Mr. Campion's Abdication

by Mike Ripley

  ‘We now be closed, so bugger off till six-a-clock!’

  ‘You must forgive my wife,’ said Joshua P. Yallop (licensed to sell, etc.). ‘Edna is from Norfolk and not used to strangers.’

  Perdita smothered a giggle, unsure whether this tall, thin stick of a man, who reminded her of a nervous Maths teacher, had spoken in jest or not.

  ‘We should have phoned ahead,’ said Rupert, playing the diplomat, ‘rather than disturb your rest period.’ He had been coached in his youth by that authoritative figure on such matters, Mr Lugg, that the hours of closure in the afternoon – a piece of cruelty imposed on good Englishmen by Mr Lloyd George, a Welshman, during the First World War – were now regarded as sacred by many publicans.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, we’ve put you in the Royal Suite, as we call it, and the other Mr Campion, who booked the room, did phone to say you were on the way. He also said to tell you to report to Heronhoe Hall tonight for dinner and rehearsals in costume, whatever that means, but he was quite specific.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ said Rupert. ‘I hope that doesn’t put you out at all.’

  ‘Kitchen don’t open in the evenings,’ said Mrs Yallop who, having disappeared through a door to the side of the main bar once her husband had appeared to receive their guests, had now silently reappeared at his side having spent her time absent wisely, running a brush through her hair and reinserting her false teeth, although her feet remained shod in a pair of red furry slippers which were moulting badly.

  ‘What Edna means is we don’t do bar food in the evenings during the winter. There’s no call for it, you see.’

  ‘Not much call in the spring or the summer either,’ said Mrs Yallop, resigned and unsmiling. ‘This place is past its prime, just like we are, Joshua.’

  Mr Yallop loped a long arm around the shoulders of his diminutive wife, where it hung loosely like an unwanted scarf.

  ‘Now then, Edna, not so glum – not on our night off,’ he said, though Edna did not seem cheered by the news.

  ‘Going anywhere nice?’ asked Perdita, feigning both joviality and interest.

  The small woman looked up at the younger woman as if she had suggested something unspeakable.

  ‘It’s our night in front of the box, now we’ve got colour,’ said Mrs Yallop. And then, convinced that Perdita had not understood, added, ‘The box, the gogglebox.’

  ‘Tonight is our one night of television viewing,’ said Mr Yallop to clarify things, ‘and now we have a colour set, we aim to get the good of it, whatever programmes are on. But don’t worry, the bar will be open as usual and Sonia will see to you if you need anything as long as it’s not food or room service. Sonia doesn’t climb stairs these days.’

  ‘Sonia?’

  ‘She’s our cleaner and barmaid and a positive gem, a one-in-a-thousand, a really precious asset to the place. She’s been the life and soul of the King’s Head for years. Worth her weight in gold is Sonia.’

  ‘But she doesn’t do stairs,’ said Mrs Yallop.

  Having discharged his duties as quartermaster and seen Lugg trudge down the modest slope towards Heronhoe, Mr Campion donned his overcoat, hat and a white cashmere scarf and set off in the opposite direction along the road to Sweethearting.

  He adopted a long stride and a brisk pace as the chilly, bleak afternoon was not conducive to a gentle country ramble and the view over the saltings lining the Bright estuary, which Campion knew on a misty summer morning could be intensely beautiful, was now offering only a featureless steely grey canvas.

  He could see the rooftops and the square church tower of Sweethearting and wondered if Rupert and Perdita had arrived yet, but if his message to the King’s Head had got through – and of that he was not absolutely certain as the woman who had answered the telephone had given him the impression she was handling a small, venomous animal – he would see them that evening.

  Precious Aird’s lime-green VW microbus was parked at the side of the road by the small copse of leafless trees which in summer hid the Sweethearting tumulus. Campion stepped delicately over a single sagging strand of barbed wire and crunched through the stubbly undergrowth until the outline of the Barrow was revealed to him.

  As an earthwork, as ancient earthworks went, it was far from impressive and, before its ‘discovery’ by two inquisitive and competitive parish priests, it would probably have been dismissed as just another lump or bump in the rural landscape. At its highest it was no more than ten or twelve feet above ground level and the slope was gentle enough that Campion was confident he could scale it without recourse to crampons, an ice pick or a walking stick, even at his advanced age.

  Plodding his way carefully to the summit, such as it was, he heard the banter of youthful voices. Precious Aird and her ‘diggers’ were wisely working on the northern side of the Barrow, out of the wind stinging over the saltings, and only ceased their heated debate over the merits of a new pop group (of whose existence Campion was blissfully unaware) when he appeared above them.

  ‘Well, hi there, Mr C. To what do we owe this honour?’ Precious sang in greeting.

  Campion would have recognized the American girl even before she spoke, thanks to the blue and red baseball cap she was wearing, but he was unsure that he could identify even the sex of her three companions, so tightly muffled were they in layers of pullovers, woollen hats, scarves and thorn-proof gloves as large and thick as a medieval knight’s gauntlets. They were armed with a variety of implements including mattock, pruning shears, hoe and scythe.

  ‘Just passing through,’ said Campion cheerfully, ‘to see how the archaeology’s going.’

  Precious expelled a scoffing laugh. ‘Archaeology? This is more like aggressive gardening.’

  ‘But necessary nonetheless,’ said Campion. ‘The site has to be cleared of vegetation before you can put in a trench and pretend to be the original diggers back in the Thirties for the film people.’

  ‘Do we actually get to be in the film?’

  ‘I’m not sure they’ve allowed for extras as I think they call them, but I’m sure they’ll need some. You’ll all have to look like Thirties’ farm labourers or vicars, though, at least from a distance, so we’ll still have to find some dog collars and flat caps and gaiters from somewhere to get you into character.’

  ‘Do we get extra pay?’ beamed Precious.

  ‘I’ll have to discuss that with the producer.’

  ‘I thought you were the producer.’

  ‘So I am,’ said Mr Campion thoughtfully, ‘but I can’t dawdle just now as I’m on my way over to Windy Ridge Farm, but I would appreciate a lift back to the hall before it gets dark as I foolishly forgot to bring a torch. I’m assuming you’ll be packing up before the light goes?’

  ‘That’s the plan, Mr Producer. Don’t worry; we’ll hold the bus for you.’

  Campion took his leave of them and walked on through the copse until he reached the single-track lane leading to the farm called Windy Ridge, which surely contravened the recent Trade Descriptions Act as nowhere in Suffolk really deserved the title ‘ridge’. It was, though, Campion mused, a more attractive name than ‘Windy Up A Slight Hillock Farm’ and it did, like Heronhoe Hall, have terrific views over the Bright estuary and its saltings.

  It was a Victorian brick-and-tile farmhouse in its own courtyard in which it nestled against the standard collection of outbuildings in various states of disrepair, the obligatory tractor which had not moved for two decades or more and those unidentifiable bits of agricultural machinery which seemed to have been made out of rust. There were chickens underfoot and a warm, earthy smell in the air which suggested that at least one outbuilding had porcine tenants, but then where would a Suffolk farm be without eggs and ham on the breakfast menu?

  To Campion’s eye, the farmer, Thomas Spark, had certainly enjoyed a regular diet of such breakfasts. He was a broad, ruddy-faced man, half Campion’s age and triple his girth, with fair curly hair and wispy sideburns which suggested a man wh
o had attempted to grow a beard, then changed his mind and settled for what in a previous age would have been called mutton-chop whiskers.

  Farmer Spark had appeared at his front door before Campion was halfway across the farmyard, as if some inherited agricultural sixth sense had alerted him to trespassers.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Spark,’ Campion hailed him, lifting his hat in greeting as he approached. He was gratified to see a pair of bushy eyebrows raised in surprise.

  ‘Do we know each other?’ the farmer asked politely, stepping out to lessen the distance between them.

  ‘Only through the lenses of your binoculars,’ said Campion, offering a handshake and an idiotic grin. ‘You were keeping an eye on my young archaeologists from behind a pillbox, as you have every right to, it being your land, but I can assure you that they are not causing damage to anything except possibly some unwanted vegetation. At this time of year I can’t think they will be disturbing much wildlife and I am assured that if and when they get down to the boat burial, they will leave it in perfect condition for the next occupant. My name’s Campion, by the way.’

  ‘You were here, back then, in ’thirty-five, when the royals came, weren’t you?’

  Campion was taken aback slightly, but he had long since perfected the art of keeping his trusty mask of vagueness in place.

  ‘I was, and that is because I am very old. You are not, and could not have been more than a lad.’

  ‘I was a schoolboy in Heronhoe and we had a talk from the vicar about the old kings of East Anglia, but I can’t say we paid much attention. All we were interested in them days was Spitfires and stamp collecting. But my dad did a bit of digging, even though it wasn’t our land then.’

  ‘You purchased it from Lord Breeze relatively recently, I understand.’

  ‘I bought a few acres of the old parkland from him when he found he couldn’t build houses there and the Sweethearting Barrow came with them. His Lordship knew he’d never get planning permission, what with it being an ancient monument or whatever they call it, and he was happy to offload it.’

  ‘Lord Breeze can’t build on it, but you can’t farm on it either, can you?’

  The farmer shrugged his shoulders as if adjusting a yoke.

  ‘It keeps the boat burial in the village,’ he said. ‘Not that there’s any boat left or anybody buried there, but it’s a bit of local history and it does keep any curious villagers from straying over my farm, so I think of it as a cordon sanitaire. My old man would have preserved it. He thought it might attract tourists but of course it didn’t. Sutton Hoo and Woodbridge got all that trade after the war.’

  ‘The old man – your father; is he still with us?’

  Thomas Spark shook his head. ‘He died five years ago but he was always talking about that summer they did the dig, had a load of stories about it, he did.’

  ‘Stories about treasure?’ Campion tried.

  ‘Mebbe when he’d had a few too many down the King’s Head or he was pulling somebody’s leg,’ snorted Spark. ‘They didn’t find no treasure over there. If they had, Dad would have known about it. He used to go round the site every morning, very early, before the volunteers arrived, just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind hearing some of those stories, you know.’

  ‘I don’t do guided tours; I’ve a farm to run.’

  ‘Perhaps I could offer you some refreshment one evening, at the King’s Head?’ suggested Campion.

  ‘I don’t drink; saw what it did to my dad.’

  ‘Then how about joining us at the hall for tea or dinner?’

  ‘I don’t think so; my wife doesn’t approve of incomers to the area. She’s funny that way, but that’s the way she is. I’ll be in the doghouse for just talking to you now.’

  ‘But I’m hardly an illegal alien, you know. I did marry a local lass from Pontisbright – that’s not too foreign, is it?’

  ‘There’s some round here would say you needed a passport to go there, crossing the border into West Suffolk, but I ain’t one of them. Your missus, that’d be Lady Amanda Fitton, as was?’

  Campion made an effort to appear impressed.

  ‘Was, and still is, I hope, but how did you know?’

  ‘Same way I knew you’d visited back before the war: my dad. He read something in the paper one day and said “that Lady Amanda’s husband, he was here with the king when he came to see them dig up the boat”. The local papers used to carry all the news about Lady Amanda, even when it weren’t really news, more like gossip.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Campion lightly. ‘We consorts of important ladies have a lot to put up with.’

  Thomas Spark had placed himself firmly between Campion and his front door, indicating that the farmhouse was out of bounds and, from the twitching of curtains, Campion observed over the farmer’s shoulder that the place was well-guarded.

  ‘Could we not have a private word, perhaps out of sight of your other half?’ he suggested.

  Spark thought for a moment, weighing his predicament on the scales of domestic justice.

  ‘Don’t suppose there’d be any harm in you helping me feed the pigs,’ he said, nodding towards one of the long, low outbuildings, ‘as long as you don’t mind their table manners, as they ain’t got none.’

  ‘My dear sir, I was at Cambridge and had to eat at High Table three days a week. I doubt very much that your livestock can shock me.’

  If anything, Campion thought, the pig sty with two lines of pens each containing half-a-dozen pink and squealing porkers was warmer than he remembered his college dining hall and it amused him to speculate that the level of discourse taking place between the diners was higher at Windy Ridge. Once the pigs heard the rattle of pellets in the feed bucket Thomas Spark was filling, the squealing rose in volume and dozens of stubby noses were poked between the metal bars of the pens, eagerly awaiting service. As the farmer poured the feed along the line of their troughs, the pigs set to with a will and the shrill squealing was replaced with a subdued snuffling and dedicated chomping.

  Now they were out of sight of the farmhouse, Spark’s attitude softened and he became more forthcoming.

  ‘Farmers get a bad name when it comes to archaeology,’ he said. ‘They’re always seen as obstructive and having run-ins with professors and museum people, but my father wasn’t one of them. He was all for the excavation back in 1935 because it was part of the local landscape and its history. It wasn’t Windy Ridge land, of course, not then, but when the chance came to buy it with some of the parkland, I jumped at it. Dad would have approved, even if the wife didn’t, but then she never wanted to have any dealings with the toffs at Heronhoe Hall.’

  ‘Bit of a socialist, is she, Mrs Spark?’ Campion grinned. ‘They’re not all bad, I hear.’

  ‘No socialists in Suffolk,’ grunted the farmer but smiling as he did so, ‘leastways not south of Ipswich. No, the wife has her own reasons for disliking them up at the hall; personal reasons, nothing political. She worked up there for a while, after the war and before we were married, as a cook for Wemyss-Grendle. Didn’t stick it for long. Friend of yours, was he?’

  ‘The Mad Major? No, not really,’ said Campion.

  ‘Good, though it wouldn’t stop me telling you what I think of him if you were. That old devil had wandering hands. That’s why my wife didn’t last long up there – she couldn’t stand the pestering. And it was the same with every female from the village that went to work up there. He had a right reputation for being always on heat. “Groping Gerry” they used to call him. We were glad to see the back of him when he had to sell up. Probably doing his lechery in Soho or Paris or one of them places now.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Campion. ‘I understand he’s in a nursing home in Frinton.’

  ‘Then heaven help the nurses – that’s all I can say. If one of the beasts on my farm behaved like that he’d know what was in store for him.’

  ‘I can imagine. Did your father ever talk
about Wemyss-Grendle’s attitude to the boat burial?’

  ‘Said he didn’t take much notice at first, just let the locals get on with it. Then he got the idea into his head that there might be something in there worth hard cash and he insisted it was called the Heronhoe Barrow even though it was properly in Sweethearting. That ruffled a few feathers, but when there was no buried treasure to spend down the bookies he lost interest until he discovered he could show it off to his posh friends. Not that it did him much good in the long run. In fact, nobody came out of it well. There was no treasure, the archaeology was nothing to write home about and soon forgotten once they did the Sutton Hoo dig. My dad broke his ankle falling into a trench and never walked straight again, and Sam Salt never got his big story.’

  ‘Sam Salt?’ Campion said carefully. ‘Should I know that name?’

  ‘Doubt it, not unless you were a regular reader of the East Suffolk Courier back then. He was the local reporter and covered the dig from the start. Dad used to say Sam believed it would be his big story, one that would get him into the national papers. Even had a bet with Dad that he could get Sweethearting on to the front page of the Daily Mail. The wager was a flitch of bacon from the farm against Sam’s pocket watch – he use to wear a big Hunter type on a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was probably worth a lot more than a side of pork and my father always had his eye on it.’

  ‘I take it he didn’t win – your father, that is.’

  ‘Neither of them did. Well, Dad never saw Sam’s name in the Daily Mail, or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, he never saw Sam again after the dig; said Sam must have stayed clear of Sweethearting because he didn’t want to lose that watch when he didn’t get his big scoop. Dad never got his name in the papers, which I reckon he would have liked.’

  ‘But he got to meet the future king of England, didn’t he?’ Campion asked. ‘That must have been a proud moment for him.’