the bus back home to Streatham, to the endless lonely nights, the air raid sirens, the blackouts and the wardens shouting at escaping light, to the shrapnel and the fires and the V2 rocket that finally buried her.
This was the first time he’d been back to die country of cider and apples in all that time. It was less than two hours’ travelling from London but it was a foreign country. He’d been travelling most of his adult life - Africa, Asia, the Americas - but the only part of the British Isles he’d really got to know well was Ulster. And he’d never considered that a part of Britain anyway.
Where was Bradford, Boston, Diss, Dymchurch? Which side of Scotland was Perth? For a long time he’d assumed the Eisteddfod was a Welsh county town. Unknown, unseen, now strangely hostile geography.
The train moved through Yeovil Junction and gathered speed again. He looked out of the window on both sides. This was not the Somerset of that five-year-old. There were no Pakistani porters on the platforms then. The countryside had changed. This had struck him all the way down; the counties were so alike. One endless Salisbury Plain. Vast tracts of land, few hedgerows, the same patterned fields, no copses, no irregularities, nothing wasted, nothing untouched. Everything symmetrical, made square by the barbed-wire fences.
And what had happened to the trees? Somerset was once full of trees - he could picture them even now. A child with freckles, squinting at the sun, tumbling into the hay, as men and women walked ahead tossing pitchforks from side to side, turning over the damp grass and offering it to the warm air and sun to dry and seal into winter feed. The men always wore flat caps whatever their age, all except the gaffers who wore brown bowlers. They had baling string tied tight round their legs, just below the knees, like coalmen.
He could remember the trees all around him then. . . trees for shade, trees to climb for birds’ eggs, trees that sprawled across the country lanes after a night’s storm, trees to escape to the day the red and white bull broke his chain, trees that hid the scores of rooks, crows and wood pigeons that would rise with the noise of a thousand football rattles as the twelve-bore shotguns exploded at hares and rabbits.
But now, looking out, he could see that the Somerset he had pictured had gone. The dumpy oaks, the willows deformed with years of whittling, did nothing to break the dull monotony of the bare fields.
The elms, the tallest and grandest of them all, were dead and next year’s children would never know what they’d lost Only their grandfathers would remember. He slept and forgot.
The train stopped abruptly: Newton Abbot, Devon. Tom collected up his newspapers and walked along the cold platform to the ticket collector. A taxi to Dartmouth would take forty minutes and cost fifteen pounds.
Colonel Haig, MC, looked younger and was much taller than Tom had expected. He was fifty-five, which made him very young indeed to have parachuted into occupied France in 1944; young, too, to be such a successful torturer in Malaya in 1950. He had a hard, very square face. It was creased with lines so deep and so black they looked as if they’d been put on with a crayon. He had short crinkly grey hair, so short and crinkly it looked African. His eyes were light grey and moist as if he had chronic hayfever.
He looked relaxed in country clothes - a squire.
‘I’m sorry for the confusion at the gate, Mr McCullin,’ he said. ‘My guards have instructions not to let anyone through to the house without first contacting me. I hope they weren’t too rude - I had told them you were coming. They are very security conscious - overso, I think, but it would be a mistake to caution them. They are so keen.’
‘No trouble. Colonel,’ Tom replied, ‘it was exactly what I’d expected; security is the byword of modem living. I wish I’d got into that line of business myself instead of what I ended up
This was the first time he’d been back to die country of cider and apples in all that time. It was less than two hours’ travelling from London but it was a foreign country. He’d been travelling most of his adult life - Africa, Asia, the Americas - but the only part of the British Isles he’d really got to know well was Ulster. And he’d never considered that a part of Britain anyway.
Where was Bradford, Boston, Diss, Dymchurch? Which side of Scotland was Perth? For a long time he’d assumed the Eisteddfod was a Welsh county town. Unknown, unseen, now strangely hostile geography.
The train moved through Yeovil Junction and gathered speed again. He looked out of the window on both sides. This was not the Somerset of that five-year-old. There were no Pakistani porters on the platforms then. The countryside had changed. This had struck him all the way down; the counties were so alike. One endless Salisbury Plain. Vast tracts of land, few hedgerows, the same patterned fields, no copses, no irregularities, nothing wasted, nothing untouched. Everything symmetrical, made square by the barbed-wire fences.
And what had happened to the trees? Somerset was once full of trees - he could picture them even now. A child with freckles, squinting at the sun, tumbling into the hay, as men and women walked ahead tossing pitchforks from side to side, turning over the damp grass and offering it to the warm air and sun to dry and seal into winter feed. The men always wore flat caps whatever their age, all except the gaffers who wore brown bowlers. They had baling string tied tight round their legs, just below the knees, like coalmen.
He could remember the trees all around him then. . . trees for shade, trees to climb for birds’ eggs, trees that sprawled across the country lanes after a night’s storm, trees to escape to the day the red and white bull broke his chain, trees that hid the scores of rooks, crows and wood pigeons that would rise with the noise of a thousand football rattles as the twelve-bore shotguns exploded at hares and rabbits.
But now, looking out, he could see that the Somerset he had pictured had gone. The dumpy oaks, the willows deformed with years of whittling, did nothing to break the dull monotony of the bare fields.
The elms, the tallest and grandest of them all, were dead and next year’s children would never know what they’d lost Only their grandfathers would remember. He slept and forgot.
The train stopped abruptly: Newton Abbot, Devon. Tom collected up his newspapers and walked along the cold platform to the ticket collector. A taxi to Dartmouth would take forty minutes and cost fifteen pounds.
Colonel Haig, MC, looked younger and was much taller than Tom had expected. He was fifty-five, which made him very young indeed to have parachuted into occupied France in 1944; young, too, to be such a successful torturer in Malaya in 1950. He had a hard, very square face. It was creased with lines so deep and so black they looked as if they’d been put on with a crayon. He had short crinkly grey hair, so short and crinkly it looked African. His eyes were light grey and moist as if he had chronic hayfever.
He looked relaxed in country clothes - a squire.
‘I’m sorry for the confusion at the gate, Mr McCullin,’ he said. ‘My guards have instructions not to let anyone through to the house without first contacting me. I hope they weren’t too rude - I had told them you were coming. They are very security conscious - overso, I think, but it would be a mistake to caution them. They are so keen.’
‘No trouble. Colonel,’ Tom replied, ‘it was exactly what I’d expected; security is the byword of modem living. I wish I’d got into that line of business myself instead of what I ended up
Similar Books
