The Bonfire Committee

a spreadsheet — таблица (электронная)

Six People and a Binder

Nora arrived at the village hall on Monday at twenty past six with a notebook, a pen, a printed spreadsheet and a plan.

The plan had four phases and a colour code.

She had made it on Sunday afternoon in about three hours, and she was aware, in a distant way, that three hours was a lot of hours, and that she had spent most of Sunday doing something that stopped her thinking about anything else, and that this was probably the point of it.

Ray arrived at twenty-nine minutes past six with nothing at all.

—Do you not have a pen? she said.

—I have a phone.

—She said bring a pen.

—She said it to both of us and you have brought four, said Ray, sitting down two chairs away. Statistically we are fine.

The committee came in over the next six minutes, in the order they would come in every Monday for the next seven weeks, which Nora also wrote down eventually, because by the middle of October she was writing down everything.

Colin Sharp first, at twenty-five past, with the binder.

Winnie Bhatt at twenty-eight, with a bag for life containing knitting, a flask and eleven books of raffle tickets.

Gordon Pym at half past exactly, with a cash box that he put on the table and did not open.

Dorothy Vane at half past, with the minute book.

Ted Rowntree at twenty-five to seven, in boots, having clearly come from the yard.

Peggy Hesketh at twenty to, with a tin.

—Right, said Dorothy Vane. Bonfire committee, first meeting, twenty-second of September. Six weeks tomorrow.

—Six weeks and three days, said Nora.

Everybody looked at her.

—Sorry, she said.

—No, said Dorothy Vane. Do not apologise for arithmetic. Six weeks and three days. Minute that.

—You are minuting yourself, said Gordon Pym.

—I have been minuting myself since 1998, Gordon.

Peggy Hesketh opened the tin and passed it along, and it contained flapjack, and Nora took a piece because it seemed politically important, and it was extremely good.

—Now, said Dorothy Vane. Before we start. I want to say one thing to the two of you and then I am not going to say it again.

Nora put down the flapjack.

—You are not here to be sorry, said Dorothy Vane. If I wanted somebody to be sorry I would have asked for a letter. You are here because there is a job, and the job is quite large, and this committee has done it for a long time with people who are now considerably older than they were.

—Speak for yourself, said Winnie Bhatt.

—Winifred, you are eighty-two.

—I know how old I am, Dorothy.

—The point, said Dorothy Vane, is that everybody in this room is going to spend seven weeks working, and at the end of it there will either be a bonfire or there will not, and that is the only measurement anybody is going to apply. Is that understood?

—Yes, said Nora.

—Yeah, said Ray.

—Good. Councillor Sharp.

—Before you do, said Ray, can I ask something?

—You can.

—Why is it on the fifth?

There was a pause.

—Because it is Bonfire Night, said Gordon Pym.

—Yeah, but everywhere else does it on the nearest Saturday. Bakewell does it on the Saturday. Half the country does it on the Saturday because more people come and you make more money.

—We do it on the fifth, said Dorothy Vane.

—Why?

—Because we have done it on the fifth since 1887 and because this village does not move things to Saturdays.

Ray looked as though he was going to say something else and then decided against it, and Nora, who had been thinking exactly the same thing about Saturdays and had put it on page three of her spreadsheet, quietly turned to page three and crossed it out.

Colin Sharp opened the binder.

It was four inches thick and it had coloured dividers, and Nora felt something in her chest that she recognised as respect.

—Marlow End Bonfire, he said. I have run the safety side since 1994. This binder is every year since then. I am going to take you through the shape of it and then I am going to give you the two documents that matter.

He turned the binder round.

—The event is on Rowntree’s Field on the fifth of November. Gates open at six. Bonfire lit at half past six. Fireworks at half past seven. Everybody gone by nine. That is the shape and it has not changed since I started.

—Since 1962, said Winnie Bhatt.

—Since 1962, said Colin Sharp. Now. The two documents.

He put two sheets of paper in front of them.

The first said RISK ASSESSMENT at the top and had thirty-one numbered lines.

The second said DEADLINES and had nine.

Nora read the second one twice.

1 Oct. Confirm field with landowner. Written.

1 Oct. Public liability insurance renewed.

8 Oct. Fireworks order placed. Deposit paid.

8 Oct. Notify police, fire service, parish council.

15 Oct. Marquee booked.

15 Oct. Wood collection begins. NOT BEFORE.

22 Oct. Rota complete. Minimum 14 marshals.

29 Oct. Final safety walk with Councillor Sharp.

4 Nov. Bonfire built. Site closed overnight.

—Wood collection not before the fifteenth, she said. Why?

—Because if you start collecting in September you have a six week pile of dry pallets in a field and children in this village are not different from children anywhere else, said Colin Sharp.

—Right.

—And because in 1996 we started on the second of October and it went up on the twelfth.

The room went quiet for a second.

—Oh, said Nora.

—Yes, said Colin Sharp.

—Question, said Nora. What happens if it rains?

—It rains, said Colin Sharp.

—No, I mean, is there a cancellation policy? Do we call it off?

—Miss Finnegan, this is Derbyshire in November. If we cancelled for rain we would have held four bonfires since 1887.

—What about wind?

He looked at her with slightly more interest.

—Now that, he said, is the right question, and it is line nineteen. Above thirty miles an hour we do not light the fireworks. Above forty we do not light anything at all. And I make that decision at four o’clock on the day with a wind meter, and nobody argues with me, including Dorothy.

—Including me, agreed Dorothy Vane.

Gordon Pym opened the cash box.

He was eighty-one and he had been treasurer since 2004, and he took out a paper ledger, a calculator and a pencil, and Nora understood immediately that the next twenty minutes were going to be difficult.

—Budget, he said. Last year the event cost two thousand one hundred and forty pounds. Fireworks eleven hundred. Marquee three fifty. Insurance two eighty. Toilets one ninety. Everything else, two hundred and twenty.

—And income? said Ray.

Gordon looked at him over the top of the calculator, apparently surprised that he had spoken.

—Gate, two thousand four hundred. Raffle, four hundred and ten. Tea tent, three hundred and eighty.

—So it makes money.

—It makes about a thousand pounds and the thousand pounds goes to the hall roof, said Gordon Pym, and it has gone to the hall roof every year since 2009 and it will continue to go to the hall roof until the hall has a roof that does not require it.

He closed the ledger.

—We have four hundred and twelve pounds in the account.

Nora looked up.

—Sorry, how much?

—Four hundred and twelve pounds.

—But the fireworks deposit is due on the eighth of October.

—It is.

—And the fireworks are eleven hundred pounds.

—The deposit is five hundred and fifty, said Gordon Pym.

—Which we do not have.

—Which we do not have, he agreed, and he said it with what Nora slowly realised was satisfaction. Every year we do not have it. Every year somebody sits where you are sitting and discovers that we do not have it. And then somebody does something about it, and that is the actual work, and it is not on Colin’s list because it cannot be.

—Why is there no money? said Ray.

—Because we spent it in March on a defibrillator.

Ray sat back.

—Right, he said. Okay. That is a good reason.

—I am aware that it is a good reason, said Gordon Pym. I signed the cheque.

Winnie Bhatt put down her knitting for the first time.

—Raffle, she said. Thirty-one years. Four hundred and ten pounds last year and that was a bad year because I was in hospital in October and Sandra did it.

—What do you need from us? said Nora, with her pen ready.

—Prizes.

—How many?

—Twenty-two.

—Twenty-two prizes.

—Twenty-two prizes from twenty-two businesses, said Winnie Bhatt, and there are not twenty-two businesses in Marlow End, there are five, so you will be going to Bakewell and you will be going in person, because nobody gives a raffle prize to an email.

Nora wrote 22 prizes, in person, Bakewell and underlined it.

—I can drive, said Ray.

It was the first thing either of them had said to the room that involved the other one, and Nora felt it land.

—Can you? said Dorothy Vane.

—I passed in June. It is my uncle’s van but I am insured on it.

—Well, said Winnie Bhatt. That is the first useful thing anybody has said about the raffle since 2011.

—One more thing on the raffle, said Winnie Bhatt. Do not ask for vouchers. Everybody asks for vouchers and vouchers do not sell tickets. You want objects. A hamper sells forty pounds of tickets. A twenty pound voucher for a garden centre sells six.

—Why? said Ray.

—Because people want to carry something home, said Winnie Bhatt, and she picked up her knitting again as though this settled the matter, which it did.

Peggy Hesketh went last.

—Tea tent, she said. I do the tea tent. I have done the tea tent for nineteen years and I need two trestle tables, four urns, and somebody strong on the fourth of November at eight in the morning.

—That is fine, said Nora, writing.

—And it goes by the gate.

Ted Rowntree looked up for the first time.

—It does not go by the gate, he said.

—It has gone by the gate for nineteen years.

—It has gone by the gate for nineteen years and every one of those nineteen years I have had a queue of people standing in my gateway with cups of tea while a tractor is trying to get through.

—Then move the tractor.

—It is my field, Peggy.

—It is the village’s bonfire, Ted.

Dorothy Vane picked up the small brass bell and rang it once.

The room stopped.

—Item deferred, she said, writing. Tea tent location. To be resolved by the fifteenth of October.

—It will not be resolved by the fifteenth of October, said Gordon Pym.

—It has not been resolved since 2006, said Winnie Bhatt.

—Then it will be resolved this year, said Dorothy Vane, because we have two new members of this committee and they can do it, and it will be extremely good for them.

She looked at Nora and Ray.

—Congratulations, she said. You are in charge of the tea tent.

Outside afterwards it had started to rain, the fine kind that does not look like anything until you have been in it for four minutes.

They stood under the porch of the hall.

—So, said Ray.

—So.

—Five hundred and fifty pounds by the eighth of October, twenty-two raffle prizes, fourteen marshals, and a war about a tent.

—Yes.

—How long is your spreadsheet?

—Four pages.

—Does it have five hundred and fifty pounds on it?

—No, said Nora.

—Right, said Ray Abiola, and put his hood up, and went out into the rain.

Chapter 4. Rowntree’s Field

Key vocabulary

a gateway — проезд, въезд

a hedge — живая изгородь

a slope — склон

drainage — дренаж

waterlogged — залитый водой, раскисший

a rut — колея

livestock — скот

a tenancy — аренда (земли)

a footpath — пешеходная тропа

to graze — пасти(сь)

to fence off — огородить

a stake — кол, колышек

tape — лента

to pace out — измерять шагами

to mark out — размечать

Rowntree’s Field

Ted Rowntree said he would think about the field, and then he thought about it for nine days, which everybody agreed was quick for Ted.

He rang the shop on the first of October, because he did not have Nora’s number and would not have used it if he had, and left a message with Amos that the two of them should come up at four o’clock and bring boots.

They walked up together because there was no way of avoiding it.

Fen Lane, which was not called Fen Lane, but Marlow Lane, went up from the green past the church and then turned into a farm track with grass down the middle. It was the first properly cold afternoon of the autumn. The hedges were still full but they had gone the colour of old tea, and there were sloes on the blackthorn, and somewhere out of sight a machine was going backwards and forwards in a field.

They did not talk for about six minutes.

—Right, said Ray eventually. Are we going to do this the whole way?

—Do what?

—Not speak. Because it is seven weeks and I have worked out that if we do not speak, all the work goes through a committee of pensioners, and that will kill us both.

Nora kicked a stone off the track.

—What do you want me to say?

—Anything. Say something about the weather. Say something about the tea tent.

—I have a plan for the tea tent.

—Of course you do.

—It is a good plan.

—I am sure it is a beautiful plan, said Ray. Does it involve telling Ted Rowntree that he is wrong about his own gateway?

—It involves measuring the gateway.

He looked at her.

—Go on.

—They have been arguing about it since 2006 and nobody has ever measured anything, said Nora. Peggy says the tent goes by the gate. Ted says a tractor cannot get through. Those are both opinions. One of them is wrong and it takes a tape measure to find out which.

Ray walked a few steps.

—That is annoyingly sensible, he said.

—Thank you.

—It was not entirely a compliment.

—Can I ask you something? said Nora, after another minute.

—Go on.

—Why did you agree to this? At the meeting. You could have said no. Your uncle was there, he was clearly ready to argue, and you just sat down and said nothing.

Ray walked for a bit.

—Because saying no makes you look like somebody with a reason to say no, he said.

—That is a very depressing sentence.

—It is a completely accurate sentence and you know it is, because you did exactly the same thing.

Nora did not have an answer to that either, which was becoming a pattern she disliked.

Ted was waiting at the gate with a dog and a stick, neither of which he appeared to be using.

—You came, he said.

—You asked us to, said Nora.

—People say they will come.

He turned round and opened the gate and they followed him in, and Nora saw Rowntree’s Field properly for the first time in about four years.

It was six acres and it sloped. That was the first thing. It went down from the gate towards the beck at the bottom, not steeply, but enough that you could feel it in your knees, and the far end was darker green than the near end.

—Right, said Ted. I am going to tell you about this field and then you can tell me what you want, and then I will say yes or no.

—All right, said Ray.

—It is six acres and it is not good land. It has never been good land. It floods at the bottom in a wet winter and that is why the bonfire has always been at the top, and that is why the tea tent argument is a stupid argument, because there is only one place the tent can go and it is near the gate, but the gateway is nine feet wide and my telehandler is eight foot two.

Nora took out her notebook.

—Nine feet, she wrote.

—You are writing it down.

—Yes.

—Nobody has ever written it down, said Ted Rowntree.

—Why is the far end darker? said Ray.

—Because it is wetter.

—Why is it wetter?

—Because water goes downhill, said Ted Rowntree, and then, after a moment, in a slightly different voice: and because the drainage in the bottom two acres was put in by my grandfather in 1958 and it has been failing since about 2004 and it would cost eleven thousand pounds to do properly.

He set off up the slope without waiting for them.

They walked to the top corner.

The site of the bonfire was still visible from last year: a circle of ground about eight metres across where the grass grew differently, greener and thicker at the edges and thin in the middle.

—There, said Ted. Same place since before me. My father did it, his father did it. That circle has been burned a hundred and thirty times.

—Does it damage the field?

—It ruins that eight metres for a year and then it comes back better than the rest of it, said Ted. That is fire for you.

He walked round the circle once.

—Now, he said. My conditions.

—Go on, said Ray.

—One. Nothing goes on the field until the fifteenth. No wood, no vehicles, nothing. I have sheep on here until the twelfth.

—That is on the list, said Nora.

—Two. The bottom third is fenced off and it stays fenced off, because the beck is up and if a child goes down there in the dark on a night when there are eight hundred people on this field, I am the one who lives with it.

—Understood, said Ray.

—Three. The footpath along the hedge stays open. It is a right of way and I am not having a conversation with the council about it for the ninth time.

—Fine.

—Four.

He stopped and looked out across the field towards the beck for a while.

—Four, he said, is that I want somebody to tell me why we are still doing this.

There was a pause.

—Sorry? said Nora.

—I have given this field for the bonfire for thirty-one years, said Ted Rowntree. My father gave it for forty before that. And every year it is more paperwork and more insurance and more men in high visibility jackets, and last year I stood at that gate and counted, and there were two hundred and six people. Two hundred and six. In 1994 there were nine hundred.

He turned round.

—So you can have the field. But I would like one of you to tell me what it is for, because I have stopped knowing, and I am not doing it for one more year just because it is in a book.

Nora opened her mouth and found nothing in it at all.

She had four pages of spreadsheet. She had a colour code. She had deadlines, a budget shortfall, twenty-two raffle prizes and a plan for a tent. She did not have an answer to the question of what any of it was for, and she had not once thought about it, and she stood in the top corner of a six acre field and felt genuinely stupid for the first time in about a year.

—I do not know, she said.

Ted nodded slowly.

—Right, he said.

—Because of the fire, said Ray.

They both looked at him.

—Sorry? said Ted.

—That is why it matters this year, said Ray. Not why it matters generally. I do not know why it matters generally either. But this year half this village thinks the other half is either a liar or a coward, and my name has been in eleven conversations I was not present for, and hers has been in more, and if there is no bonfire on the fifth of November then that is what this autumn was.

He put his hands in his pockets.

—And if there is one, then that is what it was instead. That is all. That is the only thing I have got.

Ted Rowntree looked at him for a long moment.

—Well, he said. That is not an answer to my question.

—No.

—But it is an answer to a question, so I will take it.

He whistled at the dog, which had gone down towards the beck and did not want to come back.

—You can have the field, he said. Fifteenth of October. And bring the tape measure, because if that gateway turns out to be nine feet six I am going to be extremely annoyed with myself.

—Mr. Rowntree, said Nora at the gate. Two hundred and six people last year. Do you know how many the year before?

—Two hundred and forty.

—And before that?

—Three hundred and ten. And in 2019, four hundred and sixty. I count every year because I stand at that gate every year and there is nothing else to do.

He scratched the dog behind the ear.

—You can put that in your book as well, he said.

They measured the gateway on the way out.

Ray held one end of the tape and Nora held the other, and they did it three times because the first two disagreed, and the third one settled it.

Nine feet four.

—Eight foot two telehandler, said Ray.

—Fourteen inches, said Nora.

—Fourteen inches of clearance with a tea tent guy rope in it.

—So he is right.

—He is completely right, said Ray, and he has been right since 2006, and nobody has ever asked him for a number.

Nora wrote gateway 9’4” / telehandler 8’2” / clearance 14” in her notebook and underlined it twice, and then stood there with the pen in her hand.

—What? said Ray.

—Peggy is also right.

—How is Peggy also right?

—Because the tent has to be near the gate, said Nora. Not in the gate. Near it. Everybody has been arguing about a position for nineteen years and the actual problem is a rope.

Ray looked at the gateway, and then at the corner of the field beside it, and then back at her.

—Move the tent six metres and put the ropes on the hedge side, he said.

—Yes.

—That is it? That is the whole war?

—That is the whole war.

—Right, said Ray. Bad idea number one.

—We ask the pub.

—The pub gave two hundred last year and Gordon says they will not do it twice.

—Bad idea number two. We ask everybody in the village for five pounds each.

—Four hundred people, said Ray. You will get sixty of them and you will spend three weeks doing it and half of them will want to talk about the barn.

—Bad idea number three, said Nora, and stopped.

—Go on.

—We sell the wood.

He turned round in the middle of the track.

—Say that again.

—There is a hundred and eighty year old barn full of burnt oak beams sitting in a field nine hundred metres from here, said Nora, and it is going to a skip in January, and reclaimed oak is worth money, and I looked it up on Sunday instead of sleeping.

Ray stood there for a moment.

—That is not a bad idea, he said.

—It is a horrible idea.

—Why?

—Because it is the barn, said Nora.

They walked back down the track. The light was going already, at five o’clock, which happens very suddenly in the first week of October and always surprises everybody.

—Do not tell them tonight, said Nora.

—Why not?

—Because if we solve it in nine days they will think it was easy and they will give us something worse.

Ray laughed.

It was the first time she had heard it, and it was a completely ordinary laugh, short and slightly surprised, and it changed his face in a way that Nora noticed and immediately decided not to have noticed.

—All right, he said. What do we do about five hundred and fifty pounds?

—I have no idea.

—Great.

—I have three bad ideas.

—Better, said Ray. Tell me the worst one first.

Chapter 5. Reclaimed Oak

Key vocabulary

a beam — балка

oak — дуб

reclaimed — восстановленный, вторичный

a timber yard — лесной склад

a quote — смета, оценка стоимости

a load — груз

a trailer — прицеп

a chainsaw — бензопила

charred — обугленный

salvage — спасённое имущество, утиль

to haggle — торговаться

a bargain — выгодная сделка

worth — стоящий, ценный

profit — прибыль

stubborn — упрямый

Reclaimed Oak

The man from the timber yard came on the third of October and walked round the burnt barn for twenty minutes without saying anything at all.

He was about fifty, in a body warmer, and he had a small hammer which he used to hit the beams, and he listened to each one after he hit it, the way a doctor listens to a chest.

Ted Rowntree stood at the gate with his hands behind his back. Nora and Ray stood by the tape.

—Right, said the man eventually. There are eleven beams worth having. Four of them are oak and they are from the original build, and they are charred on the outside and completely sound in the middle, which is what oak does. The rest are softwood from a repair in about 1970 and they are worth nothing.