THE ODD FLUTTER

Snout to the ground, snuffling for the unexpected, Lupi lolloped along the corridors of wheat. The lime stems were turning to watery yellow and the tacky ears rustled against Moira’s bare arms. Beyond the farmhouse of snapped cobbles, the stand of beeches on Beacon Hill beckoned. Tortoiseshell butterflies alighting three or four paces in front threaded her path.

Once across the two-step style that released her from the bungalow estate, Moira abandoned herself to the leaf and bole of dappled arcades; quite unlike her native fens, where open, flat distances lent penetration to a farmer’s stare.

Mornings she worked at the newsagency, or at least was a nodding accomplice to a clutch of pensioners, whose dithery confidences left her feeling more sprightly than thirty-three; or sometimes during heavier heart-to-hearts rather doddery on varicose veins.

Like having a bull in a china shop, that particular morning, she had to chuckle. Not just the quarterly stock take being tallied by pen-pointing accountants, but there were ice-cream deliveries galore to rush into refrigeration, the dotty old till kept ringing up pennies and shillings, and toffee-nosed gents in dog-haired tweed got military about missing supplements. But derailments, she dismissed with blue-smocked indignation, were not her pigeon.

On and up the slope romped Lupi, zigzag, following his nose. Only to disappear, waggling into the thickets of the chalk pit. ‘Oh, he does love them rabbits.’ Moira planted her thick-set legs on the outer rampart, from which she drank in lungfuls of air less heady for the chickweed burning off. Behind the veils of haze and plumes of smoke, the pallid dome of sky dimmed as sea. The townships of the coastal plain, from these heights so tidily arranged, like cardboard pyramids between bunches of broccoli, pressed towards a dazzle of glasshouses. In pick-your-own strawberry fields, trippers were hard at it, bottoms up, groveling like gold-diggers. And darkened by distance, massing in a shimmer, the towers and turrets and grey-slabbed walls of Arundel’s fairy castle

Moira lay on her back in the tussocks of cocksfoot and clover, pinching wispy heads between thumb and forefinger. Her close-cropped hair, tawny as rabbits’ pellets, helmeted a roundish, plain face ornamented by freckles beneath orange-tinted Polaroid’s. She made an arch of her legs and spread her arms, less for the slobbering of Lupi’s leathery licks than for the caresses of sunshine and breeze and the odd fragment of girlhood might-have-beens.

‘Hallo, hallo, looks as if someone’s enjoying the Roman baths then.’

If Moira flapped less than the woodpigeon she had startled in the wheat field, it was because this youngish chap with kite, a dive bomber of red and yellow sausages, had been casting sidelong glances between take-offs.

‘Come again?’ she replied, making a stanchion of one arm and pulling at her skirt with the other hand. She blinked at the face, that striking dark pink you find on lettuce marguerite, eyes too eager and a thick lower lip working a smile. Funny, visions, as far as she could tell, had always floated through the branches of distant oaks on Highdown.

‘Devilish innovative, those Romans. Built baths on this water-table. Inside the gravel path that runs round it.’

The kite-flier was already grounded in a crouch next to his collapsible tangle of struts, sails and ribbon. What stubbed her fears were his open-toed sandals, so innocently old-fashioned; then again his proper-school manner of chatting on, in all earnestness; even the mop of gingery hair.

‘No, this here’s the Water Board. If it’s something Roman you’re after, try Chichester. Or better still, Rome.’

‘Nil desperandum. This whole area is reeking with history.’

Moira’s nostrils flared. ‘Of course. Every man and his dog knows the beacon was built by Bloody Mary. As a warning against the Armada.’

His mouth hung open in what became a fuzzy smile of disbelief. ‘Hard cheddar. It was good Queen Bess. Mary invented the cocktail.’

Moira blushed. ‘A right smarty, ain’t you. I knew it was one of them Stuarts.’

‘You familiar with that eighteenth century tomb on the eastern slope of the Beacon?’ A trace of scepticism had planted crow’s-feet at the corner of his restless eyes.

‘That there Mad Miller of Swillingdean’s?’

‘Yeah, that’s the boy. They lost most of the stone embellishment. The tomb used to have engraving all around with skulls and stuff, but it was defaced by bovvers from Bognor. I’d prefer to have my ashes cast to the winds right here. Wouldn’t you?’

But she was wondering whether he ever squeezed those white pustules under his jaw.

‘Like Ginnie Woolf at Rodmell. Then I could haunt these Downs like the centurions.’

‘You’ve seen ghosts?’ said Moira, stirring to plump knees, then straining down her hem where the stitching frayed.

‘Not in the flesh, but I’ve heard them clanking along the South Down Way.’

‘I’d love to believe. All I hear is the overflow from the caravan park.’

His laugh was a mere bullfrog’s grunt, though its reverberations were sufficient to jerk his head. ‘Come over to the chalk pit and I’ll show you something.’ He was off and eager before she could quite unscramble her calf-length wellies. From a tufted ledge below: ‘See this piece of flint? As sure as rosebuds come in June, this was a Neolithic sickle.’

‘Looks like an ordinary bit of stone to me.’

‘Feel this jagged edge.’ He grabbed a hesitant palm and noticed grains in her fleshy thumb the colour of potato peel. ‘You could slice a finger off without really levering.’

‘Aw, come off it!’ She snatched her hand away. ‘It’s too titchy.’

‘People were several inches shorter in days of yore. How often have you clunked your head on a Jacobean beam?’

‘Half your luck.’

But in a boisterous leg-up to the rim, he all but toppled back, had not Moira’s lunging hand steadied what Lupi was rousing to agitate.

‘Phew, thanks! I’ve never clapped eyes on such an enthusiastic pooch,’ he wheezed, pushing away the retriever at the ruffle of sandy hair on its formidable chest.

‘My Golden’s definitely taken a fancy,’

‘Huh, a friend for life. You’re a lovely fellow, aren’t you, boy?’ Though he was cowering away from a tongue rolled with saliva.

‘Wouldn’t hurt a fly, old Lupes. I tell a fib. Goes bersek with chickens.’

‘Down, boy!’ But he couldn’t prevent a paw from pushing up against his privates.

‘Now all around those beeches,’ he gasped, ‘you have earthworks from the Iron Age.’

‘Gawd this is my Jimmy’s BMX dirt-track.’

‘Is nothing sacred?’ Though his own teeth looked decalcified. ‘Now take a butchers at the seams of chalk. Run your fingers over the texture.’ Its soft, smooth dryness made her catch her breath and left smudges that brought her palms into leprous relief. ‘The old carters and lime burners used to find their fingernails growing twice as quick.’

‘Go on, you must think I’m only sixty-five pence in the pound.’

‘No, scout’s honour. The calcium literally got under their skin. The flint seams ran every ten feet. What do you think the Romans did with the chalk??’

‘Used to draw wotchermecallits . . . mosaics, I s’pose.’

‘Just let your imagination soar,’ like his hand that wafted above her eyes. ‘They would scatter it on arid soil to improve the quality. Or they quarried it for lime burning to turn into mortar.’

Suddenly, taken by the sniffles, he began intoning through thickening mucus. ‘’Scuse me. Pollen count’s high.’ He dug out a ball of ragged handkerchief to give his sinuses a double discharge.

‘Spect it’s the rape seed.’ Then before the blush could settle on her cheeks: ‘You shouldn’t rub your eyes,’ lightly checking his wrist, ‘you’ll get inflammation.’

‘No, I must, I must,’ he insisted. ‘The irritation’s delicious.’

‘Now you’ve gone and made them all red and watery.’ With her own pressed squares of hankie and deft, moistened forefinger, the slightly poking tongue, she dabbed away at the snail streams. ‘I was always a wally at history. Now young Timmy, my oldest boy, he’s a terror for history. He’s wanting a bow and real arrows for his birthday.’

‘What’s your line of country then?’

‘Just an old council house at the bottom of the Downs. Sardine living, they calls it.’

‘I mean, what do you do? For a living, like? Something to do with antiques, I bet.’

‘Only stuck behind a newsagent’s counter, ain’t I?’

‘Huh, wasted! Then you must seize the opportunity of breathing history at the very moment of its being made.’

‘Oh I do sometimes. I saw Paul Anka at Brighton on his first tour. Lovely, he was. But you’re right. There’s nothing to go overboard about where I am, ‘cept the odd bird calendar. Oh and all the lovely coloured wrapping paper at Christmas.’

‘You breathe history in the atmosphere,’ he persisted. Though a faint odour of liquorice was what she was becoming aware of, together with stale socks bobbled with burrs. ‘It’s all around us. Take this hunk of chalk.’ Moira bent over it. If her square-necked blouse gaped alarmingly, at least the pastel blue, flocked nylon flora of her petticoat clung to discretion. ‘Flint and chalk, that’s the bedrock of culture in Sussex.’

‘Ooh, it’s like a man’s head. Here are the eye-sockets. And this little knob’s his nose. Brrr! Feels spooky,’

‘It’s made out of thousands of minute calcium carbonate skeletons we call coccoliths.’ Again he spluttered into a twang. ‘If you look closely,’ which he himself did, lowering his head to sniff the patina of centuries, ‘you can see the impression of grasses or leaves or snails.’

‘Why, I do believe there is a hairline crack. But that could be just a fault in the make-up.’

‘Not on your nelly! That’s the stem of some giant dog-rose. Have you ever been to York?’

‘Only once. Race Week. Lester Piggott wore pink silks. It was as boring as bitumen, but Ted likes a punt on the gee-gees.’

‘You must go to the Coppergate Dig. It’ll blow your mind. They’ve got time-cars there that whisk you back to how it really was in a Viking village of the tenth century. They can tell what those dreaded Norsemen ate from analysing their excrement. Did you know it was rich in bran and full of intestinal parasites?’

‘How disgusting!’

‘A pal of mine used to work in the Finds Shed, where he’d do the washing and labeling. He even unearthed an antler comb and bone pins.’

‘A Viking comb? Go on. Pull the other one.’

‘It’s got these tines hacked from the horn with a crosspiece of decorated wood. I say, would you like to take a squint at the amber beads I collected at Bridlington after a particularly bad storm?’

‘Well, I don’t rightly think . . .’

‘Suit yourself. Thought you’d be as keen as mustard.’

‘Maybe I am. Lovely just to have a chat, though. Nothing like this ever happens to me up here on the Downs. But I’d best be putting on a shifty. My two nippers will be getting in from school.’

‘Look here, if you do happen to trog over this way tomorrow . . . ‘

‘Lupi likes to give me two walks a day. A shortish one before my porridge, then a marathon after work. It’s not impossible, I s’pose.’ She threw out a breath for a laugh, though it was almost an apology. ‘Never like to risk the Downs without a dog. You don’t know, do you?’ Remembering the dusk-drawn rabbiters with low-slung grins and surlier rifles.

‘Well . . . same time tomorrow then? At the pit?’


‘What the ruddy ‘ell’s that?’ said Ted, spotting a white lump next to his wife’s wedding-ring on the window-edge.

‘It’s my bit of chalk, ain’t it?’ replied Moira, pursing her lips with a smile over the soap suds. ‘That’s a hundred million years old, that is.’

‘’Oo you tryin’ to kid?’ It was his custom to supervise the draining from his chair across the kitchen table, aiming at Moira’s beam as she dunked.

‘What are you gonna do with it anyways? Offer it to that museum in South Ken?’

‘It’s a momento. From the Iron Age.’

‘Gawd ‘elp us, I’ll Iron Age you in a minute. Sometimes I think you’re goin’ mental, Moi, I really do.’

‘There’s no harm in taking a bit of interest in what they calls the historic procession, is there?’

‘I dunno so much. Look at meself. Married a bleedin’ fossil, didn’t I? Any’ow, since when was you a bugger for old slag?’

‘You can learn things, see. About where you’ve came from and why you are what you are. Then if you understand your fundamentals, you can prevent things happening in the future.’

‘Knickers! Did you learn that all by yourself? Oo’s bin turnin’ yer ‘ead this time? Come on, out wiv it! Which berk? I’ll sort ‘im out soon as look at ‘im!’

‘Ted, listen. Why don’t we let our hair down?’ Her voice had an edge of hunger.

‘’Ow d’yer mean?’

‘Let’s go away next Bank Holiday weekend. Just the two of us.’

‘Do a bunk? Where to fer Christ’s sake?’

‘York. We never really did do the city that time.’

‘Unusual fer you, Moi, to want to ‘ave a bit of a flutter.’


Moira was in high spirits but chocolate-ribbed tights the next day. For the newly hatched dragon flies of luminous azure were gusted off on different planes, poppies splashed in the waves of wheat and the sea hardened into corrugations of lovely blue slate.

Lupi sniffed out his own meandering trail up towards the beeches encircling the mounds of the ancient fort, then, from the rim, panted for his mistress.

Below, three crash-helmeted boys were showing off their wheelies over the hummocks. Whose crater seemed less glary off-white than overblown with thistles, brambles and metallic clatter.

Moira skirted the hawthorns. There was Lupi, motionless, one front paw raised as if making a signal. Brought up short, she heard what must have been his voice, or perhaps one of them, not so breathless and quick as she liked to remember, but in murmurings of treacley slowness: ‘You can wear them for a year and a day if you wish.’

The kite-flier’s cardigan-back of imitation suede with threadbare elbows she glimpsed through the keys of ash.

‘Go on, touch them. They won’t bite.’

‘Yes, they are kind of beautiful-primitive. Crusty crystals,’ giggled the spritzy girl in jodhpurs and natty red waistcoat, picking over something dull and bitty in his cupped hands. Her straw-blonde hair was teased into a bun of the finest, shiny silk. Too pretty by half, she was, her complexion an insipid milk and roses.

‘Given me by this groovy bod my brother tripped with. Knew the roadie of the Beach Boys in sixty-seven. Used to doss down on brownstone floors in Haight-Ashbury and lived off corn relish, cinnamon doughnuts, LSD and stuff, the whole shebang.’

‘Haight-Ashbury beads? Wow! Now these really are super antiques. They must be worth heaps!’

‘Yeah, course. It was a golden age, right enough.’

Divots were heard to turn in the chalky soil. Moira, head tucked down, swinging the leash against her thigh, was descending in firming strides. Already the rickety Ford tractor had threshed one swath of grass up the downland slope.

                                                                                                                                   Michael Small
1984

published  Her Natural Life and Other Stories, Tamarillo, 1988