A Month in the Country

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Book: Read A Month in the Country for Free Online
Authors: J.L. Carr
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    So I began my labours at Oxgodby by testing this likelihood, using a short ladder to reconnoitre the apex. And it was so. By the end of thesecond day a very fine head was revealed. Yes, a very fine head indeed, sharp beard, drooped moustache, heavy-lidded eyes outlined black. And no cinnabar on the lips; that was a measure of my painter’s calibre: excitingly as cinnabar first comes over, he’d known that, given twenty years, lime would blacken it. And, as the first tinges of garment appeared, that prince of blues, ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli, began to show – that really confirmed his class – he must have fiddled it from a monastic job – no village church could have run to such expense. (And abbeys only took on the top men.) But it was the head, the face, which set a seal on his quality.
    For my money, the Italian masters could have learned a thing or two from that head. This was no catalogue Christ, insufferably ethereal. This was a wintry hardliner. Justice, yes there would be justice. But not mercy. That was writ large on each feature for when, by the week’s end, I reached his raised right hand, it had not been made perfect: it still was pierced.
    This was the Oxgodby Christ, uncompromising … no, more – threatening. ‘This is my hand. This is what you did to me. And, for this, many shall suffer the torment, for thus it was with me.’
    Moon saw this at once. ‘Mmmmm,’ he murmured, ‘I wouldn’t fancy being in the dock, if he was the beak.
“And he shal com with woundes rede

To deme the quikke and the dede …” ’
    And, lying abed on Sunday mornings, hearing them bleating away downstairs, I could see him up there in the shadows, unseen above their heads, and wondered if he was the honoured guest the Revd. J. G. Keach and Co. were so blithely expecting.
    â€˜Ha! How say you. Did you fede the hongry? Did you give drynke to the thirsty? Did you clothe the naked and nedye, herbowre the houselesse, comfort the seke, visite prisoners?
    â€˜And what about poor Birkin, did any of you offer him bed and board?’
    Yes, you blasted smug Yorkshire lot, what about Tom Birkin – nerves shot to pieces, wife gone, dead broke? Yes, what about me?
    But those condemnatory eyes! ‘And you too, Birkin! Don’t think I’veforgotten you. Out there in the barrage, taking my name in vain! It’s all down on the slate.’
    But, for me, the exciting thing was more than this. Here I was, face to face with a nameless painter reaching from the dark to show me what he could do, saying to me as clear as any words, ‘If any part of me survives from time’s corruption, let it be this. For this was the sort of man I was.’
    Kathy Ellerbeck was the first native who came to see what I was up to. She was the girl who had stared from the stationmaster’s house at my coat and me, and she was fourteen years old, in her last term at the village school. She was big for her age, blue-eyed and freckled, a knowing-looking girl. In those days I didn’t dislike children; in fact, I got on very well with most of them. And I had really great pleasure from the sort I could talk to tongue-in-cheek, who knew this and enjoyed it too – talk for talk’s sake like many kids enjoy ice-cream.
    Well, Kathy Ellerbeck was one of that rare breed and, to boot, she had the sense to know a kindred spirit wasn’t going to be on hand for ever and that she must catch the fleeting moment e’er it fled. We understood each other perfectly from the moment she flung open the door. ‘Hello there!’ she called. ‘Mr Birkin, can I come up?’
    I came to the platform’s edge, looked down and told her that I’d made a rule that no-one must come upstairs whilst I was working. An absolutely right-down-the-line rule and no favourites. Except Mr Moon. We had a reciprocal agreement – I could go down his hole and he

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