Five Boys Read online

  When the Reverend Bentley first went through Aldred’s duties and mentioned his difficulty in turning the pages of the Bible, Aldred not unreasonably envisaged himself up in the pulpit beside the vicar, with his own upholstered stool. Saw himself silently rise to pinch the corner of the page between his fingers and sweep it over when the reverend gave him a nod—even tasted the bitter catarrh of apprehension at the back of his throat as he saw himself going down the aisle, kitted out in his own little surplice and bigbuckled boots, when the reverend explained that all he wanted was the Bible open at the appropriate place before the service started and, if the passage went onto a second page, a wooden ruler marking it, so that he could turn to it without too much fuss.

  Upholstered stool, somber surplice and fancy boots all went up in a puff of smoke. Other boys might have been disappointed, but disappointment did not come naturally to Aldred Crouch. He experienced instead what felt like a peculiar interlude in which his thoughts were reordered and his interpretation of the facts rearranged and by the time he got home twenty minutes later, his interview with the Reverend Bentley had been revised to such a degree that his grandma Crouch was soon clapping her hands with glee at the news that her only grandson had apparently just been invested with about as much church clout and clerical say-so as a bishop.

  Aldred stopped at the door and lifted the key on its string necklace. He could have tucked it inside his jumper but preferred to wear it out, like a crucifix, even though it tended to bounce around when he was in a hurry and leave small bruises on his chest. He slotted it into the door and felt the old mechanism turn deep inside it. Stepped in and took a breath of holy air. Then he made his way around the organ, climbed the stairs up to the pulpit, pulled out the note from under the Bible and studied the reverend’s arthritic scrawl.

  “Romans 10:6,” it said, and beneath it was a list of numbers: “19, 392, 47, 106, 198.”

  Aldred couldn’t remember which bit of the Bible the Romans inhabited, but had an inkling they might be somewhere near the end. So he heaved it open, hoping, as always, that it might miraculously part at the right chapter and, as always, it did not.

  Once they started moving, the Bible’s pages soon found their own momentum, buckling and rolling in great papery waves, and as he looked for Romans hiding out among them, with the church all hushed and empty, Aldred thought, not for the first time, that he would quite like to do a little preaching of his own. He imagined the whole village staring up at him, enraptured, with the Reverend Bentley and Mrs. Fog right down at the front as he enlightened them on ancient curses and the drownings in the Bay of Biscay.

  Generally speaking, Aldred thought the church was far too wordy. Not just the ones weighing down the Bible and pouring out of the Reverend Bentley. Hymn books and prayer books were stacked shoulder-high by the main door, words were carved into stone tablets along both walls, there was Latin script in the stained-glass windows and framed notices and embroidered quotations at every turn. The moment you set foot in the place you found yourself playing hopscotch on the epitaphs of dead men. And most of the words were too old or worn away to make any sense. If he ever started up his own church Aldred would certainly make a few changes. Films about London’s famous landmarks and Ancient Egypt would be projected onto bare walls and from time to time Aldred would play a couple of tunes on the organ. But people would be free to come and go as they pleased—could sit and nod off without fear of reprisal. It would be the world’s one and only wordless church.

  The Romans finally turned up between the Corinthians and Mary anointing Jesus’ feet, and as the passage continued onto the following page Aldred tucked the ruler right up to the binding and pulled the first page back over it. He let the hymn board down on its pulley, gently laid it on the pulpit floor and fished out the box of numbers from its hideaway at the back of the pulpit and began picking out the ones he needed for that morning’s hymns.

  The blocks slid easily along the board’s beaded grooves, chinking against one another like dominoes. But Aldred took care. One tile out of place would have the congregation racing off in one direction and the Reverend Bentley in the other. Some hymns came up with such frequency that Aldred recognized them straightaway and could be halfway through the first verse before he slid the last block into place. Dirges such as “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” (279) and “Raise Up Thine Heart” (563) were particularly popular with the reverend, whereas Aldred preferred the stirring “Onward Christian Soldiers” (432) or “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” (138), which always gave him the willies as the chords shifted under, “Oh hear us when we cry to thee …” before being resolved with “… for those in peril on the sea.”

  By the time he’d checked all the numbers and hoisted the hymn board back up the wall, Aldred’s monopoly of the church was usually broken. Mrs. Heaney would be fussing over one of her flower arrangements and the ushers would be restacking the hymn books for want of something useful to do. But, as Aldred often reminded himself, only he had a key on a string necklace and only he was allowed to climb the pulpit stairs, and no amount of strutting about on the part of the ushers or evil glances from Mrs. Heaney from the cover of her chrysanthemums would alter the fact that their business was down among the groundlings, while he was practically the junior manager and had the run of the place.

  He crept back down the stairs, out through the side door, and made his way through the graveyard. Then leaned against the little gate and picked at its paintwork until Mr. Mercer’s Bath chair came creaking into view. From a distance the Mercers could look a little ramshackle, but as soon as Mrs. Mercer had steered the chair into its berth beside the step, they launched into a routine of the kind of complexity rarely seen outside the Edinburgh Tattoo. Mr. Mercer flipped back his blanket, took up his walking stick and swung both legs out. Mrs. Mercer jammed her foot against a wheel to steady the chair. Then her husband clamped his free hand down on Aldred’s shoulder, took a lungful of air and heaved himself up, with his jacket not far behind.

  If Aldred sometimes felt as if he was helping a dead man out of a wicker coffin then it was a resurrection they managed between them every week. Yet in all those Sunday mornings Mrs. Mercer never said a single word to Aldred. It wasn’t something which particularly bothered him. He didn’t imagine the two of them would have had much to say. What bothered him more, as he headed back toward the church with Mr. Mercer’s powerful hand on his shoulder,was the fact that most boys his age were considerably taller than he was and he couldn’t help wondering if having Mr. Mercer press down on him every Sunday morning wasn’t somehow squashing out of him any growing he’d done in the previous week.

  Aldred had learned to adjust his steps to those of the man behind him. The slightest tightening of Mr. Mercer’s fingers on his collarbone told him he was struggling; the merest pressure of his thumb on the muscles above his shoulder blade told him he had a little breath to spare. There were days when Aldred felt sure Mr. Mercer’s hand had smoothed into existence its own shallow cavity. He would be sitting at his desk on a Tuesday or a Wednesday and suddenly feel his hand resting heavily on his shoulder, with Mr. Mercer nowhere to be seen.

  The walk to the church was certainly not getting any faster, but Aldred always took great pride in being able to gauge Mr. Mercer’s general well-being by keeping an ear on the rattle in his chest, so when he felt the old man dig his fingers into his clavicle on this particular morning Aldred was first surprised, then disappointed in his own lack of sensitivity.

  “Careful,” wheezed Mr. Mercer. “Mind the plums.”

  They stopped for a cough by Mr. Wenlock and paused again just before the door. But as soon as they were inside they fairly raced for the organ—a burst of energy, Aldred assumed, intended to show those worshippers already seated just how hale and hearty their organist was. That last dash took its toll, and Mr. Mercer would sometimes slump on his bench for several minutes before sitting up and begin pulling out the stops.

  With all the organ’s pipe
s racked up around him, Mr.Mercer looked like a man at the gates of a fort. The pipes were the same blue, Aldred often noted, as the robes of Jesus, with enough firepower to sink a battleship. He had thought about taking up organ playing himself, just to get his hands on all those stops and keys—liked the idea of doing that little quickstep over the pedals. What put him off was the prospect of having to learn how to take all the squiggles on the pages of Mr. Mercer’s hymn book and convert them into something his hands could comprehend—a technique Aldred suspected involved the deadly numbering favored by Mrs. Fog.

  Aldred left Mr. Mercer and made his way around to his own station at the back of the organ. It was a good deal more dusty and dingy, with none of the polish of the front. He would have quite liked an audience for his pumping and felt that the congregation would have found much to admire. On the other hand, he had his own little den in which to do his thinking and anything else which didn’t make too much noise.

  The pump handle stuck out of the back of the organ as if someone had buried an axe in it. Aldred undid its clip, cranked it up and down, heard the bellows shift deep in the woodwork, then sat on his stool to wait for the hanky to dance on its string.

  A notice was pinned to the back of the organ, about two feet from his face.

  DESTRUCTION OF CHURCHES BY FIRES ORIGINATING IN THE ORGANS

  The organ is damp, a lamp or stove is placed in it and left to burn all night, with the result of setting it on fire.

  The organist, the blower, the tuner, or a workman making repairs, strikes a match, or lights a spirit taper, or candle, which he leaves burning, with the result of setting the organ on fire.

  The music desk lights are movable brackets which can be placed so that the flames touch woodwork; this is done once, and the whole is set on fire.

  ECCLESIASTICAL INSURANCE OFFICE

  Lim. 11, Norfolk Street, Strand, London wc

  Aldred could recite whole chunks of it verbatim, but despite the fact that it had been pinned up long before his investiture and that the paper on which it was printed was now as dry as old parchment, he couldn’t help but take its dire warnings personally.

  “Originating” and “Ecclesiastical” were far beyond the realm of his vocabulary and, no matter how many times he turned them over in his head, “spirit taper” and “movable brackets” failed to make any dependable sense. The implication, however, was clear. The organ was primed for conflagration—was a fireman’s nightmare, a tinderbox—and, hearing that Aldred was going to be in its vicinity, a committee had been convened in London and a list of directives drawn up.

  So the moment Mr. Mercer tugged on his end of the string and Aldred saw the hanky jump, he began pumping—to fire the opening chords across the bows of the congregation … to keep the airless Mr. Mercer inflated … to keep that great wooden palace of an organ afloat and dragging the audience a beat and a half behind … to build up his muscles and make himself as big as the other boys. But he pumped hardest of all because of those flames which threatened to flicker into existence in the vast, dry wastes of the organ’s insides. Pumped until he was puffing and panting almost as badly as Mr. Mercer to keep those flames from coming about. The dampness … the spirit taper … the movable bracket—three easy ways for an absentminded boy to let an organ catch fire. Three blazing organs, side by side, and every one of them his own fault.

  The only bit of the notice which offered him any consolation was the Ecclesiastical Insurance Office’s address. Aldred knew very well that the Strand was right next to the Embankment. From their window the people whose job it was to warn organ pumpers about setting fire to organs would be able to see Cleopatra’s Needle—be able to relax in its shadow on a hot summer’s day. So as Aldred pumped and felt the sweat trickle down his back he kept his eyes fixed on the Strand until Mr. Mercer held down the last chord and he heard the reassuring clunk and clatter of the congregation returning to their seats.

  Aldred had pumped out “Let Us with a Gladsome Mind” and “Lord of Mercy and of Might,” and the Romans had marched in and back out again, when the Reverend Bentley’s voice dropped by the best part of an octave and he whispered, “Let us pray.” Aldred put his hands together, closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his fingertips. He had often wondered why children prayed with such devotion while their parents just linked a few indifferent fingers and stared at the floor. He wondered also how the Reverend Bentley prayed at all with such swollen fingers, but the man obviously managed, for his prayers would sometimes last upward of five minutes and cover a whole host of things.

  On this particular Sunday they included a reference to a leaking roof (which might have been real or metaphorical), a fallen tree (likewise) and some ginger biscuits which had arrived in the post from a sister in Salisbury. The reverend’s meditations could last so long and meander so wildly that Aldred would sometimes be tempted to steal an illicit peek of light, but when he heard the reverend mention the Focke Wulf’s attack on the village he felt the powerful beam of celebrity swing onto him and squeezed his eyes even tighter shut.

  Thanks were given that no one in the parish had been seriously injured. One could only guess, the reverend said, whether the pilot had been dispatched with orders to terrorize the citizens of the South Hams or had simply added it to his itinerary. The Reverend Bentley then informed the congregation that he had been out that morning, following the path of bullet holes up and down the lane, and made a rather startling discovery. The reverend paused. Aldred stared into his own deep well of darkness and tried to imagine what it might be, and when the reverend finally continued his voice was so quiet that when Lillian Minter turned her good ear toward the pulpit the rest of the congregation did the same.

  There were bullet holes in the war memorial, the reverend told them. Bullets in the monument to the Great War’s dead. What kind of man, he asked, would show such contempt for the fallen? What kind of man, he demanded, would strafe a village street? And, in an uncustomary fit of fire and brimstone, he suggested that for those who regarded themselves as being above the law of God, Judgment Day would prove a rude awakening.

  But his pronouncements were wasted on Aldred, whose eyes had popped open at the first mention of bullet holes in the war memorial and when the reverend moved onto other prayerful considerations his organ pumper was left far behind. The congregation said their amens without him, the reverend announced the next hymn and Mr. Mercer plucked at the string and the hanky twitched behind the organ but Aldred Crouch just stared into space. Time and again, Mr. Mercer held down the opening chord of “The Saviour’s Head Was Crowned with Thorns,” without a whisper coming up from the organ’s great arsenal of pipes. The only sound was the light clatter of his fingernails tapping the keys, and the whole service had lost its way when either the hanky or the congregation’s embarrassed silence finally managed to get between Aldred and the war memorial. He leaped to his feet, grabbed the lever and started pumping. Pumped harder than he had ever pumped before. And, like a gramophone cranked back up to speed, the organ groaned into life, the bones of a tune were thrown to the congregation and the great cogs of Sunday morning turned again.

  The journey back through the graveyard seemed to take forever and along the way Aldred had to weather a terrible, if wheezy, tirade. But the moment the organist let go of his shoulder and gravity was pulling the old man back into his chair, Aldred was off like a shot toward the war memorial with his key flailing about his ears.

  A small crowd had already gathered around it. Some old fellow was pointing his walking stick up at the bullet holes, as if he might take some credit for picking them out. Aldred forced his way through to the front until he could see the holes himself, then stood and stared at them with what he hoped was the same sort of expression as the one-legged servicemen looking into the hole in the ground, and the harder he stared at the spidery cracks in the stone the more convinced he became that they spelled out some strange message of their own.

  England Expects

  C
ONSIDERING THE incredible commotion when the Focke Wulf went over, the only wonder was that it didn’t leave more carnage in its wake. The few people who actually saw the plane fly down the high street were unanimous in their opinion that if it had been any lower it would have trimmed off all the chimney pots.

  The post office had been in full session, with Miss Pye telling her customers in the strictest confidence about a suspicious pregnancy out in Tuckenhay, and Mrs. Mercer was crossing the road to join them when she heard what she thought, at first, was a lorry hurtling down the hill—a lorry which must have taken the brow above the church at such a lick that its wheels had left the ground. Then suddenly the lorry had wings and was heading straight for her. And was nothing like a lorry at all. She saw the road erupting toward her. Heard the rattle of gunfire. Then she was scrambling over her own garden wall and throwing herself headfirst into her own lupines to get out of the way.

  Naturally, the Boys were delighted that their village had been singled out for such malevolent attention, but couldn’t help but feel that the occasion would have been better distinguished by a fatality or two. If the pilot had only swung by when the powwow at the post office was dispersing he would have had plenty of old folk hobbling about the place. Then there would have been stretchers and blankets and bandages, and ambulances racing up and down the lanes.