Shepherd of Another Flock

by David Wilbourne

  ‘Yes, and you’d have had the RSPCA on you like a ton of bricks,’ Rachel said as she unpegged the filthy sheets and plonked them into my arms. ‘You just go in and put these to soak in the sink, and consider yourself let off lightly, very lightly. And don’t ever bring back a “dead” pheasant on my wash day again!’ Then she too started laughing as we staggered into the house.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  This morning I had cycled up to Duncombe Park with details of the lesson Lady Polly was to read at the forthcoming Remembrance Day service. My second encounter with the uneven concrete roads laid by the 22nd Dragoons wasn’t any better than the first. I was juddering like a pneumatic drill by the time I reached Lord Feversham’s back door and rapped on the woodwork like a woodpecker on LSD.

  I was shown into the kitchen, where his dome-headed Lordship sat on his large oak chair and Lady Feversham looked as elegant as ever – bustling around the Yorkshire range, once again stirring huge pans of bubbling, steaming soup. ‘I thought we’d go for something from the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven,” that sort of thing,’ I explained to Lady Polly.

  ‘That’ll be great. I do love a bit of irony,’ Lady Polly replied, her eyes twinkling. ‘A nice antidote to all that horrible jingoism that infects Helmsley at this time of year!’

  ‘There speaks the president of the Women’s British Legion!’ Lord Feversham laughed, injecting his own brand of irony. ‘For goodness’ sake, sit down, David, you’re shaking like a leaf. I know we lords can intimidate people, but I thought you’d have got used to me by now!’

  ‘It’s not you, it’s your concrete roads! Haven’t you ever thought of having them tarmaced?’

  ‘Good heavens, no, they’re a positive heirloom,’ Lord Feversham replied.

  ‘They didn’t strike me as much of an heirloom when I was driving back from Morrisons with a load of delicate vegetables in the boot. By the time I reached the house they were so mashed up, all they were good for was this soup.’ Lady Polly grimaced.

  ‘Don’t take on, it’s not the beaches of Normandy, my dear. You should be thankful it’s only your aubergines that took a bashing,’ Lord Feversham chuckled. He went on to explain to me how the Dragoons, a flail tank regiment, were the first to hit Normandy’s shore, clearing the minefields ahead of the infantry, at risk both from the mines and the heaviest enemy fire.

  ‘Basically, they drove Sherman tanks with cutters attached to the front to take out the barbed-wire fences, and with something like a threshing machine attached to the back, to disturb and detonate the mines.’ From the utensil rack, Lord Feversham grabbed a pair of scissors which he wielded in front of him with his left hand, and a whisk which he waved behind him with his right. It wasn’t the best impression of a Sherman I had ever seen, despite him adding phutt-phutt noises as he staggered around the kitchen.

  ‘For obvious reasons the tanks moved forward slowly, at little more than a mile an hour, dribbling a trail of chalk dust from a box attached to their side to mark out the track they had made safe for the soldiers following on foot.’ He grabbed the bag of flour Lady Polly was using to thicken the soup, tucked it under his arm and squeezed it like a bagpipe’s bellows, leaving a line of flour on the stone flags as he continued. ‘Because of all the muck and debris the threshing chains threw up, the tanks couldn’t shoot and flail at the same time, so were sitting ducks for aggressive enemy fire, if a rogue mine didn’t blow ’em apart first. Boom, that’s me done for!’ he exclaimed, collapsing back into his chair.

  His voice softened. ‘Their time in Helmsley must have been like heaven compared to the hell that they found in Normandy. Within minutes of the D-Day landings’ beginning, most of the regiment had been destroyed, lads not much older than our Patrick – not out of their teens, for pity’s sake. So few of them managed to return, but each D-Day and Remembrance Sunday the dwindling band of brothers come back to Helmsley and we give them pride of place, their regimental standard held high. So just make sure you put on a good show, Vicar.’

  I juddered back down the hill with Lord Feversham’s clear instructions ringing in my ears. That afternoon there was a knock on the door. I couldn’t believe my eyes, because there on the step stood the world-famous actor Ian Carmichael. I had long been a fan of his Boulting brothers films – including I’m All Right Jack, in which he had co-starred with Peter Sellers – as well as his major roles as Bertie Wooster in the TV series of P.G. Woodhouse’s Jeeves and Lord Peter Wimsey in adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective novels. Throughout he portrayed the archetypal, perfectly mannered English gent. Once I had recovered from the shock and said inane things like ‘Goodness me, you’re Ian Carmichael!’ I invited him in. Over a cuppa in our kitchen he explained how he’d served in Helmsley as a commissioned officer in the Dragoons, having been seconded from the Royal Armoured Corps ‘to lend the chaps a bit of a hand.’ Like me he originated from Hull. ‘I come from Hull, don’t you know, somebody has to!’ But he now lived at Egton; I envied him living in this beautiful hilltop village on the northern edge of the North York Moors, with stunning views over to Whitby’s red-roofed town and ancient abbey perching on the cliffs, and the North Sea beyond. Since it was just twenty miles north of Helmsley, he often popped back for any Dragoon reunions.

  He told me how, when they weren’t practising flailing tanks in Helmsley, the Dragoons had helped the local voluntary firemen put out moorland fires caused by the dry heather spontaneously combusting and re-combusting in the legendary summers of that bygone age. Equipped with an endless supply of brooms, Ian was under strict orders to lead his crack squad to extinguish the flames once and for all. He made it sound like an episode from Dad’s Army, with his men positively fanning the flames rather than extinguishing them, resulting in the voluntary fireman having to come to the troops’ rescue when they were surrounded by a fierce ring of fire. Steering a course between Henry V and Captain Mainwaring, Ian had given his men the stiffest lecture: ‘Now look here, chaps, if we can’t lick these bally moorland fires, how the hell will we ever lick the Nazis?’ The pep talk clearly did the trick, because by dusk every single ember had been extinguished, and Ian and his men, blackened with soot, had wearily returned to Duncombe Park – mission accomplished.

  At dinner in the mess that night the Colonel invited Major Carmichael to step outside onto Duncombe Park’s veranda, which overlooked the moors; the same privileged view which Rachel and I had enjoyed after our lunch with the Fevershams. ‘So, Carmichael, you put out all the fires, did you?’ was the Colonel’s curt comment as both men surveyed the horizon, totally and utterly ablaze.

  ‘But you know, Vicar,’ Ian concluded, ‘vexing though those moorland fires were, by night they were often mistaken by the Luftwaffe for Middlesbrough’s string of steel furnaces which lit up the night sky twenty-five miles to the north, causing them to drop their bombs too soon. Not much harm done, after all.’

  I recalled Eva’s evacuees from Middlesbrough, holed up at East Moors, fearing that Teesside’s blitz had followed them south. I guessed Major Carmichael wouldn’t have been so relaxed about it had he been squeezed into the school house with all those children, screaming in terror.

  He seemed to read my thoughts, because his ‘Pip, pip, old Bean’ facade suddenly gave way to a more serious tone. ‘I’m sorry to bother you with this in your early days, David, but for a long time I’ve been feeling that my old regiment has been treated shabbily by the church.’

  ‘Goodness, I’m so sorry,’ I replied, absolutely appalled if these heroes hadn’t been treated with the respect they deserved.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s not your fault. But ever since the war, the Dragoons’ battle standard has been hidden away in a shady corner beneath the church tower. I feel it deserves a more prominent position, worthy of the sacrifice that so many of my band of brothers made.’ He told me how time and time again he’d tried to get the previous vicars to do something about it, but
had been repeatedly fobbed off with claims that such a proposal would never get the approval of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure; the cumbersome regulations which governed what could and couldn’t be installed in ancient church buildings. He himself had had a bad experience with the Measure – when his first wife died he had been refused permission to put up a small plaque in her memory in Egton Church.

  I realize that rules are rules, but it seemed more than a bit mean, turning down Egton’s most famous son in his grief, especially when church buildings were so often festooned with all sorts of inappropriate memorials to slave traders, local despots, absentee vicars and motley has-beens from previous centuries. I felt so sorry for him that there and then I decided to right the wrong by taking up a campaign to erect a proper memorial to the Dragoons. Not wanting to do anything by halves, I boldly proposed to move it to the sanctuary – centre stage at Helmsley Church’s east end. Since the expensive Mouseman panelling around the sanctuary had been financed by the surviving Dragoons in memory of their fallen comrades, it seemed a sensible move. But Ian Carmichael was not optimistic.

  ‘That’s really very kind of you, old chap,’ he said, ‘but if the powers-that-be couldn’t give permission for the little brass plaque in memory of my dearly departed wife, they’re hardly likely to let us fly a battle standard over the high altar!’

  Personally, I felt that that was just where the standard of these bravest of men should be, soldiers who had literally given their lives for their friends. That night I contacted my old boss, David Hope, the Archbishop of York. Despite being the busiest of men in the most stressful of jobs, he made it clear that he was always available for his clergy, 24/7. He listened sympathetically, asked lots of questions and promised to pursue our cause with the diocesan authorities.

  ‘But you know what these legal wallahs are like, David. Even with me behind you, I’d only give us an evens chance, if that. But I’ll do my best, so leave it with me. Helmsley Church has been through a traumatic time recently what with your predecessor’s shenanigans, so you all deserve a break.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Bound for a regular Friday appointment in Rievaulx, I cycled NNW out of Helmsley along the bottom of the steep-sided Beckdale, sneaking through Lord Feversham’s pheasant pounds – the avian equivalent of a high-security prison. Reaching the end of the wire cages, I washed my bicycle in the ford over the eponymous beck, the mudguards clogged with droppings from the 30,000 frightened pheasants that roost here. Bernard, my churchwarden’s husband and pheasant-plucking expert, had informed me that 29,000 are murdered annually, with 1000 spared to breed next year’s kill.

  ‘You see, Vicar,’ Bernard went on, ‘the keepers will tell you that pea-brained pheasants positively deserve to be shot – good for nowt else other than a quick death. So that entitles them to charge exorbitant prices for weekend shooting parties. City gents deck themselves out in plus-fours and pay thousands of pounds each to be bounced around in muddy Land Rovers. They skulk in lodges, scoff a lukewarm lunch of convenience food masquerading as Michelin star, and wash it down with swigs from hip flasks filled with Johnny Walker charged out at Glenfiddich prices.’ Bernard shook his head in disbelief that these wizards of the financial world and kings of the stockmarket should be so gullible. ‘Then beaters drive the pheasants into their path – they can hardly miss. But most of these Hooray Henries do miss. The few they do bag are taken home as trophies for suburban wives – then they don’t know how to pluck and dress game, so the shot birds generally end up in the bin. And they claim it’s the pheasants who are pea-brained!’

  Bernard’s tirade notwithstanding, Beckdale provided the loveliest of cycle rides. Most of the leaves in the wooded valley had fallen by then, forming a rich golden carpet on the valley bottom. Both the beck and path were ringed by the autumn sunlight, at last able to pierce through the bare branches of the trees. Once you rise out of the pheasant pound, the beck flows sparkling clear. The narrow path broadens to become a tarmac road so steep that the gutters aren’t parallel to it, but have to cut across it at right angles; the only way to prevent a sudden downpour turning the road into a raging torrent. I huffed and puffed as I ascended, the pain in my legs like daggers sticking into my thigh muscles, my lungs burning with exertion. Just when I feared my strength was going to give out, just when everything around me became the dazzling bright that precedes a dead faint, I reached the top, entering another world. Here the dark forest gives way to bright green fields.

  I cycled along, breathing heavily, my head turning to the right, drinking in the distant scene – mile after beautiful mile of purple-topped moors. There was a black-haired, barrel-shaped guy walking ahead of me behind a couple of dozen Friesians. He kept shouting at them, driving them on with a birch switch, cajoling them. Though he clearly knew each cow by name, that name was less than flattering.

  ‘Don’t you even think about it, Droopy Udders . . . Come away from that gate, Dribbly Bum . . . Leave that mistletoe alone, Big Tits.’

  They remained oblivious to his direction, intent on having a leisurely stroll and pausing to chomp some tasty morsel lurking in the hedgerow, or trying their weight against a rickety gate to see if they could break through and romp around some forbidden field.

  Still recovering from my near-vertical ascent, I couldn’t summon up enough energy to overtake the man, let alone risk a collision should Droopy Udders take a surprising trajectory, so I cycled alongside him, doing my best to keep up.

  ‘Gorgeous view,’ I said.

  ‘Ay, I never tire of it, though I look over it every day. That’s t’ farm where I work over yonder, you see,’ he said, pointing to a smart stone farm house, surrounded by a cluster of ugly corrugated iron barns. ‘Big Tits, leave Dribbly Bum alone,’ he shouted when the former had become a bit frisky with the latter.

  ‘So this is a dairy herd,’ I said, stating the bleeding obvious. The Victorian philanthropist, Elizabeth Fry, was keen to show off her knowledge of things agricultural during a farm visit despite being urban to the core. ‘What are those beasts over there?’ she asked a stockman.

  ‘They be heifers, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know that, my good fellow. But are they male heifers or female heifers?’

  The stockman must have given her the same sort of pitying look my cowhand gave me. ‘Yes, this is a dairy herd. We milk ’em all, twice a day, never a holiday. They’re good producers, but with milk prices so low my boss barely makes enough to scrape a living for us all. So he has t’ diversify. Leave that buggering gate alone, Shitty Tail!’

  ‘What else does he do, then?’ I asked, once he’d headed off his errant bovine.

  ‘He writes. He sets down his memoirs; life on a moorland farm. But he can’t be doing with all these agents and publishers taking their cut, he’s had enough of that with the Milk Marketing Board, so he’s self-published.’

  That reminded me of a chap in my Middlesbrough days who was always boasting he was a self-made man. Mm, no one else could have made such a bad job, I’d thought to myself.

  ‘And he does all the marketing himself,’ the man continued. ‘T’ farm’s a bit quiet on an afternoon, so he and I often nip down to the market place with a ’oldall of his books, wait for a coach t’ pull up, and sell them to tourists as they come off the bus. You’ve got to take every opportunity when you diversify. He never goes to a family funeral without taking a few copies of his book along, and touts his wares at the wake!’

  He drove the cattle into a field and I cycled on my way, bemused by my cowman’s tales of his entrepreneur boss with his once-in-a-death-time offers! I dropped down the steep wooded valley into Rievaulx, where the ancient Abbey still stands proud, despite the worst that Henry VIII tried to do to it. Everyone remembers seeing Rievaulx for the first time; a hidden place that comes upon you all of a sudden – an unexpected view, brim-filling the valley with tall limestone buildings and graceful arches and intricate vaulting so beautiful in countryside so beautiful
that it just makes you want to cry.

  The Abbey was built in the twelfth century, with the Cistercian monks who built it taking their precedent from Moses and the Red Sea by physically diverting the River Rye, which cuts through the valley floor. This gave them enough dry ground to squeeze in a massive church, kitchens, eating rooms, libraries, dormitories, meeting rooms and an infirmary. The surrounding area was gifted to the monks by the lord of the manor, who wanted to earn himself time off from purgatory for such good behaviour. Acre upon acre was worked by tenant farmers, labourers and shepherds, who all raised revenue for the Abbey. The monks, as well as providing them with employment, educated them and gave them medical and even hospital care, looking after their bodies as well as their souls. Rievaulx Abbey was a veritable industry, the largest in the North, and cared for locals from the cradle to the grave and beyond, enabling a barren area to flourish.

  Then along came Henry VIII and his commissioners and despoiled the place, even tearing down the wooden roof timbers, setting fire to them, digging deep holes and burying the lead which had melted in the flames. This was no casual or gentle reformation, but total warfare from scorched earth to scorched roof timbers. And a whole welfare system which had benefitted the valley for centuries was wiped out at a stroke. It was as if a pit village had not only lost its mine, but everything else had gone too – from schooling to doctoring and all stops in between. It was a nuclear apocalypse, four hundred years before Rutherford split the atom.

  Robert Aske, lord of the manor of tiny Aughton, where I’d lived as a boy, led a peaceful revolt against the monasteries’ closure called the Pilgrimage of Grace. This had great success in the North, with the principal towns of York, Pontefract and Doncaster yielding to him without a single casualty. A very worried Henry sued for peace and the protesters disbanded, but then its ringleaders were arrested and tried for treason. Robert Aske wasn’t sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered like the rest; instead he was condemned to be hung on chains on Micklegate Bar, and took ten days to die. Robert Aske was my local hero, not just because he provided little Aughton with a brief moment of fame, but because he stood up for faith against greedy kings. Since then I have always had a soft spot for monasteries and Roman Catholicism, and like David, my biblical namesake, the Goliaths of this world have never impressed me that much.