The Moon Field

Haycock looked at Rooke sceptically. ‘Harry says they measure you, how tall you are … your chest and what-all before they let you in.’

‘Who’s Harry?’ George asked.

‘His brother,’ Turland filled him in. ‘He was in the Territorials so he’s already been mobilised.’

Haycock asked Rooke, ‘How old are you anyway?’

Rooke flushed: a blush that reddened his cheeks and rose to the tips of his ears. He shot a swift glance at Turland as if to refer the question to him, which George thought very curious.

‘Leave it, Haycock,’ Turland said.

‘It’s just that you have to be eighteen to join, nineteen if you want to serve overseas …’

Rooke stared fiercely at Haycock. ‘I don’t know how old I am.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

Turland said quietly, ‘Shut up, Haycock. Now’s not the time.’ He tapped his cards on the table whilst he thought. ‘We should go up to the castle together,’ he said. ‘Rooke might have more of a chance if they see us as a job lot.’

George imagined the three of them in khaki, swinging their arms as they marched together and suddenly felt awkward sitting there in his postman’s uniform. The role he’d been so proud of was safe, civilian. He felt reduced to a mere message-taker, little better than an errand-boy, while the others would be part of something huge, a glorious endeavour, taking their places as men. He was tipsily aware that somewhere beneath the muddle of his feelings about England and honour and protecting one’s family lay the unease he felt about seeing Violet again: a troubling mixture of deadly embarrassment that he had revealed something of his feelings, and shame that he hadn’t behaved with more gallantry. He felt an unbearable awkwardness that he had no idea how to overcome. Then his mind flipped unaccountably to Lillie and the fragile feel of her small bones as he lifted her that morning, and he felt a lump form in his throat.

At the next table, the bearded man was nudging his neighbour and drawing the attention of his drinking partners so that all turned round to look. One of them, who had a kitbag slung on the back of his chair, said, ‘You shouldn’t have too much of a problem. You’ll soon shape up, even the young ’un.’

Haycock spat on his hand and held it out over the jumble of glasses and cards.

‘Are you in, Farrell?’ Turland asked.

George hesitated. The scrutiny from the table behind had spread and even the men standing at the bar had turned to see what had caused the dramatic gesture.

‘Soldiers in the making!’ the bearded man called out, and with that, Turland and Rooke spat on their palms too and the three of them joined hands, fist over fist, to a chorus of approving voices. George leant back on his stool as if to move out of the bearded man’s eyeline.

‘Three soldiers and a postman!’ the man shouted and the swell of congratulation died away into laughter as George hunched his shoulders and stared into his pint. Rooke bent beneath his downcast face and grinned up at him, saying, ‘Cheer up, mate, plenty of time to change your mind.’

George shrugged and downed the pint in huge gulps until there was nothing left. He saw that he’d fallen behind the others; there was a full glass set ready in front of him. He tried to focus on the task of stretching out to pick up the glass but his hand seemed to move independently of his will, jerking forward and nudging the full glass so that it slopped a pool of beer on to the table. He stared at the beer still frothing on the dark wood.

‘Steady,’ said Haycock, setting the glass in his hand.

‘You shouldn’t have bought him that last one,’ said Turland.

‘Needs cheering up, doesn’t he?’ Haycock said. ‘Spot of woman trouble.’ He winked at Turland and dealt the cards again. Turland and Rooke picked up their cards and another game began.

George took a sup and put his glass down very carefully but waved Haycock away when he tried to give him his hand of cards. ‘I’ll pass this one up,’ he muttered.

We must have been here a while, George thought, as the girl who had been collecting glasses reached across a table to open a window and he saw her reflection in the pane and realised that it was now fully dark outside. He hoped that there was a moon and wondered how he would make the ride home without mishap otherwise. A cool draught of air reached him. He breathed it in deeply and tried to ignore the queasy feeling in his stomach and the sensation that if he didn’t concentrate very hard on the three of spades which lay abandoned in front of him, the room started to waver slowly on the borders of his vision.

The girl reached their table and began to gather up the empties. She had coarse features, hair the colour of brass and the high colour that often goes with it. Strands of her hair had escaped her pins and stuck to her brow and neck.

Haycock said, ‘Where’s Mary tonight then?’

‘She’s ill; I’m just filling in this once,’ the girl said. She paused to roll her sleeves up, revealing plump, freckly arms. She leaned across the table to pick up the empty glasses in front of George, and Haycock tipped his stool backwards so that he could give her posterior a long, appraising look. ‘Bottoms up,’ he said and drained the dregs of his beer. George thought this uncouth. Haycock sat forward again and put his glass down but as the girl reached to take it he moved it further away. She shot him a glance as if to say ‘I know your game’ but still leant over further to take it, and when he wouldn’t let it go and looked at her with a challenge in his eyes she laughed and drew it slowly from his fingers.

George, noticing as she bent forward that her figure beneath her blouse didn’t have the corseted solidity that he usually associated with the female form, but instead a loose movement as if all below was only constrained by petticoats, dragged his eyes back to her face. Feeling the effects of the drink, he was aware of a delay between thought and action and realised that he was staring, yet was strangely fascinated by her blond eyelashes, which gave her eyes a red-rimmed, unfinished look.

‘Your friend all right?’ the girl said to Turland. ‘He’s looking a bit queer.’

‘He’s had a fair bit to drink.’

‘Maybe more than he can manage,’ Haycock said, knocking George’s arm so that his elbow slipped off the table, jolting him into action. George sat up as straight as he could.

‘I’m perfectly …’ George found that even his lips now seemed to be rebelling against him, with a numb sensation as he pressed them together and tried to form the words. ‘… fine. And it’s my round,’ he finished, fishing around in his pocket for some money. He tried to rise but had to put his hand on the table to steady himself.

‘I’ll bring them,’ the girl said. ‘You stay here.’

George subsided and she picked out some threepenny bits and pennies from the handful he held out, her wet fingers leaving the remaining coins sticky in his hand.

Haycock and Turland were talking about giving in their notice at work. Both felt that their employers wouldn’t ask them to work it out; they would be released straight away if they had their military marching orders. Rooke said that when he decided to move out he just did it, although always on a payday – no point going without what was due to you. George stared into his drink; the conversation seemed too hard to follow. He very much wanted to go to sleep. He tried to marshal his thoughts by concentrating on what was before him; the beer reminded him of the colour of a beech hedge, ‘a distillation of autumn’. He thought the phrase rather good but couldn’t trust himself to share it in case it came out all wrong. The sound of the words moved through his head in a slow, pleasing procession. Why couldn’t he just curl up somewhere warm and go to sleep?

The voices of his companions rose as they explored the heady excitement of being able to escape their normal humdrum lives so quickly. The anticipated freedom of having extra money in their pockets bred madcap plans for their return. Haycock would join forces with his brother to sell motors; Turland would move to London and try his hand at a job on a bigger paper, maybe even take up travel as a foreign correspondent somewhere glamorous, ‘Paris or New York,’ he said grandly. Rooke said he would get the best cycle money could buy and eat out like a king every night. His ambition didn’t seem to extend further than a more comfortable version of the life he knew.

The girl returned with four tankards on a tray and Haycock suggested that they ‘down them in one’ so she stayed for the empties, standing with arms folded and wearing an amused expression. Rooke put George’s tankard in his hand, folding his fingers around the handle and ribbing him a little. Haycock counted them in, ‘One, two, three …’ and they lifted their elbows as one and threw their heads back.

With the first few swallows, George knew that this was a step too far. A horrible gurgling started up in his stomach and he set his glass down and put his head in his hands, trying to still the sensation that the room had begun to spin and that his stool was at the centre of the turning and seemed to be trying to buck him off. He heard the boys thump down the tankards and burst into a cheer at the same time as he felt the girl’s hand on his back; he smelt a mixture of sweat and face powder as she bent over him.

‘Not feeling too good?’ she said in his ear. ‘You come along with me.’

George was afraid to move or even look up, convinced that he would disgrace himself by either falling over or being sick.

‘Come on now, gently does it.’ She slipped her arm under his so that his whole forearm was supported. Once on his feet, she gripped his hand and he stumbled beside her, aware of a shout of, ‘Steady, Farrell!’ and the sound of his fellow drinkers drumming their fists on the table ever louder and faster. The girl ignored them and led him to the passageway that took them to the back door.

Outside, the air felt cool: his shirt and waistcoat were chill and damp with sweat. His upper lip prickled and his legs wanted to buckle beneath him as they walked into the yard. ‘Here,’ she said, pushing him towards the privy. ‘In there.’

He went in and pulled the door shut behind him. The smell of piss rising from the hole in the wooden bench seat of the closet was the final straw. He barely had time to sink to his knees and brace himself against the plank before he threw up what felt like everything he had drunk or eaten that day. Eventually, he rested his forehead on his arm, exhausted. It was wholly dark in the privy. George couldn’t abide dark, close places. Ever since his father had taken him, as a child, on an adventure down into the mine where he worked George had feared small spaces: the suffocating sense of enclosure, the tomb-like dark and the stale air pressing in on him. The tunnels, narrowing as they had gone further into the mine, were a source of wonder and admiration to his father, but they had terrified him. Their lowering roofs made his father stoop, casting a crooked shadow that stretched and shrank on the wet rock as he shuffled along in the nodding light of his lamp. Ahead and behind, the darkness was solid, as if they were moving through black treacle that parted for a moment before them only to ooze back behind them as they passed. He had known, even at seven years old, that he could never work in such a place, exiled from the sun and rain and wind, had felt that the earth and rock around him and the weight of the mountain above were pressing on his chest and stealing away his breath.

George stayed very still, waiting to feel a little better before attempting to stand up. Outside, there was a rustling noise, a shuffling against the wall, as if someone was trying to squeeze between it and the bushes. He thought of the bike, hidden behind the laurels, and hoped it was safe, but he hadn’t the strength to do anything about it. After a while, he took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth with a wobbling hand. He realised that he was kneeling on an earth floor. He levered himself up, steadied himself against the bench seat and tried to dust down the knees of his uniform trousers. Having got himself upright, shakily he felt for the door latch, lifted it and went outside.

The girl was leaning against the wall of the privy, her hands behind her back. George felt a sharp stab of embarrassment to think she had been there all the time. ‘You needn’t have waited,’ he said. ‘I was perfectly all right.’ Then he thought that he had sounded ungrateful and added, ‘Thanks for bringing me out.’ He stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket.

‘You still look pretty poorly,’ the girl said, peering at him. ‘You should stay in the fresh air a bit.’ She took hold of his sleeve and moved along the wall, drawing him beside her. ‘That’s right, breathe it in.’ George drew in a breath that smelt of damp leaves, the pitch on the privy roof and a faint tang of tobacco as though someone had ground out a cigarette butt nearby.

She took his hand and began to rub it between hers, at first as if to bring life back into his fingers but then she put her thumb in his palm and moved it in a circle, pressing it into the concavity of his hand. George felt a hot current run through him, a disturbing reflex reaction, as though his body recognised an urgent message that his mind was too slow to decipher. His fingers closed around her hand. In a sudden movement, she swung herself round to face him and her arms reached up to entwine his neck as she leant the whole length of her body against him. The soft, yielding feeling of her body beneath her light clothes undid him. He put his arms around her and bent to kiss her but she turned her head away, instead nuzzling her face into his neck, kissing and licking. She took his hand and guided it to her breast, slipping it between the sticky cotton of her blouse and the warm heaviness beneath which George cupped, trembling, his head spinning, his body taking over. She pressed against him, moaning softly and he felt suddenly afraid, unable to stop himself, and thought that this was what she wanted him to feel. She was taking his hand again, pulling up her skirt. Oh God, he could feel the clip of her suspender beneath her petticoat. She was moving his hand up and down over the silky material, over her thigh and up to her buttock …

Suddenly a blinding light was in his eyes, so bright that at first they both turned their heads away.

‘Well, what’s going on here then?’ a man’s voice said, dropping the torch beam a little and running it over the girl’s open buttons and the curve of her breast. George, blinking in the light, couldn’t understand why she didn’t move away, didn’t cover herself. In his shock, George had the bizarre notion that they were caught in some music-hall tableau of static nudity, where the slightest movement would bring down the force of the law. Then, as if a moment of posing for a photograph were over, she pulled away and began expertly restoring her clothes to order.

‘That’ll be five shillings,’ she said matter-of-factly.

‘I’m sorry?’ George said, not understanding.

‘Five shillings,’ she said slowly as though explaining to an idiot. ‘You’ve had your pleasure, now pay up, there’s a good boy.’

‘But I didn’t ask …’ George started. ‘You …’ The sudden change of circumstances left him floundering. He couldn’t grasp what was happening or quite believe what was being requested of him. He felt weak and pressed his head back against the wall as if its cool solidity could give his mind focus. He started to tuck his shirt in and then stopped, feeling ashamed.

‘Come on, pay up,’ said the man, and this time George raised his head as he recognised the voice of the chap who had sat in the corner with the newspaper earlier in the evening; he squinted against the light, trying to see him. In an instant the torch was thrown down – he heard it hit the gravelly ground with a crunch – and the man was on him, slamming his head back against the wall and punching his fist into his gut. George doubled over, retching, a dry acidic heaving from the depths of his empty stomach. He sank down against the wall and slid to his knees, winded, unable even to shield himself against the man’s boot as it met his ribs and tipped him on to his side. He lay groaning, his eyes scrunched up in pain. He felt, rather than saw, the girl bending over him and then, with her small fat fingers, quickly feeling into his jacket pockets, pulling all their contents out on to the ground and picking through them. He heard a heavy and a lighter tread as both of them walked away.

The side of his face was pressed against the sharp gravel and he could feel a long string of saliva dribble from his open mouth. His arms were folded across his stomach as if to hold him together and contain the burning pain in his gut and the pulsing throb of his ribs. He could think of nothing but the pain yet he knew that when it finally abated, what was beyond it would be even worse: the vague outline of thoughts that heaved at the edge of his consciousness would resolve into monstrous, shameful shapes.

He could no longer feel the weight of the sketchbook against his chest. Slowly he stretched out one hand, trying to trick the pain through moving by degrees; groping across the dirt, he felt the crumpled handkerchief, the coldness of a few scattered coins. He couldn’t find it. He slumped back with a groan.

Across the yard, he saw the back door open, throwing a quadrangle of light across the steps and releasing the sound of voices and laughter into the air. A small figure came out and hesitated, peering around as if waiting for his eyes to get accustomed to the dark. George tried to call out but all the air seemed to have left his body and only a moan came from him.

‘Farrell?’ The figure came down the steps and picked its way towards him. ‘Farrell? Are you all right?’ Then Rooke bent over him, taking his elbow, trying to lift him up. ‘What the hell happened?’ He looked about him quickly, checking that whoever had done this wasn’t still around. He managed to raise George into a sitting position. ‘I’ll get the others,’ he said.

George hung on to his arm. ‘My book. I can’t find my book.’

‘Never mind that, we need to get you out of here,’ Rooke said.

‘I need it.’ George struggled to control his voice.

Rooke squatted beside him and felt around until he found the book. He put it into George’s hands and then ran back to get the others.

The book’s smooth covers were grainy with sandy earth. George brushed his fingers over them and put the book safe in his pocket, wincing as he lifted his arm. Rooke returned with the others who lifted him and got his arms over their shoulders so that they could help him along.

‘We’d better take him back to our lodgings,’ Turland said to Rooke. ‘You get the bike.’

Rooke pulled it out from behind the bushes and wheeled it along beside them.

‘Took your money, I suppose,’ Haycock said.

George nodded.

‘Did you see who it was?’

‘No. He jumped me from behind,’ George said, already forming the lie that he would tell and retell, already feeling the hot shame creeping through him, sordid and unclean.

3

DANCE CARD

When Violet had first arrived at the Cedars, Elizabeth’s family home, Edmund had been away and she had been so busy, in the first week, meeting the Lyne family’s cousins and friends for luncheon parties, picnics and concerts, that she had almost forgotten Elizabeth had a brother. After a morning spent boating with a group of relations who had failed to include sunshades in their preparations, Elizabeth had felt the worse for the sun and suggested that they withdraw to their rooms for the afternoon, the better to enjoy the evening’s entertainment.

Violet, however, was unable to rest. Despite closing the drapes against the intense heat of the June afternoon and taking off her shoes and lying full length on the bed, her thoughts were too full of the unwonted excitements of the last few days, her mind a whirl of gowns and opera glasses, new faces, drives in the motor, parlour games and laughter. The room was stuffy, the satin quilt beneath her sticky and clinging, and at length she gave up, slipped her shoes back on again and decided to go in search of something to read.

Downstairs, the tall double doors of the library were open and Violet went in softly, glad that she wouldn’t have to risk breaking the oppressive quiet of the afternoon by their creaking. The room was lined with books from the floor to the ornately plastered ceiling, and was furnished with library steps to reach them. Chairs, couches and occasional tables stood around for the convenience of the reader, some arranged in a group in the centre, some placed with their backs to the room giving a view from the long French windows of the sloping lawns, elms and cedars. A large desk, belonging to Elizabeth’s father, stood to one side, littered with stamps, magnifying glass and glue pot and Violet felt that she was intruding a little and thought that she would choose something quickly and go.

Her eyes travelled over the books in the lower shelves, which were large, dull, leather-bound volumes of county history, and passed up through travelogues and heavy-looking biographies until she found a set of the Waverley novels on one of the top shelves. She wheeled the library steps along and positioned them so that they were well braced against the shelves; then, picking up the skirts of her afternoon dress in one hand, she awkwardly climbed up to find one that she hadn’t yet read. The set, tightly packed together, wouldn’t yield a volume easily. Getting a finger hooked into the top of the spine of the book in the middle, she pulled hard, dislodged several, then, juggling books, steps and skirts, tried to catch them and failed so that three volumes fell with an almighty thump on the polished wood floor.

There was a muttered curse of ‘What the devil?’ from one of the couches and a man sat up and rested his elbow on its upholstered back. He blinked and passed his hand over his face and through his dark hair, staring with a bemused expression as though unsure whether he was still in a dream.

Violet, still clutching a copy of Ivanhoe, said, ‘Oh! You startled me!’ and then flushed crimson, feeling foolish, as she had undoubtedly startled him first. Momentarily lost for words, she stared back. His tie was loosened, his waistcoat was undone and his sleeves were rolled back giving him a rakish look that was at odds with his neat moustache and candid grey eyes. ‘I’m so sorry to have woken you,’ she said, reaching to put the books that had fallen flat on the shelf back into position.

‘Oh, don’t trouble yourself about that. Here, let me help,’ he said, jumping to his feet and coming to the foot of the ladder. He picked up the other volumes and passed them up to her. ‘I’m Edmund, by the way. Who are you?’

‘Violet. Violet Walter.’ In reaching down to shake his offered hand, she almost lost the books again and he steadied her elbow.

‘You’re Elizabeth’s friend, aren’t you?’ he said. He broke into a wide grin. ‘She never mentioned you were such a big reader.’

Violet smiled as she put all but one of the books back. ‘I do like to read,’ she said, ‘but for an afternoon’s idle hour even I would find the full set daunting.’

‘Well, you’re welcome to as many as you can manage,’ he said, helping her down from the steps. She turned at the foot and they came face to face. There was a moment when they both stopped and looked – a beat, barely a pause, but it seemed to Violet that something passed between them: a strange instant of recognition. Violet drew away first, suddenly aware of the impropriety of their situation: alone together – and at this proximity. She stepped to the side but before she could pass him he said, ‘Must you go? Don’t run away. Elizabeth’s only told me a little about you; do come and tell me more. Please?’ and before she knew what she was doing she found herself steered to an armchair. Edmund solicitously tucked a cushion behind her, saying cheerily, ‘None of these chairs are comfy. They’re lumpy old horsehair things but we’re all fond of them just because they’ve always been here.’