Haweswater (22 page)

On weekends the workers drink heavily, using up a large portion of whatever pay they have made that week. They live like the newly wealthy, buying rounds for each other with abandon. During the first few months of construction they walk down into Mardale, to the Dun Bull Inn, which has a good selection of ales and is also licensed for spirits. They drink side by side with the locals, bragging about pay and eyeing up the young women of the village. But they do not fit in here and are not wanted. They come for hard enjoyment, not slow communication, and witness themselves standing out, like the scent of busy yeast beside racks of baked bread, but they are thick-skinned and do not care. The atmosphere is too tense and the villagers are too sullen for it to be a good watering hole. The women are without a sense of humour and cannot be engaged in flirtation. There is no banter. There is no life! The Scotsman behind the bar will not free pour, he measures their units in brass cups and speaks only when spoken to, even as they line his pockets. It is a strange and paradoxical time for his establishment. Immediate prosperity brought by those men who are the
heralds of a future collapse. In the room, the new punters buzz arrogantly round each other like wasps in a shaken jar.

The navvies are the first to leave the establishment, reading the mood of the place astutely, and within two weeks they are gone. They begrudge no one and will not court trouble on any front. They have sat quietly in small groups, enjoying uninterrupted drinking, uncommunicative, and now they are leaving for a last time, all of them together as if of one mind. They put on their coats, blue eyes averted from human contact, giving nothing away, but nodding their bare heads to a farmer by the door. They might be leaving for a murder, for all anyone can tell.

Soon, even against the dulling of alcohol, the rest of the workers begin to comprehend the atmosphere. They tire of the frigid tension in the Dun Bull. They do not know that even the bearded man sitting at the end of the bar, who is, in a way, one of their employers, does not wish to drink with them either, does not wish to be in their presence. He disclaims them, preferring anonymity. He has become a man disinherited from his profession, though he still works for
MCW
, he moves through duty and obligation like a militant guerrilla through the trees of a conflicted jungle, or as if he is now spying for the other side. For the workers, the crowd is dull and he is amongst it.

The catalyst for leaving is a sudden brawl. One of the young farmhands, a man with only one arm what’s more, has had enough of the loose comments about the dam, and the glinting eyes at his sister as she sits with him by the fire, lifting her skirt off her ankles to dry her wet shoes. He is next to the owner of the eyes and comments in a flash, three good right-hand punches into the bones of the face. But the worker is hardened with alcohol. He shakes off the pain and, though one eye is smarting, swelling, he throws himself on top of the farmer, head butting into his lip and splitting it down to his gum so it will take seven stitches to join together again. In his inebriated state he does not even realize he has a two-armed
advantage over the man below him. As her brother is, so the sister is also quick to anger. Had she seen the stare, the lewd gesture, the original offence, she would have been the one laying out punches. She kicks the man attacking her brother in the temple with a swift, unrepentant wet shoe. He slouches backwards, out cold. The fight is over.

In the aftermath there is little to be said. A few choice words from Jake McGill, not exactly an ultimatum but enough to convey his wishes. The workers leave, carrying their unconscious comrade over their shoulders. Later they will tease him about being beaten by a woman and another brawl will break out, one involving several of the dam workers, friends in fact, and the damage will be much worse as there will be nobody to break it up.

For now, a small amount of peace is restored to the Dun Bull. There is mild jubilation even, a temporary victory has been won. It has been a while since tension departed and merriment entered through its doors. Nathaniel Holme laughs.

– He’s a gud lad that Teddy, he says.

For the dam workers there are other public houses in the district to frequent. St Patrick’s Well and the Crown and Mitre in Bampton, where the welcome is warmer and the climate less personal, less hostile. If they fancy going that far, the food at the Helton Jerry is excellent and reasonably priced. They will spend their money freely, because at the weekend they are rich men indeed. Not even the pay for the navvies is mean, though it is slightly less than that of their counterparts.

The off-comers from West Cumberland are happier than they have been in a long while, as there has been no consistent work in their home towns for a good decade or more. They flirt with the Bampton village girls during these hours
of freedom at the weekend, having scrubbed themselves almost clean in the steamy, communal bath-houses, offering the girls a fun time if they would come back to the woods. So, on the luckier nights, the Burnbanks shanty huts are sometimes filled with inexpensive female scents too, Lily of the valley and rosewater. Lavender, borrowed without permission from their mothers’ dressing tables. The lucky workers’ hutmates will promise to stay outside for an hour if they are granted, in return, a couple of pints the following weekend. Besides, they can listen to the muffled cries through the boards of the door if they are so inclined, or perhaps win some money at cards in a neighbouring hut. The arrangement works nicely.

But for the Bampton girls, often there is that belated regret, two weeks of tense waiting, barely daring to think of what might be happening inside their bodies. And the walk home from Burnbanks is lonely, dark, the trees twist up into gargoyle faces, the branches follow them down the road like lecherous arms. They have to run, run fast without looking back, or the whole wood will crackle from its roots after them, damp skirts knotting round their legs as they run. And the moon is a bleak, faceless disc, unsympathetic above them, above the dark haunted road.

Some workers will marry local girls, because love, even under barbaric or temporary conditions, will always prevail. It is a beautiful area to settle down in, to raise a family. Others will simply promise marriage as a way to reap the early rewards from girls willing to forgo pre-nuptial celibacy. A promise is a promise, after all. Then the men will return to their west-coast towns and to the wives they have already, who will be none the wiser, glad, in a way, to have their menfolk home. Perhaps now they can stop gutting fish in the processing rooms or get off the canning-factory belt, surrender their identity as Miss Lowis, Miss Spence, Miss Jefferson, once and for all, and with the money their husbands have earned, buy a new frock or some heeled shoes.

But, aside from all this secreted heartache here in the Westmorland dales, there is contentment. The owners of the Bampton pubs have never had so much trade, even though the establishments are already popular with hunters, walkers and sheepdog competitors. Laughter booms out of the low doorways. So, while herniated Jake McGill is winding down his garden distillery and buying his ticket for Canada, St Patrick’s and the Crown are ordering double shipments of ale to cater for the large crowd of thirsty workers. The establishments are booming. And yes, it’s a pity about the village and the dam and such, but the register here is overflowing on Saturday nights!

Though, should anyone note it, the Mardale locals are enjoying their quiet pub again. Leave us alone to our last romps and tears, leave us alone to our demise, they had wanted to scream, each and every villager at the full stretch of lung and cord, to the rowdy, leering workers. And they have been left alone. Gone too are the squabbles between them, the pressurized anxieties, the bursting hearts. The man in the green suit, who now wears a pilled old jumper and helps dip sheep or move furniture from bedroom to cart, once said something about the end of a life becoming amazingly bright, that the valley would never look more brilliant than the time when it was finishing. Because even a retreating army will come to love the red fields that it is leaving. He does not speak in this way any more, and his words were more an argument than they were poetry when he uttered them. But they must agree that never has the fiery whisky warmed them so well on a cold evening, nor the Brew tasted so fine, so sweet, as it does in these years of 1936 and 1937.

Samuel Lightburn reaches around the man’s leg to pin him to the ground and the crowd cheers. He locks his wrist into the grip of his big right hand. The held man is flipping like a drowning fish, trying to get loose before the pin is signalled good by the referee. Samuel transfers more weight from his body on to the man, careful not to lose pressure. Sweat jumps out of his red face, gathers in the dark, yellow straw of the hair at his temples. He puffs loudly. The count seems eternal. Amid the cheering he can hear the rip and ping of stitching on his long johns coming loose. The man on the grass is slapping at the bare flesh of Samuel’s chest now in a last effort to break the press, but he is unable to gather enough strength to counter or twist free. On the side of the bale-marked ring, Isaac is shouting madly for his father to hold down. His daughter, next to the hopping boy, has a wild grin on her face.

For the last two years Samuel Lightburn has lost the Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling trophy at the High Street Meet. Previous to that he held it for sixteen years unbroken, and his reign might have begun even earlier but for the Great War. The wrestling is one of the highlights of the gathering. Reputations are made and broken in the space of seven long minutes. A man might become heroic. Samuel Lightburn is a legend but for the past two years. This year he is determined, it might be his last chance of fame as a local of the district. His challenging competitor in the last round is a strong lad of about twenty with small, narrow eyes and a thin mouth. His name is Edwin Morrison. He is the strongest of the five Morrison brothers, who live at home in Culgaith with their father Henry, a bullock herdsman by profession. Edwin
approached the ring and stripped down to his underwear in front of the crowd to reveal a tight wiry form, banded muscles along his back. Saying cheekily that he was fancying his chances against an old man, he stepped into the ring.

But Samuel understands balance and the youngster is too hasty, too eager, his energy can be converted to Samuel’s advantage, redirected. Keeping low, the lad came at him quickly, several times, imagining speed and surprise might overturn his opponent, sheer force, but on his third attempt he was swung and flipped over. Now Samuel has him in a full pin. A second or two more. The referee shouts good and the crowd erupts into whistles and cheers. The two men stagger up, shaking hands.

– Ne’r mind, lad. Gud try.

– Aye. Nobad fer en old fella.

The beaten youth is a dignified loser. He takes Samuel’s great, hairy blond arm and lifts it in a gesture of acknowledged victory. Isaac hurls himself at his father’s leg and tries to tackle him to the ground, but the big man reaches down and hefts his son on to his shoulders. The engraver begins adding Samuel’s name to the silver trophy base, joking that he could just use initials as the name was getting repetitive and folk were bound to realize who S. M. L. was, were they not? Janet blows her father a kiss and disappears into the crowd. From across the moor, Ella approaches the wrestling ring and sees her husband’s gaping attire.

– Sam, yer hanging right out! Yer not decent, man!

She ties a shirt around her husband’s waist, hands him a towel to dry the sweat on his chest. The wind picks up a little, blowing dry leaves and some loose straw along the ground. A few grey clouds are scudding along in the sky, but other than this the weak sun is bright. It is late November, the traditional time for the Meet. On the gentle slope of the fell-top near Helton, stalls have been set up and their sides flap in the strong breeze. Horse tackle tinkles and clangs as it sways on leather strapping. Women make a grab at items about to blow
off the stall tables – cakes, tarts, sloe gin, gooseberry and damson wine, pies and winter vegetables, kitchenware – which rock dangerously in the breeze, clatter into each other and spill down the tablecloths. Their skirts lift, revealing heavy slips and winter petticoats. Doilies take off into the air like white-lace kites.

– Me sponge cake! Wind’ll wreck it!

Ella runs back over to the stalls to rescue her entry for the competition, which is a fierce one and can often result in two women breaking friends for a year or longer. Accusations of published recipes being used have resulted in bitter arguments and even the occasional hurled tart.

In a wooden horse-trailer next to the stalls, Jake is serving hot soup and pies from a billy cooker, dressed up in drag as a buxom woman. Behind him, Jenny stirs the soup pans, seemingly untroubled by Jake’s attire. He has a printed scarf tied around his head, sporting a repetitive field of flowers, and a skirt falls just below his thick, lumpy knees. Into the brassiere under his blouse he has stuffed a substantial number of socks, to give himself an imposing shelf of a bosom. Red lipstick and rouge are smudged across his face as if applied in the dark. The men laugh and whistle as they pass by the trailer and Jake, in good humour, winks and blows kisses. He calls to them in a false soprano brogue.

– Gentlemen. Come taste ma lovely wares. Penny a pote!

Nathaniel Holme tramps up the metal ramp into the trailer, his boots covered with mud and bristled with straw. There is a flagon of ale in his hand. He laughs a high-pitched, thick, brown laugh.

– By! Thee meks a grand lass, Jek.

– Ah, Nathaniel, why thank you. Listen, you couldn’t do me a wee favour, could you? A small bet on the pig bowling, number six. A shilling ought to do it. I can’t leave my post with Jenny here.

– Aye, nummer six.

Nathaniel takes the shilling, bends over in the trailer and
coughs deeply, struggling for air. He clears his throat, spits out over the ramp. But he is still wheezing and is visibly weakened by the coughing fit. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve. Jenny leans over the counter and places her hand on his jacket shoulder.

– Are y’all right Mr Holme?

Nathaniel is still wheezing but he blinks at her. His eyes are alight with mischief and animation.

– Oh, I’ll not mek it to another grass, I shouldn’t think, bonny lassie.

The old man turns and tramps back down the ramp towards the pig bowling.

Later that day the racing begins. Between the ancient standing stones of the circle, each now leaning over almost completely to the ground owing to the ravages of time, a racetrack has been set up for the horses and the hare coursing. The thunder of hooves echoes thickly into the turf. A hare is let loose and the hounds streak along the ground, their shoulders pumping, eyes red with excitement and tongues held to one side in their jaws. Money is exchanged and the gamblers split off into groups of winners and grumbling losers, bringing hip flasks out of their coat pockets to drink to it either way. The fell runners begin to straggle in after completing a ten-mile course, with Paul Levell leading the group, his thighs rigid with muscle. The afternoon light is pewter over the yellow grass of the fell. Brooding clouds stack up above and below the horizon, but the rain looks to be holding off for the Meet. Faces blush in the fresh winds and the short grass ripples, stroked and swept into ruffled designs. The smell of pastry and potato soup drifts across the field, and the locals head into the trailer now and again for a warming mug before lining up to watch the shooting competition.

Samuel Lightburn and Kenneth Jeffries, an elderly farmer from Dale Head Farm over the mountain in Patterdale, manage the arena of the stray-sheep exchange. Any lost sheep found in the district are brought into the pen to be returned to their rightful owners. If the animals are not claimed, the farmer responsible for their recovery will keep them for a year, so that the owner might have a chance at a late claim, and after a year the animal may be sold to pay for its upkeep, or kept. The two men converse as their dogs work the sheep into neat groups.

– Dam’s cumin’ on, is it?

– Aye, it is at that, Ken. Big bugger an’ all. Red T and whoal’t. Sarge Thompson’s yow?

– Aye, Sarge’s. Sarge! Sarge! Git ova, stop yer yakkin’. Crupper, Herdwick, belongs to Les Kitching, eh? ‘Swhat happens when heafeds get selt on. Cum right back ower t’ t’fell it’s birthed on. Slump at fleece market’s got to lift or w’ll be swapping til kingdom cum nex year, what wi’ sellin’ off herds and shiftin’ buggers on!

Samuel leans down and pushes the sheep with a semi-circular smear on its rump past, down in to the end pen. He whistles for Chase to round up the stragglers from the back of the wagons.

– Found owt else fer work yit, Sam?

– Not yit. Mebbi Staingarth. Property’s bin empty since Carl Atkinson passed. Land’s a bit rough, like.

– They’re lookin’ fer fellas at Cropper’s paper mill in Kendal. Drivers, eh? Fancy fetchin’ a wagon aboot?

– Oh aye? Mebbi. I’ll kep it in mind, Ken. Pop smit. Park Mounsey. He’s settin’ hounds; leave it in t’pen til fella gits dun.

A fight breaks out among the hounds. There are the sounds of yelping and growling and the sheep exchange is halted so that the men can go and break it up, placing bare hands into the dripping jaws and pinching at pressure points to unlock them, releasing the animals from each other. There is blood
and saliva on the ground and the eyes of the dogs are red again, as if to scrap is as good as to race for the hare or the fox.

Jack Liggett approaches Janet Lightburn at the creaking stalls. He has a full beard now, with flecks of grey in it, and is wearing a long leather coat that flaps against his legs. In his head, he calculates his own age and does not feel slighted for the years it has taken him to get here. He’s not yet forty. She is standing with her mother and her brother, holding his small hand. Though she has similar colouring, against them she is as a photographic negative, darkness to their light, inverse, the deep corners of her face casting shadow. It is as if she has been born the wrong way, inside out. She might well have been. Today she passes condiments between women, tomorrow she will be out with the Mardale Hunt. Looking at her now, he could fall to her feet, tell her she is beauty, that which he has always known existed. But he does not.

She is unaffected by the cold. She gives her woollen scarf to her brother and the cliffs of her neck and shoulders receive the exposure without complaint, as if hurricanes and squalls could not harm her. In the wind, her hair is blown in every direction, like a basket of rearing snakes, and she tries to smother it with a free hand, catching only a few stray sections, the tamest vipers. There have been young men approaching her all day, as if they can smell the residue of sex on her. They stand in lusty groups and try, one after the other, as if she is a Western rodeo bull, and whoever remains in her difficult company the longest will be the victor. The bravest man. As if one day she will suddenly be broken, the notorious force dropping out of her. Jack Liggett sees them return to the group, one at a time, an imaginary harness in hand, shaking a head. She vexes them. There is no inherent respect for their gender and they disapprove of that, always have. They despise her intellect, the manly language, her autonomy.
She’s a bad breed, a eunuch, a malcontent, for all her striking looks. Not worth it, but still they try …

As she turns, she sees him coming towards her. His face is rocking in the wind. It is giving away every put-aside emotion. He is tired of secrecy. He is tired of her hands only in the darkness and the constant borders of their love. His rocking face is calling it love, simple, above all the schisms in the landscape that surrounds them. His face is weary with it, with agreeing to do without her today, as on so many days. The public spontaneity is long in coming and now it has within it an exhausted quality. As if there is nothing left over to stop him. So he removes the decision of disclosure from her.

In front of two hundred locals and her fearless mother, he offers himself to her, gaze held only on her bright living hair. As if this is their first meeting and permission is required for courting. As if this is another insignificant minute in time. Her moving hair is hypnotic.

– Walk with me? To the river?

The leather coat flaps against his legs in the strong wind. Her mother is all astonishment, of course, and burnt-metal faced. She will rip out his heart for the audacity, given a chance. She will howl at the wind for his ruthless, tender entreaty. This makes sense! Now her daughter’s behaviour is clear. It has been brought on by this turncoat of a man, who has come up from the city to pretend another existence. It could only have been such a man, such a dark, handsome devil, to create her daughter’s assortment of moods and emotions. She will curse him with her worst scowl but that he is not looking anywhere except at her daughter. Those are his only eyes.