Opposite the Cross Keys (33 page)

So long, then, as the boat remained at Opposite the Cross Keys, anything and everything was possible: St Giles, Eldon House, slotted without friction into life with Chicken by the bank of some Broadland river or – engine or no engine, mast or no mast – sailing down to Rio, rounding the Horn, peering through jewelled water for an opening in the Great Barrier Reef. But once the boat was gone, and Chicken with it –! My mind refused even to contemplate the possibility.

That very afternoon, Charlie said, when nobody was at home except Ellie, there had been a noise, an explosion, which had brought half St Awdry's out of doors in a panic. Even the Harleys, deaf as a post, both of them, had come out of their cottage at the end of the row to see what was up. The licensee of the Cross Keys, opposite, had been sure an aeroplane had fallen out of the sky. PC Utting wouldn't have been surprised to find it was the end of the world.

In fact, it was the derelict cottage. With the aid of some small explosive charges, artfully bestowed, Chicken had demolished the entire front wall. It hadn't taken much doing, considering its already dilapidated condition, though the dust generated had still caught Charlie in the throat hours later, when he came back from work. Then, the first person to meet him with the news had been Mrs Leach from next door, hysterical because the crash had pitched her Welsh dresser over on to the floor and she didn't have so much as an eggcup left in one piece.

By that time the Fire Brigade had been summoned from Norwich, and men were already shovelling the debris into a lorry. Other workmen were doing some emergency shoring-up of the adjoining walls of the Leaches' and the Fenners' cottages, which were showing a distinct tendency to lean towards each other over the newly created space between. In the Fenners' cottage, the two grandads had fallen off the wall and smashed their glass, that was all.

‘All!' Maud echoed, aghast.

Was Chicken safe?

‘
He
were all right, the clever ole bugger.' Charlie settled back to his tale. It appeared that, a short while before the explosion, a brewers' dray, drawn by two Shire horses and attended by two large men in leather aprons, had arrived in the village, and pulled up by the pond. The dray had attracted some attention because its owners, Bullards' – the name was painted on the sides – supplied beer to neither of the village pubs. One of the two men slipped nosebags over the horses' heads whilst the other, the driver, sat puffing peaceably on his pipe.

The crowd which quickly collected after the blast was not kept long in doubt of the dray's true purpose. Inside what was left of the shattered cottage, Chicken could be seen, spade in hand, systematically shoving aside the rubble so as to make way for a kind of makeshift trackway which he laid down carefully, in several interlocking sections, all the way from the boat, shrouded in tarpaulins, to the edge of the road. When these preparations seemed to be accomplished to his satisfaction he stepped out into the middle of the High Street, put two fingers to his mouth and whistled – a signal the men on the dray were evidently waiting for. The driver put up a large thumb as evidence that he had heard and understood, his companion removed the nosebags and took hold of the horses' halters. Slowly, the two brought the pair round, and the dray with them; moved slowly back down the road until they came abreast of the ruin, where the manoeuvre was repeated, so that the conveyance finished up facing towards Cromer. The brake back on, the two brewery workers unlatched the back of the dray, and then joined Chicken to help with the next stage.

Slowly and carefully – the track must have been well waxed, for after some initial difficulty the vessel moved smoothly enough – the three of them brought the boat forth into the light of day; and then, its dust protection discarded, drew it up the ramp and on to the wide loading area, where they anchored it with ropes and padding. By this time the onlookers had cottoned on to the object of the exercise, and there were many willing hands to help them get the boat safely cradled. Only PC Utting hung about fretfully, unsure whether there was anything he could properly arrest Chicken for, and apparently coming to the conclusion that there wasn't. When everything was ready for departure somebody raised a ragged cheer. It did the heart good, as old Mr Harley unexpectedly told Charlie later, to see something actually happen in the derned ole place.

Charlie stopped talking and, again, Maud and I looked at each other, our hearts too full for words. What we both wanted, I think, more than anything else, was for Charlie to say goodbye and go, leaving the two of us to work out what the intelligence he had brought was going to mean to us. But Charlie showed no sign of making a move.

On the contrary, his demeanour changed, he seemed at a loss for what to say. But that he had something more that had to be said was only too evident.

Maud demanded, ‘Tha's all, is it?' And when Charlie fiddled with his cap peak and didn't answer, sharply: ‘What else is there, then?'

What else, indeed!

Stumblingly, Charlie recounted the rest. At the last moment Chicken had gone into Opposite the Cross Keys and emerged with Ellie, an Ellie got up in her cotton dress and long brown cardigan; the straw hat with the poppies on her head, and in her hand a brand-new fibre suitcase crammed, presumably, with her belongings. There being no room on the box for more than two, he handed her ceremoniously up the dray ramp, himself following after, unfolding two canvas chairs he had been carrying under his other arm – one for her, one for himself. The driver's assistant lifted the ramp back into place, bolted it and returned to his seat. The driver gathered up his reins and, with a click of the teeth, set his beautiful beasts in motion. The boat, with Chicken and Ellie, side by side, waving and nodding like royalty to all who saw them on their way, receded up the Cromer road, bound for God alone knew where.

Well, not only God. Somehow or other, the word had got about that Chicken had taken his boat to the Bure, to a mooring a little below Buxton. Mr Fenner, stately on his three-wheeler, had ridden the six or seven miles over there that very evening, to ask what Chicken intended to do to make his daughter an honest woman, to which the answer had been ‘Nothing.' Mr Fenner had returned shaken, and retired into his private fog,
Old Moore
open on his knees.

My mother gave Maud a couple of days off to comfort her mother, whilst I – it was half-term, May, the sweetest time of the year – hung about the house wondering who was going to comfort me.

I finally decided that Chicken had had to take Ellie. He had to have somebody to cook his meals, wash his underwear, darn his socks. The fact that Ellie couldn't cook water, seldom, if ever, washed her own underwear, let alone his, and didn't know a darn from a drainpipe did not deter my luxuriant imaginings. Ellie was no more to Chicken than Mrs Hewitt was to my mother – somebody you paid (or, more likely in Chicken's case, didn't) to do the jobs you couldn't be fagged to do yourself.

I couldn't have said, next morning, when I wheeled my bicycle out of the shed, if my intention in riding out to Buxton was to offer myself in Ellie's stead or not. My cooking was probably no better than hers, and I couldn't darn. The prospect of laundering Chicken's smalls did not appeal. Let us say, I went because I went, and leave it at that.

I did not stop at Opposite the Cross Keys, did not even slow down: barely spared a glance for the gaping hole next door. Kept on through Norgate, past the gypsy encampment, the cowslip field, past all that Salham St Awdry meant to me.

At Stratton Strawless I turned right on to the Buxton road, wearying a little as the miles receded under my tyres, but spirits rising despite myself. There was blossom everywhere – in the orchards, in the hedgerows. Even in the shadowy woods blossom drew arabesques upon the gloom. I felt that I could easily bud and blossom myself if I could only get the hang of it.

In Buxton village I inquired at the Post Office for any boat arrived by brewers' dray in the past couple of days. The smiling woman to whom I addressed my inquiry directed me without hesitation. Past the mill, a little up towards Lamas, then take the right and the left and the right again. ‘Whenever you find there's a road crossing over, m' dear, take the narrowest one and you won't go wrong.'

I passed by the mill, took the right and the left and the right again, by which time the ‘road' had dwindled to a cart track between clouds of cow parsley in full flower, along which I was forced to cycle now one side of the central hump, now the other, according to the disposition of pot-holes. Whichever route the dray had taken, it could not have been this.

I was glad it had not tried to come this way, for its passage would have wrought mayhem among the white lace which fringed the path like a bridal veil. I was really tired by now, so I got down from my bike and pushed it, pleased to move half-submerged among the furrowed stems, at the top of which flower parasols swayed, each petal point like the white satin pumps of a well-rehearsed
corps de ballet
, turned in at precisely the same angle. Between the delicate stalks of each umbel, I could see a sky so blue it had to be one more figment of my imagination. I could not think how anyone could be unhappy.

The river took me unaware. No reeds to advertise its imminence, the cow parsley growing almost to the water's edge. The boat, tied to a short stake fore and aft, sat squat and still on the water like a contented duck.

How glad, I thought, it must be to be out of that dark room, off those blocks and on to an element that miraculously yielded to its weight yet at the same time bore it up! It was just the right size of river too – not so narrow as to be unworthy of the name, not so wide as to be unfriendly, the two opposite banks not on speaking terms.

The river took me unaware. So did the couple on the boat's tiny deck. I drew back among the cow parsley before they could see me, lowered my bicycle gently on its side.

I do not think they would have noticed me had I rung my bicycle bell peremptorily,
ting-a-ling!
Ellie in her cotton frock, the front unbuttoned, was sitting on one of the folding chairs, her legs apart, her face up to the sun, eyes closed. She seemed to be purring. Chicken stood behind her combing her hair.

He was dressed as usual, all in black except for his shirt. But – oh horrors! – for once, his cap was off and the awful secret was out. Chicken was bald, his bare white patch in startling contrast to the brown of his face. The fringe of curl which had peeped out so fetchingly from under his cap was all the hair he had.

Down the lacklustre length of Ellie's hair went the ghastly comb. As I watched, Chicken paused in his labours, bent over and kissed the upturned forehead, once and once again. On the bow of the boat I could read its name, painted in blue:
Lady Ellie
.

I picked up my bicycle and mounted, making no attempt at concealment. Chicken went on combing Ellie's hair. I wobbled back down the track, the bike jolting from one pot-hole to the next, moving through a mist of cow parsley which wavered in and out of my tear-blurred vision like grasses seen under water, bending with the current. I bumped along until I was out on the road again, heading for home.

First published in 1988 by Constable

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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ISBN 978-1-4472-2523-2 POD

Copyright © S T Haymon, 1988

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