Free The Levels by Peter Benson Page B

father came to the workshop first thing, to help me sort. He was moving bundles of willow to a spot where I didn’t want them. I had sat down, and was working, when he said, ‘Beautiful day.’ It was. The storm had cleared, leaving stacked blue skies, the odd fleck of cloud brushing the west, but the wind had veered south, a wood pigeon flapped by, and in the distance, the clack-clack of Chedzoy’s machines clacked off, the sun rose high in the sky; that was how it was.

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    Dick got a motorbike, so I could hear him coming for miles, given a calm day, like a paralytic bee. Life changed, a new love in his life; I didn’t care, he took me pillion down an old drove, it was all right, but I never had his passion, I drove a van.
    Disco time. Friday night. Burrowbridge Hall, ten miles away beyond Stan Moor and the Glastonbury road. I stood in the yard while Dick revved his motorbike.
    â€˜Coming?’ He wasn’t asking. My old man appeared round the corner from the orchard, whistling ‘The Sun Shines Bright On My Old Kentucky Home’, a dead racoon slung over his shoulder.
    â€˜All right, boys?’ he said. ‘Nothing like it.’
    My mother sailed from the back door with a bucket of potato peelings, yelling, ‘Where the hell have you been?’
    â€˜You coming, you listening even?’ Dick said, slipping into his crash helmet.
    â€˜I suppose so, I don’t know.’
    â€˜I’ll pick you up.’
    â€˜On that?’
    He gave it some throttle. My mother looked, came over, ‘You put my hens off laying,’ she screamed, ‘and I’ll have that motorcycle.’
    â€˜Sure,’ he said. I shrugged, I didn’t care, the time had long gone when I was responsible for the ideas we had; brawn had ousted brains, not that we really ever had either.
    I was cleaning my teeth when my father shouted Dick was waiting.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜I’ll ask.’
    â€˜You coming?’ He was in the house, shouting up the stairs, ‘Why you cleaning your teeth?’
    â€˜Don’t know.’
    â€˜Come on. Get some clothes on.’ I hadn’t thought since the last time it was mentioned. I hadn’t thought about anything except whether a greengrocer in Taunton would mind his baskets late. A few days before I’d gone for a walk towards Martock, and seen lapwings in huge flocks. I hadn’t remembered it was Friday night and my presence expected on the back of his motorbike.
    â€˜I’ll bring the van,’ I said.
    â€˜Father’s using it.’ Screamed.
    â€˜Am I?’ came a small voice from the front room.
    â€˜Hurdles from Chedzoy!’
    â€˜Oh.’
    The men were forgetting things in the house.
    â€˜You’re coming with me to the disco?’ He spelt the words. I resigned myself to going, spat toothpaste, washed, and dried with slow, deliberate and relaxed actions.
    â€˜All right,’ I said, ‘just sit on the wall for five minutes.’ I displayed five fingers.
    â€˜Mind you don’t,’ my mother shouted.
    I sat on the bed and stared at the view of South Moor and the valley of The Isle. The Isle is a leak of a river, but a ribbon of clear blue in the dying day. A pair of swans flew in the gentle evening wind, their long necks bobbing in rhythm with their wings; pfftt, pfftt, pfftt. I tied my bootlaces, to meet my chauffeur.
    Dick’s style of motorcycling was interesting; I got this idea that I was going to fall off. He raced down to the bridge, took the right to Stathe, the bend at Wick, past the houses, throwing old ladies back from their doorsteps, dogs from the middle of the road, and opened the throttle to take the long stretch to Oath Lock. I shouted ‘There’s no hurry’, but he turned round in his seat, swerved in the road and said ‘I know’. He asked if I wanted to get there any faster. What I said made no difference. We flew the railway bridge and the