Free A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr Page A

my visit to the Keaches, I was going through this performance when Kathy Ellerbeck made her normal noisy entrance. ‘Hello up there, Mr Birkin!’ she called, ‘I haven’t come to bother you.’ Then she seated herself in a pew which caught the sunlight.
    â€˜People always tell me that before they
do
begin to bother me,’ I said. ‘So say what you’ve come to say and then I can get on. And why aren’t you at school? And why didn’t we hear the bell this morning?’
    â€˜We’ve broken up,’ she cried. ‘For a month!’
    â€˜Far too long,’ I said. ‘But you can always help your mother.’
    â€˜Mam says she doesn’t see how you can make a living at your job,’ she said. ‘She says there can’t be all that many pictures hidden on walls.’
    â€˜Well I don’t make much of one,’ I said.
    â€˜One what?’
    â€˜Much of a living. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?’
    â€˜Well then,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you change your job and stay on at Oxgodby?’
    I asked her what I should live on. Did she think her dad would find me a job portering on his station?
    â€˜Well, no,’ she replied. ‘A porter doesn’t need as much education as you have.’
    â€˜What then?’ I asked.
    â€˜You could work for the Council like being a rent-collector or a school teacher – you’ve been to a college.’
    Not that kind of college, I told her.
    â€˜I’ve asked Miss Wintersghyll and she says, as long as you’ve been to a grammar school, you could be an ordinary teacher if you get it into your head right from the start that you never could rise to be a headmaster.’ And, when I remarked that she seemed very eager for me to remain in Oxgodby, she explained that her parents had taken a liking to me, and also I’d be much missed by others of her acquaintance as I was quite well thought of for my reformative work at the Sunday-school, as well as for my hardihood roughing it in the belfry.
    â€˜Ah, in that case, I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘A teacher eh? With a cane behind the cupboard? Laying down the law. Can you see me at it?’
    â€˜No,’ she admitted. ‘But I expect I might get used to the idea. And so could you if you set your mind to it. Dad says anybody can do anything if he sets his mind to it.’
    â€˜Right!’ I said. ‘That’s settled then. I like being highly thought of, so I’ll set my mind to it. Someday, you’ll be able to boast “It was Little Me changed his ways: he owes it all to Me.”
    â€˜But now I must see about earning the balance of my pay which I confidently believe Mr Keach will hand over any day now.’
    And so it went on until, after a longer than usual silence, I looked down and she had gone. But she’d put the axe to the very roots of my self-esteem: surely we shouldn’t be required, even by worthy Ellerbecks, to justify the ethic of our labour? Our jobs are our private fantasies, our disguises, the cloak we can creep inside to hide. And to be brought to book twice in one week is against natural justice. But I was.
    Alice Keach always stayed below too. She would discreetly leave the door slightly ajar and then seat herself in the back pew and shelter behind her wide-brimmed straw-hat (a rose pushed into its band). But for the occasional creak in the scaffold whenever I shuffled back a pace to see what I’d been doing, the building was so still that, although I was a good thirty paces away and my back towards her, we talked casually as wemight have talked in a parlour. Not a conventional conversation – no more than a remark, a question, answer, exclamation. Really, there was no need to look: from the way she put things I could see her face.
    â€˜How did you come to take up this kind of occupation, Mr Birkin?’ (a mischievous twist to her lips, a mock