The Levels (5 page)

‘Better?' I asked as I led him back to his direction. He nodded, but wasn't; he would need to be by the time he got home. Dick's father was not particular.

I left him on the road and walked to Blackwood as the moon rose over a new summer night; when I reached the house I watched my father through the window walking into the front room with a basket of logs. He put them by the fireplace, straightened, and put a hand to his back. I heard my mother in the chicken run. ‘You girls,' she shouted, ‘you girls will be the death of me.'

We drove to Bob Wright's for some willow. The van had never sounded so bad. My father sat on his hands to keep the springs out, pressed his feet against the bulkhead and gave me directions along lanes I'd known since I could walk. When we got behind another, dawdling ahead, he leant over, pressed the horn, jumped up and down, shouted, but they didn't let us pass, even by Muchelney pull-in, they just swerved into the middle of the road without looking.

‘Peasants!' he screamed, waving a fist at them. ‘Move over!'

‘We weren't going any faster before we met them,' I said. ‘They're probably doing us a favour.'

‘How's that?'

I told him what I thought of the van.

‘Heap!' he cried. ‘It's older than you.'

‘Exactly.'

‘You want me to buy something flash that'll be a pile of rust in a couple of years?' I took my hand off the steering wheel, and peeled a flake of metal from the dashboard.

‘Like this?' I said.

‘Like what?'

‘That not rust?'

‘Paint bubbling, happens on old cars,' and he tossed it out of the window.

I drove to Langport, then along the main road through Oath Lock, where the lane runs beside the river on one side and the railway line on the other, to Stan Moor. Wright lived in a riverside house with sixteen acres of his own withy beds and ten more rented. He grew Black Maul on all his own land, and five of the rented, but was ripping out five acres of Black Spaniard to replace with New Kind, the best working withy of all time.

‘Says who?'

‘Slocombe.'

‘Ha!'

He was in the stripping shed, whitening.

‘That,' he said, pointing at the van, ‘deserves a medal.' He took me to one side and said, ‘I'll have a word.'

‘What about?' said owl ears, springing up and rubbing his hands where the springs had impressed red circles into the skin.

‘Sorry?'

‘You will be.'

Wright looked cow eyes at my father.

‘What you going to have a word with me about? My van?'

‘No.'

‘Think I'll be needing a new one?'

‘Me?'

‘Take that look off your face. Find us our stuff.'

‘You whitening?' I asked. We always ask people if they're doing something we know they're doing.

A pair of swans flew as far north as Burrowbridge Mump before losing height and landing on a spit of land beneath the walls of a water board house. Bob Wright, a bachelor, led us to his store shed.

‘Tea for anyone?' called his mother.

‘Tea?' Bob asked.

‘Thank you, Mrs Wright. You'd like some, wouldn't you, Billy?'

‘Yes.'

She disappeared and the door flapped shut on the shed, my father looked over the willow with an expert eye and congratulated Wright on sheen, straightness, etc, etc.

We carried the bundles and stacked them in the van, before walking up the bank and staring down; the river was low and grey, the shelving mud thick and shiny. The swans took off, three hundred yards up-stream, Mrs Wright came out and called us in for tea.

The front room, where my father sat down and counted bank notes, was dominated by a long, brightly-lit aquarium. Tiny fish darted behind plastic castles and rubber weed, and Mrs Wright, when she'd poured tea, stood beside me and said how much each one cost. They were tropicals and required the water at an exact temperature.

We sat round the table with small cups of tea but huge buns and pastries. My father's hand hesitated over a cherry cake.

‘Just tuck in,' said Mrs Wright. ‘You boys have been working hard.'

We were full and leaving by the front door when Bob said for us to come out the back door so we could go down through the yard to the pound house.

‘I've got some stuff burn holes in your boots.' In one corner of the house stood two barrels of cider, laid in cradles with tiny china cups hanging beneath the taps. He lifted one of them off, tossed its contents on the ground, and poured three mugs.

‘That's beautiful,' my old man said, and it was good, deep amber.

‘Sure,' said Bob. ‘Mind, it'll kick you on the way back.'

‘Change from Jackson's,' I said.

‘Jackson?' said Bob.

‘What you know about him?' my father turned round on me.

‘I see him around,' I said, ‘met Dick at the garage, the other day, drunk.'

‘Who?'

‘Both of them.'

‘I'm having a word with the boy's father.'

When we drove home, back towards Langport, I turned back on the main road, just another way home. You drop down into Drayton, and past the church. There's an ancient house with leaded windows, you take a sharp corner, the road straightens to the north of South Moor, and runs towards the old railway, the river and Muchelney. It seemed suddenly very hot in the cab, as the sun streamed in at us. I looked at my father, he had turned off-colour, like the bloom on an unripe sloe. I took one hand off the wheel, I felt unwell myself, and shook him. He went, ‘Grrr.'

‘Father?'

‘Mmm… grr.'

I had to stop the van anyway, I was feeling strange, pulled in by the railway embankment, came over hot and cold; I needed fresh air, the hot cab, the smell of chickens and freshly boiled willow. I opened the door and flopped out onto the verge. I lay in the grass for a moment, before pulling myself up and staggering round to the passenger door. I tapped on the window.

‘Wake up, hey!'

He looked very ill, more like someone else than a person. I opened the door, and he dropped out of his seat like a sack of potatoes, until he hit his head on the ground and jumped up, shouting, ‘Where am I? What's going on?'

‘We've stopped for a minute.'

‘Stopped? Why? What for? We're not home yet…' but then he grabbed his head, wheeled around and was sick. He looked up from this, wiping his mouth, sheet white, mumbled about Wright's cider being a boot of a brew, before staggering off towards the embankment where he slumped down, on the slope, amongst the primroses. I joined him for a minute, until we looked at each other, got back up and walked towards the road. Holding onto the van, we were both sick, I first, he again, while the girl from Drove House cycled by, her hair streaming out in the breeze she made, humming a tune, breaking from the melody only to wish us good afternoon. I couldn't say anything, as a stream of illness was occupying my mouth, but my father was polite enough to say, ‘And to you', before spraying the windscreen.

I managed a sideways look, distorted by the angle of my head to her, as she disappeared in the direction we'd come. I saw her two brown legs glistening with sweat beneath a pair of white shorts, and the arch of her back humping at the bike as she pedalled, but felt ill again, and saw no more.

My old man worried, ‘Mind this doesn't get any further,' he said. I pumped the windscreen washers.

‘You kidding?' I said.

‘No.'

‘Then what about her?'

‘Who's her?'

‘The girl on the bike.'

‘Foreigner, student. Right here, take the fork, careful on the bend.'

‘She's not.'

‘Who says?'

‘She's living at Drove House.'

‘What?'

‘Dick and I saw them move in.'

‘Them?'

‘Dick and I.'

He told me when to take the left to Blackwood, and before we turned into the yard, I slowed down to look in the mirror, smoothed my collar, straightened my hair, but when we pulled up my mother appeared, shouting,

‘You took your bloody time.'

I didn't feel too bad.

Tea was a quiet affair, the old man and I picked at our food, while she stared at us shouting ‘What's the matter with you?' and other things too obvious to answer. She flustered with her apron at the plates. Then she shouted, ‘The chickens'll be grateful', and swept them away. ‘Don't suppose your lordships will want the suet pudding?' We shook our heads. She ate enough for three, so none was wasted.

‘Get out of my sight. Do something useful,' she screamed. My old man went to the kitchen garden and sat in the tool shed with a geographical magazine. I went to Drove House.

I didn't phone Dick, just set off, not wanting him bored on me, as the sun went down. When I reached Burrow, I walked round the hill and into Drove orchard, and in dimming light sat beneath an apple tree. A downstairs light came on, and I watched the older woman walk into the front room with a box, put it on the table, and leave. I could see half-unpacked tea chests and piles of books, while I shivered at a cold gust of wind that blew through the apples.

A sound rose above the noise of the gathering storm and distant hum of traffic, rhythmic clanking from the lane to the house, before it reached a pitch and the girl came cycling round the corner, to stop at the front door. She swung her leg over the saddle, propped the bike by the porch, and disappeared. I got up, watched her swallowed by the house and crept closer in the dark, so close I could read the spines of some of the books stacked in the lit, but empty front room:

There.

Fortunate to be around: Ruth Baxter's life in pictures.

The pond.

Zen explains baking!

Correct your faults? Don't. Expand on them.

These were some of the titles. I saw a glass-fronted cabinet of dark wood, and a collection of shapes, mainly pieces of stone cleaned and polished, on a chest of drawers. Some pictures stacked against the wall, the top one of the pile, a grey scene of a lake, with rows of breaking waves stretching as far as the eye could see. I had pressed my nose against the window pane, trying to read the words
Collins etymological and reference dictionary
, when the woman came through the door to the room, followed by the girl, carrying cups. They threw some boxes and blankets off a sofa, sat down, and I heard them moan.

I turned away from the window and stood in the yard, watching for a few minutes, as the night drew in. Did they know about the ghosts? They didn't look nervous. I couldn't stand and peep. I decided to leave, went through the orchard and up Burrow Hill. When I reached the tree, I looked back at the house, the single light twinkling in the dark, and stood there until it blinked out, and another light came on upstairs.

The lane to Kingston was a long dark tunnel in the night, the branches of overgrown willow and hazel thrashed in strengthening wind as I walked past the turning to East Lambrook, and rain began to fall. She didn't look like any girl round here. Had she read those books? Should I feel threatened? Should I have studied harder? Was there any point in going near Drove House again?

A line of light streamed from Jackson's garage, and above the sound of wind and rain came the noise of people drinking green cider. Someone had a radio turned up, an argument was brewing. I didn't join them.

The wind and rain of the night turned to storm, the sky became a scream of hard, grey clouds; rain lashed against my window as I got out of bed, walked across the landing, and found someone in the bathroom.

‘Busy!' shouted my mother. ‘Go and let the hens out.' To think it was May; I crossed the yard in boots, the dust of a day before turned to mud, and when I opened them, the chickens just stood in the door of their house, staring out at the rain, like they knew they weren't fish.

By the time I got back to the bathroom, my old man had taken up residence, I wasn't going to wait half an hour, so went down again, and washed in the kitchen sink, before mother appeared with colanders of eggs.

‘Get your face out of my sink! Eggs to wash!' I went outside, and watched as a distant stand of poplar bent in the storm, and young leaves, ripped off before their time, flew in the wind.

‘Stormy day,' I said, sitting at the table, breakfast cooking.

‘Don't know what you're doing. It isn't ready yet. Your father's not down …' The scarf she wore, to keep her hair out of the chickens, was at its best first thing. Neatly tucked in, little rolls of material, a V at the back, pushed underneath a huge bun of hair, she fingered it with a free hand and shouted, ‘Make yourself useful. Wash some eggs.'

The postman saved me, as I heard his weary tread, the click of the letter box, and the gentle pufftt as two letters dropped onto the mat.

‘I'll get them!' I said.

‘You'll not get out of it,' she screamed, but by the time I was back in the kitchen, my father was at his place, eating.

One letter was a postcard from Uncle Ray, my mother's younger brother, the only person who knew how to get her to talk quiet; but he was in Scotland, so of little help.

‘It's from Uncle Ray!' she yelled, ‘A picture of Scotland!' ‘A Brave Piper of The Glens' stood beneath a lake-bound castle, a banner reading ‘Greetings from Bonnie Scotland!' printed across the bottom of the picture. She read the card, and said, ‘Listen to what he says. “I am staying at Mrs Robert's again, food good as usual though so far four days rain. Went to the castle yesterday but didn't see this chap! Love from Uncle Ray.” Isn't that interesting?' she shouted. ‘What Uncle Ray says!'

The other letter was a bill from Stan Raymond for the car, when the exhaust fell off. My father stuffed it in his sock.

‘Anything?' she screamed.

‘No.'

I went to load up for a trip to Exeter, twenty-five log baskets, a dozen trugs and fourteen oblong shoppers, all a week late for Sanderson, Wrigley and Butt, Ironmongers of Force Street. My mother came out to the yard with a saucepan of peeling and crusts, steaming in the rain, for the chickens.

‘Is he ready?' I sat in the van, staring at the weather. He came out of the house ten minutes later, slumped in the passenger seat and said, ‘I'll drive.'

‘You won't,' I said, and before he had a chance to try anything, had it running, and was out of the yard, waving at the old girl stooping over her chickens, as we turned left and into the road.

‘Whooo! All right,' he said,

As I drove, towards Ilminster, I was thinking about the old man's ways, learnt from his apprentice years, and how they irritated me. They went round and round in my head, arguments with no end. I always had to leave the inside ends for him to trim, even now, while he'd make that an excuse to go round the basket with a ruler. He sat in the van, sucking his gums. He removed his top plate and began to pick pieces of bacon from between the teeth.

Out of Ilminster, travelling west, the land rises so you can see as far as the eye can see, but not today, nothing but cloud and rain, and as the old man didn't want to talk but just stare out of the window, I was thinking about Dick, and how he was the type to end up picking meat out of his false teeth. Something about his way of walking, down the road to Chedzoy's.

‘Want one?' he offered me a cigarette.

‘No thanks.'

The wipers couldn't cope; they barely got across the windscreen. I drove with my chin resting on the steering wheel, as rain dripped in through the roof. A lorry overtook us on the stretch outside Honiton, threw up gallons of mud and water, while a car tried to overtake it, and we were pushed towards the verge.

‘Bloody maniacs.'

He stared at the wet scenery with a gloomy face, our breath steaming the glass, doodled in the condensation with a finger, smoked another cigarette, and again said ‘maniacs'. He'd always thought he'd make something of himself, more than a basketmaker, cut ice, but it was something he'd never had any choice in. He was a boy when the school children in Somerset were given time off to hand-strip willow, he was a baby in the withy beds, sat by a cradle of cider and bread, no choice. He had visions, he claimed, where he saw things and was able to see that same thing somewhere else later, like at the pictures, on the television, or on a walk; he said he wished he could paint. The only picture in the workshop is called ‘In the basketmaker's shop Widow Garson found Sammy, with her arms around little Sue's neck, trying to comfort her'. A whitehaired man with a beard, sat on a chair, with a basket between his legs, his eyes closed, worked a border, while a dog watched, two small children and the widow in the doorway watched; a crude watercolour, but my father would have painted it cruder. He was never out of the starting blocks, he was never even given a pair of running shoes, in the free country of his youth, he would never do anything but what was coming. I have had better chances but chose this, but only these days, because there is nothing else to do. I was wondering what the girl from Drove House had done to deserve her blessings when there was a crack from the engine, the van jolted, and I was forced to steer into the verge to avoid a coach.

‘What happened!' the old man jumped in his seat. ‘Why we stopped?' He'd been asleep.

‘Something went. I thought you had it fixed.'

‘The exhaust …'

‘It was in the engine.'

‘You sure?'

‘Fan belt?'

‘No.'

He didn't know the first thing. We watched the rain fall, the traffic thundered past.

‘I suppose I've got to,' I said.

‘Well done. You'll have it fixed.'

Ten minutes later, and a new belt, I climbed back into my seat, soaked, lucky to be alive, so I could listen to him crow.

‘Lucky I kept a fresh one in the van,' he said.

‘You thought it was something else, you wouldn't have a clue.'

‘Who thought of carrying a spare?'

‘It got left by mistake when they fixed the exhaust.'

‘Good, isn't it?'

‘What?'

‘The new exhaust. Quieter. A good run, like this, do it the world of good.'

Of the three, Sanderson Wrigley and Butt, the last Wrigley had died in 1947, nobody knew where Mr Sanderson was, and Mr Butt was definitely out for sandwiches. I was met by a sub-manager, a small man with the habit of picking flesh off the edge of his thumb with an index finger. Tiny pieces of dry, white skin dropped to the floor, as I told him we were outside with the baskets.

‘About time,' he said, rudely. ‘They were meant to be here last week. What's been going on?'

‘You didn't get a phone call?'

‘No.'

‘Then someone's let you down …' I paused to read the name on the plastic tag pinned to his chest, ‘Mr Podmore.'

‘Oh?'

‘Someone here,' I said. He looked doubtful.

‘My father phoned to say we were waiting for white sevens.'

‘White sevens?'

‘Seven foot, white.'

‘Seven foot, white?'

‘It's willow.'

‘And?'

‘So we were held up, nothing to do with us. We can't tell what's available all the time. Not our fault.'

I gave him our invoice, he told me to stack the order in the back. I went out to the van, we unloaded the baskets, and left them with a surly boy who said, ‘Thanks a lot.'

‘If he says anything,' I said, ‘about a phone call, just say you did.' Mr Podmore tried to give us a cheque, but the old man insisted on cash; no reason, he was in one of those moods. The journey had upset him.

‘I've no cash here.'

‘Then get some.'

‘I can't. Not till Mr Butt comes back from his sandwiches.'

‘Sandwiches?'

‘He always gets them. Calls it his little foible, the boss doing the office boy's job.'

‘We'll wait.'

‘He'll be half an hour.'

‘We'll be back in half an hour,' my father said, and with an arthritic wave left the office, calling me over his shoulder, ‘Come on Billy, we'll get a pint.'

An hour later, in the van, a wad of notes, still warm from Mr Butt's hand, tucked close to my father's chest, we were travelling in a dangerous manner along Exmouth Road, towards the motorway. With five pints of cider down his neck my father was driving.

‘I can drive on an M5!' he shouted, though he never had before. We didn't need to go that way, but there lay the challenge, and as we drove down the sliproad, and the traffic increased, my old man took on a determined expression and headed for the lane carrying the least number of vehicles. We hadn't got two hundred yards before a car came up behind us so fast it had to swerve to avoid a collision, the driver flashing his lights and waving a fist. I was not going to say much to my father, but did manage, ‘You're in the wrong lane.'

‘They're all going the same direction, I can drive down any lane I like.'

‘But.'

‘Shut up.'

A coach bore down, flashing and hooting, swerving into the middle lane, the passengers leaning over in their seats, expressions of fear and alarm on their faces. My father watched a kestrel, hovering over the verge, the sun broke through scattering cloud.

‘Motorways give you time to really look around,' he said. ‘All you have to do is point in the right direction.' He turned and smiled at me, ‘We'll come this way every time.'

‘This is the fast lane.'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘I mean,' I said, ‘there are three lanes to each carriageway.'

‘What?'

‘Pull over,' I shouted, pointing.

‘But they're going slowly.'

‘So are we.'

Another car.

‘Please,' I pleaded, in the end, pulling at the steering wheel.

‘All right, all right,' he said, but hadn't finished, he didn't look over his shoulder or in the mirror, it was hard down with the left hand and across two lanes of traffic. Lucky to be alive, again, but the old man sucked his teeth, asked me to light a cigarette, and got lost outside Bridgwater.

We didn't get home till seven, the egg man was at Blackwood, and as we climbed out of the van, heads dull, my mother screamed, ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?'

The egg man, whose name was, I think, Brian, but I'd heard him called Steve, was carrying a bucket from the store.

‘Len's had to help me,' she pointed at the egg man.

‘We got lost,' said my father.

‘Well done.'

‘Outside Bridgwater.'

‘Bridgwater? Doing what in Bridgwater?'

‘Not in, outside.'

‘Outside!'

‘He missed the turn on the motorway,' I said.

‘What were you doing on a motorway?'

‘Trying to get home.'

‘Trying to get home?'

It continued, my mother repeating everything my father said, only as a question; the egg man stood in the doorway of the store shed with a bucket in his hand, while I corrected errors of fact. The sun set in a blaze of diagonals, shafts of red and orange light burning long stripes into the darkening sky above the shed and the egg man's head. An owl called from an oak tree, single flowers closed for the night in the rustling hedgerows. Sober people in fast cars drove into the night to get pissed. Children slept. The two women at Drove House sat in their front room surrounded by broken cardboard boxes full of kitchen utensils.

Next day, my father came to the workshop first thing, to help me sort. He was moving bundles of willow to a spot where I didn't want them. I had sat down, and was working, when he said, ‘Beautiful day.' It was. The storm had cleared, leaving stacked blue skies, the odd fleck of cloud brushing the west, but the wind had veered south, a wood pigeon flapped by, and in the distance, the clack-clack of Chedzoy's machines clacked off, the sun rose high in the sky; that was how it was.