The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore Read online

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  Contents © Paul Burman 2008

  The right of Paul Burman to be identified as the author of

  this work has be asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

  A portion of the royalties from this book will contribute towards

  tree planting and land-care projects.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

  ISBN: 978-0-9551094-7-8

  All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Set in Times

  Printed by J. H. Haynes and Co. Ltd., Sparkford.

  Cover designed by Chris Gooch - Bene Imprimatur Ltd

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  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For

  Gwil, Lowri and Siân

  ONE

  A car blossoms into flower twenty metres ahead. Petals of twisted metal in orange and red unfurl towards the memory of a distant sun, and green doors sprout out across the road. Winter one moment and spring the miraculous next; then back to winter.

  *

  Sleep. Let me sleep. Let me drift with the flow of a rising tide.

  My lips are shredded paper-bark glued tight with dried blood and resin. Hush. My swollen eyelids are sealed with sand and salt to shut the blinding brightness out. Keep out! Sealed tight against a storm of raining glass, shards of ice, the rending of metal. Sealed tight against a winter morning torn asunder, the hail of blood and bone, a day disembowelled. Something has happened, sometime, somewhere, but these lips, these eyes, are sealed by resin, sand and salt. Glued shut.

  Hush. Just let me be and let me sleep. Forget the bags of blood and bone.

  ROLL UP! ROLL UP! SEE THE AMAZING ABERCROMBIE MAN DISAPPEAR. WHOOSH! LIKE A RABBIT IN A HAT! ABRACADABRA!

  SEE THE FLYING CYCLIST PERFORM CARTWHEELS THROUGH THE AIR!

  This beach is a place beyond me; of surrender. My body is flotsam – broken timbers lashed with frayed rope, studded with rusted nails – but my mind is jetsam.

  Wrecked. Beached.

  This wind’s a hot breath across my back, my neck, my driftwood-head, and the crashing of surf is a sleeper’s lullaby. Ssh. My once-hands, my once-feet, are flowing into numbness, but the blanket of water slides warm against my thighs, and I think I might’ve pissed myself. Or if I haven’t, that I will. That I can, and it won’t matter. Not here.

  Let me flow into numbness and dissolve here, as rocks are ground to sand, and let me drift. Let me drift with glued lips and sealed eyes and stoppered ears.

  Sleep. Let me sleep.

  Grumbling in from an outstretched arm of reef rolls the echo of a roar, and I know the tide is turning. I know this explosion of sound and what it signifies. I know this place. I know how the sea rises and falls, rises and falls. There’s a shell in my ear and I listen to the suck and sigh of the surf.

  So, when the sea turns to tuck me in with satin-slippy sheets of kelp, I try ripping a smile to thank her, except this fickle mother changes her mind and pushes me forward and out, untucking me across a pillow of rock. And the tide slip-slaps against me, tapping me on the shoulder, in what’s a gentle rhythm at first, but soon becomes insistent.

  “Time to wake up, sir,” it says. Slip-slap. “My, you’re a deep sleeper. It’s time to wake up, sir. We’ve landed.”

  Landed? Let me drift, let me sleep. Fingers of seaweed, pebbles for toes.

  Wrenched from the beach, I open gritty eyes to see a flight attendant leaning over me, rows of seats, open baggage compartments, the anonymous backs of passengers crowding down the aisles, clutching coats, bags, passports, pressing forward. Among them, the backs of three figures are momentarily familiar: a businessman wearing an Abercrombie and a bowler hat, a young mother cooing to the baby she’s cradling, and an elderly man with his trousers tucked into his socks. The attendant smiles and her smile is anchored in lip gloss and eyeliner; she’s on board her uniform; her colours are Chanel No. 5.

  “I’ll stay on the beach a while,” I say.

  “Pardon?”

  “There’s a café. Have to get to the café.”

  “We’ve landed,” she says. “There’s several in the terminal.”

  I shake my head, rub my eyes. Try yawning, but can’t. Am numb all over.

  “Are you alright, sir? Did you take something to make you sleep?”

  “Where are we?”

  “London, Heathrow.”

  “Where from?” I say. “Where have I been?”

  “Pardon?”

  I shake my head again.

  I’ve woken on a plane at Heathrow airport, at five-thirty on a winter’s morning. Sleeping on the beach was more welcome than this – and there’s a chance I’ll prove this is a dream by finding myself naked.

  “Would you like a hand with your luggage, sir?”

  Poking out the side-pocket of my flight bag is a small, crumpled packet of thin, white card, with a prescription label on the front in my name: Thomas Passmore.

  “Sleeping tablets,” I tell the attendant, who nods, although I’m stuffed if I remember getting the things. They’re not the sort of thing I’d mess around with. Not these days. But somehow they’ve caught up with me. Somehow.

  From the cabin speakers comes a tinny rendition of Fly Me to the Moon. The flight crew are waiting at the cabin door for me; they smile and thank me for flying with their airline. It’s still night-dark outside and, from a gap between the boarding bridge and the plane, comes a rush of cold air so sharp its knife-edge slashes at me before I pull my coat tighter. The sunken eyes, hollow cheeks and flinty smile of one of the pilots reminds me of someone – and it isn’t good – but I’m dopey with sleep.

  “Enjoy your stay,” the bastard says, and his stony eyes are laughing at me. Then he mumbles something else I can’t quite catch.

  If only I could yawn and clear my head.

  In the Arrivals Hall, I dig into my pocket for my passport wallet and its plastic edge slices across my finger.

  “Shit,” I say and pull out two passports.

  One is burgundy and documents my British citizenship; the other is dark blue and records that I’m Australian. In both I’m Thomas Daniel Passmore, born in Nenford. But there’s something else I feel I should know. Something important. And yet, while there’s a familiarity about this entire pattern of events that creates the most profound sense of déjà vu, it doesn’t help me remember what in pity’s name that something is. What am I doing here? What am I really doing here? As soon as I see a bin, I’ll dump that packet of mind-fucking mo
gadons where they belong.

  The customs official looks at my British passport and smiles. At this moment such reassurance is exactly what I need. She speaks to me and smiles again, but I must be half-deaf from landing.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thanks.”

  In Heathrow’s bus station the December freeze has another stab at me and I catch my breath. The air rasps against the back of my throat, condenses and becomes an icicle growing in my lungs. All the same, I’m soon playing with the fog of each breath of air I exhale.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Draw in.

  Blow out.

  When we were kids, walking to school, we’d pretend we were smoking on mornings such as this. We’d put two fingers to our lips and take drags from invisible cigarettes, and say things like: “Ah, darling, the first smoke of the day is absolutely divine.” Or: “Would you care for a cigarette, old chap?”

  Breathe in.

  Breathe out.

  As I limp towards the coach bay, tugging my suitcase behind me, I rest a moment to glance at my watch. Almost nine-twenty. Can’t be. I tap the face to see if it’s stopped, but the second hand’s moving, moving, moving, and for one crazy instant I’m slipping out of this early dark towards a different time zone. With a jolt, I snap properly awake again, take a long drag of the icy air, pull out the winder and adjust the time.

  The coach circuits the airport before heading to Watford, where I’ll catch a train for Northampton… I think; I hope. Somehow I know to do this, as if I’ve done it before. Hitching up my coat collar, I shove my hands deep into my pockets and stare out of the window.

  I remember the orange sky-glow from years back. There’s no sign of sunrise yet, but with the jumble of road lights and fluorescence streaming from the buildings, dripping off advertising hoardings, it’s easy to see how things are.

  Too small a country for so many people. Too much busyness and too little sky.

  Military Personnel Carriers are stationed in sand-bagged compounds close to each terminal. I see armoured cars and, not quite hidden, a couple of tanks.

  WELCOME TO LONDON HEATHROW is emblazoned across a huge sign that spans several lanes of carriageway.

  On a concrete pillar beneath, someone’s daubed another slogan in black paint: FUCK OFF!

  I would if I could. I don’t want to be stuck here.

  Heat begins filtering through the coach, and the driver turns on his windscreen wipers against the winter drizzle that’s almost sleet, but I can’t stretch the numbness from my leg.

  A vast tract of industrial estate adjoining the airport is under redevelopment. Block after block, surrounded by miles of cyclone fencing and plywood panelling, littered with warnings: HARD HAT ZONE, SAFETY GOGGLE ZONE, KEEP OUT, TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED, PATROLLED BY SECURITY DOGS.

  “Yeah, sure it is,” I murmur, thinking of childhood and Gazza, and I let my head fall back against the seat and close my eyes. Can’t keep them open any longer.

  Thirty seconds later, the driver slams on the brakes and I’m thrown forward. A car horn to the side of us blares, and two lanes of night traffic slew to a halt. From where I’m sitting, I can’t see what’s happened, but the coach driver pushes open his window, leans out and shouts: “Learn to drive, moron!”

  *

  Gazza and I break into the building site on a dull Sunday afternoon. The world’s snoring after a morning of car-washing, Sunday roasts, church and all that other Sunday crap, but we’re after life and adventure. We’re both ten and in Year Six at St Giles’ Primary School, and although Gazza’s often in trouble with the police I don’t figure that what we’re doing is wrong.

  Life’s for living, not sleeping. Sleep’s a snippet of death, and you’re a long time dead, just stuck there, ain’t you?

  “Too easy,” I say, tugging back the bottom corner of chain link fence for him to crawl under.

  Above the gap I’ve created is a sign that reads NENE VALLEY SECURITY CO, with a picture of a German Shepherd and a security guard. Both have pointed noses. Below, there’s another sign in red letters: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  “Hook it back to this,” Gazza says, twisting a strip of wire onto the fence, “so we can scramble out if we need to. In a hurry, like.”

  “D’ya reckon we’ll need to? Do they really have dogs?”

  “Nah, not them. They only patrol at night. Some old busybody walking their poodle might see us if we’re not careful though.”

  It’s a new estate of fifteen semi-detached houses. About eight houses on one side of the road are almost complete, but the remaining seven only have foundations laid, and a network of deep trenches extends from each into a deeper trench, which runs the length of the estate. Pallets of bricks and roofing tiles are stacked all over the place, several wheelbarrows and planks have been abandoned, and a bulldozer is parked over the top of one of the trenches, its caterpillar tracks straddling the pit.

  “It’s bloody great,” Gazza says, running up one plank and standing on another that bridges two pallets of bricks. He bounces on the plank as if it’s a trampoline. “I was here yesterday. I made this.”

  There’s nothing wrong with being here. The fence is round the site to stop little kids from getting in and hurting themselves. It’s not like we’re gonna steal anything – a new house, a bulldozer or a brick or something. Besides, before they ripped all the trees out, there was an orchard on this land, and we used to sneak through a different fence when we walked down Wights Lane to scrump an apple or two in autumn, and no one minded much then.

  “Fan-bloody-tastic,” I agree, clambering down into a trench.

  This is the day Gazza – Gary Fletcher – finds a lump of flint the size of a small axe head. He might have the wrong sort of smarts for school (and Mr Walters sure has it in for him), but he’s sharp enough to spot the truth behind a piece of flint caked with several tons of earth, halfway down a new sewerage line.

  He’s pulling off gobs of claggy red mud when he calls me over. “Look at this, Tommo.” Crouching down, he rinses it in a puddle until it shines clean, then holds it for me to see, but won’t let me take it.

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t throw it. Promise.”

  We’ve just fought a ten-minute war, tossing ‘grenades’ of soil and half-bricks from trench to trench. I’m still grinning and my hands are the colour of clay.

  “Why not? What is it?”

  Rounded smooth across the top edge of two flat sides, it’s been chiselled down to form one long, razor sharp edge. The following day, the curator at Northampton Town and County Museum will tell Gazza’s mum and him that it’s a side-scraper – part of a Stone Age tool kit – for cutting hide off meat thousands of years back. He’ll have to lie about where he found it, of course, but he’ll offer it to the museum, so they can label it and shove it in one of their rows of boring glass cabinets, as long as he can take it to school for Show and Tell first.

  In answer to my question, he says, “I reckon it’s old.”

  “How old? It’s not a fossil, but we might find some here.”

  “Cavemen-old. I reckon it’s an axe. You know, Stone Age, like we did in those projects last term. They probably hunted woolly mammoths with this,” and he swipes it through the air, nearly slicing my bloody ear off. “Or sabre-tooth tigers.”

  “I’ve got a spearhead at home,” I remind him. “You know, you saw it. I used it in my project. Found it in the garden.”

  Only then does he let me hold it.

  Gazza will take it to school and impress the hell out of Walters. He’ll get Gazza to stretch a sheet of paper as tight as he can between two hands and, in one pass, old Waters will slice it in two with the flint – the straightest and quickest of cuts. Sharp enough to shave with, he’ll tell the class, still beaming. The old fart won’t be able to help but turn Gazza into an assistant at his own Show and Tell.

  Gazza will remain a hero for a few days, all the teachers going out of their way to tell
him how observant he’s been and wanting to show their own classes the paper trick. His popularity won’t last long though; only until the next playground brawl or until some kid forgets they’ve left their lunch money at home and points the blame at his infamously light and sticky fingers.

  Beneath the concrete that smothers Nenford, there must be thousands of Stone Age implements buried. I’ve got two myself, though neither beat Gazza’s. I found the first when I was seven, one shitty Christmas Eve, at the bottom of a hole I’d dug for a most important tree – a few days after Dad’s funeral. It had the shape and size of a spearhead, with two sharp and slightly curved sides of a triangle coming to a point. The shape caught my attention, as well its whiteness against the dark soil.

  When I took it to school to show my teacher, she took it to the museum to show the curator. It was called a point, and was probably used to work hide or get meat off bone, or to craft wood on a dull Stone Age Sunday afternoon. Along its edges I could see, as if they’d been done the day before, where each scallop-edged fleck of flint had been chipped to create a serrated and keen edge, sharp enough to score a tight line, or fashion a hole in a cured skin, to separate the hunger of boredom from the satisfaction of food in the stomach and robes to wear.

  A couple of weeks after Gazza’s find, I keep my eyes peeled when Mum asks me to dig the last of the spuds for dinner. I’d like to outdo Gazza and find the foundations of a complete Neolithic village under our vegetable garden, but know the chances of discovering even a seventy-year-old penny is thinner than slim.

  “If you want to earn extra pocket money, you can turn the whole bed over for me,” says Brian, my step-dad. Brian the fuck-wit. I haven’t heard him walk down the garden, but he’s standing on the path with a colander for the spuds. “Get shot of these weeds, eh? It’ll save me a job later,” he says. “But don’t dig the parsnips, mind. They need a good frost to give ’em flavour. Alright?”

  “Yeah.”

  I don’t really expect to find anything but, just before Mum calls me for dinner, I unearth a second point. Coarser, less smooth, but still a point. What are the chances of that?

  I can’t know it at the time, but one day I’ll keep them in a little red tin on a shelf in a house that I’m glad to call my home – in Australia. I can’t know it at the time, but perhaps it’s the discovery of these that’ll kindle my interest in trying to understand the past.