Another part of the wood (19 page)

‘How awful,’ whispered the women.

‘Poor devil,’ said Lionel hoarsely, feeling his own neck with pity and fear.

Joseph was telling Roland to be careful not to go near the bracken at the far side of the barn. As if it meant something,
Dotty took off her flowered coat and stuffed it away in the wicker basket under the sofa. May was terribly distressed. It
might so easily have been herself thus violated in the bushes.

The disturbance of the wasps’ nest had filled Kidney with unusual energy. He ran from hut to field, scarcely noticed by the
others, his whole being flung into activity, cantering heavily through the grass and going down the sloping path. Wishing
finally to stop and not able to halt, he ran into a tree; striking his forehead on the bark, he slid to the ground and sprawled
there, seeing nothing, his eyes fluttering as rapidly as his heartbeat. He didn’t know what had happened to Balfour except
that he had opened his trousers in the bushes and that Lionel had struck him to his knees. Joseph had done nothing. Joseph
hadn’t protested at such violence. A flux of tears came into Kidney’s sparkling eyes. He dashed it away with a fierce shake
of his head, shouting with lips spitting: ‘You horrid man! Rude to undo your trousers. Filthy animal. Should be put away.
I’ll show you what’s what, dirty stinker!’

He fell silent. Someone, Roland perhaps, was calling his name. That much he heard.

Roland stuck out a cheerful tongue and went past him, pretending to have somewhere to go. After a few yards he turned and
cried mockingly, ‘Daftie Kidney, sitting on the floor.’

‘I’m hot.’

‘No you’re not. You’re daft.’

Offended, Kidney hung his head.

Roland saw a piece of glass near his foot and bent to examine it. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘This place should get condemned. It’s
just dangerous all over.’ He settled on his haunches and rocked backwards and forwards. ‘Bet you it’s clean and safe up there,’
he said, jerking his head in the direction of the mountain hidden by the trees.

‘Safe where?’ Kidney asked.

‘Up the mountain. Safe as anything, all clean.’

Kidney got slowly to his feet and with bowed head began to walk back up the path.

‘Daftie,’ shouted Roland again.

Kidney took no notice. He had some vague idea in his mind that in the hut there was something he wanted, that was safe. Nobody
looked up when he entered the door. He put a chair by the sink and climbed upon it, reaching with his fingers for the pills.
Finding the bottle he put it inside his jumper, clutching his jumper as he climbed down again. No one saw him.

Joseph was worried by the continuing presence of the nest among the bracken. He pressed George to do something about it. George
said there was nothing he could do until dusk.

‘What’ll you do then?’ Dotty wanted to know.

George said he would pour boiling water down the hole.

‘That’s a bit primitive, isn’t it?’ asked Joseph. He had thought there was some chemical that could be sprayed at once causing
immediate annihilation.

George said he could burn out the nest but it was risky. He hovered between the barn and the hut, keeping a protective eye
on Balfour. The others, after a period of adjustment, took sheets and lay down in the sunshine, at the extreme end of the
field. It was to give Balfour a sense of privacy.

Lionel had driven his car to the corner shop before breakfast for a morning paper. Now he studied it earnestly and remarked
that the country was in a damned mess. Nobody appeared to object or to hold different views. Joseph was lying on his back
holding a Penguin book close to his eyes, both reading and shielding his face from the rays of the sun.

May found it difficult to concentrate for long in any one position. She never went brown, only a dull shade of brick. When
she bent her legs, sweat gathered behind the folds of her knees. She looked sideways at the sunbathing Dotty, dressed in a
swimsuit of dark blue. One arm was curved up above her head, one leg lolled outward from her crotch. There was a little fuzz
of blonde hairs catching the sunlight, right at the top of her inner thigh. May felt disgust, almost nausea. It was so immodest.
Other women were always revolting. She felt sure Lionel was watching the sprawled girl. Angrily she slapped a fly from her
arm.

‘Would you like a chair, my sweetheart?’ Lionel said, looking up from his newspaper.

She ignored him. She rose to her feet and walked back into the hut, shutting the door behind her. She opened the suitcase
still under the table. In the pocket of her trews she found the Co-op penny on its little chain. She left the hut and tiptoed
past Balfour with exaggerated stealth. She went a few paces into the bracken and turning from the group at the end of the
field lifted her arm, apparently to steady herself.

‘Careful, my sweetheart,’ called Lionel.

Straightening up, facing in the direction of the barn, she saw Roland standing a few paces from her.

‘What did you do that for?’ he asked her.

‘Do what?’ she said, laughing nervously, going to him with her hand stretched out.

‘Roland,’ shouted Joseph. ‘Come away from the nest. I told you.’

Lionel was shaking his head and making sounds of disapproval as he held his paper. ‘This man Wilson really is making one hell
of a mess, you know.’

‘Oh, I love Harold,’ cried May, restored, prepared now to be amusing. ‘That little duckwing of hair at the back, that solemn
northern face. I think he’s dishy.’

Her husband smiled at her. ‘He’s certainly making a dish out of Rhodesia, my sweetheart.’

‘I’ve got room for another toe here,’ Roland observed, looking at his foot with interest. Joseph had made him remove his sweater
and his jeans and he crouched there in the grass clad in his cotton underpants, shoulder blades prominent, ribs showing, a
line of hair, silver in the sunlight, tipping the vertebrae of his spine.

‘You’re much too thin,’ said his father. ‘You don’t eat enough.’

‘I do, I do,’ he protested.

‘He’s not too thin,’ May said, thinking he was, dreadfully so, but in some way forestalling a remark, should it be made, on
the size and weight of her own body. Protectively she bent over her knees, covering her breasts and small pot stomach. ‘Does
Mummy give you cod liver oil?’ she asked, watching the discomfited little boy who was now plucking at the skin adhering to
the cage of his ribs.

‘No,’ he muttered. ‘That’s for babies.’ He began to struggle into his striped sweater, thrusting his stick-like arms into
the air, emerging with hair tousled.

‘Now, boy,’ his father shouted, putting his book face downwards in the grass. ‘Don’t you take offence.’

‘I don’t,’ Roland replied thickly, struggling with a sense of injustice and the awkward zip of his trousers. Self-pity making
his head loll pathetically, he walked across the grass towards the trees.

Joseph reached out a hand and seized him by the ankle as he passed. He wouldn’t let go. ‘Little softie boy,’ he shouted. ‘Didums
get all cross then? Didums feel a fool?’

Tears flowed down the boy’s cheeks. He was both angry and relieved. He beat at Joseph’s shoulders with his fists, as hard
as he knew how.

They had most of the meat for lunch, the big joint that Balfour had carried from the village. There were potatoes and slices
of
beetroot. The women ate more than the men, tearing at the fatty chops with sweaty faces and fingers covered in grease.

Afterwards May wanted to go for a drive somewhere into the hills, but Lionel was evasive. Determined to recover his Co-op
penny, he had the intention of combing every step of ground he had trodden the previous day. Throughout the meal his hand
continually sought the opening of his shirt. Contrite, in that he knew May would have liked to have been taken for a run in
the car, but determined not to do so, he dried the plates that Joseph had expertly washed. He took care to keep his head turned
from her, lest her expression should cause him to change his plans. Actually May was quite contented. She didn’t mind in the
least.

There were voices outside the hut. Lionel hovered at the door, thinking it was Balfour, recovered and anxious for food, and
saw George talking to an elderly man in a cloth cap. They were nodding and looking in the direction of the bracken.

Joseph said, ‘God, it’s that Bill, hale and hearty again.’

‘Is it Willie?’ Delighted, Dotty pranced into the field, holding out her hand, taking the little Welshman by surprise, asking
him if he was better, saying it was a treat to see him. Willie removed his cap and nodded at her, bashful.

‘He’s super. He’s a marvellous little bloke,’ said Dotty, running back into the hut to confide her opinion to May.

‘Is he?’ May said, wondering who the man was. When George came into the hut followed by Willie, she still kept her expectant
eyes on the doorway, waiting for another visitor.

‘This is my friend May, Willie,’ Dotty said, pointing at the girl on the settee with sudden pride.

‘Pleased to meet you, miss,’ he said, taken aback by all the areas of uncovered female flesh.

‘Isn’t he super,’ hissed Dotty, though what it was that so impressed her she couldn’t qualify.

May looked at the shrivelled little man. As a child she had spent some time billeted in North Wales and had been early acquainted
with pastoral Welshmen who called the cattle home
and loved to fondle little girls. She was bored and revolted by him and by Dotty.

‘Mr George told me about the nest. Bad, that is,’ said Willie.

‘It was horrible,’ cried Dotty.

Roland came in and spoke to his father. ‘Can I go for a walk?’

‘Burn the nest out, will you?’ asked Joseph.

‘Most like,’ Willie responded, hanging his head and not wishing to sound too authoritative with Mr George there.

‘Can I go for a walk with Kidney then?’ demanded Roland.

‘Nasty business. Lucky it wasn’t the boy,’ said Willie.

‘You’re right,’ agreed Joseph. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

Roland ran out of the hut.

There were blackberries in the hedge – blue-black, juicy. Kidney reached down the high ones for Roland. He ate none himself.
Roland dug the stalks out with his nails and stained the pads of his fingers mauve. He rather preferred the red and tight
fruits, tart on his tongue; some of the black and ripe ones he let fall on to the road and trod beneath his feet. He could
hear the telegraph wires humming, high and quivering above his head. He laid his ear to the warm wood of the telegraph poles
and thought he heard the sea. Kidney walked with his eyes looking down at the smooth road, his hands in his pockets. When
he plucked the blackberries his eyes lifted no higher than the hedge. They came to the crossroads, one road going right to
the market town and the other to the White Horse public house, with the sign hanging motionless in the sunlight and the smithy
opposite. The blacksmith was shoeing a cart horse. The horse puffed and the man puffed too, his leather apron touching the
ground. A fire glowed in an iron stove. Roland could think only of Scripture lessons at school and Pentecostal fire; try as
he could he failed to remember the exact meaning of the word. The man went on filing at the raised hoof. Once he cut at it
with a short knife and carved away a whole segment of skin. It fell to the stone floor and lay like a slice of coconut. Now
and then, fussily, he bent lower, straddling his legs wide, and blew dust
from the hoof. Before the shoe was fitted Roland moved away. He couldn’t watch the final bearing down, the smell of the horse’s
foot burning. He wanted to watch, he wanted to stay, but he couldn’t.

To the left of the smithy was a church, square-towered. The graveyard was at the back, not seen from the road. There was a
signpost saying To the Mountain, as if it was an attraction. The sun burnt on, drugging everything with warmth. Roland would
have liked to buy some lemonade at the corner shop but he had no money.

In time the change in the countryside was noticeable. The prolific elms became fewer, the hedges thinned, the lane climbed
steeply. At last there were no more houses or cottages. Then the road stopped too. They came to a gate, stone walls at either
side. Beyond the gate was moorland, rolling into the distance, purple under a growth of heather. It was vaster, wilder, than
Roland had expected – a bleak plateau of flowing earth as far as the eye could see, and the mountain ahead and to the left,
one hundred miles away. There was a desert of moorland to cross and a deep valley to descend, not steep but endlessly sloping
down to a plantation of firs shaped like an arrow head. Its tip pointed at the black slab of a reservoir and the lower slopes
of the mountain. Roland was quite checked by the distance they would have to go. He was at the end of the world; come from
any direction start from any place, it would be the same.

The sheep trotted in packs as if they were afraid. When Kidney swung his arms they leapt haughtily, like miniature camels,
black muzzles held high. A strange unified cry came from them; they stretched their throats and landed trembling, with ears
laid back.

‘It’s a long way,’ said Roland, looking over the edge of the world into the valley that separated him from the mountain.

‘Head back, shoulders braced,’ bade Kidney, beginning to march across the plateau.

‘Have you walked often?’ Roland asked, but already Kidney was some way ahead and didn’t reply.

Something about the expanse of earth made Roland hungry. He wanted chocolate, biscuits, anything. He shouted to Kidney that
he wanted some food badly.

‘There’s none,’ Kidney called, swinging his arms from the shoulder. He waited till Roland should reach him. ‘We had a very
substantial lunch,’ he said sternly, a deep crease between his sleek eyebrows.

‘At home,’ said Roland, torturing himself, ‘we have Mr Mahmood’s breasts – ’

‘Indeed.’

‘ – of chicken. They’re pre-packed and frozen.’ Roland gazed at the distant mountain and would have preferred to turn back.

They walked some way across the moor without much purpose, until by chance they found a path, worn through the heather, leading
down to the valley.