conjured up entire spools of disparate images: visions of a primitive world; the sweet, mulish stink of the traditional farmhand, the implacable fire and sulk of the Leveller, the fierce piety of the knight, the rich, meaty righteousness of Cromwell.
It was a curious thing. Ancient. Aromatic. Romantic. Almost a museum-piece.
Although superficially loose-limbed and listless, Arthur was actually exceedingly precise in both his movements and his manner. He was gentle but absolute. He was unforgiving. His mouth was unforgiving. The deep furrows from his nose to the corners of his lips were unforgiving. His hair –trapped under an old, plain, khaki-coloured baseball cap –was thinning. His skin was tight. They had not walked quickly but he seemed exhausted. Shrivelled.
They inhabited entirely different worlds. His companion was ripe and unctuous; as grand and imposing as a high-class, three-tiered wedding cake. And although –in view of his recent exertions –his icing had a slight tinge of parboiledness about it, he remained, nevertheless, disconcertingly well-configurated.
After a moment he drew a clean cotton handkerchief from his blazer pocket, mopped his brow and then exhaled heartily. For some reason he seemed inexplicably enlivened by Arthur’s frailty. Buoyed-up by it.
‘So you finally stopped drinking?’ he asked.
Arthur twitched, then smiled, uneasily, ‘Yes. I finally stopped.’
‘And your family? Your wife?’
Arthur glanced up into the sky. It was a cold, clear day. It was midwinter. Everything was icy. His lips. His teeth. His fingertips.
‘I never married.’
His companion frowned. This was not the answer he’d anticipated. He’d imagined he knew everything he needed to know about Arthur. He’d investigated. He’d peeked, poked, connived, wheedled. The rest –the polite enquiries, the stilted conversation, the walk, even –was little more than mere etiquette. He continued to inspect Arthur closely –yet now just a fraction more aggressively –with his hard, round eyes.
‘There was something in your background…’ he began slowly, carefully unfastening his blazer, ‘which I never knew before, and it was something which absolutely intrigued me.’
‘Really?’ Arthur was unimpressed but he was nervous, and nerves alone rendered him obliging. As he spoke, he noted –with a sudden feeling of inexplicable dismay –how his companion’s plump thumbnail was split down its centre. Sharply. Cleanly. Cracked open like a germinating seed.
‘I did a little nosing around. It appears you once had a famous relative who wrote a book about walking. Or farming…’
‘Both,’ Arthur sounded off-kilter, ‘a very ancient, very distant relative.’
He tried to make it sound insignificant.
‘Well I found it fascinating. And you have his name?’
‘Yes. But that’s just a coincidence. My parents had no particular interest in either history or travel.’
Arthur cleared his throat nervously, then tried his utmost to change the drift of their conversation by suddenly peering over his shoulder and into the undergrowth, as if to imply that something infinitely more engaging might be silently unfolding, right there, just behind them, partially hidden inside that deep and unwelcoming curtain of winter green. Perhaps a badger might be passing. Or a woodpecker –lesser-spotted –undulating gracefully through the boughs just above them.
It didn’t work.
‘Your father…’ his companion paused, as if temporarily struggling to remember the details, ‘I believe he was a foreman with Fords at Dagenham?’
Arthur nodded, mutely, closely scrutinizing his own middle and index fingers. He wished there was a cigarette snuggled gently between them. He would kiss it.
‘And your mother worked on the cold meats counter in the Co-op… But you did. You had an interest.’ Almost imperceptibly, his companion’s mellifluous voice had grown much flatter, and was now maintaining a casual but curiously intimidating monotone. ‘Which was why you attended agricultural college in the early seventies, before undertaking what, in retrospect, might’ve seemed a slightly ambitious attempt to retrace the exact footsteps of the original Arthur Young, but a whole… now what would it be, exactly…? A whole two hundred years later.’
Arthur said nothing. What might he add? The forest shouldered in darkly around him. A short distance away he thought he could hear horses. His companion noticed something too. He glanced off to his left, sharply.
‘They’re on an adjacent track,’ Arthur murmured, cocking his head for a moment then walking to the edge of the path and sitting down on a wide, clean, newly-cut tree-stump. His companion remained standing, as before.
‘So I retraced,’ Arthur eventually volunteered, and not without some small hint of bile, ‘I re-visited, I re-appraised. I intended to publish a book, but things didn’t quite pan out. I found myself working for a London bank, and then, like you, in the confectionery industry. It wasn’t…’ he had the good grace to shrug apologetically, ‘a particularly sweet experience. I encountered some…’ he stumbled, ‘a portion of bad luck. I became unwell. Unfit. I received a pension. I still receive it. And you…’ he struggled to enlarge his focus, ‘you probably got promoted after I left?’
‘Yes. I had your old job in marketing for a while. Then I moved up a level.’
Arthur nodded. He inspected his hands again. They were looking –he had to admit it –just a little shaky.
‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ his companion suddenly observed, his voice worryingly moss-lined and springy, ‘you got your breath back awfully quickly, for such an avowedly unfit man.’
‘What?’ Arthur’s sharp chin shot skywards a few seconds after he spoke, in a slightly farcical delayed reaction. His companion chuckled, ‘I’m not here about the pension, silly…’
His fastidious tone made Arthur feel grubby. It was a nasty feeling, but extremely familiar.
‘Apparently,’ the glare of his companion’s hard smile continued unabated, ‘you sometimes like to walk distances of up to two hundred and fifty miles during an average seven day span. Although last week, for some reason, you only clocked eighty-nine.’
Arthur was silent. In the weak morning light his sunken jowls glimmered like the writhing grey flanks of a well-hooked bream. The truth engulfed him.
‘Can you guess what it is that really gives you away?’
Arthur didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. He was a neatly snapped twig. He sat, rigid, hardly breathing, blankly appraising his several scattered parts from some crazily random yet inconceivably distant vantage point. From a cloud. From a swift’s eye.
‘Your shoes. High quality walking boots. Well worn to the extent that any moderately inquisitive person might easily find themselves wondering why it could be that a man claiming long-term disability allowance should be wearing such fine, strong, functional footwear.’ ‘I was given them,’ Arthur whispered.
‘No,’ his companion interjected calmly, ‘you have a private
