Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [42]
CLANG!
After a month or two, Enoch also started setting up his iron altar on Wednesdays, early-closing day. As on Saturdays, he always attracted a jovial crowd.
“Less see yer lift that thing agen, bor!”
“How nigh is that enda the world, Enoch?”
“I do hope yer gorna finish my gate afore that come, Enoch!”
“Mock ye, yea. Let mockery be a comfort unto thee. For the seventh seal shall be opened, and death shall not be an ease unto thee.”
CLANG!
GEORGE, WITH HIS back to the bed, buttoned up his pajamas and said, “What’s up with your mother, Ruth?”
“What d’yer mean?”
“You must’ve noticed. She’s been different lately. She’s stopped bitching at me all the time.”
“Shush, George. She’ll hear us.”
He grinned. “I doubt it. She’s gone a bit deaf, I reckon.”
He took his socks off and looked at himself without pleasure in the mirror. How had he got so old? When had his hair started going Absent Without Leave? He got into the bed, and Ruth clicked them into darkness.
He spoke to her broad back. “You know what I mean. Instead of moaning at me all the time, she’s gone all sweetness and light. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. Like last night, when I got in late. What I usually get is ‘Yer’ll hevta scrap around if yer want somethun, ’cos we had our dinner the usual time.’ But no. She goes, ‘I’re put yer dinner in the bottom of the oven, George. The gravy hev gone a bit thick in the saucepan, but that’ll be all right if you heat it up.’”
“That was nice of her, George. I don’t see why you should get upset about it.”
“I’m not upset. I’m not saying that.”
“So what are you sayun, then?”
“I dunno. Just that it’s a bit strange, is all.”
“She’s gettun old, George. Thas all it is.”
“No,” George said. “It’s something else. I don’t trust her. It’s like she’s looking at me, saying, ‘I know something you don’t.’”
Ruth laughed, shuddering her bulk.
“Dunt be so daft, George. Go to sleep.”
CLEM AND GOZ wheeled into the field and dismounted. They eyed the other bikes leaned against the hedge.
“Shite,” Clem said. “There’s hundreds here. All the good pickun’ll be gone.”
“Nah. We’ll be all right, comrade.”
They marched over the hot hard earth to the weighing tables and took six empty punnets apiece from the stack. There was a queue of pickers waiting to have their fruit weighed. Cushie Luckett was one of them.
“Orright, Grammargogs?”
“Orright, Cushie. Good pickun?”
Cushie shrugged. “That ent bad. I’re made twelve shillun already.”
Goz grinned at him. “I thought you had a proper job, Cushie. Whassup, the abattoir run out of pigs?”
“I’m orf sick,” Cushie said. “And you hent seen me, Gosling.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Goz said solemnly, “you have always been entirely invisible.”
They made their way across the top of the field to where Mortimer’s watchful foreman stood. He looked up and raised an arm.
“Over here, you boys!”
“Hardly a necessary instruction,” Goz murmured.
“Right, you boys. Set you onter the bottom of these two rows here.”
The foreman had a hand-rolled cigarette attached to his lower lip by some magical adhesive. It bobbled as he spoke but did not fall.
“How many baskets you got there? Twelve? I shunt think yer’d be needin aller them.”
“Oh,” Goz said, all disappointment. “Why? What time are you knocking off?”
“Six, sharp.”
Goz had a watch on his wrist and he looked at it. “That’s a good hour and a half away. I reckon we’ll need another dozen, don’t you, Clem?”
“At least.”
“Hah bleddy hah,” the foreman said. “We’ll see. Now, you go all the way down the bottom of the row afore you start. And lissun —”
“Clean the plants,” Goz said.
“Clean the plants.” The foreman frowned, puzzled to find himself an echo. “You get all that fruit orf, other than the green uns, ’cos I’ll be along behind to check up. And dunt you even think about slippun stones into them baskets. Orf you go, then.”
Clem and Goz had picked strawberries every summer since they were toddlers. They considered themselves experts. Pickers were either kneelers or stoopers, depending on their age. Older pickers, mindful