by Adam Thorpe
What a place to be a boy in, they said. Not sure whether this meant that I’d been lucky or unlucky.
Have made new living arrangements for myself. Wanting to avoid that mute Dr Johnson in the Never Fear, tried the Green Man at the far end of the village. Except for the neon strips, hasn’t budged an inch since it was my occasional furtive haunt just before the war. Buttoned horsehair seats, Player’s floor mats, bedraggled dartboard, bleach-and-beer smell, fat tabby curled on a bentwood chair. Farm-labourer types in camouflage jackets, no music. Ted behind the bar in Roy Orbison specs and cardie has to be since my era. It came up that he had an attic room which from time to time had been used for guests – workers on six months’ contracts in the area, etc. He did a decent breakfast. One of the customers said he should get Maisie to do the fried eggs. Ted didn’t like that – mumbled an explanation that his wife did the breakfasts when this was a proper ‘inn’ but she went and ‘let him down’ – i.e. ran off with a lover, I presume.
We went up to have a look and it really is a garret but not without charm, split in two by a thin partition. The bathroom’s just below on a floor otherwise populated by empty numbered rooms. The deeper room has only a tiny skylight – Ted said he’d find a lamp. He also reckoned he had a solid table somewhere and a little cooker, otherwise the furnishings are what one used to call humble and the floor is joyfully to boards with only a frayed rug. Will pay half what I’m charged at the Old Barn and it’ll feel less hotel-like, more like digs. David confirmed the villa’s free through the winter. I told Ted I’d take the room to November and then we’d see.
Saturday, 25 September
A lacklustre day scribbling ideas about the research centre. I took the deposit to Ted and to check if the place was quiet in the evenings. The awful coalman and John Wall were in there, playing darts. They seem to know each other. I mean, they seem to be friends. Even in the pub John Wall looks as if he’s never had to fetch his own slippers. Morris’s gay-detecting radar (or gaydar!) would bleep feebly next to him but I don’t suppose the poor chap himself has any idea.
I couldn’t avoid them, of course, and the subject of the house came up. The coalman’s name is Frank Petty. ‘However, I am knowed as Muck.’ I’m not surprised. He went on again about ‘nice Mrs Arnold’, and then had the cheek to ask me ‘ezackerly what relation’ she was to me. Again with that horrible leer. I can’t imagine that there was anything between them, even twenty-odd years ago – the man is like a little tub with a flat gristly face and a swollen mouth in which his front teeth are so worn as to be virtually missing. Tiny eyes, reddish from drink and weather and some tainted vehemence. Smells of public lavatories and foxholes. Mind you, age does awful things. I replied that she was my uncle’s wife, and no blood-relation of mine. Then this preposterous wink, and a snigger from John Wall. I am not trowelling down any further: Aunt Rachael was a sad, bitter mystery to me. Leave well alone.
More on the house being ‘troubled’, however. John Wall threw a dart into the upper division but it dangled from a loose piece of felt. ‘That counts,’ he said. Coalman Muck, turning to me, said, ‘Hark at the old boy, he reckons that counts.’ I replied that it would if it didn’t fall, whereupon the man stamped hard on the floor and the damn thing fell out. To my surprise, John Wall calmly lowered his score without counting the offending dart. Muck clearly felt uneasy and turned to me again; ‘Fair, weren’t it, Mr Arkwright?’ I said that I reserved judgement, as Mr Wall didn’t seem to mind. Muck then pointed his dart at me and said, ‘That’s what all clever chaps say. That’s what you’d say about your bogyman, Mr Arkwright.’
‘What bogyman?’
‘The Red Lady.’
‘The Red Lady?’
‘That’s the bogywoman,’ said John Wall.
Muck threw his dart angrily into the bull and was so flushed with his success that the bogywoman vanished as quickly as she’d appeared, to my relief. Something about its name made my heart’s little flame flare up for an instant, as if I knew it from my childhood. But I’m sure I don’t.
Sunday, 26 September
Stood at the back during the Family Service and tried not to think too much about ghosts. The fragments of medieval wall-paintings are wonderful, I’d forgotten how wonderful they were. We have something to thank the German bombs for, since it was a bomb that cracked the whitewash. Maybe I only saw them that one time, when the plaster was still all over the pews. Fewer hats, but even more old ladies, including Gracie. Insurance policy, I suppose. Eager kids making a lot of noise, harmless sermon on beasts. Do beasts have souls? That has always struck me as Christianity’s fault-line. The fat, jolly vicar hopped over it with aplomb and kept to pandas.
People looked at me but I slipped out afterwards, wandering between the graves again. No official death and nothing to bury, even. Mother, I’m talking about. Somehow the plot in Ulverton churchyard never marked with a stone, a memorial stone. I have no idea where this plot was or even is, perhaps it was mythical or used up by some complete stranger: we somehow never gave up hope and then forgot. No sign of Aunt Joy’s, though I’m sure it was near the kiss-me gate into the paddock.
Spotted Gracie between the stones, with a bunch of flowers. Herbert Hobbs’s grave, of course, space on it left for her. I mentioned this business about Mother’s plot – felt empty-handed with nowhere to go. She mumbled something about singing carols. ‘That’s when I saw your mum, clear as day,’ she said. On the way back from the village carol-round, as far as I could gather. Mother always loved carols. I wanted to cry.
The junk is in layers, every time I move one thing, another appears or falls out of it. They must have got rid of much less at the auction than I realised. Kept stopping at the thought of a bat about to flutter out blindly towards my face. The thought worse than the deed. I know they’re protected and all that, but have a horror of their fat little bodies and complicated rodent faces, let alone their leathern wings. Not even sure what I’m looking for, but you never know.
Monday, 27 September
Slept until ten. Almost missed breakfast: charred kidneys.
A long walk to clear my head in indifferent milky weather, returned via the house. No sign of Wall though half the lawn is cut.
Begin to see the bones of the exploit flesh. Once the windows are unblocked and the nettles and brambles cut away from the walls and front door, it will blink and open its eyes and breathe. Had no heart to go inside and anyway left the key in my room.
Tried to penetrate the wildwood and remembered the strict injunctions of Nuncle not to. Stood on the edge where the old wire fence lay rusting in nettles and stared for a little while, thinking. Then I walked deliberately in.
The scratches still painful on my ankles and knuckles, though I didn’t get very far. A fat, familiar face passed me in the square on my return and I beamed back and of course it was the Vicar in a polo-neck. Had never heard of any of us Arkwrights or even Arnolds, yet gave the impression that he had considered our souls all week. I mentioned the two plots and he said that he’d get his parish clerk to look up the relevant documents. The Vicar’s name is Oliver, Eddie Oliver. Sounds like an extinct music-hall act, with whistling solos and imitations of animals. The type Ulverton Village Hall used to host. He mentioned something about a Mrs Prat and mummers, when he understood that I was ‘on the stage’. Vicars are much too hassled by life and death to concern themselves with earth-changing characters like me.
Unbelievably, the Mrs Prat (whose name fits her like a hat) accosted me in the village shop about an hour ago. That damned eye-patch again. Planning a traditional Xmas festivity with mummers, folk dances, etc. Could I pop in to give a professional hand with the mumming play? Now and again? Reminded me that my uncle had started the Ulverton Folk-Life Society. I looked steely and said that if I were to help, it would be in my capacity as a theatre professional, not as Edward Arnold’s nephew.
She took that as a yes and thanked me profusely.
Evening: Bush-telegraph, my word!
A Malcolm Villiers, the director of operations, has just phoned and invited me to tea on Thursday. Sounded nervous and/or depressed. Told him that Hardy’s proof of an authentic village folk ritual was the bored, miserable look of the participants. He chuckled and sounded jolly.
Do-gooding is just that: it does one good.
Took a deep breath and mentioned the Red Lady to the agreeable Jessica Marlow before supper. It’s because I can’t get rid of this flary little flame in my chest, every time I think about her (the Red Lady, not Jessica). She said I should meet Ray Duckett, the local history man. She’s got his book on Ulverton’s ghosts somewhere; will lend it to me. Duckett, she added, is very ill with cancer in a private nursing home outside Netherford. He’s bound to pass away minutes before I reach him.
An unsteady centenarian on stork-like legs entered the bar and it was none other than old Moon, the strapping blacksmith whose anvil used to vie with the church bell. He’s stone deaf. The yard’s now an up-market garage, but still Moon’s. Perhaps he’ll just go on and on, his heart wrought in iron.
Tuesday, 28 September
Am rather drunk.
Writing this in Morris’s spare room with that gorgeous rumble of London below. Rumbling river of life.
Arrived at Paddington in a fluorescent-jacketed bombscare and everything terribly loud after the country. Everyone shouting over unoiled moving parts. Throbbings, stinky smells, the air stinging the eyes. Cypriot taxi driver bawling his opinions. But a relief. Unpleasant sense that back there in the country everything’s paused, waiting for me. Even the leaves not dropping or even trembling. Even Mrs Prat of the flowery cravat not bearing down on anyone. Everything just suspended and waiting for me to come down the road as if back from the war. Like my uncle did, apparently. Actually walking down the lane in uniform and dusty face, backpack, wheezing from the gas and not in possession of all his marbles.
Interrupted Morris installing the Internet – which is just more displacement activity and will end up being taken over by the disturbed, but he disagrees and thinks it’s the most important advance since Gutenberg. Tried Arkwright, Hugh: forty-two entries. Fourteen for some baseball player called Hugo ‘Choppie’ Arkwright Jr, the rest a mixed bag of adulation and nastiness, mostly out of date, and mis-spelling Eilrig. We went to an Italian with tiles as green as old Burkett’s the poulterer’s in Brompton Road and talked of that old drab half-lit London, whether it was better than the bloodshot star-shell frenzy of today’s. Decided it was because now we’re old and less able to jig about.
Three olds, look.
Morris spent his first night ever here in the long-gone Cavendish Hotel, but I couldn’t remember where I’d stayed with Mother, only that it was near Peter Jones – where only four years later I went shopping with her for the very last time, buying that fancy red coat for Buea. Twirling in front of the mirror between all that stifling cloth and saying she was tired of looking ‘bush’, she was going to look ‘fancy’, but would it clash with the hibiscus? Such a happy image, and the shopwoman saying how lovely she looked. I don’t suppose she ever wore it. Of course she never wore it. She vanished before Christmas, just before their Christmas up in chilly Buea. Morris let me talk because he was just as sloshed. He told me that I never talk about my mother. He has decided to abandon his hair to whiteness and it makes him look blacker and very dignified, like an ambassador. I said the great shock on arrival in this country was the milling multitudes of white faces. Morris recalled Missouri and his childhood just like a Faulkner novel, the Americans so awful and unbelievably racist while in Africa itself the English were racist in a weak well-meaning way, but the effects were in the end the same. I do understand now why he never went back apart from falling in love with a Cambridge chap, and perhaps why he’s my closest and most loyal friend. Mutually loyal. He reminds me of my friend the servant called Quiri sometimes, whose servantness was like an irritating obstacle and Morris has done away with that. Quiri is probably dead now.
Wednesday, 29 September
Feeling horribly furred up inside, had to spend the whole day meeting people individually or in meetings trying to stir up enthusiasm. Much emphasis from everyone on ‘youth’, ‘multi-ethnicity’ and of course ‘accessibility’, which I keep thinking means having ramps. Dan Hartley questioned my record on blind casting which is absurd, I have never once picked an actor for a role on account of his or her colour and he’s confusing critics (attacking our ‘authenticity’ on just this basis) with our own policy. Imelda Tupp (pure coincidence) then pointed out that my Othello was a white actor blacked up and I said, ‘Exactly, Ms Tupp, and my Iago was of Asian origin, the brilliant Nadeem Rafiq.’
Want sometimes to say shuddup very loudly but these people hold me in their sweaty palms. Always the implication that one is guilty and on trial to prove it, with nothing registered of one’s achievements that doesn’t fit into one of those silly little boxes on the forms. They have never liked the fact that I only use actors who’ve been trained in Eilrig which Bill Saynor, that awful old potato-faced pseud, keeps calling the All Right Method. The only clever idea he’s ever had, yet he’s up there at the top doling out the dosh, with immense powers to create and destroy.
Now I’m back in the dark, quiet countryside with murmurs from the hotel bar below and an owl that sounds as if it’s been wound up. Odd swish of a car. Feeling a bit drained and old. The moment your back’s turned! New young bucks who are deliberately letting rip at our achievements; if they take over in a few years or so at the RSC we’ll weaken our hold there and will again be seeking our own space.
The Research Centre shall be another little flame at the heart, keeping our blood clean and scarlet.
Thursday, 30 September
Social Services meeting in Netherford’s new overheated council offices. Much humming and hawing re feasibility of turning Ilythia into home for maladjusted youths (money, basically) and still awaiting architect’s report, so we have a bit of grace. Kept mum in meeting but had already warned Brian Padmore, the jolly but ineffective solicitor here, that I was considering setting up my own project, charitably within the terms of the will. Row of neckties like bellpulls facing me, plush room furnished by racked-up rents. Emerged feeling jaded and dull, like them. These places cast a malign spell.
Tea with Malcolm Villiers. Lives next door to John Wall and his mum, one half of same double-cottage. Jed the bilious gamekeeper had it in my time, patrolling woods now criss-crossed by public paths behind the new private housing estate. The spirits of him and his mucky little spaniel must be having a fit.
Malcolm a nice shy chap with a beard and the usual roster of views to go with it, but we didn’t fall out. He’s divorced with a little girl whose presence was in the withered flowers in a jam jar on the kitchen table and some rather disturbing paintings. He blamed his neighbour for his marital breakdown: some extraordinary story about Wall’s father falling ill and being treated with Chinese herbs by Mrs Villiers. They then fell out over an incident with the Wall’s vicious little dog until Jack Wall came back one day covered in blisters and with streaming eyes, demanding to see Mrs Villiers. She stayed with him until he was taken off to hospital and he died there the next day. Whereafter she was regarded as a murdering witch and under that pressure their marriage fell apart. Wall Senior was a nasty piece of work and a well-known badger-baiter. The official verdict was arsenic poisoning. Malcolm relieved to hear that I hadn’t heard it already and I think by telling me he was pre-empting false versions. It was probably rat poison carelessly used against some harmless woodland beast. Country ways haven’t changed, I said.
Our conversation revolved otherwise around Nuncle, for whom Malcolm has an unhealthy admiration. Most excited when I told him about I, Nubat, of the Forest People as illustration of just how childishly dotty Edward Arnold was. He wondered if he could get hold of a copy and I told him it was very rare. He looked shocked suddenly at something over my shoulder and on turning round I saw John Wall staring in at the window
.
He entered and told us that his mother had ‘taken a fall’. Malcolm groaned and looked fed up so I went round and sure enough Mrs Wall was bleeding profusely from her nose and forehead, swearing like mad at her son as he came in. Plop, plop, plop went the blood on the table’s oilcloth: dark red on green. I dabbed her with a wet flannel and was struck by whiffs from her cardigan of expensive perfume. Big telly blaring, cheap fittings, lino below and bare bulb above, yet fundamentally the house is a mirror-image of Malcolm’s, which is put to pine and a cosy scatter of antique junk, rugs, etc.
John Wall looked on benignly as his mother swore at him and then the two tottered off down the lane to the doctor’s, she not changing her boots or donning a coat. Dark blots all over the table and the floor – I had half a mind to clean it up. But didn’t. Malcolm said on my return that it happens regularly and it’s probably somehow John Wall’s doing. My hands still smell of the woman: sour and sweet. There really is so much blood in the forehead, right against the bone.
Agreed to look in on mummers’ rehearsal, Saturday. For my sins.
Friday, 1 October
Maybe the howling of wolves at a bomber’s moon, but have unearthed something rather startling. To mix a metaphor.
On my way to the house, popped into the doctor’s surgery (bright, like a kindergarten, with no horrible maps of the body’s regions these days) and checked up on Mrs Wall’s welfare; receptionist amused that I’d bothered.
Saw thick smoke from the lane and thought the house was on fire. John Wall burning leaves in the garden. No mention of yesterday, so I didn’t hang about but disappeared into the attic and put away some bits and bobs using cardboard boxes from the shop. Seeing Wall had gone home for lunch, I went down once more to the wildwood’s edge.
