Country Life



The firm wanted me to move to their green field site, sixty miles south of Birmingham. I talked to Gail about commuting, but then they offered us a house down there, a new one, very favourable terms. That was it for Gail, she'd always liked the idea of country living, and on visits she'd been impressed by the two rivers, the black beamed buildings, and the Saturday market. There was talk of babies too, and Gail thought the countryside offered a better family environment than bricks, roads and towerblocks. It was decided I'd move down, while she stayed in the city seeing through the house sale. Within two weeks of moving down I'd become involved with a local woman off the assembly line.
Julie had two kids already, been married some time. She told me about her husband right off. He'd converted on her - a 'Born-Again', she said.
"Every subject's fucking Jesus."
We were in the canteen, I'd sat with her. An empty space, blonde company. But she did all the talking. Some people looked up, saw who it was, went back to their trays.
"What I say is if God's so good why'd He make the devil? He made evil. He in -vented it. What's the point in that?"
"You seem a very serious person," I said, "I'm sure you're right."
"You're a Brummie," she said. She had the local accent, slow and loping. She asked me what I was doing, I told her about the job. I got lost in some of the details of the softare I was developing. On the word 'efficiency' she cut across me -
"Does it mean lost jobs?"
"Oh," I hadn't thought of that, "no."
"Doesn't bother me anyway. Hate this stupid place."
She looked around the room, chequered with squares of sun from the skylights. Her face was white against the green bank of huge leaved, plastic plants behind her; it was smooth, bland almost, like a teenager's is, half formed, though you could see she was older - a fair bit older - than that.
"You were saying, about your husband?"
She wasn't reluctant to tell. In twenty minutes she'd told me about her husband's childhood and youth. He hadn't always been like that, she'd known him a long time. He was always a bit of a lad, a bit of a biker. "Good for a laugh," she said.


Later that day I happened to look out, bored by a recurring problem in the program, and I saw her on the line. She wore a soft blue cap for work, hair tied back in a pony tail. She turned and swung her head up. Saw me.
We met round the back of the factory, arranging a time when there wouldn't be anybody about. We sat on sacks amongst empty pallets, a skip full of swarf. You could see the river slouching along at the bottom of a field. It was late spring, warmish, and she had bare legs. Through a vent above our heads we heard the shouts, whistles, clang and rumble inside. The air was milky with the smoke and flakes of ash from another factory. She crossed her legs and I could see the pattern of the sack on her thigh. We hardly said a word. We hardly undressed. We did it quickly, scared of someone coming, and when it was over we sprang apart as if someone had.


After a day of air-conditioning and screen watching, inputting data, the countryside came as a shock. Julie told her husband she was working overtime and I drove her down country lanes, pulled up by a five-bar gate; looking through it was like opening an Enid Blyton, the field sloping down to the brook, willow trees, the hills behind. We returned again and again. There was somewhere else we went which I can't find now, driving around with Gail. Julie had directed me: through lanes that rose up a hill until they petered out into mud tracks. A walk through a coppice, and at the end, round a corner, a cliff face glittering. An old quarry, the rock scraped into flatness, clumsy facets, at angles. At the foot a pool so blue it looked poisonous.
A few times we went to the new house, sparseley furnished. There was a bed but we would lie about the carpeted rooms, half-dressed. Although she only stayed an hour or so, checking her watch, time seemed to slow for me like those summer days of childhood when I would dawdle in the long green stretch of Cannon Hill Park, or be absorbed for hours on deserted Sunday building sites. This had something to do with the silence - I seemed to be the only resident in the small development. Some of the pavements were still gravel. We arrived from the factory as the workmen were leaving. Inside we never put on the TV, or radio, we didn't make food. I drank, she smoked. After a while I smoked too.
She still talked about her husband, it was our mutual subject. Every day I'd hear another detail.
"Once he cut himself and I said O.K.? and he went on about healing. That's the way he talks now - 'you can't pluck a grape from a thorn bush.'"


I didn't realise how serious it was until one night back in the city I was coming out of a cinema wih Gail. She was just in front, I could see the white of her neck through the strands of her short haircut. I put my hand on her shoulder, she turned her ear to me, people moved about us.
"There's someone else," I said so softly it hardly left my mouth. She looked round fully now, her neck creased under her jaw, her eyebrows up - pardon?
"Funny being someone else."
"What?" Gail frowned now.
I pointed to the 007 poster above the exit: "The new James Bond."


Once Julie and I had a sick day and I drove to the town where she lived, ten miles down river. An up-market country town - a Promenade with trees, as well as a High Street. I remembered visiting it as a kid, with my mother, on a 'treat' day, shopping in department stores, carpets and lifts, bags bulging by the time we got back to the station, strangely far out of town. But Julie lived in terraces tucked out of sight.
We did the usual things: park, pub meal, the Abbey.
"My husband hates these places," she said, looking up at the high stained glass windows. "Ornament and privilege, he says."
Organ music began sounding throughout the building: the organist practising. Julie was wearing a dress and looked small in a way she didn't in the factory.
"Come and live with me," I said, with a nervous laugh. Since the cinema incident I'd been planning this.
She didn't want to know.
"You're not the one," she said, "don't think you are."


After that we were together less and less. Once more by that quarry, in some woods nearby. Old leaves and twigs crackled under the coats we laid down. Once in the house. I took what I could get. Less and less.
I was still sleeping with Gail of course. One weekend she came down and waited until the night, after we'd made love and rolled apart, to tell me she was pregnant. She placed my hand on her belly, it was cold with my sweat. She stayed awake clinging to me.
"Listen."
I said there was nothing, just some wind in the trees.
"Exactly," she said.
At work Julie ignored me. I stopped her once in a corridor by the clocking in machines. Caught her, pressed her. "Come with me. Just once then, one more time. I promise I won't ask again."
I phoned her now and then, not out of optimism or resentment, I thought, but to hear her voice. A small thing. If he answered I put the receiver down.


I took to driving out through the evening, car climbing until I'd come across a good view, where I'd stop for a while. Then I'd swoop down to her town, her street, as night fell. Reminded me of my childhood - narrow street, tight terraces, a lit shop on the corner, people loitering. I watched the light behind her curtain, sometimes saw a silhouette.
One time I got out. Bought fags from the shop. I stood to smoke one in the street and looked across to see them coming out. Her man had her by the elbow, as if escorting her against her will. He had a suit on. I took in his profile. He was a big man but with a softish look to his bulk. She looked across with a scowl.


Gail was delayed, but sent down furniture. She came with Mothercare catalogues, baby books though she hardly showed yet. We went for walks down country lanes. It was full summer, a good one. I chewed grass. She said I was quiet. Was I sure about the baby? I felt I was convalescing.
"Is it lonely here?" she asked.
"No, 'salright."
It was of course. I'd stopped phoning, my drives out reduced to one a week, then stopped altogether. At work I avoided looking down at the line, but once I did and Julie was gone, her place taken by a gobby youth.
I went out occasionally, walked into town for a drink. On the way home the lanes were dark, and there seemed to be too much air, but I was sensible enough to leave the car. I was starting to drink more. Other than that I concentrated on work, at night working on my laptop.
I knew I wasn't liked at work, being brought in like that. Round here, Julie told me, you 'worked your way up'. I grew a moustache, realised I was trying to look older. I joined in, gradually, with the office jokes. I picked up their phrases - 'look at them chokkers' - sometimes met colleagues in the social club. I'll give it foive, foive, they'd say to me and finally I knew I was in.
I got on. I worked hard on the final debugging, finished ahead of schedule. Then it was introducing the thing to various groups and individuals. Over and over I made the same speech, pointing to the screen, breaking the ice with a jokey graphic. Went on to the next project, earned more. Gail was pleased.
We were getting on better, she was growing bigger. We sat watching 'The Miracle of Life' video. I put my ear to that stretched flesh, listening for movement, heart beat. I never seemed to catch it, just watery digestion sounds. Gail talked about names, clothes, cots and mobiles, even schools but, although I joined in, I couldn't imagine life with a child.


Towards the end of autumn, two days before Gail was due to make the big move south I was in town looking for a pub. I saw a little yellow poster stuck at an alley entrance. 'J. North Speaks on the Perils of Promiscuity' or some such. A red arrow beneath. There was a little chapel down the alley. The meeting had already started, I tried to peer in through a crack in the curtain. Couldn't see much, the side view of a few townspeople. I recognised a shop assistant from the main supermarket. I crept in the back.
A very large man, with a beard he must have grown since I saw him last, was talking.
"This is what I used to listen to in my youth." He was holding up an album - Their Satanic Majesties Request. He talked of drugs and orgies. I knew him to be lying - drugs yes, orgies no. I could see in his stance, his bulk, the small town biker Julie had described. Cider-drinking, dope-smoking, him and a few mates roaring through town and out to country pubs by the river on bank holidays.
"Sex and drugs. And that equals AIDS." He urged parents to look for needlemarks, baggy eyes. His voice was deep, but the accent so soft they could use it in a butter advert.
After came the call for audience members to go forward and of course I went. He held me by the shoulders and spoke straight into my face.
"Have you let Jesus into your heart?"
"Not yet," I said, "but I'm interested."
He showed me some underlined passages in his well used bible and said, "I was sceptical too, at first. I lived life as if I hadn't heard of Jesus."
He told me about a meeting he attended by accident, someone he met there made him want to believe. You could see he was excited by the prospect of a convert.


We talked, he talked, mentioning 'my wife Julie', until nearly everybody else had gone. We left together, someone locking the door behind us. With his bulk we had to squeeze through the alley's entrance. We walked down the cold street. He talked of the sacrifice of Jesus. We passed the war memorial. I decided I was going to tell him everything. He's probably been waiting to hear it from somebody, I thought.
"Julie, your wife Julie," I began, "I know her."
I went through the complete story from the first time I met her. I was shaking inside, sure my voice was shaking too, but I felt a content spread in me.
He gave me quick looks, but kept his head down, kept walking beside me. I was aiming my mouth at his ear, each word deliberate. As I spoke I heard myself saying all this again, under the pressure of Gail's questions, in the future when the mud at the back of the house is landscaped and two kids play on a worn lawn, when there are neighbours, and we established as the oldest residents. I saw the scene exactly - Gail in a deckchair, mascara running, fists clenched and I stood in shorts, back roasting, triumphantly spitting the words at her. It seemed as real as the Christian beside me.
We walked the length of the High Street and came to the river.
He gave me a punch in the ribs, but he was already turning away so it didn't hurt. I stopped talking though and watched him lean on the bridge like a tourist gazing at the boats tied along the quay beneath. Towards the other bank, boat free, a nearly round moon was reflected, its nearest edge spreading on the water. I remembered Julie told me he had to be baptised again. Wore a long white garment, swallowed some water. Not enough, Julie said. I wondered if I just got hold of him in the right place, stooped quickly and grasped him just below the knees -
He was mumbling.
"What's that?"
"What you told me - I knew."
I didn't believe him.
"Shall we go to a pub?" I asked. After telling - confessing, he would call it - I felt two needs, thirsts: one was for a pint, and the other was to hear about Julie, anything really. "Or is that against your religion?"
He turned from the bridge laughing. The best joke in the world. "Christ's ministry is everywhere. Don't forget He drank wine."
"Ar," I said, mimicking him, "'e did."