Brensham Village (22 page)

‘Aye,' said Pistol.

‘Ar,' said Bardolph.

And Billy, forgetting for the moment his own misery, looked at them across the platform and winked.

The speeches over, the Rector got up to make his final appeal; but there was a great deal of noise going on at the back of the hall and he found difficulty in making himself
heard. ‘Silence for the Rector!' cried Pistol in a loud voice. ‘Let Mr Wilkinson have his say!' echoed Nym. The Rector allowed his hands to rest upon their shoulders while he waited for the noise to subside. ‘Gall me Thistle, dear boys,' he whispered. ‘Gall me Thistle.'

But alas, the disturbing noise grew louder. It had begun as a low menacing mutter; and indeed the Groupers had taken it for applause. Now it swelled in volume and took the shape of a rhythmic chanting, like that of primitive tribes, and amid the increasing pandemonium the amazed occupants of the platform were able at last to distinguish the words:

‘What's in the salmon-nets today-ay?
What's in the salmon-nets today?'

The Groupers, knowing nothing of village history and believing that the chanted meaningless question was directed at themselves, quailed and sought escape; the tennis-player with great presence of mind slipped out through a side-door and ran to fetch the policeman. Shouts and dreadful oaths now interrupted the chant; there was a yell of pain followed by a scuffling of feet, there were cries of ‘Wife stealers!' ‘Gallows birds!' and ‘Murderers' and suddenly pandemonium reigned, as the doors at the rear of the hall burst open and a score of screaming, pummelling, kicking Gormleys followed by a score of screeching, biting, scratching Fitchers rushed forth and passed in headlong rout down the peaceful village street of Brensham.

And Ginger Shall Be Hot i' the Mouth too

The Colonel was a man who knew a great deal about drink and drinking; I do not mean that he was in the precise sense
of the word a connoisseur, but he was at least able to deliver a sound judgement upon the alcoholic content of any liquid you put in front of him. Therefore we were both surprised and interested when he said to Joe Trentfield one night in the Horse Narrow:

'Give me a double ginger wine, Joe. I believe the beastly stuff has a kick in it.'

While Joe brought his drink the Colonel nodded in the direction of Billy Butcher, who was standing at the other end of the bar with the Lett, the tennis-player, and Sally Doan.

‘It is just possible,' he said, ‘that the ginger wine in some curious way has become fermented. There is no other explanation. For if you can tell me of any non-alcoholic drink which will make a man's eyes as red as a ferret's, cause him to stagger whenever he lets go of the bar, and provoke him to quote poetry, I'll eat my hat. And on account of the fish-hooks in it that might prove indigestible.'

The Lett, who had learned a little English, came across to the Colonel and said:

‘I see you also by damn on water-wagon! Dam' good! Billie he stick to non-alk three weeks. Dam' good. Life changed. God does it. Maybe He do you too, dam' miracle, yes by damn no!'

The Colonel lifted his drink, smelt it, sipped it and rolled it round his tongue. A look of acute distaste passed over his features. ‘I thought so,' he said. ‘By God, I thought so! The President of the Blue Ribbon League couldn't get drunk on a gallon.' The expression of distaste faded; and suddenly his rough winter face softened into spring. A zephyr crossed it, then another, and he smiled as the orchards smile in blossom-time; but behind the zephyr came the breeze, and soon the Colonel began to laugh, and the breeze freshened into a strong wind and the wind into a gale; a huge hurricane of laughter shook him as he leaned across the bar to
Joe and whispered: ‘Now then, you rogue, the secret's out. What do you put in it? Gin?'

Joe nodded.

‘He came to me and said he couldn't stand it any longer; would I slip a double gin into it every time he asked for a glass of ginger wine? Well, Colonel, how could I refuse? He looked that miserable, and you know I likes to see people enjoying themselves. 'Twas common charity to do it; and he squares up prompt and regular at the end of the week. Besides ‘twas my opinion the teetotal stuff was killing him quicker nor the spirits would.'

‘Ah well,' said the Colonel, ‘it's a nice point of morals; and I'm blowed if I know whether the Recording Angel will put it to the debit or credit of your account. Meanwhile for God's sake take the nasty stuff away and give me a large whisky!'

At the other end of the bar, to the applauding Lett, the puzzled tennis-player, and the utterly uncomprehending Sally, Billy was quoting at great length from
Hamlet
.

‘
Stulta Maritali jam porrigit or a capistro
,' said Mr Chorlton with a sigh. ‘At last he stretches out his foolish head to the conjugal halter.' We had just come from the wedding of Billy Butcher to Sally Doan, Spinster of Brensham parish, and now Mr Chorlton and I walked back through the churchyard while the Groupers continued to entertain bride and bridegroom at an uproarious party on the Rectory lawn. After all, it was their little triumph; for good or ill it was the only positive thing they had achieved at Brensham. The rest of their few converts were already beginning to melt away. Sammy Hunt had left them, and
now when he met us he looked more than ever like a dog who is conscious that it has made a mess in the corner. Jeremy Briggs had discovered that Democracy is not simply achieved through calling everybody by their Christian names, and finding what he described as ‘the seeds of Fascism' among some of the Groupers he had angrily walked out of one of their meetings, swearing he would never return. Even Mrs Hartley was beginning to doubt the validity of her after-breakfast Guidance as Jim became more morose and ill-tempered every day. Only Sally Doan, her mother and Billy remained; and with these last pieces upon the chess-board the Groupers played out their disastrous game. They were well-meaning, of course; they were quite sure, terrifyingly sure, that they were God's instruments in doing good; and what more obvious example of doing good than to complete the supposed reformation of Billy Butcher by providing him with a devoted wife, and a mother-in-law who was almost as possessive as a mother, to look after him till death them did part?

‘What a Human Story!' whispered the Rector to Mr Chorlton in the church porch. ‘And what a Happy Ending!'

It had been, however, an uncomfortable ceremony. Billy, in a mood of savage acquiescence, had obviously taken a good many ‘ginger wines' beforehand to sustain himself; he came to his wedding with the swaggering devil-may-care of Petruchio but without Petruchio's gaiety, and both within the church and at the reception indulged in so much clumsy clowning that even foolish doting Mrs Doan looked alarmed and fluttered in agitation like an old hen. But Sally seemed ecstatically happy; her bright eyes shone and she wore the expression of one who is about to undergo a willing and a joyful martyrdom. It was clear that she had Dedicated her Life to the redemption of Billy. But Mr
Chorlton looked at the matter in a different light. ‘She has been Butchered,' he said, ‘to make a Grouper's holiday.'

Now he paused at the lych-gate to light his pipe, and looked back at the airy spire of our lovely church, and said:

‘You know, John, it is a very curious thing. I am an agnostic, and I find in all religions, including the Christian one, a perpetual affront to my reason: and yet I find too, deep in my heart, a real and growing affection for this Church of England. Why?'

He paused and puffed hard to get his pipe going.

‘Now why?' he went on. ‘Historically it is absurd, being the bastard child of a king's folly and a pope's obstinacy; born of accident and compromise, with a breath of puritanical brimstone at its christening which doesn't seem to have done it any harm. Its dogma is so confused that even its Bishops have difficulty in defining it, and end up by allowing their flock to believe anything, everything or nothing so long as they refrain from causing a scandal. The structure of its doctrine is as much a mixture of different styles and periods as the physical structure of our church, which is a blend of early Norman, late Norman, fourteenth century and Perp, with a three-decker pulpit and an octagonal font in which old Mountjoy, rest his soul, used to keep his little fishes. And a lot of perfectly odious late-Victorian windows presented by Lord Orris' father! But the building is homogeneous, isn't it - almost as much part of the landscape as the hedges and the trees? Now look at its doctrine; take a slice of the Reformation, spice it with English puritanism and butter it with English tolerance, add a pinch of popery, boil it in English Conservatism, and garnish it with all the extraordinary odds and ends such as Establishment and Tithe, Queen Anne's Bounty and the Parson's Glebe and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. What a recipe! And then bear in mind the fact that a country
living may be in the gift of a layman who doesn't believe in Christianity at all or a squire whose only anxiety is to appoint a clergyman who hunts and plays a good game of bridge! And yet,' repeated Mr Chorlton, leaning on the wall beside the wicket-gate, ‘I love it. Agnostic though I am, I want to be buried in this churchyard when I die, and I should be very content for some absurd old clergyman such as Mountjoy to say over me those splendid words in the Burial Service: dust to dust and ashes to ashes. The funny thing is that thousands of people who don't believe in it have the same feeling. I suppose in Greece and Rome, when the old Gods fell out of favour and people ceased to believe in their thunderbolts and their power, the crumbling ivy-grown altars were still regarded with a sort of half-amused, half-apologetic affection, and people made an occasional shame-faced sacrifice at them for old time's sake. That is how I feel about the C. of E. and I still wonder why!'

It was a perfect September afternoon, and the spire rose steeply above us into a blue sky. The swifts swept round it, screeching as they hunted flies. A thrush was cracking snails against the gravestones in the churchyard, and I noticed that Mr Mountjoy's nesting-boxes hadn't yet been removed from the church porch. Mr Chorlton went on:

‘I suppose the answer is that it's not a system but a spirit: as Gilbert Murray said of Plato. It has grown up with England, and its history is largely hers. It has suckled on her wisdom and fed on her tolerance. It isn't, thank goodness, militant here on earth, and it doesn't want to torture or burn or excommunicate people who disagree with it. It just keeps its doors open for anybody who wants to come in. And inside there's no ranting nonsense nor anything to shock us or embarrass us or make us think too deeply. A healing draught if you like that sort of thing, but no strong poison. I once had a friend who was the most easy-going
chap I ever knew; and he summed up his whole doctrine in a single sentence: “
It doesn't matter what you do so long as you don't frighten the horses
.” Surely that's our attitude in this part of England; we've never been troubled by Irish Shouters, Welsh Jumpers, Cornish Revivalists or any sort of dancing dervishes before; and we don't like ‘em.'

He glanced across towards the Rectory garden, where the Groupers were playing some absurd game which looked rather like leapfrog. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand.

‘That midsummer madness will pass,' he said. ‘It is brief and evanescent. It has no roots. It isn't part of the pattern. Indeed I think, as far as Brensham is concerned, it is passing already. It commits the unforgivable sin: it frightens the horses.'

And indeed, before the leaves fell, the strange episode was over. The Rector and his proselytizing young wife lost heart and hope suddenly. For six months they had laid siege to our citadel with no more success than the taking of a few hostages and the temporary breach, perhaps, of a bastion or an outer wall. But Brensham quickly repaired the breach, and the hostages began to come back to us one by one: Sammy, Briggs and at last Mrs Hartley, who devoted her days to the concoction of tasty dishes and the preparation of innumerable snacks for Jim, to make up for his months of privation. Then Pistol, Bardolph and Nym, having decided that there was no more to be got out of the Groupers, sold their motor-bike and sidecar for forty pounds and began to drink the proceeds; but this process was interrupted when Bardolph, becoming incapable, and Nym, becoming
disorderly, were both sent to prison. Pistol soberly awaited their release; for he had no pleasure in drinking alone.

Soon the Rector's ‘house-parties' became smaller. (‘A good thing,' said Joe Trentfield, ‘for really, we never felt our daughters were really safe, with all those Niggers about.') At last they ceased altogether in consequence of a most unfortunate happening which occurred in early October. There had been, for several weeks, a minor epidemic of burglary and petty larceny in the district: Sir Gerald's house had been broken into and so had Lord Orris' (though the luckless thief found nothing worth stealing there). Then, one night, Banks intercepted the man who looked like a convict walking towards Elmbury with a heavy suitcase in his hand. This proved to be full of an assortment of articles which the Rector later identified as his silver spoons, fish-knives, gold watch, Venetian glasses, and his wife's diamond ring. In court the culprit asked for eleven other offences to be taken into consideration. When asked if he had anything to say, he pleaded humorously: ‘The temptation, your Honour, was put in my way. It was too much for an old lag. They were so simple!'

‘A fair enough comment,' said Mr Chorlton when he read the report in the local paper. ‘It would serve as a not-unkindly epitaph:
They were so simple!'

There were no house-parties after that. Shortly the Rector was offered another living, perhaps in some parish where the villagers were less mistrustful of strange and new things. He readily accepted, and his successor turned out to be a kindly old man whose hobby was numismatics and whose only ambition was the enjoyment of peace and quiet so that he might finish before he died his book of seven hundred pages on the
Theology of St Thomas Aquinas
.