Tollesbury Time Forever (2 page)

Bang!

So long Ray…

“Ray’s gone again,” came a voice from behind me.

Two men were sitting at one of the tables by the window, shrouded from the sun by a yellowed net curtain.

“Lasted well today,” said the other man. “Almost made it ‘til three.”

“How are the kids, Jim?” asked the balder of the two. He wore a sleeveless black t-shirt and blue jeans that were just a little too tight. The few remaining hairs that he had were falling off the back of his head; and his eyes twinkled with mischief...

“They’re fine, Bill. Younger boy is a bit of a bugger, but the wife keeps him in check. Up to all sorts I don‘t doubt when we can‘t see him, over by the bus stop and round the Rec. My young ‘uns can do what they like, but when they‘re with me I have their language clean and their hands where I can see ‘em! I‘ve always said that, Bill, haven‘t I? ”

“True enough mate,” replied Bill. “You have always said that. More or less every time I see you.”

It was early afternoon and not time yet for Jim to bite on the maggots of sarcasm that Bill dangled for him.

“You know what you need to do with your boy?” tried Bill again, sipping his pint, looking up at his old friend as he did so, knowing that Jim would not be able to resist answering the question that had been thrown up so expertly. It was like an itch that just had to be scratched.

“Go on.”

“Child-kill him,” said Bill plainly. “Simple as that. Child-kill him.”

Jim was savouring his pint when he received this advice from his friend. He didn’t spit it out like some may have. He merely used the dusky ale to delay his response, to enable him to gather his thoughts before answering. And when he did so, he asked the questions that surely anyone would have asked.

“What do you mean, you old bastard? Are you mad?”

Bill leaned back on his chair and drained a good half a pint of his Guinness.

“Jim, Jim, my boy. You can‘t be talking like that. Think of the ladies.”

At this point I was tempted to peer over my shoulder. Blind Lemon Jefferson wailed from the jukebox that sat regal and unforgiving from the other side of the pub. A pool cue that was leaning against the side of the immaculate pool table slid to the floor with a clack as the brutal blues beat took hold. The bells of St Mary’s church chimed thrice and a man I had never seen before put his money in the payphone by the bar and began explaining to a woman at the other end of the line that he was stuck in traffic and may be some time.

“So, what do you mean, Bill? Bloody child-killing.” Jim tutted. “This had better be good.”

Bill waited for a moment for dramatic effect, surely aware that I was listening in on the conversation. The barmaid too was leaning over now, slowly drying a glass. The clock behind the bar ticked onto three o’clock. It was always a little slow. Or maybe it was just the way time worked in The King’s Head, following its own unique course, letting things happen as they may. Some people say the whole of Tollesbury is like that - dragging behind; entirely of its own order; entirely of its own time.

“You mean you haven’t heard of the Child-killer? Without him, my lads would have been well out of hand. Look at them now. Good honest boys. All at work. Not a conviction between them. Two married and one at university. You can’t ask for more than that. And all straight, mind, straight as you like.”

Jim sat back and waited for Bill to continue his story, relaxing a little. The sun was in the sky, the beer was in the
keg and the day yawned ahead like the best of half-terms. I could sense Jim’s feeling of well-being even from where I sat, hunched alone at the bar. And I envied him, murderously.

“About a hundred and fifty years ago, give or take,” began Bill, “Tollesbury was much the same as it is now. A few less houses, a few more farms and obviously not so many people. And those people that were there all knew each other. None of this coming down from London business to live in the country. In them days you were born in Tollesbury, you lived in Tollesbury and you were buried in Tollesbury. Just the way it was. You didn’t get too many strangers round here in them times.”

Bill glanced over at the payphone before continuing, but the man had gone.

“Well, the story goes that the children in the village started to rebel against their parents; they became badly behaved and disrespectful. Some even talked of leaving Tollesbury when they grew up, to go to Tiptree or even Colchester. Not D’arcy though - never D‘arcy. At that time, the whole village depended upon manpower to make sure the crops were harvested and the fleets were able to bring in the fish and oysters from up the river. The elders of the village began to foresee a time when perhaps the whole fabric of their economy would fall apart. The Lord only knows what they would have made of the old Crab and Winkle railway line! These were frightening times, my old friend, frightening times for sure. But they were about to get just a bit more frightening.”

“Another two beers here please, Carrie; Bill‘s paying,” called Jim to the barmaid who was by now unashamedly taking in Bill’s every word. Interesting stuff, thought Jim, but a man can’t sit with an empty pint - not in The King’s Head.

“So then, one night, so they say,” continued Bill, “a stranger came into the village. No-one knew where he came from, he just appeared. And then, ten days later, one of the Tollesbury boys was found dead in his bed. He was only about a year old. Battered to death with a piece of wood. Poor lad. And the stranger was never seen again. Some say he was found
hanging down by the marshes, others that he made his way to London and carried on killing. One thing is for sure, those children started to behave right there and then, no more tantrums and no more fancy thoughts of working up in bloody Colchester and the like. The crops were harvested and the oysters were landed. And everything went back to normal.”

Bill picked up his fresh pint and sipped it as if it were wine.

“And?” said Jim.

“And what?” said Bill.

“What has that got to do with anything?”

Bill smiled.

”When I was younger,” he said, “I was always told that if I didn’t behave, then that stranger would come and get me. The Child-Killer. Scared the life out of me. That’s how you sort your lad out, Jim. Simple as that. Child-kill him. What worked back in my day still works now, mark my words.”

Jim nodded solemnly.

The cider was poured and the cider was drunk. People came and went and I stayed. The day grew into evening and the evening succumbed to the blackness of night. And the cider turned into whisky. I let it burn right into me. It set me on fire inside and then numbed me as it always did.

When the final bell went, I was the last to leave. I lurched, stumbling and clattering into the village square, like a coin that had been ejected from a machine, and was left to whirl in circles before coming to a halt face down on the floor. That was me, the man that nobody cared about or dared to understand. But it had not always been thus. That was where the pain was - in the fact that it had not always been thus.

I staggered whisky drunk under the moon, falling, sprawling, tumbling and crumbling. Every now and then I stopped, just paused on all fours, hands and knees in the dirty ground, possibly grinning. And I waited like that for a moment or two as the night sky righted itself, looking for all the world as if I were about to take part in some improbable race for inebriates. Then I fell sideways and lay on my back facing the blackness and the stars.

To drink, or not to drink: there is no question:

Surely ‘tis a sickness of the mind that suffers

The stinging contempt of the gorgeous blue moon.

So just let the King’s Head forgive us our trespasses

And by drinking forget them. To die: to sleep;

No more...

And there I was again, where I had started my day; gazing into the profundity of the Tollesbury salt marshes. I was drunk and desperate and could think of nothing to make me leave. Old Jed and Jake walked solemnly by again. Jed nodded to me and I nodded back in return. The marshes were there before me; my life was behind me. I had no choice. Alcohol had given me no choice. Diagnosis and medication had given me no choice.

It had come to this. Fifty years old. Fifty. A decent batting average, but still not a part of the team. I had ever been lacking some identifiable quality that would give meaning to the whole. My life had been inflicted upon me and this is where it ended. I felt, at last, a feeling of peace. Nobody would miss me. It was time to go.

So I stood as best I could to my full height and let myself fall forwards into the gloom of the dark marsh water. I remember the feeling of the cold, dirty sludge consuming me and I remember saying goodbye to my life. All over in a splash.

Except it wasn’t all over. For I awoke; how many hours later, I couldn‘t say. I was dirty, dry and alive and huddled on the urine stained floor of what seemed to be a wooden cell. It smelled of hops and vomit. The only light came through a barred window no larger than the size of a paperback book, high up in the door before me. I stood up and peered through the aperture. My fearful eyes squinted against the light that assailed them and I flopped back down again, still no nearer to discovering my whereabouts.

Before I could truly get my bearings, there was a loud crack that shook me instantly. I covered my ears as the noise continued. Someone was banging on the wooden door. I stood once more, tremulous.

“Out, drunk!”

The door opened and I fell out of the village lock-up and into Tollesbury village square. I was kneeling in filth and straw. There were cattle wandering in front of the King’s Head and several people strolling purposefully about all dressed in dull, loose clothes. A smell of dung plunged into my lungs and I could do nothing but try to cough it out. A small boy walked towards me and leaned over my confused frame. I was on all fours, more akin to the cattle than the people.

”What’s happening?” I asked the boy. A graveyard grin cracked his grimy little face in half.

“Away lad!” shouted a large man who now stood before me. He held a wooden baton in one hand. It must have been he who had rapped upon the door of the lock-up and yanked me out. The blue of the sky framed his oafish face.

“What’s happening?” I repeated.

The man breathed deep, irritated. “What’s happening? What’s happening? Well, you ain’t be getting drunk in Tollesbury no more stranger. Not now you’ve slept it off. This village don’t be for the likes of you. This is 1836, not the bloody middle ages. You go back to London or wherever you came from. You not be wanted here.”

I looked up at the Tollesbury sky. It had begun to darken. The bells of St Mary’s church tolled. And a huge sense of foreboding filled my very soul.

England.

1836.

William IV was on the throne, though he was to die in April of the following year. The Viscount Melbourne was twelve months into his second term as Prime Minister (or more correctly, First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords) and Darwin was about to return on the Beagle to work on his theories of evolution. 1836 also saw the first running of the Grand National at Aintree as well as the monthly serialisation of Charles Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers.

And what of me? Well, I remained on my knees for some moments, my head bowed, and my hands upon the ground. For what else was I to do? If I could have curled up tight on my side and snuggled up in the straw and the mud, then surely I would have; for I needed the comfort and safety only a womb can bestow. In time, the scene around me edged its way into my senses - the smells, the sounds and the sights. So I sat back slowly upon my haunches, aching unaccountably, and imbibed of all before me.

What I first noticed was the clarity of it all. I could smell the sweetness of apples, the gentle scent of newly baked bread and the charred potency of potato skins crackling over a fire. The air was a tangible construct, consisting of the fragrances around me, fragrances that pulsated within me as I breathed them in. I could taste peaches bursting, hear the crunch of lettuce and feel the smouldering smoke from a roasting lamb. It was at once dense yet pure, like nothing I had ever experienced before. Had I closed my eyes at that moment in order to further intensify the experience, I swear I would never have opened them again.

Finally, I stood, leaned back against the closed door of the village lock-up for support and stared up at the Tollesbury
sky. I then gained the courage to lower my gaze, breathed deeply once more and looked straight ahead, realizing in an instant that my previous, albeit brief, view of the square had not deceived me. Grass and cattle and ragged children. Belief did not come into it. I saw what I saw, I smelled what I smelled and I felt what I felt. You can’t take that away from me, not with medication, not with clever words - for it was real, absolutely real.

There were some cows being led through the square from the Recreation Ground to the direction of the High Street and a group of small children dressed in grubby smocks and knee length trousers was running in front, turning now and then to circle the bemused creatures. A large, heavy man urged the cattle on from the side with a long, bowed stick and scowled at the laughing boys and girls. But behind the scowl was a recognition of the inevitable and, perhaps, a distant memory of having once been one of those errant scamps.