Silver on the Tree Page 6

  “It’s a big honour, that concert,” James said. “At the Festival Hall, no less. Didn’t Paul tell you?”

  “You know Paul. Old Modesty. That’s a lovely-sounding flute he’s got now, too. Even I can tell.

  “Miss Greythorne gave it to him, two Christmases ago,” said Will. “From the Manor. There’s a collection that her father made, she showed us.”

  “Miss Greythorne…. Good Lord, that takes me back. Sharp wits, sharp tongue—I bet she hasn’t changed a bit.”

  Will smiled. “She never will.”

  “She caught me up her almond tree once when I was a kid,” Stephen said, grinning reminiscently. “I came climbing down and there she was out of nowhere, in her wheelchair. Even though she hated anyone seeing that wheelchair. ‘Only monkeys eat my nuts, young man,’ she said—I can still hear her—‘and you‘ll not even make a powder monkey, at your age.’”

  “Powder monkey?” James said.

  “Boys in the Navy in Nelson’s day—they used to fetch the powder for the guns.”

  “You mean Miss Greythorne knew you were going into the Navy?”

  “Of course not, I didn’t know myself then.” Stephen looked a little taken aback. “Funny coincidence though. Never occurred to me before—I haven’t given her a thought for years.”

  But James’s mind had already taken off on a tangent, as it frequently did. “Will, whatever became of that little hunting horn she gave you, the year she gave Paul the flute? Did you lose it? You never even gave it one good blow.”

  “I still have it,” Will said quietly.

  “Well, get it out. We could have fun with it.”

  “One day.” Will swung the lawn-mower round, shoving its handle at James’s unready hands. “Here—your turn. I’ve done the front, now you do the back.”

  “That’s the rule,” said their father, passing with a weed-loaded wheelbarrow. “Fair’s fair. Share the burden.”

  “My burden’s bigger than his,” James said dolefully.

  “Nonsense!” said Mr. Stanton.

  “Well it is, actually,” Will said. “We measured, once. The back lawn’s five feet wider than the front, and ten feet longer.”

  “Got more trees in it,” said Mr. Stanton, unclipping the catch-box of grass cuttings from the front of the mower, and emptying it into his barrow.

  “That makes more work, not less.” James drooped, more dolefully still. “Going round them. Trimming afterwards.”

  “Go away,” said his father. “Before I burst into tears.”

  Will took the box and clipped it back on the mower. “Good-bye, James,” he said cheerfully.

  “You haven’t finished yet, either, matey,” Mr. Stanton said. “Stephen needs some help tying up the roses.”

  A muffled curse came from the front garden wall; Stephen, embraced by the sprawling branches of a climbing rose, was sucking his thumb.

  “I believe you may be right,” Will said.

  Grinning, his father picked up the wheelbarrow and prodded James and the lawn-mower up the driveway; Will was starting over the lawn when his elder sister Barbara came out of the front door.

  “Tea’s nearly ready,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “Outside, we’re having it.”

  “Good, better, best. Come and help Steve fight a rose bush.”

  Rambler roses, spilling great swathes and bunches of red blossom, grew along and over the old stone wall that bordered the road. Gingerly they untangled the most wildly sprawling arms, drove stakes into the gravelly earth, and tied the branches to keep the billowing sprays of roses off the ground.

  “Ouch!” said Barbara for the fifth time, as a rebellious rose-branch scored a thin red line across her bare back.

  “Your own fault,” said Will unfeelingly. “You should have more clothes on.”

  “It’s a sunsuit. For the sunshine, duckie.”

  “Nekkidness,” said her younger brother solemnly, “be a shameful condition for a yooman bein’. Tain’t roight. ‘Tes a disgrace to the neighbour’ood, so ’tes.”

  Barbara looked at him. “There you stand, wearing even less—” she began indignantly; then stopped.

  “Slow,” said Stephen. “Very slow.”

  “Oh, you,” Barbara said.

  A car passed on the road; slowed suddenly; stopped; then began backing gradually until it was level with them. The driver switched off his engine, hauled himself across the seat and stuck a heavy-jowled red face out of the window.

  “Might the biggest of you be Stephen Stanton?” he said with clumsy joviality.

  “That’s right,” said Stephen from the top of the wall. He gave one last blow to a stake. “What can I do for you?”

  “Name’s Moore,” the man said. “You had a little run-in with one of my boys the other day, I gather.”

  “Richie,” said Will.

  “Ah,” said Stephen. He jumped down from the wall to stand next to the car. “How do you do, Mr. Moore. I dropped your son into some water, I believe.”

  “Green water,” said the man. “Ruined his shirt.”

  “I should be happy to buy him a new one,” Stephen said easily. “What size is he?”

  “Don’t talk rubbish,” the man said, expressionless. “I just wanted to get the rights and wrongs of it, that’s all. Wondered why a young man like you should be playing those sort of games with kids.”

  Stephen said, “It wasn’t a game, Mr. Moore. I simply felt very strongly that your son deserved to be dropped into the water.”

  Mr. Moore ran one hand over his large glistening forehead. “Maybe. Maybe. He’s a wild kid, that one. They kick him around, he kicks back. What did he do to you?”

  “Didn’t he tell you?” Will said.

  Mr. Moore looked across the low wall at Will as though he were something small and irrelevant, like a beetle. “What Richie told me, it wasn’t something that gets people dropped in streams. So like as not it wasn’t true. That’s what I want to get straight.”

  “He was tormenting a younger boy,” Stephen said. “There’s not much point in going into detail.”

  “Having a bit of fun, he said.”

  “Not much fun for the other one.”

  “Richie said he didn’t lay a finger on him,” Mr. Moore said.

  “He just threw his music-case full of music into the stream, that’s all,” Will said shortly.

  “We—ell,” Mr. Moore said. He paused, tapping the edge of the car window absently. “It was that Indian kid from the Common, I gather.”

  The three Stantons stood looking at him in silence. He stared back, blankly. At length Barbara said, in a small polite voice, “Does that make a difference?”

  Before the man could answer, Mr. Stanton said amiably from behind them, “Good afternoon.”

  “Afternoon,” said Mr. Moore, turning his head, with a tinge of relief in his tone. “I’m Jim Moore. We were just—”

  “Yes, I heard some of it,” Mr. Stanton said. He propped himself against the edge of the wheelbarrow he had just set down, and took out his pipe and matches. “I must say I thought Steve might have over-reached himself a bit that day. Still—”

  “The thing is, you can’t always believe these people, you see,” said the man in the car, smiling, confident of agreement.

  There was a silence. Mr. Stanton lit his pipe. He said, puffing, blowing out the match, “I don’t quite follow, I’m afraid.”

  Stephen said coldly, “It wasn’t a case of believing anyone, just of what I happened to see for myself.”

  Mr. Moore was looking at Mr. Stanton with a kind of anxious adult bonhomie. “Made a lot of fuss about nothing, that kid, I dare say. You know how they are, always on about something.”

  “True, true,” said Roger Stanton, his round face placid. “Mine usually are.”

  “Oh no, no,” said Mr. Moore heartily, “I’m sure your bunch are very nice. I meant coloureds, not kids.”

  He went on, ploughing unawares through the sile
nce that came again, “I see a lot of them at work. I’m in personnel, you know—Thames Manufacturing. Not much I don’t know about Indians and Pakkies, after all these years. Of course I’ve got nothing against them personally. Very intelligent, well-educated, some of them. Got myself an op from an Indian doctor at the Memorial Hospital last year—clever little chap, he was.”

  Barbara said, in the same small polite voice, “I expect even some of your best friends are Indians and Pakistanis.”

  Her father gave her a sharp warning glance, but the words went flickering quite over Mr. Moore’s stubbly head. He chuckled at Barbara, very much the jovial appreciative male indulging a pretty seventeen-year-old. “Well no, I wouldn’t go that far! I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think they should be here, them or the West Indians. Got no right, have they? Taking jobs that should go to Englishmen, with the country in the state it is….”

  Stephen said quietly, “We do have unions, Mr. Moore, and they aren’t exactly helpless. Most of those famous jobs are the ones Englishmen don’t want to do—or that the immigrants do better.”

  The man looked at Stephen with resentment and dislike, his thick jaw hardening. “One of those, are you? A bleeding-heart. Don’t try and teach me, young man. I’ve seen too much of the real thing. One Pakkie family rents a two-bedroom house and the next thing you know, they’ve got sixteen of their friends and relations living there. Like rabbits. And half of them having babies free on the National Health Service, at the British taxpayer’s expense.”

  “Remember your Indian doctor?” Stephen said, still softly. “If it weren’t for the immigrant doctors and nurses, the National Health Service would fall apart tomorrow.”

  Mr. Moore made a contemptuous noise. “Just don’t try and tell me about coloured people,” he said. “I know.”

  Stephen leaned back against the wall, twisting a piece of raffia between his fingers. “Do you know Calcutta, Mr. Moore?” he said. “Have you ever had beggars grabbing at your feet, calling out to you, children half the size of Will here with an arm missing, or an eye, and ribs like xylophones and their legs stinking with sores? If I lived in a place with that kind of despair round me, I think I just might decide to bring up my kids in a country where they’d have a better chance. Specially a country that had exploited my own for about two hundred years. Wouldn’t you? Or Jamaica, now. Do you know how many children get to a secondary school there? D’you know the unemployment rate? D’you know what the slums are like in Kingston? Do you know—”

  “Stephen,” said his father gently.

  Stephen stopped The raffia string in his hands snapped.

  “So what about it? All that stuff?” The man’s face had darkened. He leaned belligerently out of the window; his breath came more quickly. “Let them solve their own problems, not come whining over here! What’s all that have to do with us? They don’t belong here, none of ’em; they should all be thrown out. And if you think they’re so bloody marvellous you’d better go and live in their lousy countries with them!” He caught Mr. Stanton’s calm eye suddenly and tried visibly to control himself, jerking his head back from the window and sliding across into the driver’s seat.

  Mr. Stanton came close to the wall, where the car stood, and took his pipe from his mouth. “If your son shares your views, Mr. Moore,” he said clearly, “as I am glad to find my son shares mine, then the stream episode isn’t hard to explain, is it? We only have to decide what reparation you’d like.” The pipe went back between his teeth, abruptly.

  “Reparation hell!” The man started his engine with a deliberate roar. He leaned over the seat, shouting above the noise. “You just see what happens to anyone laying a finger on my boy again, for the sake of some snireling little wog, that’s all. Just see!”

  He lurched back at the wheel and drove off, gears snarling. They stood looking after the car.

  Stephen opened his mouth.

  “Don’t say it,” said his father, “don’t say it! You know how many there are. You can’t convince them and you can’t kill ’em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction—which you did.” He looked around, embracing Will and Barbara in a rueful smile. “Come on. Let’s go and have tea.”

  Will came last, trailing despondently. From the moment when he had heard the man in the car begin to shout, and seen the look in his eyes, he had been no Stanton at all but wholly an Old One, dreadfully and suddenly aware of danger. The mindless ferocity of this man, and all those like him, their real loathing born of nothing more solid than insecurity and fear … it was a channel. Will knew that he had been gazing into the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth. He was filled with a terrible anxiety, a sense of urgency for the Light, and knew that it would remain with him, silently shouting at him, far more vividly than the fading memory of a single bigot like Mr. Moore.

  “Come on, Tarzan,” said Paul, thumping his bare shoulder as he came past out of the house. So Will came back, slowly, into the other part of his mind.

  They all gathered for tea as though the disturbing Mr. Moore had never been. By one of those unspoken censorships that come sometimes in close families, those who had seen him made no mention of him to those who had not. Tea was laid out on the orange wicker table, glass-topped, that stood outdoors with its matching chairs in high summer. Will’s spirits began to rise. For an Old One with the tastes and appetite of a small boy, it was hard to despair for long over the eternal fallibility of mankind when confronted with home-made bread, farm butter, sardine-and-tomato paste, raspberry jam, scones, and Mrs. Stanton’s delicious, delicate, unmatchable sponge-cake.

  He sat on the grass. His senses were crammed with summer: the persistent zooming of a wasp lured by the jam; the grass-smell of James’s partly cut lawn mingling with the scent of a nearby buddleia bush; the dappled light all around him as sunshine filtered through the apple tree overhead, lush in full green leaf now, with small green apples beginning to swell. Many of the apples were fallen already, victims of over-population, never to grow. Will picked up one of the little thick-stemmed oval objects and gazed at it pensively.

  “Put it down,” Barbara said. “This’ll taste better.” She was holding out a plate with two scones spread thickly with butter and jam.

  “Hey,” said Will. “Thanks.” It was a small warm kindliness; in a family as big as the Stantons’, self-service was the general rule. Barbara smiled at him briefly, and Will could sense her formless maternal concern that her youngest brother had been upset by the violence of the man in the car. His spirits lifted. The Old One within him thought: The other side. Don’t forget. There’s always the other side of people too.

  “Three and a half more weeks of school,” James said, in a tone that was half delight, half grumble. He looked up at the sky. “I hope the holiday’s all like this.”

  “The long-range forecast says it will begin pouring with rain the day you break up,” said Paul seriously, folding a piece of bread-and-butter. He went on, through a mouthful, “It’s due to go on for three weeks without stopping. Except once, for August week-end.”

  “Oh no!” said James, in unguarded horror.

  Paul looked at him owlishly over his horn-rimmed glasses. “There may very well be hail. And on the last day of July they’re expecting a blizzard.”

  James’s face relaxed into a grin, as relief twined with shame-faced rage. “Paul, you swine, I’ll—”

  “Don’t kill him,” Stephen said. “Too fatiguing. Bad for digestions. Tell me what you’re going to do for the holidays, instead.”

  “Scout camp, some of the time,” James said happily. “Two weeks in Devon.”

  “Very nice too.”

  “I’m doing summer courses at the Academy—and playing in a jazz club at night,” Paul said with a crooked grin.

  “Good Lord!”

  “Ah, the worm turns. Not exactly your kind of jazz, though.”

  “Better nor nowt.
What are you going to do, Will?”

  “Loaf about, like me,” said Barbara comfortably, from an armchair.

  “Well as a matter of fact,” Mrs. Stanton said, “Will has an invitation he hasn’t heard about yet. Quite a surprise.” She leaned forward with the teapot and began filling cups. “Your Aunt Jen telephoned this afternoon from London—she and David are up for a day or two, with some group from Wales. And she wanted to know, Will, if you’d like to spend part of the holidays at the farm—as soon as school ends, if you like.”

  Will said slowly, “That’s good.”

  “Wow!” said James. “Don’t tell Mary, she’ll be livid—she thought she was going to get invited back to Wales this year.”

  “Jen said something about Will getting along very well last year with a rather lonely boy who lived there,” Mrs.Stanton said.

  “Yes,” Will said. “Yes, I did. His name was Bran.”

  “You’ll have to make sure it’s a working holiday, you know,” said his father. “Make yourself useful to your uncle. I know that part of Wales is almost all sheep, but it’s a busy time of the year on any farm.”

  “Oh yes,” Will said. He picked up another of the small immature apples and twirled it round and round, fast, by its stem. “Yes. There’ll be a lot of work to do.”

  The Singing Mountains

  • Five •

  “Have we been here before?” Barney said. “I keep feeling—”

  “No,” Simon said.

  “Not even when you were little, and I was a baby? You might have forgotten.”

  “Forgotten this?”

  Simon swung one arm rather theatrically to embrace the panorama that lay spread around them, where they sat on the wiry grass halfway up the mountain, among spiny bushes of brilliant yellow gorse. Over all the right-hand half of their view was the blue sea of Cardigan Bay, with its long beaches stretching far into the haze of distance. Directly below them lay the green undulations of Aberdyfi golf course, behind its uneven dunes. To the left, the beaches ran into the broad estuary of the River Dyfi, full and blue now with water at high tide. And beyond, over the flat stretch of marsh on the other side of the river-mouth, the mountain mass of Mid-Wales rolled along the skyline, purple and brown and dull green, its colours shifting and patching constantly as clouds sailed over the summer sky past the sun.