added, walking off towards the house.
Stutton was in his mid sixties now, and ran a car-breaking business out of the farmyard, having sold the land beyond to one of the big salad-crop companies in the eighties. The eviscerated bodies of wrecked cars littered half an acre beyond the garden. An industrial crusher stood idle in the middle, over which scurried a large water rat. Dryden could smell petrol and rotting upholstery, and he felt a pang of loss for the summers at Buskeybay.
Beyond the house stood a half-brick barn, black with creosote.
‘Business?’ asked Dryden, trying to be interested in the answer as Stutton searched for the key.
‘Better’n farming,’ said Stutton, freeing the padlock. ‘I’ll sell up one day.’
Inside the mist had crept under the doors and hung in the half-light, a thin layer of cloud a foot above the dung-caked floor. Dryden shivered, feeling a needle shot of pain between his shoulders. The barn’s layout was simple. Two haylofts, one at either end, with a two-storey storage space in the middle. A single dormer window, covered by moss, radiated a thin green light. Dryden climbed a metal safety ladder into the far loft, followed by Stutton, who threw a switch to light a neon strip in the timber roof above. Between them they lifted aside a green tarpaulin and several dust sheets, revealing what looked like the entire contents of a cheap antiques and bric-a-brac shop. Dryden threaded his way amongst the tea-crates, crammed with nicotine-brown newspaper. He picked at the rotted paper revealing dusty crockery, rusted kitchen scales, a sickly glazed Victorian vase, some candlesticks, pewterware, a large brass wall plate. Lifting a cheap gilt picture frame he studied the scene by the flickering neon: Constable’s haywain trundled towards Flatford Mill.
‘Worth a fortune, this,’ he said.
‘And these,’ said Stutton, lifting a wooden mangle in one hand, an old Singer sewing machine in the other.
‘Is it all Mum’s? I’m sorry – I should have done something sooner. It’s been years,’ said Dryden. Four years since the funeral. He had left it too long, reluctant to sever too brutally the few physical ties which remained with his own past.
Stutton shook his head. ‘It’s not just your mum’s. All the family, really – it’s just sort of collected here.’ He cleaned the dust from the brittle glass mantel of a gas lamp. ‘Dad must have chucked this out in ’49 when we got the electric. And that’s Grandad’s,’ he said, pointing at a porcelain washbowl set in a cabinet.
They stood in silence, the dust drifting across the harsh beams of neon.
‘Are you really going to sell up?’ asked Dryden.
His uncle nodded. ‘There’s an offer. Two. Why not?’
‘We should get rid of it all,’ said Dryden. ‘I know someone who does clearances. They can auction the best. Anything you want, just take. I’m done with it,’ he added, kicking a crate, but unable to stop himself stroking the mane of a threadbare rocking horse. ‘Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll get things moving,’ he added, fingering Thomas Alder’s business card in his shirt pocket.
They climbed down and stood below in the gloom, Dryden caressing his creaking knees. He stood, feeling along a wooden post in the half-light, knowing he’d find the right switch. A single bulb flickered on, startling a dove which clattered up into the rafters.
They stood together, united in the memory. The theatre, his theatre, the perfect childhood playground: the painted cherubs, the carved pale-purple grapes, the silver-paper trumpets and the gilded vine leaves that decorated the wings, and above the crudely constructed proscenium arch, the letters picked out in wartime standard-issue whitewash: La Scala. A rustic Italianate scene was now the only backdrop, etched out in pastels on the damp- plastered wall. A temple stood in a grove of Cypress trees, a patch of damp partly obscuring a dancing girl. A rusted oil lantern hung from the rafters above, its forward-facing glass painted lime green.
‘You knew them. The Italians?’ said Dryden, thinking that once an audience had sat where they now stood, listening on dark winter nights to songs of home as the bombers droned overhead for Germany. He had played here alone, preparing the plays he would later inflict on his parents, pacing the rickety rough-planked stage. A child then, he had accepted the wonder of the theatre with hardly a question about the people who had created it. But now he had the questions, and a reason to ask them.
Stutton was silent, lost in the memory too.
‘I forget. Did you ever see them perform?’ said Dryden.
‘The Italians? Course. And your mum. Not really plays as such; revues, I guess – songs and that. They was good, damn good.’
Dryden nodded. ‘The Italians. That’s all I ever knew.’
‘It’s about that PoW’yer – isn’t it?’ said Stutton, stepping up on to the stage and moving into the shadows by the paper-thin wings. ‘Always read your stuff, Philip.’
Dryden shook his head. ‘Yes. Sorry – I would have come anyway. But I just wanted to know more. When did they arrive at Buskeybay?’
Stutton stepped into the light, an actor whose lines had arrived. He took a tobacco pouch out of his heavy-duty overcoat and rolled a cigarette expertly with one hand. ‘That was ’44. Summertime. Most of ’em were conscripts and they’d had a coupla years in the desert. Scared, I don’t blame ’em. Not much interested in getting back at all. Once the news come through they’d surrendered back home I guess they was officially non-combatants. So they moved ’em out, billeted them on farms. Couldn’t send ’em home, I guess – Germans were still fighting. Monte Cassino, places like that.’
‘How old were you?’ asked Dryden, straining across the years to hear the songs they’d sung.
‘Five when the war ended but your mum was older by the year. Used to play with ’em, both of us. Dad put ’em in the barn here to sleep and that, worked ’em in the fields. Not always our fields, mind, they bussed them out to where they were short of labour. They did this of an evening,’ he said, laying a hand on a painted cherub. ‘We had about two dozen here, but others came in when they put on a show. But most Saturday nights they went into town, mind, all slicked up. The Ritz had seats – for the newsreel and that. They was no trouble at all. Good workers as well, better’n the lot we had after.’
‘They moved them all out of the camp, out of California?’
‘Just about. A couple had jobs there after the Germans were put in. Orderlies, that kinda thing. The Germans were a different type – officers mostly, captured after the landings – D-Day. We kept well away from the wire
