Louis de Bernieres - Notwithstanding - Stories from an English Village

THE MIST HANGS above the paddocks and molehills, and the horses snort and nod their heads, their breath condensing in the cold air.

The girls inhale the scent of leather and saddle cream; their world consists of the creaking of girths, the sweet smell of horses’ sweat, the seduction of straw and the clatter of hooves on the cobbles of the yard.

The gardener turns into the drive, his pipe stuck into his mouth, the smoke flaring behind him as the motorbike rattles along with its chair bolted on to the side. He has kept the bike in a secret shed for thirty years and more, and his wife knows nothing about it; it is the mistress and lover he never did have, the secret friend, the last connection with youth. It is to him what the horses are to the girls.

John switches it off and it pre-ignites, reluctant to stop. ‘Bloody thing,’ says John to himself, irritated and perplexed.

John twists the key in the lock, and the door creaks, the bottom scraping the floor, and, ‘Bloody thing,’ says John again.

‘Boy not here,’ he says, ‘gettin’ later every day, he is. Never mind, ’snice to have the place to yourself, first thing,’ and he takes his provisions from a knapsack and opens a tin. He approaches the corner, tweaking the threads of a web, calling, ‘George, George, here, George, I brought you some flies, good boy, look what I’ve got. Bluebottles, two of ’em, yes, yum yum,’ and John leaves the flies for George on his web, turning away to make the tea. The kettle hums, and John hums too ‘… There’ll always be an England, while there’s a busy street …’ John puts four sugars in his mug, and a drop of milk. He lights his pipe for the umpteenth time and is alerted by the sound of a bicycle being propped against the shed and then falling over as it always seems to do. ‘Bloody thing,’ says Alan, outside.

‘Morning, John,’ says Alan, coming in, compensating with cheeriness for his fractional lateness. ‘Tea on the brew?’

‘Just about boiled. You make it and I’ll watch.’

‘Is that the baccy you grew yourself?’

John offers his pipe and raises his brows. ‘Have a puff. I say it myself, but it’s all right.’

Alan is unsure, but he takes the pipe and draws, and tries to restrain his coughs. ‘Blimey, it’s like cigars,’ he exclaims, ‘but it’s kind of sharp, a bit of a bite in the throat.’ He shakes his head, as if in regret, and says, ‘Try as I might, I wasn’t cut out for the weed.’

‘You accustom yourself,’ says John, and Alan suggests, ‘You could soften it up with honey, you could try brandy,’ but ‘That’s for nancy boys,’ says John.

The door scrapes and Sylvie comes in, with a ‘Hello, boys. Kettle on? What’s a girl got to do for her cup of tea?’

‘Hello, Sylv,’ say the males, and John’s got a question, a provocation, a pertinent enquiry. ‘’Bout time you got your own kettle, innit? Whoever heard of a stable without a kettle?’

Sylvie knows that John knows that there is a kettle in the stable. ‘Don’t you want me then?’ she mock-protests. ‘I’ll go away and sulk. Can’t a poor girl get a cup of tea any more? You’re brutes. And anyway, I’m only coming in to say hello to George,’ and she walks across the cracked concrete of the floor, with its patches of ragged matting. Her hips sway without her knowledge, her body speaking the language of enticement without her explicit permission. Alan looks at the hair that flows down her back to her waist, and the hips that are speaking.

‘Hello, Georgie boy,’ says Sylvie, peering into the web.

‘Hello, Sylv,’ says Alan in a squeaky voice, and then, dropping it down to normal, ‘He gets fatter every day. You know, it occurs to me that he’s probably female. Aren’t the females big, and the males a bit small?’

John blows smoke from his cheeks, and pretends to growl. ‘I hope he in’t female, ’cause if he is, I’ll chuck him out. Females in the potting shed, I don’t hold with it.’ And here Sylvie puts one hand on her eloquent hip, and pouts in reproof, and John’s eyes sparkle. ‘’Cept for Sylv, of course, and anyway, he can’t be female, ’cause what female would put up with a web like that, all covered with dust? She’d be out and at it with a feather duster, spider-sized.’

‘You’re out of date,’ says Sylvie. ‘Nowadays we give the duster to the bloke and off we go to karate classes.’

‘Females is females,’ John asserts. ‘You know what I think? I think men are closer to nature. Here we are,’ (and he gestures with the stem of his pipe) ‘drinking tea with a sodding great web up in the corner, an’ we don’t care. In fact, we like it. Now, I bet if my missus or your mum came in here and saw George, she’d flip her lid. There’s things that women just don’t understand. Like spiders, and motorcycles, and beer. And did you ever see a woman shoot a catapult? Course not.’ John sucks hard on his pipe. Point proven, but the pipe’s gone out.

‘I like George,’ says Sylv, ‘and I like motorbikes.’

Alan supports her, he wants her to smile. ‘There’s a woman near us who plays cricket, smokes a pipe and shoots squirrels with a twelve-bore.’

‘Well, she in’t a woman then, is she?’ says John, and he strikes a match on the floor. Sylvie and Alan exchange a glance.

‘What am I up to today?’ asks Alan. ‘Weather forecast says fine.’

‘The weather forecast in’t got a gardening nose. You stick your head out of that door and sniff. It’s going to rain, you can smell the crackle and spark.’ John can’t resist a dig. ‘That’ll be a good trick to impress the other nobs with when you go to that university.’

‘I’m not a nob,’ Alan protests, although he knows that he is.

‘Course you’re a nob … posh voice, mum and dad a car each, nice big house. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if you are, it’s all right wi’ me as long as you do your work, but this place’ (he waves his pipe) ‘is all my life, and for you it’s a stop on the way.’

‘Well, I’m a nob,’ says Sylv, ‘and I’d better get to work. See you later, boys. See you, George,’ and the men watch her leave, her loquacious body talking of happiness, and the door scrapes, and John says, ‘Lovely girl.’

Alan grunts noncommittally, giving himself away, and John smiles to himself. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘you jus’ carry on digging the veg patch ’til it rains, an’ then you can come back in here an’ we’ll have some tea. I’m going to put some more daffs in the orchard. Seen the dibber? And did I ever tell you the secret of naturalising daffs? What you do is, you broadcast them.’

‘Like on the radio,’ says Alan, humour seizing his speech. ‘This is the BBC Outside Broadcasting Service. Today we are broadcasting daffs.’

‘You throw them out,’ says John, ‘with a backhand sweep o’ the arm, like that. And then you plant them exactly where they fell, see? And when they come up, they look as though they’ve been there for ever, an’ that’s how you seed grass an’ all. Broadcasting.’

Outside in the damp day, Alan digs energetically, breaking for pauses of thought. A blackbird sings, and Alan is glad to exist. ‘… It’s funny how I like to be here, the open air, the birds, loading up twigs on the long-term compost, and the rest on the short-term compost, admiring the espalier. How many years does it take? It looks so magical, like something out of a Salvador Dali picture, all those branches growing into each other, tree to tree. And John with his sad face, and his big moustache for a tea strainer, acting the old codger. Wheelbarrows and mud and wellington boots and George the spider, and a robin taking the worms from under your spade, forks that make a note when you flick a finger at one of the tangs. The stable girls in their jodhpurs and brown boots, and the big horses. Mr Gull and his white Rolls-Royce. It’s like a village all in itself. I wonder what Dad would say if I told him, “Sorry, Dad, I’m not going to university, I’m staying at the stud farm and I’m going to be a gardener all my life.” He’d probably say, “How bucolic.” Mum would scream the house down, though. No, Dad would probably say, “That’s fine for now, but you won’t be happy if you don’t use your brain,” and I’d say, “But Dad, you have to be an encyclopedia to be a gardener,” and he’d just shrug and say, “You know what I mean, though.” If I was as rich as Mr Gull, I wouldn’t have horses. Just the stable girls. That Sylvie is so gorgeous, it hurts. Don’t think she’s even noticed me, though. When you see her on a horse, it makes you think of things that you wouldn’t admit to your mother. It’s getting dark, I think it’s going to rain.’