New and Collected Stories (89 page)

Every stone had beetles underneath. They lay still and quiet, because of all creatures on earth they were good at knowing how, but in the last few months they'd been growing bigger, till he felt the boulder ready to surge into the air and crush him to even less than a beetle when it came down. The crime had kept him loving and industrious ever after, and even now God hadn't paid him out.

Nevill passed the house of a blacksmith's noisy family. The up-and-down stretch of common known as the Cherry Orchard was blocked from the west by Robins Wood. The sun glowed on a bed of clouds, and the surrounding grass appeared so green from his place of hiding that it seemed as if a secret kingdom shone from under the ground.

Too far off to be noticeable, Nevill saw the man walking towards the wood – having been daft enough to think that secrets could be kept. Silence increased the quality of the glow. The stark side of the trees stood out as if they would melt, part of the most perfect summer since the fourteen-year-old century had turned.

Nevill watched Amy follow her fancyman from the lane, by which time he was already waiting in the wood. He plucked a juicy grass stem and, now that they were out of sight, moved along a depression – in case they should be looking from the bushes – towards a spot a hundred yards above where they had entered.

A breeze which carried the smell of grass made him hungry. He had come out before his tea, tracking to where he thought she had gone. There had to be a day when he came home early. The farmer he worked for lent him a gun so that he could stalk hares and be sure of hitting them. He moved like a tree that seemed always in the same place to the delicate senses of a rabbit. Then he took five minutes to lift his gun so that they didn't stand a chance. Even so, one sometimes escaped in a last-minute zig-zag too quick to be sighted on. Because the farmer gave only one cartridge at a time he could afford no waste. A big rabbit lasted two meals, and made a smell for any man to come home to.

The last of the sun flushed white and pink against his eyes. A raven circling over the wood told him they were still there, and hadn't gone out the other side towards the west. Its black gloss turned purple in the evening light.

Kneeling, he wondered whether or not to go back to the house and leave them alone. Now that he knew for certain, there seemed no point in pursuing them, for he could call the tune any time he liked. But his legs wouldn't stop his slow encroachment on that part of the wood they had gone into. A cloud of gnats pestered him. If he had been walking at a normal pace he could have reached home and forgotten all about it, but the deliberate putting forward on to the grass of one foot after another was as if he advanced on a magnetized track impossible to sidestep.

Shadows aggrandized each tree and solitary bush. Two rabbits ran from the wood. One stared at him, then sat up and rubbed its paws, while the other turned away with its white tail shivering in the breeze. He heard a hooter from Wollaton colliery, and the blink of his left eyelid wasn't sufficient to warn the rabbits, one of which was big enough for the pot.

Fingers itched for the safety catch, the shotgun lifting inch by inch. One would be dead for sure, but he fought his instinct, staying the gun while in the grip of something firmer. Rabbits swarmed so much this summer that a week ago he caught two with one bullet.

The long dusk began. A platoon of starlings scoured back and forth on a patch of grass to leave no worm's hiding place unturned. He wanted to light his pipe and smoke off the gnats, but any movement might reveal his place, so he became a flesh statue with head bowed, green jacket blending into green.

The crack of twigs sounded and she walked, without turning left or right, straight across the Cherry Orchard and back towards the lane. It wasn't the nearest way home but, when close to the house, she'd expect him to see her coming from the Woodhouse direction in which her mother lived. He smiled at such barefaced cunning, in which they'd talked up their little plot together, he deciding to stay another ten minutes in the wood after she had got clear of it.

Nevill needed only a few paces to reach the trees. Dodging the brambles, he walked from the thigh, toes and balls of the feet descending so as to avoid the heel on unseen twigs. He heard the stream that ran down the middle of the narrow wood. Blackberries were big and ripe. A pigeon rattled up, and he made towards its noise, advancing at the crouch, knowing every patch because his cottage was on the northern tip. When a match scraped along a box he stiffened.

The odour of fungus and running water on clean pebbles was sharpened by the cool of the evening. It wasn't quite dusk, but Nevill had to peer so as not to mistake him for the shadow of a bush. Looking for the first star, he lowered his head before finding one. The sky was still pale blue.

He saw him by the stream smoking a cigarette. A loosened tie hung around his neck, and he irritatedly brushed leaves from the legs of his dark suit. He whistled the bars of a tune, but suddenly stopped, as if not wanting to hear anything that would take him so far from what had just passed between him and Amy.

Nevill lifted the gun, butt-first. When a frog plopped into a side arm of the stream he saw the rings, and the man turned sharply at the noise as he decided it was time to get out of the wood. After two paces a shadow came at his head which had the force of the world concealed in it. An electric light went on for a second and revealed the trees roundabout. Often when a rabbit wouldn't die he battered the neck, and his rage was so great that it was no more difficult to smash the man's temple while he lay on the ground. There was a smell of hard drink when he knelt to make sure he was dead.

At the edge of the wood dusk was coming across the Cherry Orchard like a scarf. When Nevill fired, a rabbit spun on the ground. Then he fastened its two back legs together and walked towards the darker part of the common.

Standing at the door to look for him Amy heard the shot softened like a thunderclap in the distance, and shivered at the evening chill. Nevill passed by the blacksmith's house and went down the lane, under the long railway bridge to Lottie Weightman's beer-off in the village. He sold his rabbit for sixpence, then drank a pint. They were talking about the war, of how everybody was going, some saying what damned fools they were, while others thought it the only thing to do. He sat observing them with his slate-grey eyes, smiling at their expressions that did not seem to know what life was about.

Next day he went back into the wood and, hanging his jacket from the spike of a dead branch, hauled the body from its hiding place. He scraped off the turf and hacked at the roots. The soil was dry, but moistened lower down. With Amy last night he had lain back to back, thinking he'd never touch her again. Each press of the spade, pull at the handle and lift, reinforced his feelings about her. From the clear land of the Cherry Orchard he heard children, so put his jacket on and went swiftly to the edge of the wood.

‘You can't come in 'ere.'

They were three ragged-arsed kids from Radford. ‘We only want blackberries.'

‘It's private.'

They grumbled.

‘Gerroff – or you'll get a good hiding.'

He looked as if he'd do it, so they went, though one of them called from a distance and before fleeing ‘Fuckin' owd bastard!'

He worked more quickly and, when the neat oblong hole was deep enough, heard the body thump to the bottom. The smashed head vanished under a first curtain of soil. Dead twigs and leaf-mould disguised the grave. He leaned against a tree to smoke his pipe, till sweat subsided and his breath came back, then he walked through the deepest grass to get the soil off his boots, for it wouldn't do to be untidy if you were going into town.

Walking up the hill towards Canning Circus he met others on the same errand. He spat on both hands for luck and rubbed his palms on hearing the clash of a band outside the drill hall, thinking that the army would be as good a place to hide as any.

The smell from his skin went as quickly as the spit dried. After passing the medical and getting his shilling he drank a pint in the canteen. Two hours later and still in their own clothes they were marched back down Derby Road to tents on Wollaton Park – only a mile from the wood where the fresh body lay buried.

Farmer Taylor could keep his job at fifteen bob a week. With two hours off the next day, he called to say he had packed it in, and expected to be turned out of his cottage, but the farmer smiled: ‘I knew you would. I told you he'd be the first to go. Didn't I tell you, Martha? You wait, I said, he'll go, Nevill will! I'll lose a good man, but I know he'll go. Wish I could be in the old regiment myself. I know of no finer thing than going to fight for your country.'

There wasn't much need to talk. He was invited into the parlour and given a mug of ale.

‘You'll mek a fine sowjer,' Taylor went on. ‘I expected no less. Come and see us when you've got your khaki on.' He gave him a florin above his wages: ‘Your wife can stay in the cottage. I'll see nowt happens to her.'

‘I expect she'll be able to look after herself,' Nevill said cheerfully.

The farmer gave him a hard look: ‘Ay, you'll mek a fine sowjer. Your sort allus do.'

He went home: ‘I've gone and enlisted. You can carry on all you like now, because I won't be coming back.'

She gave him some bread and cheese. ‘God will pay you out, leaving me like this.'

He wanted to laugh. When she went on the prowl for her man it wouldn't do her much good. He went upstairs to change into his best suit. The small room with its chest of drawers and flowered paper was part of them, as was the bed with its pillows and counterpane. She kept the house like a new pin, he had to admit, but it made no difference. He tied his working clothes and spare boots into a parcel and pushed it under the bed with his toe-cap. He wouldn't be back for any of them. Most other men in camp wore their oldest clothes, some nearly in rags, but he wanted to look smart even before the khaki came. If they took him away to be hanged he didn't want to take the drop looking like a scarecrow.

He stood in the doorway for a last look at the kitchen. ‘Everybody's rushing to the colours.'

‘More fool them. It doesn't mean you've got to join up as well. You're nearly thirty: let the young mad-'eads go.'

He didn't know what she had to cry for. She should be glad to get shut of him. He put two sovereigns between the pot cats on the shelf: ‘Don't lose 'em.'

When she took off her pinafore and began to fold it he was frightened at having taken the King's shilling. One thing led to another when you killed somebody. Birds were whistling outside the open window. She'd hung the mats on the line. In his weakness he wanted to sit down, but knew he mustn't.

She rushed across to him. He lost his stiffness after a few minutes, and held her. They had been married in Wollaton church five years ago, but when they went upstairs he felt that he hadn't known her till now.

He forgot her grey eyes and her auburn hair when walking back by the dark side of the wood. If God paid him out it would be because God was a German bullet. As for the bloke whose brains he had knocked in, it served him right. He was tempted to dig by the bush and look at the body, to make sure everything wasn't happening in the middle of a dream, but he didn't have a spade.

The day was rotting. He breathed dusk through his nostrils, a smell that was enough to turn you as balmy as a hayfork, especially in such silence before rain. Happiness made him walk upright across the Cherry Orchard without looking back.

‘You'll dig yourselves ten feet under,' the sergeant shouted, ‘when the first shell bursts.'

On parade he was ordered to tie a white tape on his arm, the mark of a lance-corporal, till uniforms came and he could sew on the proper stripe. He was a more promising soldier than the rest, for he did not live from day to day like most of the platoon, not even from hour to hour as some of them cared to. He existed by the minute because every one contained the possibility of him being taken off and hanged. The grave was a deep one, and the man not known in the district – he reasoned hopefully while lying in the bell tent with eleven others and listening to raindrops hitting the canvas. It was also a time when scores of thousands were going to other towns to get into their favourite regiments, so maybe no one would even look for him.

During every package of sixty seconds he gave absolute attention to the least detail of military routine, and became the keenest man in the platoon. When rifles were issued he was careful that each round reached a bull's eye. The sling was firm around his arm and shoulder, body relaxed, feet splayed, and eye clear at the sights.

Every battalion had its snipers. ‘On a dark night a lighted match can be seen nine hundred yards away,' they were told, ‘and that's as far as from the Guildhall to the bloody Castle!'

It was also the distance from here to where
he
was buried, Nevill thought.

‘Pay attention, or I'll knock your damned 'ead off!'

The sergeant savvied any mind that wandered, and Nevill knew he mustn't be caught out again.

He slid into the loop-holed sniper's post built by the sappers in darkness. Sacking was around his head, and mud-coloured tape swathed his rifle. He looked slowly from left to right, towards wire and sandbags across ground he had been over in darkness and seen in daylight through a periscope. He knew each grass-dump and crater. A faint haze hovered. Smells of cooking and tobacco drifted on the wind. He savoured the difference between a Woodbine and a Berlin cigar, till a whine and a windrush eruption of chalk and soil caused his elbow to tremble at a shell dropping somewhere to the left. The camouflage net shivered. He heard talking in the trenches behind. An aeroplane flew high.

Amy worked on filling shells at Chilwell factory, earning three times the amount he got as a corporal marksman, but he sent half his pay for her to put in a bank, though he didn't expect ever to get home and claim it because either a bullet or a rope (or a shell) was sure to pay him out. I always loved
you,
and always shall, she wrote. Aye, I know, same here, he answered – but not telling what he knew, and cutting her from his mind in case he got careless and was shot. He smiled at the justice of it.