Tonbert it was who’d discovered the stream, Alric who recognised the moss-covered stones over which it flowed. Swidhelm had used oil from the fish that swam in it for his cooking, whilst Redwald knew the exact temperatures to which his forge should be heated. But it’s Stoyan, guided by Morgana, who brings stone, water, oil and fire together, honing each Jutish blade to a sharpness and durability none had thought possible.
The new guerrilla tactics have brought success. In their rustic mead hall the bards immortalise their new hero, one to whom all future Jutes would aspire. Austere in dress as he is in speech. Scrupulous in judgement, expecting much of those who served him; implacable in resolution, ingenious beyond belief.
Spare of tongue yet sharp of wit
They sang;
Steadfast in kinship, slow to quit
– tagging him ‘Jute of Jutes’.
Stoyan, the perfect role-model for the coming generation; tied in children’s minds to a less than flattering image of the faith.
‘Convenient,’ I said, ‘Jimmy landing on the Jutes. Just about enough known about them to establish their existence, but so little else that almost any claim could have the semblance of credibility. On a par with Robin Hood, Hereward the Wake or Arthur, but with a more sinister motive running through them.’
With Jimmy not the Uncle Remus figure they’d taken him to be. A Jean Brodie character rather. Svengali even? Better still – given the man’s admiration of Browning – the Pied Piper of Bereden, leading its children astray.
Bias on my part, according to Peter, especially as I’d never met the man. Warning me about judging events in the light of personal experience, that ‘if you want to find something badly enough, you’re sure to succeed. Search hard enough for the proof and it will be there.’ His students were at it all the time. Along with those who ‘thought the earth was flat; the Americans had never landed on the moon; Hitler was alive and well and living in South America.’
‘And, if you’re that bothered,’ he continued, ‘how about the books you read as a child? The Arthur Ransomes, Enid Blytons, Malcolm Savilles? Weren’t they every bit as culpable? Same as storytellers the world over. Behind the plots and sub-plots, the settings and the dialogue, their choice of heroes and heroines, there’s always a message. Holding up some values to the exclusion of others; telling us that certain lifestyles are to be emulated, others rejected. Implanting notions of gender, class, compliance. And Jimmy was no exception. You might not approve of the slant he gave to his stories, but he had just as much right to his ideas as any of the others. It’s the same with the history books. Nineteenth-century England, for example. Read about it in Macaulay, then Hobswan. Same events. Same characters. Same setting. But totally different stories. If Jimmy was guilty of manipulation, then so were they.’
‘Except these were children – nine, ten years old at the most.’ I’d heard all this before. ‘It was their parents’ choice, the stories they heard or had read to them. That’s what legitimises their characters and plot-line, why we take such care down at the library.’ All the fuss there’d been about golliwogs; the re-titling of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Niggers. Why, after Batman programmes on television, we warned children not to ‘try it at home’. The reason teachers in school sometimes found themselves in hot water. ‘Even at your level, Peter, courses get cancelled, don’t they!’ A reference to one of his own programmes, The Literature of Colour, censored by the University on grounds of political bias. So why had he paid such little attention to what was going on around him; heard rather than merely listened to the stories he was told?
‘And why,’ I demanded, ‘did no one come forward to object to such stories at the time?’
Chapter Ten
Flight of Fancy
Helen was not alone in distrusting such stories. Steeped in tradition as our village was, it was hardly tactful for Jimmy to have imbued these stories with notions of democracy and land reform. Worse still, with the war fresh in our mind, tracing our ancestors back to a race of ‘Germanic’ people. It was not that he set out to cause trouble, but there were certain kinds of adult that seemed perpetually to faze him – those in positions of authority usually, the very ones whose support he most needed and who, in turn, could not seem to leave him be. Chief amongst these was our rector.
‘Hardly surprising with all that aping of the ecclesiastic calendar going on at Third Class Cottage.’ Helen puffed out her cheeks dismissively.
‘He put on quite a performance, though. Gave Jimmy a good run for his money in that respect.’
Colourful vestments, continual crossings of himself, bobbings up and down at unexpected moments, the Rev. Theodore Draper’s services never lacked verve. A high-point was the distinctive mode of his responses. High-pitched, strangulated, wavering between octaves – we took bets among ourselves as to how long he could eke them out. More particularly the benediction, concluding with ‘the peace of God’; to the uninitiated he appeared to be calling on his Maker for ‘a piece of cod’. This was abbreviated by some St Hugh’s swot taking notes on Tudor costume to ‘Codpiece’ and it was by this sobriquet – unsuspected either by the recipient or our parents, and never fully understood by the younger members of his congregation – that he came to be known.
‘Was there no one in the whole village, Peter, for whom you didn’t have a nick-name?’
‘Hardly. Nonentities and incomers perhaps. It was more of a badge of recognition really, a primitive sort of socialisation if you like, telling people that they’d arrived, were part of the community. Or hinting at what was needed if they wanted to be accepted.’
‘To conform, you mean? And nobody objected?’
‘Better to know yourself for what you are than to be totally neglected,’ I said. Which was pretty well the way things stood at the time.
Helen made no reply, merely fixed me with one of her ‘more in sadness than anger’ stares.
Jimmy was no more popular down at the school. There’d been a succession of teachers following Miss Quintock’s departure, incompetent for the most part, their tenure short-lived. Quite naturally they questioned his continued visitation to the classroom, the open relationship he’d built up with the pupils – contrary to good discipline, they claimed. Even when they finally ousted him from the school itself he continued meddling in their homework, or would turn up unexpectedly on one of the woodland trails prepared for them by the inspectorate. There they’d be, trying to fathom the accompanying notes, whilst Jimmy in the background was suggesting a right turn that would take them to Roundabout Paddock, a left to Dishery Piece, or what a shame it was to miss Tandy Gasser at that time of the year. None of which they, or their masters at County Hall, had heard.
But it was with the appointment of a new headteacher that things really began to go wrong.
Eric Stapleton – E. R. Stapleton Esq., BA, DipEd, to give him his full title – arrived in the village not only from military service but a North Korean prisoner of war camp. The school had by then gained a reputation for indiscipline. Parade ground values were required to restore it to the glory days, so he believed, and Eric brought five years of soldiery experience to the task. Battledress was replaced with academic gown, something never before seen in the school. The pupils were to address him as ‘Sir’, stand to attention in his presence, rise to their feet when he entered the room. They were to march to and from classes in good order; complete their homework not only on time but signed by the teacher who’d set it. A highly regimented cadet corps was introduced for the older boys, first-aid classes for the girls. Least popular of all, his institution of stars for good work, stripes for poor performance, with a series of carefully graded badges awarded according to success or failure; his favourite witticism – the ‘ultimate deterrent’ – a size ten gym shoe hung behind his door awaiting those disobeying any of his ‘four-minute warnings’. My brother, always of a nervous disposition, r
eacted particularly badly to all this, sleepless nights, bad dreams, sometimes worse, coinciding with the advent of the new regime. The rest of his companions disliked it just as much.
And:
‘Sorry, Helen, it was those qualifications – BA, DipEd – that did for him. BadEgg we called him. And deservedly so.’
BadEgg had a deep suspicion of Jimmy’s democratic notions, regarding his Jutish stories as a type of proto-communism. As did several long-standing and respected members of the community. For years they’d put up with, welcomed even, anecdotes celebrating the old order: Squire, parson, town crier, publican and so on. We’d sung about them in church most Sundays – the rich man at his castle, poor man at his gate – followed immediately by the assurance God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate. The more recent of Jimmy’s stories were quite another matter. Subversive, they agreed among themselves; undermining the values we’d fought so long to defend, and they were supported by leading members of the armed forces who’d snapped up local properties in the neighbourhood that had been going for a song. Comparable, these latest offerings, to the co-operative movement they’d resisted for so long but which had established a toehold in the village. As was the new health service they’d fought tooth and nail to oppose.
‘All might still have been well,’ I told her, ‘had Sir Desmond, who’d taken earlier tales of the Squirarchy in good part, not objected so strongly to the Jutish saga – with no reason given.’
This could eventually have proved the catalyst, as might Codpiece’s religious objections, or the arrival of our new headteacher. It was, however, a single incident unconnected with any one of them that brought matters to a head.
It began, inauspiciously enough, with the arrival of the Grinder Man. He appeared outside the Jugged Hare without warning one Monday morning, tall and swarthy, unshaven but sporting the most splendid moustache. More than compensating for any lack of beard it sat, black and majestic, above a set of sparkling white teeth. These glinted here and there with a hint of gold, matched only by the single ring that dangled rhythmically from his left ear. His hair, jet black also and shoulder-length, had been gathered back into a pigtail, whilst a yellow scarf was flung nonchalantly about his neck. He wore a vividly striped sweater, padded at the elbows; trousers secured at the waist by a heavily embossed leather belt and boots fastened with scarlet laces. Most extraordinary of all, though, was the bicycle he rode.
At first there seemed to be nothing unusual about it. Just a normal gentleman’s cycle with wheels, saddle, pedals, brakes, handlebars, etc. The same as those most of us owned, except for the large box fixed above the front mudguard. Closer inspection revealed two supports pulled down, front and back on each side of the frame, raising it a few inches off the ground, allowing it to remain free-standing when dismounted. Having alighted and completed this operation the stranger undid the catch which secured the box, hinged the lid forward over the handlebars, disclosing a small stone wheel, dark grey in colour, rough but shot through with diamond-like iridescence. This was connected by means of a leather belt to a small spindle, part of the cycle’s rear axle and, turning to the small crowd that had gathered, he swept his hat from his head and performed an elaborate bow.
‘How beautiful a day,’ he proclaimed, in an accent that veered from Italian to French with a soupçon of Polish, as he did so unfurling a banner proclaiming that here was none other than Grigorio: Grinder to the Great. ‘See, the sun she shines. The birds they sing. No clouds in sky. All right with world, yes? And now all is the better. Grigorio is come. Problems of garden, kitchen, farmyard, dinings room at end. Ladies, no more bluntness in cookings; gentlemen, the easier become the sawings and the mowings; scouting boys, guiding girls, the badges more quickly won, swift in the sewing ons. And how, you asking? What Grigorio talking about? Come, see. Look and amazing be!’
He produced a knife, passed it round for all to examine, and scraped the blade several times up and down the wall. Then, taking an apple from his pocket he attempted, unsuccessfully, to peel it. Several members of his audience were invited to try but, they too, failed.
‘Blunted knife caput,’ he informed us. ‘No good, man; no good, beast. Also axes, scissors, scythes, mowers. But now, problems over. Grigorio here. Grigorio has answer. Grigorio: Grinder to the Great. Come see!’
And, sitting astride the bicycle, he began pedalling. As he did so, slowly at first, the stone in front of him began to revolve. The faster he pedalled, the greater its momentum, building to a whirring crescendo till, with a high-pitched abrasive screech, the knife was brought down firmly, metal on stone. Sparks sprayed out; there was the strangest of aromas, as if the air itself had been singed. Covering our ears, we crowded forward to get a better view. Grigorio dismounted, took the apple and effortlessly quartered it, sharing the pieces out among the children. Next he demanded a piece of paper and, holding it edge-on to the blade, neatly sliced it end to end, inviting the more responsible among us – the knife was now a lethal instrument – to do likewise. This we did with spectacular results.
The grinder performed another of his bows. ‘Just three days only Grigorio is here,’ he told us. ‘Come, bring all knives, all axes, scissors, scythes, like I says. Six pennies is small. One shillings is large. Machines ten shillings, needing dismantling, blades to discover. But first threes today for frees. Gratis. Come, quick!’
One or two of the men produced penknives and several of the women scurried away to search for blunted instruments about the house. This kept Grigorio busy sharpening well into the afternoon, at the same time providing us with an unseasonable firework display. Howard, as usual, insinuated himself into the group, pushing his way to the front and excitedly interrogating the man as to his origins, details of his travels and the like. We took sparse notice, speculating rather on the wonders of Grigorio’s machine. How fast could the wheel turn? Would the metal be worn down completely before he collapsed, or vice-versa? Which of the blades would emit the longest spark, the most excruciating noise? We had cycles of our own, long since modified with pieces of cardboard fastened to the forks, slapping against the spokes as we pedaled and – depending on the size and shape of the attachments – producing any variation of sound, from the low octane growl of a Lancaster to the high-pitched whine of a spitfire. We’d seen pulleys linked to tractors at harvest time, but had never considered using a bicycle in this way. How else might they be adapted? Ice cream making? Generating electricity for Radio Luxembourg? Bowling cricket balls or shooting at goal? The possibilities were endless.
Howard was even more entranced. ‘He’s from the forest. Before that abroad. Made the bicycle himself. It took years. Stone belonged to his father, and his father’s father before him. Comes from a special place. Only he knows where. Brings it to people everywhere so everyone can benefit. And it’s our forest he’s chosen. Our forest don’t you see…’
We didn’t. Not at the time. All of us had grown accustomed to my brother’s flights of fancy, wearily promising he could join us when we visited Grigorio the following day. But only if he held his tongue till then.
This could not come soon enough for Howard. Next day he rushed off ahead of us, was nowhere to be seen when we arrived, whilst Grigorio, following an altercation with the landlord, had not turned up at all. This did not worry us. Howard and his schoolmates often went off on forays of their own. We didn’t notice his absence for the rest of the afternoon either, nor was I unduly alarmed when I arrived home and he’d still not appeared.
My parents were edgy, but it was not until he’d skipped his tea that they really started worrying. I was sent off to see if he’d overstayed his welcome with any of his friends, protesting all the way and contemplating the most excoriating of reprimands as I dragged him home by the ear. But, as I went from house to house discovering he was not there, nor seen that day, the possibility at last dawned: this was rather more serious than merely a schoolboy prank.
Howard might genuinely have gone missing. By now it was getting dark and I began to feel genuine concern for his safety. I racked my brain as to where he might be and recalled his feverish interest in Grigorio. How the man had come from ‘the forest’; his obsession with the stone, its mystic origin and magical sharpening powers. Remembered hearing all this before, in a different context. And suddenly I had it. Knew exactly where Howard would be and was off on my bike to fetch him.
Ten minutes later I was banging at the door of Third Class Cottage and Jimmy was confirming that, yes, he’d caught sight of Howard earlier that afternoon, making his way down one of the woodland tracks. He’d called out but the boy had been too distracted to respond. Nor had Jimmy given it much thought at the time. Now, as the story tumbled out, his expression turned from mild interest to real concern. He said nothing but disappeared inside, returning a few minutes later with a powerful torch, a pocket full of spare batteries, and we set off together into the forest.
At first we made good progress. The moon was full and it was a cloudless night. Even so, it seemed to be growing darker by the moment, the trees casting great shadows across the pathway, narrowing down to a track, brambles catching at our ankles, before petering out completely. Jimmy produced the torch and, flashing the beam to either side of us, stooping every so often to examine some depression, studying branches that impeded our progress or here and there a broken reed, we made our tortuous way towards the centre of the wood.
Night had by now closed in around us and I shivered as from afar came the distant call of an owl; closer to hand the sharp bark of a fox. Small animals scurried in the undergrowth about our feet. But nothing deterred Jimmy who pressed on deeper into the wood, saying little but, handing over a piece of chalk, instructed me to mark out the route we had taken. By now I had lost count of time. The hour that had passed since we’d left his cottage seemed more like days, and miserable ones at that. Nor did I realise how cold it was getting. Until…
Chorus Endings Page 9