Alan Moore - Jerusalem

He turned right onto High Street and it took him back down on the Bedford Road, just like the caretaker had said. He went out of the village past the Red Lion public house what they had near the turn there, where farm workers who was coming in already off the fields with mighty thirsts looked at him silently as he went by. That could have been his rope tyres what he had, though, and not nothing was related to his skin at all. It tickled Henry how folks here with all they clever ways of building walls and tying hedges and all that, how they all acted like rope on a feller’s wheel-rims was the most outlandish thing they ever seen. He might as well have had trained rattlesnakes instead of tyres, to hear folks going on about it. All it was, it was a trick he’d seen some other coloured fellers use in Kansas. Rope was cheaper, didn’t wear like rubber did or else get punctured, and it suited Henry fine. Weren’t any more to it than that.

Across the Bedford Road right opposite the High Street turn, the land all dropped away, and where the river tributary did too there was a waterfall. The spray what got flung up from this caught in the slanted light and made a rainbow, just a little one hung in the air, whose colours was so pale that they kept fading in and out of sight. He turned left on the main road and rode on about a quarter mile from Yardley, where he found the steep lane running down upon his right what had a sign said Olney, only saying it was steep weren’t doing it no justice. He flew down it like the wind, sending up glassy sheets of water where he couldn’t help but splash through puddles, such as on the soft ground near a third of the way down where there was ponds with gnats in a mean vapour hanging over ’em. Speed he was going at, it didn’t seem five minutes before he could see the village rooftops down the way ahead of him. He let his brake-blocks skim the dirt road, slowing down a little at a time so that he didn’t have no accidents before he’d gotten where he wanted. Back of Henry’s mind there was the thought that it was going to be an effort getting up this hill again, but he put that aside in favour of the great adventure he was shooting into like a bottle rocket, with his rope tyres sizzling in the dried-out cowpats.

Olney, when he got to it, was bigger than he’d thought it would be. Only thing he saw looked likely it might be a church spire was off down the other end of town, so that’s what Henry headed for. All of the people what he passed by on the street was staring at him, since he hadn’t come this way before and was no doubt to they mind a ferocious novelty. He kept his head down, looking at the cobbles what he pedalled over, being careful not to give offence. The streets was quiet, without much horse-traffic that afternoon as he could see, so that he was embarrassed by the noise his cart was making when it thundered on the stones in back of him. He looked up once and caught a glimpse of his reflection, racing by across the window of an ironmonger’s shop, a black man with white hair and beard upon a strange machine who passed through all the pots and pans hung on display like he was no more solid than a ghost.

When in the end he reached the church, though, it was worth it. Way down on the bottom edge of Olney, with the Great Ouse River and its lakes spread to the south it was a towering and inspiring sight. It being Friday it weren’t open, naturally, so Henry propped his bicycle against a tree and walked around the building once or twice, admiring its high windows with they old stained glass and squinting up towards that spire, what was so high he’d seen it from the village’s far end. The clock that was up on the tower there said as it was getting on for half-past three, or ‘five-and-twenny arter’ like they said on Scarletwell. He reckoned he could look around here for a while and still be home before it got too dark out and Selina started worrying.

He guessed that he was kind of disappointed there weren’t nothing on the church what told of Pastor Newton or “Amazing Grace”. It was just Henry’s foolish notion of how folks in England done things, he was sure, but he’d expected they might have a statue of the man or something, maybe standing with his quill pen in his hand. Instead, there wasn’t nothing. There weren’t even a bad likeness hung up near a chimney. Right across the street, though, Henry saw there was a graveyard. While he didn’t know if Pastor Newton had been buried here as well, he thought there was at least a chance and so he crossed the road and went into the cemetery by its top gate, off from a little path ran down beside a green. Things jumped and scuffled in the long grass near his feet, and just like in the Boroughs he weren’t sure if it was rats or rabbits, but he didn’t care much for it either way.

Excepting Henry and the village dead the churchyard seemed about deserted. It surprised him, then, when he turned round a corner in the paths what led between the headstones, right by where there was an angel what had half its nose and jaw gone like a veteran from some war, and kneeling there beside a grave to pull the weeds up from it was a stout man in his waistcoat and his shirtsleeves, got a flat cap on his silver head. He looked up, more surprised by seeing Henry than what Henry was by seeing him. He was an old man, Henry realised, older than himself and maybe close to seventy. He was still sturdy, though, with great white mutton chops to each side of a face sent red by sun. Below his cap’s brim he had small wire spectacles perched on his nose-end, what he pushed up so that he could take a better look at Henry.

“Good Lord, boy, you made me jump. I thought it was Old Nick who’d come to get me. I’ve not seen you round these parts before, now, have I? Let me get a look at yer.”

The man climbed to his feet with difficulty from the graveside, Henry offering a hand what the old feller gratefully accepted. When he was stood up he was around five and a half feet, and a little shorter than what Henry was. He’d got blue eyes what twinkled through the lenses of his spectacles when he looked Henry over, beaming like he was delighted.

“Well, now, you look like a decent chap. What’s brought you here to Olney, then, if you don’t mind me asking? Were you looking for somebody buried here?”

Henry admitted that he was.

“I come from Scarletwell Street in Northampton, sir, where mostly I am called Black Charley. I was hearing just today about a reverend what once preached here in Olney, name of Newton. It seems like he was the man what wrote ‘Amazing Grace’, which is a song as I admire. I was just looking round the church across the way there, hoping for some sign of him, when it occurred to me as he might be at rest someplace nearby. If you’re acquainted with this cemetery, sir, I’d be obliged you could direct me to his grave.”

The older feller set his lips into a pushed-out frown and shook his head.

“No, bless your heart, he’s not here. I believe the Reverend Newton is in London at St. Mary Woolnoth’s, which is where he went when he left Olney. Here, I’ll tell you what, though. As it happens, I’m churchwarden here. Dan Tite, that’s me. I was just tidying the plots to give myself something to do, but I’d be happy to come back across the church with you and let you in so you could have a look. I’ve got the key here in my waistcoat pocket.”

He produced a big black iron key and held it up so Henry could inspect it. Sure enough, it was a key. Weren’t no disputing that. Out the same pocket, the churchwarden took a clay pipe and his pouch what had tobacco in. He filled the pipe and lit it with a match while they was walking back towards the gates, so a sweet coconut and wood smell drifted out behind them through the yew trees and the tombs. Dan Tite puffed hard on its clay stem ’til he was sure the pipe was going good enough, and then resumed his talk with Henry.