A Little Bit on the Side (8 page)

‘Oh do belt up Jim,’ said Celia.

It was past two in the morning when Ted and Charlie took their leave to stagger off home, and by the time their version of events had mutated two or three times Jack’s reputation as a literary expert and authority on rare books was established throughout the county.

‘Think Celia could doss down here somewhere Jack?’ said Jimmy walking to the window and gazing out. ‘I feel like killing the bottle off and seeing the sun up. Are you game?’

‘Well I haven’t done this for years,’ said Jack, ‘But as it’s Sunday tomorrow, why not. You’ll sort Celia out with a bed won’t you Kate?’

Jimmy topped up the two glasses, and wishing the ladies goodnight they wandered out together into the night air, and as Kate led Celia up to the spare bedroom she could hear Jack saying, ‘Drummer Hodge, Jimmy. I’ve got it off by heart now. Gaze up into our friendly, old night sky. Listen, and learn.

They throw in drummer Hodge, to rest

Uncoffined — just as found:

His landmark is ….’

‘God he can be a pompous ass sometimes,’ said Kate as they passed out of hearing.

Within three years of his arrival on the hill Jack’s inept performance as a countryman, and the entertainment it provided to the locals, who watched it all from a distance with ill-concealed amusement, had done as much to endear him to the community as anything else might have. When he turned to them for advice and assistance his acceptance was finally assured.

The fate of Colditz, his fruit cage, in the January of their third winter had been the first act in his rural comedy. Determined not to share the fruit of his labours with the birds and other assorted wildlife, Jack had constructed the cage in the autumn of their arrival. With a stoicism and faith born more of love than common-sense and self-preservation, Kate stood below him holding each eight-foot support post upright while Jack, from the top of a step-ladder, swung a seven pound sledgehammer to drive it in. She survived to see their planting done and the nets in place.

Their plants flourished, and throughout the spring and early summer of the following year they watched their blackcurrants, raspberries and gooseberries swell and ripen with a satisfaction that was only a little dampened as the squirrels bit holes in the netting through which the birds could always find a way in, but never a way out, leading to anguished excursions by Kate to rescue them.

By the end of the season their losses were relatively modest, however, and with their harvest home, they had not only enough for their own pickling, jamming and freezing, but also a tidy surplus, which they offered to their cage-less neighbours, only to find that they too had their own surpluses by the simple expedient of planting an extra row or two for the birds.

At the end of the second season, with all crops gathered and the autumn pruning done, they forgot about the cage and turned to other things, which in mid-December included their first visit to the local pantomime in the village hall. This was an irregular not annual event, as it seemed to take the writers a couple of years or more to assemble the catalogue of salacious, scurrilous and near-libellous references that formed their theme.

Copulation, flatulence, defecation and various close encounters of the physical kind all featured in the script, but two items in particular marked a deviation from the usual rustic programme: the company’s own rural version of George Harrison’s
Cos I’m The Taxman,
and an obscene sketch of the seduction and subversion from duty of a taxman (unsubtly named Mr Mannering to hammer home the point) by the sexual wiles of the village tart. It was a rude, crude script, but it was played out with verve and gusto. Both items went down to great applause which Jack took as marking his final acceptance into the fold.

A mild, almost balmy, Christmas was followed, as is so often the case, by a dramatic change in the weather which made life on the hill, even on the sheltered western slope, a testing ordeal. For two days an arctic wind scoured the countryside driving the sheep to such shelter as they could find, and burning the last life from any vegetation that had clung on into the winter. Early on New Year’s Eve the wind fell away to an ominous calm, as a sullen, grey overcast slowly thickened around the hill, shrouding the heights and leaving the valleys in a threatening half-light.

Two hours or so before midnight, at Jimmy’s request, and having fortified themselves with a hot whisky, Jack and Kate set off to meet him at the Shagger for their first visit to the village New Year celebrations. As they passed the church they noticed with surprise that it was in darkness, and so it would remain. No Watch Night Service in St Matthew’s explained Jimmy when they met in the bar: the village kept to another, older tradition that no vicar had been able to usurp.

The bar was crowded, noisy and steamy-hot with the physical presence of its many ‘well-oiled’ customers; the atmosphere smoky, and heavy with an odour redolent of ladies’ Christmas perfumes subtly blended with the scent of cheap cigars and the body odours of men who make their living on the land, and may not long have left the milking parlour or pig-pen.

A call from the vicar took them over to the far corner of the bar where he was standing with a whisky and tempting Ada Sutton to her third Advocaat.

‘Thought I had to pop in to wish the mother of the village a Happy New Year, but I won’t stay long. Don’t want to spoil the party.’

Before he could say any more, he was interrupted by a younger group in what passed for the saloon bar, starting up with one of the latest pop songs, but in the public the older regulars were having none of that.

‘Come on Ted, give us one of your Dad’s songs with Charlie and show those youngsters what it’s all about,’ came a call from somewhere in the crush.

Ada’s two sons were well known in the village for keeping up the tradition of their father, and his father before him, in having at their disposal a repertoire of rustic songs, risqué or sentimental, that never failed to please an audience. Taking one long pull at their pints, which almost emptied the glasses, they moved out to a vantage point beside the fire, called for a bit of hush, put one hand to an ear, and began with
The Maid of Barton Hill
, one of Old Tom’s own compositions, with its lusty lads, mossy mounds and the raising up and laying down of ‘spirits.’ In those that followed there was much sowing of meadows, ploughing of furrows, thrashing of flails and clapping of hands on cuckoo’s nests, in which all the men and some of the ladies joined heartily, while those of a more reticent disposition sipped their port and simpered.

But when they turned to
The Chandler’s Wife
it was not so well received. It came with a repeating ‘knock, knock, knock’ in the last line of each increasingly suggestive chorus, which was taken up enthusiastically by the younger men who sang, clapped or hammered out the phrase on the bar or table top. But a few of the older men frowned their disapproval, and many of the women sat po-faced, for as midnight was fast approaching the audience was looking for a little nostalgia, and the singers scarcely had time to finish before some of the older folk were calling for Jimmy and
The Miner’s Dream of Home
.

Jimmy’s rich baritone came as a surprise to Jack, and he listened with admiration to a song the verse of which meant nothing to him until Jim got to the end, when every voice in the bar joined with him in with the chorus:

‘I saw the old homestead and faces I love,

I saw England’s valleys and dells,

And I listened with joy as I did when a boy....’

Only then did Jack recognise it as a favourite from the family Christmas gatherings of his early childhood, and he too joined in until he stalled on the final lines, when his eyes misted over and a lump rose in his throat, as it always did on such nostalgic occasions despite his best endeavours.

‘Oh my God,’ whispered Kate who knew him of old. ‘Don’t you dare let me down and have a cry. Think of your image, taxman.’

A few moments later, at a word from Albert, the bustle and chatter subsided, and they stood together in silence till the last stroke of the chimes at midnight faded away in the dark tower of St Matthew’s. But the New Year’s greetings and
Auld Lang Syne
that followed did not, as Jack had expected, mark an end to the evening’s proceedings.

‘Come on Ada, my love, your turn to lead the way this year. Get your coat on, Tom will be waiting,’ called Albert from behind the bar. At this Jack looked at Jimmy with surprise, but Jimmy simply motioned to him to stay silent and wait.

With their coats on, and with three or four picking up lanterns as they went, the whole of the Shagger’s company, lead by Ada on Albert’s arm, moved out of the bar and into the night, and the bar stood empty apart from the four incomers.

‘Give them a few more minutes, and then follow me,’ said Jimmy, and leaving a note and a handful of coins on the bar, he stepped behind it to pour them each another fortifying drink, before they too moved out into the darkness.

As they drew away from the lights of the Shagger towards the church, they could feel the gentle touch of snowflakes on their faces and the softness of settled snow beneath their feet, and Jack and Kate wondered where on earth they were being led, and why. Then, not many yards ahead of them, they saw the darker bulk of St Matthew’s looming against the gloom of the sky, and the gentle illumination of lanterns in the churchyard.

Heeding Jimmy’s caution to move quietly, they stole towards the low wall of the churchyard, and strained their eyes to follow the faint illumination of the lamps carried by the six or seven clusters of villagers as they separated and moved between the tombstones in the darkness, while those without any family connection (surprisingly few) stood quietly just inside the lych-gate.

Focussing on Ada, who was there with Albert, her two sons and four or five others they took to be family, they saw the group stop, and stand in silence for a few moments at what Jimmy said was old Tom’s grave, before Ted produced a bottle from his coat pocket, unscrewed the cap, and held it out to fill the little shot glasses the others had been carrying.

As they stood together, ready with glasses charged, Ted splashed a few drops from the bottle over the grave, said a few words which the listeners could not hear clearly, and then as one, they drank their New Year’s toast to the old boy.

At the other graves the same quiet ritual had taken place, but as the groups turned and came together again the solemnity of the visit was over, and as the lookers-on stole away towards their homes they could hear louder conversation and soft laughter.

‘That was fascinating,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve read about similar customs in other countries, but had no idea it existed here.’

Jimmy smiled, ‘Oh you’d be surprised what goes on. You’ll see them out on the fields with the latest equipment they can afford, or soaking their sheep in God knows what appalling modern chemicals, but at certain times of the year they’re still back in the Middle Ages. There’s well dressing every September down at Holly-well on the spring line. Some of the older ladies like Ada still talk to the bees, and I’m told that a few of the old boys sneak up to the top of the hill for sunset on Midsummer’s Eve. They have a quiet drink together, and then they each leave behind a twist of tobacco and a pipe. For the old spirits of the hill I was told, and they swear the tobacco has always gone when they return next day to pick up their pipes.’

‘Good story,’ said Jack. ‘I wonder who enjoys the smoke.’

When they returned home the snow was still falling, and more heavily: soft, fat flakes now that swirled around them like a blizzard of white autumn leaves, and already the telephone wires to the house were thickening as the flakes stuck, and accumulated.

They slept late the following morning, and when Jack drew back the curtains that opened to the west, it was to a clear blue sky and brilliant winter sunshine glistening on a snow-covered landscape stretching away beyond the spires of Barlow, and white against the horizon on the distant tops of the Black Mountains. It looked like being the perfect start to the New Year

They breakfasted leisurely, and late in the morning were still at the table listening to reports of heavy snowfalls across the whole of the West Midlands when Jimmy rapped on the window and beckoned them to open the door.

‘Good to see you out and about so early Jim,’ said Jack. ‘What a gorgeous start to the year.’

‘Breathtaking, and I don’t want to dampen your early enthusiasm Jack,’ said Jimmy. ‘But I think you should both get your gear on and come and have a look at your fruit cage. You’ve got a bit of a problem: spotted it on my walk. I’ll wait out here: don’t want to spread snow everywhere.’

Within a couple of minutes, booted and well wrapped up, they had joined Jimmy outside, and together they trod their way through the drifts of the night across the lawn, past the herbaceous border and hedge to the fruit and vegetable garden.

‘Oh Christ,’ was Jack’s only comment. Kate stood in stunned silence.

Where their fruit cage, so laboriously constructed, had formerly stood, was now a scene of utter devastation. Fat, heavy snowflakes, falling hour after hour throughout the night, had stuck and clung to the super-strong top mesh, which Jack in his ignorance had failed to draw back. Layer upon layer, snow upon snow, the load had gradually increased, until not even Jack’s three inch supports had been able to withstand the strain. Scarcely one remained unmoved. Most were slumped many degrees from the vertical, and here and there a post had broken and splintered, allowing the snow-laden netting to sag even further and flatten the bushes it was intended to protect.

‘Silly boy,’ said Jim. ‘If I’d noticed I’d have told you, but from a distance the netting wasn’t obvious: until it had the snow on it that is.’

By mid-day the news had been carried back to the village by other early risers out with their snow ploughs, and formed a tit-bit of conversation and entertainment among the regulars, who had gathered in the bar of the Shagger for a New Year’s hair of the dog.