A Man of his Time

‘Not as I know.’

‘That’s where she said she’d be. Tell her to come in. I don’t want her wandering near the railway line.’

‘I’ll see she don’t.’

In the garden he pushed her towards the house. ‘Your mother wants you.’

He followed the concealed way by the far edge of the cornfield, along a track overgrown with nettles and brambles, but in spring a bridle lane of Queen Anne’s Lace. At the uneven expanse of the Cherry Orchard he wondered whether cherries had ever grown there, but didn’t know, for it was now a large patch of scrubland, too open for what he had in mind, hoping not to be seen, taking care to cross only a corner. You were never alone, and he wished for the shotgun to frighten away the birds he felt were watching him.

Avoiding the worst humps and hollows, the features of Minnie Dyslin came to mind from so many years ago. How many, he didn’t care to reckon, but he’d been twenty-one and in his heyday, yet at forty-eight he didn’t feel much older than when Minnie told him she was having his child. He wondered what the boy was doing and what he looked like. At twenty-five he would be older than Oliver, and Minnie more than fifty. He didn’t know why he should think of her after so many years.

Florence was just inside the wood, because she didn’t want to be seen either. He pointed to the parasol. ‘Fold that thing up.’

She followed. ‘Perhaps there are children about.’

‘There aren’t. I’d have heard them. Or seen them. We’ll be all right.’ Through the glade a streamlet flowed. As a boy he had filled his belly with its clear water. He helped her across, preventing the branches of a bush from springing in her face. In a space of greensward he drew her close for a kiss. ‘Here’s a place.’ When this way with his gun, out for plump wood pigeons or collared doves, he had imagined leading a woman to it. ‘Only the birds will see us.’

She clasped him. ‘I don’t know why I keep on seeing you.’

‘If you don’t, I don’t. Why should you know?’

‘I love you,’ she said. ‘That’s the trouble.’

‘You have to know what you want, and if you get it, then there isn’t any trouble.’

‘I had to see you.’

‘I’m glad you did. Let’s lie here.’

‘There’s no one else in my life.’

A poor life, if she believed so. No one was in her life except her husband, and no one in his but Mary Ann. That’s the way of the world. Why he was here he didn’t know and didn’t want to know, you just did what you could when you had the chance, and all he knew was that he wanted to, and had no option but to go into her, and hope she wouldn’t make such a noise as the last time she spent, when they were behind the public house after closing time, and before that when they were upstairs in one of the rooms.

He closed the door carefully. Mary Ann, who had long since lit the lamp, sat by the fire, a sheet of clean sacking over her knees, clippings of various colours but of the same shape on the floor, to be fitted into any pattern that took her fancy. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

He held a bunch of watercress. ‘I found this in the wood. Wash it. It can go with my supper.’

‘What were you doing in the wood?’

The black dog was a bit too comfortable before the fire, so he held it around the mouth with his strongest hand, till the animal struggled as if in a fit, its helpless whine filling the room.

‘Leave the poor thing alone.’

He let it go, a hard slap at its ribs. ‘Where is everybody?’

‘In bed, except Oliver.’

He sat at the table. ‘It’s time he was in.’

‘He will be presently.’ She put the rug peg and clippings into a neat roll, got up to set out bread, cheese, and a bottle of ale. ‘I’m off to bed.’

‘And I shan’t be long.’

She stood a moment. ‘I hope you won’t get on to Oliver when he comes in.’

‘He’s late.’

‘I saw him walking down the lane with Alma Waterall.’

He wondered who else she might have seen. ‘When was that?’

‘Two hours since. She’s a Sunday School teacher at Woodhouse.’

He grunted. ‘That’s a fine business.’

‘Somebody’s got to do it.’

He had sent their children to Sunday School, on the one afternoon of the week when he and Mary Ann could have a peaceful couple of hours in bed, because he was usually too exhausted after the normal day’s work. The children came home every year with a prize for good conduct, books only looked at by Oliver. ‘I thought you might have seen them in the wood.’

‘There was nobody there but me.’

‘Wasn’t there?’

‘What would a Sunday School teacher be doing in a place like that? Go to bed, then. I’ll be there soon enough.’

He pushed the empty supper plate aside, no sitting still, every moment something to be done, anything, everything, but anything was better than nothing, than stillness. Stillness was inanition, idleness, death, putting yourself at the mercy of penury, the workhouse, or illness. If you weren’t busy you didn’t know who you were, so George said, but George was dead now, and he’d never known anything, either.

He took off his shirt, and in the pantry lifted a bucket of water fresh from the well, splashed a gallon into a tin bowl and then over him, soaping himself in reflected light from the living room lamp. Up the steps, towelling his neck, he saw Oliver. ‘Where have you been? It’s gone ten o’clock.’

‘Walking, with a girl,’ lips set as if to whistle a lively tune, happy, but standing some distance from his father. Out of the lane into sudden light, he blinked, like Burton in everything but with darker hair, and a mouth softened by resembling Mary Ann’s. He would never grow a moustache to conceal the shape of his upper lip, in case he looked too much like Burton as a young man. ‘I didn’t know the time.’

‘Get yourself a watch. Maybe that’ll tell you when it’s dark. I usually know, because I use my eyes.’

‘I’d get a watch, if you paid me more.’

Burton’s fist was clenched by his side. Such answering back called for a blow, but he knew that if his father had threatened such at that age he would have punched him to the ground. So he hesitated. A fully qualified blacksmith of twenty-three was beyond the stage of being knocked about, and in any case no one knew better than Burton that whatever you did to someone who had just been out tumbling a girl was unlikely to have any effect. Oliver didn’t know how lucky he was to be young. ‘Get up to bed.’

‘Is there any supper?’

‘You heard what I said.’

Not caring to argue, he went. The sweetness of Alma’s caresses would be easy to live on till getting up for breakfast.

Burton walked across the yard to the closet, and wondered as he stood there whether it was true that thin people pissed more than fat people. Back in the kitchen he booted the dog out, and double-locked the door now that everyone was safe in bed.

He took off the apron and reached for his jacket. ‘I’m going out for a while.’

The fire at full heat, Oliver noted a grunt of approval at the work he was doing. ‘Where to?’