Louis de Bernieres - Notwithstanding - Stories from an English Village

‘It’s really bucketing,’ says Alan, shivering with that delicious threat of wild weather in such a domesticated land.

‘It’s setting in all day,’ asserts John.

‘What’ll we do?’ demands Sylvie. ‘I swear we’re all going to drown.’

‘We’ll do what we always do,’ decides John. ‘We’ll drink tea, and then we’ll wash the green rims from off the top of the flowerpots.’

Alan groans. He suffers from the sudden and extreme weariness of the young man who is about to have to do something that bores him to death. This is worse than having to clean his room or put on a tie for the arrival of guests. ‘Let’s do “I wish”,’ proposes Alan. ‘Let’s say exactly what we’d rather be doing. Who’s going to start? Sylvie?’

She scowls at him sweetly. ‘I’m not starting. I’d feel stupid. Anyway, it was your idea.’

Alan pauses, and sighs. ‘I wish it was snowing instead of raining, and I was tobogganing down the seventeenth hole on the golf course, the one that’s almost vertical, with the snow hissing under the runners, and I’m steering by sticking my welly into the snow, and my cheeks are so cold that they ache above the bone, and there’s all the excitement of wondering if I can avoid the oak tree, and then I crash into the ditch on purpose, and just lie there spread-eagled, and one of my sisters comes up and drops a great big armful of snow on top of my head. You feel so happy.’ He sips at his tea, affected by his own vision. ‘But what really happens is that suddenly you’re just terribly cold and wet, and your mittens are so soaked that your fingers freeze, and you wish you’d never come out. Have you noticed how snow smells when it’s clogged up into ice on your mittens?’

Sylvie is struck unaccountably with gloom. ‘Do you ever get that feeling that you wish you were someone else?’

Alan looks at her sitting with her chin in her hands, and answers, ‘All the time.’

‘Me too,’ she says. ‘What about you, John?’ and John tells them, ‘I don’t want to be no one else. I just want something to happen. I don’t want to be a tree no more.’ He catches their puzzled expressions, and explains. ‘You take a sapling. It’s the first autumn, and the tree goes, “Blimey, that’s interesting, all me leaves’ve dropped off.” And then it’s spring, and the tree goes, “Well, stone me, all me leaves is comin’ back.” And then he gets his first bird’s nest, and he goes, “Well, in’t that a pleasure, to be so useful?” But then it’s fifty years later, and it’s all the same. He loses his leaves, and he thinks, “Oh, that again,” and then the leaves come back, and he goes, “Surprise, surprise, I don’t think,” and then he’s got a dozen bloody birds’ nests, and he goes, “The little sods.” Well … I’ve got like that. Over and over and over and over and over and over, same thing each day as I did last year on the same day. Every Thursday, I get home and the missus has done a cheese pie, and she says, “Cheese pie all right, love?” and I say, “Lovely,” and every Tuesday it’s macaroni, and every Sunday the daughter rings up and says, “’Ello, Dad, how are you?” and I say, “Not so bad. How’s yourself?” and I just feel like I want to jump off a high place into a lake, and feel that cold water cleaning out the dust. I got dust where my brain is. I got dust in my eyes. I got dust in my mouth. Just dust everywhere, an’ I’m getting old, I know I am, and I look back and think, “What? What? What?” And I think, “What happened, and why wasn’t you looking? You’re going to your grave, John, and you might as well not ever have lived.” You know what? I reckon I chewed on life, and never tasted it at all.’

Alan is speechless; he has never heard John, or anyone older than himself, come to that, acknowledging their own despair. Sylvie is stirred, she has tears in her eyes, and she protests, ‘Oh John. Why don’t you look at these gardens? How many other people have kept one place so beautiful for so long?’ She comes over and hugs him, kissing him on the cheek. He is touched but embarrassed, and he pats her on the upper arm. ‘You’re a sweet girl, Sylvie,’ he says. ‘You brighten things up. Do me a favour. Stay sweet. When I’m dead I want to lie in my grave and think about you being sweet, and wishing I’d been young at the same time as you.’

Sylvie pulls a disavowing face. ‘I don’t want to be sweet. I want to be fierce.’ She raises her two hands like forepaws, and growls.

John laughs. ‘You couldn’t help it if you tried. You’re sweet, and that’s that. Always were.’ John tips the dregs of his tea into a pot of cyclamen, and says suddenly, with impatience in his tone, ‘I’ll tell you what I really wish. I wish you two would get a move on and go out and do something.’ He looks up, pleased by their confounded expressions. He says to Sylvie, ‘He’s been meaning to ask you out.’

Alan exclaims, ‘I haven’t. I mean —’ and John interrupts, still addressing the girl. ‘He watches for you when you ride past, and he says, “Shall I go to the stable and barrow the manure?” and he hangs about doing it slowly, in case you turn up. I’ve seen.’

‘You’re an old sod,’ moans Alan, hiding his face in his hands.

‘Is it true then?’ demands Sylvie, thrilled by this turn of events, but also alarmed.

‘Course it is,’ confirms John, with an upward motion of his arm.

‘The rain’s stopping,’ says Alan, his face still hidden in his hands.

‘Don’t go changing the subject,’ says John. ‘It’s true, what I said, it’s true, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s true,’ admits Alan, his ears reddening even more. ‘It is true. I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ repeats Sylvie, thinking that this is a peculiar choice of word, but John turns his eye on her. ‘As for you, little miss, you’re just as bad. You could’ve run for the stable, ’stead of runnin’ in here. In fact I saw you running over here from the stable, and you got wet when you needn’t. In my opinion, and if you want my advice, you two should get something sorted out.’ He turns and puts his hand to the doorknob. ‘I’m going out. Got to see what the rain’s done. Come on, puss, idle cat never caught quick mouse,’ and John heaves the door open, sploshing out into the wet world, followed hesitantly by the cat. ‘See you, George,’ he calls.

Sylvie and Alan are shamefaced; they are both nervous. There is a sense in which their situation was more comfortable when each was just a reverie for the other. Now they are going to have to begin the awkward process of becoming flesh and spirit. Alan looks up at her briefly, and she smiles a little encouragement. She feels her mouth become somewhat dry, and her heart is like a moth. ‘What do you normally do on a first date?’ he asks.

Sylvie shrugs. ‘Flicks, I suppose.’

‘Saturday?’

Sylvie remembers her mother’s advice about not making it too easy, and replies, ‘Friday.’

‘What shall we see?’ asks Alan, caught between a man’s duty to be decisive, and a man’s duty to defer to a woman’s desires.

‘Let’s look in the paper,’ says Sylvie, who has more common sense than he does. She stands up and places her mug on the potting bench. ‘Listen,’ she says, ‘I’ll be back in a mo. I want to go and give John a big hug.’

‘Why?’ asks Alan, genuinely mystified, and also, much to his own surprise, a fraction jealous.

‘Because,’ calls Sylvie over her shoulder as she strides away.

Alan blows air through his lips to make them flap together, and then distorts them into a shape that reflects his trepidation. ‘Well, George,’ he says, collecting the mugs together, and addressing the impassive and discreet spider, ‘I suppose I ought to be thrilled, but, between you and me, I’m bloody terrified. I’m going to make a mess, I know I am.’ He pauses for reflection, and continues. ‘It’ll be the usual disaster. Mum won’t lend me the car, I’ll be late even though I started early, because I’ll get stuck behind a tractor on Vann Lane, and I’ll be all in a sweat, and I’ll have spilt the aftershave so I pong like a hyacinth, and I’ll have forgotten to get any money out of the bank. No, the cash machine’ll pack up and swallow my card, so I’ll have to borrow the money from Sylvie and promise to pay it back, and the film’ll be bloody awful, and then afterwards I’ll spill red wine all over the tablecloth and Sylvie’s white jeans, and then I’ll drink too much, and when I drop her off I’ll try to kiss her and she’ll get angry, or else I won’t try to kiss her when she’d hoped that I would, and I’ll go home all miserable, and then I won’t be able to face her when I come into work, and she’ll tell John and all the stable girls what happened.’