Ah Sweet Mystery of Life Read online

  But then an astonishing thing happened. The first day that he stayed away – a Monday it was – not one single child came near the playground.

  Nor the next day, nor the one after that.

  All week the swings and the see-saws and the high slide with steps going up to it stood deserted. Not a child went near them. Instead they followed Ole Jimmy out into a field behind the Rectory and played their games there with him watching; and the result of all this was that after a while the Council had had no alternative but to give the old man back his job.

  He still had it now and he still got drunk and no one said anything about it any more. He left it only for a few days each year, at haymaking time. All his life Ole Jimmy had loved to go haymaking and he wasn’t going to give it up yet.

  ‘You want one?’ he asked now, holding a bottle out to Wilson, the soldier.

  ‘No thanks. I got tea.’

  ‘They say tea’s good on a hot day.’

  ‘It is. Beer makes me sleepy.’

  ‘If you like,’ I said to Ole Jimmy, ‘we could walk across to the filling-station and I’ll do you a couple of nice sandwiches? Would you like that?’

  ‘Beer’s plenty. There’s more food in one bottle of beer, me lad, than twenty sandwiches.’

  He smiled at me, showing two rows of pale-pink, toothless gums, but it was a pleasant smile and there was nothing repulsive about the way the gums showed.

  We sat for a while in silence. The soldier finished his bread and cheese and lay back on the ground, tilting his hat forward over his face. Ole Jimmy had drunk three bottles of beer, and now he offered the last to Claud and me.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘No thanks. One’s plenty for me.’

  The old man shrugged, unscrewed the stopper, tilted his head back and drank, pouring the beer into his mouth with the lips held open so the liquid ran smoothly without gurgling down his throat. He wore a hat that was of no colour at all and of no shape, and it did not fall off when he tilted back his head.

  ‘Ain’t Rummins goin’ to give that old horse a drink?’ he asked, lowering the bottle, looking across the field at the great carthorse that stood steaming between the shafts of the cart.

  ‘Not Rummins.’

  ‘Horses is thirsty, just the same as us.’ Ole Jimmy paused, still looking at the horse. ‘You got a bucket of water in that place of yours there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No reason why we shouldn’t give the old horse a drink then, is there?’

  ‘That’s a very good idea. We’ll give him a drink.’

  Claud and I both stood up and began walking toward the gate and I remember turning and calling back to the old man: ‘You quite sure you wouldn’t like me to bring you a nice sandwich? Won’t take a second to make.’

  He shook his head and waved the bottle at us and said something about taking himself a little nap. We went on through the gate over the road to the filling-station.

  I suppose we stayed away for about an hour attending to customers and getting ourselves something to eat, and when at length we returned, Claud carrying the bucket of water, I noticed that the rick was at least six foot high.

  ‘Some water for the old horse,’ Claud said, looking hard at Rummins who was up in the cart pitching hay on to the rick.

  The horse put its head in the bucket, sucking and blowing gratefully at the water.

  ‘Where’s Ole Jimmy?’ I asked. We wanted the old man to see the water because it had been his idea.

  When I asked the question there was a moment, a brief moment when Rummins hesitated, pitchfork in mid-air, looking around him.

  ‘I brought him a sandwich,’ I added.

  ‘Bloody old fool drunk too much beer and gone off home to sleep,’ Rummins said.

  I strolled along the hedge back to the place where we had been sitting with Ole Jimmy. The five empty bottles were lying there in the grass. So was the satchel. I picked up the satchel and carried it back to Rummins.

  ‘I don’t think Ole Jimmy’s gone home, Mr Rummins,’ I said, holding up the satchel by the long shoulder-band. Rummins glanced at it but made no reply. He was in a frenzy of haste now because the thunder was closer, the clouds blacker, the heat more oppressive than ever.

  Carrying the satchel, I started back to the filling-station where I remained for the rest of the afternoon, serving customers. Towards evening, when the rain came, I glanced across the road and noticed that they had got the hay in and were laying a tarpaulin over the rick.

  In a few days the thatcher arrived and took the tarpaulin off and made a roof of straw instead. He was a good thatcher and he made a fine roof with long straw, thick and well packed. The slope was nicely angled, the edges cleanly clipped, and it was a pleasure to look at it from the road or from the door of the filling-station.

  All this came flooding back to me now as clearly as if it were yesterday – the building of the rick on that hot thundery day in June, the yellow field, the sweet woody smell of the hay; and Wilson the soldier, with tennis shoes on his feet, Bert with the boiled eye, Ole Jimmy with the clean old face, the pink naked gums; and Rummins, the broad dwarf, standing up in the cart scowling at the sky because he was anxious about the rain.

  At this very moment, there he was again, this Rummins, crouching on top of the rick with a sheaf of thatch in his arms looking round at the son, the tall Bert, motionless also, both of them black like silhouettes against the sky, and once again I felt the fine electricity of fear as it came and went in little waves over the skin of my stomach.

  ‘Go on and cut through it, Bert,’ Rummins said, speaking loudly.

  Bert put pressure on the big knife and there was a high grating noise as the edge of the blade sawed across something hard. It was clear from Bert’s face that he did not like what he was doing.

  It took several minutes before the knife was through – then again at last the softer sound of the blade slicing the tight-packed hay and Bert’s face turned sideways to the father, grinning with relief, nodding inanely.

  ‘Go on and cut it out,’ Rummins said, and still he did not move.

  Bert made a second vertical cut the same depth as the first; then he got down and pulled the bale of hay so it came away cleanly from the rest of the rick like a chunk of cake, dropping into the cart at his feet.

  Instantly, the boy seemed to freeze, staring stupidly at the newly exposed face of the rick, unable to believe or perhaps refusing to believe what this thing was that he had cut in two.

  Rummins, who knew very well what it was, had turned away and was climbing quickly down the other side of the rick. He moved so fast he was through the gate and halfway across the road before Bert started to scream.

  Mr Hoddy

  They got out of the car and went in the front door of Mr Hoddy’s house.

  ‘I’ve an idea Dad’s going to question you rather sharp tonight,’ Clarice whispered.

  ‘About what, Clarice?’

  ‘The usual stuff. Jobs and things like that. And whether you can support me in a fitting way.’

  ‘Jackie’s going to do that,’ Claud said. ‘When Jackie wins there won’t even be any need for any jobs…’

  ‘Don’t you ever mention Jackie to my dad, Claud Cubbage, or that’ll be the end of it. If there’s one thing in the world he can’t abide it’s greyhounds. Don’t you ever forget that.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Claud said.

  ‘Tell him something else – anything – anything to make him happy, see?’ And with that she led Claud into the parlour.

  Mr Hoddy was a widower, a man with a prim sour mouth and an expression of eternal disapproval all over his face. He had the small, close-together teeth of his daughter Clarice, the same suspicious, inward look about the eyes, but none of her freshness and vitality; none of her warmth. He was a small sour apple of a man, grey-skinned and shrivelled, with a dozen or so surviving strands of black hair pasted across the dome of his bald head. But a very superior man was Mr Hoddy, a grocer’s