Jimmy placed his finger to his lips for me to remain silent, sweeping a final curtain of shrubbery aside to reveal a break in the trees. And a clearing no bigger than Third Class Cottage, the grass bleached ashen in the moonlight, fringed at the parameters with jagged shadows. The flashlight swept along the trail now visible before us, played hither and thither among the foliage, then swung back to rest on the solitary figure hunched there among the shadows.
It was Howard right enough, wild eyed, feverish, and muttering incoherently to himself. ‘See! It’s true. Exactly as he told it. Didn’t I tell you, Peter. Didn’t I say they were far more than stories?’ He pointed towards the centre of the glade.
Jimmy swung the beam across the open space before us, empty but for the silvered grass and shadowy trees. ‘Whatever are you doing here, Howard?’
‘I had to come. See for myself. After all you told us. But he broke his promise. Didn’t come today. As he said he would. On his travels tomorrow, so this is my only chance. Didn’t suspect I was on his trail, though. Led me right here.’
‘You’re not making any sense, Howard. Followed someone, did you say? Whatever possessed you to do such a thing? And at this time of night.’ There was real concern in Jimmy’s voice.
‘It was daytime when we set off. This afternoon. I never expected it to take so long. Didn’t notice how dark it was getting. But I had to keep track of him. He had the stone, Jimmy. Don’t you see? Knew the secret. The one you told us about. Made knives cut paper. Sharper than anything I’d seen. Just as you said. Came from these woods, too, where they had their home. Was one of them himself. I could tell by his accent. He laughed at me, like Peter and the rest. Said he would be glad to be rid of my pestering. But I tracked him, to the middle of the forest. Then he disappeared. And I couldn’t find my way back. Walked and walked. For hours! But I found it. By accident. Not like you, Jimmy. You knew just where to come. All along, you’ve known exactly where it is.’
‘But I know nothing about this part of the woods. And just who was this man?’
‘Grigorio, of course. And don’t you start pretending, as well. It’s out there! Right in front of you, just the way you described it. Not a thing has changed.’ And Howard continued pointing towards the emptiness at the centre of the clearing.
I groaned. ‘Not Stoyan! Not the Jutes! You’ve got them on the brain. Are you never going to give them a rest?’ For weeks he’d bombarded us with such stories, besides which I foresaw real trouble for both of us once we got home. Jimmy brushed my objections aside. He draped his coat over Howard’s shoulders and squatted down beside him. ‘Suppose you tell us exactly what you can see,’ he suggested.
Which is precisely what Howard did. There before us was the smithy, the mead hall, mill, ale house and individual huts. Villagers came and went between them, going about their daily business, or tended their gardens. Our attention was drawn to the men, some of them working their plots of land, others fishing in the stream; to the women baking or hanging out clothes to dry. Night had been transformed into day, so that there was hawking in the fields, hunting in the forest. Archery practice was in progress on the village green; at home the girls were sharpening up their culinary skills. We strained our ears to catch the rush of the millrace, the creak of its wheel; arrows thudding into targets; the clang of hammer onto anvil. Couldn’t we smell the smoke from the charcoal-burners’ fires, the scent of new-mown hay? Individuals, too, were clearly identifiable: Redwald fetching wood to stoke his furnace; Alric dismounting from his horse; Saba circling in the sunlight, the shaman, withdrawn and malevolent, casting the runes.
My brother, I realised, was not shamming. The scenario was as real to him as the leaf of each tree, every blade of grass was to me. Jimmy for the most part remained silent, assenting with nods of the head and positive grunts to the claims that were being made; attempting occasionally to bring matters to an end; telling Howard it was time to go home; putting an arm around the boy’s shoulders in an effort to move him off in that direction. Always to be repulsed. ‘Wait,’ Howard would protest. ‘We can’t go yet. Not till Stoyan comes.’ Or: ‘See, his mother awaiting his return. Along with Swidhelm and Tonbert.’ And, finally, ‘Morgana, Jimmy. She’s coming. I know she is. What message do you think she’ll bring? What message?’
Such humouring might have continued for hours to come, but it was now well past midnight and getting colder by the minute. Howard refused to be moved other than by force, nor could he be left alone. It was obvious that help was needed, and needed quickly. All along I’d questioned the necessity of those chalk marks, grumbled continuously at time wasted in making them, but I was glad enough of them now as I made my way back, the route plunged into darkness, the trees in constant motion, and with no one there to protect me. Later they estimated I’d made it in half an hour or less, yet I could account for not a minute of it. All I do remember is that, at the moment I heard the distant call of Howard’s name, glimpsed the lanterns swinging dimly in the darkness ahead of me, the first drops of rain began to fall.
The rest remains blurred in my memory: leading the searchers back through the woodland; Jimmy fashioning a rudimentary stretcher from branches and lifting the semi-conscious and weakly protesting Howard onto it. The Lone Granger placing a sodden cape over him; the trek back along a now well-beaten pathway; Doctor McNeil examining both of us before a roaring log fire, shaking his head, harsh words, not, as I had expected, for my brother, but Jimmy; then bed, sleep and more sleep.
Chapter Eleven
Closing Ranks
My brother came out of the whole episode very well. Continued feverishness and high temperature kept him in bed for several days, and so immune from blame. Thereafter he was considered too young to have known any better. He’d a strong imagination, so Eric Stapleton testified – too rich to distinguish between make-believe and reality. Not so myself. As his elder I should have taken more care; prevented him from listening to such stories or, at the very least, ensured he did not take them seriously. Which I resented, especially when he became something of a hero among his friends, who crowded round once he recovered, eager to hear every detail of the adventure; wishing they could have been there too.
Howard revelled in the attention, oblivious of the real danger he’d been in or the part we’d played in saving him, elaborating instead on the supposed perils of this hazardous mission into uncharted territory, supplemented with first-hand accounts of Redwald’s strength, Stoyan’s cunning, Alric’s swordsmanship. Any attempt to challenge the veracity of such fantasies resulted in high fever and tantrums. I had my own opinions as to the cause as well as the cure for such behaviour, but medical opinion thought otherwise. Rest and tranquility were the best medicine, the doctor assured us. My brother was therefore to be humoured. So, as they fussed about him, it was resentment I nursed. In time – matched precisely, it seemed to me, to the shelf-life of his stories – he made a complete recovery and things in our household returned to normal. Meanwhile it was Jimmy who shouldered most of the blame.
Previously, and despite growing opposition from several quarters, his sessions up by the war memorial or around the fire in Third Class Cottage had seemed no more than harmless entertainment. After all, Enid Quintock had tolerated them, so they couldn’t be all that bad. Now, as rumours of Howard’s predicament spread, trust in Jimmy began to waver. Several of our parents placed an embargo on all future contact and, when he remained unrepentant, others withdrew their support completely, playing right into the hands of those who’d opposed him all along. They might not have acted in unison, nor was there anything calculated about the campaign they waged. It was instinctive, intuitive almost, operating through implication via innuendo; the way things were done in Bereden and – for all I know – still are.
The Rev. Theobald Draper – ‘Codpiece’ as we knew him – again took the lead, speaking out openly in a sermon one Sunday some weeks after the event. Jimmy w
as not mentioned by name, only ‘members of the community operating from their own selfish motives’ – those who ‘act contrary to the guiding principles manifest in the Scripture’. The sins of which he stood accused were unspecified, but with direct quotations from St Matthew’s Gospel – the bit detailing the fate set aside for those who lead children astray – few can have doubted just who he had in mind. Which was the line taken up at Sunday School. There was, it seemed, to be a collective closing of ranks.
This became obvious when, next morning, lessons at Howard’s school were called to a halt and the pupils marshalled into the hall. Here the headmaster, in academic dress, accompanied by the fully surpliced rector and senior members of staff, awaited them on stage. Howard had difficulty in conveying precisely what followed. Not so the teachers, several of whom were friendly with our parents; or Albert Florin, the caretaker, who – for the price of a pint at the Jugged Hare – gave impromptu renditions of BadEgg’s rhetoric for weeks to come.
‘Many of you,’ he’d begun, ‘will remember the terrible years of the war. For others, your lives will just have begun as it ended. But, if any of you need reminding, or have not been told, just ask your mothers and fathers to take you on a bus ride to Portsmouth or Southampton. Not to visit the cinema or spend your coupons in the shops, but to see for yourselves the houses that have been destroyed, the streets that still lie in ruin, the weeds growing among them.
And it’s the same for boys and girls all over the country: in Liverpool or Birmingham, Bristol or Coventry. The war is now over, won by our brave soldiers, sailors and airmen, but not only them. Each of you played his or her part also. By going about your daily lives as normally as the enemy allowed you; by giving up some of the things you like most so he might be defeated; by collecting pans, kettles, train sets to make tanks and aeroplanes; by helping your parents dig for victory.
The “war effort” we called it. And, now that peace is here, you may think that that victory has finally been won. In many ways it has, yet in other ways it continues. We still have our ration books, not quite as much coal as we’d like to keep us warm, and we still need to ask ourselves, “Is my journey really necessary?” And, of course, it’s a longer, different kind of journey we’ve all of us been on these last few years – you, your mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends and relations. Everyone in this room, in Bereden, in fact. All of us together. But I wonder how many of you have asked yourself another question: why did we set out upon it? Why did we accept all the shortages? What was it that we were fighting for? The answer is simple. It was for an ideal. A way of life.’
There was little new in all this. I’d heard it a hundred times before; could supply the parts that Howard and the others omitted, the concluding passage especially. Something along the lines of: ‘Freedom of speech. The right to think as you like; within the bounds of decency to write as you wish; without defamation, to say what you please.’ So, at long last someone in authority was coming out on Jimmy’s side. Well, good for him!
I should have known better. ‘A way of life,’ BadEgg continued, ‘that’s been handed down from generation to generation. That is all the more precious for having been fought for. And won, as it has continuously been won down the ages. But, having once more triumphed in the battle for liberty, we must guard the peace with equal vigilance. Not this time against foes from overseas, but those who would challenge it from within. Those who seek to undermine or weaken the very things that have made us strong, by which victory itself has been achieved. Those living among us who set out to challenge the values all of us hold dear; who fight not with bombs or guns, that injure our bodies, but with thoughts that corrupt and poison our minds. Growing like weeds among the remnants of our triumph.’
Howard and his friends were devastated when they realised what had been said – or had it explained to them. As were several of their parents who only a few weeks earlier had complained at the amount of time their offspring spent listening to Jimmy’s tales. It was one thing for the rector to make such allegations. He was always sounding off about one sin or another, which was his job after all. But the headmaster; a newcomer to the village, speaking in long words, making accusations they couldn’t fully understand? Others defended BadEgg on the grounds that he’d been an army man, captured – possibly tortured – by the enemy, who should know what he was talking about. But explanations such as these failed to satisfy his pupils and a rash of bad behaviour spread like measles through the village. Normally well-behaved children became sullen and disobedient; they had now to be dragged even more unwillingly to church. Truancy – virtually non-existent in Miss Quintock’s day – increased; pupils shunned out-of-school activities; graffiti aimed chiefly against Eric Stapleton and the Rev. Draper began to appear around the village.
And Jimmy? Within the month he’d disappeared, as quietly and unobtrusively as he’d arrived.
* * *
I’d have been content to leave it at that. Would have done but for Helen’s new-found interest; as eager now as once she’d been dismissive, insisting there must be more to tell. But all that had happened some thirty years ago; it was now 1985, and there was little further I could remember – chose not to rather – nor anything of substance to add to what she already knew. The Jutes might not have emerged particularly well from her reading of Bede’s History of the English People or The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, but they’d come down to me through childhood as shadowy, omnipresent figures, universally accepted as the founding fathers of the village. I could point her in the direction of one of their warriors, armed for battle with a full range of grave goods that had been excavated nearby; or the remnants of their pottery, darkish red in colour with small circular indentations, unearthed just north of the village, pieced together in Winchester Museum to form the most graceful of vases. I could show her evidence of Ytedenbe, a lost Jutish settlement in the Forest of Bere, or – interesting in the light of Jimmy’s stories – the reputation these people had for the sharpening of tools or weapons. And:
Spare of tongue but sharp of wit,
Steadfast in kinship, slow to quit.
I could remind her of the physiological and psychological traces of these people that Jimmy swore still ran through our veins. Not that I took him all that seriously.
Till…
… down at the library, Helen happened upon England South by Sydney R. James: the reminiscences of an amateur artist, issued by Studio Publications in 1948 – roughly the time that Jimmy and I had met. Glancing through the book she discovered Jutes listed in the index and there they were, on pages 127-133.
Out sketching in the Meon Valley, around Old Winchester Hill, Sydney had met up with one of the breed of local natives and, on enquiring as to directions, experienced the local’s monosyllabic… economic style of speech. Later, he tells his Hampshire cousin about this:
‘Why,’ she cried enthusiastically, ‘you have been talking to a Jute!’
‘This curious stock in the Meon Valley,’ she informs him, ‘is supposed to have descended from the Jutes. A whole lot of Jutish burial mounds were discovered at Droxford village, which you must have come through… Everybody thinks them rather curious, both in looks and manner, quite different from us true-blue Hampshires.’
‘So,’ Mr James tells his readers, ‘it seemed that perhaps I had chanced on a descendent of the marauders who plundered these parts quite early in A.D., who with customary campaigning technique made up to the local girls, produced the goods for succession, and thereby secured a continuance of peculiarities imported from the fatherland, including the mono-staccato in speech.’
A genuine near-contemporary sighting of a real-live Jute, the first and only one I’ve come across from that day to this.
‘But it was thirty – more like forty – years ago.’ Helen was dismissive. ‘With no local radio, television in its infancy in those days, travel not back to pre-war standards. Things m
ust have changed enormously since then.’
‘True,’ I said, ‘but go back a generation or two, send a post-card for 1½d in London and you’d have it delivered to Bereden next day. Go back a further hundred years, use our signal tower in the woods and the message would arrive in less than five minutes. So what’s a mere thirty years set against a couple of centuries?’
All the same, I wondered just what trace of the Jutes still remained? Just how genuine a presence had they really been? Had they continued to be spoken of at all? The village had increased enormously in size in the forty years since the war ended, the ‘forest’ shrunk into a shadow of its former self. A large housing estate covered Cowpat Meadow; Joe Wickbourne’s forge was now a greengrocer shop. The tanneries had become an exclusive girls’ school and traffic rushed headlong on tarmacked roads past the remnants of Harry’s toll booth. All of which I learnt from Giles Amberstone – ‘Gerundive’ – when I booked a room at Amberstone Hall – or BERCEN: Bereden Conference Centre and Residential Retreat as it now was. Helen, the librarian with her knowledge of records; my own experience in the area of research; fieldwork something both of us enjoyed; each having a vested interest in the outcome. The ideal team, apart from the bickering – maybe because of it – to answer such questions. Above all, to discover – first-hand – all we could about Jimmy, his motivation and just what had become of him.
Part Two
Dark Side of The Moon
Chapter Twelve
Tricks of the Light
‘Second right, over the bridge, look for a pillar box a bit further on… Slow down. Now what did he say?’
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