Half-Sick of Shadows (15 page)

Some years earlier, and without telling anyone, the Department of Conveyance decided to construct a motorway – Father called it an abomination – from top to toe of the country and back again. In fact, the abomination ran only half the country’s length, connecting north to south (or south to north). It ran parallel to the railway track, but on the far side. If they had constructed it on the near side, the mess would have destroyed a stretch of Hollow Heath.

Instead, destruction threatened the whole of Hollow Heath.

There were rumours of a new town replacing it. They planned to build half of the new town on the far side of the motorway, and half on the near side. The new town would come right up to our door.

Mother brought these rumours home when she went shopping for things we were out of. The notion of a new town replacing Hollow Heath sounded like a notion of Armageddon. Father made enquiries, but I heard no more, and I doubt he did either. They built a halt, and a footbridge over the motorway so new town people could get off the train and walk home.

In time, the new town came, but they only built half of it, and built it well away from us, on the far side of the track and the motorway. Moreover, the planners forgot, or omitted, to build a slip road off the motorway leading to the new town, Bruagh and beyond, thus leaving the new town to starve and die when, as rumoured, through lack of passengers, the train no longer stopped at the halt. Were the rumours true, only an unreliable daily bus would service our sick, small spot of the land.

By the time the motorway was finished, a strip of widely spaced and tall orange lights, as far as the eye could see, from right to left and
back
again, robbed half my sky of stars. My gloomy sky over Whitehead House seldom entertained stars. But at the Manse, I liked to stand at the broken garden gate and look at them.

Father said, of the planners and executors of progress, as he said of everyone he had no control over or influence upon, ‘They don’t care about common gardener people like us.’ I think he might have meant common or garden, but whatever he meant, for once I agreed with him. He also said, ‘All this progress, and all this making us a nation fit for modern times: it’s nothing but the Devil’s work.’

I had some trouble agreeing with this, despite having a degree of sympathy with the spirit of his argument. I could see that motorized vehicles broke down but horses never did. They died, but that was natural.

Father was a hypocrite, of course. When progress brought hot water into his home, a warm toilet seat, and light to read his bible by at night, Father’s condemnation of the Devil’s work was absent.

The Manse lost a spare bedroom and gained an indoor toilet. That the simple flush of a loo should put such smiles on faces! Our bathroom boasted a sink too. And a bath! In the old days we put water from the well into the old tin tub and heated it with water from the kettle. Luxury is having a bath with your legs straight and your knees under the water. Father hung the tin tub on a nail in an outhouse, where it rusted – like the whistling kettle and the mangle – for someone, someday, to discover and write into history.

I overheard talk of boilers, timer switches and thermostats. ‘Plumbing’ entered my vocabulary. I became aware of the connection between these technologies and Science, but it would be more years before I became aware that my scientific tendencies were theoretical, not practical. I couldn’t wire a plug to save my life.

The Manse received an upgrade or three. Workmen dug channels and pits. We became proud owners of a new septic tank. Progress consigned the well – although we all had a soft spot for it – to
stagnation
. Father covered the top with boards and bricks in case someone fell in. He also discovered electricity and came out from the Dark Ages around this time.

And he took a stroke.

I didn’t know what a stroke was until he took one.

He had to take time off work, of course.

Where did money come from to see us through? Farmer Barry, apparently – charity, really. Barry could afford it. He owned land as far as the eye could see, which he rented out for grazing and growing.

The doctor from the big hospital far away, where Father had to stay for two weeks, said Father was lucky: his stroke was slight. His speech wasn’t affected and his face didn’t sag on one side. He had a limp, and needed a walking stick, but apart from that no one would have suspected that he’d had a stroke. I, for one, was heavily disappointed by the prospect that, one day, he might throw away his stick and his recovery might be complete.

But that was not to be.

Mother, Gregory, Sophia and I wanted a television. Father wanted one too, but wouldn’t admit it. ‘Where’s the money coming from to buy it?’ he asked. ‘And you need to buy a licence and renew it every year. It’s a money-eating machine, it is.’

We received a government grant to cover the cost of modernization, but that didn’t include a television. I don’t know where the money came from, but, in the end, it came.

Two men wearing blue overalls arrived at the Manse in a van that said
TeleIdeal
on the side. We were beside ourselves with excitement. They’d brought us our television. The images on the screen would be in colour. Nothing would ever be the same.

One of the men in blue overalls climbed a ladder and attached an aerial to the chimney. The other man placed the television where Mother said she wanted it, and drilled a hole in the wall beneath the living-room window. When the aerial cable fed through the hole and fixed to the back of the television, and the drill-man switched on our
new
acquisition, the screen came magically alive. We had visitors in our home, in a box, whenever we wanted them. There were wars, and rumours of wars, that we hadn’t known about. Father said it was the Second Coming of Christ.

Our television had three channels with good reception, and two channels that were fuzzy. A blue-overall man said we needed to wiggle the aeriel on the chimney about, but Father said to leave it alone; it was a stupid idea. You can’t climb up there in all kinds of weather, wiggle the aeriel about, and watch programmes in the living room at the same time.

In the future, said the other blue-overall man, we would be able to switch channels without getting up from our chairs; we would only have to point and the television would know what we wanted. ‘It’s satanic,’ moaned Father, shaking his head as if powerless and defeated already. In the future, there would be not three but thirty or more channels. The screen would double in size and the images would become sharper. Pictures would come into our living room live from outer space.

The idea of live pictures from outer space thrilled me. The television people must have known things that we did not. Of course they did; they were a branch of the government! What, I wondered, strange, wonderful and other-worldly things went on in outer space that, soon, everyone on terra firma would know about.

Father became increasingly worried. For him, seeing what happened in outer space intruded upon the upper realm of God.

The blue-overall men went away, leaving us watching television. None of us blinked for two hours. Father didn’t blink for three. Hours turned into days. Sophia sat too close to the screen and started seeing snow before her eyes wherever she went. Mother took to burning dinner. Burnt meals arrived late on the table. Dishes went unwashed. The noise of clicking knitting needles competed with noise from the television. Soon, the Manse boasted enough woollen scarves to warm the necks of a small army. Pom-pom hats appeared
on
the floor like mushrooms. At full capacity, the Manse had twelve feet, but a month after our television arrived it had forty-three knitted bed socks, and a forty-fourth on the way.

No one spoke any more in words of more than two syllables – even television became TV. Sentences were short, and ceased being preceded by, or followed by, other sentences …

‘What’s on?’

‘This.’

‘What else?’

‘This is good.’

‘What time’s dinner?’

‘After this.’

‘I like him.’

‘Hmm?’

‘What?’

‘I thought you said something.’

‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Shh!’

Sophia discovered that by propping a mirror beside the television she could view programmes without being startled when someone entered the room behind her.

Everything had changed, changed still, and would continue to change. I didn’t realize it then, but change is a condition of nature.

Edgar passed out of my life with neither a goodbye nor a departing wave. The authorities persuaded Mother to allow him to be taken into care – for his own good, they said. Apparently, Edgar’s long-term care had been an issue for some years. Obviously, things went on between Mother and Father that we children knew nothing about.

Father put his foot down – as far as I understand what happened. He said that Edgar had parents who were fit and able to look after him – by which he meant that Mother was fit and able to look after him.

The authorities sided with Mother, and gave my parents a booklet
which
explained that, because they had such a low income, the state would pay for all Edgar’s needs. The booklet changed Father’s mind. He said Edgar’s going into care was for the best.

I had daydreamed for years about how wonderful leaving junior school for ever would be. Real freedom at last! I would run like a fast-flowing stream. I would float in the air like a … balloon? I would … I didn’t know what I would do, but whatever I did would feel alive and good. I would feel alive and good! Leaving junior school for ever would be like going directly to Heaven without the unpleasant necessity of dying first.

On the penultimate day, we had an end-of-term party during which I ate too much, and on the ultimate one I felt sick.

I expected to have grown up by the time I left junior school for ever, but I had not – not grown more than a centimetre no matter what variety of instruments of measurement anyone cared to employ. My feet – along with my inches – were disinclined to draw attention to themselves. Their dastardly plan to keep their heads down – and, consequentially, my head too – backfired, and I dreaded returning to Whitehead House, after the summer break, as the smallest ever senior. I would rather have been conspicuous for my ability to see over hedges than for my ability to walk under tables. I would have felt much more grown up if I had spent at least some of my time during the junior years growing up.

In the end, it was an anticlimax. Nobody said goodbye to anybody else. Indeed, everything changes. But nothing changes much or quickly. We would all be back in September as seniors.

I had diarrhoea on the train.

Fortunately, it had an indoor toilet.

Sophia was pleased to see me. Mother was pleased to see me. Gregory couldn’t care less. Father … God knows. I was pleased to see the toilet indoors.

A little growing up went on during July and August, but not much. Mother promised that I would awake some morning to find that I had grown an extra foot. For a boy who tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible in all situations, an extra foot would have been disastrous, especially if it came attached to an extra leg. There was a little consolation, although not much, in that, with an extra foot, I would have something in common with Miss Ballard with the extra toe. It was a long, dull summer.

12

Senior School Photographs

The shadowy, senior side of Whitehead House awaited. No longer a junior, proudly wearing my longs – which would have covered the knees but not the shins of most boys my age – I walked beside Mother as she carried my suitcase up the Lane to the Road. My strides were the same length as hers now. There had been no rain for a week and the potholes were dry. The clouds were white and fluffy, and the morning sun shone ferocious and cold. Our feet crunched gravel. I heard no other noise. I felt ever so strange.

Sophia hadn’t been there this time to wave goodbye from the back door. She missed breakfast. Flu, Mother said. It was catching. I couldn’t go to her room, to hug her and say goodbye, for fear of spreading flu to everyone in Whitehead House.

‘Why aren’t you coming to the train?’ I asked Mother.

‘You’re a big boy now.’

‘But why aren’t you coming to the train?’

‘Don’t go on about it, Edward.’

At the top of the Lane, Mother put my suitcase down and we waited for Farmer Barry’s lorry. I don’t know why he didn’t drive down the Lane to the courtyard this time; maybe he was in a hurry. After several minutes, Mother became impatient. ‘He’s late. I hope he hurries up or you’ll miss your train.’ She sat on the grass at the side
of
the road while I kept lookout, jumping up and down to see over the hill – although I would have had to jump ten feet high to see the road on the other side.

We heard the lorry before we saw it. Mother stood up when Farmer Barry came over the hill. ‘All right?’ he greeted us, stepping down from behind the wheel to get my suitcase. Mother squashed me with a hug, kissed me, flattened my hair with her hand, hugged me again, and sobbed all the words you would expect a mother to sob about being good, keeping out of trouble, brushing my teeth and remembering to write to Sophia – as if I’d forget. Farmer Barry climbed back behind the wheel, closed his door, wound down the window and stuck his elbow out, and restarted the engine because it had cut out while he retrieved my suitcase. Mother gave me a shove to get me going, and in no time I had climbed nearly as high as my neck to get into the lorry. Mother waved, weeping, and I waved back as we drove away. I twisted round to wave through the tiny back window, but Mother wasn’t in it.

‘We’re off, then,’ said Farmer Barry, as if I might not have noticed. I had never known Farmer Barry to say much, but he spoke to me in the lorry, maybe to put me at ease, or to try to put himself at ease. We had never been alone before.

‘Like school, do you?’ he asked awkwardly. ‘Good, is it?’

‘I like parts of it,’ I replied, after consideration.

‘Parts, eh? Which parts are best, then?’