by Ray Timms
Chapter 4
They say, a change is as good as a rest and one of the immediate benefits of moving to Devon was the tangible relief from the unannounced visits by, Pete and Leroy, our local bailiffs.
With each passing day, our jangled nerves slowly unwound although we would still jump out of our skins at any unannounced visitor, and just opening the post was a bit like getting a wartime telegram. Despite these niggling peculiarities I felt we were making good progress.
August came around, and we’d been living, not quite the dream. The days were warm, if often wet, and the evenings stretched on till eight in the evening.
This particular day had been a scorcher - just right we thought for a late supper in the garden. Working as a team, Julie, the boys, and myself set a table and chairs in the pool of yellow light spilling from the kitchen window. I looked up in wonder at the black sky punctured like buckshot in a velvet blanket. We set the table for a sumptuous evening meal of beans on toast … al fresco. Half an hour later, ravaged by midges we ran back inside the house. Living in close proximity to fields where cattle and sheep grazed had its drawbacks. Throughout the whole of August we daren’t keep the door and windows open after dusk.
We had hoped… expected even, that family and friends would flock to our door for a free holiday in glorious Devon. Nobody came more than once. The gilding on the dream was now beginning to fade.
At first, we took the hits, rolled with the punches as it were, but inexorably, reality bit home. Like Sirens of the seas, the seduction of the quaint villages, narrow lanes, thatched cottages, and cream teas had lured us into a trap. I had been naive, foolish even, to imagine Devon was going to rescue us from the poverty that blighted our lives. How stupid to think that the locals would take us into their hearts and hearths - that the employers would jump at the chance of employing a distinguished, hard working plumber such as yours truly. At first I tried denial, then I tried massaging facts, and then I switched to displacement of cause, and then digging ever deeper, I focused on the positives. Then as the clouds darkened and the sun shied from our windows the bone-grinding poverty shook its fist in my face. The weekly visit to our local supermarket became an exercise in compromise. We weren’t exactly living on gruel but it did feel as if we were living in a period drama. The employers down here treated their workers no better than forelock tugging serfs, leaving them dry husks of whatever ambition they might once have nursed. Beaten down by fear not a single one I ever met had would dare question, let alone challenge their boss and that worried me. Having run my own business for thirteen years… I was not at all comfortable at being told how to do my job! Would I be able to hold my tongue... act like a serf? Only time would tell.
For Julie and I this risky Devon experiment, was about to unravel and push us over the edge.
Little by little, the dream of us as a family spending hot summer days lazing on sandy beaches, eating cornets layered with clotted cream, and taking our dogs across the moors proved to have no more substance than Will-o-the-wisp, who was said to stalk the Dartmoor bogs.
With summer gone the mist rolled in off the moors. This I was reliably advised by the locals would blot out the sun from October right round till April. That winter was not one for brass monkeys or for tender-leaf Grockle’s such as us poor souls huddled in our freezing cottage feeding on cheap cuts of meat and tinned food, and warming our ice-brittle bones on the miserly heat given out by the smelly Aga. Once a day I would go outside to the oil tank to inspect the fuel gauge and with grim anticipation I saw that dark, cold days lay ahead.
Saturday. November 16. 9.47.am. The wind was cold enough to cleave a parson in two. The ice on the windows was thickening by the day. The exposed and isolated cottage high on the moors, blasted by the freezing winds careening off the moors became an igloo. I couldn’t imagine the North Pole being colder!
To add insult to our misery, my employer was now acting like a character out of a Dickens novel. Paying me what he fancied rather than what I had earned. From one week to the next I had no idea what I would get in wages.
Shut away like the Three Little Piggy’s with the wolves of hunger hammering at our door I sought a solution that was as dangerous as it was unthinkable…. I was contemplating a blasphemous suggestion that carried terrible risks. I would need to pick the right moment, catch my wife when she was in the right mood, and then test the waters with a mild suggestion.
‘You have to be joking!’ She snarled. ME! Get a job?
I flinched.
‘You never said a word about me having to work, when you convinced me life would be great down here in this godforsaken dump!'
I winced again. In the cold I seemed to have lost my sense of timing. My wife’s reaction was entirely rational and to be expected. I fully understood her point of view; after all, Julie already had a career…of sorts! She was a housekeeper… always had been… that was her profession, and I…. I had always been her employer. These were long-established hierarchical positions that would be difficult, if not impossible, to renegotiate. I was taken aback by how quickly she shifted tack.
‘Besides,’ she said calming down, ‘There is no work here. Where would I find a job in this ghost town?’
She was right of course. I filed the matter into my overflowing “unresolved’ in-tray and returned to the jigsaw puzzle, scattered across the Melamine kitchen table I bought earlier in the week in a charity shop for fifty pee. It had come in a jiffy bag with no picture. The minute I counted seven corner pieces I had my doubts about its claim to be 'all there'.
Julie broke my concentration.
‘We going shopping or what? We’ve got no milk.’ She grumbled.
I pushed aside a heap of unsorted puzzle pieces and looked up. Dressed in her thick padded coat, wearing a hat with earmuffs and fur-lined boots, and pulling on a pair of gloves, she glared at me. In that get-up she looked like Nanook of the North. I thought it imprudent to enlighten her of this perception.
I rose from the table.
‘Yes.’ I said, irritated more by the puzzle than my wife’s manner. After sweeping the pieces back in its bag I pulled on my duffel coat. ‘I’m ready.’
Julie sat in the car steaming up the windows while I, crunching around on frozen grass and with the aid of a spade, tackled the ice on the windscreen. My head was still preoccupied with the mathematical conundrum of how many corners a rectangle had when I heard the passenger window crack open. Julie poked her head out
‘What are you mumbling about?’
‘Nothing dearest.’ I replied. Go back to sleep. I muttered.
It is remarkable how hungry a person can get when you have little money for food. Equally astonishing is how appealing certain items of food can be when you are least able to afford them.
Driving into town Julie and I had words. Unfortunately I didn’t get to use mine.
The municipal car park behind Morrison’s was half empty. The fact that my favourite parking space under the overhanging evergreen Magnolia tree was unoccupied I took as a good omen. I couldn’t believe the fragility of my existence life had been reduced to worrying about omens.
The footpath to the Co-op, took us past, “Teaspoons café.” As usual I found myself, like some Dickensian, urchin staring through the steamed up windows at people who could afford to eat a fry-up. I was salivating when my wife, embarrassed by my behaviour walked off. An elderly couple, gloved and hatted, arms linked, heads low swung the door inwards and stepped out. I sucked greedily on the sweet smell of bacon and eggs. The elderly man glared at me when they needed to sidestep me blocking the doorway. I gripped my stomach and was reminded that it had been two hours since I’d eaten two pieces of white toast with an abstemious spread of marmalade.
I was about to run after my wife when a notice taped to the window checked my progress.
I caught up with Julie and taking her by the arm I lured her back to the café.
‘Where a
re you taking me?’ She said pulling back.
‘I just want to show you something.’
There followed a face-to-face standoff in the narrow mall.
‘You are making a scene, ‘I said. People are watching us.’
‘Then let go of my arm.’
‘I just want to show you something.’
It was a bit like pulling a struggling toddler along, but I did get her to the window.
‘Look. There’s a job for you.’ I said excitedly pointing out the handwritten notice taped to the inside of the window. “Part-time waitress required. No experience necessary.”
Julie was shaking her head. "I am not a waitress. I wouldn’t know what to do.'
'It says no experience needed. You’d make a great waitress.' I said.
'You’re only saying that because you want me to get a job.'
'I don’t want you to get a job Julie; I need you to get a job.'
'Ok,' she said, 'I will go in and enquire, but I wont get it.'
After closing the door behind her I suspected she had every intention of saying anything that might mean she wouldn’t get it. I was wrong. Ten minutes later she came out smiling.
‘I’m a waitress, ‘she beamed. ‘The girls in there seemed nice. It’s only four mornings a week.’
‘Well done you.’ I said giving her a hug. It felt stiff and awkward. Hugs were a rare commodity these days.
If it hadn’t been for the meagre tips that Julie earned in the cafe, and the foil wrapped waste food she brought home, we might all have starved that winter.
So far, living in Devon had proved to be a challenge. On the plus side I had a job. The might have worked out, had my employer paid me what I was due, when it was due. Getting paid at the end of each week had become a lottery. Julie would meet me at the door on a Friday night and would know immediately from the look on my face whether I had been paid or not.
A flake at a time, the gilded dream was started to fade and when Daniel began to talk about how much he loved working on our landlord’s farm I became seriously worried.
My youngest son’s happiness should have been my contentment, but it wasn’t. There was no way I wanted Daniel to end up as a farm worker… coming home to a comely farm wife with his clothes covered in cow crap. I mean, what kind of life would I have condemned him to?
I suppose it was unfair to extrapolate our experience of living in Oxhampton across the whole of Devon but however one wraps it up, what we feel is what we feel, and my interpretation was just as valid as anyone’s, and, perhaps… perhaps, we had been unlucky…maybe in other towns, villages, we may have found people more open and friendly than those that we had encountered. It wasn’t as if we’d made no effort to fit in. We did try. …Just the once! Socialising usually involves money and our pecuniary situation didn’t stretch to going down the local pub. (The only pub within ten miles.)
Constant vigilance, always on the lookout for our creditors who might still track us down we tried to keep out of sight to the point I was getting cabin fever. About four weeks after our arrival I’d had enough living behind locked doors and drawn curtains. The clock on the mantelshelf said it was eight-fifteen. I jumped up from the sofa with such gusto that Julie and Robbie and Daniel thought I had finally lost it.
‘That’s it,’ I announced, ‘I am sick of staying in every night watching telly we are going out.’
My wife stopped chewing on the lump of apple in her mouth.
'Out,’ she said frowning. ‘You mean - like out… out?’
‘Exactly.’ I said grabbing my coat. ‘Out as in…. we’re off to the pub… out.’
‘And do what exactly… have a game of arrows, maybe a gripping game of dominoes while drinking flagons of real ale mud?’
‘Now you’re being cynical, ' I said. 'Get your coat on.’
Being masterful was not exactly my style but every dog has its day. Any moment now she was going to tell me to go to hell. ‘Come on, I insisted, 'It’ll be fun.’
The boys were already pulling on their coats. Complaining we were all mad, Julie got into her coat and joined us on the driveway.
‘Is this your idea of fun.’? She complained halfway into the fifteen-minute to the pub.
'Walking along an unlit country lane slipping on frozen sheep crap is a novel way to spend an evening.' Robbie said.
Rather than stare into the shifting shadows, giddily I looked up at the inky black sky. Like a baby’s crib under a netting of mist a thousand twinkling stars were celebrating the thin crescent moon hanging low in the sky.
We flinched at every rustle in the hedgerow. There was a collective sigh of relief when the yellowish lights of the pub lit our path.
I was first through the door. A deathly silence fell upon the saloon bar of the Lamb Inn. Four farm workers, huddled over a table, clearly engrossed in a gripping game of dominoes stared at us through dull eyes from under cloth caps. I screwed up my nose and looked across at Julie who’d done the same. I traced the smell of cow dung to the wellies they wore. Julie nudged me and I responded by leading the way across the creaking oak floorboards headed for the table on the far side of the snug.
I stood a while at the bar. The pub landlord was in no hurry to put down the newspaper he was reading. I looked back at the Julie and the boys huddled around an oak table set on iron legs. Julie nodded in the direction of the victualler. I mouthed something back at her.
‘Ahem!’ I coughed.
The landlord stared at me over the top of his cloudy spectacles.
‘What do you want?’
The barren demand took me by surprise. I reddened.
‘Some drinks please… and maybe some cheese and onion crisps.’
‘Aint got none.’
‘Drinks?’
‘Crisps.’
The man was clearly not one for discourse of any kind I felt.
I sensed the heavyset man leaning on the polished bar with thick bare arms would rather we leave. I shared his preference, but to do so would be like rolling on our backs, and I am not a dog. He was waiting for me to tell him what we wanted to drink I looked about me for inspiration and finding no such ingenuity I said cheerfully.
‘Would it be a bother to have a pint of your….’ My eyes flicked back and forth over the beers advertised on the four ceramic bar pumps. ‘A pint of your excellent “Badgers Arse real ale," sir.’
A pint glass appeared from under the counter. I watched the landlord pump a faltering flow of muddy liquid unto the vessel.
The contents of the three-quarters full glass pushed across the counter resembled slurry.
I looked up into his round ruddy face and smiled. ‘And two cokes… no ice, and a glass of white wine if you please’
I saw his eyebrows as thick as a hedge transform into a brooding frown.
‘Wine you say?’ He said out loud, his remark clearly meant for the dead-eyed domino players that might have been extras in the film Shaun Of The Dead! I followed his gaze before looking back at him.
‘You be up from Lernden then?’ He said placing two tiny bottles of coke and two cloudy tumblers on a beer mat in front of me. ‘You think that I run one of those swanky wine bars you have up in the great metrollops, do yer?’
‘N…n…not at all…. This…’ I said casting my eyes about, ‘this is a charming pub. A real local I would suggest.’
‘We don’t get much call fer wine down yer. Praps, yer misses’ll settle for a Babycham with a cherry on a cocktail stick?’
I studied his face carefully trying to work out if he was being serious or taking the piss. I smiled and said.
‘Thank you, but just another coke please.’
Increasingly uncomfortable by the furtive glances coming our way we kept our voices low. The stench of cow crap hung in the air like a thick fug. The room was small enough to listen in on the farm workers conversation that focused on a
disagreement about the virtues of certain cheeses.
When we left the pub, Robbie and I had hardly touched our drinks. A blanket of cloud now hid the moon and the deepening shadows made the walk home scarier than ever.
We almost fell into the relative warmth of Moors Cottage.
I set to making a brew for us while the others got the telly working. Even the crisp night air and the brisk walk home hadn’t done much to eradicate the stench of the cowmen’s wellies that seemed to have marinated my brain. A nagging worry surfaced. Was it possible that in thirty years time, devoid of ambition and never knowing what he might have become, Daniel could become one of those men playing dominoes and stinking of cow crap? I shuddered and stirred the hot tea in the four mugs.
Daniel’s future if we stayed down here was still plaguing my mind when three days later the brewing animosity between my boss, Bowler and I spilled over into open hostility.
Our Devon dream was about to come to an untimely end. Ankle deep in mud on the building site, Bowler and I had a nose-to-nose blazing row over my unpaid wages.
‘Yer an uppity Lerderner, who ought to know his place.” Bowler raged. ‘Pack up your tools, you’re fired.’
‘You can’t sack me… cos I quit!’ I yelled in his face.
‘I sacked you first.’
‘No you didn’t. Simply because you said it before I did doesn’t mean you fired me. Now… I quit! Poke your job up your squeaky arse.’
How I managed to stop myself from cleaving his head from his shoulders with the pair of Stilson’s I held in my hand I will never know.
From day one in his employment I could see that he and I were never going to get along and with that in mind I had the presence of mind to look about for alternative employment and I had already identified three plumbing contractors all within ten miles of Oxhampton. It was only when I approached these one after the other that I discovered what incestuous bedfellows the Victorian-minded bosses were in these parts.
News of the “Uppity Lerndener” who dared stand up to his employer had gone viral. No one dared even speak to the troublemaker that was bound to sow the seeds of sedition in the minds of the dull-witted serfs. Getting blackballed and being a Grockle are mutually disadvantageous positions for a person of my impecunious position. Putting my situation succinctly, I was now up crap creek without a paddle. I couldn’t have been more isolated had I a touch of the Black Plague.
This novel situation was a game-changer. Oxhampton, the Bungalow… the Victorian attitude of employers and the serf-like subservience of the locals had shattered my carefully crafted rose-tinted mental construction of an idyllic life in sunny Devon. After weeks of penniless attrition, now heartily sick of the freezing fog and just weeks from Christmas I was forced to agree with Julie. My hastily drawn up plan to settle the family in Devon had been fatally flawed. Devon proved to be a poverty cul de sac. Putting three hundred miles between my creditors and me did not make a whole lot of difference. There was no work down here as Dave had led me to believe. In fact, as far as prospects went, the recession had hit Devon as hard as any other part of the UK; the only difference that I could see was Devon had fewer opportunities.
It seemed if you came down here poor, that was how you stayed.
‘We can’t live on cow crap!’ I raged as I paced the kitchen. 'I have to do something Julie. I can’t have us live like this.’
Two hours after my murderous thoughts directed at Bowler had abated, a little after eight, Julie and I sat around the Aga and discussed our future, one in which Devon did not figure.
‘We could go back to Crawley.’ Julie suggested with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
‘Hmm, I don’t fancy that,' I said picking at a midge fighting for its life in my hot tea. I pushed aside the mug and leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling. The water stain on the ceiling was definitely getting bigger. I shook my head and said, ’I reckon Paul and Leroy will have “Wanted” posters stuck up all over town. There might be a reward for our capture. Maybe we’re Crawley Town's Bonnie and Clyde?’ I said wryly.
Lost in her own thoughts Julie didn’t respond to my poor attempt at humour. I sighed.
We remained quiet for some time. I watched Julie feed our Yorkie, "Rats" small bits of her Digestive biscuit.
‘We could move up to London?’ She suggested with a shrug. ‘We have family up there and it would be easier to find work.’
I nodded. I was thinking the same. ‘It'd be like going back to our roots,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. That’s where the money is, and the jobs... and we have family there for support.’
I looked around at Solomon the Bassett hound who was groaning by the back door. I got up off my chair to let him out and then returned to my seat. ‘I like the thought of us living in London again. My God how different that would be to the dull dreariness of down here!’ I was warming to the idea… excited even. I began to babble.
‘Of course Robbie will do well in London. There is absolutely nothing for him down here. He’s been on job seekers allowance for months. And of course Louise would be able to get home from her digs in Basildon much easier.’
When I saw Julie's face lit up I thought the matter was settled. Then I saw her frown.
‘I agree but what about Daniel?’
‘What about Daniel?’
‘He loves it here Art, he loves his school and his best friend lives on the farm. Just lately he’s been talking about helping out with the lambing in the spring.’
‘That’s what worries me the most Julie. I can’t just sit back and do nothing and watch Daniel become a farm worker. Christ Julie, what kind of a life would I be condemning him to? No. I can’t be doing that. As responsible parents you and I have to take a long-term view about his future. He’ll thank us when he’s older.’
While Julie poured the leftover crumbs from the biscuit packet on the floor for Rats to lick up I went over and let Solomon back in the back door. When I returned to my seat Julie looked me straight in the eye.
‘We go to London then.’
It was more of a determination than a question. ’What we got to lose?’ She shrugged and then bent down to lift the Yorkie up on to her lap. Solomon shook and sprayed rainwater over my legs. It was raining again.
‘Awww, Doggy wet then?' Julie said rubbing the top of Solomon's head. ‘I got no more biscuits baby.’ She said truthfully.
‘London it is then.’ I said getting to my feet as if was the signal to crack on. Doing nothing was making my bones itch.
There was much to plan. Getting my family up to London was going to take scrupulous organization and more luck than life had afforded me of late. Like bobbing Bingo balls the ideas came thick and fast and most were useless. I gave myself permission to relax a little, thinking a calmer approach might be more rewarding. There would be time enough for me to formulate a more detailed plan later.... before we became committed to anything rash.
Unlike the random, mismatched pieces of the jigsaw I had bought in the charity shop, now in the bin, a waste of fifty pee, the elements of an escape plan began to take shape. I now had what I considered to be a workaround solution. I gave Julie one of my best serious looks.
‘This is the plan,' I said. 'I will go on ahead, up to London and stay at my mums while I find a job. Give me two maybe three days and I guarantee I'll have a job. (At times my confidence levels can border on arrogance) That way we’ll at least have money coming in….’ I paused waiting while the lottery balls of ideas rolled around inside my head. Another idea fell into the tube that came out of my mouth.
‘And…’ Julie said.
‘And, then we save up the deposit to rent a house, and then, boom! We all get back together again.’ Saying this out loud it sounded easy. I knew it wouldn’t be.
‘Saving up a deposit will take a while.’ Julie said.
‘Maybe not too long.’ I said pacing the room
with my hand forked around my jaw. ‘Don’t forget we’ll hopefully, have some of the four hundred quid we get back from the farmer. That will kick start our savings.’ Julie was shaking her head. I really didn’t need any negative vibes right now. I just wanted her to go along with this.
‘Some, maybe most of that money we will have to spend renting a removal van. We will have to buy diesel for the removal truck and for the Transit van and then there is petrol for the car.’
‘I can buy the fuel using Smithy’s company petrol credit card.’ I said, hoping and praying the petrol company hasn’t worked out he hasn’t been paying the bills and had closed the account.
Julie flashed me a look. ‘You can’t possibly… I mean. For all of them… use that dodgy card to fill up every vehicle?’
I shrugged. ‘I can try.’
Julie didn’t put up much of a fight, she knew me well enough to know I was going ahead regardless. What did surprise me was how well Julie took the news I planned to live in London, for weeks, possibly months.
‘You’ll be gone a while.’
I nodded. ‘Yep, but hopefully not for too long,’ I said. ‘You’ll be okay though?’
Julie shrugged. ‘Have to be, won’t I?’
Having secured Julie’s backing for my plan I could now take it forward. Next I would call up my Mum and ask if it’s okay to stay at hers. I didn’t see that being a problem, knowing my mum she would have taken in all ten of us siblings in at one go and loved it! That’d be just like when we were kids. I guess, even at her age, she must miss having loads of kids around.
Before I could put my scheme to bed there was one last, thorny issue that I needed Julie to agree to, and this was going to be tricky. Broaching the subject was going to require spot-on timing–stealth, tact, empathy, and no small measure of cajoling.
To her credit Julie appeared to be taking this remarkably calmly. I stalled… thinking was this the best time to bite the bullet and tell her? I could only hopes that she’d understand…see sense. I had gone over every conceivable alternative of which there were none. It's no good. I am just going to have to tell her, I need to take her car!
There were some things that Julie might meet you halfway on, and occasionally even capitulate on. Then there were other issues that were so insensible to her cherished opinions that you just knew, well I did, that I was treading on sacred ground, and her beloved Nissan Bluebird was sacrosanct. Of course, had we stayed in Crawley, the Inland Revenue debt collectors would by now have snatched it.
Julie could be pedantic, and forthright in her views. Yet, I credited her with having a good practical head on her shoulders with a sharp practical understanding of the need for compromise and it was to this exemplary side of her nature that I made my appeal.
‘You want to take my car up to London! Are you kidding me?’
‘Think about it Julie,’ I said backing off and holding up the palms of my hands, ‘we’d be in the doggy doodah if we lost the Transit van, and driving it around London was asking for it to be seized. I promise…. cross my heart, I’ll get the car back to you as soon as I can.’
‘Yeah. How long?’ She growled. The angle of her neck and her cold scary eyes had me feeling like a mouse facing a cat.
‘I dunno,’ I stumbled. 'One…two days… one week…. at the most.’
‘A week!’
‘Look.’ I argued. ‘You can cadge a lift into work from your friend Carol. I mean she only lives round the corner and she works the same shift as you. I don’t see a problem.‘
‘You’d better look after it.’ She said poking a finger in my face and giving me that interrogators stare.
‘Of course I will’. I said in all seriousness. ‘And the first chance I get I will let you have it back.’
‘You know how much I love my car.'
‘Trust me Julie, I won’t put a scratch on it.' I said making the sign of the cross. She scowled at me.
‘Don’t do that stupid cross signing thing with me, and that's not how you do it. You don’t even believe in God.’
I shrugged. She had me bang to rights. ‘Julie, have a little faith will you? The car’s going to be fine.’ My words trailed off when I recalled last time I had driven her car I could tell the clutch was beginning to slip. That, and the fact her car hadn’t been serviced in three years meant driving the Bluebird on a 600 mile round trip was taking a risk.
Crap! I wondered. Would it even get me there?