This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

Caring for his father had taken up more and more of their time over the years. His health was poor enough to justify moving him into a nursing home. There was one over in March; she had a friend whose mother was there, and had heard good reports. But it was obvious that his father would refuse to go. And she had been unable to find a way of bringing it up with George. There were so many things she was unable to bring up with him. Sometimes it felt as though they only related to each other through talking about work, about the business. As business partners, they have been close, communicative, collaborative. All those good words.

In the mornings and the afternoons, they worked in the fields. That wasn’t really true. It might have been true once, in the very early days, when they’d had to work hard all the hours of daylight to try and pull the business out of the hole his father had dug it into. There’d been no money to employ extra labour, and they’d had to do everything themselves. There was less land then, but it was still a struggle and they were always exhausted by the time they found their way to bed.

But things had changed, gradually. They’d bought more land, secured more grants and loans. Diversified. And almost without noticing, they’d stopped being farmers and become managers. Most of the field-work was done by labourers hired by sub-contractors, people they never spoke to. George still liked to do some of the work himself – the ploughing, the ditch-digging, the heavy machine-based jobs – but there was no real need. For the most part they spent their days on the phone, or filling out forms, buying supplies, dealing with inspectors, negotiating with the water authorities. Discussions about drainage and flood defences seemed to take more and more of her time now. The floods seemed to be coming more often, covering more land, taking longer to drain. Maybe we should switch to rice, George had started saying, and she wasn’t sure whether or not this was a joke.

All of which meant that when he said he wanted to tell her something, and that they should take the time to walk out along the path beside the canal after lunch, it was no real interruption to the running of the farm. Down in the few fields which weren’t yet flooded, the workers carried on, their backs bent low, and she was able to stop him and put her hand to his chest and ask what it was he wanted to say.

In the evenings he often spent time in the barn, fixing things. She would spend that time walking backwards and forwards from the house to the barn, offering to help, and having that help warmly but firmly rejected. He was unable to admit, even now, that she was better than he was at mechanical jobs: repair, maintenance, improvised alteration and the like. Her father had been a mechanic. It was natural that she would have an ability in that area. But still, he found it difficult to accept.

At the same time, he found it difficult to have sufficient patience with, or tolerance of, the writing she did. She had only ever called it writing: he was the one who used the word ‘poems’. But whenever he said it – ‘poems’ – it was with an affected air, as if the pretension was hers. So, for example, he might come crashing in from the barn late one afternoon, with his boots on, and say Would you just leave your bloody poems alone for one minute and help me get the seed-drill loaded up? There were five other places he could have put the bloody in that sentence, but he chose to put it there, next to ‘poems’. This is an example, she would tell him, if he was interested, of what placement could do.

Once, he says, he saw a man metal-detecting in that field. He was driving past and saw a car parked on the verge, a faint line of footprints leading out across the soil. The light was clear and strong, and the man in the field was no more than a silhouette. He sat in his car, watching. Twice he saw the man stoop to the ground and dig with a small shovel. Twice he saw him stand and kick the earth back into place, and continue his steady sweeping with the metal detector. He wanted to go and tell him to stop, but there was no good reason for doing so. It wasn’t his land. The man would surely have asked permission, and anyway he was doing no damage so soon after harvest.

He wondered what the man thought he was going to find, he says. He had a sudden feeling of inevitability; that this would be the moment when the body was found, the moment when everything could be made right. He thought about going to fetch Joanna, so she could be there to see it as well.

He’d been living like this for years, it would seem, lurching between a trembling silence and a barely withheld confessional urge. When he thought about it later, he realised there was no reason why a man with a metal detector should find a body. But that kind of logical thought seemed to crumble in the face of these moments.

He got out of the car, and waited. The man in the field looked up at George, and George looked down at him. Ready. The man packed his tools into a bag and began hurrying back to his car, stumbling slightly across the low stubble.

Did you find anything? George asked.

No, the man said, nothing. And he got in his car and drove away.

This is the way it happens, in the end. This is the way he describes it, when he tells her:

He was driving, he said. There were bright lights, and men in white overalls standing in the water. There were police officers along the embankment and a white tent on the verge. There were police vans in the road. A policeman was directing the traffic through from either direction. The men in white overalls were doing something with poles and tape. He could hardly breathe, he said. There was something like a rushing sound in his ears.

The policeman waved at him to stop, and walked over to the car, and asked George to wind the window down. He reminded George that they were at school together, and George didn’t know what to say. A funny do this, isn’t it, the policeman said. George thought the policeman was probably waiting for him to ask what had happened but he didn’t say anything. The policeman told him anyway: they’d found a body in the water. The farmer had seen it. They were assuming it had been buried for years, and that the flood water must have disturbed the soil and brought it out. There wasn’t much left of it now. The policeman said he couldn’t imagine they’d find out who it was, and then he asked after the family and said he should let George get on. George said that his wife and his father were both fine and drove slowly into the fog.

Later, he drove into the yard and the dogs came barking out to meet him. He sat in the car for a moment, too weak to open the door. Joanna could see him from the kitchen window. She stood and watched. She wondered what was wrong. The lights of the house were clear and warm, spilling into the foggy night. He got out of the car and walked to the house, pushing the dogs away, and she came to meet him in the hallway. He looked at her and said that they needed to talk. She said it would have to wait until she’d finished some more work, and he said there was always something else to do, some other reason to wait and to not talk. He said they couldn’t go on like this, it had gone on for too long, they were young when it happened, they were older now, time had passed, they needed to bring things out into the open and deal with the consequences and stop trying to hide what it was doing to them both. She looked at him. It was the most she had heard him say for a long time. It didn’t fit. All right, she said. Fine. Bring the dogs.

He served the meal she had prepared for his father and took it through to him.

They found a body in the field down the road, his father said.

George nodded, and said that he’d heard.

Can’t think it was anyone from round here, his father said.

No, George said. I shouldn’t think so.

She Was Looking For This Coat

Lincoln

She came in and she was looking for this coat. It was her father’s, she said. He’d left it on a bus last week. She spent a long time describing it. Herringbone was a word she used. Also she said it was a kind of faded moss-green. Or more like a faded sage-green, but like a faded dark sage-green, with a brown hue. She asked me if I knew the colour she meant. I said I thought I was getting the idea. She had her hands resting on the counter, and she was trying to look round behind me, the way people do, like they think I’m hiding something. She said the buttons were tortoiseshell and one of them was missing. She said the lining was a very dark navy-blue and it was torn from one of the arms right down to the hem. She asked me if I thought hem was the right word to use about a man’s coat. I said I wouldn’t know about that. He’d left it on a bus the previous week, she told me again, on the Wednesday. It did have a belt but that might be missing, she said. I turned the pad of Mis/Prop/B forms across the counter towards her and asked her to fill in her name and address and telephone number. I said I could do the rest. I said I didn’t think we had anything right here in the office but I could make enquiries. She was looking at the form like she couldn’t read it. She said it was definitely Wednesday. She said she thought the coat was from Burton’s. I asked her if she knew which bus the item had been mislaid upon. She said she didn’t. She said it would have been some time in the morning. She said her father had told her he’d gone to meet his friend for lunch, when she’d spoken to him, when she’d spoken to him on the phone, last Wednesday. The way she was talking, I felt like asking her if she needed to sit down. I asked if her father had a bus pass and she nodded and I told her in that case he was unlikely to have been on the bus before nine thirty. She looked surprised. I said so we’re narrowing it down now aren’t we, love? I tried a smile. She didn’t smile. I asked if there were any valuables in the pockets. She said she wasn’t sure. She picked up the pen. She said there’ll be pens in the top pocket, in the breast pocket. She started to fill in her name and address. Kathryn something. With a Y. It was a nice name. It suited her. She had very dark black hair. I told her if she could put all her contact details on the form I’d be able to make enquiries and someone would be in touch. I told her she’d given a very good description and I was sure if the coat had been handed in we’d be able to locate it for her father. There was another customer waiting by then. There’s never normally another customer. I said someone would be in contact as soon as possible, if it had been handed in. I told her unfortunately in this day and age etc. She asked me had she mentioned it being a long coat. I told her I thought I’d assumed that. It came down to here on him, she said, pointing to her knees, but he was a lot taller than me so it would look longer than that on me. I started to say something but I didn’t say anything. We had quite a queue by then. We never normally have a queue. I said I hoped we’d be able to locate the item for her. I told her someone would be in touch. She told me the collar was brown. She was trying to remember the name of the material. She said what’s it called, it’s like inside-out leather, you have to brush it, it’s soft to the touch, it smells like leather but it’s soft to the touch when you stroke it, it leaves marks if you stroke it the wrong way. I asked her did she mean suede and she said yes, that was it, suede. I wrote on the form that the coat had a brown suede collar. I asked her was there anything else I could help her with today.

Looking Up Vagina

Welton

He was the first boy in his class to get pubic hair. He’d vaguely assumed that this might be something the other boys would be envious of. Perhaps even awestruck by. Something which would make them see him in a new light. But it turned out to be just one more thing they could use in their campaign of vilification against him.

Vilification was a word he’d come across recently. It was a word he’d found easy to understand.

Virile was another word. It was something to do with sex. He knew pubic hairs were the first step on the way to getting sex, so he thought this might mean he was virile and the other boys would be impressed or maybe even intimidated or at the very least would reconsider their apparently venal opinions of him.

He’d had the pubic hairs for over a year now. He was used to them, and had almost forgotten that they might be an issue. The subject had never come up. But this was the last year of primary school, and they were starting weekly swimming lessons, and at the swimming pool there was a communal changing room. One of the boys saw, and pointed it out to the other boys, and soon enough all of them were looking and asking him questions about it.

And for a moment everything seemed to hang in the balance, like when a bus hangs off the edge of a cliff and everything depends on whether the passengers rush to the front or the back. It would only have taken one boy to say something like, ‘cool,’ or, ‘nice one, Smithy,’ and everything would have been different. There might even have been some quiet veneration, before everyone put on their trunks and got into the pool. Word would have spread around the school, and he would no longer have been vulnerable to being tripped in the corridors. People would have talked to him on the bus, or between lessons. But instead, someone pushed the balance the other way. Robin was in the vanguard. He shouted something, pointing at the pubic hairs and turning to the other boys for support. They all joined in, and the shouting continued for the rest of the day, and for some days after that. Weeks.

‘Bush’ was the word that got shouted. Bush, and its many variations, with everyone trying to think of a new version: bush, bushy, bushwhacker, bushmonkey, bushman, bushy bushman, busharama, bushface, bushmuppet, bushalicious, bushbum, bushbunny, busher, bushayre, busherara, busheba, lord bush, president bush, sir bushwhacker of bushingdon, bushmonster, bushbilly, bushwilly, bushknocker, bushiel-san, bushelman, bushalackalonglong, bushy-bushy-bush-bush.

It wasn’t even as if his pubic hair was unusually verdant.

Someone told the girls, and so then all the girls knew that he was the first boy in the class to get pubic hair. One of them came up at lunch-time and asked him if it was true. She looked like she was on the verge of being impressed, but her friends were laughing so he said it wasn’t. He said he vigorously disputed it. Robin and another boy heard this, and pulled his trousers down in order to publicly verify the facts. There was a certain amount of vicarious laughter from just about everyone in the vicinity.

He stayed home from school for a few days after that. Mostly he lay in bed, looking up vagina and vulva in the dictionary.

He understood, already, that in a few years’ time these same boys would get, or claim to be getting, sex, and that he would be mocked and called a virgin. Virginal. Someone would realise that virginal sounded like vaginal, and he would be called a vagina; a vagina-head. He could visualise it precisely. There was no logic to it. It was vindictive. There was no way he could win. There wasn’t really any hope of winning. It made him feel vexated.

But he also understood that one day he would leave. Eventually, he would leave. And when he was gone they would still be here. He would move to a big city, and go to university, and be friends with people who didn’t feel the need to mock and belittle him, people who were interested in reading and art and philosophy and those varieties of things. And Robin and everyone else would all still be here, with their limited vocabularies, working in the chicken-processing factories and vegetable packing-houses, looking for someone else to victimise.

Victorious would be a word he could use then. Vindicated.

Keeping Watch Over The Sheep

Alford

They told him he wasn’t allowed on the school premises. They didn’t even use the word allowed to start off with, they just said they thought it would be better if he didn’t come in. Better for everyone concerned is what they said. Only that didn’t even feel like an everyone which included him. He wasn’t really bothered what they thought, he said, he just wanted to come in and see his daughter. That’s when they actually stepped in his way and said he literally wasn’t allowed on the premises.

For Christ’s sake, this was the school nativity.

When would he get another chance to come and see his little girl in her first ever school nativity? Never is when. But the man just stood there all immovable and what have you, his arms folded to show just how totally immovable he was. Said his name was Carson. Mr Carson. Wasn’t even the headteacher or anything, but the other teachers were obviously all women so he must have been sent out to deal with the situation.

That’s what he was now. A situation.

He said to Mr Carson, he said, look, it’s only the school hall we’re talking about here. He was only going to stand at the back. He wouldn’t try and talk to her. Rachel wouldn’t even have to know he was there, he could hide behind another parent, he could slip out before the end. There didn’t need to be a problem here, he said. Mr Carson just stood there and said it was out of his hands.

Yeah I’ll take it out of your hands you four-eyed fucking twat.

He didn’t say that. He knew better than saying something like that, these days. He wasn’t there to make trouble. He was just there to see a nativity play. The shepherds were mightily afraid. The wise men followed yonder bright star in the east. All that. There weren’t no room at the inn. He held up his hands in surrender. A conciliatory gesture. He’d been learning about those, at the sessions. He even attempted a smile. He told Mr Carson, he said, okay, he was leaving now, he was sorry to have caused any disturbance, he hoped the performance went well and could someone perhaps tell Rachel that her father had said hello? Mr Carson did this disappointed shrug and said for him to take care. Not saying whether he would or he wouldn’t pass on the hello to Rachel, take note. There were other parents hanging back behind him, waiting to get in the school, not wanting to get involved. But standing just about close enough to hear what was going on, and then none of them meeting his eye when he turned and walked away. Like they didn’t know him or they didn’t know what was going on.

They knew though. They all did, round here. Some of them had even known certain things before he had, when it would have been useful for him to have been told. They all like to hear stuff but they’re none of them that keen on passing it on.

He got to the corner before he looked back. The other parents were all safely inside, and Mr Carson was closing the door. Bolting it, probably. Even saying something about how they couldn’t be too careful. He walked off. Calmly. He followed the line of hedging around the edge of the school playing field, where the road dipped down a bit and you could see out past the edge of the village. Someone was out ploughing, which seemed early but what did he know. The seagulls were following behind the plough. He got to the sign that said School Property: No Dog Walking, and climbed over the double-gate there. That was harder than it used to be. Used to come over this way when he was a kid and they were looking for somewhere to play football. Or, later, for somewhere to drink. He even came over here with her once or twice, before he’d got a car.

He didn’t really even have a plan, now.

He wasn’t here to make trouble.

He could just stand outside the hall and listen. Rachel had such a good voice he’d probably be able to hear her over all the others. She got that from her mother, the voice. Among other things. He walked across the playing field towards the hall. Walking calmly and casually, not running or ducking down or any of that. He wasn’t going to attract attention to himself. The curtains were closed, so no one could even see him. He listened right up to the glass. They were singing a song about the angels, and then when it went quiet he heard a little girl saying Joseph Joseph you must find somewhere for us to stay the baby is coming soon. That didn’t sound like Rachel. Probably an older girl would be playing the part of Mary. Maybe Rachel would do it another year, when she was older. There would be other years, after all. There wouldn’t always be this situation. But this was her first nativity. He couldn’t miss the first one.

He didn’t even know what part she was playing. He didn’t know anything about it at all. He’d only found out it was on when he’d heard some women talking about it in the post office.

He didn’t know if Rachel’s mother would be in there. She’d have a prime seat at the front, if she was. Guaranteed. He hadn’t seen her going in the whole time he’d been waiting up the road from the main entrance. But she’d got pretty good at sneaking around in the last few months. Since the injunction. So she could have easily found another way to get in. And she wouldn’t be hiding behind another parent, or tucked away at the back of the hall. She’d be right in Rachel’s line of sight, right where she could see her. And little Rachel would be delighted to see her, her little face would be all lighting up right now probably, in the middle of this song about the happy sheep coming down from the hills to find the baby Jesus lying in a manger, and that was fine, that was good, he was happy to think of her little face all lighting up the way it does. He just wanted to be there to see it sometimes, was all. He wanted to be the one who her little face would be lighting up about, sometimes, was all.

He saw Mr Carson coming across the field towards him, looking all purposeful and what have you. There were some others with him. He turned back towards the hall, sliding his face along the window to try and find a gap in the curtains, listening out for the sound of that one little voice he’d come to hear.

He didn’t even know how it had all started going wrong. With Rachel’s mother. He couldn’t really blame her, not like most of the others who went to the sessions had someone to blame. It wasn’t her fault. But it wasn’t really his fault either, and something like that didn’t just come up out of nowhere. Maybe it was both of their faults in a way. Maybe there were some things he probably shouldn’t have said, or done. Or broken. Breaking things had never helped. But just sometimes it was hard to know what else to do. When she said those things. When she purposefully misunderstood what he was trying to say.

He’d always made sure Rachel wasn’t there to see. That was one thing that could be said in his defence.

It was one way of getting to touch her again anyway at least.

Later, once the police had got the handcuffs on and were picking him up off the ground, he noticed that someone had opened the hall curtains, and he thought he could see Rachel standing on the edge of the stage wearing what must have been a sheep costume. She’d grown a bit since the last time he’d seen her. It didn’t take long. He tried to smile at her and call hello. But unless she was doing some very good acting she was looking pretty upset, pretty tearful and scared and what have you. Which made him wonder what was going on in there, if she’d maybe been pushed into doing the school nativity when she didn’t really want to, or if she’d forgotten her words and no one had helped her remember them. He wondered why no one was looking after her right now, while she was standing there on her own all tearful and upset-looking. He wondered what kind of a school this was that her mother was sending her to anyway.

He’d definitely be coming back for some answers. There wasn’t any doubt about that. Just as soon as he’d sorted out this current situation. They didn’t need to worry about that, any of them. He’d be coming back, and someone was going to be asked, in no uncertain terms, to explain.

Airshow

Scampton

On the long drive back from the funeral, they took the grandfather to see the airfield where he’d been stationed during the war. They thought this was something he might like to do. They parked on a grass verge beside one of the exit gates in the perimeter fence, and helped the grandfather from the car. The ground was so flat it was difficult to see anything at all. It seemed to curve away from them. They looked at him looking through the fence. The wind was blowing in from the east, and the long grass near the fence dipped and swayed with a sound like a low shush. They looked at him looking at the runway and the hangars and the other low buildings in the distance. They couldn’t really see much from where they were. They waited for him to tell them something, but he seemed at a loss. He lifted a finger, as though to point something out, and withdrew it. They walked along the verge for a short distance. The grandfather wasn’t much inclined to talk about the place, it seemed. Instead, he talked about living in digs in the next village along, with his new wife and their baby, and about how his wife had only ever been able to walk along the road and back because the fields and woods were too muddy for a pram. The wind picked up. It got colder. They climbed back into the car and drove south.