Trading Futures by Jim Powell

Author:Jim Powell [Powell, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509806447
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

7

It is a Saturday afternoon in July 1967. I am lying in the long grass with Anna Purdue, close to her, not touching, a hand’s width from paradise.

It is a cloudless day, comfortably warm, almost hot. We are in a field near the top of Blackdown, a few miles south of Haslemere. The counties of southern England sprawl around us, shimmering in the haze. A tractor crawls across a distant field. Under sail, it appears, because the noise of the motor does not reach us. We are lying in the long grass, buried in its wilderness. Swallows dart in the sky above us. Around us, butterflies weave through tall stalks of buttercup and cornflower. Bees hum among the clover. Somewhere, a church bell rings. Someone, somewhere, is getting married. Someday soon, it will be me.

We talk of many things: serious, trivial, ludicrous, pretentious. Not much about our feelings, at least not towards each other. A transistor radio, secreted in the grass, fills the gaps in the conversation, apposite in its punctuation. ‘Waterloo Sunset’. ‘Night of the Long Grass’. ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. ‘Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me’. Broadcast from some pirate station, now under the government’s sentence of death. We are feasting on a condemned man’s last banquet.

I have an oxeye daisy in my hand and am slowly pulling off the petals, one by one. I do this casually, silently, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. Anna watches me, does not say anything. It ends with ‘she loves me’, but I may have pulled two petals off at once.

I don’t know why I’m doing this, because I don’t believe in things like this any more. I suppose I believe that moments like these portend something: that they can be bottled, and that the vintage will mature for years. I suppose I believe that this moment will endure, even when we stand up, in one hour’s, two hours’ time; even when the key turns in the ignition.

I no longer believe any of these things. Yet I do still believe that, without moments like this, life would be barely worth living.

I’ve gone down to the Surrey–Sussex border for the day to see my old friend Simon, the friend with whom I was staying when I’d first seen Anna. He is now working in Birmingham. I’m in London, waiting to go to university. We haven’t seen each other in months. Out of the blue, Simon has rung me. He will be in Lurgashall the following Saturday, playing cricket for the village team. Why don’t I come down? We arrange to meet in a pub.

I arrive at the Noah’s Ark in Lurgashall at about twelve-thirty. The pub is already full. People are spilling out across the road and onto the playing field. Simon is amongst them, beer glass in hand, not about to let the athletic requirements of the afternoon stand in the way of a liquid lunch. We drink and chat, and chat and drink, for an hour or more.

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