At Hawthorn Time (29 page)

Up on the hill’s broad and treeless back Howard made for the toposcope where he sat gingerly on its low concrete plinth. It seemed less dark up there than it had done down in the car park, as though, with so much sky in every direction, the summit could gather in all the available light. Much of the landscape before him was indistinct and unrecognisable, Lodeshill’s church spire lost in black trees, but he could see the lights of the distant motorway and Connorville like a twinkling constellation beyond.

An hour or so before he had to set off for the airport. He unscrewed the top of the Thermos and poured himself some coffee, hot and black and sweet. At the back of his mind, like a body in a sack, was the row with Kitty, and what was to happen next. But he didn’t want to look at it just yet.

Among the stars a light moved steadily; a plane coming in. Howard tried to work out which way the airport was and which direction Jenny’s flight would arrive from, but gave up. Maybe it would be better to be honest with her when she arrived, and with Chris: just tell them they were having some problems. The kids were adults now, it’s not like their childhoods were at stake.

All those years of not arguing in front of them. Had it really been for their good? He’d thought so at the time, but looking back it wasn’t as though he and Kitty had had it out properly when they weren’t around. They had just tacitly agreed to leave some things be; things that were too damaging, potentially, to discuss. His drinking, for one thing. Her affair.

Howard closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the concrete pillar. His back ached and the ground felt cold through his cords.

It was so quiet up here, so still. He pictured people sleeping, below him, in their thousands: safely tucked up in bed, sunk in their ordinary lives. Families in groups, like little planetary systems, bound to one another for life. He thought about Jenny and Chris, being pulled back even now by the gravity of his and Kitty’s marriage. They were still a family; they always would be, whatever happened. Wouldn’t they?

He took another sip of coffee, then reached for the Dansette. The radio felt comforting in his hands; it was the way the knob clicked on and the dial glowed, the way it immediately began to whine and babble softly, surrounding him with familiar noise. It reeled his thoughts back in.

Slowly he began to scan through the frequencies, adjusting the dial minutely, listening, waiting, listening again. Pops and crackles, garbled speech, snatches of music, and between it all the otherworldly heterodyne wails. The Dansette wasn’t a shortwave set, but Radio Moscow, or whatever it was called these days, was supposed to bounce off the big mast somehow and piggyback in on medium wave and even TV signals, so it could be anywhere on the dial – if the rumour about it was even true.

He gave it half an hour, the black sky around him becoming deep blue, the stars slowly fading in the east. He’d no idea, really, why he wanted to pick up the signal; it was probably a myth anyway. But to have heard it would have been . . . what? A little victory; a moment of connection. But there was nothing that sounded like it could be from Russia, nothing at all; just the usual chatter and interference he knew so well.

It was nearly time to go and collect Jenny. He wondered if Kitty was awake yet, and whether she’d be angry that he had left without her. He pictured her moving around in the rooms of the house by herself; pictured her living there, alone and unobserved, for good. If this was it, if he were to move out, she’d be a separate human being once again, with her own plans and thoughts and desires. It made him feel utterly desolate.

And what of him, who would he be without Kitty? He tried to see himself as others doubtless would, without her making up a part of him, or making up for parts of him, perhaps: just a sad retiree in a crappy flat somewhere with a load of old radios and cirrhosis of the liver, most likely. After all, he was nearly a pensioner; it was surely all downhill from here.

The fact was, he couldn’t imagine life without her, not after all this time. They had their problems, he knew that. They had got into some bad habits – not talking about things probably being one of them. But no marriage was perfect. He didn’t always understand her, but he loved her, and surely that was all that mattered?

Even when he was drinking he’d never slept around: not once, not even after that awful evening when he’d seen her getting out of another man’s car, had understood instantly the eloquence of her expression as he’d driven away; not even when they’d finally stopped touching each other. He just hadn’t wanted anyone else.

Howard clicked the radio off and let the hill’s silence rush back. After a few moments he got up, stiffly, picked the radio up and began making his way down to the waiting Audi. He’d meet Jenny off her flight and they could listen to his Simon & Garfunkel CD in the car on the way back. And then, as soon as Jenny had settled in, he’d take Kitty up to the radio room, close the door and ask her if she wanted to talk.

Four thirty on a May morning: a long, straight road between fields. Jack was on the Boundway as dawn gathered in the east and the air around him filled slowly with song: blackbirds; thrushes; wren after wren.

He walked on the verge with his usual loping stride.
Just to be by myself
, he thought.
Just to live out the rest of my days as I see fit. I don’t mean anyone any harm, God knows.

Crows began to call from the woods and spinneys, and beyond the hawthorn hedges that flanked the Roman road the still-dim fields were dotted with early rabbits. The daisies on the verge were closed, the thick grass heavy with dew and clotted with fallen may blossom. It stuck to Jack’s boots like confetti as he walked.

Raising his eyes from his feet Jack saw there was something on the carriageway fifty yards or so away. He stopped and peered ahead. In the low dawn light, looking east, it was hard to see exactly what it was; a struck deer? A feed sack? Whatever it was, it was motionless.

Jack stood and listened carefully. Apart from the waking birds and the distant hum of the motorway there was nothing; no traffic approaching from either direction, no voices, no human sounds. He took a few paces forward and stopped again, keeping his eyes on the shape on the road. It didn’t move.

A few more paces and it resolved itself into the shape of an old man, his white hair thin on his liver-spotted and undefended head. He was sitting on the road, facing away from Jack, and he wore an old worsted jacket. Trailing behind him, from one pocket, was what looked like a washing line. Jack approached to the very end of it and stopped.

‘Are you all right?’

There was no response. Jack wondered how the man’s old bones could stand it, sitting on the cold road surface like that.

He tried again, louder. ‘Are you all right?’

Still nothing. Jack shifted his boots on the tarmac; coughed; waited. Then he walked around the still shape to crouch down facing him, swinging his pack down to the road beside him.

The man’s eyes were open, but he was looking past Jack. His hands rested awkwardly and uselessly in his lap.

‘Is it here?’ he asked, shifting his milky eyes at last to Jack. ‘I’ve been waiting ever so long.’

Jack felt his hands. They were icy cold. ‘Is what here? What’s your name?’

‘I need to get back for Edith, she’ll be worried. I always get this bus. I don’t know where it’s got to.’

Jack closed his eyes for a moment. ‘How long have you been here, Mr . . .?’

‘Hirons. James Albert Hirons. Where’s Edith, do you know?’

Jack tried to think. If only he had a mobile phone.

‘Where have you come from, Mr Hirons? From home?’

‘Home? Where’s that?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you. Where do you live? Do you live in Lodeshill?’

‘I was born in Lodeshill. 1919.’

Jack stood up and scanned the road in each direction, then crouched down again and took the old man’s chill hands in each of his. There were no bruises or abrasions on them, at least; it didn’t look as though he had fallen. He tried to think. He’d have to stand him up, see if he could walk. At least get him off the carriageway.

‘Are you injured anywhere, Mr Hirons? Does anything hurt?’

‘Hurt?’

‘Have you got any aches and pains?’

‘Oh no.’

‘Good. Do you think you can stand up for me, if I help you?’

‘Stand up? Course I can, lad. Here, give us your hand. Old bones.’

Jack reached his arms around the old man’s ribs and hauled him gently up. He weighed nothing; it was like embracing a bird.

‘Don’t fuss,’ the old man scolded; but he held on to Jack tightly as they shuffled slowly to the side of the road.

‘Can you stand? Are you OK there for a moment? Look –’ and Jack guided his hand to a hawthorn branch in the hedge. ‘Let me just get my pack.’

The old man smiled. ‘Did you ever collect that deer, lad?’

Jack shrugged his pack onto his shoulders and adjusted the straps. Then he gently took the old man’s hand from the hawthorn and slipped an arm around his shoulder. Together they began, very slowly, to walk back the way Jack had come. Towards Lodeshill.

‘What deer was that?’

‘You know, on the road. Not far off here, was it?’

If he could just get him home he could hand him over to his wife. Then he could get back on his way; then he could disappear.

‘No, not far off.’

‘Hundreds of deer in Ocket Wood, always was. We used to go in there, you know, when we were courting.’

‘When was that?’

‘Oh, after the war, lad. Edith was only a girl before the war, you know; six years younger than me, she was. But it made men and women of us all . . .’ His voice tailed off for a moment. ‘Anyway, she – well,’ he chuckled, recollecting himself. ‘You wouldn’t credit it. Not that she was one of those good-time girls, you understand.’

‘Course not.’

‘She said we should get married straight away, rent a little house near her mother, but I wanted to do it properly. I worked hard and I saved it up: four hundred and fifty pounds, that house, have I ever told you that? It was a lot of money in those days.’

Lodeshill was only a mile or so away. Jack wondered if the old man would be able to find his house all right, and if he should take him all the way to the door. Whether he could risk being seen. He had the sense of something having been decided, although he couldn’t have said what.

‘I used to think about all this in Changi, you know,’ the old man continued, gesturing weakly. ‘The fields, the birdsong. Whether the may was out. If it was haying weather.’

‘Changi? Is that . . . was that a prison camp?’

‘Singapore. I was just a boy, really. Twenty-three. I had a great friend there, Stan. Chorley lad, he was. They took him away one day, to build a railway, they said. I never saw him again.’

Stan
. Oddly, Jack felt his eyes fill with tears.

‘I used to imagine I was ploughing the Batch, you know? With a team. Lovely animals, Suffolks. Up and down. I’d do it over and over, all in my mind. Getting a straight furrow, steering round that big oak. Kept me sane.’

‘You were a farmer, before the war?’

‘A farmhand, lad. I’ve told you that.’

‘And when you got home did you ever do it?’

‘What, plough the Batch? No. When I got back there was no call for horses any more. Anyhow, Edith was proud of me going into manufacturing, bettering myself. When I was made foreman she cooked me a steak dinner and she made sure all the neighbours knew.’

‘But you missed it.’

‘Now and again. Never told Edith.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’d’ve had no truck with foolish notions, she had the children to bring up. Anyhow, you can’t turn back the clock.’

‘That’s true enough.’

‘I had to put food on the table, lad. I just had to get on with it. Oh, it’s all different now – kids come out of school wanting what they call a career these days, but we were just glad to have honest work.’

‘And did you ever see anyone again from when you were in Singapore? From the war?’

‘No.’

‘Did you talk to anyone about it?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘What was there to talk about, lad? It was all in the past. Best forgotten.’

‘And did you? Forget, I mean?’

‘Oh, you never forget something like Changi. Not really.’

They walked in silence for a while, Jack keeping his arm lightly around James Hirons’ back to save his pride. He thought about the old man’s life: a unique landscape of memories, parts of it sunlit and open, parts shadowy and unvisited, all of which would soon be – was being – lost.

‘I’d like to see it one more time, though. Before I go.’

‘The field you ploughed?’

‘The Batch.’

‘Is that where you were going?’

‘Going?’

‘Just now. Is that why you came out?’

‘No, I was – I’ve been –’ and he patted his jacket pockets and then turned to Jack, a look of sudden distress on his face. ‘Who are you, anyway? What’s this all about?’