Driving with Daisy. Tom Nestor
and a little pale shadow of shyness crept over his sun-tanned face. They were a twin puzzle, father and son. They showed nothing of themselves to their neighbours, no clues to discover what their world was like. We knew nothing about their personalities.
Once, my cousin Con and I were sneaking along by the hedgerow, with Con’s new air gun. We were looking for a magpie that had stolen eggs from a nearby nest. At the far side of the hedge, the elder Harold was loading hay onto a cart. It was a humid evening and the midges were swarming in waves in the shelter of the hedge. We poked the air gun through the hedge and fired at the fleshy part of the horse’s hindquarter. The elder Harold took little notice when the horse reacted to the first pellet. But when we had fired some more and the horse was plunging between the shafts, the old man thumped his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He took off his hat and bent to beat off the invisible horseflies. He searched under the neck collar for something that might be biting the horse’s flesh. He stood with his hands on his hips, disbelief all over his face. His calm fifteen-year-old horse was behaving like a stabled stallion on a diet of oats. Then he took off his hat, crossed himself and said a prayer.
Everyone who passed the Harold house was noticed. There was a high wall in front and the passer-by would only be visible for a few moments. But they never missed the shadow of somebody going by the gate. When I looked back, I would surprise the son or the father peeping round. The face alone would be visible and it would duck out of sight when I looked.
A hundred yards from the Harold house there was a quarry. In the heel of one Sunday evening when I was nearing my ninth birthday, I chased in there hunting a rabbit. I was alone except for the dogs. There was a ledge jutting out from the rock. Underneath the ledge lay a man and woman. They were making love. The man I knew well. He was a neighbour, with a wife and several children. I knew that the woman lying with the man was not his wife. I stood there in shock until then the man lifted his head and looked at me. He mouthed a couple of swear words and made a rude sign with his fingers.
I whistled up the dogs but lost all interest in the hunt. It wasn’t finding the couple in the lovemaking act that shocked me. Neither was it the fact that I knew the man to be a regular churchgoer and a friend of the priest. What bothered me was that I knew then the truth of something I’d had my doubts about. The mystery of birth was explained. The stories about storks that left baby parcels on doorsteps were all fairytales. I had my suspicions all along. I had grown up surrounded by animals and had watched their goings on. I knew where young animals came from. It was all plain now, the man and the woman, the cow and the bull. There was no mystery, no magic.
I was into a loping canter by the time I reached Ned Wall’s house, because I was afraid. The thatched house was hidden by a hedge and a huge lilac. Both had grown out of control and were spreading along the north gable. It was like a cottage from an English rural landscape painting. Some years ago, a splinter had entered Ned’s eye as he was chopping firewood. He had neglected it and the sore had turned to poison.
One summer’s evening, when we mowed the meadow opposite Ned Wall’s house, my uncle Lara sent me in for a drink of water. Ned Wall was sitting in the gloom at the fireside and smoke was floating around the room. Everywhere was smoked: the walls, the chair backs, the small windowpanes. The chimney-breast had turned brown and wrinkled like old paper. But it was the sight of Ned Wall in his backless chair by the fire that set my heart racing and filled my nights with devils and monsters. His hands and the good side of his face were smoked like the side of bacon that hung on our kitchen wall. Around him the smoke spun, and out from the smog this terrible face turned to look at me. One side of it had rotted away.
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