A Man of his Time

FIVE

Youngsters looked in the open door to see what he did, and they’re welcome to, Burton thought. They stand all clean in a row like so many sparrows on a wall, staring as if I deal with magic, and when I look up they’ve gone to a place that’ll teach them how to read and write, which they’ll learn if they’re sharp enough, though I’ve managed well without it, sometimes better than a lot of fools who think they’ve learned all there is to teach.

Still, children might end up with more magic than I did, who never went to school because my father needed me, young as I was, two more hands making a difference, so he can’t be blamed for me not knowing my letters. There weren’t as many schools built then as there are now, but you can never blame your parents for anything, and those I’ve heard in the pub who whine against them have no pride, no backbone to stand on their own feet and blame themselves.

My father gave me a trade that’s like gold, you can go anywhere with it, turn your hand to anything. There are smithies all over the place, at every pit and a lot of factories, wherever you go you’ll find one. Each village has enough work to keep more than one family, so nobody owes me anything and I owe not a penny to them.

He took a bar of iron from the mound of heat, shook and tapped the sparks away. Like Vulcan or Tubal-Cain, his arms were bare, his eyes alert and, lean and agile as he had always been, and still was at forty-eight, battered the iron to his will. The world did not exist while he made the first bend of the shoe, saw that it was clean, and brought the two prongs to the right distance apart. He drove the holes fully through, and when the shoe came steaming bright blue from the bucket and the job was finished he looked up at the ever-familiar thin smoke lanced by light and fighting its way through the solitary square window.

The forge, on a lane leading to the church at Lenton, was similar in size and structure to the one in Wales. Work never done, he set to making another, Oliver his eldest son of twenty-three standing by as his striker, a man as well trained as Burton at that age, and much like him in physique, though a trace of sensibility had blended into his features from Mary Ann, and given a more vulnerable aspect.

Oswald, the second son, tackled the bellows with the dignified attentive face of a Norman warrior at the Battle of Hastings. Talk was impossible in the swinging of arms, the clatter of hammers, and the stench of coke, explaining the taciturnity of smiths who worked for hours without speaking.

Burton took a silver snuff box from his apron pocket and tapped a small khaki mound of dust onto the back of his hand, held it under his nose, drew it sharply into one nostril and then the other. A moment’s stillness was followed by a twitch at the face signifying a violent inward sneeze rocking the system as the drug took effect, clearing his head so that for a few seconds the world showed in greater detail and more vivid colouring. At the sound of a customer leading a horse to be shod he went outside.

Oswald put the hammer his brother had used on a bench by the wall, then took tobacco from his pouch to roll a cigarette. He and Oliver had been at school till they were thirteen, so could read and write, but they feared Burton, who would be sure to remind them with his fists if a mistake was made in their work. On the other hand, should a good job be turned out, he would give no sign of satisfaction.

Glad to see the back of him, Oliver wiped his face with a rag, but went out to forestall any shout that he would be needed. A locomotive hauling coal wagons through a nearby cutting shrieked like a glutted kitehawk sighting more offal, so frightening the horse being shod that it broke free and scattered a couple of bystanders.

Burton pushed the shoeing smith aside, took the reins and brought the head close, and looked in the eyes shimmering with panic. He stroked down the grain and, drawing breath, exhaled a warmth of intimate snuff-smelling reassurance up the nostrils to calm its heart, in the way his father had shown him even as a child, who had been drilled in how to do it by his father. How many generations such knowledge had come through he didn’t think to wonder. The worst time was when lightning flashed and a horse imagined that the head of fiery light was meant for it alone. Then you had to take care and, if you could, persuade it that lightning was unavailing against animals close to Thor’s heart. Lightning might go for men, if they got in its way, but never horses, those who cared for them also immune. A higher power looked after horse and farrier, and Burton supposed that even the first blacksmith on earth didn’t know where such protection came from, though they believed in it, and that the only friend of a horse was the blacksmith who fitted its shoes and sent it well-shod to work in comfort.

No blacksmith ever harmed a horse, let alone killed one, and no horse wantonly killed a man, though many a man had been killed or injured while riding because he had done something daft, or hadn’t understood the animal. You had a feeling for horses other people didn’t have. You were born with it, and picked the rest up along the way, no horse impossible to tame, though he wouldn’t ride one, because no horse would trust him again, would smell the breath of the other horse, and think the blacksmith was sharing his favours. A horse, which will do what you want if you know how and what to tell it, would never stand for bad treatment.

Oliver knew all that was in his father’s mind as he watched him still the horse. He had often seen him do it, but the thought now came, and he felt a spurt of triumph at the knowledge, that Burton, in spite of all his experience, had an inborn ancestral fear of horses that would never leave him. He had spotted his father’s one weakness, and wondered why it had taken him so long; because he himself had never been frightened of horses, but was glad at having found a slit in Burton’s armoured covering so small it could only become apparent to a son of his in the same trade,

‘Always get the shoe off slowly,’ Burton told the shoeing smith. ‘They think you’re going to hurt them if you don’t make them think you’re doing it in their time.’

The train frightened it. It wasn’t my fault.’

‘It’s always the farrier’s fault. Learn to take care of them.’

‘I do take care.’

He stood at the door before going inside. ‘Don’t answer back. Wait till you’ve got eight young ‘uns to feed like I have, then you’ll hold the horses still.’

‘Old Burton’s a hard one,’ said the drayman whose horse it was. ‘I wouldn’t like to work for him.’

The shoeing smith looked towards the noise of hammering. ‘I’m fed up with the way he treats me.’ ‘Pack it in. Go somewhere else.’

‘I’d like to, but you work where you can. And every day there’s more motors on the road.’

‘Yeh, one day horses won’t be needed anymore.’

‘We get enough trade here,’ the shoeing smith said, ‘because Burton makes sure the work’s good. People know where to come. But he’s a hard man to be under.’

‘That’s because of the way he was brought up,’ the carter said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be one of his sons. He must have taken some stick from his own father to make him the man he is.’

‘It was his brother George who put him through the hoops. Or so I heard Burton say the other day when he was telling one of his lads off.’

‘I wonder what Burton was like when he was young?’

‘He never was young, if you ask me.’ The shoeing smith stood erect to rub his pained back. ‘Here you are. That should keep your nag going for a while.’

‘I hope so,’ the drayman said. ‘Two bob a time’s getting a bit expensive.’

Burton had so much sweat on him as he stood in the doorway it looked as if he had dipped his head in the waterbutt. He held a hand over one eye where a spark had chipped the flesh below. ‘If you can find somebody to do it for less go and trade with them. But if you do, God help your horse.’ ‘Times are hard, Burton.’

‘They always were.’ Two of his daughters came along the lane. ‘What do you want?’

Oval-faced Sabina, ten years old, shook her chestnut hair, and flushed at his sour greeting. He knew very well why they were there, because couldn’t he see the billy-cans of tea in her hand? ‘We’ve brought you your dinners.’

‘Put them down there.’

Emily set the snap tins on the bench and stepped back as if he might hit her should she get too close. Eight years old and Burton’s youngest, everyone in the family regarded her as a bit touched, being slow-witted and more unpredictable than the others, with too much willingness in her smile to please whoever she met that she was never allowed out of the house on her own. Mary Ann told Burton that while it was his right to treat the children as he thought they deserved, he was never to strike Emily since, when she misbehaved, she didn’t altogether know what she was doing. He found it easy to do as Mary Ann wished because a mere look was enough to scare Emily. He picked up the cans with no word of thanks. ‘I thought you two were at school?’

‘We’re just going,’ Sabina said.

‘Don’t be late. I’ve told you never to miss any of it. See that you don’t.’ His glare at their backs seemed to force them into the right turning. Inside the forge, his eyes roamed over the tools, materials, state of the fire. He missed nothing, but looked again as if he might have done, ever on the lookout for discrepancy, damage or misplacement. ‘Where’s the hammer you were using?’

Oliver stood. ‘It’s over there.’

‘Where’s there?’

‘On the bench.’

‘Don’t I always tell you to put the tools back in their right place when you’ve finished with them?’

‘I didn’t have time to do it.’ The veins jumped on his father’s temples, and he knew that what was coming couldn’t be avoided, the blow at his head too quick. ‘Don’t answer back,’ Burton said. ‘I don’t want to have to tell you again.’

Oliver balanced the weighty hammer as if to swing in for the kill, but didn’t much relish the vision of his body hanging from a gallows. He had long regretted having the misfortune to be Burton’s firstborn and prime competitor.

‘Put it in its proper place, and be quick about it. How shall I be able to find it if it’s not where I think it is?’

‘There won’t be anymore of that.’ But he did as he was told. ‘I’m telling you now. You aren’t going to hit me again.’

A smile shaped Burton’s lips, much of himself in Oliver from almost too long ago to be remembered, except at moments like this. He admitted that the time had come to stop the punches but, even so, he had made him one of the best young men at the trade, who in a few years would be as good a blacksmith as himself, though all you got for such effort was the insolence of being answered back. ‘I hear a horse coming along the lane, so get outside to see to it. And send Oswald in to me.’

‘We haven’t had our dinners yet.’

He softened a little, which for Oliver was far too late. ‘If you’re thirsty drink some tea from one of the cans. You can eat when things get slack. Never delay a customer longer than you have to. So do it now.’ Hunger could wait. Burton only felt thirst, a fire inside always there to be put out. He wiped sweat from his face with a large red spotted handkerchief, took a scoop of water from a bucket covered by a wooden lid, and carried it outside.

Oliver sat on the stool to get the shoe off, the lame horse’s hoof between his knees. He stroked the horse’s poll, knowing when to keep quiet as Burton held the bucket for it to drink, Oliver thinking you had to be a horse to get any kindness out of Burton.

He walked well ahead of his sons on the mile home, went into the long tunnel which carried railway lines to Ilkeston, the way narrowing between brick walls, a muddy pestilence in days of rain, hardly ever drying in summer weather, and dark enough at all times to make the girls timorous of going through on their way to Woodhouse. Beyond, the sunken lane was resplendent with elderflowers. He moved tall and upright, with the slightly swinging gait of a man on his own.

His sons were careful not to follow too close — Burton would never allow it — and came on in silence, until Oliver said: ‘One of these days I’m going to push his head into the fire.’

‘He’d have yours in first.’

He stroked the bruise on his face. ‘Not if you help me. I’m fed up with it. Ever since I was born I’ve been kicked from arse-hole to breakfasttime by him. As soon as I can, I’m off. I hate the sight of him. He’s always been like that, and always will be. He makes everybody pay for the fact that he’s alive. He’s dead ignorant. He can’t even read and write.’

‘That’s not done him much harm. Anyway, people like him live forever.’

He shredded a leaf of privet with a fingernail. ‘There’s too many of his sort around, and it’s time things changed. When he dies they’ll have to put nine padlocks on hell’s door to keep him out, for fear he’d give the place a bad name.’

Burton left them to close the latched gate, walked up the path and paused to inspect two fat porkers in their sty, poking each with a stick till they squealed through the slush out of range. Satisfied that they were lively enough for his mood, he passed the brick storehouse with its copper inside for boiling the weekly wash, and on by a smaller outbuilding divided between coal store and earth closet by whose wooden holes was a large tin of creosote to splash down and diminish the stench. The yard extended to the lane, and behind the cottage a long garden provided the family with vegetables. The first of three properties, each was brickbuilt and tile-roofed, with three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and larder leading off, and a parlour. The cottages were well fenced and separated, which suited Burton, who never gave more than a nod to his neighbours. He left the door open, again to be closed by those behind.

The warm living room smelled comfortingly of meat, baking bread, and potatoes steaming on the wood fire. After greeting Mary Ann he washed his hands and face in the pantry. Oswald and Oliver stood not too close to do the same. ‘You’ll need to fill the buckets after you’ve had your dinners.’ He spoke as if to no one in particular, but those who would have to do it knew who was meant.

A large brass oil lamp hung by a chain above the table, taken down for cleaning once a fortnight. No one allowed to help, he and Mary Ann polished the brass till their faces could be clearly seen, and washed the shade sufficient to make the glass almost invisible, the only task of their married life performed together.

Oliver combed his hair at a mirror by the door, the trade name ‘Sandeman Sherry’ blazoned in gold letters along the bottom. To the right was a glass-fronted showcase of Burton’s prize horseshoes, and often when Oliver looked at them he recalled how at fourteen Burton had taken him to a county show near Tollerton: ‘Put your suit on tomorrow,’ he was told. ‘You’ll see a few other blacksmiths where I’m taking you.’

On their way through the city Burton allowed him half a pint at the Trip to Jerusalem, in a cool room hewn from the sandstone rock of the castle. By the time they’d done the seven miles to Tollerton he wondered whether his father had only asked him along to test his walking prowess, having trouble at times keeping up with the long stride while maintaining his respectful distance behind. But Oliver adjusted his pace and enjoyed a good day of his life, for it was the middle of May, blossom on the trees and birds happy in their heaven, and he thought how much he could love his father if only it had been allowed.

Burton stood outside the competition marquee, wilful pride preventing him going in to find out who was the winner of the Grand Horseshoe Competition. Oliver wasn’t able to understand his hanging back, but when he came close Burton said, after someone had announced him as the winner, and aware of what was puzzling his son: ‘They can come and talk to me if they want. If you’ve learned nothing else today you’ve learned that a blacksmith never goes up to others in a case like this. Now go to that table and bring me a pint of what they’re dishing out, and get yourself a cup of tea from the tent over there.’

Oliver watched his father accept the prize and handshake from the Duke of Something-or-other, merely nodding at the grandee’s words, and walking away with the five-pound note in his waistcoat pocket, and the prize horseshoe in his hand.

Mary Ann lifted the half-finished rug from her knees, gathered the coloured unused clippings into a cotton bag to get everything away from the fire. Idleness was the only sin, Burton knew, and he had never seen her idle for a moment. He felt justified in scorning others who indulged themselves, because he too had never been idle.

He sat at the large oval table, every muscle aching from his day’s work, though nobody could know and they would never be told, certainly not his sons, because he did his best to make sure they wouldn’t become as tired as himself. Still young, they would strengthen in a year or two, but it was unnecessary even to think such things, though you couldn’t stop what jumped into mind.

Mary Ann drew a pan of Yorkshire pudding and a sauceboat of gravy from the oven by the side of the grate. ‘Where’s my ale?’ Burton asked.

She brought a bottle and glass up the few steps of the pantry, one small task of the number necessary to remember, almost without thought. The potatoes she strained, new from the garden, gave off a pleasing smell of mint, as she served slices of roast lamb.

Burton looked at Oswald. ‘Use a fork with your bread to mop the gravy, not your fingers. You aren’t starving, are you?’

‘We’re hungry,’ Oliver said.

‘So am I. But it looks bad. When you’ve finished, fetch some water from the well.’

‘Do we need it?’

‘We always do.’ He turned back to Oswald. ‘Some wood wants chopping, and that’ll be your job.’

Mary Ann served herself last and, sitting on Burton’s left, saw the darkening bruise on Oliver’s cheek. ‘What happened to you?’

He smiled, always careful not to upset his mother. When Burton struck, all his strength was in it. ‘I banged into a brick wall.’

‘You’d better put some witch-hazel on it.’ She said to Burton: ‘It’s not right, hitting a grown man.’

‘He should do his work properly.’

‘But he doesn’t deserve that.’

‘It won’t happen again,’ Oliver said.

Burton’s grunt was as profound a statement as could be made at his son’s defiance. Having heard such an expressive monosyllable so many times they always knew what lay behind it, on this occasion wondering if he was about to strike out, but Oliver was ready, and decided he would be from now on.

The meal went peacefully, Burton eating to live rather than living to eat, knowing that Mary Ann’s cooking was in any case the best. The first to finish, he pulled the door open and called into the yard: ‘Thomas!’

Thomas was thirteen, none of the children allowed to call him Tom, though they did when Burton wasn’t nearby. Expecting the summons, he stood in the doorway, a swatch of thick fair hair angled towards his eyes, the third son, already up to his father’s shoulders. He had left: school before learning anything because Burton needed him now and again to help in the forge, intending to make a blacksmith out of him as well, though Ivy of the sharp tongue said Thomas was too slow to have qualified in the classroom anyway. From talking to his sisters in the yard, he now stood sullenly by.

Burton had never known them to do anything as willingly as he’d had to do. ‘Feed the pigs. Edith, help him to get the mash from the outhouse. The stuff that was made today.’

The eldest daughter, she was a vivacious seventeen-year-old with golden-blonde hair. ‘I was just going out for the evening.’

‘Do as I say.’ Seeing them start to obey, he closed the door, but as his back turned Edith gargoyled her face, then went to help Thomas.

Oliver came from the pantry with a yoke across the back of his neck, and a steel bucket in each hand. ‘When you’ve done that,’ Burton said, as if never to leave him alone, ‘you can get some coal in.’

Softly whistling, Oliver was happy to be liberated from the pall of his father, and set off along the path between chicken coops and the house wall. Passing the front door, the long garden gave off its smell of dry soil, a scent of fresh flowers, and a tang of rotting potato tops that he would later gather up. Every week he and Thomas, under Burton’s critical eye, lest they slacken on the distance or spill a drop, manoeuvred iron buckets reeking also of creosote from the outhouse to furrows indicated in the garden, and splashed it liberally about, nothing from the house being wasted. The garden gave shining red beetroot, potatoes, onions, carrots, marrows, cucumbers, lettuces and kidney beans, as well as sweet peas and mint, while raspberries, gooseberries and redcurrants made pies, puddings and jam.

The well up the slope was covered by a triangular wooden roof and, however many times Oliver had laboured to and from to get water he liked the sight of its fairy-tale shape, as depicted in books brought home as an infant from Sunday School. The vision of magical enactments at midnight, or even during daylight, summer or winter, when he wasn’t there, set him cheerfully whistling To be a Farmers Boy, letting the chain that Burton had made rattle the bucket from its roller and hit the water with a satisfying smack, before it sank and began to fill. Turning the handle, he brought up the first overflowing bucket.

All the others at work, Burton in the kitchen enjoyed his usual pinch of snuff after the evening meal, stood with back to the fire, as contented as could be after the day’s work.

‘Don’t I get any money this week?’ Mary Ann said.

‘You always have.’ He took cash from his pocket. ‘Take this sovereign.’

‘I was hoping for a bit more.’

‘Have another five bob, then. Trade’s been good.’

And that was all, though it was better than usual. She looked at the head of King George on one of the half-crowns, then put the coins into her pocket.

‘I’m off to town for a couple of hours.’ He stomped his way up the stairs to change.

Thomas was half bent over carrying a huge bucket of pig food from the wash house to the sty, Edith following with another, helped by fifteen-year-old Ivy, while Rebecca, Sabina and Emily looked on.

‘I hate the old bastard.’ Edith’s words were smothered by the shrilling pigs, smelling their supper, already at the trough, as if to start on the bare wood. Thomas drove them away with a stick, then poured in the flood of mash, bran, slops and old seed potatoes, stepping aside to avoid the rush at his trousers.

‘Don’t hit them anymore,’ Emily said. ‘I like the piggies. They’re my friends.’

‘How can you be friends with pigs?’ he jeered.

‘Well, I am. I’ve got names for both of them.’

‘And what are they, young madam?’

‘That fat one’s Lollipop, and the other’s Kidney.’

‘Percy the slaughterer’s coming up from Woodhouse soon to cut their throats,’ he said spitefully. ‘And then we’ll eat ’em.’

It was easy to make her cry. They sometimes called her Monkey Face, or Mrs Meagrim, or Dolly Dumpling, in spite of being told by Mary Ann to treat her kindly. ‘I’ll run away, then, and take them with me. We’ll go and live together in Robin’s Wood. I’ll cook their dinners and wash their faces.’

‘You like sausages and crackling and chitterlings and pork scratchings, don’t you? I’ve seen you gobbling them up when Mam wasn’t looking.’ He turned to Edith. ‘You’d better not let Burton hear you talking about him like that.’

‘Well, I do hate the old bastard. I always have. Did you see Oliver’s face? I’ve never seen such a bruise. He’s always hitting people. I’m going to leave home the minute I can.’

Thomas stroked one of the guzzling pigs. ‘And when will that be?’

Oliver came into the yard, two buckets on the yoke slopping water. He waved, and straightened his back before going into the house.

‘I’ll do it after I’m married,’ Edith said. ‘And he won’t dare touch me then. Every time I go out he tells me not to be long. And when I don’t go out he calls me in to do some work. And when I do go out I’ve always got to be back in bed by nine o’clock. I’m seventeen, and I’ve been working for four years.’

‘You stopped out till eleven the other night.’

‘Yes, and I’ll blind you if you tell Burton.’ The older girls, exploiting the inconvenience of a lavatory set apart from the house, sometimes made their way downstairs when Burton and Mary Ann were already in bed, as if to go there, then walked quietly through the gate and down the lane to see boyfriends in Woodhouse. They might not get back till midnight, but a piece of gravel at the window of their bedroom brought Sabina down to let them in. ‘The only good thing about Burton,’ Edith laughed, ‘is that he sleeps so deep an earthquake wouldn’t wake him, though if one should ever swallow him up it would be good riddance.’

‘I’ll run away from home,’ Rebecca said, ‘one of these days.’

Thomas smiled. ‘You’d soon come back.’

‘I bleddy wouldn’t.’

‘You might, if you got hungry,’ Edith said, ‘but once I go, that’ll be that. He won’t see me till after I’m married.’

‘You’re not twenty-one,’ Thomas said, ‘so he could fetch you back.’

Rebecca smoothed her long dark hair. ‘He might be glad to get shut of us.’

‘And where would you lay your head at night?’ Thomas asked. ‘Under Trent Bridge?’

‘I would if I had to.’

‘I’ll always find a bed to sleep in,’ Edith said, ‘but I shan’t say who with.’

‘You’ll get into trouble one of these days.’ Thomas took the empty buckets back to the outhouse.

They were locked in notions of what they imagined freedom to be. ‘I don’t care.’ Edith was adamant. ‘It’ll be better than staying here.’

Oliver placed the buckets under the large sink, came out of the pantry and picked up the long-handled woodsman’s axe to tackle a heap of logs by the fence at the laneside. At the noisy opening of an upstairs window they saw Burton’s face: ‘Don’t stand there. Get on with your work all of you.’

The house was small but adequate, one bedroom for the five girls, another for the three sons, and the largest for Burton and Mary Ann. There was a four-poster curtain-drawn bed, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers with a swivel mirror above, which showed Burton putting on a laundered white shirt, a high collar, and square-ended bow tie.

Tucking the shirt into the trousers of his navy-blue suit, and fastening the thick leather belt into place, a sudden irritation took him again to the window. ‘Thomas! Get your hands out of your pockets and come in to polish my boots. The black ones. They’re in the parlour. And look sharp, or you’ll get a stick across your back.’

A few minutes were needed to arrange the correct set of the tie, and finish turning him from a blacksmith at the forge into a smartly dressed man of consequence. He fixed the watch and chain across his waistcoat with its attached couple of sovereigns, and slipped the white folded handkerchief in his lapel pocket. Down in the parlour he held his boots against the window to make sure they had a sufficient shine, then drew both on and carefully laced them up.

He went to the back of the house, the evening warm and damp with plenty of gnats, and from the garden decapitated a chrysanthemum with a small pocket knife, to adorn his button hole, thus completing the presence he wished to show. Satisfied that everyone was at their allotted tasks in the yard, he strode onto the lane, leaving the gate open.

SIX

He pushed into the swing doors of the Crown Hotel, the smell of pipe smoke and ripe ale as familiar as if he had known it even since before birth. Walking to the bar he noted everyone with hardly a turn of the head, those known and unknown. Eli the barman had the same facial colour and white albino hair as his father had at the old White Hart. ‘I’ll have the usual.’

‘Can’t get enough, eh, Burton?’ Morgan wiped froth from his long moustache. Burton had known him from a youth, but disliked such familiarity, at least so early in the evening.

Tom, who also worked with the ponies at Radford pit, hovered on the other side. ‘He’ll need a lot of ale to dowse the fire in him.’

Eli put the tankard down. ‘That’s a tanner you owe the till.’

He set a coin on the wood and, standing sufficiently apart in the crowded Saturday night taproom, said: ‘Have you seen Florence?’

‘She was serving in the jug-and-bottle. Then she went upstairs, but I expect she’ll be down in a bit.’

Burton let the rest of his ale stand while lighting a cigarette. At work he rolled them, but for the weekend emptied a packet of twenty Virginias into a silver case. ‘Is she all right?’

He was called to take another order. ‘She will be, as soon as she sees you.’

‘She’s not for you, Burton,’ Tom said.

Burton stared. ‘Nobody’s for anybody, unless you take them.’

‘You’ll need a horse to gallop away on if her husband sees you,’ Morgan laughed.

‘You think so?’ Saturday night was a time for ease, but he was annoyed at them putting their noses into what could only be his business. ‘I’ve never been on a horse in my life. I wouldn’t trust one an inch. Nor would I trust a woman, unless I wanted her. Only a fool would risk his neck on a horse, or his life for a woman.’

He noticed her stance at the foot of the stairs, glad she saw only him, and even more so at her approach in response to his faint nod. A tall well-built woman of thirty, she wore a flowery blouse with a lace collar. Her thin lips and the expression, as if for the moment unaware of where she was, made her seem eternally threatened, and too serious for Burton’s liking, until her smile changed to one of expectation, a lightening of the features he had noticed on first seeing her six months ago.

‘I thought you’d be in last night,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it when you don’t come when you say you will. I think something’s happened to you.’

To me?’

‘I know, but I can’t help it.’

‘I worked till ten.’

‘I thought as much. But I waited.’

‘You can’t stop while there’s work. Not in my trade.’

She fiddled with the string of jet beads at her bosom. ‘It’s nearly a week since we were together.’

Their heads close, people drew back to let them talk. ‘Come for a walk tonight.’

‘I’d like to, but I daren’t risk it. I’m not sure when Herbert will be back.’

‘I shouldn’t let that bother you.’

‘I’ve got to be careful, haven’t I?’

She was called to serve another customer, so he turned back to Tom. ‘Did you have anything on the races today?’

‘A couple of bob on Vanity Fair, but I think the bogger must have been wearing hobnailed boots. I could have got to that winning post quicker myself.’

Burton watched Florence at work. ‘If you ride on them they break your neck, and if you bet on them you might as well throw your hard-earned money in the dustbin.’

‘You spend it on ale, though,’ Morgan said, ‘and that only gets swilled into the Trent.’

Burton’s laugh was short and dry. ‘But you enjoy it as it goes through your tripes.’ He emptied his pint, and went closer to the bar, a ripple of agitation on his cheek. ‘Florence!’

She gave change, then came at his call. ‘You’re short with me tonight.’

‘Fill this up. What about tomorrow?’

‘It might be all right.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I’m not two people, am I?’

Her scent wafted against him as he leaned closer. ‘I wish to God you were. I don’t know which one I’d love more.’

She smiled at his rare compliment. ‘I’ll try,’ then drew his beer and moved away.

Though the night was as black as Cherry Blossom boot polish Burton could have gone blindfold up the lane to Old Engine Cottages. Morgan and Tom, trying to follow his footsteps, swayed to either side between the hedges, and sang as if the noise would keep them free of potholes. ‘Come in for a sup of ale,’ Burton told them by the gate. ‘I’ve got a bottle cooling in the pantry.’

‘It’s eleven, and I must be up early.’

‘Me as well,’ said Morgan.

‘You’ll get all the sleep you want when you’re in hell. At least I shall.’ He led them up the path and into the house. All three faces showed when he set the glass over the lamp wick. ‘Close the door behind you quietly, then sit down. This is vintage Shipstone’s.’

The smell of ale poured from the bottle brought heads closer to the glasses. ‘How many have you got upstairs now, Burton?’ Tom wanted to know.

‘There were nine when I last counted. That was including Mary Ann.’

‘I don’t see them around much,’ Morgan said.

‘I set them to work, that’s why. Five daughters are a handful at times, and you’ve got to keep an eye on them. One of the young ‘uns is a pretty little thing, so I expect she’ll be a bit of trouble when she grows up, if I don’t tame her first.’

‘We won’t know if she’s pretty unless you fetch her down,’ Morgan said.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I didn’t say so.’

‘You meant it, though. I’ll go and get her.’

They heard his weight on the stairs, and a door opening. ‘He’s a hard bogger,’ Tom said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be one of his nippers.’

Morgan drew out his pipe. ‘He’s got something on with that Florence, and she’s married. Let’s hope his missis never finds out.’

‘Nor Florence’s husband,’ Tom laughed. ‘But wedding bells never frightened Burton. He’d run his own son off if he got half the chance.’

Morgan detected a descending tread. ‘Shut your rattle. Here he is.’

Ten-year-old Sabina was half-asleep in Burton’s arms. She stood hazy-eyed in her nightgown, looking at them from the middle of the table. ‘What did I tell you? Straight out of angel’s sleep.’

‘What a little beauty!’

‘Come on, my duck,’ Burton said. ‘If you can’t sing us a song, cock your leg up and do us a dance.’

She looked at the three men, a smile on pale lips, unable to think, hardly knowing where she was, but seeing her father in a mood unknown before, one she might never see again. Maybe he wasn’t her father, but someone who had come out of the night from a forest where he lived, and if he wanted her to dance, then she had to.

One leg high, one leg low, she stepped around the table, lips apart and smiling in her aim to obey and please him who must be her father after all. Tom and Morgan threw pennies at her feet, which she picked up quickly. ‘You should put her on the stage,’ Morgan said, ‘and make your fortune.’

‘I’d break a stick across the back of any girl of mine who wanted to go there.’ Burton, tired of the caper, heard Mary Ann coming down the stairs. He helped Sabina to the floor, and Mary Ann took her hand. Silence, except for the pendulum clock on the wall. ‘This is a fine thing. In the middle of the night as well. You and your drunken friends from the alehouse.’

A smile twitched across Burton’s downcurving lips. ‘It was a bit of fun, that’s all.’

‘I suppose it was, if you say so.’ She pushed Sabina before her. ‘Let’s get you back into bed where you belong.’

‘I’d better be going,’ Morgan said, ‘or I’ll get the rolling pin treatment as well.’

Burton pulled them close. ‘I don’t want another word from either of you about me and Florence, do you understand? Keep your mouths shut.’

Tom was amazed they had been overheard. ‘We won’t say a dickybird.’

‘People talk,’ Morgan said, on the porch.

‘Let them.’ Burton bolted the door, went into the parlour to take off his boots, and on getting upstairs found Mary Ann asleep.

After the move to Old Engine Cottages the children had played in the field between house and railway, and counted the wagons or carriages of trains steaming along the embankment from Radford station. Sitting on the fence, they argued over the numbers, then went hiding and seeking in the tall grass.

Sabina had always been fearful at the run of a startled rabbit — it might have been a dirty old man lying in wait — but as the wheat-cutter worked in from the hedges she saw how frightened the poor things were as they leapt for safety. She thought how important Farmer Taylor looked on the high seat of his dray, a large grey horse in the shafts fighting off flies.

‘You’ll have a good harvest this year,’ Burton said.

Taylor’s laugh was of a man never satisfied. ‘I might think so if the price was right. You work every hour God sends, and get little enough for it. The market’s bad for farmers, and this government doesn’t like us. Who do you vote for?’

‘The Liberal chap.’ Burton didn’t care who knew it.

Taylor snorted. ‘They’ll never do any good, whether they brought in the old-age pension or not.’

He can kiss my backside, if he’s a mind to. ‘You can’t expect much from any of them, so it’s no use complaining.’

Taylor stared at his gold half-hunter. ‘Is Mary Ann cooking the men’s dinner?’

The shilling or two earned went into her pocket, though sometimes the housekeeping. ‘I expect it’ll be ready directly.’

A bundle of brown fur hurled itself from a line of wheat, reaching a safe hedge in seconds. ‘Another lucky one.’

‘I’ll get my gun,’ Burton said.

Thomas in the garden was loading weeds into the wooden barrow whose iron supports Burton had beaten out in the forge. Oliver was up the slope winding a bucket from the well, and on wondering where Oswald was Burton saw him in the yard chopping the day’s firewood.

Mary Ann and Ivy came into the field with a cauldron of boiled bacon and a tray of newly baked loaves, odours reminding him of hunger, after the slice of bread and fat bacon for breakfast at six. But rabbits were fleeing in all directions, and he wanted one for their supper, so went upstairs and pulled the shotgun and cartridges from their hiding-place under the bed. Pointing the barrel downwards he opened the window to let in a summer breeze.

The gun came from an auction and cost three guineas, a light breech-loading firearm worth twenty now. Mary Ann grumbled at having such a weapon in the house, but never turned down a rabbit or a couple of pigeons for the pot. Like most women she disliked the plucking and gutting, so got him to do it. It was easy work: draw off the skin, open it up, pull out the stomach (careful not to burst it because of the fearful stink), cut off the head, then give the carcase a good wash before the butchering.

Farmhands were eating by the hedge, and Burton positioned himself in the far corner of the field, took a stone from his trouser pocket picked up on his way through the garden, and hurled it over the limit of uncut wheat.

Waiting on one knee, he fired, and missed. Another pair took their chance, one pausing to cuff itself, too confident at clear land ahead. He squeezed the trigger on the one that ran — more sporting that way — and bowled it over.

A cartridge still in the breech, he laid the gun down gently and launched himself at the half-alive rabbit. The butcher or poultry shop would charge a shilling, and this one was free — well-fed on the choicest grass — bar the price of the cartridge.

The blade of a hand against its neck dropped it dead at his feet. ‘This’ll make us a good dinner,’ he said in the house, the rabbit swinging from his hand. ‘It’s the third this year.’

Soft Emily ran to Mary Ann’s skirt, tears pumping as she stroked the fur. ‘Dad killed you, poor little thing. I’d like one of these for a cat!’

‘Stop your blawting.’ He rolled a cigarette, and descended into the cool pantry to tie the two back legs with a piece of twine, and put a pan under its head to catch blood. He took a slab of smoked bacon from its hook, and a large round loaf out of the panchion, and laid them on the kitchen table. ‘Mary Ann, cut me something to eat.’

By afternoon the hay field was flat and sweet-smelling, men and horses gone, crows daggering their beaks among the stalks. He scythed around the edges not reached by the combine harvester. The girls would husk and boil it in the outhouse copper, to mix with whatever else there was for the pigs.

He advanced with a wide swing of the arms through each uneven path. Nothing escaped the gleaning blade sharpened with a stick of carborundum to as fine an edge as the razor he shaved with. From a gap in the hedge Emily watched the stern reaper she had always known him to be in her dreams, till she could bear the spectacle no longer and stood behind the nearest bush to hide.

Florence opened the gate and crossed a corner of the field. He worked rhythmically, as if never to stop, forward to the privet then back to sweep what had not been in his track, thoughtless endeavour fuelled by the slow advance of his feet till the job was done. He noted her parasol, light gloves, and anxious smile. ‘What are you doing, so far out of your way?’

‘I get fed up being in that pub all day. They let me out for a walk.’

He laid down the scythe. ‘That was good of them.’

‘One of the customers said Farmer Taylor was haymaking so I thought I might see you.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

She smelled his sweat, and he took in the scent of fresh lavender when she came into his arms. ‘Careful what you do,’ he said. ‘There might be somebody about.’

She stood away. ‘I love you.’

There was no answer to that. His look would tell any fine woman that he wanted her, and if they fell in with it, as they sometimes did, they must know what they were doing. If they didn’t, and as time went on there was something about it they didn’t like, it was nothing to do with him. ‘Go across the Cherry Orchard, and I’ll see you by Robin’s Wood. Take the back lane.’

‘Don’t be long, my love. I haven’t got much time.’

You won’t need it, he thought, the way I feel. Emily on the other side of the hedge picked at a cornflower as Burton strode to the house. ‘There’s some wheat to collect around the field,’ he told Mary Ann. ‘Get the girls to husk it. They know what to do.’

‘I’ll do it myself, as soon as I’ve cleaned these pans.’

‘Don’t leave it too long, in case there’s rain. What did Taylor give you for cooking the men’s dinner?’

‘Half-a-crown.’

‘He’s a mean sort.’

‘He paid for the bacon and bread.’

‘So he should. I’m going back into the field for a bit.’

‘Is Emily out there?’

‘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?’

‘Mind your own business. You’re in charge.’

Wherever it was, Oliver was glad to see the back of him, and went to striking in the nail holes of the shoe he was making. Oswald came from seeing to a horse, dropped the money in a tin. ‘There ain’t much trade today. If it doesn’t get better we’ll be in Queer Street.’

‘It goes up and down. It always did.’ Oliver dipped the shoe, set it aside, and walked with his brother to the door. ‘Which direction did he go in?’

‘The pub way.’

‘It’s not like him, to go at midday, though when I saw him in the Crown last week he was very thick with that Florence. She was too busy talking to serve anybody else, and Burton didn’t even greet me.’

‘Not that he would.’

‘No, but something’s going on with them.’

‘He met Mam when she was serving behind a bar,’ Oswald said.

‘Yes, and I think she’s regretted it more than once.’ Back in the forge he picked up the horsehoe, held it to the light, and considered it done. ‘In those days barmaids were different. Mother was, anyway. But Florence is married, and if Mam finds out there’ll be ructions. I hope she never does.’

He rolled two cigarettes from Burton’s tobacco tin, and they went outside as if he might pick up the lingering fumes when he came back. ‘He’ll notice some’s missing,’ Oswald said. ‘There’ll be hell to pay.’

‘If he went off in such a hurry as to forget his tobacco he can’t be up to much good. Anyway, he treats me like a dog so I might as well behave like one.’ A mouthful of delicious smoke drifted towards his brother. ‘We’ll enjoy it while we can.’

Emily and Sabina stood in the doorway with the men’s dinners. Oliver set the cans on the bench. ‘Did you see any lions and tigers on the way here?’

Sabina came forward. ‘We saw two, our Oliver, when we crossed the wide road.’

‘And did one of them have blood on its teeth?’

Emily glanced sideways at the ground, as if finding her brother too handsome to look at. ‘It had lovely fur. It was ever so tame, and I stroked it.’

Alma Waterall, watching from across the lane, saw Oliver take a coin from his pocket and close a hand over it, then hold both hands towards Sabina. ‘Which one is the penny in?’

She glanced, and pointed decisively. ‘That one.’

He opened his fist. ‘You little devil! Lucky first time. It’s got His Majesty’s head on it! Now it’s cheeky Emily’s turn. See if you win a prize as well.’

Her face a mockery of adult consideration, she tapped a knuckle and, on her lips going down to weep at the empty palm, Oliver put a hand to his left ear, rubbed at a simulated itch, and brought a penny away that had been hidden in the other hand. ‘It was stuck in my tab-hole, but I pulled it out by the tail.’

She smiled like a daisy in spring. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won! Now I can buy some toffees on my way to school,’ and ran off hand-in-hand with Sabina.

Alma, a full-busted young woman with fair skin and a fringe of dark hair across her forehead, a retroussé nose but a well-shaped purposeful mouth, came from across the lane. ‘I saw you, but couldn’t believe it was true. You said you were a blacksmith, but didn’t tell me this was where you worked. I happened to be passing.’

He led her into a place she hadn’t been in before, and wiped the bench with a piece of rag for her to sit, though she preferred not to. He intended to kiss her, but she stood aside. ‘I’ve seen your sisters at Sunday School. They’re always well-behaved.’

‘Unlike me, I suppose. But that’s because I told them to be. We all went there because Mother and Father insisted on it.’

‘We need whoever we can get. I wish every child would come.’ Oswald called that a horse and cart was on its way. ‘I’ll be going, then,’ she said.

‘Don’t you want to see us at our work?’

‘I’d like to, but my Aunt Lydia’s not well, and she lives on her own, so I call now and again. She’s my father’s sister, but they don’t get on, and I try to make up for it.’

The carter pointed with his lit pipe to the horse. ‘Can you put a shoe on this awkward bogger?’

‘I’ll have none of your swearing.’ Oliver caught Burton’s sharp tone behind his, but considered it justified. ‘You can go somewhere else if there’s to be any of that.’

The man laughed. ‘I don’t know if the horse would get that far, it’s such a wayward nag. But I’m sorry I cursed, miss.’ He turned to Oliver. ‘He’s gone fair lame.’

Alma coughed from the dust and fumes of the forge. ‘Shall we meet soon?’

‘What about Sunday? I’m not free till then.’

She nodded. ‘I’d like that,’ and went on her way, Oliver watching for a moment before turning to the carter. ‘Now let’s see what can be done for your old crock.’

SEVEN

Burton was glad to see so few in the Crown, not more than a couple of men who had left their wagons by the kerb. Florence was distracted. Well, she would be. She always was. There was only one thing that could bring her back into herself, but by the look of her he could tell she was wondering whether or not she’d had enough of him.

He was halfway through the pint he allowed himself at midday. ‘Is it your husband you’re frightened of?’

‘It’s not that so much. He might murder me, but apart from that I don’t think he’d care one way or the other. The thing is, he’s leaving his job, and we’ll have to live in Chesterfield.’

‘What does he want to go to a place like that for?’

She might be daft enough to think her husband didn’t care, but he surmised otherwise. Yet you could never be sure of anything. She might be using the assumption that he did know what they were up to because she was fed up and wanted to pack the business in with him, though if her husband did know then maybe he wanted to get out of it because he couldn’t stand and fight like a man for a woman worth fighting for. Let him try, though he wouldn’t like Mary Ann to hear of it.

‘His brother’s in business at Chesterfield,’ she went on.

‘Get him to stay here.’

‘I don’t know as I can,’ her tone implying she might not want to. ‘He’s set on it, anyway.’

He leaned closer, a hand on hers. ‘I’m sure you can if you want to. He sounds the sort who will listen.’

The glitter of desire came into her brown eyes. ‘Is that what you’d like?’

He was irritated by her emotional scheming. It wasn’t up to him to make up his mind. She must come to him, and if she didn’t she wasn’t worth having. ‘It only matters if you want it to.’

She was looking beyond him, and he saw Mary Ann’s reflection in the mirror, between liquor bottles on the shelf. Uneasy at the apparition he turned back to Florence, as if to go on talking would prove innocence. ‘Don’t let her bother you.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Some woman or other. I’d be sorry to lose you. I think a lot of you.’

‘You ought to show it a bit more.’

‘I don’t often see you, in that way. But I always want to. Life is hard for everybody. We’ll have to see what can be done.’

Mary Ann had witnessed all she needed. Pale, blood pulsing in every vein, she pulled at his arm. ‘I was told you weren’t at work, but I knew where to find you.’

He pushed her away, to finish his drink. Dignity was the dearest thing in the world, and he was shaken that she had come into the pub and dared to make a fuss. Florence realized who she was, and stood away with shame and sorrow at what she had become part of, and at what she felt to be her fault. Burton had courted her for weeks before she gave in, though she too had wanted him. And now this. She should have known it would happen.

The few drinkers looked on, as Mary Ann went for him. Nobody had tackled Burton in that way before, and it was extraordinary to witness. ‘You’ve got eight kids to keep,’ she said, ‘and you’re doing it on me with her.’

Words were wrenched out of him. ‘We were talking.’

‘I don’t believe it. You think I’m a fool? I know what’s going on.’ She seemed about to strike him. ‘Come back to your work. No wonder you give me hardly enough to keep the house going, carrying on with a trollop like that.’ She took a piece of paper from her pocket, held it before his face so as to give him time to recognize their marriage lines, and threw it in two pieces on the bar. ‘That’s what I think of you!’

He flushed with shame and rage. ‘Go home.’

‘Only if you come with me.’

As a master blacksmith and man of the house, philanderer and favoured customer at the pub, something had to be done to counter this violation of his dignity, and in such a way that it would never happen again. Such an affront had never been dreamed of, and caused a ripple at the temples fit to burst his head. He gripped her arm and walked her to the door. ‘Get off home,’ and pushed her into the street.

In the silence he dared whoever looked on to deny that what he had done was anything but just. None could. They would have done the same. Or the worst of them would. He wasn’t finished with Florence. ‘Don’t worry about that little set-to. We’ll meet in the woods tomorrow evening.’

She handed him the two halves of the marriage certificate. ‘You’d better have this, and see if you can put it together again.’

‘That’s cold.’ But he took it.

‘I shan’t see you anymore.’

‘Don’t say that. Wait for me. I’ll be back.’ A few strides took him outside.

‘His poor bloody wife’s going to cop it now,’ one of the carters laughed.

‘Well, she could have hammered him in the house instead of showing him up in public.’

The closer to home the less was he able to think, and the faster he walked. No need to think at all, everything spoiled between him and Florence. Rage carried him through Woodhouse, under the railway bridge and up the lane, not caring to avoid puddles from yesterday’s downpour. He passed his neighbour Harold Ollington, who wondered at not receiving the usual nod. Even God, had Burton recognized Him, would have got no greeting, pushed out of mind by the force of such catastrophic events. It wasn’t so much that she had shown him up in a pub as that she’d had the gall to do something like that in the first place. As his wife she had lost all respect, flaunted intolerance of him as his own master when away from the house as well as in it. His boot hit the gate.

Mary Ann pegged out a line of clothes fresh from the copper. Work for the household must go on, but tears went down with drops from the sheets. What she had done to Burton served him right, though she’d be damned for her Irish temper. Emily had seen him in the field talking to that wicked woman, then he had stayed so late in the wood, and today she hadn’t found him at work when he should have been, and had caught him in the public house talking to the barmaid in such a way it was plain what had been going on.

She felt only anger and wild resentment that he had betrayed her who had brought up their eight children on short money over so many years; nor did she suppose it was the first time he had done such a thing, which caused more tears to flow as she thrust wooden pegs onto cotton or cloth.

She heard nothing, then Burton pulled her around to face him. Dead grey eyes fixed her, then black and orange sparks exploded at a blow impossible to avoid. ‘Don’t ever interfere with anything I do, ever again. Never. Do you understand? Keep out of my business.’ Ignoring her scream, he fixed her in readiness for another across the mouth.

A third blow was held back. One was enough, and he had given two. Never lose control. He immediately knew he had done wrong, shouldn’t have given even the first, because she was his wife and not a child or animal to be kept in order. George would never have done the same to Sarah. She caught him out once, though hadn’t dared tackle him in public. George had done nothing more than laugh in her face, because fair was fair, he told Ernest, who was now sorry he hadn’t recalled the incident on his way up the lane. He pushed Mary Ann aside, and slammed the door into the house.

Annie Ollington looked over the fence at the commotion, and hurried around by the front gate. She sat Mary Ann on a log. ‘Oh, what a terrible thing! Look what a mess he’s made of your mouth. But you’ll be all right in a bit, duck.’ She wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief, shook it square, and saw smears of red. ‘Does he do this often?’

‘He’s never hit me before. I wish I could die.’

‘Don’t talk like that. But if he does it again you ought to set your lads onto him. I never thought Burton would do a thing like this. And he thinks himself such a gentleman! If anybody treated me like this I’d take the carving knife to their guts.’ She put an arm around her. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, though I know a lot of it goes on.’

Burton came with a bowl of water and a cloth. ‘What do you want?’

‘Can’t you see? I’m trying to help. What did you hit her like that for?’

‘It’s none of your business. Clear off, and don’t come here again.’ A hand jerked, as if to throw the water should she move any closer. ‘She’ll be all right.’

‘Not with a beast like you she won’t.’

‘Have less of your lip.’

In answering back she was more brave than she knew.

‘You’d better go,’ Mary Ann said.

She saw the glint in Burton’s eyes, and went quickly down the path. He dabbed at Mary Ann’s face. ‘I was only talking to the barmaid, passing the time. I’d had a heavy morning at work, and thought I’d go to the Crown for a drink. There was no need to show me up in front of everybody.’

If that’s all he had been doing why was he so enraged? He couldn’t get out of it like that. ‘Whatever you were up to God will pay you out for hitting me.’

‘God? And where does He live? What job does He do? Does He get good money while He’s at it? Hold still, and let me see to you.’

‘There is a God, though, and He’ll have it in for you.’

‘Not if I know it.’

‘You shouldn’t have hit me.’

He helped her to stand. ‘I wish I could undo it. Come into the house.’

Nowhere else to go, she had made no better home for him and all of them, and because he was her husband she let him guide her to a chair by the fire. The world had turned in a way she’d never imagined. To say she had loved him was unnecessary. He was the main factor of her life and she would never complain, had made her bed and must lie on it. She got up, hoping her face would pain less if she busied herself.

A huge horned gramophone stood on the round mahogany table in the parlour, as if to bellow condemnation at what he had done. He pushed it aside on sitting down. The room was Mary Ann’s creation, and she cleaned it every week, though rarely had company to show it off. She sometimes enjoyed its comforting solitude, and did her sewing there.

On a smaller table lay a neatly boxed set of dominoes, while a series of whatnot shelves fixed to a corner of the room held pottery pieces from seaside or Matock. The bookcase was filled with prizes brought from Sunday School, which he had sent the children to hoping they would get knowledge into their heads that had never entered his. They might also be taught to behave, so that Burton wouldn’t have to do it — as he once heard sharp-tongued Ivy remark to her sisters, not knowing he was near.

Mary Ann cared for the books, liked the idea of several a year coming into the house, and noted with pleasure how the shelves slowly filled. Only Oliver took interest in them, but she supposed that was encouragement enough. She had been with Burton on Alfreton Road and saw the glass-fronted case in Jacky Pownall’s junk yard, standing in the drizzle by a stack of bedsteads, the perfect piece of furniture for storing books, instead of them staying heaped on the table, so she robbed him of a week’s drink to pay for it, and got him to push it the mile or so home on a rented handcart.

It stood for a week in the warm kitchen to dry, and he took several evenings with rag, scraper and turpentine to remove the sickly green paint, then cleaned and polished to reveal the splendour of original wood.

The picture on the wall over the fireplace, a wedding present from George, was of a youth handing a bunch of flowers to a young girl, the couplet underneath an avowal of love that Burton knew well but didn’t care to repeat at the moment. He sat with a hand over his eyes, as if they were paining him, or would be if he thought more about what he had done, aware that what was done could never be undone.

In a cupboard facing the fireplace was his bottle of whisky, rarely broached, but he went to it and poured a small glass, noticing that the level had gone down from when he had last taken a nip, wondering whether any of the children had been helping themselves.

Things couldn’t be worse. He was losing Florence, and had been angry enough to hit Mary Ann, having always said he would never knock any woman about. But none had ever given him cause to, and when your blood boiled there was little to stop you doing it — though there ought to have been. It was no use saying he wouldn’t do it again. It was already done. The only way to make amends, if they could ever be made, was to let time go by, but that wasn’t good enough. Thoughts went in a circle, till the only way to get out of their grip — nothing at the moment could make up for what he had done — was to be certain that Florence no longer wanted him.

He poured a larger dram. If Florence wanted to go on with him nothing should stand in her way, and since he wanted to go on with her he couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t want to.

He put the glass of whisky before Mary Ann. ‘Try some of this. It might help a bit.’

‘Nothing will.’ But she sipped, not averse to the taste. ‘What would you do to me if you caught me doing the same thing?’

‘Kill the man, and you as well — except I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t.’

She thought it better to stay quiet. He stood at the door. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To see how those two idlers are getting on at the forge.’ She had never questioned him before. As for telling a lie, what could you do when you didn’t want to tell the truth? You never lied because you wanted to, he would always rather not, but only when people drove you to it, and to save them from worry. She should have had more sense than to ask, and if she doesn’t believe me that’s her lookout. Never tell anybody what they don’t need to know.

He pondered the matter, but on reaching the main road his thoughts were only of Florence. Few women meant what they said. Getting her to keep on with him was as important to his pride as the need to use her body.

Eli took his time serving other customers, before coming to ask what he wanted.

‘Where’s Florence?’

‘Gone. Packed her job in. Walked out just after you did. And she won’t be coming back, she said.’

Burton’s head tilted with disappointment, and indignation. ‘That was a foolish thing to do.’

‘You lost us a good wench,’ Eli said. ‘There’s some things a woman won’t put up with.’

‘It’s nothing to do with you. I’ll have a pint.’ The first mouthful tasted as if pumped out of the Trent, but he drank nevertheless, deciding never to go into the place again.

Tears fell into the mist of lavender, whose smell reminded her of early days at home when her mother and grandmother scented clothes and underwear in the same way. She was blinded with regret at ever having delivered herself into the hands of Burton. Emma Lewin had told her more than once that she ought not to.

She wondered if Burton had at one time found the florin she was looking for, and spent it on ale, or used it to treat some fancywoman — that holy florin she had vowed to keep till death.

The underwear drawer was her domain, so he would never have done such a thing, though if the thought occurred to him in the future he wouldn’t find it. In any case he didn’t know she still had that keepsake coin passed over the bar at the White Hart for buying her pair of gloves. She had those as well, though neither tokens could any more mean what they had.

The coin was wrapped in the same scrap of newspaper given him to go and buy the gloves, held firmly as if it might come alive and try to escape. She went up the slope to the well from which all water came for the house, moved the wooden lid aside and saw the glint at the bottom. She would throw the florin in, and say goodbye to her love for Burton, chuck herself into oblivion after it, water soothing her wounded face while she died, a reward of that peace and rest she seemed never to have had since marrying, and which she now thought she deserved.

She sat so still on the parapet that a thrush alighted and looked at her. You’re free, she said. You have a hard life, but at least you don’t think, or suffer misery fit to shred your insides. Its tail shook as if in greeting, then it lifted and flew at the twitch of her fingers.

Opening her hand, the florin tilted on her palm. She held it awhile, in two minds whether to let it drop. She wouldn’t unless, taking on a life of its own, the decision was made for her. She levelled her hand. A chill wind increased the ache on her face, and she wanted the warmth of the house.

On going through the door the florin was still in her hand, and she looked at the elderly head of Queen Victoria who for better or worse had lost her husband early. Then the superstitious worry came, as if the Queen was sending a message from the grave, that if she had dropped the florin in the well something dreadful would have happened to Burton. She didn’t want that, so the only thing was to return the coin to its hiding-place among the sweetness of lavender.

He made his way over the hill and into town, in the hope that the effort of walking would still his regret at what had been done, though nothing ever would. In a jeweller’s window at Chapel Bar he saw a display of Galway claddach rings, and remembered that Mary Ann had admired them for as long as he had known her, but had given up hope of getting one. The price of twenty shillings dug into the reserve he kept should anything happen to her or the children, and the cost of having her mouth mended would also take some money.

The ring in his pocket, he bought twopennorth of tram ride along Castle Boulevard to Lenton. He recalled that nearly a hundred years ago ten people were killed and as many injured when a barge moored off Canal Street carrying a ton of gunpowder exploded. It was being held for pits in Derbyshire, but on being carried from the boat to the warehouse left a trail along the towpath. A man who saw it thought he would have a lark — as the damned fool must have told himself — and threw a hot coal down. He never knew what happened, his troubles gone in a flash, though he took nine others with him and ruined half the quayside.

Some men are like that, nothing in their heads but mischief, though on the top deck of the clanking tram he wondered whether it was worth going home. A beneficial explosion would nicely settle him, yet he wouldn’t want anyone’s company on the ride into hell.

On the other hand he could call at the forge, collect sufficient tools, and go back to being a journeyman-blacksmith as in his younger days when he had worked for George in Wales, those carefree times of knowing Minnie Dyslin and the girls of Tredegar. If Minnie was still there he would call and see the son she’d had. Perhaps she was married again, and had as many by now as Mary Ann. He could think of no better thing for her, and hoped she was happy.

Easy to understand why George had taken himself off to earn his living in Wales for a year or two, and left Sarah with the children. Having a forge of your own brought the bother of keeping it going, not to mention a home with a wife and eight children around your neck. A journeyman’s pay might not be as much as a settled blacksmith’s, but at least you had no responsibilities.

He let the tram carry him, because the world wasn’t yours to do as you pleased with, as he had always known. The world owned you, though you had a fight to stop it doing you in. Storm clouds were everywhere, now and again a patch of blue to give you a bit of fun — until you put your foot in it and made a mistake. Then you got to thinking it was time to be off, yet knew you couldn’t go. He was married to Mary Ann, and that was that. It was a harder road than the prayer book said, a bond that anchored him to solid concrete. Though Mary Ann would be pleased at getting the ring, he hardly expected the gesture to make any difference.

He went to the forge for an hour’s work before the day ended. ‘The old man’s quieter than usual,’ Oliver said to Oswald as he was seeing to a horse. ‘I wonder why?’

‘When he’s like that we should keep out of his way.’

Burton sent them home first, and closed the place himself.

The table hadn’t been set for the evening meal, ash dim at the bars, gloom so thick you could cut it with a knife but, Oliver thought, you couldn’t eat it, and they were hungry. They wanted food, but something had happened, as if news had come that someone had died. Neither son had ever seen Mary Ann sitting by the cooling fire as if turned to stone. The house could die for all she seemed aware of it. ‘What’s gone wrong?’

She turned her head. ‘Ask Burton.’

Thomas stayed by the door, fearing to come close but calling: ‘Where’s our supper?’

Her voice wasn’t right. ‘I’ll get it in a bit.’

‘You’re crying,’ Oliver said.

Her mouth was bruised and twisted. ‘Can’t you see?’

Oswald cried out. ‘How did you do that?’

‘I caught Burton in the Crown talking to a woman. I lost my temper, and showed him up in front of everybody.’

‘Temper be damned.’ Oliver’s anguish brought more tears. ‘Look at her. You don’t do that to a woman, not for anything.’

She went to and from the pantry with none of her usual quickness while Oliver, weary after the day’s work and wanting a meal, poked ash from the grate and put sticks on embers that still had heat. Thomas used the bellows, set larger wood and then coal to bring the fire to a state for cooking.

‘Don’t say anything to Burton,’ she said. ‘It’s best if the whole thing blows over.’

‘Somebody’s got to.’ Oliver didn’t relish the role, knowing how it would end. ‘We can’t let him behave like that.’

‘Go upstairs,’ she told Thomas, ‘and get Edith and Rebecca to come down and help me with the dinner.’

‘Did you put anything on your face?’ Oswald asked.

‘Annie came with some witch-hazel after Burton had gone.’

‘You finished ours on me a few days ago,’ Oliver said. ‘It’s like being in a war, living in this house.’

‘It helped a bit. She came with some Collis Browne’s as well but I told her I wasn’t a baby who’d got colic. She said it might buck me up, and it did for a while. At least I’ve got a good neighbour.’

‘I’ll make sure he never lives this down,’ Oliver said.

Edith took knives and forks from the drawer. ‘You’ve seen what that old fucker’s done?’

‘Don’t swear like that,’ Mary Ann said, ‘or I’ll make you wash your mouth out with soap. I won’t have that sort of talk in this house.’

‘I can’t help it. He wants blinding, except that it would be too good for him.’

‘And don’t talk like that about your father, or God will pay you out as well.’

‘If He paid me out for saying anything against Burton there wouldn’t be any God.’

‘It won’t change him,’ Oliver said. ‘I can’t think what will. He won’t even alter after he’s dead and gone.’

Edith laughed. ‘Somebody ought to kill him. That’s what he deserves.’

‘He’s not worth hanging for,’ Oswald said.

‘Let’s get on with supper,’ Mary Ann told them, as if only eating would stop such talk. ‘He’ll be in directly, and if it’s not ready there’ll be hell to pay.’

‘Make it as hot as you can,’ Edith said, ‘and chuck it in his face.’

‘Now stop,’ Mary Ann said angrily. ‘You can give me some help. Crack the eggs for the pudding and beat them in the big yellow bowl.’ Her face pained, and two of her teeth were loose, alarming because she had always feared for her looks, but such murderous words from the children inclined her to take Burton’s side.

She didn’t like the notion that he had sowed the wind and would reap the whirlwind, not from her children anyway. He behaved as he did because it was his nature, and he didn’t know any better, not realizing that do as you would be done by was the only way to live. If there was one thing worse than what he had done it was to have the children set against him with so much hatred. No woman deserves what she’d had, but no man deserves that, either. She had, after all, enraged him by doing the worst possible thing, humiliating him before other men, when she ought to have tackled him at home. She regretted her loss of temper, but it was too late to say so. He had never hit her before, and never would again.

Oliver nodded to his brothers. ‘Let’s go in the yard and get this muck off our faces.’

The fully leaved beech tree on the mellow August evening gave shade and shelter to both sides of the fence. Oliver took two bowls from under the worn rickety table and filled them from a bucket. Drawing off their shirts, they lathered themselves with pleasant-smelling White Windsor soap and, after much swilling and towelling, fetched clean shirts and trousers from the house. Thomas, the last to dress, went along the yard to get wood for the fire and, from the gate, signalled that Burton was on his way.

It would be an evil deed to strike your own father, and the intention troubled and frightened Oliver. Knowing that something had to be done, he regretted being the chosen one to do it. ‘I rely on you two to give me a hand.’

Burton came from under the bridge in his usual smith-alone way, on up the lane towards home, back straight and looking only in front, as if nothing was visible for a thousand miles, therefore too far off to be bothered by. Victim though master of his thoughts, he was weary at wondering whether there would be any advantage in going to Florence’s house and calling her out to talk, because a job left: undone was a bad one, and he wanted to see the matter through. Then he decided that he wouldn’t chase her. It wasn’t worth it, was beneath his dignity, whether or not there was any hope of carrying on with her again. Let her come to him if she wanted, but he knew she wouldn’t, a strong-minded woman never going back on her word.

A young man coming down the lane made no move to step aside, and when they collided Burton sent him staggering against the bank.

‘Watch what you’re doing, can’t you?’ the youth cried.

Burton knew him as someone from Woodhouse, and considered giving him as good a hiding as he deserved. A tall robust lad, he had broken his parents’ hearts, so he’d heard, because they hadn’t had the sense to bring him up properly. Well-muscled and able to work, he spent what time he could at the boozer, though he was barely eighteen. At least none of the girls in the family, nor his sons for that matter, would have anything to do with an idler who went poaching and was often in trouble with the police.

Doddoe sensed what was coming, and moved deftly from Burton’s way, walking quickly and calling: ‘You think you own the fucking world!’

Too near the house to bother, Burton was only anxious in some small way to mollify Mary Ann with the gift in his pocket.

Oliver stepped from the washhouse door, and placed himself in Burton’s way as if having something to say about work at the forge, though fear increased when his father stopped to listen: ‘What is it?’

‘Why did you hit our mother like that?’

Burton disliked being pulled out of his world, except in his own time and when he cared for it, so he was merely startled. ‘Eh?’

Oliver, legs shaking, called to his brothers standing by the pigsty: ‘Back me up, then.’

Burton took a quick pace away.

‘I asked why you hit our mother?’

A blow sent Oliver to one side, and before he could recover his stance Burton had gone into the house. ‘That’s a fine thing.’ Oliver turned to Oswald and Thomas. ‘I thought you were going to help me.’

‘It would only cause more ructions,’ Oswald said, ‘and upset Mam even more.’

‘No it won’t. He’s got to pay for what he did. He just can’t do a thing like that.’

Burton put a hand over Mary Ann’s shoulders, and held the small white box open before her. ‘That won’t make up for it,’ she said. ‘Though it might be a start.’ She placed it in her pocket, and hoped that her sons, having seen the gesture, wouldn’t now make a fuss about what had been done.

They sat down to eat. Edith, knowing that things hadn’t gone well in the yard, winked at Oliver, as a hint that he should say something to Burton again. Knowing he needed encouragement, she sent a further signal.

Though only halfway finished he laid the cutlery across his plate. ‘Burton, I want an explanation as to why you hit our mother like that.’

Ivy trembled, and looked away, while Rebecca’s features showed only loathing. Emily and Sabina grinned, as if not caring what the tension was about. Oswald and Thomas stayed silent and fearful.

‘Stop it,’ Mary Ann said, ‘and finish your dinner. It was my fault as much as his. I shouldn’t have shamed him in the pub like that.’

‘I don’t care what you did. I expect he asked for it. There must have been something behind whatever you said.’

Burton ate, everyone knowing he wouldn’t for long. His exertion of more control than they had ever known reduced them to terror. The veins at his temples twitched at Mary Ann saying she had shamed him. He was incapable of shame, and had struck her because she had done what no woman should. She had forgotten her place.

‘I’m waiting for an answer,’ Oliver said.

‘Just eat your meal.’ Mary Ann had little hope that he would, at times just as stubborn a man as his father. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’

‘I want to hear what he’s got to say for himself.’ He turned to Burton again. ‘You’re a bloody savage.’

Burton, who never swore, and didn’t like to hear it from his children, went on cutting at what meat remained on his plate. You couldn’t sit down to your food in this family and say a word without starting an argument. ‘You know the answer you’ll get if you don’t close your lips?’

‘It won’t happen again,’ Mary Ann said.

‘I’ll see that it doesn’t.’ Oliver thought he had said enough, that honour was satisfied, so looked again at his plate. He had told his brothers he would tax Burton, and he had, and felt happy about it, was even proud to have gone as far as to let Burton know that he couldn’t hit their mother and not be told off about it. Beyond that, Burton was immovable, nothing more to be said or done.

Burton was nagged by the reflection that if there was one thing worse than a wife not knowing her place it was having a son with no firm understanding of his. Unable to tolerate any confusion in the matter, and not seeing why he should, after a day in which nothing had gone as he would have liked, he stood, and launched his fist across the table with such speed that it struck Oliver full on the chest, seemingly before he saw it coming, and sent him sprawling with chair and plate across the floor.

If there was one nightmare in Mary Ann’s life worse than any other it was that of violence breaking out in the family. ‘Why did you do that?’ she cried at Burton, already on her way to help Oliver, but he was on his feet, gesturing her to one side.

Burton, a piece of meat back on his fork, wanted only to finish the meal, before soothing himself with work in the garden. He was therefore not so intent on avoiding a blow that, had it properly landed, would have been at least equal to the one he had given. Adept at dodging sparks of coal and steel from the crucible of the forge, there was no one more alert than a blacksmith, but he had been slow, which realization enraged him even more.

Oliver, both hands up to defend himself, was terrified at what he had dared to do. He was mesmerized by Burton standing slowly up in so unusual a way that Oliver wondered whether he wasn’t going to come forward and forgive him, as if the weird smile never seen before meant that Burton might only tell him to sit down and finish eating.

He ran to save his life, for in two strides Burton reached the pantry door and picked up the sharp-bladed woodsman’s axe. Mary Ann saw Burton about to commit murder, as Oliver pulled at the latch to get out, in despair that the others sat like statues, who would not help to pull their father down.

Burton stood at the door like an executioner, but Oliver’s equally long legs had taken him quickly down the yard and onto the lane, leaving the gate wide open in his hurry, not caring who would have to close it.

Burton would not demean himself by chasing his son onto a public bridleway, so came back to lean the axe in its usual place. He sat to finish his meal. ‘That’s the end of him. He never comes into this house again, or works for me anymore.’

‘Don’t say such a terrible thing,’ Mary Ann cried out.

‘Never again does he sleep in this house.’ He turned to Oswald. ‘Who are you staring at? Do you want to go as well?’

He didn’t. No one did. Where would they go? The hardest thing to do was find a haven from tyranny, though Edith didn’t doubt she would do so one day, as she lifted Oliver’s jacket from the door. Burton’s mouth was open to call her back, to threaten if she didn’t obey, but he stayed quiet, as if something in him halfway approved of what she intended.

She ran along the lane, afraid Oliver would be lost to them forever if she didn’t catch up. He was liked by his sisters as well as loved by them, and she couldn’t bear the thought of him having nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat, or going away without his jacket.

He walked disconsolately along the embowered track, a lost and lonely place she would never go to on her own. ‘Oliver! Wait for me.’ From behind he might have been mistaken for Burton, with the high proud walk she had often noticed. She caught up with him, and sat on the bank. ‘Where shall you go?’

He was hungry still, full of grief and anger, and shame at having run away. ‘I heard they needed a blacksmith to look after the horses at Brown’s sawmills. I’m going there.’

‘Where shall you sleep tonight?’

‘In one of their sheds. I don’t care. It’ll be dry and warm. I shan’t be near him at least.’

‘Have you got any money?’

He picked a twig and shredded it. ‘I’ll earn some. If they set me on they’ll lend me ten bob to get by. I can never go back home.’

‘You’ll break Mam’s heart if you don’t.’

‘I can’t help that. Burton will kill me if I poke my face in the house. Or I’ll kill him. Either way, murder will be done, and it’ll be his fault. He’s never liked me.’

‘Yes he has. You’re his favourite, but he just doesn’t know how to treat you. I know what he’s like. It’s the same with the rest of us.’

‘I’d like to think so, but I can’t.’ She felt he was going to cry, but he went on: ‘You lot will have to look after Mother, since I can’t be there anymore. I thought Oswald and Thomas were going to help, but they didn’t.’

‘They’re cowards.’ She took a shilling from her pocket. ‘Here, have this.’

‘I can’t take your money.’

‘Go on, you can get a pint at the Rodney. And you can buy some bread and butter. It’s not my last, honest.’

‘I’ll pay you back soon.’

‘And don’t worry about Mam.’ She took his hand. ‘She’ll feel a lot better when I tell her I’ve seen you, though I shan’t say anything to Burton, even if he starts to worry.’

His laugh was bitter. ‘He won’t do that. But thanks for bringing my coat.’ He brushed the grass from his trousers. ‘I must be off. Mr Brown will still be there, and I’m sure he’ll have some work for me.’

‘Give my love to Alma then, when you see her. She’s lovely.’

‘We’re meeting tomorrow, and now I have a coat to put on.’ He kissed her. ‘At least I’ve got a good sister.’

She watched him turn a bend in the lane, then ran back to the house.

EIGHT

All metal in a blacksmith’s house had to shine, and the females were told to make sure it did, so Ivy, Rebecca and Edith gathered on Sunday morning for the ritual of polishing. Heaps of cutlery, prize horseshoes, and brass ornaments from the parlour shelves lay by their hands, tins of Brasso and silver polish in the middle of the table.

‘I bumped into Tommy Jackson on his way home from work the other day.’ Edith picked a rag from the heap, and fell silent when Burton came into the room.

Ivy wouldn’t be put off. ‘Tommy’s at the bike factory, isn’t he?’

Burton looked on. In the early days, before having so many children, he sat at the table on Sunday morning cleaning horseshoes and ornaments himself, but with so many daughters, and so much to be polished, there were other things to do with his time. Mary Ann recalled how, in his shirtsleeves, he had never been happier, glistening the metal and rocking Oliver’s cradle with a stockinged foot. Glamorous Emma Lewin, who had never trusted him to be good to Mary Ann, called one morning to see them, Burton so happy at her visit he promised a special horseshoe to hang in the pub, sent by a boy before the week was out. How much water had gone under the bridge since then! Too often the liquid flowing through had been muddy enough, but she could not stop loving him more than she feared him.

‘Tommy Jackson dresses very smart,’ Edith said. ‘I saw him walking along the street yesterday, and he winked at me.’

Burton laced his boots by the fireplace, grunting in disapproval at such talk.

‘He asked me to go a walk along the canal. “No fear,” I told him, “you might chuck me in.” “No,” he said, straight back, just like that, the cheeky devil: “It’s you as might chuck me in. You’re as big as I am.”’

Geraniums by the open window seemed to shake at their laughter. ‘He’s ever so nice,’ Rebecca said. ‘I once saw him with a flower in his buttonhole.’

Burton looked at the girls’ work, picked a spoon from the table, and turned it over, handing it to Edith. ‘Do that one again.’

‘Isn’t it clean enough?’

‘You heard. The rag’s not black. You do it till there’s black on the rag. Then you give it a final polish. How many times do I have to tell you? I want it to shine so’s I can see myself to shave in it.’ He examined a horseshoe closely. ‘Whose is this? It’s good, but it’s not mine.’

‘Oliver made it.’

He threw it onto the settle. ‘Give it back to him if you see him. Me and your mother’s going to the Admiral Rodney for an hour. When you’ve got everything clean and shining put them back in their right places. Make sure they’re straight. And don’t get polish on the table. It leaves a stain.’

‘I’ll try not to.’

‘There’s a spot there. Rub it off.’

Mary Ann wore her best jacket with gold embroidery along the wide lapels and around the pronounced cuffs at the wrists. Four buttons on the left kept the garment open to show a white highnecked blouse, fastened at the waist with two short ribbons. A long matching skirt went almost down to boots laced up with a buttonhook, such a rigout crowned with a flamboyant hat of golden feathers to make her seem taller and more stately.

Burton, who liked to be seen with her at such times, recalled how stylish she had been when he courted her twenty-five years ago. She pulled on her shining leather gloves, and picked up a small neatly rolled umbrella. ‘You two cook the dinner,’ she said to Ivy and Rebecca. ‘You know where everything is.’

‘We should, by now,’ Ivy said.

‘Don’t answer your mother back,’ he said, ‘or you’ll feel my fist.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’ The answering back was aimed at him, which he well knew.

‘Thomas can get the beans and potatoes out of the garden,’ Mary Ann said, ‘and Oswald is to keep the fire going.’

Burton turned to Ivy. ‘What do you call that?’

A small pot of Colman’s mustard lay before her. ‘It’s for your dinner.’

‘I know it is. I’m not blind. But do you know what it looks like?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘It looks as if a canary’s done its mess. Put a lot more in. I like it hot. You should know by now.’ He turned to Mary Ann. ‘I’ll wait in the yard.’

When the door closed behind him, fearing Burton’s renowned ability to hear through walls, she said in a low voice to Edith: ‘When you take Oliver’s dinner don’t idle along the way, or it’ll get cold.’

Only girls in the house, Edith held the pot of mustard at arm’s length, to imitate the way Burton stood to drink his ale, and with a gargoyle face drew it to her mouth. She hawked up what phlegm was in her chest, regretting it should be so little, and unloaded it into the mustard. The others did the same, and Ivy stirred it vigorously in, to the laughter of them all.

Mary Ann walked the customary few paces behind him down the lane. Halfway to the railway tunnel he sensed she no longer followed. ‘Are you coming, or aren’t you?’

She poked the tip of her umbrella at a pothole. ‘I want you to ask Oliver to come home.’

He looked askance, but had been expecting her request. ‘I’ll be damned if I will.’

‘I shan’t come to the pub then.’

If he did walk on she might not follow, a stubbornness about her that even he at times could make head nor tail of. It was understandable that she wanted Oliver back. So did he, half-smiling at the thought that if there was one thing worse than having an argumentative son in the house it was having him out of it so that he could no longer be got at. ‘I’ll think about it.’ For the moment that had to be good enough, and he left her to come after him.

A few paces later she stopped again.

‘What is it this time?’

‘I don’t like walking under that dark tunnel on my own.’

A full smile and, ever willing to be gallant before a woman’s weakness, he held out his arm. ‘When we get to the Rodney I’ll buy you a glass of port.’

Edith walked between machinery and large sheds, and hogsbacks of pristine sawdust on which she and her sisters had romped as children. Seasoning trunks were laid on trestles by neat pyramids of cut planks. Oliver stopped whistling on seeing her. Collarless shirt open at the neck, he looked even more happy and relaxed at getting a basket of the best dinner he could imagine. Mary Ann, away from the eye of Burton, had also slipped in some groceries. Edith spread the cloth on the smooth flat of a tree stump, and laid out the meal as if for Burton himself.

‘That’s a good sister.’

‘What do you do for your breakfast?’

He picked up the shining cutlery, cut into vegetables and potatoes. ‘I’ve got a packet of tea in the hut, and fetch milk from Mrs Baker near Robin’s Wood. She gave me a slice of smoked bacon and two eggs yesterday, and wouldn’t take any money.’

He was popular and handsome, and she was glad to help as well. ‘What about water to wash in?’

‘There’s a pump near the house.’

‘And when you want to go to the lavatory?’ she asked mischievously.

‘I dig a hole among the bushes with a trowel. But how’s Mother getting on? I hope she’s all right.’

‘She is, but she wants you to come home.’

‘What does Burton say about that?’

‘He hasn’t said anything, but everybody sees how he misses getting on at you.’

He passed her a piece of pork on his fork. ‘I’ll bet he does. I like it very much here. I don’t have to pay my board, so I’m all right for money, and living like Robinson Crusoe suits me a treat.’

It was a disappointment that he could be so adaptable, because if there was one thing she and the others missed at home it was not having a brother they could joke and laugh with. ‘Where do you sleep?’

‘In that long hut, on the planks at the far end. I’m as warm as toast. Mrs Brown gave me some old blankets.’

‘You’ll be cold in winter.’

‘I’ll get lodgings by then.’

‘Can you afford to?’

‘I’m saving up. I’m earning a pound a week, which is more than I ever got from Burton. I mend machines, and shoe the horses. I feel a new man not having him ordering me around with never a thank you for all I do. He isn’t going to knock me about anymore.’ He pulled the basket forward and searched under the cloth. ‘Did you bring that book?’

She had forgotten. ‘I couldn’t find it.’

‘You’d forget your head if it was loose. Don’t you remember? It’s called Famous Engineers. It’s on the top shelf in the middle of the bookcase. You can read, can’t you?’

‘You know I can. I’ll bring it tomorrow. I can’t do it this afternoon.’

‘I suppose you’re too busy going after the lads. Who’s your young man now?’

‘Mind your own business,’ she flushed.

‘Let me guess.’ He danced around her. ‘Oh I know: it’s Tommy Jackson. I used to be at school with him. He once threw an apple at Miss Soames, and got the strap for it. Hey, what’s that paper bag in your hand?’

She held it close to her chest. ‘It’s pepper.’

‘Pepper? You don’t put pepper on blackberries, and you know I don’t like it on my dinner. What’s it for?’

‘It’s lonely walking along that lane,’ she said, embarrassed to admit her fears. ‘Nobody ever goes there, not even in daytime, and I get frightened. If a man jumps out from the hedge I can chuck pepper in his eyes and blind him. Then I’d run like hell!’

He laughed. ‘Who put a daft idea like that into your head?’

‘Mother said her grandma used to do it when they lived in Ireland.’

‘Poor old Mam! She’s frightened of her own shadow. I can’t think who’d jump out of the bushes on an ugly thing like you. He’d run a mile as soon as he saw your face.’

‘I’m going, if you talk like that.’

‘No, don’t. I want to rag you some more.’

‘I can’t stay. I’ve got to see that the others set the table properly.’

‘Well, don’t forget to bring my book. I want something to read after finishing work.’

‘Aren’t you coming back to live at home?’

He stood up tall and straight — like his father. ‘Not even if Burton came and pleaded with me on bended knees.’

‘But you will if Mam asks you?’

‘I might. But I’ll never work for him again.’

She went through the bushes towards the canal with the basket on her arm, and he laughed about the bag of pepper. A big comely girl like Edith should be able to knock any man senseless who bothered her, but the trouble was that women didn’t often know the strength they had, and those who did were afraid to use it as they should.

Few tables were taken in the yard of the Admiral Rodney at Wollaton village. The day was too fresh, though perfect for Burton, who liked a breeze after the stink of burning coals and searing metal all week. He drank with more pleasure in such weather.

A well-dressed man with a friendly smile paused at their table. ‘Good morning, Burton.’

He gave a nod that only someone unfamiliar with his ways would find offensive. ‘Who was that?’ Mary Ann wanted to know.

‘Some damned fool.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s anybody around here who doesn’t know you, but he seemed pleasant enough.’

‘He brings his horses to be shod, and complains when I charge two bob. They’re all cripples, the way he uses them.’

‘He won’t bring them anymore if you treat him that way.’

‘He can please himself. You’ll be getting drunk,’ he said, at her modest sip, ‘if you go on gobbling it up like that.’

‘It’s nice, but I could never take much.’ The small glass was still almost full. ‘I used to see people getting tipsy all the time when I was in service.’

‘I wasn’t one of them.’

‘I know, but I like to keep a clear head when I’m thinking about Oliver.’

He snorted. ‘He’s got too much to say for himself.’

‘All young men have. I expect you did when you was a youth.’

‘Not to my own father. It was more than I dared do.’

‘Oliver was concerned about me. You can’t blame him for that.’

‘I look after you,’ he said, ‘not him.’

She thought that even he might take such a statement with a pinch of salt — which accounted for the few moments of silence. ‘I wish you’d let him come back home. He’s sleeping on planks at the sawmill.’

‘I’ve slept on worse.’

‘I miss him, though.’

‘I expect you do.’

Morgan came through the gate, and stood as if for a talk, spruce and affable in a bowler hat, a sovereign and some farrier regalia dangling from his waistcoat. Burton hadn’t seen him since Sabina had danced on the table. ‘Hey up, Burton! Things all right?’

‘So you can see.’

‘Can I get you and your missis a jar?’

‘We’ve got them already.’

‘I’ll see you, then.’

Burton watched him stride to the pub back door. ‘Another damned fool.’

‘I ought to have been introduced to him properly,’ Mary Ann complained.

‘You don’t want to know him. He talks too much for his own good.’ He finished his drink. ‘I suppose I am missing Oliver’s cheek. You’d better knock that jollop back, or we’ll be here all day.’

She needed no telling. He was relenting, and it was about time. The house was a miserable place without Oliver. Even Burton would agree, though never say so. ‘If we walk back along the canal we pass the sawmill.’

‘What are you in such a hurry for?’ He drew her chair away. ‘A button’s loose from your glove. You’d better take it off or you’ll lose it.’

They followed the wall-lined road bordering Wollaton Park, away from the village. Mary Ann walked her few paces behind, at times almost catching up, which he wouldn’t like. Clouds flowing low from the west put the wind at their backs. She all but clipped his heels. ‘I don’t know why you’re in such a hurry,’ he said. ‘The dinner won’t get cold. You’ll be running me down if you’re not careful.’

‘Do you think he’ll come home?’

‘He will if I tell him.’

Having a child away from the house was like a brick missing from the wall and letting the weather in, she’d heard her grandmother say. ‘I’m sure he will, then,’ and she smiled, happier than for many a day.

They turned up a lane through the wood, till sawmill sheds were visible, a deep lock of the canal at their backs. ‘Oliver!’ he shouted, then turned to Mary Ann. ‘You go home, and leave this to me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Make sure dinner’s on the table in half an hour.’

The arrangement was good enough, and she would happily face the darkness of the railway tunnel now that Oliver was coming back. ‘Don’t be late, though, or the pudding will go flat.’

He would be on time whenever he arrived, late or not. He stopped on seeing Oliver talking to a young woman. ‘Did you hear, when I called you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can come home.’

Oliver let go of her hand. ‘I’m not working for you.’

‘Please yourself.’ Mindful of his shining boots, he avoided the higher mounds of sawdust. ‘Who’s the young lady?’

In her early twenties, he guessed, perhaps a little older than Oliver. He noted the blue eyes, fair hair done into a bun, and the palest of skin, a straight line of jaw from ear to a well-rounded chin when she turned to him. Perfect teeth as she smiled at Oliver’s reaction to the erect well-dressed man who could only be his father.

Her plain white shirt had a narrow collar, no brooch to adorn, and the sun throwing a haze over her face created such a vision that Burton wondered how it was he hadn’t seen such an unusual girl in the district before, as if she was a throwback to a very good family, amused in thinking she was far too good for his son.

‘This is Alma Waterall,’ and to her Oliver said: ‘Burton, my father.’

Burton nodded — he never shook hands — but the gesture teamed with an uncommon stare, used fully, knowing its effect on an uncommon woman. His grey eyes looked — though not for too long — as they always did in order to test, and to optimistically ensnare any woman who took his fancy. He recalled turning such a gaze on Minnie Dyslin, and Mary Ann, and Florence, and not a few in between, an appraisal without seeming to be in any way entranced, yet long enough to take in a woman as yet uncontaminated by a world she might come to know if she responded to him — which she would do, he thought, if there was anything special about her.

She imagined she knew more than she did, on giving a stern and knowing look, trying to take in what sort of a man he was, yet not quite able to. Hard to tell what was in her mind. Such curiosity would get her nowhere. She didn’t even know what to look for, but if she did satisfy her enquiring mood the responsibility for what ensued would be entirely her own.

He smiled, a mere flick of the lips before turning to Oliver. ‘You’re wasting your time working at this place. Come back to me, and you’ll soon be the best blacksmith in the trade.’

Oliver knew he was so already, and had no further need of his father’s slave-driving tuition. Burton waited long enough for an answer to know that none would be forthcoming, aware that his eldest and favourite son was as proud as himself, which wasn’t much for either to be pleased about. ‘Your mother’s got your dinner on the table.’

‘I’ve eaten already.’

He knew they’d been feeding him behind his back. ‘I’d have been glad to eat ten dinners at your age. Anyway, you heard what I said. Your mother wants you to come home.’

Watching him go back in the direction of the canal, Oliver knew that an invitation of equal welcome would never have come from Burton, so there had been no use expecting it. He drew Alma close for a kiss, and wondered why her embrace was more ardent than he’d so far had that day.

‘So he was your father?’

They stood apart. ‘Yes, more’s the pity.’

‘What’s his Christian name?’

The bitter laugh widened her eyes with surprise. ‘Christian? Him? His name’s Ernest, but we never use it. We call him Burton. Even our mother does, except I suppose when they’re on their own.’

‘He doesn’t say much.’

‘His fists talk a lot.’

‘He dresses smartly. I wish my father did. He drinks more alcohol than he should, which causes trouble at home. I tried to get him to sign the pledge and join a temperance society but he just laughed. When Mother shouts at him for not working hard enough he starts crying, and then hits her. I don’t think he can be all there. And he looks even more awful when he’s supposed to be dressed up.’

‘Let’s not talk about them. It’s you I want, all of you.’ He kissed her again. ‘There’s a warm place in one of the sheds. Nobody will see us.’

Impossible to know what thoughts curdled behind her blank stare. ‘I can’t.’

‘Don’t you want to?’

She turned from him, did and didn’t, would and wouldn’t, only not now, but felt enough heat in herself to give in, a confusion making her blush. ‘Will you walk me home?’

‘I would, except they’re waiting for the return of the Prodigal Son. I’ll take you as far as the road, then meet you at the school this afternoon. We can go for a walk, when you’ve finished drumming God into the poor little devils.’

He came back and rolled his belongings into a blanket, tied the ends, draped the bundle around his shoulder, and followed his father’s footsteps through the bushes with the same high-headed walk.

Burton enjoyed seeing neat girls in their Sunday best, noted how lively they were at Oliver’s return, and Oliver’s happiness at being among them. Mary Ann served Yorkshire pudding to begin, crisp at the edge and light in the middle, succulent to lips and tongue, a trickle of rich gravy from the sauceboat. The plates were afterwards laden with broad beans, slices of marrow, small boiled onions and potatoes fresh from the garden. Burton’s long knife flashed along the steel for carving the leg of pork from their home-reared pig. He laid out portions in his usual silence, Oliver receiving two instead of one. ‘Who was that girl you were with?’

In spite of his previous meal, he ate with appetite. ‘Someone from Woodhouse.’

‘She looks a rum wench.’

He wondered why Burton must push his nose into everything. ‘I like her.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘I met her three months ago.’

‘She’s lovely.’ Edith, as always, took her favourite brother’s part. ‘I saw her when I took his dinner to the sawmill.’ She put a hand to her lips not so much out of fear as to mock herself. Rebecca and Ivy laughed, while Burton thought that Mary Ann was too soft-hearted. ‘Well,’ Edith went on, ‘he needs a hot dinner every day when he’s courting.’

Emily sang out: ‘I saw Dad courting.’

She dropped her fork at Burton’s stare but, close to tears, turned too Mary Ann. ‘Mam, what’s courting?’

‘It’s what two people do before they get married.’

‘What does her father do?’ Burton wanted to know.

‘He’s a jobbing builder,’ Oliver told him.

‘That’s a poor trade.’

‘Before that he was a soldier.’

‘That’s the worst trade of the lot.’ He looked around the table. ‘Now be quiet, all of you, and get on with your dinners.’

NINE

Oliver felt more himself among the comforting odours of the house, a mixture of lamp oil, pumice stone, carbolic soap, of baking bread and cooking, and the lavender Mary Ann sprinkled between newly ironed clothes. Camping out had been a treat, but the civilized embrace of the family house was unbeatable, in spite of Burton.

The flagstoned scullery was cold to the feet when he took off his clothes for a sluice-and-soap all over from one of the buckets. Underwear went into the washing basket, and he put on fresh with a clean shirt. The tang of his brothers’ sweat in the bedroom was more noticable after nights among the wood planks and clean air coming through the slats of the shed.

He put on his brown suit, and polished his boots to a shine that might have been mistaken for Burton’s, assuming the good habits of his father but, he hoped, none of the worst.

The silver watch bought from a man at the mill for five bob adorned his waistcoat, a pleasure to have when asked in the street what time it was. Such an object gave status, he thought, combing his hair at the downstairs mirror.

The sunken lane was bordered by pink willow herb, in hedgerows overlapped with plates of white elderflower. He pressed a berry between his fingers, the smell mixing with mellow high summer. Life indeed was better than yesterday.

Woodhouse was a settlement of three short cul-de-sacs ending at the railway embankment, and the first turning beyond the bridge brought a forlorn lifting and falling moan of song from the Sunday School that reminded him of childhood. Inside the door, arms folded, he didn’t much believe in the religion but enjoyed the stories.

He knew many of the variously dressed children, from the respectable to those who lived in squalid poverty. The buttons of Albert Dawes’ cardigan were done up unevenly, and he looked as if he had fallen into the canal and, battered about the head for the trouble he had given, been hung on the clothesline to dry. The Warrener lad of twelve in his lop-sided Eton collar (though he was well-shod) was kicking at Bessie Atkin’s ankles, who wore a white pinafore and a blue ribbon in her long hair, till a look from Alma drew his boot away.

Aaron Beaseley’s tongue showed beyond his lips, but his jacket and waistcoat were tidily fastened, though his ironed collar was askew. Alice Smith’s mauve frock matched her face, as if she was still locked in a frightening dream from last night. The same mixture of children was found in every school, and Oliver felt pity whether they were well-dressed or not, at the mere fact of them being children. He recalled that he and his brothers and sisters had always been well enough dressed and shod, never knowing how Mary Ann had managed on the money Burton gave her.

Alma’s head over the book, and the sound of her voice, told him that she at any rate believed, and demanded it from her listeners. ‘Charlie, stop that fidgeting, and pay attention. “And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac … and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I shall tell thee of.” Abraham was told to sacrifice his firstborn, as proof that he loved and feared God. Bertha Abbis, pay attention to what I’m reading. But when “Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son” — in other words, just as he was about to kill him (Oliver noticed the silence at this lift of the tale) the Angel of the Lord came and said (now she acted the words, and he was amused) “Lay not thine hand upon the lad.’”

She expanded her arms till they became wings, assumed a more sombre tone, at which the floors shivered, and windows rattled fit to shatter, the skylight grew dim with a shadow of overflying smoke, and she waited for the trembling of the earth to settle, for the heavy goods train not many yards behind the room to pass, before going back to her recitation. ‘“Neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.’”

She paused for comment, which came soon enough from ragged Charlie, whose elder brother, Oliver knew, was named Isaac. ‘Please miss, why did God want the father to kill his son Isaac?’

Oliver had often thought to ask why a man could contemplate, even to please God, the murder of his long-awaited and only son. He imagined the reply playing in her head like sparks, till she said: ‘Because there is no greater proof of love than for someone to kill his firstborn son, the son he adores most in the world, a son who is most precious to him.’ She smiled at Oliver in the hope that he approved of her response. ‘Bertha, whatever are you crying about?’

The girl lowered her head, shuffled in her seat, words hardly audible. ‘Why did Abraham have to kill the poor little ram, miss?’

Alma smiled. ‘I’ll talk about that next week. You can all go home, but don’t make too much noise as you go up the street.’ A few moments, and the room was cleared. ‘I’m glad you could come. Is everything all right at home now?’

‘For a while I expect it will be. You never know what might blow up with someone like Burton.’

She locked the door, put the key in her pocket. ‘You’ll have to do what he tells you, then, and be a good son.’ He didn’t think he had ever been anything else, that it was Burton who should be a better father.

She took his arm as they walked away from the hall. ‘He seems a just and upright person to me.’

‘I’d rather not go into his so-called virtues.’ They walked by the limekilns bordering the canal and on towards the main road leading into town. ‘Let’s talk of something else.’

Hard to know what to talk about, coming from a family of few words, though he had never found any shortage with his sisters. With Alma also it was a matter of ‘still waters run deep’, except when before her catechism class. Maybe the waters ran too deep for him as well, but the more packed into your head to say the harder it was to get out words that made sense, or didn’t make you sound a fool.

The rise of the road was too steep for speech, both being quick walkers — as she had to be to keep up with him — so you waited for the descent to chat on things that didn’t matter. In the Market Square he suggested an excursion to Misk Hill.

‘It’s a long way,’ she said.

‘Not if we catch a threepenny tram to Bulwell, and walk from there.’

‘It’s too late in the day, but let’s go next week. I’ll get a replacement for the Bible class.’

Which was the best thing he’d heard all day. ‘You must be tired. We’ll go to the Oriental Café on Mansfield Road and have some tea.’

Burton carried two buckets of slop to the pigsty, and Oliver was by the door before being seen. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Out. With Alma.’

He let the mess into the trough, avoiding the usual pigs’ rush at his trousers. ‘I need some help in the garden.’

The last kiss from Alma, sweet on his lips, was undisturbed by the smell of bran and pig muck wafting from the sty. ‘I want to read my book:’

‘There’s no time for that.’ Burton sensed how little he wanted to help. ‘Pigs can’t tell when it’s Sunday. Nor do the vegetables.’

‘I don’t suppose they can.’ He was too dispirited to make trouble. Burton looked at his son, long since out of his grasp, not only a fine blacksmith but he’d also been sent to school, a combination to stifle any regard between them. ‘Go and get changed, and put some proper clothes on your back.’

Sunday trains were few, the carriage crowded, but he found the one spare seat for Alma. Sweat and Woodbine smoke thickened the air, and she couldn’t know that looking at her between various heads gave a more complete view than if he had been by her side. Even so, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking behind such placid but determined features. A clue might now and again help to build assumptions, as when her eyelashes flickered to show her changing from one subject to another, but that wasn’t good enough for his intense and loving curiosity.

He couldn’t ask. She wouldn’t thank him if he did. Nobody would. People had to be left alone, because their thoughts belonged only to them. They weren’t to be disturbed, just as you wouldn’t like it if someone tried to break into your mind with questions you didn’t care to answer, even if you had one ready to give.

They threaded streets away from Hucknall station, leading into the country. ‘How is it you know your way so well?’

‘I’ve been twice before,’ he said. ‘I walked the whole way from home once. I knew it was near Hucknall, and then I asked the way. Ernie Warrener promised to come, but let me down at the last minute, so I did it on my own.’ Across the lane from the reservoir was Beacon Hill. ‘See that hut on top, with the pole outside?’

‘What about it?’

‘Two young chaps from Hucknall who knew all about wireless set it up. They heard the SOS from the Titanic a couple of years ago, and before that they got the signals of a German zeppelin going down in France.’

‘Are you having me on?’

‘I read about it in the newspaper. I’m interested in mechanical things.’

By a farm fence a ferocious Alsatian seemed about to leap over and assail them. He chose a good-sized stone, and gave such a commanding shout for it to keep its distance that she looked at him as much with surprise as relief, but glad he knew so readily what to do.

He realized such behaviour to be as crude as Burton’s, except that he might well have walked by in silence and, had the dog come close, booted it out of the way with never a word. ‘He’s blind in one eye,’ letting the stone fall, ‘so he couldn’t have harmed us.’

Over a stile near Misk Farm he led her onto a path almost arched by briars and wild roses, pushing them aside and holding an outstretched hand. ‘We’re five hundred and twenty feet above sea level,’ he said on the open plateau.

‘Where did you hear that startling fact?’ — as if suggesting he had no right to know it.

‘They showed us on a map at school. It’s the highest point near Nottingham.’ He took her by the shoulder. ‘You can see Newstead Abbey over there,’ and pointed — which Mary Ann had told him he must never do, though he couldn’t think why. ‘If you look you can see Linby pit, and Papplewick just beyond. It’s a marvellous view,’ as if wanting thanks for his tuition. ‘To the right you can see Hucknall and Eastwood.’

They trod the purple vetch and white clover. ‘I expect you can even see Trent Bridge,’ she said, ‘if you squint hard enough. It’s not very clear.’

‘I know, but you can tell where you are when you’re so high up. Everything’s good because it’s far away. If I could fly I’d go over it, as far as other countries. I’d be like a Wandering Israelite. Burton’s only ever been to Wales, and to hear him talk you’d think it was the other side of the moon. I could save the fare and go to Canada. A blacksmith can always get work. On the other hand maybe I’ll only dream about it. Unless you come with me.’

‘I might want to leave one day,’ she said, ‘but for the time being I’ll stay where I am. I hope to become a proper full-time teacher.’

The idea fell like a blow, as if a blacksmith in that case couldn’t win her. ‘You never told me before.’

‘I didn’t know. I still don’t. The Reverend Walker said he’d try to get me a place where I can train, but it could take a few years. Maybe it will never happen, because so many want to become teachers. But I liked school, and was good at my lessons.’

‘I wasn’t, particularly, so I suppose I’m a bit of a numbskull.’

She allowed a kiss, to let him know that he was far from it, though didn’t like saying so, while he was surprised at her assumption that he had used the word seriously.

It was unthinkable that he might not like it here. ‘Why do you want to go on your travels?’

‘Wherever I went I’d always have this place with me. I want to see as many different countries as I can while I’m alive. Maybe the only way would be to go for a soldier.’ He brought her close for a kiss. ‘Except that it would break my mother’s heart.’

‘Those boys will see us.’

‘Let them.’ He sat to light a cigarette. ‘I suppose they’ve seen their mothers and fathers do it before now.’

Neither spoke, till he thought it was up to him to do so. It was his day, but needed effort to keep it pleasant. ‘There’s a picture hanging in our parlour, of a youth and his sweetheart, and underneath it’s written: “If you love me as I love you, nothing can ever part us two”.’

‘It sounds,’ she said with a laugh which was no laugh to him, ‘like a postcard from the seaside.’ She joined him on the grass. ‘Is it supposed to be your father and mother?’

‘It could be you and me, though it might have been them at one time. When Mother was a barmaid she asked Burton to go and buy a pair of gloves, expecting him to wait till after his work, but he went straightaway, and she was so impressed that when he came back with them and asked her to marry him she said yes.’

‘What a romantic story. He’s very goodlooking, and smart as well. He stands out from everybody else.’

‘It was the worst move she ever made. I can’t help but despise him.’

‘Does your mother, though?’

He was afraid to say how vilely Burton treated her in case she might think such traits would pass to him. ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. She’s far too long-suffering.’

‘It says in the Bible that you must honour your father and your mother.’

‘I’d like to honour Burton, but it’s not in me.’

‘You look a lot like him at times.’

‘It would be surprising if I didn’t, but thank goodness I’m different in every way.’ She seemed to get a more lively tone in her voice when they talked about Burton. He took another kiss, and held a hand for her to stand. ‘We should start walking back. There’s a place in Hucknall to stop for tea. Then we can go to Bulwell and catch the tram from there.’

‘I hope so. I’m tired.’

Talk declined, there was a limit to his store of things to say. Tea should have refreshed them, but the walking had been too much for her. She was pale and looked exhausted when they got to Woodhouse.

‘When shall I see you again?’

‘I’ll call for you next Saturday evening,’ she said.

‘I’d rather meet by your house.’

‘I like the stroll up the lane to yours. I’ll be there about half-past seven.’

‘I’ll never love anybody else but you,’ he said, for which she let him kiss her, though neither readily nor tenderly. As he walked away he found it hard to decide what in the day had gone right.

TEN

Thomas took a bar of iron from the heat to shape a horseshoe, Burton looking over his shoulder: ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Working hard to make a fair job, but feeling his father’s critical presence, he missed a beat of the hammer, expecting a blow he could do nothing to avoid. ‘I’m bending it, like you said.’

The bony fist struck his shoulder. ‘You don’t do it that way. You’re lifting the hammer too high. Your mind’s not on what you’re doing. You’ve got so much confidence you don’t know how to take care. Not to think about what you’re doing is idleness, so stop thinking about yourself and think of the job.’ Thomas’s tears angered him even more. ‘I’ve told you a hundred times how to do it.’

‘I was doing it like you said.’

‘Don’t answer back, or you’ll get another.’

‘I’m tired, because there’s too much work.’

Burton couldn’t dispute it, and knew he’d been too harsh. ‘Don’t complain, do you hear me? Never complain.’

Thomas had heard it said so often he was fed up with the words, knowing he’d always had plenty to complain about.

‘Oliver would make ten of you. Put the shoe back and heat it up again. It’s the colour you’ve got to watch. From now on do it the way I’ve taught you.’

‘Will Oliver be coming to work with us?’

‘Not if I know it.’ Burton wanted Oliver to ask for his job back, but no number of hints could make him see sense. Trade was good again, and he could do with help, but he preferred his soft place at the sawmill. He would regret it one day, as you did everything you said no to. He called from the doorway: ‘Oswald, when you’ve finished that horse come in and show this daft ha’porth how to go on.’ If he never did anything else he would turn his sons into good blacksmiths.

A wad of wool in his ears might deaden the high whine and tearing screech of the bandsaws, though the torment of such inhuman noise lessened when he forgot about it in the attention given to his work. Being Saturday, he would be going home soon to his dinner and, after a wash and change, stand by the gate for a glimpse of Alma on her way up the lane. She would want to go to the village, but he preferred strolling across the Cherry Orchard and into the cover of the wood, to find a dry place and go all the way in making love. The prospect was never out of his mind, though who could hope for such intimacy with a Sunday School teacher?

He backed a horse into the shafts, wondering how many more had to be done. The animal reflected his own weariness but passed a few moments by releasing a column of amber piss into the sawdust. Thirteen-year-old Sidney Camb stood by, a bedraggled specimen who, Oliver thought, should have been in school. The boy looked uncared-for, more exhausted than himself or the horse. A cap sat on a bunch of fair curls, and his too-big waistcoat had half the buttons missing. ‘Look sharp, Sidney, and fasten him in. Earn your five bob a week. We can get our wages and go home soon.’

He liked Oliver calling him Sidney, instead of plain Sid as all the other men did: ‘My money won’t do much good.’

‘It must be a help to your mother.’

He spat, to seem grown-up. ‘It would be, if my dad didn’t drink it all away.’

His father was a carter, and so often rocked at the reins it was a wonder he didn’t injure himself, or get thrown out of his job. ‘As long as you don’t take after him. Here’s Mr Brown with our money.’

A corpulent bald-headed man, under his bowler hat, walked from the main shed clutching a leather wage bag. His hand dug deep for the last to be paid. ‘Here you are, Oliver, a sovereign this week. Not bad for a young chap, but I must admit you’ve earned it. I expect you’ll be getting married on it soon.’

‘It’s always possible.’ If Alma didn’t know her own mind he could put a baby into her and go into wedlock on a foreceput. All would be honey and spice once they were married. Or perhaps not, because the real struggle would begin, like the hard life his parents had always led. Better to take the way of a journeyman and get to Canada for five years, returning with more gold in his pocket than could be made by staying put. He would ask Alma, and find what his fate was to be.

Brown ticked his name off the pay sheet. ‘Remember me to Burton when you see him. He must have been a good father, to teach you the trade so well.’ He handed Sidney his two half-crowns for the week.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And don’t spend it all at once.’

‘No, sir, I shan’t.’ He turned, cleared his throat of wood dust and bile, and emptied it by his boot. ‘I never do, sir.’

‘Oh yes,’ Brown said to Oliver. ‘I almost forgot: you’ll be staying on a bit longer tonight. We’ve got six horses back from late deliveries, and they’ll all need seeing to.’ Oliver’s frown was plain. ‘You’ll be done by nine, so I expect she’ll wait, whoever the lucky girl is.’

‘Of all the evenings,’ he said when Brown walked back towards the house, ‘it would have to be this.’

‘I’ll go and see her for you.’ Sidney barely avoided the fist that flew at his face. ‘I’ll take her for a walk up Colliers’ Pad.’

He could use his feet, collect his belongings and tell Brown to put his job where a monkey shoved its nuts, as no doubt Burton would in a like situation. When he ran from the White Hart to get Mary Ann’s gloves there must have been a queue of urgent work at the forge, his father cursing and wondering where he was. But Oliver knew that if he walked away he would lose his job, at a time when another might be hard to find. Then how could he ask Alma to marry him?

On the other hand if he did go Burton would happily set him on, but asking him would strike at the roots of his pride. And then, Brown had kindly taken him in after his quarrel with Burton. The first two drays came at the crack of whips from between the sheds. He would have to see Alma another time.

Hens and cockerels scattered when Burton went into the poultry compound. Panic and clumsy flight at his marauding fingers around the hatches, he came out with four eggs. Halfway to the house he heard the gate latch click and saw a young man come up the path.

‘What do you want?’ It didn’t take long to know where he had seen him, the same young bully who had given him some lip when they had accidentally collided on the lane. Doddoe Atkin, who a few days ago had passed the gate on his way to do some poaching. Whatever he got from selling rabbits was spent in the pub.

Doddoe halted a few steps away, Burton noting that he didn’t take off his cap before speaking: ‘I’m looking for work. Some chap in Woodhouse said you might want an extra hand in your forge.’

He must have heard that Oliver was working elsewhere. ‘Not as I know it.’

‘I acted as striker once at the pit.’

Burton thought he was impertinent in thinking himself capable of doing any work he might give. Even if hard up for help he would never employ someone like that. Though big and hefty, he was fit for nothing. ‘I don’t have anything for you.’

Lips lifted, a slight gap between otherwise perfect teeth, and he spoke as if his life depended on a better response. ‘In that case, can you spare a copper or two? I’m on my uppers.’

‘There’s nothing for you here.’

Half into the house Burton heard a shout from the gate — which Doddoe closed as if to wrench the hinges off. ‘You’re a mean old fucker!’ — convincing him that nothing but trouble would be any man’s lot who took him on.

Mary Ann at the table sewed buttons on a shirt, and Emily played on the floor with empty cotton reels. ‘Oh, big white chucky-eggs!’

Burton put them into her hands, to show Mary Ann: ‘We’ll have one each for breakfast. Fry the others for Oliver’s tea when he comes in.’

He took his rubber-rollered machine and a pouch from the cupboard, made five neat cigarettes and laid them in a row beside Mary Ann’s sewing box. ‘Oliver’s late,’ she said.

‘I expect he’s dawdling with some girl or other.’

‘I thought I heard him in the yard just now.’

‘It was a young lout from Woodhouse wondering whether I could give him some work. I told him I couldn’t, then he asked for money, the damned fool.’

‘Poor young man.’ She would never send a beggar from the door with nothing. ‘I’d have given him a cup of tea.’

‘I know you would. You’re too soft. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted money for booze. Nobody should meddle with his sort. He’s been up a time or two before the magistrates for poaching.’

‘There’s always somebody worse off than us,’ she said. ‘A lot of young men don’t have work these days.’

‘There’s plenty, if you look hard enough. Where did that come from?’ he asked, when she picked up a newspaper.

‘Oswald brought it back.’

‘They’re a waste of money.’ A knock at the door, and he wondered whether Doddoe had been mad enough to come back, but looked down on a little scruff in his working clothes. ‘What do you want?’

‘Your Oliver said to tell you he’d be staying late at the sawmill tonight,’ Sidney called from a few feet away, cap in hand. ‘A lot of horses want seeing to.’

Burton gave him a penny for his trouble, and closed the door. ‘You heard that?’

‘I hope they pay him extra.’

‘That’s cold. Brown’s a mean one.’

‘Oliver should leave the job, then.’

‘He’s too loyal, at least with other people, though I can’t think why.’

She picked up the newspaper. ‘They say there might be a war soon.’

‘What for?’

‘With Germany it looks like.’

His grunt was more contemptuous than usual. ‘The world’s daft enough for anything.’ He got up, unable to sit for long. ‘I’m going down the lane to get some ale.’

He thumped around upstairs, changing into a neater jacket and trousers, then came down, went through the kitchen, and strode across the yard onto the lane.

Halfway to the railway bridge a young woman came towards him. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘where are you going?’

‘I’m calling on Oliver.’

‘Do you remember me?’

Alma smiled, having hoped for a glimpse of him, even if from a distance. ‘Of course I do.’

He saw the freshness of youth in her eyes and skin, and in the shape under her blouse, such beauty he would like to get closer to. ‘Now you’ve met me.’

‘He said he’d be waiting.’

‘A lad came from the sawmill and told us he was working late this evening.’

‘Did he say when till?’

‘He couldn’t say. It might be as late as ten. That’s what it sounded like.’

‘I’d better go home, then. I expect he’ll tell me the reason when I see him again.’

‘I’m going your way. I’ll see you safe under the bridge. I’m sure you won’t mind walking with me.’

Despite the lack of rain the evening smelled cool and fresh between the thick green hedgerows. She laughed. ‘How can you think I’m afraid?’

‘Every young woman’s frightened of something.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You get some rum characters around here.’

‘They wouldn’t dare bother me.’

‘What about the big bad wolf?’

‘That’s just a fairy story.’

He wondered whether she would know a wolf if she saw one. ‘It might not be, and if it isn’t it won’t get you, if you’re with me.’

The company of a young woman brought back the lechery of youth, as he walked a few steps in front to test her seriousness about following him. She came level. ‘Where is it you’re going?’

‘To get some beer. But we’ll call at the pub, and I’ll buy you a drink.’

‘I don’t go into such places. They ruin people.’

Such naivety was fetching. ‘They do if they throw their money away by getting drunk. I’ve never done that. Here’s the tunnel. Take my arm, if you like. My girls are frightened of going under it by themselves.’

‘I don’t see why they should be.’

‘Nor do I. But people are funny that way.’

He was amazed that she put a hand on his arm in the half-dark, the lightest touch of warm soft fingers. At the middle he thought about a kiss, but it was too soon. Had it been muddy he was amused to think he could have offered to carry her through. Back in daylight he asked where she worked.

She took her hand away. ‘At Hollins’s mill.’

‘I expect you get thirsty, in all that dust. I’ll bet you could do with a drink of something.’

‘Are you sure Oliver won’t be back till ten?’

‘I only know what I was told. It’s happened before. And I wouldn’t tell a lie.’

At the corner of the street Doddoe leaned against the wall of the beer-off, eyes beamed above an upended bottle. Burton looked, daring him to say something, but he turned and brought the bottle down — empty, in any case — happy not to be called to account for his swearing.

‘It’s a warm evening,’ she said, ‘so I could have a glass of lemonade.’

‘You shall have whatever you like, if you take my arm like you did back there.’ She hadn’t, yet she must have if he said so, but she didn’t know, couldn’t remember, alarmed at having forgotten, if she had. They walked towards the main road. ‘If you don’t want to be seen inside a pub we’ll find a seat in the yard. It’s a nice enough evening.’

His day at the forge was far away, and now he had the energy to enjoy leisure. They passed the limekilns, and the keeper’s cottage outlined in the pallor of dusk. Every leaf of its garden tree seemed to hold a bird, the noise intense and piercing. A hooter sounded from a barge approaching the lock.

Hard to keep up with his stride, didn’t want to be left behind, tried to stay level, his assurance a comforting umbrella she was allowed to share. He was a more complete man than Oliver could be on his own, and she’d marry Oliver without hesitation if he had been his father, whom she so much liked being with, though without knowing why.

Burton indicated the table she was to wait at while he went in for drinks. She stood by uncertainly, wondering what she was doing here, though it was a cosy place, with the full-headed overhanging tree shadowing the last of the sun. Talk and laughter came from inside, and she could hardly fault people for their relaxation after a day’s work. They sounded content, and happy. Even so, she felt an urge to leave, but wasn’t able to move, waited anxiously for him to come back, a state impossible to explain. Perhaps he’d met an acquaintance and forgotten her, a notion so intolerable she had to wait and see if it was true.

‘I got you a shandy.’ He set the glasses down. ‘It won’t buck you up all that much, but it’ll taste better than plain lemonade.’

‘You know I can’t drink alcohol, so why did you buy it?’

‘Because I like you.’ He smiled as she took a sip. ‘They only put a thimbleful of beer in, to give it colour. You can see that, but it doesn’t taste. In fact I like you very much. How old are you?’

She swallowed again. ‘Twenty-three.’

‘And do you like me?’

Her smile, though suggesting the question was unnecessary, didn’t make it easy for him to know which way her answer would go. ‘How can I say?’

‘You mean you might think so?’

‘I suppose I could.’

He looked at any woman as if reading all her secret thoughts, and as if knowing she knew that he did. ‘You’ve got to know your own mind, and get used to answering a question when somebody asks. If you’re twenty-three you should be able to.’

He was telling her what to do, how to behave, and she couldn’t dislike it. Oliver had not been truthful in saying his father never talked. ‘I can’t always explain myself.’

‘Let me ask you this, then, do you ever go in Robin’s Wood?’

His enquiry seemed innocent enough. ‘I did when I was younger.’

To pick bluebells, I suppose? It’s famous for them.’ He drank more ale, smoothed his moustache. With no hope of getting her he might as well come out with what was in his mind. ‘People come from all over to get them when they’re in bloom.’

‘I used to love it there,’ she said. ‘In spring there was wood-sorrel, primroses and violets, all kinds of flowers. When I took some home and put them in water though, they died. My mother used to say they smelled then as if somebody had wet the bed.’

He didn’t want to hear about her mother. ‘I go there for a stroll on Sunday afternoon. If you come you might see me.’

‘I’ll be in Sunday School. I read Bible stories to a class of children.’

‘So I heard. How did you get that job?’

‘It’s not a job. I don’t get paid for it. One of the preachers heard me telling a story I thought the children hadn’t understood. He asked me to do it in front of the class, and I did. Then he coached me till I could do it better. He gave me a Bible to read at home. I was sixteen. One day I hope to be a real teacher. I don’t want to work at Hollins’s mill all my life.’

He laughed, and reached for her hand. ‘I’d like to hear you talking to the children, though I’d rather you came for a walk with me in Robin’s Wood. Send word to the Sunday School that you’ve been run over and can’t go in that day. They’ll believe you.’

She drew back, while not wanting to. ‘I don’t think they would.’

‘They’ll believe anything. That’s their trade. And if you can’t come this week, come next.’ Her cheeks flushed at the pressure on her wrist. ‘I can show you something better than flowers.’

She drank more shandy, as if it would lessen the flame of her colour. ‘Oliver told me you’re one of the best blacksmiths in the county.’

He was sparing with his smiles, even talking to this handsome girl. ‘Did he?’ It wasn’t the time to hear Oliver’s opinion. ‘I’ve been in competitions, if that means anything.’ From her mood he thought she might after all be tempted to walk in the wood. A woman’s uncertainty was always the beginning of getting what you wanted. She might not come tomorrow, but that would give a whole week for the notion to sink in, to worry her, to turn her bed thoughts lickerish, and tempt her into wanting to find out what he meant. The prospect was possible, and he was prepared to wait, though he was surprised to be thinking so already.

Being twice her age made no difference if he wanted her. All you had to do was want hard enough, and let her know you did, that you wanted it so hard she didn’t have to make up her mind about whether or not she wanted you. You also had to let her know that as far as you were concerned she could take it or leave it, which made the chances even better that she would take it, though if she didn’t nothing was lost. Often enough a woman did take it, and when you got what you had made it known in no uncertain terms you wanted she would have no cause to complain at giving in, not if the result made her halfway happy.

He enjoyed the sight of her pale skin and lustrous hair, fair bust and ready lips, wanted to spread her legs and go into her, sending his steady gaze across the table, which she had found so hard to meet at first but now looked at with curiosity, helplessness, admiration, and even hopelessness at being drawn into something from which he was making sure there would be no escape.

To question himself as to what he was doing was a weakness he wouldn’t allow. If you wanted something, you did and said all that was necessary to get it. Consequences were for the future, had nothing to do with you, because the future was never with you, was always the present. Tell a woman you loved her as if you meant it, and she would believe you whether you did or not, though he always meant it at the time. On the other hand it could be a bit of a game which, should it turn out to have been no more, was pleasant enough, with nothing lost.

She closed her eyes, opened them quickly, and not to be on her guard, either. He had seen it before, the barriers coming down in a full-blooded woman who didn’t know they were doing so. But they were. He took care that the movement of his lips would be taken for a smile. ‘Have something a bit stronger now.’

The last shoe was hammered into place. ‘Hold still, will you?’

Lights yellowed through the trees from the house, where Brown and his wife were sitting to a well-earned meal, always late on Saturday night. After a hard day the horse bridled, sent a blow at Oliver’s thigh. He had seen it coming, so avoided the worst, but walked a circle knowing he would have a dark bruise for a week.

An elderly blacksmith once told him how, as a young man, a horse had trodden on his foot, and the pain stayed with him for life. His already subsiding, he went back to the horse, talking as he stroked its mane. ‘You didn’t mean to knock me for six, did you, you poor beast? I wish you hadn’t tried, though, because I’m as much of a slave as you are.’

Level with its nostrils, he touched with one hand and sent up comforting breath, taking the horse’s part, familiar with its hardworking day, its weariness and agitation. Burton had drilled into him that if you knew how to whisper to a horse you’d never come to harm, but he should have done so before putting on the shoes. Missing the date with Alma had clouded the mind. Burton said often enough — but Burton had said too bloody much — that nothing should be on your mind while shoeing a horse, otherwise you were asking for it. He’d hammered the nails flush into the shoe, so saw no reason for the trouble. ‘You can’t be half as fed-up as I am.’

Brown came from the house, a comforting cigar smoking between his lips. ‘I’ll take him off your hands, Oliver, and make sure he gets a good feed. You’ve done well. I shan’t forget it.’

Nor shall I, he thought, walking between the blending shadows of the footpath, weary in bone and sinew.

Mary Ann got up from the fireside as soon as he came in. ‘Aren’t you going to wash?’

He hung his jacket and sat at the table. ‘In a minute. Give me a bit of bread and something first.’

She cracked two eggs into a pan of fat.

‘What are those?’

‘Your father said I was to fry them for you. They’re straight out of the hens. You can eat them before the supper.’

He cut away the whites to eat first, as she had so often seen Burton do. ‘Has somebody called for me?’

‘Only a young lad, who said you’d be working late. Were you expecting someone?’ She took a pan of bacon and roast potatoes, a crock of peas and carrots from the oven, and set them on his plate. A speared potato went into his mouth but, being too hot, he let it fall into his palm and put it on the plate. ‘A young woman promised to call.’

She came back from the pantry with a square loaf not long baked, glad to see such a spread for him on the table. ‘You look half-dead. You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten.’

‘She said about half-past seven.’

‘It’s as well she changed her mind, because you wouldn’t have been here.’

‘It’s strange. She’s always been on time.’

‘I expect you’ll see her at Sunday School, if it’s Miss Waterall you’re talking about.’

Done with eating, and sufficient energy back, he refreshed himself in the scullery with soap and cold water. From the steps he asked: ‘Where’s Burton?’

‘He was in the yard a while ago. Then he went to Woodhouse to get some ale.’

‘I should have told her to meet me at the sawmill, but didn’t want to be seen in my working clothes.’

‘You look handsome in whatever you wear.’ She put a suet pudding and a boat of treacle before him, held his hand as he picked up the spoon and, remembering him as a fair-haired boy running about the yard full of delight, kissed him on the cheek. ‘When you see her tomorrow you can tell her what happened.’

A rattling of the doorlatch signified Burton on his way in. His eyes glistened as he pointed to the pudding. ‘You can give me a bit of that.’

‘Where were you?’

‘I stopped for a jar.’

She wondered at his unusually ready answer, though a whiff of beer suggested the truth, and proved it on him taking a quart bottle from his pocket. He set it before Oliver. ‘Drink this. I know you’ve worked hard enough.’

He made no move to pick it up. ‘Don’t you want it?’

‘I’m giving it to you. It’s not poison, so drink. You look thirsty.’

Mary Ann put a glass before him in case Burton should change his mind, or feel insulted if Oliver still refused to drink, and when Oliver squeezed off the rubber top to pour, her heart softened at seeing them like father and son at last.

ELEVEN

Burton walked silently around the house and behind the garden, till covered by the hedge. The track beyond the well, thick with vegetation, was pushed through and trodden down to reach the trees. He turned at the edge of Robin’s Wood, to see anyone crossing the Cherry Orchard.

Uncertain that she would come, he knew there was a chance, otherwise why was he here? Where a woman was concerned it was every man for himself, and if Oliver couldn’t make sure of her that was his lookout. He hadn’t been acquainted with such a woman before, and in any case all women were different, equally young and fresh if you hadn’t yet had them. A rise at the thought of her, he regretted that, having so much Sunday School business, she might not turn up.

An hour went by, and felt like it, but the breeze was cool, and bushes lush even at the beginning of August. Birds sang more sweetly here than in the town, reinforcing his love for fields and woods. Skylarks whistling in the heat would guide her to where he lurked. Though careful to stay hidden he would make sure she saw him.

A pigeon scrambled noisily out of a tree as he gazed at the way of her approach. The route from Woodhouse led by the house, but unless someone was looking over the fence she would get by without being seen, and who would realize she was on her way to meet him? She might in any case think herself only out for a walk, hardly knowing what she was doing. Such things happened that way.

Putting yourself in the mind of another person was only useful for passing the time. Others would do what they would do, and you could only hope for the best when you wanted them to do what you wanted them to do very much indeed. You had enough in your head thinking for yourself.

She was close before he saw her, from an unexpected direction, proving that she had a head on her shoulders, and knew what she was doing, telling him that the innocent could be as cunning as their elders, though perhaps not more than once. She had been hurrying, and her heart beat heavily. ‘Did anyone see you?’

‘I don’t think so. I came the way you told me, but then I zigzagged a bit.’

‘I waited a long time.’

‘I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Now you are.’

‘It doesn’t seem right.’

‘It’s right enough for me.’

‘I came as if I had no say in it.’

‘That’s the only way.’ He had clipped his moustache, and shaved with special care, smoothing his skin for the give and take of kisses. ‘Come into the wood.’

She stepped backwards. ‘I don’t know that I should.’

‘Should or shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I love you more than I ever loved anybody.’ There was a time to bully and a time to coax, and he hardly knew which would be more effective. ‘You came all this way, so we might as well stroll inside. It’s a bit hot in the sun.’

Twenty-three, but she wasn’t much more than a child in her understanding, and he drew her along to save arguing with herself, better for her not to be certain which way things were going. That she had deeper feelings than he thought was better in the end. Neither did he know whether he was doing good or ill, but whoever did, and what was the point in knowing whether you were or not if it stopped you getting what you wanted?

She noted the strong athletic boughs he walked among, and prepared herself either to stay out of range, or field them with open hands should they shoot towards her. None of it necessary, she so much in mind that he stopped the twigs and branches springing against her, careful also to tread down the virile nettles that would sting even through her skirt and stockings because they had matured under a damp canopy of trees.

A man only ever took a woman into a wood for one thing, and a woman only followed for the same purpose. He helped her over the narrow brook he had drunk from as a boy after escaping George’s wrath. She thought his snort at the memory was because of her, and went into his arms for kisses of reassurance, so passionately received that she knew she had done right to meet him.

She followed close on his strides, and when he stopped without warning went into his back. ‘What is it?’

‘I can’t,’ he said.

She thought he meant walk on because of some obstacle. ‘What do you mean?’

He turned, and though throbbing at the groin to take her, he could control it, as any man should be able to. He had never had to force any woman, but getting her here had been too easy. It was the sort of mad year in which young girls had become more lax in their ways, as he knew from his own. He could deceive Mary Ann as long as she didn’t get to know, and trick another man by taking his wife (because that was never anybody’s fault but the man’s) but he didn’t relish the notion of doing it on Oliver. ‘We’ll go back.’

The pleading on her features shocked him. ‘No, please, it’s too late now.’

The knot in his brain fused. He hadn’t banked on her pushing the boat out, yet it was he who had cut the ropes. There was no more to be said as he led her to a glade where they wouldn’t be seen. ‘We’ll lay down here.’

Overarching trees hid the sky. He hung his broad leather belt in the fork of a tree, and helped her into place, a picture among the green he could never have hoped to see, her soap and scent smell mixing with the sweat of hurry over the fields, a fragrance to set any man aflame, though he sensed uncertainty in her still, and knew he must not hurry.

She seemed uninterested in his kisses, pressed her arms around his neck with more force than he thought necessary. The rustle of her skirts was hidden by the noise of the birds, and he went smoothly past the garters to get at her drawers. When they were off she pulled him in.

Oliver went to the Mission Hall and was told that another mistress had taken Alma’s duties. When he knocked at the door of the house where she lived, her father stood on the step in braces and collarless shirt, to tell him she wasn’t in. Calling again, her worried mother in apron and sud-stained hands said the same thing. Alma was out, and she had no idea where.

He wanted to knock her father down, or kick the door in when her mother slammed it in his face, and force a way inside to find where Alma was hiding. He was tall enough and strong enough, but shame prevented him.

If he found her she might even lie as to where she had been, but he wouldn’t care as long as they could talk, if only for a few minutes, because he was sure she would be back in his arms and never lie to him again. Imagining she would tell a lie was hardly fair, it was just that she didn’t want to see him, though if not, why not? It was griping that he didn’t know, longed to find out if it was true. He had thought of asking her to marry him when they met, and the ache of love was in him more than ever.

A long goods train rumbled along the embankment, and Edith coming from under the bridge wanted to know why he was standing so forlorn. ‘I was wondering which way to go for a walk,’ he said.

‘What difference does it make? You’ve walked everywhere before. We all have. I’m fed up living in the same place, and traipsing the same dreary footpaths. I’m nearly eighteen, and I’ve worn every one out with my shoes. I just want to get away.’

‘Is that why you’re wearing your Sunday finery? I’ll bet you’re going to meet Tommy Jackson.’

‘You are a sharpshit!’ She laughed. ‘He promised we’d walk into town and go rowing on the Trent. Or he might take me on an excursion boat to Colwick.’

‘Don’t fall in the water, will you? I worry about you. It’s a warm day, but it’s still cold among the fishes, and you’d get wet.’ He came close, and looked into her unfearing eyes. ‘If you see any orange peel on the road, pick it up for me.’

‘Orange peel? What for?’

‘I’m collecting it. When I get a sackful I can sell it. I’ve already got a lot at home.’

‘I haven’t seen it.’

‘It’s hidden under the bed, in a pillow slip.’

‘Oh, you are daft, you and your jokes. You’re always pulling our legs. Are you waiting to see Alma?’

‘I would be if she was waiting to see me.’

The pain on his face was plain. ‘She hasn’t chucked you, has she?’

‘I’m beginning to wonder.’

‘She’s no good if she has.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘There’s plenty more pebbles on the beach.’

‘You’d better go. Tommy won’t wait long for any girl.’

‘I’ll blind him if he doesn’t wait for me.’

‘Remember me to him. We were at school together. But I’m serious about the orange peel. If you see any, bring it home to me.’

She held his hands. ‘Are you all right, Oliver?’

He regained his normal voice. ‘Tell Tommy how lucky he is to have you for a sweetheart.’

‘I do that every time. I like him a lot.’

‘But I do want some orange peel.’

‘If I see any I’ll put it in my pocket.’

‘That’s a good sister. Tell Tommy to get some for me as well.’ Now why did I say all that? He watched her walk up the road, and only when she was well in front did he go in the same direction, and turn onto the canal for a stroll among the Sunday fishermen casting their lines from its banks. Some sat without thought, gazing at small points of exploding water, or watching water-beetles making rings around the minnows, then going about their inexplicable business. They were as content for an hour or so as any men could be on this earth, which was how he would like to be, though the sight of them calmed him.

This is where they start to cry, but she didn’t, either made of better stuff, or not knowing what she had done, or what she had let herself in for. Experience told him it was something of both, so she might need humouring. ‘I don’t suppose they ever saw you like this at that Bible class?’

She sat peacefully, drawers off and stockings down. The calmness puzzled him, and her look told him she knew it. Realizing her dishevelment, more from his gaze than her own feelings, she put things right, and tied the band of blue ribbon around her hair. ‘I haven’t done this before.’

‘I could tell. But you’ve done it now. It’s a good job I always have a red handkerchief about me.’ As if uncertain of their haven’s safety he pulled up his braces and reached for his belt. ‘Was that why you wanted to?’

‘Yes, but only with you.’ She stood against the green background to straighten her skirt and be again the young woman who explained the Bible to children. He was bemused by the glint of accomplishment in her blue eyes, not to mention the smile of mischief on her lips when he looked more closely, telling himself he would give a guinea to know what was hurtling through her mind. He lit a cigarette in the certainty that he would never know. ‘Were you good at school?’

She leaned against him. ‘I didn’t want to leave, but my father said I had to earn some money.’

‘I suppose he would say that.’

‘Not that I hold it against him. We were always short.’

‘It’s not easy, keeping your children.’ An idea came to him. ‘Have you ever been to Matlock?’

‘The Sunday School went once, but I was ill with bronchitis, and couldn’t go. The others talked about it for ages when they got back.’

‘We’ll go together, and put up for the night. Not under the bushes, either. We’ll find a boarding house, and have a bed to ourselves.’

‘What could I tell them at home?’

‘Say you’ll be staying the weekend with an aunt. You must have one.’

‘I don’t like telling lies.’

‘Nobody does. But you’d better get used to it. I’ll meet you at Radford station next Saturday morning, at eight o’clock.’

She looked around. ‘I’ve lost an earring.’

‘So you have.’ He scraped among grasses and leaves, but it was hopeless. ‘I’ll buy you another pair.’

She held the odd one. ‘No, don’t. I’ll keep this as a memento.’

He thought it just as well. ‘You’re a strange girl to me.’

‘Am I?’ As if wondering what advantage there was in it for him. He found her as vulnerable as a winged bird, though a wayward and beautiful one. When they embraced she whispered: ‘I love you,’ and as they turned to go out of the wood: ‘I can’t wait to do it again.’

‘Nor me. You spent, didn’t you? I know you did.’ You’ve got to be sure the woman enjoys it or she might not want to see you anymore.

‘Now I know what it means. I love you so much I don’t feel like going home.’

‘Nor do I, but we’ve got to.’ There was pity in his tone, impossible to say for whom. Sending sweet words into a woman’s ear was the same as when your warm breath whispered them up the nostrils of an intractable horse. ‘You’ll like Matlock. We can take more time over it. Then we’ll go out, and walk by the river.’

Her bosom shivered against his ribs as she put her face up for another kiss, warm and protected by a man of such self-confidence. ‘What about Sunday School?’

‘Tell them you’ve got the mumps.’ Beyond the kiss, eyes ever open, he saw Ivy and Emily coming hand-in-hand across the Cherry Orchard. They roamed everywhere, at any time, but maybe Mary Ann had sent them to find out where he was. He wouldn’t put it past her, though to be so distrusted was more than a man should have to endure. He pulled her to denser cover. ‘A couple of my youngsters are over there, and I shouldn’t like them to see us.’

Her heart beat almost to sickness at the peril of meeting children from her class, and she allowed him to steer her to the other side of the wood. ‘Go home,’ he said, ‘and take the long way. See me at the station on Saturday morning. And don’t keep me waiting.’

When Burton passed them he looked, Ivy told herself, like thunder, and didn’t say a word. Well, he wouldn’t, would he?

TWELVE

Uniformed musicians in the bandstand embarked on a lively tune from The Quaker Girl, all threepenny chairs taken, people crowding the outer fringes. Burton, tall and upright in his best suit, a bowler hat flatly on and the usual flower at his lapel, beat out the rhythm on a chairback.

Alma’s hat of sprouting feathers almost reached his height. The ring on her finger, fashioned from a piece of metal at the forge, was exactly the right size, though Burton had made no measurements. ‘I wish it was real,’ she said on taking it from him in the train.

‘And so might I.’ He watched her put it on, playing his wife for a couple of days.

When everyone stood for the National Anthem he drew her between the chairs. ‘Let’s get out of this’ — heeding no one’s stares.

‘Why didn’t you stand like the rest?’

They were crossing the river. ‘I don’t do that, not even for God Almighty.’

‘People should, when they play God Save the King.’

He walked ahead, a slight squeak in his boots, but waiting to guide her over the road between brakes and wagonettes, a motor car now and again. ‘Nobody forces anybody to do anything. They stand up like dummies for a piece of music because they want to. That’s their business. I don’t care what they do, but it’s got nothing to do with me.’

It worried her that he stood so far apart from the sentiment of the crowd. You can hide yourself just as well by doing the same as everybody else, and yet if he had been like other people she wouldn’t have wanted him so much, and he’d never have brought her here.

They weren’t married, so he could allow her to take his arm, patient when she paused at windows showing sticks of peppermint rock, mineral specimens and fishing tackle. The smell of frying floated everywhere. ‘We’d better find a boarding house. They get full later on.’

He seemed to know where to look, went along the road towards Matlock Town. After knocking twice the door was opened by a short grey-haired woman in a black apron. ‘We want to be put up for the night.’

She led them upstairs to a room with a wardrobe, chest of drawers, chair and small table, and linoleum on the floor. ‘This’ll do,’ he said.

‘It’s four shillings and sixpence a night each, bed and breakfast. And you’re lucky, because it’s the last one. Somebody cancelled. Doors close at ten, and breakfast is at eight sharp. What name is it?’

‘Mr and Mrs Worthington,’ his mother’s before marriage.

‘Where’s your luggage?’

‘At the station. Where’s the bathroom?’

‘That door across the way. You can pay me now. The hot water won’t come on till morning, and that’s an extra sixpence.’

He gave out the coins in silver, as if far more than she deserved. ‘Cold is all I’ll need for the bath.’

‘Too much lip,’ he said when she’d gone, opening the window to let in fresh air. ‘Do you like it?’

She turned from looking at woods across road, river and railway. ‘It’s clean and pleasant.’

‘If it hadn’t been we’d have found somewhere else.’ For their honeymoon Mary Ann had booked a more comely place by telegram. He put jacket and waistcoat on hangers into the wardrobe. She looked on at his orderliness, till held for a kiss. ‘You get undressed as well.’

She took out the pin and set her hat carefully on the chair, undid the small pearl buttons of her blouse. ‘I’ve never seen such a picture as you make,’ he said.

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘You wouldn’t if you could see yourself. If I’d met you earlier in life things would have been different.’ Love grew the more he saw her skin unworn by work, flesh unblemished from having children. Such beauty called for tenderness, but she would have had eight young ones by now, and I’d be the same as I’ve always been, so it’s no use dreaming. ‘Are you sorry I made you miss Sunday School?’ he said with a subtly malevolent smile.

‘You seem to like the idea.’

‘No woman’s missed Sunday School for me before, and that’s a fact. I’ll never forget it.’ She was enough of a Nottingham girl to remind him of younger days, and the sight of her made him want to live forever. The fact that neither of them could brought a moment of sadness; though as far as he was concerned there was no such thing as yesterday, nor the future, either. He turned to take off his trousers, undo suspenders, lay socks aside. She uncovered her breasts and held out her arms.

It was a delight to see her so well-bosomed, and all for him. The bedroom was like no other, she as no other girl, and he a man of distinction to have her in the same room — though she couldn’t fail to note how far he stayed inside the shell of himself when they lay down.

He passed her clothes. ‘Get your shimmy on, and we’ll go out.’

‘Will you take me on the river?’

‘I’ll do whatever you want.’ He watched her dress. ‘You can put your hat on as well.’

The Derwent forced a bottle-green track between steep wooded banks, heading for Derby and the Trent. After a ten-minute wait he helped her into a fragile skiff. ‘Look sharp, or you’ll get your ankles wet.’

‘Don’t go too close to the weir, sir,’ the boatmaster called. ‘We’ve lost a few people that way over the years.’

‘He must think me a damned fool.’

She settled herself as he moved them quickly midstream, her finger dipping into the water. ‘Where exactly are you supposed to be today?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘I just wondered.’

‘It’s best if you don’t.’ He noted a sulk at his reticence. ‘There’s no harm you knowing. I’m in Sheffield, looking over something for the forge.’

‘But it’s Sunday tomorrow.’

‘Business is always business there.’ He missed a boat by inches to reach less traffic. ‘And where are you supposed to be?’

With my Aunt Lydia. I told her a gentleman friend wanted me to visit his family.’

‘What did she say to that?’

‘She said good luck to me. She thinks women don’t get much opportunity to enjoy themselves. She said times were changing, and she was glad they were, even though she might be too old to get the benefit.’

‘Times don’t change.’

She thought they did. ‘But people do.’

‘They do if they don’t know themselves.’

‘If things happen to them, they change.’ She took her hand from the water. ‘It’s cold.’

‘It always is.’ But it hadn’t rained for weeks. ‘We could do with some of it out of the sky.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘I wish we could stay in Matlock for good.’

He pulled more strongly, cutting through the wake of another boat. ‘You think I don’t?’

‘Why can’t we stay here? I’d find a job, and you could work at your trade.’

He grunted. ‘Yes, I know, you could sell sticks of rock in a shop, while I’d show people around the caverns and get their pennies at the end when I held out my cap like a beggar.’ She waved the gnats away, so he paused in his rowing to light a cigarette. ‘That’s a daft idea.’

‘Why should it be?’

‘If we stayed here do you think they’d let you teach in Sunday School?’

‘I don’t suppose I’ll be able to do that again wherever I am. But we could be happy together.’

‘Could we?’ He didn’t care for such talk and, feeling the pull of the weir, headed towards the boathouse. ‘We’ll go up the Heights of Abraham tomorrow. You’ll like it there.’

He was incapable of thinking about anything. He was empty inside and couldn’t think at all. ‘I love you.’

‘I can’t deny that’s what I like to hear,’ he said. ‘But do you know what love is?’

‘Of course I do.’ She put a hand on her heart. ‘I feel it here, for you.’

‘You can’t know. You will one day, but not yet. It’s when you’ve got eight children, and you break your back working every hour God sends to keep them and yourself out of the workhouse. I can’t leave that, much as my flesh and bones might want to.’

‘It doesn’t sound like love to me.’

‘It’s the only one I know, and I’m chained to it. Every day at the forge I want to walk out and never go back. But I know I shan’t because there’s something stronger than chains to hold me there. You have to go on working, and never complain. You might think I’m complaining now, but I’m not. I’m telling you how it is. You’ll have a lot better life with the sort of man you can get than running off with me.’

Yards from the weir again, drawn to its line of toppling water, she thought the best thing would be if they went over together and drowned. Or, most of all, if she did, though her heart throbbed so fiercely she knew the body wouldn’t allow such a convenient fate.

A few more pulls at the oars got them to safety, and her tone was regretful. ‘How strong you are!’

He knew what she had been thinking. ‘It’s a good job I am. You don’t die until you have to.’

She laughed. ‘Can’t you swim?’

‘No more than Saint Clement. They tied an anchor to his leg and threw him in, or so I heard.’

‘Who did?’

‘That I don’t know. I heard he was a blacksmith, but he still drowned.’

‘I can’t swim, either, but I shall learn one day.’

‘We’d better go back. The hour’s about finished. And I’m hungry for my dinner, so you must be.’

The stale cheese smell of fish bait came from a tackle shop, postcards dazzling in the sun by the door of a gift emporium, placards blazoned outside a stationer’s front. A boy laden with newspapers shouted his way along the promenade: ‘Special! Special! Telegram to Berlin!’

‘What does that mean?’

‘There’ll be a war with Germany,’ she said.

People stopped to buy papers. ‘As if there isn’t enough trouble in the world. Anybody must be daft in the head to want war.’ They came to a restaurant. ‘Let’s go in and fill our bellies. We’ve earned it, one way or another.’

A clerkly man on his way to take the only vacant table was frustrated by Burton’s long strides, who put his hat on one chair, and pulled the other out for Alma. Exhausted and hungry, she loved him for getting a place so soon.

‘You can read that for me, as well.’ He gave her the menu as she sat down. ‘I worked almost as soon as I could stand, and had no time for schooling.’ Smithing’s my trade, he added to himself, and you don’t need letters for that.

‘What would you like?’

‘Two hot dinners should settle us.’

‘There’s beef, and there’s lamb.’

The waitress was a gawky tom-laddish woman whose apron looked none too clean. ‘Bring me beef,’ he told her, ‘with plenty of fat on it.’

‘I’ll have the lamb,’ Alma said.

Burton pointed to food left on plates at the next table. ‘What do you do with all that?’

The waitress wrote their orders. ‘Throw it away.’

He grunted at such waste. ‘If you kept a couple of pigs on it they’d think it was Christmas every day.’

Her eyebrows lifted, as if he wasn’t in his right mind. ‘Tell it to the manageress.’ She looked at Alma, wondering how she could put up with a man like that, and Alma was half-inclined to tell her, as if quite taken with her, while Burton speculated on what might be done in bed with such a woman. ‘She’s a bit of a rum ‘un,’ he said, on her zig-zagging away.

Alma smiled. ‘She didn’t know what you were talking about.’

‘She might one day. People waste too much.’ Her plainly troubled eyes could not meet his, her thoughts whirling in all directions, but he had no intention of guessing why. A woman’s eyes always showed when her mind was on the boil, and he knew he was right on her saying: ‘What are we going to do?’

‘We’re waiting to eat.’

She turned her knife in a circle. ‘I love you. You’re my whole life now.’ Passion joined them, but he lived in too wilful a world to want the cargo of her troubles. She needed kind words, promises, even lies, but he couldn’t help because he saw no future, only the present. ‘We’re enjoying outselves,’ he told her. ‘It’s a holiday. What more do you want?’

She held his wrist. ‘There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’

Disliking to be touched in public, he drew his hand away. ‘If there is, I don’t know what it can be.’

The waitress set Alma’s soup on the table. ‘Enjoy it, duck!’

He reached a piece of bread. ‘Get that down you,’ and touched her hand, adding gently: ‘It’ll make you fit for when we’re in bed tonight.’ The big-eared waitress, who made an enquiring face at his words, could think what she liked. Alma smiled, as if for the moment his advice was what she wanted to hear.

Plates of meat and Yorkshire pudding, potatoes roast and boiled, peas and cabbage were set on the cloth, the waitress glaring at Burton as if to say he could lump it if he didn’t like it. He looked at Alma over his uplifted fork, before bringing it to his mouth. ‘You’re famished, aren’t you? You should be. I know I am.’

She leaned forward and said that she was. ‘The sight of you makes me hungry, but the trouble is I can’t come down from the stars so soon.’

Oliver, usually finding distraction in a book, couldn’t now. Shirtsleeves rolled, he wore neither coat nor waistcoat. Burton would have been shocked, since he was always fully dressed when beyond the bounds of the house and garden, even in the hottest weather.

Emily moved loving fingers among flowers by the brook. She counted the daisies but, though knowing her numbers, got them in the wrong order. From his seat on a fallen tree he held back a laugh for fear of hurting her raw pride. Out of love the others often made her cry so that they could take her in their arms and cradle her back to happiness, always easy to do. Mary Ann, making sure she lacked for nothing to appear normal, had tied a ribbon in her hair, and put on a clean pinafore. She never let Burton bully her, and was glad the others looked after her, even though they often treated her as a pet.

Burton regarded her as dense enough to be quite a long way on the wrong side of normal, therefore so little receptive to his discipline that he hardly cared to look at her. She had neither the fair features nor the liveliness of the others, and could be left alone.

‘What are you sitting there for, our Oliver? You’re ever so quiet. Why don’t you say something?’

‘I’m trying to read.’

‘Reading’s daft.’

‘You won’t say that when you can do it’ — though she never would.

‘What’s the book saying?’

‘It’s about famous engineers.’ He flipped the pages to their frontispiece. ‘Men who built trains and ships and bridges.’

‘You won’t do anything, if you only read.’

‘Where did you get that idea?’

‘I heard Dad say it.’

‘He would. But I’m also waiting.’

‘What for?’

‘To die.’

Her features were wrenched into distress, so he pulled her close and stroked her face. ‘I’m not really. Look, your ribbon’s got tangled. Let me see to it.’

Her smile came back. ‘Shall you go to heaven when you die?’

‘Nobody knows till they get there.’

‘I shall. They said so at Sunday School. But when I laughed and couldn’t stop they made me stand in the street.’ Every indignity was stored in her heart, never to be forgotten. ‘Can you pick daisies in heaven?’

‘I expect they’ll find some for you.’ He offered his hand. ‘Let’s go home, and get our tea.’

She was eight, and would never make her way in the world. He feared for her future, but vowed to see she never came to harm. His tears almost broke as she hugged him. ‘We’ll have sliced cucumber and salmon, pineapple chunks and jam pasties,’ she cried. ‘I love Sunday tea.’

‘Come on, then, you greedy little devil.’ Burton would not be in the house to spoil her teatime. He had gone to Sheffield, or so he said, though not all of Ahab’s horses would get the truth out of him.

Her merriment covered any anxiety about Alma, though when he looked across the blank stretch of the field his misery came swamping back. Emily lingered at the edge of the wood, loving greenery and flowers. ‘Run!’ he called. ‘There’ll be buttercups in heaven as well when you get there in a hundred years.’

The broad and shaded track went steeply through the woods, Alma breathless by the summit. Burton walked beyond the lookout tower to the shelter of a tree where they could be more alone. The neighing of a horse from a trippers’ wagonette came on a warm breeze from the valley. He kissed her, and she sat on the dry bracken. ‘I went on a motorbus to Skegness last year, with some girls from work.’

‘Did you?’

‘I couldn’t stop looking at the waves coming up the sand. I was going to walk into them but the girls pulled me back.’

He enjoyed the taste of a cigarette. ‘I’ve heard they’re dangerous.’

‘Because I can’t swim, the waves looked so strong and beautiful, like a wall I wanted to walk through. I was sure if I went into them they’d be warm and soft.’

She was beginning to sound like daft Emily, not knowing there were things you could think but not say, though he smiled. ‘I’m strong, and you’re lovely, so we get all we want between us.’

‘I still think there’s something missing.’

He caught her regret. ‘It was all right in bed.’

‘Oh, I know.’

‘You’re a funny thing. You know I love you. You’re a miracle to me.’

‘You’re a lot more than that to me.’

She wanted to stay but, hearing laughter on the path below he held out a hand for her to get up. ‘You’re as light as a feather. We’ll go down now.’ On the descent she kept a hand in his, praying he wouldn’t take it away, as was his habit. He didn’t, more aware now as to how she felt about him, though at people coming towards them he put the hand by his side. She kept up with his strides: ‘I’ve never had a weekend like this.’

‘Let’s hope it’s not the last.’

He was remote and unfeeling, except when storms within showed by a sign at his cheeks, which he couldn’t always control. He was the opposite to all that her father was, but she hoped that wasn’t the reason she loved him. They paused by a small stone shelter under the trees, built into a sort of grotto. ‘I like being with you. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could live in that little place?’

Anguish unsettled his features, though only for a moment. ‘That’s a rare notion.’

She would never break through. Even make-believe wasn’t part of his nature. ‘Oh, why is it? I could live anywhere with you.’

‘And me with you, but not in this world. And there isn’t any other. We might want to do all sorts of things, but we can’t.’

‘I don’t believe it. Imagine how happy we would be. I could teach you to read and write,’ thinking he would prize the capability.

‘There are plenty of others to do that.’ He put a comforting hand on her shoulder, feeling warm flesh under the blouse. ‘There’s no hope for us staying here, but don’t you think I wish there was?’

She began to weep. A man and his girl stared on their way by. Burton steeled himself. ‘Let’s get down. There’s a train to catch.’ He’d had enough, wanted to be a thousand miles away. Yet she was right. The picture of a new life dazzled, perhaps brighter for him than for her, but nothing could be done about it.

Crossing the bridge, a train whistle warned everyone to get a move on, a melancholy signal for Alma, who knew they would never be here again. She wanted to tell him, but said: ‘We shall miss it, unless we run.’

‘I never run. There’ll be another in an hour. And if we miss that, we can walk.’

‘But it’s twenty-five miles.’

‘I know. I did it once.’ He had been young, and ale inside helped on the way. He was pulled from mulling on that dull incessant walk by seeing Florence come out of the station. She gazed ahead, a stately vision in a high hat, carrying a folded parasol. She looked older, as if tragedy had struck, though he knew it hadn’t. The man must have been her husband, middle-aged and neatly dressed, a bowler hat on and carrying an ivory-handled stick, so cock of the walk he could never have known about the behaviour of his wife. Burton ensured mutual recognition before she turned her head and walked on, her husband hurrying to catch up.

‘Who was that?’

‘Somebody I was acquainted with, once upon a time.’

It was obvious she believed something else, though he was glad no more was said. ‘We can still catch the train if we hurry.’

‘I thought you wanted to stay?’ He shouldn’t have said so, but on such a weekend how could you listen to every word in your mind before letting it from your lips? She wanted to get the day over, and so did he now that all enjoyment had gone, but it would end soon enough.

Torment burned her insides: ‘We can’t stay forever, I know, so what’s the point in another hour? If we could stay forever I would.’ She turned on him. ‘You’re not alive. You’re not even awake. You don’t know how to live.’

‘I don’t know anybody who does, but I didn’t come here to do your bidding.’ He pulled her along. ‘The train’s still in. We’ll catch it.’

People got out of the way like minnows before a bigger fish as he walked through the crowd, saw above everyone’s head, thrust her into a carriage, and found seats.

The train threaded the wooded vale towards Derby. Neither spoke, in the withdrawal from a pleasure they felt would have to be paid for. His features were set, when all she wanted to hear was how he expected her to pass the rest of her life, which could only be unreal compared to the one already lived. Two days in Matlock had set her years apart from her previous existence, and she would never understand what madness had driven her into going away with him.

Whatever he could say — if he wanted to open his mouth, which he didn’t — would help neither. They would be better hardened for whatever might happen if they didn’t indulge in entangling speech.

The train slowed through flat land close to Nottingham, and he ignored her as if they weren’t together, when the thought of what had been done to Oliver was so overwhelming that she cried as quietly as could be done in the crowded carriage. People looked as if wanting to speak words of comfort, till Burton said: ‘Didn’t you enjoy yourself? I know I did.’

‘You don’t realize what’s hurting me. I want to die.’

Allow me to open the door so that you can jump out and have your will against me, he said to himself, though the train’s going too slow at the moment to do much damage, which you must know, or you wouldn’t have said it. Despair or disappointment was no excuse for weakness.

‘I know what you mean,’ he had to say, ‘more than you think in that young head of yours, but we had a good time, so stop blawting about it. You ought to be happy, that’s all I can say.’ But he didn’t know what had been done, nor wanted to know, nor could in any way know, in his assumption that all things would take care of themselves.

He’d had a good weekend, and spent something like two pounds, so she ought to be glad. But she wasn’t, and he couldn’t think why she expected a good time to go on forever, because they never could nor had, and though she was inexperienced enough to hope they would, it was unreasonable of her to think so. He liked her young body but not her immature thoughts, which served him right for taking up with such a woman, though he couldn’t blame himself because who wouldn’t have done his best to get her into bed, and miss Sunday School for him into the bargain?

The train shunted into Radford station. ‘I don’t want to see you again,’ which he thought a bit soon to hear.

Usually, by the time such words were said, he was more than halfway wanting to tell the woman himself, since everybody got fed up with each other sooner or later. ‘That’s a fine thing to say.’

She dried her cheeks. ‘It’s true.’

‘That’s that, then.’ He drew her upright as the door opened, and helped her to the platform, hoping she would want to see him again, however she felt. ‘Go out of the station first.’

She walked quickly up the steps to join the tread of men’s boots across the wooden floor of the booking hall. The lamps were lit, though it was still daylight outside, a subtle odour of gas, their mantles glowing with fairy incandescence. Burton lit a cigarette, and let her get well in front, not wanting them to be seen so close to home.

Oliver, opposite the station entrance, was hoping to see someone he knew, for company on the way to Woodhouse, though doubting anyone would be able to keep up with him in his present mood. He had been in and out of town at such a rate as to erase all thoughts of Alma, and the sight of her turned him pale, an unbelievable apparition he hadn’t hoped to see.

He recalled her kisses among the pungent sheds of the sawmill, their dalliance on Misk Hill, her homely entertainment of children at the Mission Hall, but since that short time ago her face had changed. As if not sure she was the same person he let her go a few yards, before running across the road and taking her arm. ‘Where have you been? I couldn’t find you anywhere.’

‘I went to Matlock.’

‘Who with?’

‘On my own.’

He wanted to believe, but her features had no fear, and settled into a hardness he found strange. ‘You must have been with someone. I’m not daft. I can tell.’ He couldn’t, particularly, but it was a way of attacking her as he knew she deserved. ‘Nobody goes to Matlock on their own.’

‘I did. And it’s got nothing to do with you.’

Distress in her eyes told him that guilt was responsible for the unfamiliar tone, which she had no way of hiding. ‘By heck, it’s got a lot to do with me.’ He calmed himself. ‘Who were you with?’

‘I was by myself.’ The words were forced out. A fortnight ago her dull life had been so marvellously peaceful, but she had been drawn to Burton on seeing him at the sawmill, and had met him on the lane when her only thought had been to call on Oliver. If only he hadn’t been still at work, though she despised herself for thinking that everything was his fault.

‘I never thought you would lie to me,’ he said calmly, looking back towards the station. She knew who he would see. ‘So that’s how it is?’

Burton, bowler hat at a non-caring angle, cigarette still burning, went downhill towards the river.

‘I knew that was the case.’ His throat closed as if to choke him. ‘It was a nightmare I couldn’t believe in.’ He clamped a fist tight at his side, because a son of Burton knew better than to hit a woman. ‘Why did you do that to me?’

The day had started in the bedroom at Matlock, when Burton’s long body had leaned over her, and she was so happy when he came into her, but she should have known it would lead to this. Tears burning like vinegar, she wanted to run back to the station and fall under a train. ‘I don’t know. I wish I hadn’t.’

She walked away, but he followed, stopping so suddenly he knocked into her. ‘Is it him you love, or me?’

‘Don’t touch me.’ When her hat fell lopsided she put it quickly back in place, steeling herself into dignity, holding down her sorrows and regrets. ‘Leave me alone. How can I love anybody?’

He walked so that she would never catch up, supposing she wanted to, to soften her distress. She was a scourge, and he wasn’t the man to relish pain. Any talk of what she and his father had been up to would be too sickening to hear.

THIRTEEN

Burton stood in the doorway hoping for an afternoon breeze to dry his sweat. Three idlers watched Oswald shoeing a placid grey carthorse.

‘They’re calling up the Territorials,’ a man said from behind his newspaper.

‘The queue at the drill hall stretched halfway down Derby Road this morning,’ said the other man, who looked too old for soldiering. ‘They won’t get me. I’ve got a family to keep. But they say it’ll be over by Christmas, anyway.’

Burton’s sceptical grunt said: ‘Which one?’

‘Anything’s better than staying around here and sweating your tod off for bogger-all,’ a youth of eighteen said. ‘At least in the army you get beer money and a suit on your back.’ He looked at his feet. ‘And a new pair of boots as well.’

You couldn’t even waste compassion on such stupidity. ‘If you still haven’t gone in six months,’ Burton said, ‘come to me, and I’ll give you a pair of boots.’ But he knew he was on a winner, because the damned fool would go.

‘A shilling a day,’ the family man said, ‘and they’ve got you body and soul. You wouldn’t really sign up, would you, Ken?’

‘Half the lads in our street have gone already,’ the youth replied. ‘Some of the married men as well.’

‘How many do you think will come back?’ Burton asked.

‘I’ll see France, won’t I?’

‘For all the good it will do you. Only fools enlist.’

Ken didn’t like the opinion of a man over twice his age. ‘Lots of people are waiting to jump into my job at the brewery, so I shan’t be missed.’

Burton tapped Oswald on the shoulder. ‘Finish what you’re doing, then we’ll lock up and go home.’ He went in to make sure all tools were in place for the morning.

The long dry summer made each day’s walk more wearying, and evening brought no ease, the sunken lane holding in so much heat it was lousy with gnats. He lit a cigarette to smoke them off. Since Matlock he’d hoped Alma would call at the forge, or show herself on one of his strolls in Robin’s Wood, couldn’t think why she was sulking, or brooding. He never believed anyone who said they’d never do this, or never do that, because whenever anybody did say they’d never do something it was usually a way of letting the matter rest till they did exactly that again. On the other hand if she really did mean she had packed him in, being a more determined woman than he’d imagined, well then — he spat out a strand of tobacco — she can kiss my behind.

A long low booming sound crossed the almost clear sky, and though hard to tell where the storm was coming from he hoped it would bring rain, though he would only believe it when water splashed on his cap.

A flash of more immediate light, and a gunclap of noise, reverberated through the empty kitchen. The wide open door told him where to find Mary Ann. Since childhood she had been terrified of thunderbolts spinning down the chimney and exploding in the fireplace. Or they would flash through a window and create hell in the parlour, bouncing from wall to wall and scorching them black, perhaps setting fire to the house in their malevolent playfulness, killing or horribly injuring anyone in the room.

So she kept the doors open, to encourage any such fireball to leave after the minimum of damage. It was better to take precautions, and stay out of their way.

Burton knew every thought in Mary Ann’s head, much disliking those put there by her grandmother. ‘I wonder where she can be?’ Oswald said, at another splintering of light and burst of thunder.

‘I know where.’ Burton hung up his jacket, then tapped the door to the cubby hole under the stairs. ‘Mary Ann! I know you’re in there.’

A small oil lamp at half-glow came before a pale hand and bare forearm. She stumbled into the kitchen, and almost turned back at another flash covering the window. Burton, while softened by her look of terror, couldn’t understand why anybody should be afraid. ‘I always know where to find you.’

She put her lamp on the table and turned it off. ‘I get so frightened.’

‘I’ve told you time and time again that lightning never strikes a blacksmith’s house, but you won’t be said.’

‘It might. You can never tell. I’m going back under the stairs till it’s over.’

‘No you’re not,’ Burton said. ‘Get my beer, and some snap. I’ve been at work all day, and I’m clambed.’

‘I’ll do it when the storm’s finished.’

At such unreasonable fear he took a bunch of steel cutlery from the table drawer. ‘I’ll show you that lightning can’t hurt us.’

Wondering what he had in mind, her fright multiplied when he opened the window and held out the bundle of knives and forks as far as his arm would go. She had never wished anybody dead. ‘Ernest, don’t!’

‘He’s enjoying himself,’ Oswald said.

The veins at his temples twitched. ‘Come on! Strike me!’

Mary Ann was transfixed.

‘Here’s your chance! Strike me dead!’ he shouted at the sky. A sizzle of lightning sheeted the window, and Oswald thought how pleased Oliver and all of them might be if he was scorched to a cinder.

He rattled the cutlery to give whoever it was a second chance, but the flash was weaker, as if it couldn’t be bothered with such as him. He turned. ‘What did I tell you? It didn’t strike me, did it?’

Oswald, who had never seen his mother so pale, inwardly cursed Burton.

‘No,’ she said.

‘It never will, either.’ He patted her on the shoulder, and it was as much as she could do not to shrink away, but he smiled at his prank. ‘It won’t harm you, either, and that’s all I care about.’

‘God will do it when He wants to,’ she said, ‘in His own good time.’

‘If He didn’t do it then, He never will. Anyway, He missed his chance.’

‘I suppose that makes you happy?’

‘He can take me or leave me.’ Glass and bottle were put before him. The storm had gone, and left no rain, and to staunch their hunger she put out bread and a piece of bacon. ‘Who was that young woman you were seen with at Matlock last weekend, when you should have been in Sheffield?’

‘What woman was that? I know of no woman.’

‘I’ve heard different.’

No option but to answer, he could never give himself cause to hit her again, would regret to his dying day that he had already done so. ‘I did the business sooner than expected, and came back through Matlock. I wanted to see if it had altered since we were there.’

‘And had it?’

‘Not as I could tell.’

‘People talk.’ Batter went into a bowl for the pudding. ‘They always have, and they always will.’

‘And who the hell was it who did?’

Oswald stopped eating at his savage tone, wondering what could be done if Burton thought to knock her about. He didn’t fancy going for him without Thomas and Oliver to back him up.

‘Never mind who it was,’ she said.

The names of those who might have blabbed were gone through almost as quickly as the lightning that had flashed so uselessly at his bundle of steel. Perhaps Florence had talked: he wouldn’t put it past her, or Annie Ollington from next door had been in Matlock that day. She had it in for him, but there was no point speculating on who had panmouthed. ‘I stopped to ask somebody if they knew the place to get a good dinner.’

‘Couldn’t you remember the one we went to after we married?’

‘That was a long time ago. Places change.’

‘It seems like yesterday to me.’

‘Me as well, at times. But I didn’t think.’

A likely story. She went into the pantry to calm herself, knowing that the only way to end an argument was to say no more. ‘Here’s something else till your dinner’s ready,’ she said, laying a pasty on Oswald’s plate.

‘Don’t I get one?’ Burton had eaten enough for the moment, and any more would spoil his zest for dinner, but he had to ask.

‘You’ll get it when I’m good and ready. I only have one pair of hands.’

He was uncertain whether to show concern about Oliver, yet wanted to know where he was.

‘I expect he’s still at the sawmill,’ Oswald said. ‘They work all hours.’

‘I don’t know. I worry about him these days,’ Mary Ann said. ‘He came in half an hour ago, for something to eat. Then he changed and went out again, saying he wouldn’t be long. When I asked what was the matter he just smiled.’

Burton sharpened his dinner knife with the steel. ‘He’s young. He’ll get over what’s bothering him.’

Restless as ever, after the meal he walked across the Cherry Orchard, boots crunching over stubble, grass parched to a dusty unhealthy brown. The storm had left no rain to make any difference. Nothing but a deluge would bring the colour back, though there’d be plenty in the autumn. Robin’s Wood spread to either side, every tree clear, a place of memories, causing a momentary smile. A breeze against his face, he felt at peace, and went between the nearest parting of the trunks.

Rain or not, brambles and nettles had found enough sustenance to overgrow the path. He pushed his way through, and at a rustle in the undergrowth wondered if a rabbit was close. Oliver stood with the double-barrelled twelve-bore signposting his father’s stomach.

‘Put that thing down,’ Burton said.

‘If you move, I’ll kill you, and put the other in myself.’

Burton noted his hands not too firm at the firearm, though steady enough to put the ice forever in his belly: ‘It’s loaded. And I can use it.’

‘I know you can. I showed you when you were thirteen. I showed you everything you know.’

‘You deserve to die.’

‘You think I care? There’s many a day I’ve wanted to. But if you kill me, Mary Ann loses both of us.’

The gun wavered, so much misery on Oliver’s face. ‘You ran me off with Alma. How could you have done such a thing?’

‘I shan’t touch her again.’

‘I don’t care. It’s too late, anyway.’

‘Nothing’s too late. Where did you get that gun?’ Not the man to waste talk, but knowing that only words would save them, to look as if not much caring whether he lived or died. ‘I took you shooting over the fields, remember? I made you stand behind me when I fired so that you wouldn’t come to harm.’

‘I was in love with Alma.’

Burton scoffed. ‘How was I to know? A young man has lots of girls. I know I did. Any woman is any man’s meat — except your wife.’

Oliver thought that whoever spouted such a philosophy was little better than a brute. Burton was irredeemable.

‘I didn’t force her. If anyone had taken a girl from me in my young days I’d have thought good luck to him, and bided my time till I could do the same back, unless I was too busy with other girls by then. Anyway, I’ve told you, I shan’t bother with her again.’

Oliver marvelled at hearing more words from his father than he ever had. Burton lunged forward and pushed the gun clear. ‘You young fool. I’ll have this.’

‘I’ll hate you till my dying day.’

‘That’s a long time to hate, if you think anybody’s worth it. Get out of my way before I brain you.’ The safety catch had been off, and two cartridges leapt from the breech when he opened it. It was that close. Unable to say anything, he put the shells in his pocket, and threw the gun back. ‘Carry it home.’

Striding away, he regretted not having given him one between the eyes, even two, though glad at having saved him from murder. No man looked pretty swinging from a gibbet. The sun was going down over the wood behind, and he hoped for such a dowsing of rain as would cool the air and make everything grow. For weeks his sons and daughters had carried every drop, from washing either themselves or the pots, into the garden, and watered at least some of the vegetables. He supposed they hadn’t done so when he wasn’t there, because they’d do anything to get back at him, even though the garden provided food for them all. He’d also splashed a few buckets on the marrows and cucumbers, but water was getting low in the well and was barely good enough to drink.

Shadows covered the bushes, it would be dark in half an hour, and as he thought of hurrying to give the garden its last look of the day a shot clattered from the wood, a startling sound ripping through the still evening. If you wanted to kill your father and didn’t have the guts or the firm enough wish the next thing you might think of, having the means to do it, was to kill yourself. He scoffed at such an idea, but his heart jerked, almost stopped, and though aching from the day’s work he multiplied his rate of strides back to the wood. He’s done it, the mad stupid youth, because I didn’t think to search his pockets and find the shell he’d hidden from me. Careless, careless, I should have known he was ripe for anything.

He crashed between the trees. ‘Oliver! Where are you?’

He stood before him, a dead pigeon dangling from his hand. ‘I’m here, Father.’

Burton wanted to take him in his arms and hold him, never to let go. ‘I heard the shot, and came back to see what it was.’

Oliver smiled. ‘You thought I’d committed suicide.’

‘I never supposed you’d do such a thing. I only wanted to know what you’d caught.’

‘A plump wood pigeon for Mother’s supper, though more by luck than judgement.’

‘I’ll pluck it for her when we get home,’ Burton said.

‘No, I’ll do it.’

‘We’ll need a few buckets of water on the garden first. It’ll be dark soon, so we’d better hurry.’ He pointed to the gun. ‘Are there any more in there?’

Oliver held up the dead bird. ‘I used the last on this.’ He smiled, serene and sure at having one final blow to deal his father, which he would not mention now, something unluckily that would upset the rest of the family as well, but things had gone too far to bother about that.

‘Don’t let your mother see the gun, or you’ll frighten her half to death.’ As he strode across the common, relying on his son to follow, he wished he had never set eyes on Alma, and regretted that Oliver didn’t have another bullet to put in his back.

He could think of nothing more than to enlist in the South Nottinghamshire Hussars, and do his bit for the war like everybody else. No queue at the drill hall, a sergeant at the table inside told him the lists were full.

‘We’ve got over five hundred men, and that’s all the regiment needs for the time being.’ He picked up a four-ounce tin of Craven ‘A’ Mixture, and sat back in his chair as if after a good day’s work in enrolling so many, to light his pipe from a box of Swan Vestas. I’ll tell you what, you look as if you’d make a good soldier, so why don’t you put your name down for the Robin Hoods? It’s a fine regiment.’

Oliver had seen the Hussars parading in the Market Place five years ago, and told himself that if ever he decided to become a soldier (though hardly intending to) he would join that body of men, or none. It was all the same whether he belonged or not, because how else could he get rid of the misery of Alma’s betrayal? What better than to forget by going for a soldier? The Robin Hoods would be as good a regiment as any, and being with the infantry would get him killed sooner. He turned to leave.

‘There’s one trade we’re short of,’ the sergeant called, ‘but the people in it seem a bit shy of coming forward.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Blacksmiths. Shoeing smiths. Farriers. With so many horses we’re dead short of ’em.’

‘I’m a blacksmith, and I’ve got my articles.’

‘You aren’t codding me, just to get in?’

‘It’s as true as I’m standing here. I’ll sign up, but I must go home and let my mother know.’

‘Of course you must, my lad. But first I’ll put your name down. You’ll be on the roll as a shoeing smith. What name do you go by?’

‘Oliver Burton. I’m twenty-three.’

‘The colonel will be as pleased as Punch. Even he’s waiting to get his charger shod.’ He shuffled a few lists. ‘You’ll be in the Wollaton squadron, under Major Ley. They’ve been out all day bringing in horses. A lot came from Shipstone’s brewery, which’ll mean less ale for the drunkards in town tomorrow.’ He smoothed his bushy grey moustache, and smiled widely, turned loquacious at getting a farrier, pleased to let his pipe go cold. ‘The colonel’s been up Eastwood way, and his party brought over twenty back, though I can’t say how good they’ll be. Anyway, the regiment’s off to Norfolk in the morning. You’ll join them in a week or two, after we’ve made a smart trooper out of you.’

The first day’s pay of one-and-twopence in his pocket signified the prospect of adventure and put elation into his walk, as if the war had broken out for him alone. Anguish falling away, he was no longer his own master, but when had he been? The army wouldn’t be so strange, because he would be dealing with horses, and any sergeant-major’s bark couldn’t be worse than Burton’s had always been.

The forlorn yet familiar hooting of steam whistles from Radford station swamped him with the reality of what he had done, and he could hardly bear to face his mother without explaining Burton’s perfidy to her, which he could not do. Lighting a cigarette, he decided to put off the encounter by calling at the sawmill to say he wouldn’t be working there anymore.

‘I knew you’d enlist, Oliver.’ Brown asked him into the parlour. ‘I told my wife only an hour ago we’d be losing you. “A fine upstanding chap like young Burton is bound to go now that his country needs him,” I said, didn’t I, Doris?’

She sat in an armchair, as if not at all agreeing with what her husband had said. ‘We’ll be sorry to see the back of you,’ he went on. ‘You’re the best chap we’ve got. But it’s always the best who go first.’ He felt in his pocket. ‘Here’s a little something to help you on the road. And when you come back, as I know you will, you’ll always find work here.’

Such a time was too far off to imagine, or to hope for. He’d heard Brown talking to the foreman about buying a couple of motor lorries to speed up deliveries, so when he came back there would be no horses left to need looking after. He took the sovereign, shook hands, and turned smartly to go.

He looked on from the hedge at how busy they were. Thomas plied his fork into a heap of sunburnt weeds at the end of the garden, loaded them on the barrow for burning. Oswald and Burton dug shallow trenches for autumn planting, a reel of string on a stick to get the alignments straight. Burton peered along the line, a twitch of the head. ‘Left a bit. Now a shade to the right.’ He lifted a hand towards Thomas. ‘Weed the marrows when you’ve finished that. I said to the right a bit,’ he shouted to Oswald. ‘Get it straight, can’t you? And Thomas, give them a bit more water from the well.’ He saw Oliver. ‘There’s plenty to do if you’d like to get stuck in.’

‘I’ve enlisted.’

Burton stood at full height. ‘You’ve what?’

He plucked a gooseberry from the bush and ate it. ‘I’m a trooper in the South Nottinghamshire Hussars. They’ve taken me on as a shoeing smith, and I’ve got to be back at the drill hall in half an hour.’

Oswald looked up. ‘What did you want to do that for?’

‘There wasn’t much left to do. Burton might know.’

‘You don’t do that for anything,’ Oswald said.

Burton recovered himself. ‘You’re a bigger fool than I took you for.’

‘Perhaps. But I’ve done it.’

‘Don’t go. I’ll buy you out.’ He would get the money even if he had to sell up at the forge. A young man from Woodhouse had signed on a few years ago after quarrelling with his parents, the worse thing he could have done, the sort of disgrace they would never live down, and now it was Burton’s turn to feel the same. But the young man’s father had been able to get him out by paying five pounds.

‘There’s a war on,’ Oliver said, ‘and I’m over twenty-one.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with us. War never did anybody any good.’ If only he’d killed me in the wood, Burton thought. No one on either side of the family had ever ‘gone for a soldier’. Had they done so the service of the dead would have been said over them, no other way to outlive the shame.

Oliver was no longer sure he had done the right thing. ‘I’ve taken the King’s shilling.’

‘Give it back. I’ll pay a lot more to get you out.’

The girls were eating dinner, and Oliver stood in the doorway to tell them what he had done. Mary Ann turned white, all ten more silent than they had ever been in the same room together.

‘If he’d come and told me he was thinking of joining up,’ Burton said, an accurate spit at the bars of the fire, ‘I’d have talked some sense into him.’

Oliver hoped to calm them. ‘Everybody’s enlisting.’

‘That’s even less reason to go. You never do what everybody else is doing.’

Mary Ann, hands to her face, fell half-fainting into the Windsor chair only Burton ever used. ‘Oh, why did you do it?’

He no longer wondered, propelled by a force he could neither understand nor control. Everyone was going, all the young men and quite a few of the old, and he wouldn’t be left behind, might well have gone even if he had never met Alma.

‘Maybe it’s not so bad.’ Thomas held back tears at his mother’s pain. ‘He’s a blacksmith, and they don’t put them in the firing line.’

‘I’ve got to be back at the drill hall soon,’ was all he could say. ‘So I should be off.’

Edith, Rebecca and Sabina began to cry because their favourite brother was not only leaving home but was setting off for war. ‘Oliver’s going to be a soldier,’ Emily sobbed.

‘Stop your blawting.’ Burton too felt wrenched by the misery of Mary Ann, who in her moaning saw her firstborn as a young boy, now on his way to being dead forever. Burton knew that soldiers didn’t come back for years, if ever they did, though he couldn’t say so. ‘He didn’t think of any of us when he took that paltry shilling.’

Oliver’s tears blended with the girls’ on kissing them goodbye. ‘Edith, you’re the eldest now, so look after the others.’ Mary Ann sat quiet and still at this unexpected and bitter disruption to their lives. ‘Goodbye, Mother. I’ll see you as soon as I can.’

She stood. ‘And when will that be? I won’t see you again. I know I won’t,’ unable to take in how someone as loving as Oliver could have made such a pitiless move.

His smile withered. ‘Don’t be daft, Mother. Of course you will.’ How many times had the young hero of a Henty novel said familiar farewells to father, uncaring or tyrannical uncle, or mother? The comparison buoyed him as he offered a hand to Burton. ‘Goodbye, Father.’

Burton pushed it aside. ‘There’s no call for that.’ He wanted to take the hand, yet couldn’t. If he did he might not see his dearly loved son again. Then he thought how terrible it would be if Oliver never did come back, and he had to live for the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had spurned the goodbye hand. He took it, and pressed it with all the love he could decently show in front of the family, as near to tears as he had ever been. ‘Come back to us soon.’

Oliver kissed his mother again, and went stricken out of the house. At the gate he looked over the yard in which he had played and worked, and waved to his sisters, brothers and mother who stood around the door to watch him go, Burton’s austere face above their heads.

Walking down the lane, alone at last, relieved that the news had been given, his youthful spirit reasserted itself, and by the time he reached the railway tunnel, wishing he was on the train that rumbled overhead, he was singing aloud, and happy to be on his way.

FOURTEEN

‘You’re lucky,’ the quartermaster said. ‘A lot of men rushing to the colours have to wait weeks for their uniforms and equipment.’ But the Hussars were the darling regiment of Nottingham, and had all they wanted, so he ought to be proud they had taken him. He put on the khaki and fitted a peaked cap. Winding puttees around his legs wasn’t easy — he didn’t see the sense of them — but patience taught the knack. A small metal horseshoe, prongs pointing downwards, was stitched onto the upper left sleeve of his tunic, the distinguishing sign of a shoeing smith which pleased him because most others had nothing to show for their status.

It took a fortnight to give him the semblance of a cavalryman, training which normally needed twelve weeks. Footdrill and disciplined equitation was almost a pleasure, and learning to care for horses in the military fashion easy. A course of musketry with the Short Lee Enfield was concurrent with how to handle (and kill with) the sword. Fascinated by maps since the teacher had shown one with the height of Misk Hill — that cursed place he had walked to with Alma — he went downhill into town and bought a pocket manual on how to read them.

The sergeant was surprised at his ability to estimate distances, soon regarding him as a smart enough soldier to join the regiment in Norfolk. ‘You’ll go up through the ranks like a knife through butter once you’re abroad and we take casualties. You might even end up with a commission before this war’s done. Don’t believe all that nonsense about it being over by Christmas. None of us old sweats do.’

Some troopers were billeted at home, coming on parade every morning, but Oliver needed much of the day and night to care for the horses, and was found a bed at the barracks. Calling once more on the family, the farewell was not so harrowing. He took his civilian clothes for them to look after until he came back. ‘At least I shall have something to remember you by,’ Mary Ann said, seemingly less in despair at what he had done.

She asked him to have his photograph taken at a studio in town, which he found time to do, the first and only snapshot of his life. When Mary Ann sent Edith to the barracks with handkerchiefs and underwear in a bag he gave her the photograph to take home.

He didn’t tell anyone he had signed on to serve overseas, as had the whole regiment. If he was killed, so be it. He didn’t much care. That was in the future, and though he might hope for death he couldn’t imagine it would happen, because what you wanted you never got. Someone who went to the Boer War to get himself killed because of a disappointment in love had survived the bloodiest battles, while another had gone to fight saying he would never be killed and died of fever in a Bulawayo hospital, proving there was something more than yourself with a say in what happened. All you could do was keep whistling, and go on with your work.

They had difficulty getting the horses into the wagons, until Oliver coaxed the most placid up the ramp, and the rest followed. As a blacksmith he was wanted urgently in Norfolk, so was on his way with other troopers and their remounts. He arranged each horse in the cattle truck, for them not to face passing trains head on, and when they seemed snug enough took off their bits and slackened the girths.

Four hundred and fifty-two officers and men had already gone, entrained with their horses from the Low Level station on 14 August. Several thousand people had gathered to see their heroes off, unlike their unobserved departure.

The corporal split the party into shifts of two hours, keeping a couple of men on hand to make sure the horses came to no harm. Army beasts were more fractious than those Oliver had dealt with so far, either due to hard treatment and the uncertainty of their lives, or from too many changes of master.

Wanting never to see Nottingham again, he was impatient at the slow train huffing towards Grantham. A ration box between the seats made a table for their game of ha’penny brag. He could afford to lose a coin or two, change from Brown’s sovereign still rattling in his pocket, and in the ups and downs of the game he won a shilling.

‘Lucky at cards, unlucky with women.’ Kirkby, a saddler who had worked at the same sawmill, had a long pale scar ending in a whiter circle of skin as big as a florin, where somebody had gone at him with an awl during an argument in one of the sheds. ‘I don’t know how you do it, Burton. Must be the aces up your sleeve.’

‘I’d rather be lucky with women.’ Time off from King and Country was taking him painlessly away, but he was riled at Kirkby calling him Burton. ‘It just happens, like everything else.’

‘As long as you’re lucky at something,’ Kirkby said. ‘I know a few poor bleeders who don’t have any in all their lives.’

Oliver looked at scenery little different to that at home. ‘It says we’re at Sleaford. They seem to be shunting us all over the place.’

‘You’ll get used to it.’ The corporal opened a tin of corned beef, a tongue-wetting aroma when air hissed out. Hardtack biscuits and a tin between two filled their stomachs. ‘My mother used to make a stew for the whole family out of one like this.’ Beardmore the carter had done five years as a Territorial. ‘Sparetime soldiering kept me on the straight and narrow,’ he told them, his smile almost diagonal. ‘And the perquisites were welcome. But one tin of bully for six had to be enough, though we loved it when Mam put carrots and onions in as well, and the fattier the better. These biscuits’ll break my teeth, if I’m not careful.’

‘You’ve got to crumble them with your fingers.’ The corporal opened his clasp knife. A thatch of black hair came almost to his eyes, Oliver wondering how good he would be when using his brains. Tim the Ostler, if ever there was one, though he knew his trade in most respects. ‘You put it in your fodder box, but don’t swallow till the spit’s melted it, or you’ll get toothache terrible.’

‘It’s a good thing an old sweat like you’s with us,’ Kirkby said, ‘to tell us how to go on.’

‘He wasn’t very clever at getting the horses on board,’ Beardmore said. ‘A good job Burton put us right.’

‘Shut your fucking mouth,’ the corporal said, ‘or you’ll be on a charge when we get to Diss.’

‘Try any of that, and you’ll go flying off the train, when it speeds up a bit,’ Beardmore said. ‘You shouldn’t swear in front of enlisted men. It’s against regulations.’ The trucks jerked at the sound of a whistle. ‘What else is there to eat? My guts are still rumbling.’

‘We’ll be boxed up in here for weeks,’ Kirkby said.

‘As long as we’re on the train we aren’t working,’ Beardmore laughed. ‘It suits me down to the ground.’

Kirkby looked at Oliver. ‘How about another of them lovely fags?’

Whatever you had, you shared. His father might well have kept them to himself, but Mary Ann said you must give what you could when asked for something. Soldiers were your mates, not beggars, and he passed them out, though the corporal huffed and told him to keep it, Oliver thinking that some people were born unhappy.

‘I’ll make it right with you.’ Kirkby held a match for them. To use only one, he waited till the flame was about to burn out, then spat on two fingers and held the charred piece, and while the flame consumed the rest of the wood he was able to light the last cigarette. ‘When we get to where we’re going I’ll be put on saddling.’ Smoke towards the window bounced back on him, a cloud he waved away. ‘It’ll suit me, because I’ve always done it. Do you know what it takes to make one? All you’ve got to remember is: eight stitches to the inch. That’s what I was taught. I can hear my father now. In fact I’ll never forget the old bastard till my dying day. He bawled it when he set me to work at thirteen, and I made a mess of things. “Eight stitches to the inch.” Smack — right on the chops. “Did you hear me, you careless lump?” Smack, again. “Eight stitches to an inch, not one more and not one less.” Thump. And if I didn’t get it exactly right from then on it was a boot up the arse, after the biggest bang of all on the napper.’

‘As for me,’ Oliver said, ‘it was seven nails to a horseshoe. The old man didn’t care if I couldn’t count up to ten, as long as I knew what seven meant. Not that you dared get it wrong, with him hanging over you like the Sword of Damocles.’ He held out the rest of his Gold Flake, and by the time they were passing Ely the compartment was filled with comforting smoke. ‘Have one now, Corporal?’

He let go of his sulk, and puffed amicably with the others. ‘Parents?’ he said. ‘I’ve shit ’em. They’re all the same, though they can’t bother us anymore. That’s one thing the army’s good for. My father’s in jail, and serve the bogger right. He tried to murder my mother. I ought to kill him when he gets out in five years, but I shan’t want to know the swine. I don’t fancy swinging, anyway. All I do know is that if they put him in the army he’d frighten the Germans to death.’

None had been up a whole night before, so those not looking out for the horses dozed, the corporal’s head against the window, mouth open as if never to wake again. The air vibrated from an orchestra of rhythmic snoring, and Oliver as the only man with a watch was left to call the changes of shift, which gave him little rest. He stayed alert, till prodding them awake when they got to Diss.

Arms piled on the gravel of the siding, they unbolted the doors, easier than expected to get the horses off. Oliver found the trooper sent to meet them smoking his pipe in the station-master’s office. He looked up: ‘You’ve come, then?’

‘Doesn’t it look like it?’

‘I’ve been waiting for you, and you’re none too soon. So many horses have gone sick. I hope those you’ve brought don’t start pining for Sherwood Forest like the others.’ He stretched, and knocked the ash from his pipe, which Oliver thought was going to take all day. ‘I’ll give you a hand to get them off.’

‘They’re out already.’

The cavalcade trotted to Palgrave leaving a trail of dung they had been too nervous to let go on the train. ‘There’s a good breakfast waiting for you,’ the trooper shouted into Oliver’s ear. ‘Coffee as well, piping hot, as long as it ain’t all gone. The eggs are fresh and the bacon’s good, and the bread ovens have been working full-time. But now let me tell you what you’ll really have. Bully beef, hard tack that the navy threw out and, oh yes, if you’re lucky, a bit of mousetrap cheese. But there’s all the tea you can swill down, cauldrons and cauldrons of it — without sugar.’

‘What bleddy concert party did they pick you out of?’ Beardmore called.

Only the names were different to the area he had left but, having marched, entrained, and ridden to get here, he felt so carefree as never to doubt he would come back safe from the war. He wondered whether The Golden Treasury had been put together in the village they trotted through, so bright and homely in the early dawn that he regretted not having brought the Sunday School prize from home, though in the next letter he might ask his mother to post it.

He was happy at the jingle of harness, occasional neighing, shouts and handclaps from children at the doors and bedroom windows, urging them on as if they were the most important people in the world which, he smiled, they were, at the moment. Out of doors was the only place to be, however dozy he felt after all night in the close air of the carriage. The early breeze was a treat to freshen the senses, a trace of cloud to look down and wish them well.

Pennants fluttered from marquees among the lines of tents, a bugler sounding reveille in the central square of the Hussars’ area. Men swilled themselves at the ablution troughs, queued for breakfast, or groomed their horses.

The trooper dismounted beside Oliver, who looked at a squadron of Lancers cantering by from the Diss direction. ‘They’ve been on patrol, as far as the coast,’ he was told, ‘to see whether the Germans have landed. We’re all part of the Mounted Division, and that’s what we’re here for. There’s rumours every night that the Germans are coming, but it’ll be the day of our lives if they do. Every man-jack’s as keen as mustard.’

In line for breakfast, mess tin and irons in hand, he thought: I’m here to kill Germans if I get the chance, and if they don’t kill me first — though they’d have a job should they try. Sweat under his cap from the sun’s heat, and heavy khaki cloying his body, a slight soreness at the feet, he exulted in the way he felt because it was no longer up to him how much time would be spent where he was, nor to what part of England or even the world he would be going next. Everything was new, and to be on the move was all that mattered.

The roughest food tasted good when you were hungry, which he always was, commons of some sort turning up. Kirkby kept a seat for him at the trestle-table, sparrows darting for crumbs or alighting on horse manure to pick out undigested bits. The regiment owned him yet he felt more free than when under the basilisk eye of Burton where he had at times been no more than a slave. Here he was among friends and equals, and those above in the hierarchy could never be as harsh and villainous as his father.

The neat mechanical contraption of a mobile forge was little different in principle to what he had been used to, and simple enough on being shown its workings. Much to be done, the days passed. From five o’clock reveille and through till dusk he made shoes for horses which had lost them on patrol, or worn them so far down they needed replacing. The sergeant-artificer said the army had no use for horses that went lame, while all Oliver knew was that nobody had.

Handmade shoes were put together from new bars of iron or, more often, from worn-out shoes, because not enough could be carried on the wagons to make new ones. Of the different types of shoe the first four sizes were for cavalry and small horses, and others for heavier breeds of the artillery and engineers. Years under Burton’s tuition made everything easy. Out of two worn shoes he produced a strong and sufficiently blended piece of metal from which a new shoe could be made, adept at wasting nothing because Burton, whenever trade was slack, always set him to making new shoes from heaps of cast-offs. With such skill he thought the army had him cheap, but he was satisfied with the arrangement because food and shelter were taken care of.

Farriers also learned to ride without saddles or stirrups, or became part of a line galloping for the kill across the fields. Before the war, eight months were needed to fit a man for the saddle but, as the sergeant bellowed, we have to train you in as many weeks, till you’re second to none, and will go through any Hun cavalry screen as if it’s made of brown paper.

Sword in hand brought out a wilder Burton, surprising Oliver, a primitive inner force never suspected, a space being filled almost against his will, but he was spurred on for the charge with a weapon that had its uses, no time for thought except what concerned the hill or wood in front.

Horses were made to lie down on their own and come to the trooper when called, and even if shots were fired they must remain standing. Scouts who knew map-reading rode crosscountry, by day, marched on compass bearings in the dark, got from place to place under as much cover as possible. On field exercises they were given the map reference of a supposed enemy position and told to get there, Oliver regretting that farrier work kept him from much of this.

Exhausted by close of day, he washed and changed into walking-out uniform, lucky to be let off once for work well done. It was still light and he walked into Palgrave for a pint. Officers went to the Crown Hotel in Diss, some in motor cars, others on their chargers, but he found a pub corner, smoked a cigarette, and supped a strange brew, though welcome to a farrier’s throat. Alma came to mind, but he tore the vision away, to speculate on work to be done in the morning, or to wonder where in England the regiment would go next. Anywhere would do.

The beer went in a straight drain down his throat, his tankard empty on the ironlegged table. He watched a darts game, till a man in gaiters and deerstalker hat put another pint by his elbow: ‘Can’t see a hussar without a drink.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ He stood, to shake the offered hand, of a farmer perhaps, with his pink face and affectionate blue eyes. The man went abruptly back to his whisky at the bar, as if embarrassed by his action, and Oliver thought the spirit of the country good if this was how soldiers were treated.

In spite of money in his pocket he put on his cap and went back to camp. He folded his clothes carefully in the crowded tent, before going through the gate of oblivion into sleep.

They grumbled at the bullshit of a kit inspection, every item to be accounted for, smartened up, and laid out. The regiment paraded in full field service order, alignment perfect for the march to Diss. They filed into the first of four trains taking them to Colchester and through Chelmsford. Eight men to a compartment, talk was low, they seemed awed by the murky spread, the endless cuttings and buildings of London. The train jumped points every few hundred yards, buildings so close they might come together and stop them getting on.

The country beyond was flat and nondescript. They played cards, broke into their rations, and made a home out of every space as if, Oliver said, they were on an excursion to Skegness.

They detrained at Reading, cookwagons waiting to hand out a meal of stew and bread. Oliver found warmth for the night in a hut of the cattle market near the station, others bedding down in the sheep pens. As the sergeant said — and you could always rely on him to say something — this is the Savoy Hotel compared with what you’ll put up with later. Right or wrong, Oliver didn’t care, and set his pack down for a pillow. Talk and laughter went on into the night, blotted out by passing trains or the shunting of trucks. The scrape of a mouth organ fell silent at the sergeant’s command.

Oliver saw in his little pocket diary that it was 1 September. The regiment mounted and formed up by the station. When the thousand-yard column clattered out of the cattle market and went through the silent streets Oliver felt like a king on his high horse riding to war, laughing at the thought that though never making a king he would surely be going to war.

The Thames flowed under the bridge, a boat steaming in the London direction, trees and bushes dawn-black along the banks, a cotton-wool drift of smoke between the houses. To be on the march was the only tonic for an enlisted man, cutting away tendrils of the past still clinging to his boots. Yet family and house were close, and he hoped letters would be given out when they reached Churn Camp.

Fresh air swept his brow. To take his cap off would be very heaven, but he enjoyed the jingle of harness and clip-clop of massed hooves jostling with birdsong. The sky was clear and he was hot in uniform, but so was everyone. Cool-looking woods patched the hills to either side, and he thought how pleasant it would be to sit in a glade and read.

They bivouacked at Woodcote, officers finding billets in cottages, the men to bed down in barns and stables. Oliver spread his groundsheet behind a headstone in the churchyard, sufficient protection from the night’s chill.

A morning’s march led them to the riverside village of South Stoke, where the usual bell tents were ready, twelve men to circle clockwise with their feet at the centre, such accommodations scattering the Berkshire uplands. Water for the horses was drawn in canvas buckets twice a day from the Thames.

On fine afternoons young men and women cycled from Oxford to see soldiers at work, march and gallop. Oliver smiled at Kirkby’s Nottingham shouts, unfit for anyone’s ears: ‘Come down here, duck, and see what this throstle’s made on!’ Beardmore joined in: ‘How about a bit of hearthrug pie? Can I take you courting on the Forest?’ colouring the young men’s cheeks more than those of the girls, who often blew kisses and waved back.

People on steamboats fluttered handkerchiefs, but the hussars soon couldn’t be bothered, thinking it strange that buntinged vessels were still in service, however far away the battle line was. Two young women, all hats and ribbons, came close in a rowing boat: ‘Remember us to Paris!’

‘Berlin more like,’ a soldier cried, but rumours every day that they’d be packing up for France were always false.

Filling buckets was mindless enough work to bring Oliver’s mother and sisters vividly to mind. Burton’s face was wilfully blanked away, though Mary Ann would no doubt tell him not to think evil of his father, even if she knew what he had done, because without Burton she wouldn’t be able to go on living, in spite of the hard times he had given her. Everyone was redeemable, and Oliver knew he should endeavour to go by her laws rather than Burton’s, who could hardly be said to have any.

When in charge of a detail for watering the horses it worried him to hear Burton’s voice behind his own, a persona that had its uses though he tried not to feel ashamed, because it was always effective when the men began larking about.

Off duty, a cloud the shape of Baffin Land on the map followed a boat to London. He watched the placid smokey green stretch of water flowing by, and listened to birds fighting for space to manoeuvre overhead, or squabbling for food around the bushes, such intricate music mingling with shouts of command and the neighing of horses.

Soldiers in the gnat-filled twilight stood outside the tents to sing O My Darling Clementine and Danny Boy, popular but sombre tunes. Oliver preferred to listen, not knowing why, though he liked hearing the songs.

Letters were given out at the Divisional Post Office, items bundled alphabetically, meaning Oliver’s name was called early. From the postmark and the writing a letter could only have come from Alma. The previous one, in his tunic pocket, had been sent on from the drill hall, and he’d thought of throwing it into the fire, because nothing she could tell would be what he wanted to know. Their lives were divided, so whatever was written could only intensify the pain, and he wasn’t Christian enough to forgive.

He opened his mother’s letter, a single sheet telling that all was right at home. A folded postal order for two shillings came: ‘From me and your father, who sends his love.’ He smiled at Burton being prevailed on to part with money, and as for his love, he knew what he could do with that.

Albert Beardmore, seeing Oliver with a pad writing hastily to his mother, said he wasn’t much of a scholar, so had no way of staying in touch with his sweetheart. ‘I never liked school. The teacher was always hitting me, so I ran away.’

‘If your girl can read,’ Oliver said, ‘I’ll drop her a line, but you must tell me what to say.’

‘Her name’s Dora,’ Beardmore told him. ‘I’ll treat you to a pint if you do.’

‘No need of that. I’ll write to your mother as well, if you like. She can get a neighbour to read it.’

Oliver couldn’t think what kind of girl Dora was, but was amused when Albert dictated that he couldn’t wait to get back to Radford for another walk up the cut, to that bit of wood called The Roughs near Wollaton colliery, where he would get her drawers down and give her juicy purse a sweet taste of the mutton dagger.’

‘Are you sure you want to say all that?’

‘Oh yes. She’ll like to be reminded. We had some lovely times. We didn’t have a bed to jump into so we took all the chances we could get and fucked in the fresh air like rabbits in a thunderstorm. She was fifteen when we started, but we didn’t care about that. I don’t mind if I have to marry her one day.’

FIFTEEN

Burton’s hammerblow brought forth Oliver’s image, a smile from that sensitive yet determined mouth in the fire’s dull glow. The bellows pumped up a man much like himself, hoping to spot something in the distance before whatever it was saw him.

Now that Oliver had gone the atmosphere in the house was ominous. Burton had never worried about his children as far as health and life were concerned. They worked, played, and were sometimes a torment to him, but they were fed, clothed and shod to the limit of what he earned and of Mary Ann’s care. No reason to worry, yet Oliver’s absence was painful, and not only because he could no longer get at him.

Mary Ann pined because he wasn’t there to be looked after, and Burton sometimes thought he was too much influenced by her, who always lived as if the world was about to end. What comfort he gave didn’t make a blind bit of difference.

Thomas and Oswald would tell her time and time again that shoeing smiths were too much thought of to be sent to where the danger was, but it was natural that she ached now that he wasn’t at home. Nor could she be consoled that thousands of families suffered the same way. If he had gone off to get married it would have been different, a matter of joy that she could still see him, and make a friend of his wife.

Sons and husbands gleefully broke their bonds, having waited all their lives for the chance to spite their families and escape. They ran to feel the hot shilling in their palm, Burton went on, and he hoped they’d be happy, though knew they wouldn’t for long. Every man was caught by the madness of wanting to get out of the country, even at the risk of his life, as if it was a Sunday School excursion and they could come back the moment they found it wasn’t.

The others were in bed, and he sat waiting for Edith. Ten o’clock had gone. A train hooted along the embankment across the field, the dog growled and dragged its chain around the kennel, and wind rattled the door so that, thinking it might be her, he looked to make sure the stick was in its place. It was, but he stared into the fireplace until eleven o’clock, enraged at his enforced idleness, or the sleep he was missing. Mary Ann came down in her nightdress: ‘Where do you think she can be?’

‘Go back to bed. It’s no use two of us waiting.’

‘I can’t sleep while she isn’t here.’

Neither could he. Everyone of the brood had to be under the roof before he could close his eyes. He set out mashcans and knapsack on the table Mary Ann had already laid for breakfast. ‘She knows that if she comes in at this time she’ll have a sore back for a week.’

‘You shouldn’t hit her.’

‘But where is she? It’s pitch-black outside, and she deserves what she’ll get for not thinking about how upset you’ll be. But she’s gone, I’m sure she has. So go to bed.’ He riddled the ash from the fireplace bars. ‘She won’t come back.’

‘Something might have happened to her coming up the lane.’

‘Not if I know her.’ Of the Burton girls Edith was the one most able to care for herself. She had liveliness and good looks, but was also strong and with a mind to match. She could give as good as she got from anyone. ‘We’ll know soon enough where she is. Let’s go upstairs, then.’

Little to do, he left Oswald in charge and walked to the Nottingham Arms. The army had commandeered so many horses that times were getting hard. Some forges had closed because even farriers were joining up. Harry the bartender came to serve. ‘How’s your Oliver?’

The first gulp tasted of soap. ‘He was all right when we last heard.’

‘Morgan’s two lads have gone. They’re with the Robin Hood Rifles, in Hertfordshire.’

Not worth talking about. He drank, and at the click of a door-latch saw Alma looking at him from a few feet away. ‘What are you doing in a place like this?’ he asked.

‘Oswald said you’d be here.’ She had much to say, features taut, eyes red, and hair he saw as untidy, which disappointed him. He would drum it into Oswald that he must never again tell anybody where he was. ‘What is it you want?’

‘I don’t know. There isn’t much I can want. And if there was I wouldn’t get it from you.’

He called Harry. ‘A whisky and water over here,’ then turned back to her. ‘If there’s anything I can do for you just let me know.’

She sat by a table. ‘I’ve sent Oliver two letters, and he hasn’t written back.’

‘Nobody can make him, though I expect you’ll hear soon. He’s a young soldier. A young fool as well, but no more than anybody else these days.’ From his full height he reached her warm and pulsating wrist. ‘I’d write to a nice young woman like you if I was in his place. Or I’d get someone else to do it for me.’

She sipped her drink, and smiled, as if pleased at so many words from him. ‘My letters were long. He should let me know if he’s received them at least.’

‘Give him time. I expect he’s busy. He’ll come round.’

‘I’d like to think so, but don’t see how I can. Not after he found out about us.’ The whisky gave neither strength nor pleasure, and her face twisted into weeping. ‘I don’t know who I am anymore. I only want to die.’

Not another one, he said to himself. Mary Ann, all of his daughters, and now her. Oliver can’t know how lucky he is to have so many women blawting over him just because he went for a soldier. And if she didn’t know herself, then she should. He expected everyone to know themselves, otherwise why were they alive? She would have to know herself one day, because if she didn’t nobody would do it for her. ‘You’re too young to die,’ he said kindly. ‘And too good looking. Drink that, and have another. It’ll buck you up.’

‘I’ll be sick.’

It looked as if she might. ‘Not with all that water in it.’

She looked away. ‘I was sick this morning, before I had anything to eat or drink. Perhaps I’m getting a cold.’

He gave a grunt of premonition, but hoped he was wrong. ‘You must look after yourself. Oliver will be back one of these days. People say it’ll be over by Christmas, and even fools have been known to be right. Are you sure you won’t have another?’

She wiped her tears. ‘I have to go.’

Oliver was a double fool for ignoring such a fine young woman, in spite of what had happened. He watched her to the door, disappointed that she hadn’t taken another drink, because they might then have talked and become friendly again.

Thomas was sent home with the housekeeping money, and found Mary Ann sitting by the window with her glasses on glancing through Mrs Beeton’s cookery book, which Burton had gone downtown to buy for her on hearing she would like to have one, not long after he had struck her, when even the claddach ring seemed too feeble an apology.

She recalled Emma Lewin engrossed in her Mrs Beeton, and to have one herself was a connection to the happiness of the past. On seeing her squint at the small type Burton had also taken her to be fitted with spectacles, a further good deed he was glad to do, but considered sufficient to be going on with.

She put the coins in her pinafore pocket, and took Oliver’s latest letter from behind the clock. ‘On the train to Norfolk we passed Ely, and I was sorry we couldn’t get closer to St Neots, where you said you had grown up … The train was so slow at times going through London that I thought what a lark it would be if I jumped off and came back to see you all. What a surprise that would have been. But I was with my pals, and you don’t do that in the regiment. I’d have relished the surprise on your faces though as I burst through the door. I’ve got stamps and an envelope, and will put this in a pillar box when we get to where we’re going.’ She always told Burton that Oliver sent his best wishes, which couldn’t have been a lie, because even though it wasn’t on paper it must have been in the lad’s heart to say so.

With Oliver away she had no place in the world, didn’t belong anywhere, had no anchor unless seeing his face at table or knowing he was busy about the yard or garden. She couldn’t think how she lived much of the time, though she cleaned and cooked and served and kept the house running, almost as if she was two people where before she had been one.

She tried to imagine him on his horse, or shoeing one, or sitting on a stool outside a tent much like the illustration on the Camp Coffee bottle. Or he’d have a pad on his knee writing her a letter, or be eating from a tin plate, or standing in a pub with friends, a pint to his lips.

It was no use talking about him to people in Woodhouse while shopping because they had similar worries, other thoughts bothering them. Then again there was Edith to think about. They hadn’t heard anything for weeks. Burton as well was nagged with anxiety on both counts — though less so about Edith — but what could they say to each other that hadn’t already been said? Whatever he thought he kept inside, but she knew it could be no less troubling than what went on in her own mind. These days he listened with more patience when she mentioned her fears about Oliver, telling her to stop worrying, that the lad would be safe, that in a year or two he would come back. A comforting hand on her shoulder, he would say: ‘There aren’t any Germans in Norfolk. He’s just in camp there.’

Happen so, but she was hearing all the time of young men killed or wounded in the fighting, photographs displayed day after day in the Journal and Evening Post. She wasn’t worrying for nothing. In no time at all Oliver could be in France, and the weekly gap between his letters became ages of torment. Burton wondered how she would feel when he did go overseas.

A letter from Edith told them she had married Tommy Jackson by special licence. How she had managed it they didn’t know, but Edith had always found ways of doing what she wanted. ‘It’s a terrible thing to do, not telling us,’ Mary Ann said. ‘We could have given them a proper wedding.’

Burton grunted his agreement, though Edith’s headstrong act had no doubt saved them a bob or two. Tommy then joined up as a gunner in the Royal Artillery, after a few days honeymoon at his parents’ house. ‘Another fool in the army,’ Burton said. ‘I would have expected better from him.’

Mary Ann wrote that Edith could live at home until her husband came back from the war, hoping she would, but Edith replied that she never wanted to be in the same house as Burton again, to which Burton responded, on Mary Ann hinting as much: ‘She can please herself.’

At least Mary Ann had no more cause to worry about her, and in spite of his daughter’s opinion, never much of a secret, Burton said she could come home any time, though trying to talk sense to her had been like shouting at a brick wall with your back to it.

When Tommy went to France, Edith got a situation as cook in a hotel at Mablethorpe, intending to stay till her husband came home. Burton was disappointed but, with no liking for the fact, couldn’t dispute that times were changing.

Mary Ann took up a basket and went down the lane to shop in Woodhouse, hoping the tent Oliver lived in didn’t leak, that the weather was as warm there as it was here, that it would never be raining wherever he was sent, wanting only sunshine in his life, looking on him as a blacksmith rather than a soldier (she still couldn’t think of him as one of those) and praying he would never have to kill anybody so that nobody would need to kill him, yet full of fear in knowing that those who lived by the sword inevitably died by the sword.

SIXTEEN

A small feed had been given to the horses, and now the start was delayed for them to drink, which they were often reluctant to do so early in the morning. Major Ley, the inspecting officer — eyes all too aware, large ears that missed no sound, and a broad nose above a well-marked dark moustache — walked the squadron lines to make sure the saddlery was correct, that the withers weren’t pinched or pressed on, nor pressure put on the horse’s spine, that the shoulder-blade bones had free movement, and that weight was on the ribs rather than the loins.

Oliver, erect in the saddle, knew that his mount was well groomed, accountrements wiped, greased, soaped, scrubbed, polished and, above all, shining. Up since four, everything was in place, and they were ready to go. His sword blade was keen enough to shave with, and his mother would have been frightened half to death to see him wield it.

Much work and little sleep convinced him there was no other life than that of a soldier for scraping away the past, a life even better when the regiment was on the move. Wherever they were at the end of the day it would be one stage closer to France. A rumour floating about spoke even of Egypt, and if so he would see the Nile where Baby Moses was found among the bulrushes by Pharaoh’s fair daughter. Alma would envy him, but her letters stayed unopened in his tunic pocket.

The squadron moved through Moulsford, Oliver and other smiths at the rear should horses hang back and have to be looked after. Some NCOs also followed behind in case any men fell out, though none would today. The level stretch called Fair Mile seemed longer than that, for he wanted to get on and see new vistas.

They crossed the ground of ten days ago, where the division of two thousand men had been inspected by the King. Oliver noted his bearded figure and frozenly severe aspect, changing to benign kindness and concern on speaking to the next man. The King was nowhere as tall as himself, something else to tell his parents when he saw them. Even Burton by then might, after time overseas, have more respect for him.

An invigorating tang of caustic horse droppings sharpened the air, fodder that had worked through many an irritable stomach. Five hundred horses traversing the hills would leave soil for flowers and cabbages to thrive. Such fertilizer made the garden sprout at home, Burton often sending the girls to collect what had been left along the lane.

Churn Hill was a green hump in the sky behind, but a good soldier never looks back, the sergeant once bawled. After half an hour they halted on the open downs to check saddles, and for fifteen minutes of the hour, or every three miles at regulation pace, they dismounted and led their mounts on foot, keeping to trail or lane and maintaining a proper distance from the horse in front. A ten-minute break every two hours allowed for a quick smoke or swallow of water, or to loosen the horse’s girth and turn its head to any breeze.

The springy turf was easy to ride on, and despite no laxness in dressage the sergeants barked them to attention on approaching a village. They needed little telling, as children clapped from garden walls, men and women waving from the fields.

They halted at East Ilsley among red roofs and bowering trees in a steep hollow of the hills, its pubs increasing every man’s thirst. Through a cup-shaped hollow of bare chalk, over the hills to Peasmore, beyond Leckhamstead and on by Hangman’s Stone, then down to Welford where Oliver imagined spending the rest of his life it was so embowered in trees, yet so taken with the ride over such fine country he was happier at going on, till flies tormented men and horses, and the trek seemed an endless up hill and down dale, each rider with his thoughts, the camp of morning far into the past, and the place they were going never to appear.

Faces dusty, beiged by sun and wind, they descended to the Great West Road and crossed the cool Kennet, Oliver craving a swim among its reeds. Eighteen miles, and near to dusk, slow-walking the horses for them to breathe before going into camp, they passed through Kintbury to Hungerford Park, and into the squadron lines made ready.

‘If they don’t feed us soon I’ll eat my bleeding horse.’ Kirkby dismounted, and slapped its sweating flank. ‘Won’t I, Bunty? You’d give me a steak off your arse any time, wouldn’t you, my old duck?’

No one got hungrier than a soldier, though Oliver recalled how famished he often was when knocking off from the forge, though hardly as much after such a day’s ride over the downs. But animals had to be seen to first.

Beardmore came from the troughs, two buckets slopping water. He handed one to Oliver. ‘We’re going to be here for the winter, some chaps just said.’

‘I hope not.’

Kirkby observed the neat rows of tents. ‘I expect you’ll get your wish before long.’

Horses unsaddled, rubbed down and tied in the lines, men were told off for guard and fatigue duties. No matter how little daylight was left, a soldier’s day never ended. Yet it did. Shirtsleeves rolled after shoeing two horses, he leaned on a five-barred gate to let the breeze dry his face, and lit a cigarette to drive off gnats and flies, which fed on the horse muck. Fatigue parties gathered it up but there was always plenty. The line of hills darkened across the valley, smoke hovering above cottage chimneys as if it couldn’t make up its mind which way to go for extinction. Hungerford Park seemed like home already, but so would any place after you’d been there a couple of hours.

From fixing his puttees in the morning to winding them into rolls at night and getting his head down for sleep, the welfare of horses was his concern: rope galls to be doctored, legs to be bandaged, the lame and halt to be attended to, shoes to be made and fitted. Recalling half-forgotten information from Burton made him as much a veterinary officer as a blacksmith.

Days and even weeks went quickly, the flitting hours barely noticed, work continuous — though when hadn’t it been? Only in sleep were you free, until parading in the morning for inspection, taking your place in line for breakfast, dinner and tea.

He was glad when the squadron formed up to collect its fort-nightly pay, but an equally good time was the delivery of letters, except that he was stung at another from Alma, because what was there to ask that he could give, and what could he tell her that she would like to hear? He thought of throwing her missives in fragments to the birds, watch them chase as though they were scraps of food. He wanted to lie on the earth and howl at what the letters might contain, except that a soldier must stay strong within the stockade of skin and uniform and get on with his duties. Destroying the letters would be too close to the violence he had enlisted to take part in, so he buttoned the envelope into his tunic pocket with the others, and turned to Beardmore’s, which came from Dora. She wrote in no uncertain terms, in spite of faulty spelling and punctuation, that the letter Oliver had written had been welcome and enjoyed. He handed it back. ‘You should learn to read and write. I’ll help you sometime.’

Sergeant Wilkinson stopped Oliver. ‘Burton, you’re to go to the sidings in Hungerford and collect a couple of remounts for the colonel. Sign for them, then bring them back to the Park.’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘And get that scruff Beardmore to give you a hand.’

‘Come on,’ he said to Albert who still perused his magical letter, ‘we’ve got some horses to pick up.’

Albert took his arm. ‘Shall you read me Dora’s letter again when we get back?’

‘If there’s time I will.’

‘You’re a pal. I’ll look after you when we get to France,’ at which Oliver grunted, and pushed his hand away.

‘That one’s a bugger.’ The corporal opened the waggon door and pointed to a fierce-eyed grey stallion of more than fifteen hands stamping a hoof in its impatience to get free. ‘He’s given trouble all the way from Marlborough. I don’t know where they get them. People sell anything to the army. Before the war we wouldn’t have touched it.’

Oliver steadied the horse onto the station platform and, laying a hand on its mane, it sheered away. ‘You won’t be the worst horse I’ve had to deal with, so do as you’re told.’

Deeply-arched neck, ribs full and finely bent, chin broad and straight, the rear round and full, legs fine and pasterns short, it was a handsome horse but a lot to handle. The colonel would have some fun taming it.

A few homely words calmed it for a while, then a loop under its upper lip and over the poll with a slipknot brought a slight jerk of renewed restiveness. ‘You’ve had some bad usage, but you’ll be all right with us.’

He kept the led horse to the nearside of the road. ‘They knew what they was doing, sending you to collect him,’ Albert called from his more tractable animal. ‘If we go the long way back it’ll be nice and quiet before the colonel gets him. Not that I don’t think we deserve a pint. What about you?’

He couldn’t consider it yet, as they passed the church along the High Street. Albert whistled a couple of girls who, he said at Oliver’s chiding, expected no less. ‘Maybe a bit of a canter will soothe your nag. Make the bogger pant for its living.’

Keeping the regulation distance from the nearside of the road, he held the reins in his left hand, shortening them by a foot, such an awkward cuss it hardly seemed to have a mind of its own, unless it had borrowed one from somewhere and hadn’t yet got used to it.

He steadied the horse into the pub backyard, thinking any man deserved a drink after riding such a beast. Whoever gets him will need a few months to bring him to heel. ‘I’d rather be in the trenches than manage this one.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ll say that when you get there.’ Albert tied his horse up. ‘It’s always better to stay where you are. I heard we’ll be going back to Norfolk for a while, but let’s get a drink. The colonel can wait an extra ten minutes.’ He filled his pipe, as if it might be longer than that. ‘He’s too busy to know the difference, and if he isn’t he ought to be. I’ll go in and see what I can do.’

Oliver dismounted, and passed over a shilling. ‘It’s my turn. Pay out of this.’ A bucket brimming under the pump provided drink for the horses, but he let the awkward one wait till the last, thinking it might mend its ways if feeling neglected. ‘At least we got you off the train quick enough, didn’t we, you mean-hearted so-and-so? I wouldn’t like to be near you in a thunderstorm. Hold still, while I light up.’

Two men in the yard were arguing, hard to fathom what about for a while, two carters, or farm labourers, family men of about fifty, too old to heed the call from Kitchener’s boss-eyes. Oliver presumed that one was from Inkpen, and the other from Combe. The Combe man said that the gibbet on the hill between the two villages belonged to Combe, because those who lived there spent money on maintaining it. The man from Inkpen swore that the gibbet throughout history had belonged to his village.

‘Then why is it called Combe gibbet?’ the man from Combe said.

‘It ain’t called Combe gibbet. It’s called the Inkpen gibbet,’ the Inkpen man retorted.

‘That’s the first I ever heard.’

‘Well, you’re hearing it now. My little girls run up there to play. It’s all bracken by the woody bit called the Bull’s Tail because of its shape. They go up everyday from Inkpen.’

‘So I hear you say, but it’s still the Combe gibbet.’

‘No it ain’t. It’s Inkpen Hill, so it’s the Inkpen gibbet.’

‘It ain’t on Inkpen Hill. That’s half a mile away. It’s on Gallows Down. You can see it from the Bath road, as plain as a pint pot at harvest time.’

‘Perhaps you can, but it’s still the Inkpen gibbet.’

The man laughed with throaty self-assurance. ‘Then how is it Combe maintains it?’

‘It don’t maintain it. Inkpen does. I’ll bet you a quart pot to a pickled onion.’

Their argument went on vociferously, as if they had tackled the matter many a time before, and Oliver might have been amused had the subject been less gloomy.

A barmaid followed Beardmore, carrying two pints, and two small whiskies on a tray: ‘Compliments of the landlord,’ she said. ‘He took for the jars but sent you the whiskies buckshee.’

The men stopped their hammer-and-tongs about the gibbet at such generosity, one calling: ‘He’s got a soft spot for hussars. His son’s in the Royal Berkshires.’

The grey stallion, gleaming malignly, settled itself for a long piss, as if to lessen its weight for another bout of mischief. The rest of the horses took time to do the same business. Oliver lifted his pint, wondering why they had bothered to water the horses since, judging by low cloud and a sudden chill in the wind, they would get enough of it from the sky in a while. ‘What’s your name, love?’

With her creamy complexion and pile of fair hair he thought her about sixteen, and he smiled when she actually curtseyed. ‘Jenny. What’s yours?’

He laughed at her cheek in asking. ‘Burton, since you want to know.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘It’s no use getting off with him,’ Albert said. ‘He’d fall over his own toes to get to France. But I’m in no hurry, and our camp’s just up the road, so what are you doing tonight, duck?’

‘I’m not a duck,’ eyes glistening at Oliver as she placed the shorts on a weather-worn table under the window. ‘I’ll be serving in the bar for you, though.’

He stood erect, arm held out, and brought the jar in for a well-earned measure in the throat. It had been drummed into them that a hussar was ever on duty, so they must be on their way. ‘We’d better not have the whisky, though it’s bad manners to hand them back.’ He drew out a letter to his mother. ‘Will you post this for me?’

‘I’d like to,’ she said, ‘but there’s people in the pub waiting to be served.’

‘It’s to his sweetheart.’ Beardmore lifted his ale. ‘Every girl in Nottingham’s hanging on his coat tails.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘But there’s a box just round the corner, by the gate. You can’t miss it.’

‘Look after the horses,’ he told Albert. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Aren’t you going to drink the whiskies?’

‘We daren’t,’ Beardmore said. ‘It’s bad enough if the officers smell beer on your breath, but if it’s neat stuff we’ll be for the high jump.’

‘Our boss will be ever so disappointed. What shall I tell him?’

‘Just pour them on the ground where the horses have done their business. They’ve made such a flood already. Then you can take them back empty and tell your gaffer how much we appreciated it.’

As he turned to knock ash and dottle from his pipe she slopped the whiskies into the remaining half-bucket of water, then went indoors.

Oliver came back and picked up the same bucket to give the awkward horse a last drink before the final half-mile to camp, pleased to see it drink so avidly. Jenny returned for the tray, and he put an arm around her, a quick kiss on the cheek before she could break free. ‘You’re red like a beetroot.’ He smiled at her excitement. ‘It was only a kiss! But you look lovelier than any beetroot. I’ll come and say hello when I can get half an hour off from my duties. Perhaps we’ll go for a stroll.’

‘I’m living in,’ she said. ‘I can’t come out till a week next Sunday.’

Burton had courted a barmaid, but he wouldn’t let that put him off. ‘I’ll see you, unless we’re packed off to France. I’m not so sure I want to go now.’ He steadied the spiralling horse, deciding to ride it instead of lead. ‘Hold still, you damned Tishbite!’ He apologized to Jenny for such language, saluted her, and rode out onto the lane.

‘Looks like you got off with her,’ Albert called from behind.

‘A lot of good it’ll do me. But she’s a lovely girl.’

‘I wouldn’t mind getting her under a bush, either.’

‘Don’t be filthy.’ The horse reared, and he saw only a troubled moiling of grey cloud. ‘This mount’s a swine to look after.’ A touch of the spurs might bring it to order, but that was a mark of failure. Bad treatment could only make a horse worse, and in any case spurs were discouraged in the regiment, except at certain times.

‘It wants a bat across the arse with an iron shovel,’ Beardmore cried. ‘We’ll get it back as quick as we can, then it can torment the colonel.’

The crinkle of the letters on moving his arms called Alma to mind. Perhaps he should have burned them after all, to obliterate her memory. Love died bitterly, and you lived in limbo till another person came along who, in all freshness, you began to love more. He was twenty-four, and hoped to cut all ropes that held him to the past. He felt old, as if he had lived two lives already, yet everything was vividly reflected in the mirror of the past, constantly forcing him to look in and see faces he fought to forget. He wanted strange and open landscapes yet thought what heaven to walk up and down the High Street with Jenny or someone like her, whether or not it delayed his going to France.

Perhaps she flirted with every hussar who called for a drink, though he preferred not to think so. Her blue eyes, like corn-flowers plucked from the edge of a wheatfield in August, held the promise of seeing her again. A few minutes’ chat across the bar would obtain her full name, and permission to write while on active service. Letters would be a way of falling in love, and if he was alive and in one piece by the end of the war they could marry, and live till death did them part.

Fresh leaves fell on the mottled ones of last year, spots of rain clattering to help them down. ‘We shall get drowned in this,’ Albert said, ‘but we’ll be there soon, so it’s no use unrolling our capes.’

At the first view of tents Oliver was pulled from his dreams by so forceful a lunge that he jumped before being thrown, disorientated but on his feet. The horse neighed and reared again, galloped through a gate into a field of stubble.

Albert leapt down. ‘I’ll hold the bogger.’

‘You won’t do much good. Leave him to me.’ If a horse goes mad on you, Burton once said, in his rasping self-assured voice, the only thing is to shoot it. But if you care to risk your life, walk backwards till you’re by its side, only don’t touch. Talk gently to see if you can calm it. I did once, to see whether or not I could, but swore I’d never do so again. No horse is worth a man’s life, or any injury, so get out of the way of a mad horse till you have a gun in your hand, then shoot the devil.

Oliver went forward, but the coal-burning eyes lifted before him, hooves uprising, a pair of neat shoes terrifyingly outlined. He ran, at its feet drumming down and circling the field.

Burton’s advice might be good, but he didn’t know everything. The horse was an awkward cuss, not much worse than others he had known. Albert watched as Oliver went close, using all caution, talking in as gentle a tone as a fast-beating heart would allow. ‘Come on, then, Neddy, the world’s not such a bad place. We’ll get you to the lines and give you a good feed. You can roll about in a sandbath up there, though it’s only for horses who behave themselves.’

The horse charged. The escarpment of its chest frightened them both. ‘We’ll have to tackle the brute, or we’ll be late getting back,’ Oliver said, running after it.

Such a horse gave no warning. The power of its curving chest came down, a hoof glancing his forearm. He saw no reason for it to be unsatisfied with its existence, but some malevolence against mankind, and him in particular, lodged in its brain. It couldn’t have been well cared for, and whoever had sold the swine to the army must have been happy that day. Maybe it had been some gentleman’s horse and, on being taken away, could not adapt to new surroundings.

Albert stood well aside and said fervently: ‘Oliver, leave the fucker. It ain’t worth it.’

His Burton will was up. He would not be beaten. He would pacify the beast, but with ever more caution, as he imagined his father would have shown, and relying on agility to avoid whatever viciousness played in the horse’s mind, he went forward. The earth spiralled to a few square yards of conflict, the horse a falling monument. He swivelled to avoid the hooves, power under his feet to jerk clear, saw nostrils widened with emotion, snot and rain running down, as if more in terror of the world than even he was, but such a dangerous animal he’d never been close to, the mouth open showing a flash of teeth not much worn, evil in the eyes — he was frightened and knew the time had come to get out of the way.

A building on legs, of sheer muscle and flesh coming down, he hoped the horse in its madness would fall over on trying to kick, but a hoof as big as an anvil splayed wide with lightning suddenness on an unforeseen trajectory, unthinking tons of angry flesh behind. He misjudged the speed, and with a cry fell to the ground. Blood spurted, covered a whole side of his face by the time Albert reached him. He left the three horses, and set off in a gallop to the camp.

SEVENTEEN

Verses read to children from the Bible came out of days when she had been happy and in control of her life.

‘The vapour of fire wastes the blacksmith’s flesh, and he fights with the heat of the furnace; the noise of the hammer and anvil is always in his ears, and his eyes still look on the pattern of the thing that he makes.’

No idlers around the entrance, one glance into the forge was enough to show Burton wiping sweat from a face more lined than when they had been in Matlock. Talking to a man who hammered and shaped at the anvil as if only that gave meaning to his life would be futile. Unseen, she stayed a moment, since no one would notice.

Burton, lucky to be out of the cold rain, was never one to let another’s troubles concern him. The hiss of fiery metal in water by his side overcame the sound of rain striking slate tiles, and the slam of hammers followed her up the lane and by the church, head down as if not to be blinded by what she must face, tormented by no longer seeming to know who she was, yet so solid in mind and body that the anguish was unbearable.

A convoy of army wagons rattled on before she could cross the road. Letters to Oliver had gone to waste, a heartbreak written into each, but requests for forgiveness or understanding could not be expected from someone so stiffnecked. The son was like the father in refusing to soften her misery.

Yet she remembered his blameless features when he had taken her to Misk Hill, a memory now too spoiled to give comfort. To enjoy such a poignant vision was a romantic indulgence from days which could never come back. The madness with Burton could not be undone. People looked at rain mixing with her tears as they went by — just another woman crying. She wanted to be dead, but whatever you wanted wouldn’t happen. The simple wisdoms of the world were hard to learn, and God alone made the rules.

Lydia was the only person to talk to, or so she hoped, standing by the step, rain washing off traces of soap and pumice. By custom she should have gone down the entry way to the back door but couldn’t move, and after a while knocked again, with her fist. If her aunt wasn’t in she would go to Trent Bridge, climb the parapet before anyone could pull her back, feel her flight through the air, and then an unbreakable envelope of cold water would welcome her in.

Two bolts were unshot, and her aunt stood in the doorframe, peering through steel-rimmed glasses. ‘What a surprise! I thought you were at work.’

‘I felt too ill to go in.’

She stepped aside. ‘You’re all soaked. Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?’

She had known Lydia’s parlour, even as a young child, to be unlike the smelly untidiness of the one at home. Everything was still in place, familiar and comforting, the round table covered by a lace cloth, an aspidistra plant of outcurving leaves in a laminated metal bowl set in the middle, a small Bible close by, brass clasps always shining, a book she used to open and try to read. A sewing machine in a black case stood on the dresser, and a corner what-not was crowded with seaside pottery figures and coats of arms from trips to the coast and countryside. Alma had played at putting them in ranks on the rug and, not yet able to read, speculated on where they came from.

A framed photograph of her father as a smart soldier in dress uniform, with a pillbox hat and swagger-stick, was far from the wreck of his appearance now. After seven years in the army he was without rectitude of any sort, never able to profit from his work and business, perhaps because he had no sergeant-major to bully him, so turned into an idler only happy after a few pints. Sitting in the pub, he would lament his bad luck, till the beer began to inspire, then tell stories about his service in India.

She followed her aunt into the kitchen-living room, with its piles of lace which Lydia, with other women in the district, fetched as outwork from the factory at the end of the street, collecting her load every few days in an old pram. Working all hours without complaint, she made a living, did so much every day, and if she was unwell and couldn’t, laboured into the night to make up for it when she was better. Instead of a ten-hour shift in the mill she preferred working at home, even if it took far more of her time, unable to tolerate the heat and dust in the factory, and the foulmouthed women who title-tattled from going in to coming out about how they were up to no good.

Alma saw her busy every day with her mending at the table, time too valuable to waste, unlike her father who hadn’t the backbone to go out and find work, and grumbled against whatever prevented him making a living. Yet she could no longer despise or condemn him, having fallen lower than was ever possible for a man.

In her trouble she had come to Lydia because there was no one else, Lydia who took care of herself because, she said, no one would do it for her, and she didn’t want any man to do it either, having too often seen how young and happy women were turned into fearful mouse-like drudges soon after getting married.

Alma put a hand to her breast as if to stop the heart breaking through, and didn’t see how anyone could help, though watching the care Lydia took at placing a kettle on the half-dead fire increased her hope.

‘I’m economizing on coal, but it’ll boil in a bit.’ She was tall, sallow-faced and thin, arms sinewy below the elbows. Black hair was dappled with grey, and the stern line of her lips contrasted with signs of humour in her eyes. She took crockery from a glass-fronted cupboard. ‘Get your coat off, and sit by the fire. You look half-dead, and it’s not just the rain, either. Is it because your father’s murdered your mother? Or have the bum-bailiffs been and chucked your furniture onto the pavement because my feckless brother hasn’t paid the rent? Neither would surprise me.’

The kettle boiled, and she fetched a seedcake from the scullery. ‘Have a slice of this. I made it myself. I’ve never seen you in such misery, so tell me what’s the matter.’

Alma put a hand around the cup to warm her fingers, and to stop it rattling against the saucer. ‘On my way here I thought the best thing would be if I chucked myself off Trent Bridge.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I’ve been sick every morning this week. A woman at work said I must be having a baby.’

Lydia faced her from the rocking chair. ‘That went through my mind when I saw you at the door.’ She put her cup on the hearth. ‘But I couldn’t believe it.’

‘I wish I couldn’t.’

‘Stand up, and let me have a look at you.’ She pressed the stomach, and turned her. ‘The woman at work must be right, though trust her to know. Who was it?’

She had dreaded the question. ‘I can’t say.’

‘Eat your cake.’ Anger flashed across her dark eyes. ‘You’ll be needing all you can get soon. So how many men were there?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘I should hope not. He’s married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it a teacher at that Sunday School?’

‘No.’

She sat down, as if exhausted. ‘I suppose I shall have to be satisfied with that for the moment. But whoever it was you can stop thinking about chucking yourself in the river. You’d go straight to hell if you did a thing like that, and I don’t think someone like you would want to be in such a place. In any case it won’t be necessary to kill yourself because your father will save you the trouble. I know Les. You can’t have told him yet, or you wouldn’t be here.’

‘I thought you might want to kill me, as well.’

‘I would if you hadn’t always been my favourite. But how can you have been so daft as to get pregnant? It’s a shock, I can tell you. But you looked after me when I had pleurisy. Nobody else did. But your father will have to know about it.’

‘I’d better go and tell him.’

‘Not on your own. Finish your tea, and we’ll go together. You won’t get drowned on the way because we’ll take the big umbrella I use to cover the pram when it’s raining and I don’t want to get the lace wet.’

Lydia held her hand along the straight and narrow street, every door shut firm as if all inside were dead, water splashing from disordered drain pipes onto the pavement. ‘We’ll go by the Raleigh. It’s quicker that way.’

Alma’s footsteps slowed, wished herself far from trainsmoke coiling above the bridge. Low clouds were moving, and she wondered if one would pull her along if she put up a hand, taking her to anywhere but where she was. The rain stopped, and Lydia brought the umbrella down to fold. Lights glowed yellow at the factory windows, a heavy smell of oily disinfectant from rows of machines going full pelt inside. ‘They’re on war production,’ Lydia said, ‘though they still make a few bikes. A lot of women have been set on because of all the men joining up, but I’d never work there.’

Alma hoped only her mother would be home, but Les opened the door, the sleeves of his striped collarless shirt rolled to the elbows. The unlit pipe in his mouth was a bad sign. Once tall and slender on his soldier’s rations, a stomach bulged under his belt. Having heard them coming, he stood on the step. ‘I thought you were at work?’

‘Aren’t you going to ask us in?’ Lydia said.

He moved aside. ‘I suppose that’s the least I can do for my only sister, who’s always been too stuck-up to come and see me, and never even lent me a couple of bob when I was in need.’ He grasped Alma’s wrist. ‘I asked why you weren’t at work.’

Half a loaf and a dish of butter stood on the table, an aluminium teapot, cups and saucers, not a good day, they were always short of something, the money she gave them never going far. An empty firegrate smelled of cold soot, and a floorcloth hung over the lip of a half-filled bucket.

‘I didn’t go in.’

‘I can see that. I’m not blind, am I? Why not? Do you want to lose your job?’

‘I wasn’t feeling well.’

He knew all about malingering. ‘You look well enough. You’re on your feet, aren’t you?’

‘She’s going to have a baby,’ Lydia said.

Hilda came in from the parlour, a small round-faced woman whose eyes could never, or did not dare to, focus on her husband. She looked at her sister-in-law, having heard the revelation, and thought that for everyone’s benefit it might have been spoken less directly.

Les made a fair job of bringing himself to full height, and called from the wreck of his parental authority. ‘I could tell. It’s obvious already. I had my suspicions a week or two ago, and said as much to Hilda, but that wet fish told me I must be wrong. She said I was a man and didn’t know about such matters.’ He turned to her: ‘Well, you did say it, didn’t you?’

‘I know. But I feared the ructions if I said what I thought. I only hoped it wasn’t true.’

Lydia leaned forward on her umbrella, tired at standing but too proud to request the use of a chair. She pitied Alma but was hardly less sorry for her brother, not nice for anyone to hear of his daughter’s bad luck, or gormlessness. ‘We thought you ought to know.’

To have it confirmed by his sister was doubly painful, since she had always treated him and his failings without an ounce of sympathy for what the world did to a man who tried his best to get work, and when he did, and slaved all the hours God sent to make a go of it, the client took a dislike and paid him off, which made him even harder done by, and now the present catastrophe stabbed him like a bayonet in the guts.

He stood before Alma and lifted her chin. ‘Been whoring, have we, you dirty little bitch? Got your belly up, have we?’ She shook her head clear, but the grip was brutal. ‘Said you were at Sunday School when you were with some lad. Who was it?’

Hilda rubbed the lamp glass with a teacloth and set it gleaming on the table — anything for her hands to do. ‘Don’t say such things, Les. It won’t help matters.’

‘Won’t it?’ He turned to her. ‘You can shut your mouth, for a start, and leave this to me. I always expected something like this.’

‘It’s not the end of the world,’ Lydia said coolly, ‘unless you want to make it so.’

‘It’s none of your business.’ Half-fainting, Alma stood as if all life and hope had gone, but the hatred of her father kept her upright. His pot-coloured eyes glazed with rage. ‘Who was it, then? We shall have to get you married, and I can only hope that whoever it was has a bob or two to pay for it. I’ll wring his bloody neck if he tries to get out of it. Come on, who was it?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘“Can’t say”!’ he mimicked. ‘Oh yes you can.’ He opened a tobacco tin in the hope of seeing a few shreds for his pipe, the inside so clear he saw his face and didn’t like it, slinging pipe and tin onto the couch. ‘Was it that young man who called on you in summer?’

‘No, it wasn’t.’

‘Who was it, then? I want to know.’

His request was expected, and reasonable, but she had to say: ‘I can’t tell you.’ If she did, and her father was mad enough to call on Burton, well, she was saving blood and tears by staying mute.

‘You’ve always been stuck up and stubborn, but if you don’t tell me I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.’

Silence drove him to madness, and what she hoped would not happen came when the flat of his hand went against her head. She staggered into a mist of sparks, but stayed on her feet. ‘I won’t tell you,’ she cried.

A heavier blow sent her onto the floor, curled in misery and waiting for a boot to strike. His short black moustache was wet with spit: ‘Who was it?’

‘Oh, Les, don’t,’ Hilda said. ‘She’ll tell me later. I know she will.’

He moved to give what his eyes promised, but Lydia stood between, and drew back her umbrella for the thrust. ‘If you do that I’ll stick this in your beer-belly. And don’t think I won’t.’

He recalled her temper as an elder sister when they were children, and stepped away. ‘You got her into this. She told us she was stopping with you, when she was out whoring.’

Alma stood up, as if to strike back, but Lydia took her arm. ‘Come on, you can’t stay in this house.’

‘You’ve disgraced me,’ he shouted after them on the street. ‘Never come back, you trollop.’

They walked silently for a while till Lydia said: ‘I know he’s my brother, but he’s mental, and I can’t think what made him like that. He had a lot to put up with as a child, but that’s no excuse, because we all did.’

Alma covered the pain with her hands. ‘I feel sorry for him. It’s my fault, after all. I have to forgive him.’

‘No you don’t. There’s too much forgiveness for what people do to each other, especially what men do to women. The things I hear when I go to collect the lace. Some women have had more black eyes than hot dinners.’ Close to the main road she said: ‘We’ll do some shopping before getting home, and you can help me to carry it.’

Her flesh burned less on being hurried along at her aunt’s pace, a blue and white landscape between the mountainous clouds, peaceful without houses or people, and she wanted to be walking on her own among them, the nearest relief from a death she wouldn’t now think about.

‘I’ve got some witch-hazel at home.’ Lydia reached back for her hand. ‘It’s good for bruises. But if somebody asks what happened tell them you fell on your face when you weren’t looking. They’ll believe you. You do get that dreamy look sometimes. What a terrible waste,’ she said, a column of soldiers passing on their way to Wollaton Park. ‘All these idle men.’

They looked tired as ghosts going into some nether world where none could follow. ‘Keep your eyes to the front,’ the sergeant shouted. ‘And step out.’

Lydia crossed when the first batch had gone. ‘Won’t you tell me who it was?’

A lamplighter was pulling the gas into flame with his pole, wet pavements shining in the half-dark as if covered with ice, so that Alma righted herself from slipping in a pool of light. The painful drumming in her bones told her she would one day get out of a place which was no part of her, and not by killing herself either. ‘I can’t tell you.’

‘I shan’t ask again.’

‘Perhaps you’ll know one day. But not now.’ She was surprised at her strength in not even saying anything to Lydia, and hoped it was a promising sign for the future. ‘I’ll go on working at the mill as long as possible, so as to save all the money I can.’

‘We’re going to need it,’ Lydia stopped at the grocer’s window, ‘but you’ll be all right with me. One thing about the war is that wages are going up. Prices are as well, because everybody’s got work. As for the men, I know I shouldn’t say this, but let them kill each other if they want to.’

When she came out with her packets and bags Alma said: ‘If I have a boy I’ll call him Oliver.’

‘So that’s who it was.’ She put some of the groceries into her arms. ‘But Oliver who? It’s got to have somebody’s name.’

‘It’ll have mine,’ she said.

EIGHTEEN

Four stretcher-bearers and Albert looked on as Surgeon-Captain Rowe spread his burberry so as not to get mud on his trousers when kneeling over Oliver, who lay pale and cold on the ground. The winded horse chewed clover by a hedge, too satisfied at what it had done to wonder about its fate. Albert stood erect, glad that rain concealed his tears, and hoped the bastard would be shot dead, the sooner the better.

Blood soaked the khaki serge to Oliver’s shoulders. Rowe took off his cap for a clearer view, a small mirror at the wounded man’s mouth showing the hardly-expected sheen of breath, the face narrowed with pain, lips ashy blue, pulse uncertain. A leg kicked out. ‘He’s a strong soldier.’

Albert felt himself the only man left on earth because he hadn’t been able to help his friend, and struggled to straighten his features. ‘He’s very popular in the regiment, sir.’

‘That’s as maybe.’

Oliver’s head was lowered, tunic opened at the neck. Second-Lieutenant Hanson said: ‘How bad is he, sir? We can hardly afford to lose a farrier.’

‘There isn’t much to be done here in camp. It looks like a fracture at the base of the skull, and some lacerations of the brain I shouldn’t be surprised. He must go to the Southern General Hospital.’

‘That’s about thirty miles away.’

‘They’ll be able to treat him properly there. The thing till then is to keep him comfortable and still. May God help the poor chap. The orderly will need plenty of morphine for when he comes to.’

Stretcher-bearers took him to the medical-aid tent, where dressings were put around the wound. When a wagon was found a corporal and orderly were detailed to get him to Oxford. Rowe’s signed authorization and particulars ‘of the case were given to the corporal, who elected to drive. ‘Go as fast as you safely can. A man’s life depends on it. Once you’re in Oxford ask for the hospital at St Peter’s-in-the-East. Do you know the way?’

‘It’s through Wantage and Botley, sir.’

‘At least you know your geography.’

‘I’ve been there before, sir.’

‘The Saturday traffic might be heavy. But take the light wagon. I noticed one free this morning.’

Hanson turned to Albert. ‘The colonel will be sending for you, to find out how it happened. Meanwhile, get back to your work.’

Raincloud darkened as the corporal whipped the horse along the High Street. A barge sliding under the Kennet and Avon bridge looked so set apart from the world he wished himself asleep in the cabin, after a few pints from a wharfside pub, instead of driving the cart on a journey likely to be wasted.

The man was obviously near death, but hurry was the order because he was a lad of the regiment whose life depended on getting to Oxford as quick as the old nag would allow. You couldn’t tell. Some people go like a straw in the wind, but others have come out of worse. If the poor chap dies he’ll be the second since the regiment left Nottingham, because Sadler was crushed to death when a horse fell on him at Moulsford in September. Two dead, and the Germans hadn’t fired a shot, though you had to expect casualties in the army, and there’ll be plenty when we get abroad. It’ll be interesting to see foreign places, but it’ll be even more interesting to come back in one piece and tell the family what it had been like.

The orderly felt better off under cover, away from the rain on such a piss-ant day. Burton was so still it was hard to say whether he was here or in the next world already. He’d been told that if he came round and was in the sort of pain he looked like not being able to stand he must take a morphine tablet from the first-aid pack and put it under his tongue.

A rank odour of beerish nausea mingled with cold rain pelted the canvas. Drops came through in places, and it was funny how many different smells rain could have. If you were walking through a field in summer it might be sweet and warm, and you didn’t mind such a pong. Along a canal bank there would be a touch of iron in it, he couldn’t think why. Rain in town had a stink of horseshit and fag stumps, very unpleasant to the sniffer. The best rain was the sort that slapped against the window when you were in the kitchen, and smelled of nothing except toast and strong tea on its way to your gullet. The worst was that which reeked of soaking overcoat and leaky shoes on your way home dead beat from work on a dark night. But what was a few splashes of cold rain to a trooper?

Oliver’s feet stirred, a troubled snore from nose and lips, both arms needed to stop him sliding off the stretcher at the bumps and bends. The corporal on his high seat tackled the hill to Hungerford New Town. A nice pub there, but they daren’t stop, much as he would like to, speaking for himself, but the corporal from outside shouted that it was wrong even to think of it. A good enough stretch with little traffic took them over the hill to West Shefford, where a motor in the high street frightened the horse which had to be shouted at and called to order.

‘It’ll be ups and downs nearly to Oxford,’ the corporal mused. ‘Unless somebody flattened them out with a rolling pin since I was sent on one of the colonel’s chargers to get a box of cakes from that posh pastry shop, though I hope nothing’s been done with the more or less level bit beyond Wantage. After that there’s only the big up until down into Botley, and we’ll be nearly there.’

Oliver was trying to say something, all bubbles and blue spit, calling for his mother, the orderly didn’t wonder, like they were supposed to, unless he was married and it’s his wife he wants, though if he is married he ought not to be serving in the army but looking after her at home. Anyway, he’s too young to look as if he is. What’s that you say? Don’t worry, you’ll be as fit as a fiddle again, though I can’t promise you’ll shoe any more horses. Might as well make him think he’s going to get over it, if he’s hearing me at all. That’s a nice-looking chain coming from his tunic pocket. I wonder if there’s a watch on the end? Some blokes are born lucky to have one. Pity there’s no fags. I could do with a smoke.

Clouds moiled and glowered, a dreary day for the job they’d been landed with. Why couldn’t the horse have kicked him on a sunny day? Dour hedges lined the road, and a well-fed spaniel ran in front of the cart, from one field to another as if whistled by a bloke they couldn’t see. A second dog followed, and he wondered how many more there were. Maybe the hunters were out. They didn’t care about the weather. The hooves missed it by inches, and he squibbed his whip shouting: ‘Watch out, you blind curs.’

Crows squawked from a great oak tree. On beer wafting its malt delights from a pub doorway the orderly poked his head from the tarpaulin to say again that he wouldn’t mind a taste, but the corporal said they couldn’t stop under any circumstances. They might, though, pick up a jar on the way back. It’s a bloody long way to Tipperary, and I’m already fed-up slogging along this miserable road.

Sparks squealed from the brakes on a steep descent, a workhouse two-thirds the way down, a place I might have been in if I hadn’t joined the army, the corporal smiled, ready to tackle the obstacle of Wantage. ‘Do you know what famous man was born here?’

The orderly moved the flap aside. ‘Where?’

‘In Wantage. Can’t you see the houses?’

‘Who was it born here, then?’

‘You an Englishman, and you don’t know?’

He stopped Oliver rolling, at a turn of the street. ‘How the hell should I?’

‘I don’t know. Some mother’s do have ’em. It was King Alfred, you bleddy dunce.’

‘The chap who burnt the cakes?’

‘Well, you do know that much. He started the navy, that’s what he did.’ It was a complicated place to find a way through, but an elderly constable whistled, shouted and waved to get them a space in the congestion. A file of cavalry halted to let their red-cross wagon go by, the lieutenant at its head lifting a hand in salute.

‘He didn’t start the bleddy army after he burnt the cakes, though, did he, that King Alfred?’ the orderly shouted, smarting from his ignorance.

‘Shut your rattle, while I drive out of this lot.’ He turned left across the market place by the town hall, right into Grove Street, and down to the end of town. After the tramline came an awkward angle for a horse and wagon, then the way was clear into open country. The horse trotted across the railway and, a few miles on, over the Childrey Brook and the River Ock. The corporal took out a tuppenny packet of Woodbines, lit one, and even the horse seemed to clatter on more smartly at the smoke in his lungs.

Opening the flap the orderly called: ‘You wouldn’t have one of them fags for me, would you, Corporal?’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’ The horse went slothful again, so he used the whip, thinking that a month or two before it must have been pulling slag and rammel around a builder’s yard.

‘They ought to have provided a motor van for what we’ve got on board,’ the orderly shouted as the speed increased.

‘Or they could have put him on a train,’ the corporal said, when a scream came from Oliver on trying to move. ‘He’d have got there quicker, the poor chap, and in a lot more comfort. Here, have a fag, then.’

‘Thanks, Corporal. Swear like a trooper, smoke like a trooper, eh? They don’t care. He’s only an enlisted man.’ Head and shoulders came in from the stinging rain. He put an ear to Oliver’s lips, cigarette smoke over his face as if it might revive him. ‘What’s that? Your mother again? I wish she was here, instead of me. I expect she’d be a lot more use, though I don’t suppose by all that much. Stop moving your legs like that. It’ll make things worse if you manage it.’

Oliver struggled as if to get on his feet. The orderly opened his slack mouth, blood and spittle sliming his fingers, unravelled a twisted flattening tongue between the teeth, for a tablet to go in. ‘That’s the best thing. A bit of old knockout. The less you feel the better.’

Making him as comfortable as the jolt and rattle allowed, he slid fingers into the tunic pocket. ‘You don’t want to get it damaged, in all this rolling around. It would be a shame, such a lovely ticker.’ Oliver’s hand stopped him, an effort through dimming waves of sickness and pain, perhaps recalling the acronym of the Royal Army Medical Corps which the men always said meant: ‘Rob All My Comrades’.

‘Hang onto it, then, if you feel like that. I only wanted to look after it, to stop somebody else getting it off you. We’re doing our best to get a move on, and I wouldn’t mind if you did come round. Not that it looks like you’re going to, but it’d make my job easier. We could talk, then. Or you could talk, and tell me what’s best to do for you. When they’ve mended you in Oxford they’ll send you back to your family. Let them fuss over you. I’ll bet they will. You’re out of the war, and no mistake, one way or the other, so perhaps some good will come of your accident, except it’s taking us a long time to get to King Sawbones’s Palace. Not that it’s our fault. Your watch says it’s over a couple of hours since we left, and we’re doing the best lick we can, crossing most of Berkshire. Trouble is we’ll come back over the hills in the dark, and that’ll be a right dance. Lighting-up time’s twenty-past seven, and we’ve only got one lamp for the dark road.’

Ending such a comforting speech he called: ‘Do you want me to drive for a bit, Corporal?’

‘You do your job, I’ll do mine. You’re best off where you are. But I hope they shot the horse that kicked him. If they do, I suppose there’ll be meat pies for tea when we get back. It was a big horse. Corn in bleddy Egypt all next week.’

‘They don’t eat horses in the army, Corporal.’

‘Not yet we don’t.’

The orderly enjoyed talking to someone who could answer back. ‘When I see leaves diving from the trees, Corporal, it makes me think we’re in for a long war. I didn’t think so when they was green and the sun was shining on ’em.’

‘Shut your gravy-box, and look after your precious cargo. I’ve got this beast to manage.’

Oliver’s fingers reached for the opposite pocket to that holding his watch. ‘What’s in there, mate? I’ll get it out for you. It ain’t good for you to struggle. We don’t want your paybook getting covered in blood. Ah, it looks like letters. You don’t need ’em, unless you want to make a poultice out of the paper. Maybe there’s a ten-bob note inside. No, there ain’t. What’s this, though?’ He opened a gap in the covering, let the wind take the letters away. ‘I suppose it’s good there’s something on your mind, but don’t upset yourself, I’ve put ’em back. What’s this in the other pocket? A soldier carrying a folded handkerchief! There’ll be plenty of clean hankies where you’re going, and lots of nice nurses to mop you up.’

Oxford colleges and spires showed under a low sky from the top of the hill. An artillery column stalled them at the Witney road, men marching behind the shining barrels. ‘They’re so smart that the sergeants aren’t swearing at them,’ the corporal said in wonder, as the gunners stopped for nothing and went on.

Over the stream beyond Botley the road was taken up by carts and charabancs, motors and pony traps, wagons and omnibuses, neither space nor order in the eagerness to progress or disentangle. The corporal cracked his whip as they passed the station, a whiff of marmalade from Frank Cooper’s factory. ‘Makes your mouth water,’ the orderly called.

The corporal tugged this way and that at the reins. ‘I could walk faster than this. At least it’s not raining so much anymore.’ He talked to himself. ‘Over the bridge and fork right, I think. It’ll take me a fortnight to dry out. Then fork left.’

A military policeman at the Carfax crossroads, resplendent in red cap, was endeavouring to sort out the traffic. ‘We’ve got a badly-injured soldier on board, Sergeant,’ the corporal shouted. ‘Can you tell us where the Southern General Hospital is?’

The whole six-foot-odd of him, coolly raising his swagger-stick, stopped all movement, and came over to talk. A deep fair moustache, blue eyes as hard as stone, well-filled cheeks, and Boer War medal ribbons above the left tunic pocket into which went a lanyard with no doubt a whistle on the end, made a vision of authority to be feared. ‘How bad is he?’

‘He’ll be lucky to get there, Sergeant.’

He glared at the stalled traffic, as if daring a single wheel to turn, and in a blistering voice told a parson in a dog-cart to hold back and not shift till he was beckoned on. ‘He will, if I can help it,’ pointing the way onto the High Street. ‘Keep going, past St Peter’s-in-the-East, and over the bridge, then follow the Cowley road. Turn right when you come to a church. And good luck to him.’ Waving his stick, he began to sort out the congestion.

‘What a fucking bully he was,’ the orderly said, halfway along the High Street. ‘I thought he was going to incinerate us when he came over.’

‘They’re like that.’ The corporal flicked his whip. ‘That’s their trade. But we wouldn’t have got through without him. As soon as I said we had a soldier on board he was like a lamb to us.’

Soldiers and civilians strolled along the pavements by church and college fronts, those with urgent business using what roadway was free of traffic. Officer cadets were drilling or doing physical jerks inside the quadrangles. The corporal urged his horse on. ‘It’s like trying to drive through Goose Fair on Saturday night.’ Two young women, arm-in-arm, thought him a tormenting brute, but he shook the whip at them, and they laughed on going into the Mitre Hotel.

Morphine no longer got through to the stars or landscapes of Oliver’s mind. He clutched the bandages, to tear them away and see how much blood was there, mouth working as if in dialogue with his mother. He called in fear for Alma.

The orderly held his hands. ‘Can you hear me when I talk to you? She must have been a nice sweetheart. But we’re nearly there, and then your troubles will be over.’

‘Father!’

‘It’s enough to break your heart,’ the corporal said. ‘This is the church the redcap mentioned. No more jerking around for him in this ramshackle contraption.’ He began the turn.

‘Perhaps they’ll supply us with tea before we start our way back,’ the orderly said. ‘I’m knackered already, and we’ve only done thirty miles. Having this poor bloke on board’s worn me out.’

‘I’ll bet it felt like three hundred miles to him.’

‘He’s very quiet suddenly.’ The orderly leaned for another look. Nothing to be done. Only hope he stays in his coma. Leave well alone, is all I can think.

A couple of chaps in white overalls, chasing a tennis ball around the yard, took little notice of their cart entering the gate. Too common a sight for them to jump, but recalling the redcap’s method the corporal raged that they had a dying man on board, and would they look sharp and give them a hand?

They unloaded the limp body onto a trolley, while others opened doors into reception. The nurse behind her glass office pressed a button, while the corporal showed his chits to a medical officer.

Oliver’s face suggested little more wrong than had been sustained on rugger or football field — common soldiers could be so damned rough — but on turning the head the doctor called: ‘Wheel him to the lift,’ and to a nurse: ‘He’s to be made ready for the operating theatre.’

‘That’s our job done,’ the corporal said.

‘Now we can get our tea and buns.’

‘Not before we’ve watered the horse. He’s got to get us back to Hungerford. I don’t suppose he’s done sixty miles in one day before.’

After such duty by the stables the corporal talked to the nurse behind the desk about a meal. ‘Matron will give you a chit,’ she said, ‘for the other-ranks’ mess. I’ll call her.’

The orderly looked at his watch before sitting at the trestle-table. ‘We’d better hurry, or we won’t get back till midnight, and it’s church parade tomorrow.’

Cold potatoes, two slices of bully beef, a scoop of cabbage and a chunk of bread covered their plates.

‘Where did you get that?’

The orderly took a long drink at his mug of tea. ‘I’ve always had it. The old man gave it me as a present when I joined up.’

The corporal gripped his wrist. ‘You lying thief. You’ve nicked a dying man’s watch.’

He drew the hand away. ‘You want to be careful what you’re saying.’

‘That’s Burton’s ticker. Hand it over. I’ll see it gets back to his family — if he dies.’

‘It’s mine, I tell you.’

‘It was for an hour. Say goodbye to it.’

‘You’ll only keep it for yourself.’

‘If you don’t give it me I’ll knock you to the ground. And I’ll make a report. Never in my born days have I known such a thing. And as well as that, I’ll have that postal order you took.’

‘Postal order?’

‘You went through his pockets. Thought I was blind? Didn’t know I had eyes in my arse, did you? A slip of paper it was, so it must have been a postal order. If you don’t hand it to me jildi-like, I’m going to shake you up and down in front of the nurses till they see what tiny bollocks you’ve got.’

He gave up his loot. ‘A right mate you are. Can’t we go shares?’

‘I’m not your mate. I’m an NCO in a crack cavalry regiment.’ He folded the paper and put the watch in his pocket. ‘Now that you’ve handed it over no more will be said, but just keep out of my way from now on. I don’t think that sergeant-redcap at the crossroads would show much concern for your face if I told him what you’d done. I only hope the Germans put a bullet through your windpipe as soon as we get overseas. Now let’s eat our grub. It’ll be dark in an hour.’

NINETEEN

Morgan knocked raindrops from his billycock hat. ‘There won’t be many horses left soon, with so many taken by the army. I can’t see a lot coming back. Soldiers don’t know how to look after them.’

Oswald hammered a shoe on carefully because his father watched from the doorway. Burton hadn’t felt well on getting out of bed, eyes less sharp and tongue coated, not from boozing but a touch of the ague — or age, he wondered — that a lot had now that the autumn rain was back. To be out of sorts was rare, never to be mentioned. He was tired and couldn’t fathom why, nor cared to. A pain in the back, or a crick in the groin, or a tweak at the bend of an arm, or any sign of a headache, could only be a matter of wilful disobedience on the part of the body, regarded with the contempt it deserved, and if it didn’t go away it would kill him in its own good time, but if it did go away there was nothing to worry about, and could be taken as a sign of his God-given right to go on living.

Oswald saw him in the forge uptilt a bottle of the jollop for seedy or sluggish horses and take a couple of swigs, so that by the time the cork was back and the bottle on its shelf, he seemed more his normal self. A grind of knuckle at the eyes diminished the spinal ache. ‘Hit the nails a bit harder,’ he called. ‘They won’t bite. You should know what you’re doing after all this time.’

Oswald wasn’t so afraid now that Oliver had gone. ‘I’m doing it my way.’

‘The only way is mine, so have less of your lip.’ He wished Morgan would go, and let him get on with the work to be done. ‘The army’s got plenty of motors, though; there’ll be so many on the roads we’ll have a lot less trade.’

When Sabina came along the lane he felt anger at her being away from school, though it was strange that Mary Ann had put her in a white frock kept only for Sunday. ‘What are you doing here at this time of the day?’

She stayed some yards off, her face a chaos of misery. ‘Oliver’s dead, our dad.’

He looked for a few seconds. ‘What did you say?’

Oswald stopped work, and everyone around stood like images in a frieze. She called again: ‘Oliver’s dead. He’s been killed. Mam got a telegram.’

Burton looked into the forge, the fire at half-glow, as if Oliver might be at his usual tasks. He came outside, pausing at the door to pick up tools from the ledge. ‘What was that again?’

She wouldn’t come closer in case he should smack her around the ears for bringing such news, and told him the third time, but this further demand had been a means of Burton keeping himself steady, and for him to remain still for a few seconds among the silent men waiting around, who seemed equally in shock, and then looking again at Sabina as if indeed wanting to boot her to Kingdom Come and back — to remark in an astonishingly sharp tone that made them realize even more how terrible the by now not unusual news must have been: ‘I damned well knew it.’

‘Mam says you’ve got to come home.’ Sabina, crying into her frock, agony in each noisy sob, was to remember till her dying day the whiteness of Burton’s face as he lit a cigarette. Oswald finished shoeing the horse, and Burton without thought manoeuvred it into the cartshafts. It didn’t want to go, as if also feeling that someone’s world had changed, and he got it in by force rather than persuasion, would have battered it to the ground had its resistance gone on too long.

‘He was such a fine young man.’ Morgan thought something must be said. ‘He was the apple of your eye.’

Burton turned on him. ‘Shut your mouth. We don’t know if it’s true yet.’

They did, but understood him wanting to doubt. Some mistake had been made. It couldn’t be true. They’d got the wrong man. Burton was a common name, and there’d been a mix-up. He wasn’t in France so how could he have been killed? They’d had a letter from him only the other day. ‘Go home to your mother,’ he told Oswald. ‘Take Sabina.’

‘She’ll want all of us.’

‘Do as I say. Some mistake’s been made. Close the place up, Tom,’ he said to Morgan.

‘I’ll be glad to.’

‘Drop the keys in on your way home.’

With Oswald and Sabina gone away hand-in-hand, he put on jacket and cap, and walked in the opposite direction. The sky had fallen in. The slightest hint that Oliver had died was impossible to credit. Houses to either side went black, the church was black, the sky was black, the trams on the main road were black. Oliver wasn’t anywhere near the war, so how could he have been killed? Trees along the boulevard were black. Sabina had called out that he was dead but how could it be true? Every word of the telegram was black. The idea of Oliver being dead created the blackest of fogs.

Let the sky fall, it could be no worse. If it was true, and the way he felt told him it was, he would find out how it happened. He would know who was responsible, though if it was the truth, then he would be dead too, and so do nothing. The world went on, and there were so many things you couldn’t do or know.

The only building that wasn’t black was the public house, massive outside, red-bricked, and rearing to the sky. He stood at the bar yet didn’t call for a drink, features so abnormal Harry had to look twice. ‘Are you all right, Burton?’

He struggled to open his lips. ‘A glass of whisky. A double.’ Was he dreaming? He hadn’t been aware of dreams before, hard to know what he was doing if he wasn’t in a dream, but if this was dreaming he wanted none, never having heard of dreams so heavy they would break your back, like when your son went off to the army and four months later was dead.

Harry took a bottle from under the bar. ‘This is the best. Is anything wrong?’

‘They say my eldest lad’s been killed.’

‘Your Oliver? I didn’t know he was in France.’

The whisky went in one watery swallow. He turned to go home and see what could be done for Mary Ann.

He walked through Woodhouse, erect and high-headed. Everybody must know by now. On up the lane, he passed the house, unable to go there for the moment, as if a ten-foot thorn hedge held him back. A chalk mark would have been as effective. A traipse to the wood and back might stop the beating in his head, though he doubted anything would.

Mary Ann could not stop weeping. She couldn’t be expected to, poor soul, didn’t know what to do with herself, couldn’t do anything in the scorching anguish that wouldn’t leave her alone. It was unbearable to be near her with so much pain in himself. The day after the telegram he got up at five and went to work. Life had to go on. He dragged the lads out of bed to come with him, and earn enough so that everybody in the house could eat, though the hardest labour dulled nothing.

Children scattered as he crossed the Cherry Orchard, rooks creating a raucous palaver on the wet and misty day. The noise of redwings chattering overhead was buried by the rumble of a train. A wind told him that rain would soon be falling.

He took a cigarette from his tin but the match wouldn’t light. The next one did, and he put the box in his pocket, at the spot where Oliver had pointed the shotgun. If only he had squeezed the trigger, and had injured me, and I had told everybody it was an accident, and then I had died, he would have been free of me, and might not have gone for a soldier. Keep your back straight, whatever you do, it hasn’t even come into me yet what’s happened, though I can feel it trying to kill me.

The words would never go away: ‘I regret to inform you War Office reports Trooper O. Burton, South Nottinghamshire Hussars died 15 November Lord Kitchener expresses his sympathy’ — neatly written on the telegraph form. A few days later a second message came: ‘The King and Queen deeply regret the loss you and the army have sustained by the death of your son in the service of his country. Their majesties truly sympathize with you in your sorrow.’ The news had been reported in the Evening Post: ‘BURTON, shoeing smith, died from a kick while shoeing a horse, 15 November, 1914.’

The warbling of a wood pigeon mocked with its certainty of life. Those doomed to lose their firstborn son hardly know them to be the apple of their eye until they are dead. Beecher’s only lad was killed last week in France, and rows of photographs in the papers make it no better for the rest of us. As for Kitchener and their majesties, they’ve got more to gain from the war than people like us, so let them put their faces in the firing line.

Treading grass and live brambles in the wood, water soaked his trousers to the knees. The cooked smell of greenery came from the stream, where three children with their arses hanging out were putting potatoes, unearthed from Farmer Taylor’s field, into a fire. One urchin on his belly was blowing his guts away to keep a small flame alive, and when a pair seemed about to scatter at his footsteps Burton went no closer: ‘Don’t let Farmer Taylor catch you digging up his spuds.’

One boy had a more knowing face, half-starved but merry. ‘We can run faster than him!’

He envied their innocence. Perhaps one had lost a relative already. The world was hungry for young men, and King and Country was never a good excuse. The scum of the earth went into the army because they wanted a job and a nigger to wait on them — though Oliver had had no idea of that. If he joined up because of what I’d done more fool him, but I could blawt my eyes out, though it’s too late for that, and tears are always wasted.

On a roundabout way home he stepped over a freshet of rain running to the bridge. In the yard he walked to the outhouse where pig food was stored, took up two buckets to fill with bran and seed potatoes. Ivy and Emily held hands and cried in their misery. ‘Stop your blawting, or I’ll give you something to blawt about.’

The look Ivy gave was as if she wanted to strike him dead, and if only she could, he thought, what a blessing that would be, though not for her after I’d gone. ‘We can’t help it, our dad,’ Emily dared to say. ‘Oliver’s dead, and now he’s in heaven.’

Grunting his disbelief that Oliver could be anywhere but at the undertaker’s parlour, or on his way home by now to be buried, he scooped scraps and potato mash from the barrel. The world might come to an end but pigs must be fed. What had happened had nothing to do with them, whose fate would be decided when Percy came up to slaughter one next week. He worked to dull pain, though nothing could, dumped the stuff in to let the pigs sort it how they wanted.

He took the buckets back. ‘Carry these to the well, and get them clean.’ Work might ease the girl’s minds, but such hope had no chance.

Thomas and Oswald were at the table with Sabina and Rebecca, no cloth spread, as if only alive to the white-faced pendulum clock on the wall, and the isolated heartbreak of a sob from one of the pale girls. ‘Where’s Mary Ann?’

‘In the parlour.’ Where you should be, Rebecca wanted to add but daren’t, because with Burton you had to rehearse every word before letting it out, and then press your teeth into your tongue to hold it back, more often than not.

Curtains were drawn in mourning, though only a footpath passed the house. A small lamp was lit, and Burton faced her, the telegrams and a letter open between them. He nodded: ‘That’s all it takes, a few bits of paper.’

She said it again. She said it every day. She came out with it every time she saw him or anyone. ‘He hadn’t been away four months, and now he’s gone forever.’ She said it to herself with every breath, every few seconds, no use telling her how often she said it, because she would more than likely go on saying it every minute till the day she died. And so would he go on saying it, and though he would say it only to himself you had to say something aloud now and again in case it was thought you had no heart.

‘He was killed by a horse, that’s what I can’t get over. The times I had to tell him to be careful. And he was careful, at least while I was looking. I know I did my duty in that respect. I drummed it into him from when he was a child. He knew as much about handling horses as I did. And then one had to kill him. It didn’t take the army long to rob him of his life. That’s what it must have been. The army killed him. If he hadn’t joined up he’d have been here now.’

‘It seems only yesterday that he was with us.’

‘Blawting won’t bring him back.’

‘I know,’ she wailed, ‘oh, I know.’

‘I could blawt as well, but it wouldn’t help.’ He spoke gently, afraid of too soft a tone in case he did weep.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said.

‘Nor can I. Read me the letter again, from his chaplain.’

Her fingers shook, voice barely audible, though he’d heard the words a few times already. ‘“Your son died while shoeing a horse.’”

‘That’s wrong,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t killed while shoeing a horse. That’s a lie.’

‘A parson wouldn’t lie,’ she said.

‘Believe what you like. Go on.’

‘“He received a blow at the head from which he never recovered. He was an excellent soldier, and his friends in the regiment will miss him sorely. I very much regret having to send you such sad news. You might like to know that the horse which killed him was shot.”’ She folded the letter carefully back into its envelope. ‘A lot of good that did, to kill the horse. But it was kind of him to write and tell us what happened.’

‘I only wish I’d been there to shoot the horse myself,’ he said after a silence. ‘If I had been it wouldn’t have kicked him to death anyway. A few tricks up my sleeve would have settled its hash. It wouldn’t have got on its legs again for a month, either. Or I’d have pulled Oliver away and told him to leave it alone.’

‘You weren’t there, though, were you?’ She spoke as if he ought to have been, that it was his fault he hadn’t been there, but he knew that whatever happened to one of your children had to be your fault for having got them into the world. So she was right in what she said, and all he could do was help her inch by inch through her grief, while enduring his own.

‘I know a few more tricks than he did. I’ve had more experience. Our family’s been blacksmiths for generations, and none of them was injured by a horse, beyond the odd nudge or two. But why did he try to shoe a mad horse in the first place? He should have run away. He could have done. Nobody’s obliged to shoe a mad horse.’

‘I pleaded with him not to enlist,’ she said.

‘So did I, but you couldn’t tell him anything.’

‘I can’t believe it. I remember holding him up in my arms as a baby, and making him laugh. And how he used to laugh! I know what made him enlist. It had something to do with that girl.’

He had been waiting for that. ‘No, it wasn’t because of me. He didn’t have to go. You can’t blame anybody. Everybody was joining up. They still are. There was a queue at the barracks, and he got pulled in with the others.’

‘It was about that girl,’ she said. ‘He didn’t tell me, but I’m sure I’m right.’

There was no answer, and he could only let it rest, if ever it would, but if that was the case he’s got me for life, and maybe longer. ‘Blame it on me, if it’ll help.’

‘Nothing can help.’

Nor me, either, he was unable to say. His large working hands reached across, but she drew hers away. ‘We’ve got to keep on living,’ he said, ‘that’s all I know. The girls are in the kitchen waiting for something to eat. Oswald and Thomas have been at work all day, and they’re hungry.’ As I am, but he couldn’t say that. ‘It’s time to get up and make the dinner. You look as if you could do with a bite.’

Remembering their courting when she had served his beer with such a smile at the White Hart, and the glistening of her eyes on his first night back from Wales, caused him to put out his hand again. She lifted it to her lips, and washed his fingers with her tears. He regretted that the house was so full of children, and when they stood to embrace he could tell that she did too.

There was nothing for it but to lead her into the kitchen so that she could start work on the meal everyone needed. Seeing the case of prize horseshoes on the wall he recalled how Oliver helped him put them in with the correct space between, an instinctively good eye for such arrangements, and enjoying that early confidence Burton placed in him.

Mary Ann came out of the parlour like a sleepwalker, but now, looking around the room, she seemed to wake up, and began telling the girls what to do.

An army wagon came from the railway station, a coffin on top with Oliver’s body inside, a Union Jack draped over. People stood by their front doors as it passed through Woodhouse, and went under the bridge up the lane. Four soldiers laid it on trestles in the parlour. ‘His sword’s on the coffin,’ the sergeant said, ‘and we’ll display it when we get to the church tomorrow.’

‘It’s a shame he wasn’t wearing it at the time.’ Burton took it from the scabbard. ‘He sharpened it, didn’t he?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘It looks a handy weapon. He ought to have rammed it into the horse.’

‘They were only given out last month, and he wouldn’t have had it at the time, being a shoeing smith.’

The lid was lifted, and Mary Ann began keening again, his death more believable now that she could see his body. ‘They’ve done something to the face,’ Burton said. ‘He must have been knocked about a bit.’ The texture was that of false fruit he had seen on peoples’ tables, nothing like flesh, though he was glad it seemed normal enough to Mary Ann.

His face was not so much at rest as utterly dead, made of putty, like that in a photograph taken at the seaside, with the head poked through a hole surrounded by unusual scenery, a bad copy of the living man, eyes closed, and cheeks more filled. Either the army diet had improved him, or cotton wool had been stuffed into his mouth at the undertaker’s parlour. The sword in its scabbard lay by his side, tunic buttons polished to shine like golden sovereigns.

Mary Ann kissed him as if tears, falling on cheeks and lips, would recolour his features and bring him back to life. Burton wished to God they would, he’d have spilt some of his own then, and blood as well, and been the happiest man on earth, but nothing could do that. The army had killed him, and what else could you expect? No army looked after its men when there were so many to draw on. His father and mother had died in the fullness of their lives, and so had Mary Ann’s. Perhaps she was thinking of her parents but, whoever they had in mind, what was left of Oliver was here to receive the final kisses of Mary Ann and the rest of the family, a scene to break the heart if you did but let it.

He gave each soldier a glass of beer, and while they were drinking took the sergeant back into the parlour. ‘Now you can tell me what really happened to my son.’

‘How do you mean, sir?’

‘He wasn’t killed shoeing the horse when it kicked him.’

‘That’s what I was told.’

‘That was what you were told to tell me, but you know that’s not the truth.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you. No blacksmith was ever kicked while shoeing a horse. If a horse tried to kick while being seen to in that way it would fall down. A horse can’t kick on three legs. It’s an impossibility.’

‘I wouldn’t like to say anything about that, sir.’

‘I don’t suppose you would.’ He was lying, or he really didn’t know, so Burton let him go. They would never tell the truth.

Emily, Sabina, Thomas, Oswald, Edith, Rebecca and Ivy: each face bore its misery as they stood at the coffin, resplendent happiness only on Emily’s face: ‘Oliver’s gone to heaven. He always said he would.’ Then her features distorted into tears.

‘I’ve told you,’ Burton said. ‘There’s to be no blawting in this family.’

‘Why can’t there be?’ Edith wailed. ‘He was worth a hundred of you.’

A tremor at his cheeks, but he said nothing. Let them cry, for all the good it would do. It wouldn’t bring Oliver back. He was about to leave, unable to endure so much warranted grief, when the door rattled to let someone in.

They saw Alma standing there. A loosely buttoned coat hung about her as if it had been rained on for a week, or as if she had slept in it under a hedge. She looked older to Burton than she should have. ‘What do you want?’

Anyone could come in who wanted to, so he needn’t have spoken. One or two would call from Woodhouse or the sawmill, and the Ollington sons would show themselves on finishing work at Taylor’s farm.

Alma pushed a way forward with bowed head to the coffin, hands together as if in prayer. Crying stopped, not because Burton had cowed them by his impossible demand not to blawt, but at Alma’s long intent look, eyes going from head to foot of the body as if to make sure all of it was there.

She’s pregnant, Edith said to herself, like me, and then a weird scream of agonized distress shocked them, Alma’s wail going on until everyone except Burton was pulled into an intensity of keening that seemed to vibrate the walls. The girls turned to each other as if for explanation as to why their control had gone, or to comfort each other as they stared down at Oliver, unable to believe he was dead, that he would never again make them laugh at his jokes and quips, wanting him to get up from his coffin and say he had only been pretending. They turned to Burton, who had always kept them in order, as if daring him to condemn their behaviour.

He looked at Alma, then over her shoulder to view Oliver, gazed about the room as if desperate to find refuge from the terrible unstoppable commotion on each mournful and individual face. After the long slow look his features suddenly shivered from their habitual iron composure, which none present had seen before and never would again. He drew out a large red handkerchief, and from the albeit noiseless movement behind the covering of his face, they knew that the soul was being torn out of him at last, Edith not alone in thinking that if it wasn’t now it never would be.

Ivy and Rebecca helped Mary Ann to get the dinner ready, and Thomas went with Oswald to the well. Edith, having twigged what was wrong with Alma, walked arm-in-arm with her down the lane, since she had seemed too distressed to leave the house alone. ‘I can see you’re going to have a baby, duck. So am I. My husband’s Tommy Jackson. He went off with the gunners to France, and I haven’t heard from him for over a fortnight, so I’m beginning to wonder if he’s all right, but then, I would, wouldn’t I?’

‘I knew him,’ Alma said. ‘He’d sometimes come to the Sunday School and collect his little sister.’

‘That’s him, all right!’ Edith laughed. ‘Though I shouldn’t think he ever went there himself, the way he carried on with me. “I’ve rented a hedgebottom for the weekend,” he used to say. “It cost me the earth, but I know it’s going to be worth it. Just come with me, and let me show you where it is. I’ve fixed it up with a double bed and a birdcage!” He’s a real devil, but I’ve always loved him, and I know he loves me. What’s a man for if he can’t make you happy in that way? Oh, I’m sorry. You’re crying again. I feel like that as well,’ and they wept through the dim long tunnel, Edith stopping the moment they were in the open, unable to bear anyone seeing her upset. ‘When I have my baby I’ll call him Tommy, after his father, and I think I know what you’ll call yours. Our Oliver was a bit of a lad. All the girls liked him, and it never took much to see why.’

She stammered. ‘I’m not sure what I’ll call him.’

‘Well, you’d better decide, because if you don’t have a name ready you might say the first one on the tip of your tongue, and afterwards it might not be the one you wanted. I must know what to call mine in case I blurt out my father’s, which is Ernest, and I never want to do that, because he’s been a bogger to me all my life, though he’s better to me now I’m married.’

Alma felt close to Oliver’s goodlooking confident sister. She liked her, and in her misery wanted to hold her. ‘Mine might be a girl.’

‘Well then,’ Edith said, ‘if mine is I’ll call her Ivy, like my sister. My baby will always be Little Ivy, and my sister will be Big Ivy. That way there’d be a difference, and we’ll always know who’s who. I’ll walk you to the top of the road, duck, but then I must go back to help my mother.’ It was impossible not to weep. ‘I can’t believe our Oliver’s dead. It don’t seem true.’

‘I can’t believe it either. I never will.’ They embraced in mutual misery and concern.

‘I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow morning.’ Edith kissed her wet cheek. ‘It’s at Lenton, at eleven. I don’t suppose there’ll be many there, but I’d like all Nottingham to come and say goodbye to Oliver.’

Mary Ann wept through the service, so many tears from the thirty or so in the church that you could rear a patch of prize marrows, Burton thought, who felt himself bleeding inside. Oliver deserved no less, but the vicar rattled on about what a good and upright Christian he had been, and what a pity God took him so young, as if the sanctimonious humbug had known him every day of his life. The army chaplain put in his sixpennyworth as well, and there were prayers and hymns, though the ceremony had to be drawn out if only for Mary Ann’s sake. The few tears he had blawted in the house were enough for him, having the rest of his life to mourn a beloved son who would have made an even better blacksmith than himself. Whether there would have been much work, with so many motors coming on the road, was something else to think about.

The November sky over the cemetery increased the desolation as the people came out, mourners as if blind, hardly knowing where to stand, till vergers discreetly arranged the scene. Six troopers from Oliver’s regiment carried the coffin to the graveside, marking his departure with full military honours.

The rain had waited specially, but what could you expect at a funeral? Fourteen riflemen formed up on either side of the grave, each file for the seven holes of a horseshoe, Burton surmised, a sergeant-major by the left hand row with three other NCOs. The vicar wore a cassock, and mortarboard with a tassel dropping behind, while the regimental chaplain in uniform stood close to Burton and Mary Ann. Eli and Tom and Harry and Morgan, all in their Sunday best, were further back by the wall, and others with nothing better to do had walked in from the street to see the show as if it was something on at the Theatre Royal. Away from everybody, and sharing a large umbrella with an older woman, Alma stood with a handkerchief to her mouth. Edith had told Burton of Alma’s condition, and he didn’t have to enquire whose baby it would be.

The vicar spouted as if he couldn’t have enough of listening to his own voice:

The sergeant-major barked: ‘Present!’

All rifles pointed at the sky.

‘Load!’

One blank cartridge went into each breech. ‘Fire!’

Fourteen shots clattered into the dank air, and after the echoes had died away, and the lugubrious melody of The Last Post sounded, even traffic on the road seemed stopped by the slow notes of the bugle. The ceremonial scene was taken by the Nottingham Post photographer from his tripod a few yards behind the priests.

Soldiers lowered the coffin, and Mary Ann sent down the first handful of soil with tears never to be her last.

As Burton kept the gate open for her to come onto the road a man of the firing party said: ‘Just a minute, sir.’

He held Mary Ann steady. ‘What do you want?’

The corporal saluted, and took something from his pocket. ‘This is your son’s watch. I know he wanted me to give it to you.’

Burton looked at it, and put it into his pocket. ‘Here’s a shilling for some beer.’

‘No, sir, that’s all right. Oh, and there’s something else.’ He gave him a slip of paper. ‘It’s a postal order for two shillings.’

Mary Ann fainted, but Burton caught her before she could fall.

A bottle of White Horse and a few quarts of Shipstone’s were laid out for those who came back to the house. Burton wanted to be at work, to lose himself in his own thoughts, but stood aside with a single whisky and let the others go to it, though few had much stomach for booze. The girls cut bread and butter, and brought in sandwiches on Mary Ann’s best plates to the parlour table, which none outside the family had seen before.

Morgan stood by the fire. ‘You’ve got a nice place here.’

He’s keeping the heat from the rest of us. Burton nodded at the remark. Had they expected to come back to a slum?

‘I suppose you’ll be joining up next,’ Morgan said to Harry the barman. ‘You can’t be a day over thirty.’

‘They’ll have to fetch me.’ He upended his empty glass. ‘I must get back to work. There’s still plenty of men clamouring for their pints, and some women as well, these days.’

A suitable guest, who drank and went. Burton nodded again, while Morgan turned to Tom. ‘Shall you be joining up?’

‘I will if you come with me. I’ve got children to look after. Kitchener’s bleddy eyes don’t frighten me. He wants to get in the trenches himself.’

‘That sort never do,’ Burton said, a hard look at Tom who was on his second glass of beer.

Ivy combed Rebecca’s long hair, which Burton considered wrong behaviour at such a time, though didn’t speak, which would have made it worse. At least they weren’t crying. He gave Emily a hard look for biting her nails. The girls had always gnawed them to the quick, and he’d told them about it many a time, but they never took a blind bit of notice. Sabina the other day was going so greedily at her fingers you’d think she didn’t get enough to eat. He clipped her ear, but knew she would do it again as soon as his back was turned. Such a detestable habit looked ugly on a young girl. Mary Ann said she used to do it, till her mother threatened to dip her hands in vinegar.

She sat unable to speak, a cup of tea and a ham sandwich undrunk and uneaten, as if a brick wall loomed an inch from her eyes. There would never be eight children again because she was too old to have any more, but at least she’d had them. Burton said that if she’d had another man instead of himself there might not have been such trouble between him and Oliver, who could therefore have been with them still, though he would probably have gone off to the army, with the daft notion of changing his life. When I said that God had taken my favourite he told me you shouldn’t have any favourites among your children, they’re all precious and equal. And so they are, I said, but any child of mine God took would be my favourite, whatever you say, and Oliver was always special, just like he was for you — which he didn’t deny.

She cried again. Would she ever stop? Could she? If she couldn’t it was easy to understand, because he was crying, the linings of lungs and stomach turning to salt. Last night he had woken up feeling torn and bloody from a dream of wrestling with Oliver, a bitter and inconclusive bout in the dark, but he couldn’t say anything to others because you never told your dreams. You could only be on your own at such a time, knowing that a day would never come when you could be as easy again as before your son had died. He wasn’t soft enough to hope for it. You go on, day by day, and if you live until tomorrow you’ll have lived forever, though on going to sleep at night he hoped he wouldn’t wake up again, and was sorry in the morning that he had, but you never revealed such things, nothing to be done about what was eating you with steel teeth.

Ivy opened the door of the parlour to show in Mr Brown from the sawmills. Bowler hat in hand, he held the other out to Burton, who pressed reluctantly, while Mary Ann folded it with both of hers. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get to the church,’ he said. ‘We’re working full tilt making planks for trench supports. The army nags us morning noon and night for all we can give them.’

Mary Ann stood, to pour a whisky.

‘Just a small one, Mrs Burton. We were so upset to hear about Oliver. He was such a fine man. My wife cried when she read it in the paper. She couldn’t believe it.’

‘Neither could we,’ Burton said. ‘But we had to.’

‘He was the best man I ever had, but I was very proud when he enlisted so readily.’

‘It was the worst move he ever made,’ Burton said.

Brown sipped his drink. ‘Young men have to go.’

The veins at Burton’s temples twitched. ‘They don’t.’

‘It’s for King and Country. I don’t know where we’d be if they didn’t go.’

‘Just where we are now.’

‘Even young Sid Camb’s gone. He went the other day to join the Robin Hoods. Told them he was eighteen, and he’s only fifteen. But they took him. He couldn’t wait to get in — a brave young lad.’

Oswald took a sandwich from the plate Sabina held before him. ‘They were wrong to take him.’

‘I can only pray for his mother,’ Mary Ann said.

‘Oliver wasn’t shot by the Germans,’ Burton said. ‘He was killed by a horse, and it could have happened anywhere. But before this war’s over,’ choosing the first large number that came to mind, ‘there’ll be a million killed.’

Brown looked at his watch. ‘I don’t know what it’s like to lose a son, Mr Burton, and I hope I never do. But my eldest went last week, into the Flying Corps, to be a pilot. He’s just turned eighteen.’ A sense of foreboding filled the cottage. ‘As I said, I’m sorry. It’s a terrible time. I must be going now.’

Rebecca showed him out. ‘If he’d stayed much longer,’ Burton said, finishing his whisky, ‘I’d have knocked him down. Him and his “King and Country”.’

‘He means well,’ Mary Ann said.

‘No he doesn’t. People like him know nothing. They were born grasping the wrong end of the stick, and they’ll die that way.’

‘I wanted to scratch his eyes out.’ Edith handed her father a sandwich. ‘I ain’t heard from Tommy for a while, and I’m worried to death.’

Ivy put the slide into Rebecca’s hair. ‘Well, they can’t kill everybody.’

‘No, but they’ll try,’ Burton said. ‘That’s the trouble. But Tommy will be all right.’ Edith had to take what comfort she could from that, yet he knew she looked for more, which he gave, knowing he might well be sorry if the worst happened: ‘He’s a good sort. He’ll come back.’

Mary Ann couldn’t stop her tears, and Edith went to her, and when she also wept Rebecca cut a piece of cake and passed it across, at which she wiped her face to eat. Burton put a hand on Mary Ann’s shoulder, and looked towards Morgan and Tom, who, feeling the burn, said they had to be going, put their glasses down, and went out together.

The wake was over, as far as he was concerned. He was glad Alma hadn’t drummed up the gall to come. Considering how easy it had been to get the brazen girl to bed at Matlock, she would certainly have called if she’d wanted to. He roused himself from thinking about scenes that weren’t appropriate.

The best way to take everyone’s mind off death was to set them working. ‘Thomas! Oswald! Get changed. We’re going to the forge. There’s a lot to catch up on. We can put a few hours in before tonight. You girls can help your mother. She’ll need it more than ever now.’

He was glad that people had come to wish Oliver goodbye, but on his way upstairs to get into working clothes he felt better now they had gone.