A Little Bit on the Side (2 page)

With more than half-a-dozen helpers assembled in her kitchen Ada’s first thought had been to fetch Tom back to the house, but now she was a little more composed she changed her mind.

‘No, let’s leave him where he is for a bit,’ she said. ‘He looked so comfortable and sort of happy out there, and this will be his last time. We’ll leave him till after dinner… But don’t go just yet.’

Turning to the cupboard she reached in and brought out a couple of bottles of parsnip wine and an assorted selection of glasses.

‘Year before last,’ she said. ‘A really good drop.’

Nobody left. ‘To Tom,’ said one of the men, and they all echoed the toast and sipped appreciatively. The second bottle was opened, and a third placed on the table. Then for half-an-hour or more they sat reflecting on the strange ways of life and death, and rehearsing all those comforting platitudes that help to ease the strain of such occasions.

‘Lovely way to go though, if it has to come. Just what old Tom would have wanted I’ll be bound.’

‘Hard on those who find you though.’

‘Always is though, always is - nothing changes that. Don’t matter how ready you are, it’s a blow.’

‘A pretty good life all-in-all. Saw a bit more of the world too than most of us when he was young.’

‘How old was he now Ada?’

‘Eighty-four last March.’

‘Eighty-four eh! He didn’t look it you know always came up with the best of the caulis at the village show too.’

This non-sequitur was more than enough to silence their routine exchanges of solicitudes, and so they sat in reflective silence for a moment or two before George expressed the thought that must have been in the minds of all the men.

‘Ada,’ he said. ‘Would you mind if….’

He nodded towards the door, and Ada had no difficulty understanding.

‘No, course not George. You’re his oldest friend. You pop out and see him if you want to, he’d like that’

And so, one by one, the men popped out to have a final word with Tom, and then they all left: the women to cook their bit of dinner and the men for a quick visit to the local, from where the news soon spread. The understanding was that they’d be back about two-ish to bring him in, but before then more than half of the immediate neighbours must have been down to gaze through the bottom hedge at old Tom sitting there gazing out over two flourishing rows of caulis which would surely have taken the prize once again.

When three of the men had returned, Ada went down with them to the privy where with all proper respect they sorted Tom out, gently pulled up his trousers, and prepared to bring him back to the house. By that time, however, Tom had stiffened up a bit and wasn’t exactly willing to cooperate. His passage along the path, through the door, and finally up the stairs and into his bed was an awkward, angular affair with arms and legs getting in the way however they turned, but they did it with as much dignity as they could muster, and eventually Tom was back and at rest. Ada could then turn to the formalities which she had known all along had to be observed, but she wasn’t going to have anyone mucking Tom about, she said, until she got him back and laid out comfortably.

If the doctor was surprised at the somewhat irregular disposition of Tom’s limbs for a man who had supposedly died peacefully in his bed he said nothing, and as both he and the local representative of the law had known Tom and Ada for many long years, neither was inclined to be a stickler about the finer points of the legislation. A death certificate was issued without question: Tom had died from natural causes, and was ready to proceed to his final rest without any interference from the coroner’s office.

At the highest point of the village stood The Barton Shepherd, generally known as the Sheepshagger, or more briefly the Shagger, to the exclusively male customers who gathered in its public bar to enjoy, or as some said endure, the somewhat unusual bitter and mild that flowed from the nearby Stanton brewery. An eccentric brew, as a visitor once described it, but at least it was well kept by Albert who knew his customers and how to keep them satisfied, which he did far into the small hours when they gathered that evening to celebrate the life, times and passing of Tom Sutton. The last of his generation and the end of an era, said the vicar, who was never averse to spending a convivial hour or so with his flock.

That, as his flock would certainly have noted, was not an original thought from the Rev Breakwell, who had used it at the passing of every one of the old brigade for the last five or six years. On this occasion however it embodied what all of them knew well to be true. Old times and ways were passing fast, with the post-war world increasingly breaking in to disturb Barton’s long isolation.

Within two years or so of Tom’s death the first incomers arrived when two of the smaller holdings on the sheltered side of the hill were sold. One to a businessman from Wolverton who visited the property only occasionally, and possessed of more money than sense, taste or decency, allowed the land to revert to scrub, and turned the house and out-buildings into a rural gin-palace with a conversion that spat in the eye of local convention and building styles. The other to the Gillans, a youngish couple in their thirties who by dint of hard work, common sense and a fund of practical knowledge earned the respect and acceptance of the local community astonishingly quickly by the way in which they applied themselves with some success to achieving self-sufficiency on a worn-out and run-down small-holding. They would be followed by many who tried to do the same and failed.

Traditionalists and conservative to the soles of their muck-encrusted boots, the men of Barton Hill, for it was still only the men whose opinions carried any weight, looked on these local developments with a jaundiced eye, as they looked on all change, both locally and in the world at large. Contented and at ease with the old Tory paternalism that they had known for so long, they condemned all post-war nationalisation out of hand. Surreptitious use of the NHS was, however, tolerated by the patrons of the Shagger, but when ‘gummy’ Alcock of the sunken chops and lisping speech startled them all by returning after a short absence with a gleaming set of dentures and perfect enunciation, he received few congratulations, and was henceforth marked down as a Labour man.

Comfortable once again with the return of Winnie’ and the urbane MacMillan, their loyalty was subsequently severely and doubly tested. First when the Beeching cuts brought the loss of Barton Halt at the foot of the hill, and then when the Profumo affair burst like a bomb in the bar of the Shagger, where it silenced all talk of improvement grants, the pool price of milk and a local outbreak of liver fluke, as the regulars eagerly devoured each succeeding instalment of the Cliveden scandal.

A few grey heads may have been shaken with token disapproval, but for the most part they soaked it up with the same eagerness as they soaked up their beer, and the publication in the Sunday Mirror of ‘that photo of that Keeler woman’ was the event of the year. It stopped them mid-pint as their libidinous imaginations ran wild on the sensual delights enjoyed by those they still considered as their masters and betters. But if it sowed any seeds of political doubt it didn’t stop them voting en masse against Wilson and all he stood for.

Any socialist or liberal concepts were anathema to them. Staunch supporters to the last of the death penalty they inveighed against the relaxation of laws on homosexuality and abortion. It wasn’t right was it? It wasn’t natural. No good would come of it all! And with an inbuilt rustic stubbornness and a reluctance to allow to their wives a freedom they themselves enjoyed, they objected to the use of the pill. At home they sired their wives’ children, and away they occasionally sired one they couldn’t acknowledge, and that was an end of it. From then on it was up to the women.

Such was the reactionary, bigoted, narrow-minded and insular community into which Jack Manning was to blunder as he, increasingly restless in his job and of his lot in life, decided like many before him, to opt out of city or town living and go in search of the rural idyll. He hadn’t set his sights on Barton Hill from the outset, but the remoteness appealed to him. It was at the heart of an area he loved, and he knew the surrounding countryside well.

A visit from an old friend provided the excuse, and a fine summer weekend the opportunity, to get out the car and potter off to the west with no particular object in mind other than that of ending up for lunch in Barlow, a handsome old country town that in many ways still seemed to be living in the thirties, having avoided the excesses of re-development that blighted so many towns in the south. It also had the attraction of The Parish Pump, a rambling sixteenth century building which over the years had lived many lives as blacksmith, drapers, barber-surgeon and others until, when Barlow bloomed for a few decades as a fashionable regency resort, it finally settled down to life as an inn, and so remained.

For those who had the good sense and taste to choose The Pump for their eating and drinking there was the reward of a cook who provided traditional food that was as good as its range was limited, and a landlord who was fussy about the way he kept his traditional beers, and pulled a pint of freezing lager with illdisguised contempt. Such was Jack’s anticipation that he could almost taste his favourite bitter on his tongue as he set off with Kate, his wife, and Roger, an old friend from their early days in London.

Turning immediately on to the minor roads and country lanes he loved, Jack meandered along with no particular object in mind other than to travel west and chat as they went. They reminisced over old times, caught up with the news (mainly Roger’s), and then just talked. Or rather Roger talked: a cold, methodical dissection of Jack’s naive vision of the smallholding life, in which he drew upon the unattractive reality of his own far from romantic country childhood, but by then it was clear that Jack had got the bit between his teeth and wasn’t listening.

Forty minutes of motoring found them waiting impatiently in a narrow lane leading to Barton Hill, while a flock of sheep squeezed by on either side, filling the car with the greasy, malodorous stink of soiled fleeces drying out after an overnight shower.

‘If you’re thinking of taking on something like this you must be bloody raving,’ said Roger, nodding at two pathetic old ewes limping towards them who, despite their condition, insisted on disputing the narrow passageway alongside the car, and in the course of their bumping and boring exhibited a pair of revolting, stinking rumps on which the wool was matted into a foul and tangled mass by their diarrhetic discharges.

‘That’s about the measure of what you can expect if you meddle with sheep,’ said Roger, ‘Foot-rot, scours and hour after hour of hard graft for no return with God’s most stupid creation.’

Jack’s response was cut short as the last of the sheep passed by, and the young boy who was driving them bent towards the window and offered what might have been a few words of thanks, or just as easily a mouthful of abuse.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Jack. ‘I’d always heard that the Barton Hill dialect was a strong one, but that was utterly incomprehensible.’

A little further along, where the lane widened, Jack pulled off to the side, and they set out to stretch their legs as far as the top of Midden Hill, Barton’s lower neighbour. Initially it was comfortable walking over turf close-cropped by the sheep, but on the final stretch it became a steep climb, and they were breathing hard by the time they got to the Iron Age camp at the top and dropped down onto the grass behind the ridge of the old defences, where they were out of the wind that blew on both the hills even when it was calm below.

‘God it’s so shaming Jack,’ said Roger when he had caught his breath. ‘Clapped out and not yet forty. Fifteen years ago we’d have done that at the jog-trot and still had breath for a seven-a-side. Too many fags, and too much bitter.’

‘And in your case too many loose women I suspect, but don’t let’s go into that.’

‘Ah well, we can’t all have your luck of a happy marriage with a good woman,’ said Roger blowing Kate a kiss.

Kate, very genteelly, held up two fingers in response, and then they stretched out in the sun, content to lie there quietly while they smoked a cigarette, and watched the broken clouds scudding across the sky towards the east.

Once again on their feet they could see, far away where the clouds were heading and almost lost in a haze of city pollution, the cluster of high-rise flats that marked out the centre of Wolverton, to which Jack commuted daily from his ‘executive’ style house on the outskirts of the city. Close by to the west was Barton Hill, and further off the spire of the old parish church of Barlow, marking their lunchtime destination and the pint for which Jack was now more than ready after his exertions.

Once back in the car, the snug bar at The Pump was little more than half-an-hour’s drive away, but their journey was interrupted once again as they dropped down to the lower slopes on the western side of Barton Hill where Kate spotted a ‘For Sale’ sign pointing off into one of the side roads.

‘Oh do turn off Jack and let’s have a look. We’ve seen nothing we fancy so far, perhaps Roger will bring us luck.’

With his lunchtime pint and meal so near and yet so far, Jack turned off the main road reluctantly, but when they stopped and stepped out to look around, he wondered whether Kate might perhaps be right.

Sheltered on the north-east by the bulk of the hill and a long copse of trees, the property stood on a little plateau with an open prospect to the south and west across the richer pastures and arable land of the lower levels. The house itself was unexceptional in appearance, but the location was outstanding, with uninterrupted views across the valley to Barlow and beyond, where under a blue haze in the far distance the Welsh hills marked the horizon.

To the side of the short drive leading up to the house a large barn serving either as a garage or stables carried a sign providing further information, ‘House and nine acre smallholding of mixed pasture and woodland.’ ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Roger, when he saw the look in Jack’s eyes. ‘You really weren’t born for the clodhopping life. It wouldn’t suit you. Take it from me: I saw enough of it as a kid. Nine acres is either too little or too much, and with hill farming it’ll be all hard slog, sheep shit and disappointment. Hang on to the day job however pissed off with it you feel, and leave this game for the mugs.’