to platform two, and hid behind a chocolate machine, watching. A couple of days hadn't changed them. I was familiar with what Muriel was wearing. I had felt that material. She had treated me to many pleasures. Did she feel my presence? She looked down the line, said something to her mother, and went to the café. The station announcer said the train was coming. That was fair enough. It wasn't late. The railway provides jobs. I don't begrudge anyone working on them. People have families to support. They couldn't have known they were taking her away. Many goods travel by rail; I have sent baskets that way. I'd no quarrel with them. She was in the café. I would talk to her.

I went down the stairs and through the tunnel as the train arrived. It was deafening beneath the tracks. I ran up the other side, doors opened, people said hello, porters threw sacks of mail out of the guards van and directed other people to their carriages. It was a blur. I walked towards it. A man knocked into me but did not apologize. I had a long way to go. I stepped on a damp sandwich. I saw her. She handed her mother a cup. She picked up the suitcase, they kissed each other on the cheeks. I drew closer. I heard her say ‘I'll see you next week.'

‘Get the flat warm for me,' her mother said.

‘Sure.'

‘And don't forget to phone.'

‘No.'

‘Just in case.'

‘And remember what I said.'

‘What was that?'

Her voice hadn't changed. She smiled at her mother, they held hands and kissed again. I would have had one of them. She did not see me. I was almost next to her when she climbed on the train, swung the door shut, lowered the window, and hung her head out.

Her mother said, ‘Find yourself a seat.'

‘There's plenty.'

‘And don't talk to strange men.'

‘No.'

‘Or sit facing the wrong way.'

‘Mum?'

‘Yes?'

‘If you see Billy …' But behind me, a guard blew his whistle, the open doors were slammed shut, and I didn't hear what she said; I was pushed in the back by a late passenger, the train moved off.

I shouted, ‘Muriel!' But her mother was running alongside the carriage, holding the top of the open window, talking, her voice rising until she was shouting, but words I couldn't hear, words her mother replied to, until the train was too fast, and Muriel was on her own, waving in my direction, but not at me, though she would have seen me, just not recognized my face.

I followed Anne down the stairs, thought about going up and saying ‘hello', but it wouldn't have mattered anymore, to me, or her. She had a house to shut up, my mother would be ready to go home, it was still raining.

I drove home. Home. That is what Blackwood is. My mother had her Poultry Spice.

‘You get a book?'

‘A book?'

‘For your father.'

‘A book?' I was thinking about something else. I didn't know what she was talking about.

‘You said you were going to buy him a book, on tropical fish.'

‘Oh,' I remembered, ‘they didn't have one.'

Mother. She was the mother I had. She knew what was going on. My father. He'd had a quiet afternoon reading. The Japanese had removed a mountain in Swaziland and turned it into steel while native girls danced the traditional reed dance. The world was a big place. Nobody denied it. But I took the van to Drove House and sat watching from Higher Burrow Hill. I was not alone. My thoughts were with me. They had real power.

Drove House, in the valley of the Isle, a world hidden from most people by the way they travel. Cars, trains, aeroplanes. These ignore the valley. I walked through a gathering storm and stood at a window while her mother covered the furniture with dust sheets. The ambulance had gone. Muriel's bedroom window was shut, the curtains open, the panes of glass reflected nothing. It was a dark, moonless night. The front door opened. The last milk bottles were put out. The yard was bathed in light, a branch, blown from the orchard, a pair of chairs, the mud, illuminated, then darkness.

I walked back to the van. Before I went to Jackson's garage, I sat with my hands on the steering wheel, staring at Drove House; the last light went out, I gave into it, wept, but would not cry again.

I lay in bed, with the radio on. I had a headache. My father asked my mother why I didn't come downstairs. She didn't know. I heard him talking to the fire. She asked if he needed some logs. He didn't. I stared at the ceiling. It reflected the sky. Shadows raced over me. The sound of the rain, the door slamming, my footsteps across the yard. The mash bin lid banging back, the chickens starting up, familiar sounds, the ones I was doomed to hear forever.

I didn't bother to start work till late anymore, I didn't care if I hadn't the money. What was I going to spend it on? So long as there was enough for the groceries and the bills, I didn't see the point anymore. My father couldn't climb the stairs, my mother was busy with the chickens, I stayed in bed till ten o'clock. It didn't matter. Dick might call later. We could go to Jackson's. I'd met some other people there. You didn't get airs from them, you could bet on it. What they came out with was what they meant.

I had had a phone call from a butcher in Bridgwater. His baskets were late. I had always been told to be polite to the customers — it was bred into me, they were the reason we ate — but I just told him to get stuffed and find someone else to make them. If he wasn't satisfied with what I'd done, he could get lost. I'd let the business go downhill. It was nothing to do with me. I had tried my best. I had been gentle with her. She hadn't been hurt. She breathed London air, I breathed this.

My mother didn't care anymore either. When I got up and showed my face in the kitchen, she just pointed at the cereal and said, ‘Finish them up. They're soggy.' Soggy. Typical. She was the only other woman I'd known. She looked at me.

‘What's the matter?' she said.

‘Leave me alone.'

‘And stay in the same house as you? That too?'

‘Yes.'

‘Bloody impossible.'

‘But I …'

‘Tell me.'

‘I can't.'

‘That girl. She mucked you about, turned your head …'

‘What girl?'

‘What girl? Billy. Fool yourself, but don't fool me.'

‘Mother?' I couldn't face breakfast. I stared at the floor. It told me nothing. I stared out of the window. Rain flooded the fields beyond the orchard. She lived in that direction. Imagine what I felt like. I had a good memory. All the things we did were still fresh in my mind, clear as a bell, ringing over the moor. I fought to keep them out, it was hard, I struggled, gave up. ‘Mother. Do you love the old man?'

‘Love him?'

‘Yes?'

She gave a grunt and turned away, wiping her hands in her apron. ‘Love him?' she said.

‘Mother?'

‘Sorry.' She knew all about it, she had the look in her eyes. ‘Love,' she said, ‘is what you make it. We've just gone along, he never knew much different, and if I ever did, I soon forgot about it. But it was different then. We didn't have telly …'

‘Telly?'

‘Distractions. I wouldn't be young today,' she said, told me to at least eat some bread, and went to the front room to straighten the furniture.

I sat in the workshop. I had begun to do strange things. I'd got interested in odd stories about composers. A woman on the radio collected them. Beethoven had poured cold water over his head to keep himself awake, jugful after jugful. So much water got inside his piano, the strings rusted and the hammers stuck, in the end it couldn't make a sound, but it didn't make any difference because he couldn't hear anything anyway. Beethoven stories were the commonest. Chopin ran a close second, with Mozart third. In one week, Mozart wrote so much music, that if you tried to copy it out, let alone do the composing, you couldn't finish in a week. I thought about that. The woman who told the story spoke with a German accent. Mozart had been a tragic figure in history. Touched by God, destroyed by the devil. The woman was a professor from Vienna. She had compiled a book of stories. I remembered them, they became important to me, the lives of great men reduced to my size. I even went to the library and borrowed an encyclopaedia, but in the end, didn't care.

I couldn't avoid Drove House, so long as it stood I had to go past. Damn the place. Another house for someone to rent with more money that's right. Its damp and angry walls would wait for them. Its sheeted furniture could loom in the darkness for as long as it took. The ivy on the walls and the elder trees, scratching, scratch, scratch, at the windows, and the ghosts. The ghosts would wait in their place, preening their smiles and their dead, white, maggoty eyes, scalding, unblinking. What had I done to deserve it? I tried to remember my sins. My sins. I was no longer pure.

I couldn't work. One day, I would again, but for the moment, I didn't care. I went for a walk. Simple Billy. Sweet boy. Gentle thing. Clever enough to have been at college, he just never had the chance. Fated to be a basketmaker, laughed at for his skills by people who thought it was something he'd been taught in hospital. The last of a proud line. Poor man. Hardly anyone knew he existed, what would he leave to the world? Sixty-five years of basketmaking? Working a five day week, that's sixteen thousand nine hundred days. Six baskets a day; 101,400 baskets. What a useful thing to do, all those baskets and a cracked back. Twisted, broken fingers, hands so calloused they could smooth a plank of wood.

The romantic picture of the country; a wise old craftsman putting the finishing, loving touches to his work, content in his world, happy with his lot. Screw that. Simple Billy. Sweet boy. Gentle thing. He grew to love self-pity.

I had grown to love self-pity. I walked as far as Muchelney, and back along the river bank. The rain eased but not the wind, sheep sheltered in what protection the bare hedges provided; a heron stood in a pool, swayed by the breeze, hungry.

Muriel. In the end, I didn't blame her. She had done what she wanted to do, and I was being Billy, born a century after his time, when women didn't have the same chances. What could she want from me? She had a beautiful face and the brain to match; her man would never be like me. Dick would call later, that was more likely. I thought about that. It could happen forever. What a tomb.

This tomb followed me into winter, through the new year to the spring. Spring. A new beginning. I tried to make it so. Another day. I riddled the stove, stoked it, and carried the ash to the heap. A breeze came off the sea, miles away, a flooding wind.

I stood on the porch with a cup of tea. My mother and father took up all the room in the house, we hadn't had breakfast, they were washing. The moor stretched out, here and there, rows of pollard willow, the odd cow, Chedzoy's whistle and his dog. Dogs remind me of Dick. Dick and I used to throw stones at cows. The river saved us.

Only time I thanked the damn river, but it's never been anything but a river to me.

I carried my tea to the workshop, and soaked enough sorted willow for the morning. Some people soak the night before ... I was by the door, staring at a tree I'd planted against the wall. It looked dead months ago, but I can't dig it up, I get a feeling, once in a while; something might happen.