A Month in the Country

Birkin settles gratefully into a routine, feeling a happy contentment as he works on the mural. In one of her visits, Kathy suggests if Birkin is so happy in Oxgodby that he could stay there, perhaps as a schoolteacher. Even Alice inquires about Birkin’s curious career choice—there can’t be that many old church murals that need to be restored—but for Birkin the mural work has been less about his future and more the past. He is finding his way to the Middle Ages: “They weren’t us in fancy dress, mouths full of these and thous, quoths, prithees and zounds” (66). As he works, he reflects on his drift from religion. He overhears the church services and has begun to sit in. The preachers differ each week. It is not always Keach. Members of the congregation take turns and deliver the word of God with “zeal and conviction” (69). On Sunday nights, the congregation gathers around the church’s old pipe organ and have an open house sing-along. Caught up in the moment, Birkin volunteers to sing—but he only knows an off-color drinking song from the military. He accompanies himself and sings all six verses. Later, Kathy’s mother suggests next time he change “ale” to “tea.”

As he uncovers the mural, Birkin notes that the figures of those falling into Hell are not drawn with the same precision as Chris—save for one. Birkin notices that one falling man is detailed—he has distinctive red hair and a beard, a flowing robe, and even a crescent scar on his brow. As he falls, he is being fought over by two dark angels. Birkin, amazed, compares such precise detailing to Brueghel’s work, although the mural predates that master by two centuries. As the mural emerges, Birkin comes to believe this is a masterpiece: “It was breathtaking…A tremendous waterfall of color, the blues of the apex falling, then seething into a turbulence of red; like all truly great works of art, hammering you with its whole before beguiling you with its parts” (75). Even Moon sees the mural’s grandeur. He asks Birkin if he intends to make the find public, adding that he believes Alice Keach understands the importance of it. “I had rather hoped there was something coming on between you,” he says absently. Birkin then tells him about Vinny and her serial infidelities. That night, he thinks about Alice: “I found it pleasantly disturbing to consider the possibility of wandering off with her to some quiet room, eating supper, taking her hand, touching her, kissing” (79).

In early August, Keach is summoned to preach at nearby Barton Ferry as a stand-in for their parson. He grouses over the inconvenience, and Alice volunteers Birkin to take the assignment. Birkin protests; he has no schooling in theology and no experience in the pulpit. She teases him: It is a tiny church and they seldom get more than a handful of parishioners. “The Lord will tell you what to say” (88), she assures him. He bikes the four miles to the village. As the service begins, Birkin awkwardly stumbles through a hymn or two before starting a sermon. When he finds himself stammering, he shares with the congregation his work on the mural. When he finishes, he apologizes for not providing a conventional sermon. As he prepares to leave, the organist, Lucy Sykes, invites him to tea first. He accepts. At her house where she lives with her parents, he notices a framed photograph of Lucy’s brother in uniform. He understands that her brother never came home. On the way back, he yells to the empty cornfields, “You bastards! You awful bloody bastards. You didn’t need to start it. And you could have stopped it before you did. God? Ha, there is no God” (89).

The next day, as he puzzles over the falling man, Birkin thinks that perhaps the falling man may be the artist himself. In the Middle Ages, church artists were not permitted to sign their work—that would be immodest—and putting in your own figure would have been a way to sign the work. But Birkin is unsure why there is such a drop of quality in the mural; the edges and the bottom work lacked the precision of the rest. Perhaps someone else completed the mural. Because artists were under patronage and could not quit, Birkin conjectures the artist must have died during the work, perhaps taking a fall from the scaffold.

When Alice visits next time, she teases Birkin about rumors that he has his sights on Lucy Sykes; it never occurs to Alice that perhaps Birkin is already married. As she studies the mural, she asks, “Do you believe in Hell?” (95). He knows the Hell she means, but instead he thinks about the long, bloody siege in the muddy trenches of Passchendaele: “Bodies split, heads blown off, groveling fear, shrieking fear, unspeakable fear!” (95). But he says nothing to Alice, besides a generalized bit of obfuscation; everyone, he supposes, imagines a different kind of Hell. He then thinks momentarily about his wife—“another kind of Hell” (95)—but sees that in Oxgodby “life had flooded back” (95). The next morning when Moon visits, Birkin asks him whether he ever thought about the war. “Often,” Moon says, “particularly at night, that’s the bad time…But I tell myself it will be better as time passes” (97). Suddenly, Moon says the two of them have earned a day off and that tomorrow, Saturday, they would take a holiday. They share a picnic in the wheat fields near the church in the oppressive August heat