(5/20)Over the Gate (24 page)

He flexed his muscles, stood on his toes, took a deep breath, and then turned three backward somersaults in a row. After the last he stretched his arms above his head, looking this way and that, as though acknowledging applause. Joseph thought he looked just like the acrobat he had seen in the pantomime last Christmas. If anything, he was better, because he was so smad and neat. Joseph was entranced.

'That's chicken-feed,' said the man. He swaggered slightly, thrusting his thumbs into the top of his red trunks. 'Look at this!'

He stretched his arms again and began to turn cartwheels, with extreme dexterity and rapidity. He wheeled so steadily, that his red trunks and white torso seemed to blur before Joseph's admiring eyes. He must have turned almost twenty times before he ceased and became upright again.

'Ain't you a marvel!' breathed Joseph, awed.

The little man laughed, but was obviously pleased with the boy's admiration. He smote him cheerfully across the shoulders and they sat down together in the shelter of a rock. Joseph compared their outstretched legs. His own were thin and brown, marked with many an ancient scar on the shins, and the fresh scrape across one sore knee. The stranger's were several inches shorter than his own, but twice the thickness, and bulging with muscles.

'D'you live in Barnsford?' asked the stranger.

'No,'said Joseph. 'Do you?'

'Not likely! Not in this one-eyed dump! Do I look as though I live here?'

He cocked a blue eye upon Joseph. Anxious to please this superman, Joseph hastened to apologise, although he himself could see nothing wrong with Barrisford. Indeed, to someone whose home was in the modest confines of Fairacre, Barrisford seemed a splendidly sophisticated place.

'What's your name, sir?' ventured Joseph.

'Ah now! That's telling!' said the little man teasingly. He leant back against the rock, clasping his hands behind his head, and gazed quizzically at the boy with half-closed eyes.

'I think you'd better call me "The Old Man of The Sea," he said lazily. 'That's where you found me, wasn't it?'

'The Old Man of the Sea,' echoed Joseph, not completely understanding. 'Do you mean you five there?'

The man nodded, grinning at the boy's mystification.

'That's right,' he said. 'I live in the sea. In a palace, in fact. I'm a sort of King, you know, got a crown and that when I'm at home.'

Joseph pondered this. It sounded a bit far-fetched, but why should a grown-up man want to he? And the whole affair was odd-the queer, dark, under-pier world, the tiny man, the cartwheels! He wanted to know more.

'Where is this palace?' he asked suspiciously.

'If you're not going to believe me,' said the man, suddenly looking sulky, 'I shan't waste my rime telling you.'

'Oh, but I do!' cried Joseph, aghast at upsetting this god-like creature yet again. The stranger appeared mollified.

'Well, if you must know, it's way out beyond die end of the pier, on the sea-bed.'

'What's it made of?' asked Joseph.

'Oh, rocks and stones, and that!' said the man airily. There was a short silence, as though he were thinking heavily, and then he began again.

'Sea shells, too, of course. It's sort of decorated with shells. And we have sea-weed trees in the garden. It's a pretty place. Fish swim in and out the windows. We always keep the windows open. I like a bit of fresh sea-water in the rooms myself.'

Joseph sat contemplating this picture of royal life beneath the waves. He found it wholly enchanting, and only a fragment of his former doubt remained.

'What d'you eat?' he enquired.

'Fish, of course,' replied the little man, opening his blue eyes very wide. 'What fool questions you ask! We've got nets from the garden, straight through the kitchen window, to the larder where we keep 'em.'

'I like fried fish,' said Joseph warmly. This talk of food was beginning to make him hungry.

'Oh, we don't fry ours,' answered the man casually. 'Too wet, you know. Makes it difficult to keep the stove alight.'

'Ah! It would!' agreed Joseph. Somehow, the difficulty of keeping the stove going underwater, seemed to make sense of the whole, slightly improbable, situation.

'No, we eat 'em raw,' said the man. 'Very nutritious too.' He suddenly gave a gigantic yawn.

'Ah wed, my boy, wish I could stay longer with you, but I'd best be getting along.'

'Back to the palace?' asked Joseph. He half-hoped that he would be invited to accompany him.

The man rose to his feet and began to shake out the sand from his towel.

'Not just yet,' he said, smiling. 'I've got some friends to cad on first.' He wrapped the towel round his shoulders.

A distant yelling caused the two to look round. Leaning over the pier railings, just where the rope ladder was fastened, was a smad figure. To Joseph it looked like a little girl.

'Come on, Bid!' she shouted. 'It's half past four. Your tea's ready!'

'Coming, Katy!' the little man shouted back, and set off towards the rope ladder with incredible speed. Joseph ran beside him.

He watched him untangle the lower rungs and begin to mount aloft. The strong little arms and legs twinkled over the criss-cross rope, like a monkey in a ship's rigging. Halfway up he stopped and looked down at Joseph's upturned face.

'Hey, boy,' he said, grinning. 'You cut off to your own folk. And don't believe ad you hear, son!'

He nipped smartly up the rest of the ladder and through the railings. Joseph watched him untie the rope, his face suddenly solemn and intent. He slung it across his towelled shoulders, with never a backward glance at the boy below, and vanished towards the theatre.

Disconsolately, with the words of his hero echoing in his ears, Joseph obediently retraced his steps, seeking—tardily and reluctantly—his own folk, who were already ensconced amidst the solid worldliness of Bunce's restaurant.

'And you knows the rest, miss,' said Joseph, fiddling with the brass lid of the Victorian ink stand which dominates the teacher's desk at Fairacre school. His dark eyes were downcast, crescents of thick lashes brushing his dusky cheeks.

'And I 'ad my tea with you, and then we come 'ome,' he continued.

'I remember,' I said. I also remembered Mr and Mrs Widet's conversation at the tea table, of which Joseph was obviously unaware.

'A pity we have to go back so soon,' Mr Willet had said. "They say there's a good show on at the end of the pier.'

'Someone told me there's a juggler that keeps six bottles moving,' said Mrs Willet. 'and a dog, dressed up like a nursemaid, pushing a monkey in a pram!'

'There's twelve acts altogether,' said someone further down the table. 'I looked at the posters. Top of the bid is the midgets. Acrobats they are—six of'em. Call themselves The Mighty Atoms, or some such name. "Appeared before aU the crowned heads in Europe," the poster said. I bet they'd have been worth seeing!'

'I'm partial to midgets myself,' Mr Willet had agreed, before the conversation took a different turn.

I looked at the little gipsy boy before me. What was going on under that black thatch of tousled hair, I wondered? Did he really believe the yarn spun him by the fanciful midget? Or did he merely want to believe it?

And what should be my reaction to Joseph's disclosures? I doubted whether this was the time to ted him the cold truth-whether, in fact, he would ever want to know the truth. It seemed wiser, I decided, to say as little as possible at this stage. Joseph's feelings were still too raw to stand rough handling. If he ever wanted to know more, I felt that he would ask me, and then I should answer him with truth.

At this moment the problem was settled, or at least shelved, by the appearance in the doorway of Mrs Pringle. In one hand she held an upturned broom, in the other a dustbin lid. She looked, at first glance, like some squat Britannia, with trident and shield.

'You done?' she enquired glumly.

'Yes, indeed,' I said. Under the present trying circumstances Mrs Pringle's appearance was almost welcome. I put the stack of papers on top of the ancient walnut piano, anchored them safely from the cross-draughts with
Hymns Ancient and Modern,
locked the drawers of my desk, and made mv way out into the playground.

Joseph followed me, still looking thoughtful. Outside, by the doorway, Mr Willet was perched on a pair of rickety steps. He was drawing a bent stick along the guttering, collecting dead leaves, an old nest or two, twigs and odd slivers of slate, all of which impeded the dow of rainwater to the butt behind the school.

I stopped to hail him.

'Run home now, Joseph,' I said to my shadow. 'You shad pin your picture on the wall tomorrow morning. It's one of the best.'

His countenance became more animated, and he began to move off Suddenly, as though remembering something, he turned again to confront us.

'And there
was
a little man!' he said earnestly. 'Honest, there was!'

'I know,' I assured him. We looked at each other for a moment. Then he smiled, and set off at a brisk trot through the school gates.

'What's up with young Joe then?' enquired Mr Wilier, when the child was out of earshot. 'He bin in trouble?'

'Not trouble exactly,' I answered. 'I'll ted you ad about it some day. Let's say he's finding life a bit of a puzzle at the moment.'

Mr Willet snorted, and dropped a noisome handful of muck into the bucket at the foot of the steps.

'Who don't?' he demanded.

12. Harvest Festival

T
HERE
are a number of people in Fairacre who maintain that far too much importance is given to Harvest Festival in our village. Mrs Mawne, our local ornithologist's wife, is one.

'I find something abhorrently bucolic about Harvest Festival,' she announced one day, looking round the chancel of St Patrick's church where the ladies of the village were busy festooning ledges and pillars with the fruits of the earth.

Miss Jackson too, I remember, voiced much the same sentiments. She came among us—mercifully for a short rime—as infants' teacher at the school, and had a very poor idea of rural festivals, church or secular.

'Simply a survival of primitive superstitions,' was her comment. 'An act of propitiation to malevolent tribal gods, bound up with fertility rites and other ceremonials of earlier civilisations.' Miss Jackson's dicta were always couched in high-down language of this sort, and very tedious it became.

Lucidly, such people are in the minority. For most of us in Fairacre our Harvest Festival is a well-loved and well-supported institution. It is, after all, a public thanksgiving for the fulfilment of a year's hard work in the fields and gardens, and a brief breathing space before tackling the next year's labours.

Mr Roberts, the local farmer, gives a mammoth Harvest Home supper in his biggest bam, at this season, but naturally it is the farm workers and their friends who attend this jolhfication. The service at St Patrick's caters for the whole village, for chapel-goers join church-goers on this occasion, and the church is always crowded.

'Far more crowded, in fact,' sighs the vicar, 'than for any other of our church festivals. I sometimes wonder why.'

I think I could ted him. Here is something tangible, something vital, the fruits of the earth—in turn, the fruits of man's labour—lying in splendid array, as living witness of God's and man's work together. A good harvest means food, security, life itself. A poor one, not so long ago, could mean starvation -and memories are long in the country. It is easier to comprehend the things of the flesh than the spirit, and although one can sympathise with the good vicar's attitude, it does not mean that the praise and honour rendered to the Almighty at Harvest Thanksgiving are any less meritorious.

On the Friday afternoon before Harvest Festival Sunday, I took the schoolchildren across to St Patrick's as usual. Every year we decorate the pews and other allotted portions of the church, and we guard this privilege jealously. On Saturday, the ladies of the village come with armfuls of flowers and greenery to do their share, but they always find that the Fairacre children have done their part first.

Usually we tie little bunches of corn to the pew heads, and arrange marrows, shiny apples, onions, giant potatoes, and any other contributions which will not wither or fade, along the ledges and window sills which we know by ancient custom are 'ours'.

It was a bright windy afternoon as we made our way across to the church. Somewhere in the village an energetic gardener was having an autumn bonfire, and great billows of blue smoke hung gauzy veils between us and the distant downs. The smell of the burning leaves had that whiff of sadness which an autumn bonfire always brings; a reminder that summer is over and that soon we shad be head-bent against the gales of winter. I thought briefly of that Devon school, but this time with no regrets. This, I thought, looking at my straggling flock bearing their harvest tributes, is the place for me!

On the south side of St Patrick's the creeper was glowing scarlet and bronze against the grey flints. On the graves chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies made a brave show, and over the lych-gate, where Mr Willet began his story of Sady Gray last winter, a many-berried bryony traded its bright loops and cods. In the vicarage garden, adjoining the churchyard, I could see dahlias, pink and yellow, as big as soup plates; and on the telephone wire, which stretched from the lane to the chimney stack of the vicar's study, a row of swallows chattered together—no doubt of the journey so soon to be undertaken.