reviewed its pumping system, found in our presence a new-found windmill-purpose.
But this was when Mary was fifteen, and so was I. This was in prehistorical, pubescent times, when we drifted instinctively, without the need for prior arrangement, to our meeting-place. How had it arisen that in the space of a year our encounters were now a matter of appointment and calculation; that during the summer months we would meet to love each other (and sometimes merely to talk) only between the hours of three and five-thirty in the afternoon?
For two reasons. Because between the hours of three and five-thirty, at least, Dick would still be at work on the dredger, watching the dripping silt of the Ouse disgorge itself from the river-bed. Thus, needing time to ride home and eat his supper, he could not – for want of a better phrase – go awooing along the Hockwell Lode till seven at the earliest. At six-thirty every evening Mary ate her own supper at Polt Fen Farm, under the austere eye of her father, who daily shook his head (having given up remonstrating) over his reprobate daughter; and thuswould not be free to present herself to be wooed till nearer seven-thirty. By which time I would be hard at my history books.
Secondly: to avoid Freddie Parr. For though Freddie Parr, a pupil at the Gildsey Secondary School, had, like ourselves, the freedom of the summer days, he would be engaged most weekday afternoons on certain business for his father, signalman and guardian of the Hockwell level-crossing, for which Freddie earned good pocket-money; thus gaining an advantage over us neighbouring children whose own pocket-money (with the exception of Mary’s – till her father stopped it) was negligible, and thus acquiring a small-time monopoly in various black-market goods, ranging from Lucky Strikes to condoms.
At two-thirty or so Freddie would set out from Hockwell with one, sometimes two sacks under his arm. Forsaking his bicycle – because he would never know that on his return his sacks might not be heavily and bulkily laden – he would walk by road and field in the direction of Wash Fen Mere, and, in particular, in the direction of the marsh-hut occupied in the summer months by Bill Clay, whose age no one knew.
No one knew either what it was that Bill Clay and Jack Parr had in common; unless it was something that had stemmed from some favour in the past. Unless Jack Parr, who was a superstitious man, more superstitious even than my father, had once as a boy – long before he became a trainee signalman – made visits to the old fowler (he was old even then) and had been prepared, as few were, to sip his lethal poppy tea and listen to his half-comprehensible yarns. Yet everyone knew that Jack Parr’s present dealings with Bill Clay were of a more material kind. That Jack Parr, renowned for his ability to pass clandestine messages up and down the lines of the Great Eastern Railway and thus obtain from near and far all sorts of unauthorized consignments, to which the company guards turned a blind eye, merely kept Bill supplied with certain articleshard to come by in these belligerent times. And that the sacks which Freddie Parr carried to Wash Fen Mere were not always empty but sometimes contained canisters of gunpowder and bottles of rum and whisky.
Bill Clay still shot duck during the winter floods on Wash Fen Mere. In the summer, when there were no big flights, he grew torpid like the Mere itself which became in places little more than a stagnant bog, and contented himself with eeling and setting springes in the reed beds. Bill Clay sent his winter bags of fowl legitimately to market but his summer bags were sold locally and without licence to all comers – much to the irritation of the inspectors of the Ministry of Food. An official was duly sent from the food office in Gildsey to appeal to Bill’s patriotic instinct and sense of fair play in these days of rationing; to be met by the 6-bore barrel of Bill’s punt-gun, a
But this was when Mary was fifteen, and so was I. This was in prehistorical, pubescent times, when we drifted instinctively, without the need for prior arrangement, to our meeting-place. How had it arisen that in the space of a year our encounters were now a matter of appointment and calculation; that during the summer months we would meet to love each other (and sometimes merely to talk) only between the hours of three and five-thirty in the afternoon?
For two reasons. Because between the hours of three and five-thirty, at least, Dick would still be at work on the dredger, watching the dripping silt of the Ouse disgorge itself from the river-bed. Thus, needing time to ride home and eat his supper, he could not – for want of a better phrase – go awooing along the Hockwell Lode till seven at the earliest. At six-thirty every evening Mary ate her own supper at Polt Fen Farm, under the austere eye of her father, who daily shook his head (having given up remonstrating) over his reprobate daughter; and thuswould not be free to present herself to be wooed till nearer seven-thirty. By which time I would be hard at my history books.
Secondly: to avoid Freddie Parr. For though Freddie Parr, a pupil at the Gildsey Secondary School, had, like ourselves, the freedom of the summer days, he would be engaged most weekday afternoons on certain business for his father, signalman and guardian of the Hockwell level-crossing, for which Freddie earned good pocket-money; thus gaining an advantage over us neighbouring children whose own pocket-money (with the exception of Mary’s – till her father stopped it) was negligible, and thus acquiring a small-time monopoly in various black-market goods, ranging from Lucky Strikes to condoms.
At two-thirty or so Freddie would set out from Hockwell with one, sometimes two sacks under his arm. Forsaking his bicycle – because he would never know that on his return his sacks might not be heavily and bulkily laden – he would walk by road and field in the direction of Wash Fen Mere, and, in particular, in the direction of the marsh-hut occupied in the summer months by Bill Clay, whose age no one knew.
No one knew either what it was that Bill Clay and Jack Parr had in common; unless it was something that had stemmed from some favour in the past. Unless Jack Parr, who was a superstitious man, more superstitious even than my father, had once as a boy – long before he became a trainee signalman – made visits to the old fowler (he was old even then) and had been prepared, as few were, to sip his lethal poppy tea and listen to his half-comprehensible yarns. Yet everyone knew that Jack Parr’s present dealings with Bill Clay were of a more material kind. That Jack Parr, renowned for his ability to pass clandestine messages up and down the lines of the Great Eastern Railway and thus obtain from near and far all sorts of unauthorized consignments, to which the company guards turned a blind eye, merely kept Bill supplied with certain articleshard to come by in these belligerent times. And that the sacks which Freddie Parr carried to Wash Fen Mere were not always empty but sometimes contained canisters of gunpowder and bottles of rum and whisky.
Bill Clay still shot duck during the winter floods on Wash Fen Mere. In the summer, when there were no big flights, he grew torpid like the Mere itself which became in places little more than a stagnant bog, and contented himself with eeling and setting springes in the reed beds. Bill Clay sent his winter bags of fowl legitimately to market but his summer bags were sold locally and without licence to all comers – much to the irritation of the inspectors of the Ministry of Food. An official was duly sent from the food office in Gildsey to appeal to Bill’s patriotic instinct and sense of fair play in these days of rationing; to be met by the 6-bore barrel of Bill’s punt-gun, a
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