Chorus Endings

Growing up in a rural Hampshire village during the immediate post-war years, Peter and his companions lead a carefree existence roaming the countryside at will and finding adventures round every corner. Their great hero is an artist living hermit-like on the edge of the forest, universally known as Jimmy the Saint. Jimmy holds them spellbound with tales of the village's past: Chirper Edwards the ineffectual town-crier; No-Good Naughton and Freddy the Fop, the Squire's disreputable forebears; Stoyan the Jutish warrior, and Morgana the pagan goddess. How smugglers once swaggered along tunnels beneath the Square, highwaymen shared their loot at Harry's turnpike and mythical creatures – the grampus, screech-owl and cockatrice – awaited unsuspecting wayfarers in the neighbouring woodland. But all is not as it seems, nor Jimmy the man they'd taken him to be, as Peter – now a university lecturer – discovers by chance some forty years later. He and his wife, Helen, set out to trace such...