Red Sky at Sunrise: Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, A Moment of War (11 page)

‘We come on a visit, Gran.’

‘Just mind them pots then, or I’ll cut you to pieces.’

The three of us clumped indoors. Granny Trill was perched in the windowsill, combing her thin white hair.

‘What you doing, Gran?’

‘Just biding still. Just biding and combing me bits.’

The room was blue and hazy with woodsmoke. We prowled slowly around its treasures, opening boxes, filling teapots with cotton-reels, skimming plates along the floor. The old lady sat and watched us mildly, taking very little notice, while her dry yellow arm swept up and down, and the black-toothed comb, as it slid through her hair, seemed to be raking the last ash of a fire.

‘You going bald, Gran?’

‘I still got me bits.’

‘It’s coming out.’

‘No, it ain’t.’

‘Look at that dead stuff dropping out of yer comb.’

‘That’s healthy. It makes room for more.’

We didn’t think it mattered; it was merely conversation, any subject at all would do. But suddenly the old lady skipped out of her seat and began to leap up and down on the floor.

“Er down there! I got more than ’er! Er’s bald as a tater root! Wicked old lump, I’ll see ’er gone. ’Er’s failing, you mark my words.’

When the spasm was over, she was back in the window, winding her hair into a fragile bun. Beautiful were the motions of her shrunken hands, their movements so long rehearsed; her fingers flew and coiled and pinned, worked blind without aid of a mirror. The result was a structure of tight perfection, a small shining ball of snow.

‘Get yer hands from me drawers! Them’s female things!’

She sat relaxed now her hair was done, put on her cracked and steel-rimmed glasses, unhooked the almanac from the wall, and began to read bits out aloud. She read in a clear and solemn voice, as though from the Holy Writ.

‘ “Tragic Intelligence of a Disaster at Sea, in the Region of the Antipoods.” That’s for June, poor creatures, with their families an’ all. “A party of Scientists Will Slip Down a Crevice, With Certain Resultant Fatalities…” Oh, dear, oh well, if they must poke round them places. “A Murdered Cadaver will be Shockingly Uncovered in a Western Industrial Town.” There, what did I tell you! I knew that’d come. I been expecting that.’ She began to skip pages, running through the months, but giving weight to the Warnings that struck her. ‘ “Crisis in Parliament”…“House Struck by Fireball”…“Riots”…“A Royal Surprise”…“Turkish Massacre”…“Famine”…“War”…“The King will Suffer a Slight Infirmity”…’ The catalogue of disasters seemed to give her peace, to confirm her sense of order. In Old Moore’s pages she saw the future’s worst, saw it and was not dismayed. Such alarms were neither threats nor prophecies but simply repetitions; were comforting, frightful, and familiar, being composed of all that had fashioned her long past, the poisoned cuds she had so patiently chewed, swallowed, and yet survived.

‘Ah, well,’ she said placidly, as she lay down the book. ‘He foresees some monstrous doings. A terrible year it looks to be. And he says we’ll have hail on Tuesday…’

We boys took up the almanac and leafed through the pages, seeking the more ominous pictures. We saw drawings of skies cracked across by lightning, of church towers falling, multitudes drowning, of men in frock-coats shaking warning fingers, of coffins laden with crowns. The drawings were crude but jaggedly vital, like scratches on a prison wall. We relished them much as did Granny Trill, as signs of an apocalypse which could not touch us. In them we saw the whole outside world, split, convulsive, and damned. It had nothing, of course, to do with our village; and we felt like gods, both compassionate and cruel, as we savoured these bloody visions.

Granny Trill used the almanac as an appetizer; now she shifted to her table for dinner. She sopped a few biscuits in a cup of cold tea and scooped the wet crumbs into her mouth, then began grinding away with such an effort of gums one would have thought she was cracking bones. She wore, as usual, her black net dress, but her bright old head rising out of it looked like a flame on a smoking lamp. Her brow was noble, her pink eyes glittered, her nose swooped down like a finger; only the lower part of her face was collapsed and rubbery, but then that did all the work.

‘You a hundred yet, Granny?’

‘Nigh on – nigh on.’

‘Have you got a dad?’

‘Bless you, no; he died long since. He was killed by a tree over Ashcomb.’

She often told us the story of this, and now she told us again. Her father had been a woodcutter, strong as a giant – he could lift up a horse and wagon. From the age of five, when she lost her mother, she lived with him in the woods. They used to sleep in a tent, or a kind of wigwam of pine branches, and while her father was tree-felling, the little girl made baskets and sold them around the village. For ten years they lived together and were perfectly contented. She grew up into a beautiful young girl – ‘Some’ow I seemed to send men breathless’ – but her father was careful, and when the timber-men came he used to hide her under piles of sacking.

Then one day – she was fifteen years old at the time – a tree fell on her father. She heard him shout and ran up the thicket and found him skewered into the ground with a branch. He was lying face down and couldn’t see her. ‘I’m going, Alice,’ he’d said. She clawed a hole with her hands and lay down beside him, and held him until he died. It took twenty-four hours and she never moved, nor did he speak again.

When at last some carters discovered them, she was still lying with the body. She watched them roll the tree off him, and straighten his limbs, then she ran up the Scrubs and hid. She hid for a week near some fox-holes there, and neither ate nor drank. Then the Squire sent out some men to look for her, and when they found her she fought like a savage. But they managed to carry her down to the Manor, where she was given a bath and a bed. ‘That was the first bath I ever had,’ said Granny. ‘It took six of ‘em to get me soaped.’ But they nursed her and pacified her, and gave her housework to do, and later married her to George Trill, the gardener. ‘He were a good man, too – he settled me. I was about sixteen years at the time. He was much like me dad, only a good bit slower – and a lot older than I, of course.’

When she finished her story her chin was resting in her cup and her features were abstracted and bright. Sharp little veins crackled around her eyes, and her skull pushed hard through the skin. Could she ever have been that strapping Alice whom the carters had chased through the woods? a girl of sixteen whom men washed and married? the age of our sister Dorothy?…

‘Me dad planted that tree,’ she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window.

The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house. Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth, I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill’s dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny’s age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world.

‘He were a young man then, a-course,’ said Granny. ‘He set it afore he got married.’ She squinted up at the height of the tree, and sat there nodding gently, while a branch of green shadows, thrown by its leaves, moved softly across her face.

‘I got to see to summat!’ she said abruptly, slipping creakily down from her chair. She left us then, gathered up her skirts, and trotted lightly along to the wood. We saw her squatting among the undergrowth, bright-eyed, like a small black partridge. Old age might compel her to live in a house, but for comfort she still went to the woods.

Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness.

Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down – rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen.

In spite of their formal dressing-up, the two old ladies never went very far – now and again to church for the sermon, and to the village shop once a week. Granny Wallon went for her sugar and yeast; Granny Trill for her tuppence of snuff.

Snuff was Granny T’s one horrible vice, and she indulged it with no moderation. A fine brown dust coated all her clothes and she had nostrils like badger-holes. She kept her snufF in a small round box, made of tin and worn smooth as a pebble. She was continually tapping and snapping it open, pinching a nailful, gasping
Ah!,
flicking her fingers and wiping her eyes, and leaving on the air a faint dry cloud like an explosion of fungoid dust.

The snuff-box repelled and excited us boys and we opened its lid with awe. Reeking substance of the underworld, clay-brown dust of decay, of powdered flesh and crushed old bones, rust-scrapings, and the rubbish of graves. How sharp and stinging was this fearful spice, eddying up from its box, animating the air with tingling fumes like a secret breath of witchery. Though we clawed and sniffed it we could not enjoy it, but neither could we leave it alone.

‘You at me snuff agen, you boys? I’ll skin yer bottoms, I will!’

We looked up guiltily, saw her cackling face, so took a big pinch between us. With choking tears and head-rocking convulsions we rolled across the floor. The old lady regarded us with pleasure; our paroxysms shook the house.

‘That’ll learn you, I reckon; you thieving mites. Here, give it to me, I’ll show ’ee.’

She took up the box and tapped the lid, then elegantly fed her nose. A shudder of ecstasy closed her eyes. She was borne very far away.

One morning our Mother was paring apples, so we boys settled down to the peelings. They lay in green coils upon the table, exuding their tart fresh odours. Slowly we chewed through the juicy ribbons, mumbling our jaws as we went.

‘I’m old Granny Trill, a-eating her dinner,’ said Jack, sucking peel through his gums. A great joke, this; we chewed and moaned, making much of the toothless labour.

‘Don’t mock,’ said our Mother. ‘The poor, poor soul – alone by herself all day.’

We glanced at our sisters to share our wit, but got no encouragement there. They were absorbed as usual in some freakish labour, stitching dead birds on canvas hats.

‘The poor lone creature,’ our Mother went on, lowering her voice out of charity. ‘It’s a sin and a shame!’ She raised it again.

‘That’s what it is – a crime! You girls ought to pop up and pay her a visit. You know how she dotes on you all.’

Our sisters had reached the impressive stage; they talked careful and dressed in splendour – as fine, that is, as they were able to do with the remnants that fell to their hands. With a short length here, a bit of tulle there, a feather picked up at a sale, a hedgehog of needles, a mouthful of pins, a lot of measuring, snipping, and arguing – it was remarkable what raiment they managed to conjure considering what little they had.

They were always willing to put on a show, so they accepted Mother’s suggestion. They decided to deck themselves out in their best and to give Gran Trill a treat. The attics were ransacked, the cupboards breached, and very soon all was uproar. Quarrelling, snatching, but smoothly efficient, they speedily draped themselves; took a tucket in here, let a gusset out there, spliced a waist or strapped up a bodice; in no time at all they were like paradise birds, and off they minced to see the old lady.

Enthralled as ever by their patchwork glories, I followed them closely behind. Beautiful Marge led the way up the path and rapped elegantly on Granny’s door. Meanwhile Doth and Phyl hitched their slipping girdles, pushed the bandeaux out of their eyes, stood hands on hips making light conversation – two jazz-debs bright in the sun.

For once Granny Trill seemed hard of hearing, though the girls had knocked three times. So with a charming shrug and a fastidious sigh Marge swung a great kick at the door.

‘Who’s that?’ came a frightened yelp from within.

‘It’s only us,’ trilled the girls.

They waltzed through the door, apparitions of rose, striking postures straight out
of Home Notes.
‘How do we look then, Gran?’ asked Marjorie. ‘This line is the mode, you know. We copied it out of that pattern book. It’s the rage in Stroud, they say.’

Riffling their feathers, arching their necks, catching coy reflections in mirrors, they paraded the room, three leggy flamingoes, each lit by a golden down. To me they were something out of the sky, airborne visions of fairy light; and with all the enthusiasm they were capable of they gave the old lady the works. Yet all was clearly not going well. There was a definite chill in the air…