The Levelling Dust

THE LEVELLING DUST

By

T JOHN WARD

Copyright T John Ward 2002

Smashwords edition 2013

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Chapter One

Robert Bowen dipped a milk can into the brimming horse trough. His brother, Douglas, a spindly- legged eleven year old, was standing by a towering dung heap urging him on.

‘Go on, chuck it!’, he shouted, with an intensity that encouraged grubby fingers to tighten their grip on the can. Making his brother commit a minor act of cruelty was both an expression and a release of Douglas’s juvenile frustrations.

For Robert it was an opportunity to show his brother that, although he was a year younger than him, he was just as brave. He pulled the dripping vessel from the trough and swung it in a short arc, releasing two pints’ of silver-grey water into the air.

His target was a fully grown Billy Goat. It had watched balefully as the boys had raced each other over the five–barred gate, dropping into the muddy farmyard, careless of the consequences to their boots and half- mast socks.

The goat was tied to a rusting, iron ring, set into the cowshed wall. Pink eyed, bearded and with a matted, dirty coat, the belligerent animal tossed its horned head; recognising his long-standing enemies.

The water scored a full in the face hit.

‘Do it again, Bob!’ The older boy’s high- pitched tones sent several startled rooks soaring from the majestic elm trees growing in the corner of an adjacent pasture.

A soft sound emanated from the cowshed. Milk was being hand squeezed from a swollen udder into a half-full, aluminium pail. The sound ceased as the tormented goat launched itself at the small boy.

The frayed binder twine securing the animal broke apart as cloven hooves scrabbled for purchase in the ordure that covered the surface of the yard. Robert dropped the milk can. Panic stricken, he ran towards the gate, while Douglas scrambled quickly to the top of the dung heap.

The goat was rapidly shortening the distance between its bony head and the rear of the fleeing child when a man of stocky build, wearing a peaked cap, reversed upon his head, came swiftly out of the cowshed, carrying a long handled bass broom.

‘What the bloody hell are you kids’ doing?’ With one quick step he came within range of the goat and struck it on its backside with the broom. The unfortunate animal emitted a strangled bleat as its rear legs collapsed beneath it.

The man glowered at Douglas. ‘Get down off that muck heap. You’re going to feel my belt when I get home tonight. Now get the milk and clear off.’

Douglas scrambled down and bent to pick up the milk can. ‘It weren’t my fault, dad, Bob done it.’

The boy’s father took hold of the remnants of string trailing from the goat’s neck and dragged its reluctant form into a pen at the end of the cowshed. ‘Don’t add lies to it. I heard you telling him what to do.’ He glanced at Robert, who had perched himself out of harm’s way atop the gate. ‘He’s younger than you, so you’re supposed to know better.’

Douglas slouched into the cool of the dairy. In marked contrast to the yard, the shabby cowshed and other outbuildings, it was brand new and pristine in its cleanliness; with gleaming, stainless steel coolers and sinks and a newly washed, tiled floor. The air smelled sweet and buttery. Douglas was aware of how pleasant the place was as he plunged a ladle into a churn of milk. He drank the first ladleful, spilling some down the front of his shirt.

By the time he emerged with a full can and a creamy white moustache on his upper lip, Robert had unlatched the farm gate and was holding on to the top bar, with his feet on the bottom one, enjoying the brief ride it gave him as it swung open.

Douglas grabbed his brother by the arm, yanking him from the gate.

‘Come on, Bookworm, we’d better get a move on or we’ll miss the taxi and be late for school. Not that I care – but you do, don’t cha?’

They trudged along, hidden from the world by the tall, green hedgerows bordering the Sussex lane, towards where a cottage stood. The newly risen sun shone benevolently on the rural scene.

Douglas burst out laughing, suddenly overcome with wicked glee.

‘Old Billy bloody near had you that time, Bob! I reckon he would have butted you clean over that gate if he’d caught up with you! I’d have loved to ‘ave seen that!’

‘You shut up! I thought I was going to be killed, stone dead! I’d ‘ave liked to have seen you standing over my grave. P’raps then you’d have been sorry.’

Douglas laughed again, causing a blackbird to shoot out from the hedge, chattering its alarm call.

‘I bet there’s a nest in there – with eggs. We’ll have a look tonight.’

For now, they contented themselves with eating fresh leaves pulled from the hawthorn hedges. ‘Bread n’ cheese’, as this rustic repast was referred to by the local children

Robert burst into the kitchen just ahead of Douglas.

‘Mum, that old Billy got loose an’ nearly killed me!’

While David, her three year old, was far away in Child Land, under the kitchen table, Mary Bowen was spooning out thick, grey porridge into bowls. Hard work on the land and at home had enabled her to retain her trim figure, but one had to look more closely at her sweetly oval face to find traces of her youth. That natural beauty had been eroded by several years of penury and anxiety.

‘Look at the state you two are in,’ she snapped. ‘Can’t you keep yourselves clean for five minutes?’

The two boys scrambled into their chairs. ‘Dad’s going to belt me tonight, Mum,’ Douglas said, in a matter of fact manner as Robert, not for the first time, read the intriguing message on the Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup tin and pondered its meaning, ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’.

‘Gimme that treacle,’ Douglas snatched it away and poured a golden pool onto his porridge.

Mary passed them the army surplus small packs containing their exercise books and the thick cut sandwiches she’d made for their lunch. ‘You’d better steer clear of your father, tonight, Douglas, until he forgets all about it.’

Both boys poked their heads under the table before they left. ‘Bye, David.’

David emerged from Wonderland for a moment in order to say, ‘Bye’

Mary watched her two sons through the kitchen window as they fought their way through the garden gate, then pulled David out from his play area and sat him on her lap. He liked being there. After Robert had been born, this boy with the intelligent eyes had not announced his arrival until six years later.

There was a heavy silence in the house after Douglas and Robert’s noisy departure.

Mary fed the contented David with cereals then turned her attention to frying eggs for her husband’s breakfast. She felt alone and vulnerable this morning and had deliberately avoided using the washstand mirror when she’d combed her hair.

The garden gate made its familiar grating sound as it was opened; then Harry Bowen’s boots crunched their way along the gravel path leading to the kitchen door. Mary shrank a little into herself at what, to her, had become an ominous noise.

****

Douglas, Robert and the Austin 14, arrived simultaneously at the junction of the lane and the main road. The boys had discussed the possibility of pressing button ’B’ in the red telephone box standing there on a triangle of grass. They both remembered the day when they’d done so and two pennies had magically dropped into the receptacle. The prompt arrival of the school taxi spoilt their chances of repeating this small miracle.

‘I can see your drawers,’ Douglas jeered at the girl sitting on the seat, as he half fell into the back of the car, closely followed by Robert. ‘Elizabeth Vickers wears no knickers!’

‘If I don’t wear ‘em, how can you see ‘em?’ Elizabeth wanted to know. She had a very logical mind for a ten-year old.

‘You leave her alone.’ Her brother, James, was sitting next to her, worrying about long multiplication

‘You going to make me?’ Douglas challenged.

The interior of the taxi smelt of polished wood and leather. Robert closed his eyes and inhaled these pleasant aromas. He began to imagine he was driving the car and made as though he was holding the steering wheel. With child-like perception the other three quickly emulated him. In a moment they were all holding pretend steering wheels and emitting car engine noises, complete with the clashing of gear changes.

‘Shut that racket up and sit still back there!’ Ken Bateman, the taxi driver, turned his head and shouted at them through the glass partition. He was in a black mood as it was, without having a bunch of noisy kids making things worse by putting their dirty boots all over his upholstery.

A few months ago he’d been an army sergeant chauffeuring a major- general round the ruins of Berlin. With money in his pocket from a bit of black marketeering, three stripes on his arm and a cushy job, he’d been Jack the Lad. Now, here he was, demobbed and reduced to ferrying kids to and fro school on behalf of the District Council and taking various members of the Hore-Bellingham family to the railway station when they went ‘up to town’. Twenty seven years old; Bateman still maintained a military-style haircut. It bristled now, atop a rotund, beery face. His various frustrations had become exacerbated by the knowledge that he’d left Hart Green as a nobody and upon his return, had quickly slumped to the same status. They’d already grown tired of listening to his blood and guts war stories in the pub; and the only difference to his pre- war life was that he now delivered people by car instead of groceries by bike and van.

Bateman changed gear rather harshly as he negotiated a tight bend in the road. He could feel his expanding stomach pushing at the waistband of his trousers. The war may have been bloody dangerous at times but at least he’d felt alive and worth something. He’d ‘done his bit’ alright; saving the lives of two soldiers in Normandy by pulling them from a burning ammo truck. He should have got a medal for that. Still, he was happy enough with the third stripe on his arm and the respect of his comrades.

Using his teeth, he extracted a ‘Craven A’ from its pack, flipped the top open on the Zippo lighter he’d won off that Yank and touched flame to the cigarette, inhaling deeply. Those were the days! His thoughts turned to the evening, not even a year ago, when, in exchange for cigarettes and chocolate, he’d had a nubile young German girl in the back of the general’s car. Re-living sliding between her thighs as she gasped and hung onto a leather door strap while looking up at him with rather desperate eyes, caused his throat to constrict. He could do with a woman like her, right now! The local village girls were dangerous. They either cried rape if you put a hand up their skirt, or acquiesced, told mum, and had the bloody vicar calling the Banns within a fortnight.

There were only two classrooms at Hart Green Primary School. Robert sat in one of them and Douglas, in his last term before going up to the ‘big’ school at Westfield, was in the other.

‘Now then, Douglas,’ the stately Miss Coombes asked, ‘can you tell me the names of the two oceans that are connected by the Panama Canal?’

Douglas screwed up his face as he struggled to remember. He knew that one of them was the Atlantic. Was the other one the Indian Ocean or the Pacific? After enduring the gaze of the entire class for several seconds, along with Miss Coombes unwavering stare, he lost patience. With a slight shrug of his shoulders, he answered, ‘I’m buggered if I know, Miss.’

Twenty- seven children burst into paroxysms of laughter. Several of them began banging the lids of their desks, making the ink- wells jump. Pigtails were pulled and some boys hideously distorted their faces.

‘Be quiet at once!’ Miss Coombes spoke with devastating authority and the class fell instantly silent. ‘Douglas Bowen, stand up!’

Douglas scraped his chair back and stood as ordered. He was well aware of the hole in his grey jersey and the fact that the knot in his green and grey striped tie was somewhere under his left ear. He lifted his chin and looked at his teacher. ‘Yes, Miss?’

‘If it were not for the anomalies of birth date and term times you would be at Secondary School now, where you would most certainly be caned for that remark. As it is, you will stay behind after school and write out one hundred times, ‘I must not swear in the classroom’. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Miss Coombes, but how am I going to get home if I miss the taxi? It’s a blood – I mean it’s a four mile walk, and I’ve got work to do for me dad.’

Miss Coombes paused for a moment, studying the ragged little human being standing before her, displaying a kind of forlorn defiance. The poor wretch didn’t stand a chance in life!

‘Very well, Douglas,’ she conceded, ‘you will stay in every playtime until they are finished. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Good! Now who can tell me the names of those oceans?

Nineteen hands shot into the air as Douglas sat with his chin in his.

‘I didn’t see you at all today,’ Robert told his brother, after Bateman had dropped them off from the taxi. ‘Not at playtime or dinner time.’

They began to trudge down the lane. ‘I got lines from that cranky old Coombes. How did you get on with the Gumboil?’

Robert pulled a book from his haversack. ‘Miss Gumble lent me this. She said I’m good enough to read it.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s called, ‘The Dog Crusoe.’’

Douglas pulled some long grasses from the verge and prepared to suck at their sweet and pulpy ends. ‘What, sort of like Robinson Crusoe only it’s a dog?’

‘No, it’s about this dog called Crusoe and his master. They go off to the Rocky Mountains and fight bears and Indians.’

Douglas spat out the grass. ‘Oh, cowboys and Indians.’

They became instantly transformed. Holding on to imaginary reins with one hand and slapping at their imaginary horses flanks with the other, they galloped towards their home.

Harry Bowen lugubriously eyed his family as he pushed a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

‘Don’t that boy know its bad manners to read at the table?’ He demanded of Mary. His powerful voice had a daunting effect on his wife and sons, who were only too well aware that he was growing ever more belligerent with each passing week. Harry’s gradual change from being a reasonably cheerful husband and father into an unapproachable bully had crept up on them so slowly it appeared to be part of the natural order of things.

‘Put the book down, Bob; you can read it later,’ Mary said, quietly.

‘Oh, mum,’ Robert protested, ‘I’ve just got to a good bit.’

His father boomed out. ‘Put the bloody book down, unless you want a clump.’

Born in 1915, Harry Bowen had left school and the dilapidated farm cottage that was his home, at the age of fourteen. Visits to his parents and siblings became less frequent and eventually ceased altogether. Before his marriage, he had worked on a series of farms across Sussex and Kent, becoming knowledgeable about stock and learning the art of hedging, ditching and thatching.

Shire horses still prevailed over the tractor and he grew proficient with those as well. Harry was strong in the body. Hard manual work from dawn to dusk, mostly six days a week, together with a diet of farm-fresh food, had honed him to a peak of physical fitness

When Mary first saw him as he came into the farmhouse kitchen where she’d taken employment, she had been impressed with him. He had a quiet dignity that had prevailed after their marriage in 1934 until the Second World War was well advanced.

Harry had believed the war would give him his big chance. He would join the army; escaping from the land, the tied cottage and the two pounds, fourteen shillings per week. Giving little thought to the fact that he might be killed or injured, he’d looked forward to seeing something of the world and learning a trade that would enable him to earn good money when he was back in ‘civvie’ street.’ Unfortunately for him, his job, like those of thousands of other farm labourers, was deemed to be a reserved occupation. He was obliged to remain on the land, watching war planes fly overhead, observing the occasional doodlebug and learn about the rest of it, either in the pub at Hart Green, or at home, on the radio. Local men in the same situation joined the Home Guard. Harry, bitter over losing the opportunity to escape from the life he’d been born to, did not. As a consequence, he found himself drinking alone in the ‘Ram’s Head’, unaware of his growing ill health.

Now, he sat morosely at the kitchen table. The malfunctioning thyroid glands that were the cause of his increasingly violent mood swings were making him feel nauseous. Sooner or later, the undiagnosed condition would cause a crisis which would result in a plunge into black depression – and worse.

‘What’s for pud’n, Mary?’

‘There’s some of that plain suet. You can have it with some jam or treacle.’

Harry pushed his plate away and stood up. ‘That lays too heavy on me. I’m going up the garden.’

He stood up, his form dominating his family.

‘You’re right to keep your head down and your mouth shut, boy,’ he told Douglas, as he opened the kitchen door. ‘I ain’t forgot this morning.’

After he’d gone an air of almost tangible tension remained in the room

‘Stay on the right side of him, Douglas,’ Mary said, ‘go and do some weeding or something.’

‘Yes, mum.’

He followed after his father, leaving Mary gazing anxiously after them as they proceeded up the garden path. David clutched at her skirt, demanding attention.

Robert picked up his book and began to read; his mind swimming gratefully away from a cottage in post-war Sussex to a pioneer settlement in the New World.

Mary examined the book’s jacket cover, with its depiction of the huge Newfoundland dog and its gallant master holding a long rifle and wearing the garb of a mountain man of the old west. ‘Do you understand what you’re reading there, Bob?’

Robert glanced up. ‘I understand it alright, mum. I like this bit I’m reading now, where he says the shape of the doors and windows in houses make them look like they’ve got feelings. Some of them look like happy houses and some look sad. That’s true, isn’t it? It does sort of depend on the design of their doors and windows and whether the houses are tall or long. I think I’ve noticed that myself, but I couldn’t – well, you know, I didn’t have anybody to tell, without being laughed at.’

Mary ruffled his hair. ‘Well, I’m glad someone’s got some brains ‘round here. I’d better get washed up. I’m feeling tired and I’m taking David over to the five acres tomorrow, picking up early potatoes; and after that, I’m going to see Dr Metcalfe, so I won’t be here when you come home from school. Mind your ‘P’s and Q’s.’ Don’t go upsetting your father. You know what he’s like these days.’

‘Yes, mum.’

In the lean-to shed at the end of the garden, Douglas squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as Harry Bowen’s broad, leather belt struck his backside for the fourth time. ‘One day I’ll be big like you,’ he thought, ‘then you’d better watch out!’

Harry had intended to give his son the time honoured six strokes until something of his old self stirred within him. Wavering in the face of the boy’s stoicism, he allowed the belt to fall to his side.

‘At least you’re no cry baby,’ he said. ‘Now go and chop some kindling.’

Douglas glanced at his father. He had been expecting two more blows from the belt. Their eyes met in a rare moment of mutual respect. ‘Yes, dad.’

After Douglas had left to do his bidding, Harry’s mind worked its way round to thinking about Ken Bateman. Before the war, the taxi driver had been a grocery boy who’d graduated from riding around on a bicycle fitted with a wicker basket, to driving a bull-nosed Morris van. Then he’d been called up and, judging from what Harry had overheard in the pub, had been to Egypt, North Africa, Italy and who knows where else? Then the useless bugger had come home with enough cash in his pocket to start a taxi business. Lucky sod!

He closed the shed door and went back to the kitchen.

‘Did you hit that boy?’ Mary demanded to know, as he hung his cap on the hook and began to wash his hands at the sink.

‘I’ve told him before about messing about with that goat.’

‘You always pick on him.’

Harry threw the towel onto the draining board. ‘I’ll pick on you if you don’t shut up.’

She turned her back on him and took the kettle from the hob, pouring boiling water into a large, brown teapot. It was time to take a chance and give him the news.

‘I’d better tell you before you start knocking me about again. I might be expecting.’

‘How the hell do you think we’re going to manage with another kid? We can’t make ends meet now. This shouldn’t have happened, Mary.’

A note of self-pity crept into Harry’s voice. ‘I don’t have anything except a smoke and a pint. Now I suppose you’ll want me to give them up as well!’

Mary brushed her hair back with one hand and lifted her head defiantly. ‘I don’t even have what you have; and it does take two to make a baby, you know.’

Harry stood up, anxiety and frustration tightening his guts. ‘How am I ever going to get a place of my own if we keep on having kids? I was all set to buy that small holding when Bob came along. That soon put a stop to that, didn’t it?’

Mary put a tentative hand on his bare forearm, feeling bone and taut muscle through the curled hair. ‘But Harry, dear; getting a place of your own is just a pipe dream. We’ll never save enough money to buy land on our income.’

‘I could borrow it from the bank.’

‘They wanted security the last time you asked them. All we’ve got is the Farmers Union policy, and that’s supposed to pay for burying us.’

‘To hell with everything; I’m going back up the garden.’

He slammed out of the room.

David said, ‘Mummy, I want a wee.’

Douglas came into the kitchen with a freshly chopped bundle of kindling which he dropped carelessly into the half empty coal scuttle before making a perfunctory attempt at brushing sawdust from his pullover.

‘Dad’s got it on him tonight.’ He glanced at his mother’s face and saw tears in her eyes. ‘Has he been having a go at you again? Oh, mum, don’t cry!’

She tried to smile. ‘I’m not, Doug. I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘You just wait ‘til I’m big enough, mum. I won’t let him hurt you then. I can promise you that.’

Mary composed herself. ‘He can’t help it, Douglas. Things get on top of him, that’s all. You’d better have a wash. Have you got any homework?’

‘It’s nothing worth bothering about. Where’s Bob?’

‘He’s upstairs, reading’

‘Not again?’

****

The avuncular Dr Metcalfe told Mary the result of the test was negative. Anxiety and stress might be the root cause of her missing a period. Although Metcalfe didn’t say so, he thought the bruises on her upper arms were a pointer to the problem.

He tugged at the waistcoat of his three piece pinstripe. ‘What happened here, Mrs Bowen?’ He asked the question softly, casually; expecting Mary to tell him a lie. In his experience, her type always did.

‘I-I tripped over some potato haulms out in the field. It’s nothing much.’

A likely story! ‘How is Mr Bowen these days?’ Metcalfe knew the answer he was going to get to that question as well. Sure enough, back it came.

‘Oh, he’s fine, doctor, just fine.’

‘He must be. He hasn’t been to see me for thirteen years, has he?’

‘He simply hates doctors and hospitals, Dr Metcalfe.’

Afterwards, she sat on the ancient bench inside the Lych gate at the entrance to Hart Green churchyard. Having worked all day in the potato field she was tired.

Mary enjoyed the cheerful company of the other women who worked with her; although their saucy banter scandalised her natural modesty as they bent to their task of picking up the earthy tubers of early potatoes, spun out of the ground by the horse drawn rotor. It had been difficult not to laugh along with them that morning, though; causing one of them to shout.

‘Hey, girls, I do believe shy Mary’s coming out of her shell.’

‘I don’t know what she’s got to be shy about, with three kids on her hands,’ a woman with a large amount of hair tied up in a head scarf, had called out, ‘Perhaps she don’t know how she got ‘em!’

At the end of the day, they’d clustered around her at the edge of the field so that she could discreetly change into a dress. After cleaning her shoes with grass as best she could, Mary left the protesting David in the capable hands of her nearest neighbour, Ivy, and walked to Dr Metcalfe’s surgery in Hart Green.

It was teatime. Mary looked down the meandering street. The only movement, apart from smoke rising from several chimneys, was the distant figure of a small girl playing hopscotch on the pavement outside the butcher’s shop. Smiling at her own foolishness, Mary began to make small movements with her feet in unison with the child, who was at that moment negotiating the chalk drawn squares.

‘Come on, you pathetic little orphan,’ she told herself ‘Get on home and tell hubby the good news.’

As she walked out of the village, Mary couldn’t help feeling a slight tremor of anxiety at the prospect of returning home to Harry, even though she was bringing him what could be called, ‘Good news’.

Ken Bateman had driven past the church just in time to see Mary’s trim figure disappearing down the lane. She was wearing well; that thin dress was clinging to her loins as she walked. Not bad really. He’d offer her a lift. You never knew your luck.

The sound of the taxi’s horn startled Mary to such an extent she almost fell into the hedge.

Bateman stopped the car and wound down the window.

‘Sorry, Mrs Bowen; I didn’t mean to make you jump like that - you were daydreaming, you know.’

‘I know I was, Mr Bateman. Sorry.’

Bateman flashed his best smile, casting a quick eye over Mary’s trim figure. Pretty damn good for a woman with three kids. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me. Come on. Jump in. I’ll give you a lift.’

He emerged from the car, and with a smirk and a sweeping bow, opened the front passenger door. ‘Would madam care for a ride?’

Mary hesitated; she was worn out, but there was something about the taxi driver she didn’t like. Tiredness won the day and she got in the car.

Bateman closed her door and walked round the front of the car, patting its warm, phallic bonnet, as he did so. He slid in beside her. ‘Where would madam like to go?’

Despite being made to feel uneasy by his vaguely sweaty presence, Mary let slip a joking request, conjured up by the rare experience of sitting in a car. ‘Do you know, Mr Bateman, this is the first time I’ve sat in a car since mum’s funeral. That was four years ago. Take me to London or the seaside; anywhere but home!’

‘With perspiration shining on his top lip, Bateman looked her over again. That button-through, cotton dress she had on was a little bit tight. Was that a nipple pushing at the fabric? ‘That’s easily arranged, Mary, girl. If you ever want a trip out, I’m your man. He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I mean it, you know.’

Calling herself all sorts of a fool, Mary moved away from him. ‘I was only joking. My husband will be waiting for his tea.’

Bateman gently engaged the gears and the Austin purred down the lane, its long bonnet, a phallic symbol indeed, pointing this way and that as he negotiated it through the tight bends.

‘How’s that old man of yours getting on, then? He’s turned into a bit of a miserable bugger since I’ve been away, hasn’t he? Would you like a cigarette?’

He proffered a packet.

‘No thanks, Mr Bateman. Harry’s got a lot on his plate at the moment. He’ll be all right.’

‘Call me, Ken. He ought to be, with a pretty girl like you for a wife.’ The hand was on her shoulder again. Bateman, by talking with a cigarette dangling from his lips, rather fancied he was emulating George Raft, a film star he greatly admired. ‘He’d better watch out or some good looking bloke will come and take you away from him. In fact, I’ll volunteer for the job myself.’

‘None of that, now; I’m a married woman with three children,’ Mary said, making light of his flirtation. ‘You’re not Clark Gable, you know.’

Slightly shaken by this flash of insight, Bateman removed the hand and grasped the steering wheel. Slackening his grip, he allowed his fingers to slide gently round and round its cool, hard surface; his finger tips rippling over the indentations on its underside. This simple action always gave him a small, erotic charge.

‘None of what? I’m only saying the truth.’

Mary brushed her hair back in her habitual gesture. ‘That may be so, but you’d best not let Harry catch you talking like that’

As the car swept past the farm gate, Mary could see the cottage illuminated by the setting sun; pretty as a picture on a biscuit tin lid.

‘You’d better let me out here, Mr Bateman. There’s no point in upsetting Harry. He might not like you giving me a lift.’

‘That be buggered for a tale. I’m not worried about him. I didn’t spend six years in the army without learning a thing or two!’ He accelerated the car and brought it to a noisy halt, right beside her garden gate. One of his arms snaked round her shoulder. ‘If you ever want that day out, just let me know.’

Mary grappled with the door handle and half fell out of the car, narrowly avoiding going down on her knees.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Harry was standing there wearing a collarless shirt and the wide, leather belt, buckled around a pair of corduroy trousers.

‘Mr Bateman gave me a lift, Harry.’ Mary could feel a pulse beating in her throat.

‘That’s not all he was trying to give you from what I saw,’

Bateman got out of his car. ‘What’s that you’re saying?’

Mary took hold of her husband’s arm. ‘Come on, Harry, I’ll get your tea for you.’

He shook himself free. ‘No, I want to know if he was trying it on. Just because he thinks he’s God Almighty, who’s been everywhere and done everything, don’t give him the right --.’

Ken Bateman’s frustrations allowed his temper to keep pace with that of the, glandular- driven, Harry Bowen. ‘What’s up with you, mate? Afraid you might lose her to a better man?’

Douglas and Robert were at the garden gate now, watching the incident develop. It was reminiscent of a playground encounter. First of all there was the exchange of insults. Next, the challenges, then–the fight! As Harry lunged forward, Bateman exclaimed, ‘Come and get it!’

Bateman’s image of himself as being a fighting soldier was self delusion; he’d spent too long sitting behind steering wheels and propping up bars. Harry Bowen, on the other hand, had walked the land all of his life, wrestled horse-drawn ploughs across endless acres; pitched sheaves for hours on end and was able to throw hundredweight bags of cattle feed into store rooms without even thinking about them. So, it was not much of a contest, being all over within a few seconds of the two men squaring up to one another. The taxi driver’s one and only punch had no effect on Harry’s abdomen, whereas Harry’s clenched fist broke Bateman’s nose and knocked him down. When he fell, his head struck one of the hubcaps on the Austin. He attempted to stand up right away, but only managed to roll onto his side, choking out, ‘You bastard!’

‘God, Harry! What have you done?’ Mary knelt down beside the floored man. Blood was dripping from his nostrils and his eyes were glassy.

Harry turned away and opened the garden gate under the admiring stares of his two sons. ‘He’s alright. I only tapped him.’

‘You showed him, all right, dad,’ Douglas said, excitedly. ‘You flattened him with one punch!’

‘Yeah,’ replied his father,’ the army didn’t make him hard after all. It made him soft.’

Mary put her hands beneath Bateman’s shoulders and attempted to lift him into an upright position.

‘You’ll have to help me get him into the house. He can’t stand up.’

A morbid sense of despair engulfed Harry as he went back into the lane.

‘Let me do it.’ He bent down and hauled the man to his feet. ‘Come on, you.’

He half dragged and half carried Bateman through the front door and into the house.

Douglas and Robert, consumed with conflicting emotions of excitement, curiosity and a vaguely fearful premonition, followed them in.

‘I don’t like the look of him,’ Mary said, as they made the semi conscious man as comfortable as possible on the worn out settee. As she began wiping his face.

Bateman moaned and opened his eyes. ‘I feel sick!’

‘Quick, Harry,’ Mary said, ‘get a bowl or something. Douglas, you run to the farm as fast as you can and ask Captain Mocatta to ring Dr Metcalfe.’

Harry thrust a washing up bowl under Bateman’s nose. ‘There’s no need for that.’

‘He hit his head on the car, Harry. I think he’s got concussion.’

Bateman was sick into the bowl, retching miserably and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Oh, all right, then,’ Harry conceded. ‘Get going, Douglas.’

‘Yes, dad.’

‘I’ll go with you!’ Robert told his brother. Together they raced out of the house and up the lane to the farm.

Ivy chose that moment to arrive with David in his