Bertie, May and Mrs Fish

In Charlton Kings suburbs she says … Shall I risk it … thirty miles an hour will not get us there in a hurry … I am going to hope for the best. She cuts the red lights at the Prestbury Gymkhana field crossroads and says … Needs must … and she and I chant … When the devil drives … and the van corners right hard and right again onto gravel and stops and she looks back at me and says … You stay there … I won’t be long … I promise … if I have to be I will come to get you … out you get Munday … we will have those fingers stitched on again in no time … if that is at all possible.

She walks up the hospital steps and opens the door for Mr Munday and holds the velvet bundle in her other hand.

Mr Munday’s bloody vest comes home in brown paper and my mother hands it to Mrs Fish and says … Mr Munday had a bad time … two fingers lost on the circular saw … will you soak his vest … if it dries he will have it when he comes back from hospital … which hopefully will be before tonight.

She says to me … You stay here with Mrs Fish … I don’t know what time I will be back … have a hunt for eggs in the top barns … I see one hen going in and out … she may be thinking of sitting … if you count six or more in a nest we will move her into a coop … thank you Mrs Fish … the wireless says afternoon weather is uncertain … good luck with the drying.

Mrs Fish drops Mr Munday’s vest in a white enamel bucket of cold water and colours thicken from pale pink swirls to crimson. She turns back to the white china sink and her Woodbine ash falls and powders my mother’s pink brassieres and silk peach camiknickers and linen blouses and blue dungarees piled on the flagstone floor. Her orange ringlets bounce under a bright-green crocheted beret she keeps on indoors and she leans forward in hot water steam. Her splashed crossover cotton apron has flower faces and the black plimsoles she keeps in the coal shed and changes into from white rubber boots have no laces.

I go in the larder and scoop up food in my fingers. Pastry crust on rabbit pie and rice pudding from under brown skin and pale-pink rhubarb fool. I watch Mrs Fish through larder door hinges. She dangles jodhpurs on a thick wooden spoon. Dirty water trickles in the sink and she dumps the sopping wet lump on the drainer and spreads the legs and scrubs at buckskin thighs with yellow Sunlight soap.

I tip up a glass bottle of Kia-Ora orange squash and the bottle mouth knocks my front teeth and I lick hurt nerves. Three chrome thermoses for harvest teas stand in a row and under the slate shelf cider and ginger beer and Guinness brown glass bottles fill a cardboard box and a note says … Brown bottles – keep out of light.

I stand beside Mrs Fish at the sink and run cold water in a glass of orange squash. She hisses … Get me a gin then … go on … you heard. She grins and the Woodbine sticks to a lip and her teeth close on the little cigarette.

I can hear my father saying when he was home on leave … Here’s to mother’s ruin … and see him lift a cut-glass tumbler of gin and fizzy tonic … Shall we celebrate our beloved home by getting nicely foxed … what say you … how’s that for the best idea the Colonel has had all day … and he sips from the glass and says … That washerwoman has been at the gin again … she damned well has … taste this … it’s simply awful … watered down to cat’s piss … she will simply have to go … I will not tolerate petty thieving in my house … I most certainly will not.

Mrs Fish puts her face close to mine … If I don’t get my gin I’ll tie these sodding jodhpurs round your neck … I am telling you.

Her wet red fingers open and the soap bar slips underwater. She pulls a blue-and-white stained tea towel off the Esse chrome rail and twists the linen in her hands and shoves the tea towel back and walks down the long white dining room her black plimsoles squeaking.

The dining room has a rosewood sideboard spinette. The keyboard has been sawed out and there it stands ruined and pretty at the end of the dining room and along the polished top stands Dutch and Irish and English silver. A rosebowl engraved with my mother’s maiden name – ‘May Lenox-Conyngham – 1936 Pytchley Hunt Ladies’ Race’. Two silver cock pheasants … one pecking and one peering sideways. Two filigree jam pots with silver coolie hat lids and blue glass jars and a silver filigree pattern of tigers climbing flowers. Four glass decanters line up in grooved oak coasters with circular silver miniature picket fences. An Irish Waterford crystal decanter pair hold dark-crimson port and brown sherry. Two square Dutch ship’s decanters hold transparent gin and tawny whisky.

Mrs Fish pours three fingers of gin and carries the tumbler and decanter to the kitchen and runs cold water in the decanter and holds the glass neck out to me and says … You put it back … go on … I’m telling you. Her soapy fingers slip and I catch and hug the cut-glass and tiptoe to the sideboard and say under my breath … Don’t drop … don’t drop … and think I can hear my father’s voice shout … What the bloody hell is going on in here … I damned well want to know … speak up.

Mrs Fish drinks half a glass of gin and leans on the kitchen table and coughs. Her coughs are rough and brittle. I go out of the kitchen door and run up the yard slopping orange squash on dandelions and stones.

Outside the harness room the mounting block is a two-step concrete throne in sunshine. Behind a creosoted stable door horses’ shoes scratch cement and straw shifts under a pony’s feet. A crow flies over to Fishpond Wood. My father’s horse kicks a pine partition plank and splinters break. A horsefly comes at my face and swerves. My black pony hangs his head over a half-door and sighs and pricks his ears. I see creosote blister on stable doors facing south. Mrs Fish carries a clothes basket out of the kitchen door and weaves up coal shed cinder path and drops the basket. A forked ash pole props the washing line and Mrs Fish gives the pole a slap so the fork slides down the wire and the line sinks. She flings wet clothes up over the wire and clips stripped bark hazel pegs on overlaps of jodhpurs … knickers … blouses … brassieres … nightdresses … vests … dungarees. She stands on two sawn-off logs and throws white sheets up and over and steps down and tugs the sheets flat along the wire. Under the oak branches she does a dance with the forked ash pole to hoist the line and the wet clothes rise up and flap between the tree and coal shed roof.

I go in the stable and dandy-brush dust out of the black pony’s silky summer coat and finger yellow wavy dandy bristles and hold up my hand in sunlight strips of dust. I hear Mrs Fish’s gumboots flap up the stable path and she looks in over the half-door … You can take me back home now … get him out …

I say … No thanks …

And she says … Get him out here … I’m telling you.

She slams back the barrel bolt and the pony’s head jerks up and I push his face in a webbing halter and lead the pony. Mrs Fish steps up on the mounting block under swallows playing in the blue sky. She lifts one white gumboot and hops a circle on her other foot and says … Come on then … bring him close … And I say … I’ve got to get on first.

I vault on off the ground and ride past the mounting block and she steps behind me across the pony’s broad back. We turn out of the yard and start down Rickyard Lane. White elder flowers big as saucers lean over stone walls on either side. Mrs Fish begins to sing … If you were the only boy in the world, and I was the only girl … in a sweet, husky treble and I groan.

At Fiveacre gate the stream parts clumps of gold kingcups and goes under the lane and oak and ash and larch grow along steep slopes either side and the path gets darker. Low branches stretch across and meet. The pony walks in hardly any light. Mrs Fish finishes singing ‘God Save the King’ and begins … If you walk through a storm hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark … and we come to the wide-open Valley gate. The pony trots across baked mud ruts and starts to canter on the grass and I yell … I can’t stop him … and Mrs Fish shouts close to my ear … Let him go then.

Her bony arms are tight round my waist and her fingers hold a butcher’s grip. The galloping pony rocks. I pull up my knees and crouch and grip mane hair in both hands and hold the halter rope. Mrs Fish leans her chest on my back.

The pony gallops flat out over Valley cowslips and thistles. Rabbits run past bluebells and disappear down warrens in trees. Hoofbeats rumble and jays scream. A pigeon swerves above us as we race down the long bright-green strip. Where the woods end a chaotic plan of anthills circles Alexandra’s Gorse hillside. Green tumps bulge high as the pony’s knees and at a tall one the pony swerves downhill. Gravity pulls Mrs Fish sideways and she hugs me tightly. Her thighs slip. Our bodies cling and wobble and our legs stick out sideways and wave.

Mrs Fish and I fall … rolling over gorse twigs … stuck by green gorse needles … squashing yellow gorse flowers … red ants scurry … lucky for us ancient grass is spongy. We sit up side by side between anthills puffing hard. Downhill the pony pulls couch grass and mows small brilliant blue speedwell flowers and Mrs Fish says … Go on then … fetch him up here.

A rabbit skims a gorse bush and scuds uphill to the wicket gate and the flowering horse-chestnut tree and the pony’s head comes up and his ears prick.

I say to Mrs Fish … Stand on an anthill … and I tug the pony up close and say … Bend your knee … one two three … and I lift her foot and she lands astride. I jump off the bouncy anthill behind her.

The pony walks to the Valley end and I see smoke from Mrs Fish’s cottage and above Windmill blackthorn spinney grey windmill blades spin on a frame of legs and bars. Mrs Fish sings hymns – ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ and ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and ‘And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times’ – up to Needlehole Cottages. In the paddock the scent of dead lilac and cow-parsley and wood and stone blow past and I slide off and Mrs Fish swings her gumboot across the pony’s neck. She sits side-saddle and slips down and I pull the pony round the way we came. Mrs Fish says … I’ll have a ride back after Betty comes in for tea.

She hauls a split elm rail across the paddock track and pokes it in a horseshoe nailed on the gatepost and says … I’ll fetch water … you let him go.

Dog roses grow up broken walls and stick through empty pigsty windows. Orange marigolds flower against a dark-green water-butt. Mrs Fish drops in a wooden bucket for water. The pony pulls at roses. Mrs Fish shouts … Get him off the flowers.

She throws a stone so the wall rings. The pony backs away. She lugs the bucket up the garden path and water slips inside her white rubber boot. The pony drinks and huffs. His breathing starts a whirlpool in the bucket. He sucks and gulps and his long top hairstar lip wipes inside the rim and the bucket falls over and rolls and rattles. His front legs rear up towards Halfmoon Spinney and he prances along the trees with his nostrils flared and his tail crooked high. He halts and his knees and hocks fold and he sinks on the grass and rolls and chucks his body side to side and gallops his legs upside down. He sits front legs straight and stands and shakes his skin and starts to graze.

Mrs Fish says … You come along indoors.

I cross my legs and stand still. She opens the blue front door and looks round and shouts … The privy’s round the back.

I hear water pour and wood fall inside the cottage. I can’t see past geranium flowers and green leaves clambering up smeared window-panes. I go along a grass strip between carrot rows and peas twined in hazel sticks to a corrugated-iron hut. I shove my finger in an opening and lift a wire hook. Inside the hut torn newspaper hangs on mouldy green string and a circle is cut in board on a box and down the hole is black water and floating brown lumps and the smell’s sweet rotted muck. I hunch off dungaree straps with my thumbs and shove down white cotton knickers and sit on the damp wood ring and shut my eyes tight. I can hear piss splash and see pink garden worms and shiny grey slugs crawl on my skin.

I don’t touch the paper flaps. I hoist up knicker elastic and trouser bib and one strap and lift the hook and run along the grass path strip.

Mrs Fish’s lovely daughter Betty comes in the garden gate. She is taller than Mrs Fish. Her auburn hair shines in the sun. She wears a white cotton puff-sleeve blouse and daffodil-yellow full gathered skirt and white ankle socks and slip-on black elastic plimsoles. Her blue eyes look my way. She smiles my father’s smile and says … You coming in?

I don’t follow her. In the paddock the backs of my legs press the drystone wall. I pick off yellow lichen cushions and hear chair legs scratch brick floor. The sun goes in. Swallows fly low over the two cottage chimneys. The cold breeze raises goose bumps on my skin. I lean on the pony’s withers and fold my arms and put my cheek on my hands and when he steps I step.

Rain begins. I turn over the water bucket and step up and spring off onto the pony and whack his neck with the halter rope knot.

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