Cambrians: The Fenlands

Where the hills of the Midlands roll gently northwest into the Fens, the soul of the country becomes watery; a subtle edict of a pagan God, enacted in heavy banks of fog which settle like a gown over the stagnant canals. Marsh Harriers reign cruel over the flat, wet soil, and are audience to the liquid song of Garden Warbler and Nightingale. It is a rare man who understands the Court of that mud, the simple truth of waterlogged earth, the linear hierarchy of migrating bird under dwelling bird, pond skater under grey fox, algae-clogged water under draped-cloth willow.  He who understands this natural fen’s heart understands the true meaning of ‘marsh fire’ – the alcohol flame held within, a water-fire natural in its paradox.

Some are taught the fenland way; they sit in riverboats and live their lives sodden. But some are born with marshland hearts, and when reunited with their true habitat understand in a second the fragile beauty of a wetland winter, never quite frozen or melting, the smell of stem and brittle tree branch rich in the air like bonfire. These people, when reunited with their heart-home, smell the wet fen air as toast, mown grass and frying bacon – a smell so intrinsically good as to be unquestionable. They find their way by the lighthouse Cathedrals dotting the Holy Land of the English, and take refuge on islands above the inevitable tide of a thousand years of history.

 *****                        

Max knelt. He disliked the sweating incessancy  of a Mass held with others; it felt claustrophobic and suffocating – so he had joined the choir, initially for a better seat from which to worship his Lord and later out of real piety. For Max, faith had been natural, but not easy. He had trained some incorporeal vine around his belief; it had grown steadily alongside or maybe around him, reinforcing the ground underfoot. He was seventeen, and the least godless person he knew. Every Wednesday at four o’clock (just after school), he reinforced the solidity he felt behind his heart, cocooned by the heavy walls of Ely Cathedral.

Afterwards, when his knees were sore and his thoughts tired, he would take a short walk down by the Maltings, where the chips were too expensive but the service was good, and watch people float by on the river. He had been watching the water for a while when a girl four inches and four weeks his junior settled next to him, her hair settling quite suddenly to one side of her face, as if displaying an expression of its own. Maggie was like that.

“Are you contemplating the Universe again?” She yawned slightly, as if the Universe bored her. Maggie affected her boredom. Her aim in this wasn’t exactly to deceive you, but to slow down your speech. People spoke to Maggie, they didn’t just talk.
“I think you think I’m more profound than I am.” He took a chip, as did Maggie, with almost impossible vagary. “You want to be a priest. Won’t profundity be your job?”
“No, my job is a constant air of self-deprecation; this is the Church of England, Mags.”

Their exchange would’ve continued in earnest, satisfied in its own aimless humour, but for the whiff of £12 fragrance coming from the doorway. Naomi had arrived.

“Hey choirboy, hey Mags.” She settled herself down effortlessly, in the way only very deliberate people can, and set about rummaging through her purse. “I am done. I’m completely done.”
“Really.” Mags glanced at her lazily.
“Really, Mags.” Max was grinning.
“Really.”
“Shut up, you two. Seriously, I spent half an hour at Ryan’s and he didn’t look at me once. Not once. It’s a fucking joke, and I’m not gonna spend time with an idiot who prefers his fucking limp-dick Xbox over his so-called girlfriend. So I left. I’ve been waiting for like half an hour for him to text me and say sorry.” She pouted, and stole a chip.
“What if he’s not?” This was from Mags; Max had already silently consigned this conversation to the space he dared not tread.
“What if he’s not what?”
“Not sorry.”
“Of course he’s fucking sorry.” But Naomi had been weakened, and Mags pounced.
“I think he’s a twat. What’s the point of having legs to Morocco if you never get to wrap them around anything?” Ignoring Max’s sudden attack of spluttering, she continued; “I’m just saying, you actually had interesting things to say when  you weren’t mooning around after him. Do you know what the last and only conversation I had with him was about? Trainers. Fucking trainers, Naomi.”
Naomi made a sound somewhere between protest and resignation, and eventually slumped. “Ugh, you’re right, he’s braindead. I’ll text him and end it.”

There was a pause, in which Max stared at Naomi with faint amusement. “In twenty years, when humanity first contacts the aliens and they demand of us that we prove our worth as a species, we will search and search the wide and rich canon of human creative output; from it we will take Rilke and Confucius and Fitzgerald and Shakespeare and Descartes, hundreds of our most talented writers and theorists and politicians. But lest we forget; nay, lest the Universe forget, the saga of Naomi and Ryan will be consigned too to that rich and varied list of human achievement. And they will cry. The aliens will cry, Naomi.”

“You are such a dickhead, Max."