The Levels by Peter Benson Page B

dawdling ahead, he leant over, pressed the horn, jumped up and down, shouted, but they didn’t let us pass, even by Muchelney pull-in, they just swerved into the middle of the road without looking.
    â€˜Peasants!’ he screamed, waving a fist at them. ‘Move over!’
    â€˜We weren’t going any faster before we met them,’ I said. ‘They’re probably doing us a favour.’
    â€˜How’s that?’
    I told him what I thought of the van.
    â€˜Heap!’ he cried. ‘It’s older than you.’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    â€˜You want me to buy something flash that’ll be a pile of rust in a couple of years?’ I took my hand off the steering wheel, and peeled a flake of metal from the dashboard.
    â€˜Like this?’ I said.
    â€˜Like what?’
    â€˜That not rust?’
    â€˜Paint bubbling, happens on old cars,’ and he tossed it out of the window.
    I drove to Langport, then along the main road through Oath Lock, where the lane runs beside the river on one side and the railway line on the other, to Stan Moor. Wright lived in a riverside house with sixteen acres of his own withy beds and ten more rented. He grew Black Maul on all his own land, and five of the rented, but was ripping out five acres of Black Spaniard to replace with New Kind, the best working withy of all time.
    â€˜Says who?’
    â€˜Slocombe.’
    â€˜Ha!’
    He was in the stripping shed, whitening.
    â€˜That,’ he said, pointing at the van, ‘deserves a medal.’ He took me to one side and said, ‘I’ll have a word.’
    â€˜What about?’ said owl ears, springing up and rubbing his hands where the springs had impressed red circles into the skin.
    â€˜Sorry?’
    â€˜You will be.’
    Wright looked cow eyes at my father.
    â€˜What you going to have a word with me about? My van?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Think I’ll be needing a new one?’
    â€˜Me?’
    â€˜Take that look off your face. Find us our stuff.’
    â€˜You whitening?’ I asked. We always ask people if they’re doing something we know they’re doing.
    A pair of swans flew as far north as Burrowbridge Mump before losing height and landing on a spit of land beneath the walls of a water board house. Bob Wright, a bachelor, led us to his store shed.
    â€˜Tea for anyone?’ called his mother.
    â€˜Tea?’ Bob asked.
    â€˜Thank you, Mrs Wright. You’d like some, wouldn’t you, Billy?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    She disappeared and the door flapped shut on the shed, my father looked over the willow with an expert eye and congratulated Wright on sheen, straightness, etc, etc.
    We carried the bundles and stacked them in the van, before walking up the bank and staring down; the river was low and grey, the shelving mud thick and shiny. The swans took off, three hundred yards up-stream, Mrs Wright came out and called us in for tea.
    The front room, where my father sat down and counted bank notes, was dominated by a long, brightly-lit aquarium. Tiny fish darted behind plastic castles and rubber weed, and Mrs Wright, when she’d poured tea, stood beside me and said how much each one cost. They were tropicals and required the water at an exact temperature.
    We sat round the table with small cups of tea but huge buns and pastries. My father’s hand hesitated over a cherry cake.
    â€˜Just tuck in,’ said Mrs Wright. ‘You boys have been working hard.’
    We were full and leaving by the front door when Bob said for us to come out the back door so we could go down through the yard to the pound house.
    â€˜I’ve got some stuff burn holes in your boots.’ In one corner of the house stood two barrels of cider, laid in cradles with tiny china cups hanging beneath the taps. He lifted one of them off, tossed its contents on the ground, and poured three mugs.
    â€˜That’s beautiful,’ my old man said, and it was good,