Gavin Highly

Illustration by Gary Baseman
Illustration by Gary Baseman

Did it happen this way? The land lay like stone, and one night, all night long, rain pelted down on it the way people, they say, hammer hard on a stone to find blood. And in the morning the land was cut in two by a deep flow of creek, clotted with red weed—Gavin Highly’s creek.

But all this was a long time ago. I did not know back then that hearts could be laid out like land and cut in two by storms coming out of the sky, or that dreams could be thrown, as Gavin Highly threw the ashes of his fire or his oyster shells or his old tins and bottles or his scraps of food, deep into the dark flowing divided heart to be buried there. I did not know, and my brother did not know. We cared more about plums—ah, they were yellow and dusty blue and hung on trees, over Gavin Highly’s fence, and in the early autumn the sun burned on each plum till its tight yellow or blue dusty skin gave in and rolled up like a blind to let in more sun. The plums split and were ripe and we ate them and, if Gavin Highly caught us, all he said, in one breath, was “Hop-it-you.” I think he understood about plums.

He lived alone; apparently, he had always lived alone. The story was that he had been up Central, living in a rabbit burrow, where a rabbit kept house for him and he invited ferrets, kindly ones, in for afternoon tea. But of course that sort of story couldn’t be believed by realists. Still, it was true that he had never lived in an actual house. A tent, yes, and huts and, when he was small, in a room with an iron bed, top and tail at night with brothers and sisters, but never a real house. His dwelling now was a hut with a hole in the roof to satisfy the needs of smoke wanting to go out, and with old bulging beer barrels, corseted by rusty iron hoops, placed at strategic points around the outside walls, to act as downpipe and spouting. There wasn’t even a step to the door. Going inside was like climbing a mountain, though I had never been inside and could only guess. People said that there were books everywhere, on shelves, under chairs, on chairs—the chairs were two—and tied with binder twine in bags under the bed. Gavin Highly collected and loved books. No one had ever really seen these books, but hearsay had it that they were worth thousands of pounds and, if ever Gavin wanted to have his dream and live in a proper house with a proper downpipe and spouting and taps inside and waste pipes under the sink and hot water, why, all he’d need to do was sell his books.

And the selling, word went around, would have to happen very soon, for Gavin’s hut had been condemned by the Health Inspector, and if he had no money to buy a house he would have to go to jail or to an old people’s home, where he’d eat boiled mutton all the time and no oysters. And folks knew how much Gavin Highly liked oysters—indeed, he ate so many that he could have become one. He was in league with them, surely. But then he was the kind of man who is in league with many things—almost everything except people. For him, there was no way, it seemed, of being in league with people, as he was with the birds, shabby starlings, their feathers worn and shiny green from flight, or with the frogs that in early autumn made the creek vocally sinister with their croaking, handless and cold, their pale-yellow-and-cream ballooning throats propped upon the surface of the water, or with the trees, willows that knew whenever their limbs failed, and lived near the creek, so as to be able to drop their dead parts down for burying.

Was that why Gavin Highly, too, lived so close to the creek? Tip, splash went the ashes from his fire every morning; whizzbang went the pork-and-bean tins. Till the Health Inspector made a visit. He was a narrow man, like a shadow, the sort of man who slips under doors and through keyholes, or else how could he have known that our dog, Lassie, slept in our bedroom?

“I have had complaints,” he said to Mother on one visit. “There are dogs in and out of your windows. You have a . . . lady dog, I understand.”

Yes, the Health Inspector was a sneaky sort of man, and I felt sorry for old Gavin Highly when I heard my parents talking about him.

“They say the place is a disgrace. Full of books and oyster shells,” a lady said to my mother. This lady came and drank tea and then knitted tea cozies and hotwater-bottle covers for bazaars, while Mother watched and wished that she could knit and crochet, but I did not like the knitting woman. Come to think of it, I wasn’t much in league with people, either, and so I pitied poor Gavin Highly having to sell all his precious books or else sit in jail with a bowl of bread and water. But I soon put him out of my mind, for a little while, anyway. My brother had a new sled with a patented speedometer, which read, true or false, ninety miles an hour.

One morning, it was autumn and the little polished acorn bullets were knocking down hard on the roof of the shed, and it was breakfast time, with my father eating porridge, my mother sewing a quick patch onto Dad’s work pants, my brother putting the kindling wood in the coal house, and me still sitting, past porridge and halfway through bread and treacle, and suddenly my father stopped eating and said, “Today’s the day.”

A silly, obvious remark. Of course today was the day—for me, the day of sycamore windmills. The sycamore seeds were brittle and thin as a fly’s wings, but they could whizz, and today was the day of whizzing. But I knew that my father was not talking about that.

I took another piece of bread and treacle.

“You have hollow legs,” my father remarked absently, but in my curiosity about today’s being the day I felt no special pride in this anatomical wonder, which my father quite frequently assured me that I possessed.

He continued, “I hear Gavin Highly is selling his books today. He’s making quite a fuss about it, advertising and all that. There’s a van calling to take them to the auction room, and this morning an expert is coming to look at the collection and price it. Half the town’ll be there for sure.”

How could I forget that day? There was a light-blue morning wind blowing and thistledown flying loose along the tops of the clouds and larks going up and down, up and down, in the shining lift of the sky.

Poor Gavin Highly. I did not see anything that happened, but I know, I tell you, I know that it happened this way.

Toward noon Gavin Highly began to prepare a number of packing cases at his front and only door. The cases were labelled “Soap Powder,” “Tinned Beans,” or “Sunkissed Oranges.” All would eventually contain books, millions’ worth, folks said, and old Highly would be someone, richer than anyone in town. He sat crouched like a watchdog on top of the cases, waiting for the men to come and see the books, the experts who lived in clean houses with doorsteps and downpipes and spoutings and taps, hot and cold, and baths, the experts with their folded wallets stuffed to the seams with banknotes. And soon the experts did come, or, rather, one expert. He was an old man, about the same age as Gavin. He was half bald and he looked like a kind ferret, with his long nose leading the way up the path to where Gavin sat like a stone mountain on the cases.

“Gavin Highly?” the visitor queried.

Gavin looked respectful. “That’s me, sir. You got my notice, no doubt. The books are in here. They mean m’ life to me. They’re valu’ble books, but they’ve gotta be sold.”

Gavin led the way through the door to his one room. He had spread the books on the bed and the sofa. The thousands were not there—only fifty or so old volumes, some torn, some ragged and zigzagged by the teeth of mice or rats, some without covers.

“I’ve talked about them sometimes to people, but they’re me private life,” Gavin continued. “I’ve never shown them. I don’t have people coming here. What are they worth?”

The expert frowned. “If they mean your life to you, how do you expect me to assess their real value?” He spoke in proper language and used big words because he was an expert.

Gavin did not answer but reached for a book. “This is a hist’ry book. I’ve had not much education but I know it’s valu’ble an’ I read it every night.”

The expert leaned forward eagerly and grasped the book. The title? The edition? The publisher? He opened the book and read “Junior History for Schools. Our Nation’s Story.” There was childish writing on the flyleaf, somebody’s name, Standard Four, then a little rhyme:

Standard Four

Never no more

If this book should chance to roam

Give it a whack and send it home to ME.

The name was written again in red ink underneath.

The expert turned over the pages. There was a picture of Captain Cook, embellished with red hair and a permanent wave and spectacles.

“The marks can be rubbed out, I s’pose,” Gavin said. “All old books get some kind of marks, don’t they, like stamps, but it’s got about when grass grew in the streets of London and the Great Fire and the plague and the people walking from door to door and crying, ‘Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!’ And to think I’ve got a book about it! And I’ve others like that—po’try, and the high tide coming up on the coast of Lincolnshire. This is what I call my treasure, and, if anything can buy me a decent house to spend my old age in, it’s these books will buy it for me. What are they worth?”

For a moment, the expert looked quite incredulous. Surely old Highly was not serious. Children’s history books, old, dirty magazines. “Worth millions,” Highly had said in the note he’d got the auctioneer to type.

Gavin waited for the expert to answer. “They are valu’ble, aren’t they? They’re hist’ry.”

“Yes, they’re valuable,” the expert answered. Gavin sighed with relief. Real downpipes and spoutings. A doorstep. Taps running hot and cold, a warm fire and no smoke. “I guessed their value,” he murmured airily. “Though no one’s seen them. About what are they worth?”

The expert pondered. “A few pounds,” he said.

Gavin looked startled. “But there’s some mistake—they’re valu’ble.”

“In money they are worth a few pounds, perhaps not even that.”

Gavin opened the history book to the picture of London. “Look. Grass growing in London streets, on the floors of the poor people’s houses an’ up through the cracks in the walls, an’ when you go on the street you’re going on grass, just like going out onto your lawn, if you’ve got a lawn.” He turned the pages again. “An’ look, the Fire in the Fern, that’s us, an’ the land being fished up out of the sea, and the forest being taken away—it’s hist’ry,” he pleaded.

The expert glanced at his watch. He took shelter in formality. “I haven’t really much time, Mr. Highly. Your books are very valuable, I told you that, and they are worth a few pounds, no more. The value is inside you, and I’m afraid you cannot take that down in a van to the auction rooms and call for bids upon it. Love does not go under the hammer, ever. But I must be going.”

Gavin spoke humbly. “I see. I’ve spent years collecting these, down at the rubbish dumps and in secondhand shops. I thought they were rare an’ precious. My apologies, sir,” he said calmly and with dignity. “But will you stay to tea with me? I don’t ever have people to tea, but I like the way you speak.”

So the expert sat down on one of the two chairs to drink a cup of thick black tea. He sat there holding the stained cup in his small wrinkled hands, and he looked like the kindly ferret come to take tea with Gavin Highly in the home that was a rabbit burrow. Away up Central.

After tea, he shook hands with Gavin and left him sitting quite peacefully on the bank of the creek.

By the afternoon the whole town knew about Gavin Highly. Somehow they just knew. Where would he go, they asked, with no money, no house? It was not as if he could make do on social security. And his books turning out not to be worth anything—it seemed the man had been delivered a mortal blow. “He’ll go mad,” my father said. “A man can’t withstand a lifetime of dreams being swept away like that. He’ll go mad and shoot himself. Or jump off the wharf.”

My brother and I listened, fearful and trembling.

Oh, Gavin Highly and the bird-picked and clouting plums, whose stones told tomorrow, and the blackberries, on which the late-in-leaving autumn sun lavished a shoeshine, hanging around in a gold thirst over the trees. Gavin Highly’s trees, and Gavin Highly’s creek. Supposing he should die or jump off the wharf? He had to be helped, rescued. So my brother and I, just before sundown, took some bread and treacle wrapped in newspaper and set off for Gavin Highly’s hut.

My brother did a quick calculation. “It’ll last him pretty long,” he said. “All these pieces.”

“We ought to help him escape,” I suggested. “The Health Inspector’ll be after him, and you know how he took Lassie to the gasworks—perhaps they’ll take Gavin Highly to the gasworks, instead of prison, for not having a proper house.”

We arrived at the fence near the creek and peeped in. We felt afraid. The treacle was sticking to the newspaper, the print getting swamped in the brown coming through. Gavin Highly was sitting on the bank of the creek. He wore his old khaki shirt open at the neck, and beside him was a bag of oysters and in his hand an oyster knife. He lay the oysters on the bank and—we could see it clearly through the fence—whenever they opened their mouths he pounced on them with the knife. He was talking to them, saying something like this: “Aha, got you. Whenever you open your mouth to breathe or speak, I stick a knife in your throat and kill you! Aha, got you! Never open your mouths to speak again! Got you!”

My brother and I shivered. It was true. Gavin Highly was in league with the oysters. How else could he get them at this time of year, anyway? He was in league with them and talking to them. Then he turned to look up at the willow tree. He said something like this—time has changed the words in my mind, but the meaning stays—he said, “Willow tree, when your branches die you don’t carry them with you to sap your strength, you know they are dead. They drop off into this creek and are buried. This afternoon I came here and buried fifty books below the water. The weed is red like blood, and the creek is a wound of everlasting blood flow.”

We crept shivering away. I threw the sandwiches high onto the hedge for the birds, if they cared for them. We did not speak all the way home. We went to bed and slept deep as willow logs.

The next morning Gavin Highly was gone. No, he was not dead; he was just gone, and no one knew where. Perhaps it was up Central. He may be there today, living in a rabbit burrow, with a rabbit to keep house for him and a ferret—a kindly one—to come for afternoon tea. ♦