Festival Day

In the poisoned alleys and hyperbolic hillside lanes; beneath the ragged north and borrowed south; in all quarters of the eroding town a living lie. Its weight is felt with the weather ' an ever-present approaching storm, a headache right between the eyes, in the imagination brain, the dream nut of sleep. Through every Sunday street the unspoken hush moves bleaching the town white as lime and lifeless ' in the little shops and wedding beds, on the fag ash sand, in the chipped rim teacups of Saturday afternoon. In every voice and glance the shape of a lie is present.
But like a valley full of summers the village appeared on that morning in July, before our story has even begun, when she looked down from the up and down deck of the open-top bus on the spreading scene of streets and gardens in the sea's cove mouth. Every window a shining little jewel, the walls made of seashells and the grass a salty cow's cud of kelp. It was still early and she was excited to meet her new family and the children she was tasked with keeping safe and well-behaved.
The directions she'd been given led her up a vertical hill arched by horizontal trees to a house called 'Bluewater' and a huge, practical garden with runner beans, butterflies, and an empty plastic swimming pool. The whole family were there to meet her: father with huge leathery hands; smiling mother drenched by the smell of baking; Flora the oldest and ugliest; Sam and Simon in the middle; little Gloria a bursting eleven who wrote articles for magazines.
The father was Mr Brian Oliver, the mother Margaret. They'd been married for thirty years and appeared too old for such a young family. The youngest three of the children were home from school for the summer and every year the Oliver's would hire a young someone to keep them entertained and give them lessons in the mornings. She was this year's teacher, in from the city to enjoy a summer in the lost West of the country in a fairytale village cut away from the template of the times.
Flora Oliver and a man named Tom were to marry that September, and the village was already excited over the prospect. He was another of the few children in the aging population upon whom such hopes were bestowed ' a tall young man not yet twenty five with dark hair and blue eyes; confident in manner, far more than you'd expect from an upbringing of such constricting horizons. He was plainly handsome while Flora was a buck-toothed, pale, wiry-haired brunette, and together they made an incongruous couple.
Two weeks into her time there and she'd already settled into a pleasant kind of routine. Getting up early she'd take the spiralling hill down to the main street and the fingernail of sandy beach that lay at the end. The coast was ragged and high, a geography of granite strength and shipwrecks, broken occasionally by these soft coves where the waves arced in with their white frothy smiles. Upon the concrete pier she'd sit and watch the wide blue ocean thick with sharks and mermaids, and when the few tourists started to appear return to the house for a breakfast of home-made bread with eggs and bacon. The lessons lasted until early afternoon when the boys would rush out into their own mischievous, private world leaving Gloria and she to roam the village or sit around at home with books and pens.
It was Tom who first orchestrated their meeting. He'd heard Flora's whines about the pretty young girl in from the city and came around in the first week to introduce himself. He was intrigued by the words 'pretty' and 'city', two things he'd felt deprived of most of his life. The three of them sat in the steep back garden with its high view of the village and the sea. The bees buzzed all afternoon whilst Gloria wrote a piece about buses leaving them to talk with ever-increasing excitement of their dreams for the future, their lives.
As you'd expect he was back the next day, and all the days after that. He was idle and dreamy, with no job for the summer, his only responsibility to meet Flora in the evenings when she finished work. He hated those petty walks from the High Street to her house, sometimes extended to take in the beach or the cliffs, depending on her whim. They were stilted, silent hours, where he was fascinated and disgusted by her dullness and practicality. And yet they were to be married in September, the end of the summer, and his dreams would always remain as such, never formed and never lived. But the village is a family, one huge prying aunt, and the marriage was theirs; he'd had no control over it. The question had long before been decided in lunches between their parents, conversations in the pub and post office ' an arranged marriage in everything but name, without even the pretext of love.

It's a well-known fact that most little towns with any kind of age will have their own special claims to history, their mythical little tit-bits of a better time, passed down in quaint stories and traditions. For our seagull-spun, fishing-netted village by the waves, it was barrels that marked its individuality, which gave a special fame.
The High Street runs from the pier up past the shops and pub in a dead straight line, rising all the time to the hills and the highway above. The story goes that the pub, which had been standing in its drunken splendour for three hundred years, was once the den of smugglers who soaked themselves silly when a cargo had been successfully landed. One evening the place was packed like a prison right through the night ' the whole conspiratorial village had turned out to toast the import business and with so many guests the fat landlord ran right out of drink. This unheard of situation occurred past four in the morning, but the revelling crowd refused to leave and insisted upon more beer. The landlord was in a tight spot, his house full of dubious characters none of whom looked like leaving. With nothing else for it he sent a barman running up the hill to the highway, where another pub stood, to beg for some beer. At double the price, and upon hearing the situation, they consented to help, but refused to lend a wagon to take the barrels down to the village. The barman was panicking. He stiffened at the thought of returning empty-handed to the rage of the landlord and the quickly sobering smugglers, and looking out at the cove below with the first hints of paler night on the horizon, he was struck by inspiration: the road ran down straight as an arrow, flattening out a hundred yards or so before the pub, giving anything rolling ample time to slow down. So there, alone on the highway with four large barrels of beer, he pulled off the greatest feat of skill the village had ever seen, and the lowly barman was remembered always with his own unique festival.

It was in her second week she heard about the approaching festival. It was always held on the last Saturday in August, and by the end of July preparations were already being made. Tom considered it just another inane piece in the grey jigsaw of the village and refused to even think about it. She found it quaint and was even looking forward to it, but sensing Tom's disdain she pretended to know nothing.
The weeks rolled by slowly in a thick summer heat that gave no ground to clouds and provided not a drop of rain. She and Tom conducted their affair with little need for secrecy, everyone about them being so unsuspecting, Flora more so than anyone. They made love on secret beaches, in the pagan woods, the naked high hills, and both played their parts exquisitely in company. Flora was even pleased with Tom; she saw his obvious contentment and put it down to the approaching marriage.
The day before the barrel festival and the village was dry as a bone. It hadn't rained in nearly two months; the sea washed in and out in a hot, lethargic rhythm, taunting the town with its wetness. It was a boiling Saturday afternoon and everyone was out on the hill or in the kitchen sweating over the preparations for the following day. The men were stringing bunting along the length of the High Street and setting out the tables for the food and drink; the women were cooking their prize dishes with the windows thrown open and their cheeks flushed and damp. The water had been off for a week, stand-pipes were out in the village for drinking water and the gardens were dying. The smell of unwashed bodies was everywhere, and everyone was a little on edge.
She'd been with the children for the morning. There were no lessons ' it was Saturday ' but the Oliver's were frantic all day and asked her to keep the children out of the way. Flora was hanging around too, lying on the sofa, a thin film of sweat on her bluish skin. After lunch some of the pretty village girls came knocking in their short summer dresses inviting Flora on an expedition to one of the secluded beaches along the coast, an hour's walk, to bathe in the sea. The boys laughed and asked to come, and left conspiratorially once they'd been half-heartedly scolded. She was asked along too, but politely declined, saying she was a little tired and wanted to sleep. Tom had been sitting with Flora for the morning, watching her doze and sweat, bored to death in the stuffy house.
With Mr Oliver raising flags, the boys gone, and the girls making their bothered way to the beach, she and Tom were alone apart from Gloria who was listening to the bees in the garden and Mrs Oliver who was baking in the frying kitchen. They kissed in her bedroom and giggled at the stupid village and their rustic enjoyments. Tom spoke of the city and his lofty ambitions; they felt the hot day moving about them so slowly it was almost stopped still.
It was her idea to follow the girls and watch them in the water. Tom was at first shocked. He was very naive, and had a strong, misplaced honour, but he was inquisitive too and quickly gave in. They left about twenty minutes after the girls, but knew they'd have to walk slowly or they'd soon catch them up. The path ran along the cliffs, sometimes no more twenty feet above the breakers, zigzagging along the rising-falling coast beside the impossibly long ocean. There were few trees to give shelter and the sun was beating down relentlessly on the buzzing, kindled day. Cows lay in the yellow pastures, moaning laconically, little mice crawled amongst the brambles and butterflies fluttered their beautiful wings in the dark places amongst the bushes.
They reached the point where the path forked in two: to the left it ran down steeply, around an elbow of rock, leading to a tiny yellow beach with protective high walls; and to the right it cut inland before rejoining the cliff about a mile or so later. They couldn't take the left path as they'd be seen from the beach, so walked a few hundred yards along the other before cutting into the woods in the direction of the cliff edge, from where they could look down from the cover of the trees. It was dark and much cooler in the wood, but the space was overrun by gorse and the may trees were so stunted by the wind they grew branches right from their bases. The thorns pricked them and twigs caught and pulled their hair, all the time the ground ran down steeply towards the invisible cliff and the growing rumble of the ocean.
Before they reached the cliff they heard muffled laughter somewhere to their left. It wasn't coming from the beach and there were at least two different voices. Tom told her to remain where she was while he went to investigate. Crouched low, he parted the branches and stealthily moved through the undergrowth ' she followed a few steps behind ' until he saw light through the trees and could hear the ocean booming as if right below his feet. They saw that the voices were coming from Sam and Simon, her students, his future brothers-in-law ' the boys were lying on their stomachs looking down over the cliff's edge at the beach and the girls below. Tom was indignant and immediately made is if to approach them, but she held him back trying to suppress her own laughter and pulled him away. They groped their way back along the cliff face until they were at least fifty yards away from the boys, and there they moved through the last few trees and lay on a small patch of soft, salty turf, their heads poking over the cliff looking down at the scene a hundred and fifty feet below them.
The sun was high and shone down on the cove making of it a vast pool of sparkling lighted waves. The water was shallow and transparent, varying in colour from pristine azure to glaucous greens and aquamarines. The beach was sandy, almost white, and shone enough to hurt their eyes. Upon it were strewn piles of crumpled clothes from which tracks of running footprints led down to the water. Nine girls were naked in the warm waves, their laughter rising up the cliff walls and dissipating in the huge, impersonal chasm of the cloudless sky.
She saw Flora amongst them, her skin bluish-white, now glistening with water as it had with sweat that morning. She looked at home in the ocean, having always something marine and fish-like about her anyway. Her hair stuck to her back like dark, stringy seaweed and her body looked flaccid and unhealthy, not full enough to fit the skin.
Tom barely even noticed his fiancée despite never having seen her naked. His eyes were huge trying take in the sight before him of all the girls he'd been brought up with, whom he'd dismissed so quickly as innocent and unworldly, with their beautiful, brown bodies, appearing and disappearing beneath the waves; their long, strong legs and lovely breasts, smiles full of teeth and the laughter coming from a secret place inside them. He was overwhelmed by that scene, a Mediterranean fresco, a vision on canvas, and it set moving a pendulum in his heart that beat out a new desire to possess beauty, the entire world's beauty together, at once. He no longer saw the girls as rustic and uneducated ' they were secret and strange, strung around in the filigree of their youth, untouchable, unimaginable, exotic birds of his beach.
She saw him staring, wonderstruck, and smiled to herself, watching his eyes moving from one girl to the next, never resting for more than a second. He'd forgotten all about the impropriety of it all, forgotten the two boys fifty yards along the cliff, forgotten about her beside him.
And it was truly beautiful up there, on the spongy turf full of little insects. The salt-laden wind whipped in cooling the sweat from their skin carrying wheeling gulls in its turbulence, the sea was huge and curved about the horizon were vast ships were miraging their slow way across the wet earth. Shoals of little fishes moved about in the cove, between the thighs of the girls, and they didn't even know it, wouldn't even have seen if a huge shark came loafing in to eat them up. But from the cliff, looking down, Tom could see everything ' the five toes on each foot, the moles on backs, the underwear on the beach, the soft curves.
Eventually the girls grew tired of the water and returned to the beach. They dried themselves, put their dresses back and lay on the hot sand. She and Tom lay back and looked up at the dense, cloudless, cerulean sky. Under heaven, at the edge of the world, they made love above the sleeping girls with salty skin.
In the bushes behind them Mr Oliver watched in the same way he'd been watching the girls. He observed the moisture on her brown skin, and the smooth run of her thighs, her hips. The sweat gathered and ran down his face, the brambles bit into his skin, as the anger welled up inside him at the little usurper who'd so abused his family's hospitality and stolen his daughter's groom.
As they got dressed he moved back into the undergrowth and made his way up to the path.
The next day the whole village was up early, finishing off all the last little jobs. The drinks were carried out to the tables and the food was beautifully arranged. The men congregated in the pub discussing the best tactics for rolling a barrel in a straight line down two kilometres of road. ' It had never been done, not since that first heroic barman; no one had managed to roll a full barrel (not with beer, but seawater) down the course so it reached the pub without hitting the sides of the street. Special barriers were erected, made of hay bales and sand bags, to stop the barrels as they tottered and spiralled and came to crashing, noisy ends a hundred, maybe two hundred metres down the hill. The prize went to the farthest roll, and Mr Oliver had won three years straight. At twelve O'clock the rolling was to begin, so there were still a few hours of drinking time.
Mr Oliver was greatly distressed and above all furious at the outsider who'd come to ruin his daughter and the peace of the village. With no hesitation he told the story to the whole pub, the whole coven of locals who knew each other like brothers, and the smoke filled the room as voices were raised and the indignation spread. He told them how he'd grown suspicious and followed the couple on their walk, how he'd found them on the grass and been too shocked to act. ' Nothing was said, however, of the girls on the beach, and the truth was he'd been there long before the loving couple.
Calls were made to eject her from the village, to send her home in shame that very morning. The general opinion was confirmed of the salacious depravity of city life, the lack of all morals. No one blamed Tom; it was obvious he'd been led against his will, most probably blackmailed. In the end it was agreed to say no more on the matter until after the festivities, and it was especially important that Flora should never know, should be spared such an awful, unfair embarrassment.
The rolling began. The heavy, oak barrel was placed on the line and held in place. The competitor prepared himself, lifted the awkward object and with an ungainly underarm motion sent it crashing down the hill. Between throws a white flag was raised signalling the road was safe to cross.
Mr Oliver was the reigning champion, so rolled last. He saw Tom take his turn and laughed with the rest as the barrel unceremoniously arced to the right, teetered on end, rolled over lengthwise and crashed to a stop in a pile of straw twenty yards from the start. The girls from the beach lined the top of the hill cheering everyone on, and Flora was with them. Mr Oliver gave them all smiles and innocently teased them, treating them like children, whilst Tom could think of nothing but the wet brown skin and shoals of fish the day before.
She had stayed at home most of the morning with Gloria. They counted the fishing boats in the cove and composed an imaginary letter to the Pope, drank cold apple juice watching the bees busy in the mouths of the flowers. Gloria hated the barrel festival and had been allowed to stay home for the morning as long as she came to watch her father roll at two o'clock. They reached the High Street just in time to see Mr Oliver preparing himself for his turn. He'd taken his shirt off and looked an imposing figure hefting the barrel to judge the weight as if it were empty and light as a feather.
The side of the road they were on was full of people and Gloria was too short to see anything. The white flag was still aloft so they quickly pushed their way through the crowd to cross to the other side. Mr Oliver saw them crossing about a hundred metres below him. He saw her as he'd seen her yesterday and he felt a great anger inside, but it was jealousy, covetous envy, like he was being pushed by this girl to the end, the tailing-off of his own life. She embodied his decline and all that he could never have again, the withering of his existence, his own weak-limbed death.
They were halfway across the road and Mr Oliver began to swing the barrel, gaining momentum and judging the distance. It would be the greatest throw of his life and he felt the excitement. Shouts began as the barrel left his hands and sped in a thunderous jumping motion down the hill. Gloria had reached the other side and was safe behind the wall of bales when they heard the thunder approach, but she only looked around in time to see the barrel catch a rut and jump two feet into the air . . .
It caught her full in the abdomen and sent her flying back into a stone wall where the barrel hit above her slumped body and shattered into splinters, raining seawater over her and the baking, cracked earth. The crowd cried out and ran to the girl; Gloria screamed and collapsed in tears.
Mr Oliver pushed through and saw Tom holding her hand. The sunlight caught her soft skin and made it shine like a million captured flakes of diamond; her dress clung to her crushed body and limp thighs. To Tom she had become like the girls on the beach ' untouchable, angelic, wet and salty.

And the lie is there, now, after years it resides in all the bent-backed women and coffee-brown girls. The secret is a buried corruption in the earth beneath the flowers, is repressed whenever the sun comes out, whenever a girl is wet from the sea. And the barman's feat has been surpassed by an even greater roll, so accurate, so powerful, that all who saw it couldn't help but marvel.
They cast her body from the cliff and the men shut the gates to truth, forcing a choking cloth across the village that shut in all the miasmic guilt and spoiled all that had been good.