Clearly this state of affairs couldn't be maintained for more than a few seconds, and it was Geoff who cut through the Gordian knot. With the authority of a man who knows what he's talking about, he called out, 'Jump!' And like a battle-hardened soldier who never questions an order, that's what I did.
Whether it was the ideal solution I shall never be sure. I might have scored a perfect ten for the landing, but for one factor. My right leg and foot were somewhat slowed in their bid to keep up with the rest of my body by the young woman's merciless grip round my ankle. Fortunately, even she had to let go as it scraped over the top rail.
'There,' she laughed, peering down at me, as the dog, tongue at the ready, poked its head through the woodwork, 'that's a lot better, innit?' And, though I could have done without the mirth, I had to admit she was right.
Because, at the moment I reached ground level, I'd had only one leg available to support me rather than the traditional two, I'd ended up crumpled in a humiliating heap in soft mud at the foot of the fence. However, a cursory survey of my limbs and vital organs revealed nothing more serious than a torn hiking sock and a damp backside, which can hardly be compared with the certain and horrible fate that would have befallen me if I'd been pitched head-first into the hawthorn hedge.
The young woman explained where the stile was, I got to my feet, and two minutes and three light hearted hops later, we were all on the far side of the fence.
I breathed deeply and strode on.
The three of us were now walking where the headstocks of Moorgreen pit had stood up to that Sunday morning when I'd seen them demolished. We immediately discovered that two clever things had meanwhile happened here. Half the area has been turned into a park with trees and curvy paths and benches where you could sit and watch the sparrows bicker. The other half, which, as Chris pointed out, is hidden from the main village road, is now an industrial estate (Unit M22a: TEKNICOLOUR PRINTING LTD, Unit 7: TOUCHABLE LINGERIE AND HOSIERY).
I turned to Chris. 'Who would have been responsible for this?' I asked. 'It seems inspired – putting both somewhere to work and somewhere to enjoy nature on the site of the old pit.'
'A planning office, I guess,' he replied, 'somewhere in the local authority.'
'A planning office that plans. Blimey, there's a novel concept. We could do with a few of those in the Cotswolds.'
We were going to be walking where Lawrence set one of his Nottinghamshire novels, The White Peacock.
Herbert Lawrence, whose father was an uneducated collier and his mother a former governess who'd come down in the world, could be just as rude about his origins as the old miner, Edwin Cresswell, was about him. Lawrence said of the squalid Eastwood slum where he was born: 'I hate the damned place.' But from the upstairs window of the little terraced family house, he could see the fields and hills. And when he was older he used to turn his back on the 'ugliness, ugliness, ugliness' – that's what he called Eastwood – and walk over to pay court to Jesse Chambers at her parents' farm just beyond Newthorpe village, right where we are now.
His route would have taken him right past Moorgreen pit, which he renamed Minton Colliery. The sight he described in 1911 in The White Peacock has gone now.
'We came near to the ugly row of houses that back up against the pit-hill,' he recorded. 'Everywhere is black and sooty: the houses are back to back, having only one entrance, which is from a square garden where black-speckled weeds grow sulkily, which looks onto a row of evil little ash-pit huts.' The 'ash-pit huts' were lavatories.
Geoff, Chris and I left today's park and industrial estate behind, to cut across the main road and into what Lawrence thought of as 'the country of my heart.'
First we passed the lodge reckoned to be the inspiration for the gamekeeper's cottage in Lady Chatterley's Lover, then into woods that border a long lake. Some place names Lawrence changes, others he doesn't. But you can often fix exactly where he's talking about.
'Nethermere' he writes, 'is the lowest in a chain of three ponds at Strelley: this is the largest and most charming piece of water, a mile long and about a quarter of a mile in width. Our wood runs down to the water's edge.'
Strelley is Felley Mill Farm. Nethermere, Moorgreen reservoir. And on we went, just as Lawrence did, up the hill and across the fields.
'Some of the stuff he wrote at this time could be a bit purple,' said Geoff. He read English at Durham. 'In The White Peacock, he describes the 'ears of corn waiting to be kissed…' Geoff pronounced the word as Lady Otteline Morell might have done lounging in her boudoir. '… kissed by the sun.'
By the time we'd done the full circuit and arrived back at the pub at the Moorgreen end of Newthorpe, it was gone two o'clock. Not a problem because it's the kind of place that serves meals all day. Good old English food of course, like Thai green curry and chicken fajitas.
'Plenty of mementoes of Bert Lawrence in here then,' I said, shaking my head at the widescreen telly, which was showing a repeat of Escape to the Country ('In Hampshire with a couple of retired ex-pat house-hunters who have a budget of £650,000 for their new rural home,' read the subtitles).
'A prophet is not without honour except in his own land,' said Geoff.
'I didn't know you were turning religious?' said Chris.
Geoff grinned and took a healthy swallow of his pint.
'Well, consider the irony,' I went on. 'Millions of people – from Japan to Argentina, Germany to the USA – are familiar with the village of Newthorpe and the countryside we've been walking through this morning. They may not know the place by name, but if they've read about these places in Women in Love, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Sons and Lovers, The White Peacock, they'll know it all right. And out of all these millions of people in the world who've come to know Newthorpe, one small group seems as blind as a garden gnome to the place's importance in English literature. Who do I mean? The people of Newthorpe itself, that's who.'
'Yes, you're right,' said Chris. 'You'd think at least there might be the odd photo of him on the wall.'
'So why do you think that is?' I asked.
'Setting up a Bert Lawrence memorial, I suppose, isn't top of your To Do list in a recession,' suggested Geoff.
'Could be a money-maker though,' said Chris. 'A tourist attraction for all those Japanese and Germans you were talking about.'
'So whose is the fadge-eat-us?' It was the pub manager who'd arrived with our meals. None of us responded, then I realised it was my Mexican delicacy.
'Do you mind if I ask you something?' I said to the manager once he'd set our food down.
'You can try,' he smiled.
'We noticed you don't have any Lawrence memorabilia on the walls.'
He looked puzzled. 'Lawrence who?'
'You know, D. H. Lawrence. Women in Love. Lady Chatterley's Lover.'
'Oh yeah. Did they film it round here then?'
'No, Lawrence used to walk through Newthorpe all the time while he lived in Eastwood. I just wondered if you'd ever thought of putting some pictures of him up in the bar.'
'No, we just do what the brewery tells us to do. Can I get you anything else, gents? Any ketchup, mustard? Salt and pepper's on the side-table.'
We tucked in, and moved on to other matters (football, trains, and how 'The Pig' alias the geography master had sneered at Keith Mills on learning he'd won a place at London University, and other stuff you wouldn't want to know about right now). Two hours later, we'd finished our Asian and Latino lunches, agreed to meet up again soon and gone our separate ways. I decided to wander round the village a bit more before heading back to Gloucestershire.
Newthorpe's a pleasant little place these days. The newish houses have well-kept front gardens and views from the back over open fields towards Greasley's fifteenth-century, eight-pinnacle church tower. I noticed the school was still there, where Bert and I both went. No shops though.
The terraced cottages where Sam and Mary Taylor and their neighbours once worked were painted up, and I could still see their ext
ra-wide windows put in specially so the framework knitting machines could keep shuttling till the last flicker of sunlight had disappeared. A young woman came out of one of the cottages and got her twins settled in a double-buggy, while talking on her mobile at the same time. 'So what time do you think you'll get off work?' I heard her say. I guessed these cottages make starter-homes for people who work at Teknicolour or Touchable, or in shops and offices in Nottingham and Derby, or at IKEA near the motorway.
Ralph might say, 'Newthorpe is what it is.'
It doesn't have any pretensions.
The big difference between Newthorpe and Hogsthorpe – the village you remember where I spent my childhood summers – is that Newthorpe is not so isolated. It's only 4 miles from an M1 junction, so new businesses are more likely to set up here. Then too there's that tradition in Newthorpe of dealing with change and moving on. When the pits closed, people turned to any of a score of trades that they could practice in jobs that are easy to reach.
Of course, I'm not saying life's perfect in Newthorpe. For centuries, it's been hard here, in the damp vegetable fields, by the dark knitting machines, or at the choking coalface. Now in the twenty-first century, when the recession hits the east Midlands, unemployment goes up, in Newthorpe as much as anywhere else.
I walked on over to the Recker, short for recreation ground. The swings and slide had been upgraded. And the area was now surrounded by a 6-foot-high metal fence, to separate it from the world of dogs and paedophiles I suppose. And these days, each kid or set of kids was being watched over by a parent. You'd have been thought a 'reet mardy little bogger' in my day if your mum had to bring you.
To my joy, I saw the football pitch was still there. So Newthorpe still passed the football team test! But then when I walked over to the new sports hall, I saw on its noticeboard that – though there was a thriving Colts Club with four teams turning out every Saturday – there was no sign of a senior side. Still the more I thought about it, I wasn't sure there ever was, the reason being that nearby Eastwood always had a strong team. (My dad was a fan. He told me once that when, as a young man, he was offered a place at a Nottingham college to study to become a pharmacist, he turned it down. 'I'd have had to work Saturday afternoons,' he explained, then in a low voice, 'Never mention this in front of your mum.')
I strode a few paces along Dovecote Road to look for The Ram Inn. Almost every room and bench of it is described in The White Peacock. It's where George Saxton drank too late and too often. But it wasn't there any more. It was now a private house. There wasn't even a plaque.
As I got back in the car and drove off, I started wondering why Newthorpe neglects its literary past. Maybe there was a bit of Edwin Cresswell's opinion rife in the village still. Or perhaps nobody had time to think about anything so esoteric.
My route took me through Eastwood. At least there, I thought, they've made something out of the Lawrence link. The terraced house where he was born is now a museum, and there´s a thriving Lawrence Society. But as I drove out of Eastwood on the Derby Road, the sign hit me. It said THE LAWRENCE SNACKERY (chips and a burger £2.49). And then, two doors up, across the front of a grey warehouse, the words PHOENIX CUE SPORTS ('We aim to provide the ultimate pool and snooker playing experience') sitting above a lurk of hoodies smoking in the doorway. And in case you thought 'Phoenix' had no connection with Lawrence's non-fiction writing published under that title, Lawrence's portrait, 3 metres high, was staring out – teeth no doubt gritted – from alongside the PHOENIX sign.
What kind of deranged mentality would lead anyone to associate burgers and cue-sports with a romantic-modernist author? How many Japanese literary tourists are lured to Eastwood by the prospect of sinking a few balls in a D. H. Lawrence snooker hall? Or conversely, how many hungry Eastwoodites say to themselves, 'I feel peckish. What would Bert Lawrence have done in my shoes? He'd have gone for a kebab and a Coke. I'll away to the snackery that bears his name.'
It's irony at its finest.
My recollections of that trip back to Newthorpe and Eastwood are interrupted. The sparrowhawk's back. He's sitting on an overhanging branch of the sycamore outside my window at Mill Cottage. I don't rush off for my camera this time. I sit and enjoy him. The breeze ruffles the barred feathers on his chest as he turns his head till I can see his hooked beak in profile. Then he flies off leaving behind a bouncing branch, its autumn leaves now all shed.
I turn back to the laptop and see that Ralph has replied. He says, 'You're behind the times with your thinking. It's neither class treachery nor escape from oppression. Both your father and your grandfather were trapped in a system that forced them onto different sides. Hey-ho, you'll be free of all that in Stow!!! Best – R.'
Life must be very comforting for Ralph. Everything's got its pigeonhole. There are never any untidy bits left over.
There's a book I need to find. So up I go into the third bedroom, where all the 'Not wanted on voyage' boxes are. Did we label them properly? The answer turns out to be 'up to a point', so it's forty minutes later before I come back down, if not in triumph, at least with a thin volume of essays on Lawrence.
Here's the bit I wanted to check. You may be surprised to learn that in-between lyricising about corn waiting to be kissed and shocking with graphic descriptions of inter-class sex, Lawrence formulated his own theory of town and country planning.
'The real tragedy of England, as I see it,' he wrote, 'is the tragedy of ugliness. The country is so lovely: the man-made England is so vile.' He asked why the miner's houses 'could not have been modelled on an Italian village with a piazza to instil some focus of community.'
Hmm. You don't think sunny weather's got anything to do with it, do you, Bert? People sitting around outside most of the year, chatting together. And I suppose nineteenth-century Umbrian villagers all had safe jobs guaranteed by liberal-minded landowners.
Now I'm sounding cynical. I'm forgetting all those things I said about Bledington's village green and Stow's Market Square giving those villages a centre, a heart that people they can feel they belong to. Don't they do the same job as Bert Lawrence's Italian-style piazzas?
CHAPTER 21
A HORSE IN
THE BATHROOM
It's a week later on Wednesday at 11 a.m. that the radon barrier manufacturers call Nik to say the new miracle membrane has been delivered to the local builders' merchant.
Wednesday, 11.06 a.m.: the merchant says nothing's arrived.
Wednesday, 12.04 p.m.: the manufacturers say they'll redeliver it at the start of the following week.
Monday, 3 p.m.: no sign of it.
Monday, 3.14 p.m.: the manufacturers say it's the courier's fault and, 'We're trying to match our records.'
Monday, 3.17 p.m.: I shout down the phone to Nik, 'What are they using? Dating agency software?'
Thursday, 9.43 a.m.: the merchant calls Nik to say the stuff's turned up.
Thursday, 10.31 a.m.: I arrive on-site to celebrate the event, to be told by Nik that actually only part of the stuff has arrived. And, it's not the right part to make a start with. 'I'm going to give them a bight rollocking,' I spit, confusing consonants in my huff.
'Trust me,' advises Nik, 'You'll get them all so turned off' (as in 'as turned as a newt') 'that they'll do nothing for a week.' He's right. Lateral thinking's needed. So I suggest if it's not with us by Monday morning, I'll get in the car and drive the 300-mile round trip to Tredegar and collect it myself.
Same day, 2.05 p.m.: the builders' merchant calls to say the rest has arrived. Simon goes straight off to collect it.
Same day, 3.36 p.m.: Simon, back on-site, sees it has protective paper on each side. Should both lots be removed? He phones the merchant, who phones the manufacturer, who tells the merchant, who calls Simon back to say: 'Yes, strip both sides.' Simon then finds one side is stuck firm. Another string of phone calls brings news that we must have a 'dodgy batch' and there are no replacements available.
This last sequence I only learn later
from Nik, who at this point decides that if he sees my number on an incoming call to his mobile, he'll go and hide. But before this happens, he makes one last attack on the manufacturers' technical department.
They chortle at our pathetic ineptitude. Of course only one side is supposed to come off.
Later, over mugs of tea, Nik, Simon and I speculate on how long before garrotting-for-real is added to the list of apps available on iPhone.
So Simon starts to lay the great radon barrier membrane, two weeks and two days after Nik first tracked the stuff down.
Meanwhile, two other tasks have shot to the top of my To-Do list.
First, I've got to try to sort out what we're going to do about the flagstones inside the house. We don't want any artificial factory tiles. We want something in keeping with the old feel of the place. My visit to the trade show has convinced us we should go for limestone. They have the same natural feel as our exposed stone wall, and they get that kind of parchment yellow tint to them as they age. There are problems though. The price is bad enough. You can pay up to £100 a square metre. But there's worse news, as a friend of ours found out. Natural limestone scratches. Now you might put up with that as a mark of individuality. But, if anyone then spills a glass of Malbec or a can of Coke on the floor, it soaks in – and permanent ruddy brown stains all over your floor are too much of a lived-in look for most people. So the offending slabs would have to be hacked up and replaced.
A Horse in the Bathroom Page 17
