It was his father, Sir Desmond, who headed up the family in my day. I remember him as an irascible, tweedy man; his wife, Dame Alice, a tall, anxious-looking woman, viewed from a distance on the sideline as hostess at children’s parties or sitting on the front row at village concerts; situations in which it must have been only too natural to be anxious. No love lost between the Squire and Jimmy, you might have thought: the one a formidable upholder of privilege and the status quo, once Lord Lieutenant of the county; the other a rugged individualist, distrusting authority in any guise. But this was not the case, just the opposite in fact. Nobody knew quite how it had come about, but here was Jimmy living on Amberstone land, free of charge so it was rumoured, and how – other than with the Squire’s support – could he have hoped to have made a living? Certainly not through the poems he hawked from door-to-door. Nor those pictures. Of some value certainly, but not to everyone’s taste; nor did any of them seem to get sold.
Strange, the way Sir Desmond treated him: in the friendliest manner, forever taking his part; defending him against all the accusations that came his way – and there were to be plenty of these. Perhaps they’d met somewhere before? A distant relative maybe? Possibly the Squire owed him a favour, or did Jimmy have some claim on the Amberstone estate? Even more far-fetched was the gossip he was a spy. Not that the Russians could have had the slightest interest in anything down here in rural Bereden. Except, maybe, for Sir Desmond himself, who’d served in intelligence during the war and, it was said, still had connections with MI5. How else could someone like Jimmy, who’d appeared from nowhere, have obtained the relevant papers – identity card, ration book, etc. – allowing him to live rent-free out there in the forest? How, but for such patronage, could he have afforded the materials, paint, brushes and canvas to produce pictures such as Fiddlers Three? And there lay the solution, a large part of it at least. Sir Desmond had lost the elder of his two boys during the war, as competent an artist as he was an airman to judge from his battlefront sketches; mentioned several times in dispatches for conspicuous bravery; buried abroad with full military honours. All this I discovered growing up in and around Bereden and it was Sir Desmond who, by introducing Jimmy to the bell-ringing team, had been responsible for the name we gave him, the one later purloined and bowdlerised by Frank Murgatroyd and his cronies: Jimmy the Saint.
A bell-ringer he might have been, but Jimmy was better known – among us children at least – for his stories. Of which he had an inexhaustible supply, forever startling us with obscure aspects of the village life unknown even to our parents; never actually repeating himself, but for ever introducing some fresh variation or other to the more popular of such yarns.
He was most often to be found up at St Matthias beside the war memorial; a small wiry figure, back pressed hard up against warm grey stone whilst round about him we’d jostle one another for pride of place. ‘Tale, treasure or travel?’ he’d ask when we were settled, and turmoil would ensue as the merits of each were noisily contested. Jimmy would sit there amongst the clamour, hands resting on knees, fingering his beard – short, dark, ashen-fringed, frayed as the corduroy trousers he wore – that or the medallion that hung around his neck in a theatrical manner. The stance signalled he was in the process of contemplation; divining through acclamation or show of waving hands just what form that afternoon’s entertainment should take.
His timing was impeccable; the routine never-changing. He’d wait till the clamour reached fever-pitch before raising his hand. Silence would fall. If it was to be a ‘treasure’ he’d make a great show of searching his person, the loosely-woven mud-coloured pullover, his faded tartan-patterned shirt, turning out trouser pockets, running fingers through the grass at his feet, throwing us his discarded jacket for inspection. Then, at the precise moment when our interest was wavering, he’d find his prop – the ‘treasure’ for which, supposedly, he’d been searching. This would be nothing special. A strangely shaped pebble, maybe. A tiny eggshell: creamy, mottled or sky-blue. Sometimes a coin would emerge from the deeper recesses of his clothing, at others an orange-coloured fungus or loosely-splayed fir cone. On one occasion the tiniest of bird nests gingerly withdrawn from a bag he’d been carrying; on another the chalky skeleton of some tiny woodland creature was discovered wrapped within his handkerchief. We’d crane forward to get a better look, and Jimmy would begin his commentary. How the object had been found, how it got there: if from the natural world, speculation on the type of species, its colouration, habitat or life-cycle; if man-made its origin, construction, variety of purposes to which it could be put.
‘Treasures’ such as these were interesting enough, but his ‘tales’ generally proved more popular, whilst the more adventurous among us simultaneously clamoured for ‘travel’. There was, in fact, little difference between the content of these two categories, each of them crammed with anecdote and drama, centring around some memorable character or critical incident in the village’s past. Jimmy’s response depended on his frame of mind. Most frequently he opted for a straight ‘tale’, in which case we’d push forward for a ringside seat, making ourselves as comfortable as we could. Sometimes, though, his response was more dramatic. ‘Travel it is!’ he would exclaim. Leaping to his feet, he would grab the hands of those closest to him and, without another word, sweep them out of the churchyard, into the woods, across the fields, or down one the many tracks that in those days served us as roads, the rest of us tagging excitedly behind.
So, a visit to the remains of the toll gate that had once stood on the old Bereden/Winchester road might focus on the tricks played by travellers to avoid paying their dues, or the adventures of the highwaymen who used to meet here, their names, exploits and particular mode of thievery being modified to suit the prevailing mood. Here it was that ‘Chirper’ Edwards, the town crier – so called because of his high-pitched squeaky voice – would announce the latest scandal from London, disseminating it morning and evening having first proclaimed, ‘If each before his doorstep sweeps, the village shall be clean!’, and Harry, the toll keeper – just as eager to dig the dirt – met his maker. Anxious to impart each minute detail of the latest public hanging, he volunteered to give a practical demonstration but, no sooner had he placed his head in the noose, than the village band passed by, marching tunefully to rehearsal. His audience flocked to the window, leaving Harry swinging in his booth.
An expedition to Scapegoat Heath would be enlivened with tales of how the inhabitants would creep out each night, moving the boundary stones that marked the extent of their property. A trip to the railway station at the outskirts of the village reminded Jimmy not only of how the line first came to be built, in order to bring Hampshire strawberries – which he maintained were the best in the world – to Queen Victoria’s tea table, but how various disasters, through fire, storm, explosion, incompetence or fog, had narrowly been averted. He would explain the workings of what was left of the old signalling tower that stood on the edge of the wood, one of fourteen between Portsmouth and London. The network, so he told us, pre-dated electronic modes of communication, which it excelled through transmitting a message from coast to capital in under four minutes. The process consisted of hoisting a series of coloured balls by day and lights by night, but was sometimes misused – as on the occasion when one of the operators attempted to send a message to his sweetheart in Deptford, only to have his assurances of undying love and eternal devotion arrive on the admiral’s desk!
Between the woods and Harry’s toll-booth lay the village square, beneath which – according to Jimmy – were a series of underground passages, and we spent hours trying to trace them. The haunt of smugglers, so he said, bringing contraband from across the Channel, or treasure pillaged from the holds of foreign galleons. Not to be confused with ‘owlers’, who took goods out of the country rather than being employed in the import business. Regardless of nomenclature, if apprehended each shared the same fate: to swing in chains from Portsmout
h Hard, meat for crabs till three tides had passed over them.
The contraband trade, whether into or out of the country, had been funded by a long line of village squires, the most infamous of them being ‘No Good’ Naughton whose interests lay chiefly in the ‘liquid assets’. No Good had a special underground extension to the system constructed, emerging in the shrubbery behind the Amberstone Hall but, being in a constant state of inebriation, never could quite remember its precise location. Until one fateful night when, in the act of relieving himself, he’d actually stumbled upon it, falling headlong down, dislodging the roof props and blocking any way back to the coast. Neither able to retreat nor climb back up, he was never seen again. Still, there was a good supply of rum down there, so Jimmy assured us, and if ever we were out in the woods and listened very carefully, we might still hear footsteps wandering to and fro, his bawdy songs echoing from the depths of the earth.
A similar fate befell No Good’s foolhardy yet foppish son, Freddy, who had an assignation with his lady-love on the other side of the forest. No more than a woodland really, lying in the valley between St Matthias and Amberstone Hall, but that’s the way we liked to think of it, inhabited from time immemorial – according to Jimmy – with all manner of creatures. The devil-screecher, for example, whose razor-sharp beak was only matched by the tenacity of her memory. One might escape unharmed if straying beneath her nest, but sooner or later, this year or next, she or her partner would have vengeance, seeking you out and sweeping down with a blood-curdling shriek when least expected. Or the grampus, a bulbous, blunt-headed sea creature that had found its way into our part of the world, waiting to pounce on those who strayed nearby. Worst of all these mythological creatures was the cockatrice. With the wings of an eagle, the tail of a dragon and the head of a cockerel, it emerged from a duck’s egg hatched by a toad and, like the gorgon of old, turned mortals to stone with a glance. His sweetheart had presented Freddy with a mirror, assuming he’d have sense enough to realise that, seeing its own reflection, the cockatrice would be the one to suffer. But the foolish man used it to arrange his wig, affix beauty spots to his cheek and generally preen himself, and so failed to hear the creature’s approach. ‘Saved them making a statue,’ Jimmy told us. ‘Just carted him up to the Hall and stood him in the garden among the fountains.’
* * *
Stories such as these must have been passed down from generation to generation, in pub, playground, market square or corner shop, or over garden fence. No one questioned their accuracy. To do so would be to miss the point; they served a deeper purpose. Nor is it quite certain just how a stranger like Jimmy came by them, but the Squire relished tales of his disreputable ancestry and you can see how, as children, we adored them. And how Helen, carefully brought up in a Catholic household, would have had her doubts.
Chapter Three
A Tale of Two Childhoods
Peter’s right, I never cared for Jimmy’s stories. The violence must have had something to do with it. All those spectral figures: screech owls, cockatrices, and the like. Highwaymen hanging from gibbets; the unpleasantness of Harry garrotted to death as the band marches by; generations of smugglers – or ‘owlers’, I never remember which it is – devoured by crabs as the tide comes in. Anecdotes, he’d assure me, never intended to be taken seriously. Maybe, but I drew the line when it came to religion. Jimmy inflicting his views, or lack of them, on children that young.
We’d met back at the University, myself the self-assured, high-minded post-graduate student, answering to the name of Helena, and Peter, a modest, middle-ranking member of the Social Science Faculty, lively enough in seminars or the lecture theatre but single-minded and almost totally lacking in ambition. ‘Headstrong Helen’ it became following frequent clashes in discussion or tutorial groups, spilling out beyond the classroom into teasing of a more intimate nature. Me chiding him, like as not, over the difference in our ages, with Peter taking up the jealousy theme. How I coveted the hours he spent together with that man – innocent though they were – before my time.
‘Jealousy’ is putting it too strongly. I never begrudged Peter his friendship with Jimmy. Envied, rather, the freedom he’d been granted. To roam the countryside at will, his backdoor the gateway to an adventure playground. The home guard drilling out on Scapegoat Heath, American troops lined up along the roadway awaiting D-Day. Clambering with his chums over papier-mâché gun emplacements set up as decoys for enemy bombers. In and out of air raid shelters, building magpie collections of shrapnel, used shells, camouflage. Blackout curtains converted to skull-and-cross-bones flags, ARP helmets padded out with newspaper, long-handled shovels intended for piling sand onto incendiary bombs transformed into lances for knightly tournaments. Waking some mornings to find the countryside strewn with metallic strips, black on one side, silver on the other, cut to correspond to the frequency of our radar stations and blinding them as a consequence. Chaff, they called it, or window. Dragons’ teeth – concrete tank-traps, pyramidal in shape, about the size of modern traffic cones; pill boxes – circular, heavily reinforced rifle or machine-gun emplacements; stirrup pumps – primitive, portable fire extinguishers. A whole new vocabulary for someone born fifteen years into the peace.
No such playmates in our household; just the companions foisted on me by mother. Not the ‘common’ children from whom I might catch rough habits, to say nothing of swear words, colds or head lice. Young ladies rather, those I met in school or at church; taking tea at their houses, with only the chosen-few receiving return invitations. All such outings would be vetted before setting out and on my return: what had we done? What had I said? Did I remember to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’? Not to take a second cake, no matter how tempting this seemed? Never satisfied, it seemed, till she’d discovered some misdemeanour. All of which I could have stood had her motives been altruistic: to make me a better person, ensure that I got a good start in life. Not a bit of it. Mother’s sole concern was how she herself would emerge from such encounters. It was the same with the cleaning lady. A good half hour before her arrival would be spent going round the house, brushing carpets, washing crockery, tidying the living room. A charade repeated whenever visitors were expected. Followed by her perennial greeting on their arrival: to ‘take us as you find us’.
I found consolation in Daddy’s study, tucked away at the top of the house. A sanctuary reserved for lesson preparation and the marking of sixth-form essays. We’d retreat there, the two of us, when I was bored or fretful, or bad weather prevented me playing outside. Perfect for the kind of entertainment he’d devise. Hide-and-seek, in and out around the kneehole desk, searching for sweeties secreted between the bookshelves, the rediscovery of the Noah’s Ark he’d played with as a child. Best of all, the stories he’d tell. By the time I went to school I had each one of them off by heart. Real stories; longer, more detailed, having a beginning, a middle and an end. Not set in the self-same village, as Jimmy’s had been, but far-flung locations: Russia, the lush forests of Africa, a volcanic island, market places of the mysterious East.
‘Where animals talk, events happen in threes. People with fanciful names live in turreted castles or thatched cottages and declaim rather than speaking to one another.’ That had been Peter’s response, back at the University, sounding off to a bevy of admirers, female mostly, hanging on his every word. ‘Folk tales,’ I’d insist, contriving to be on the opposite side of any argument, ‘formulaic for a purpose, peopled with archetypes.’ Citing The Golden Bough, Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, with Jung’s collective unconscious, the seven basic plots of literature thrown in for good measure. Foreplay I suppose you’d call it. The way to this man’s heart was through the intellect.
Serendipitous, then, the cathedral requiring a sociologist of repute for a series of evening sessions just as my studies concluded.
Uncle Henry: (the current incumbent, my mother’s brother): Must be a Catholic.
Myself: Academic credentials more important.
Uncle Henry: High church at least. And familiar with the terminology.
Myself: But grasp of the subject essential. (Uncle Henry’s sermons, self-published, had received a drubbing from the critics.) I know just the man!
Providential, you might say, Uncle Henry leaving me to check out Peter’s qualifications and credentials; pure luck, being loaned out to assist with his research. But ‘never leave coincidence to chance’, a dictum remembered from one of his lectures.
Which is how I came to be sitting so intimately beside him, watching that particular television programme some eighteen months further down the line. With mother pointedly avoiding our unmarried status, and finding endless opportunities to do so; Uncle Henry hinting at my absence from confession. The year, 1985; October I seem to remember, an evening of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’.
Peter had told me something of Jimmy’s paintings. Lurid, comic-book stuff, I imagined. Thrown off for the amusement of the children, just as his stories had been. Nothing, then, had prepared me for the wonder of Fiddlers Three. Imaginative, colourful, perceptive; technically brilliant, with subtle touches of wit captured in each of the brushstrokes. A tour de force, as Murgo himself had been forced to admit. Strange, though, Daddy’s As You Like It print turning out to be one of Jimmy’s pictures. How I’d lived with it throughout my childhood, giving no thought to the artist whilst Peter, having spent so much time in the man’s company, apparently knew so little about him. ‘Never claimed to be anything other than himself’ was all he’d say. Later, it’s true, there were minor details regarding the Amberstones, parties up at the Hall, and that bell. Till, caught off-guard by my sudden interest, embarrassed by the inadequacy of his own response, he disappeared into the attic in search of the family ‘archive’.
Chorus Endings Page 3