Free Waterland by Graham Swift

muzzle-loader for which supplies of gunpowder were essential.
    It was for these same illicit summer fowl that Freddie Parr brought his sacks. Indeed Jack Parr was Bill Clay’s chief customer. Within hours of Freddie’s return with his haul, the sack or sacks of birds would be on their way by the evening train to a station on the Mildenhall line. Here (guard and station-master taking their share) they would be collected by a jeep of the United States Air Force, whose driver would convey them to certain officers at the nearby base, who took solace in having their orderlies serve up for them what they regarded as the traditional fare of the region before they took off on their insane daylight missions, to be killed – or live for another feast. In return for these regular banquets, the officers were prepared to pay at a good American rate; and back up the line every week, dispatched by the selfsame corporal in his jeep, would come sometimes foodstuffs, sometimes tobacco, but always, and most importantly for Jack Parr, several bottles of Old Grand-dad Kentucky bourbon.
    Jack Parr could not desert his signal-box and level-crossing. So every alternate afternoon, between half-pasttwo and half-past five, Freddie Parr would make his way to Bill Clay’s marsh-hut. He would hand over the smuggled contents of his sack. Then the two of them would set off round the margins of Wash Fen Mere. While Mary and I nestled in the old windmill, Bill Clay would inspect his springes. If a bird were caught, he would grasp it with a fowler’s firm yet pacifying grip, unsnare it, and with a casual action, as if he were shaking out a tea-towel, wring its neck. Freddie – so he told us – learnt to do likewise. While Mary and I engaged in caresses that were no longer exploratory yet far from unadventurous, three, four, six or more birds, snagged by the neck or leg, would struggle, flap, thrash at approaching footsteps, be stilled by Bill Clay’s horny hand and dispatched. Doubtless, throughout all this Bill Clay talked, and, doubtless, Freddie listened. For Freddie, who was a great blabber-mouth and divulged everything about his father’s dealings with the US Air Force, told us – me, Mary, and the others – much about Bill Clay, which may or may not have been embellished. How, though Bill wasn’t the wisest man in the world, he was certainly the most extraordinary. How he ate water-rats, hypnotized animals; how he was over a hundred; how he knew about the singing swans. How, though he left his cottage and lived alone for weeks on end in his tiny marsh-hut, he was still ‘married’ to Martha Clay and they still ‘did it’ (a remarkable sight it was too) in the open air amongst the reeds.
    But I never told Freddie what Mary and I did on summer afternoons.
    Freddie Parr. My own brother. You see the shape of my dilemma – and the extent of Mary’s curiosity. And why I was obliged to meet Mary only at selected and predetermined times.

    But on July the twenty-sixth, 1943, I was late for my rendezvous. Because – because, in a word, Freddie Parr was dead. And Mary was squatting on top of the windmill emplacement, chin on knees, arms round shins, rocking to and fro in agitation. Scarcely, it’s true, the agitation of the impatient mistress kept waiting by her lover. Because she must have heard by now— Because by now the whole of Hockwell had heard— But Mary’s agitation had another source too. For three weeks now there’d been no misreading the signs. For Mary – if you haven’t guessed already – was pregnant.
    Beyond the poplar spinney, I wheeled my bike down the landward side of the Lode bank, let it drop in the long grass, ran the last few paces, because of the steepness, on to level ground, then continued to run, helter-skelter, though I didn’t have to, across the wedge of meadow between bank and windmill.
    A simple but edifying scene in which Mary and I embrace to confirm the power of our love in the face of the unforeseen