The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth

by Mackenzie Crook

  Later

  My efforts to acquire the shipwrecked ape were sadly unsuccessful. Arriving at Inglesea it was not difficult to find the whereabouts of the creature and I was directed to a local tavern where it was being held in a narrow back room. A small window in the door offered views into the room and people were paying a shilling to peer in. The beast was, as I suspected, a young chimpanzee. I enquired as to who had brought it in and was introduced to two nasty-looking characters at a table who were greedily counting their takings. On my asking if I might purchase the chimp of them they became quite aggressive and told me of their plans to tour the animal from town to town and make their fortune.

  I decided on a new approach, and when the local sheriff arrived I casually suggested that the ape could be a French spy sent to gather military information. I told him that I would be happy to take the animal with me and extract information from it. This suggestion did not have the desired effect and instead the rumour started to circulate that this was not a chimpanzee at all but a hairy Frenchman and that more were on their way. The sheriff clapped the poor creature in irons and carted it off to jail.

  So I have returned empty-handed. The people of Inglesea really are quite the most foolish people in the land.

  Saturday 30th October 1773

  An irritating piece in The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser this morn:

  Idiot Yokels Imprison Monkey

  Wednesday last, at Inglesea, a large monkey was found washed up on a beach. The beast was captured and soon a sizeable crowd had gathered to gawp and jeer.

  A local Inglesea man, one Benjamin Teeth, claimed the creature was an invading Frenchman and, on his insistence, it was locked in jail and tried as a spy.

  Mr Teeth is due to collect his prize for the Stupidest Man in England from the King Tuesday next.

  The following ‘humorous’ illustration accompanied the text:

  Never have I been so enraged. For a start a chimpanzee is not a monkey but an ape. Secondly my name is Tooth not Teeth and thirdly I am not and have never been from Inglesea.

  Monday 1st November 1773

  This even an angry mob of twenty hammered on my door brandishing a copy of the Gazetteer and demanded to know what I meant by making a laughing stock of the town. I pointed out the mistakes in the text but this didn’t seem to wash with them and they were at the point of barging their way into the house when Justice Wooten arrived and they began to disperse. They made it quite clear, though, that I am no longer welcome in Mereton and so I shall move permanently to the moor. Not because they have driven me out but because I no longer want to be associated with nor live in a town of such dunderheads.

  Part the Third

  Sunday 17th May 1778

  My name is Benjamin Tooth. This is my journal.

  It has been near five years since last I wrote.

  But I have not been idle. On the contrary, I have built up a vast body of work.

  My isolated existence on Windvale Moor suits me to a T and I will oft go days or a week without encountering another living soul. The lack of such distractions has allowed me to concentrate on inventing numerous herbal remedies, machines and contraptions. I have mapped the moor beneath my feet and the heavens above me.

  Shortly after I moved in I converted the large downstairs room into a laboratory and it is there that all my fieldwork is collated and written up.

  I am quite certain that never has a more complete and exhaustive study been made of any other habitat on Earth as I have made of this landscape. To the untrained eye the moor would appear a desolate and sparsely inhabited wilderness but nothing could be further from the truth. The wealth and diversity of both plant and animal species is astonishing. Indeed, on certain summer days the air is so thick with life, a living soup, that one feels like wearing a face mask for fear of inhaling a lungful of invertebrates.

  A great deal of my daily intake of food (though I don’t need much) comes from my foraging trips on the moor and surrounding countryside. I have learnt which plants are edible through a system of trial and error. My errors early on caused many an uncomfortable night of stomach cramps and one particularly distressing occasion led to me cutting all fungi from my diet.

  These days I live off a rich and varied menu including many edible leaves, roots, seeds and berries, honey from my hives, hazel and beech nuts, birds’ eggs, snails and sloes. My trusty blunderbuss will bag me a hare or rabbit, partridge or grouse and the stream offers up eels, crayfish and sweet brown trout. Other fish to be found in the brook include gudgeon and miller’s thumb but these are small and bony and taste of mud.

  Occasionally I will make a trip to the coast and spend the day collecting shellfish, crabs and shrimps, various types of seaweed and armfuls of bitter sea kale. I think I have never been in such good health and the clean bracing air and lack of butter and coffee in my diet have given me an energy and zest for life that I never experienced whilst living in that ungrateful town.

  The only times now that I need visit Mereton are when I require supplies that cannot be gathered from nature: scientific instruments, paper and writing materials, &c. On the rare days that I do visit town I take with me medicinal potions and printed pamphlets of my scientific findings, which I sell from door to door. The people of that town though are a superstitious bunch and view me as some wandering mountebank or witch doctor rather than the learned scholar that I so clearly am. I have a few regulars, however, who are always interested in my findings: Mad John Long the wheelwright, Crazy Terry the miller’s boy and Mr Lincolnsob the hatter are among my most loyal customers. ( John Long is a keen amateur vintner and usually pays me with a bottle of his latest wine. You would be surprised (and taken aback) at the things Mad John can make wine from.)

  I do have two occasional visitors out here on the moor. The baker’s boy from the nearby village delivers essential supplies once a week: bread, milk and cheese, and if he has cause to travel to Mereton he will pick up my post and deliveries.

  I have never asked his name but he is quite the most dim-witted Jack Pudding I have ever met. His hair is dense, matted and black and grows so far down his forehead that it looks like a strange hat. He has one thick eyebrow from under which tiny eyes glare accusingly. He has the overall appearance of a miniature, prehistoric cave dweller.

  Once, as he was putting my supplies in the larder, I told him that there was a sheep on the roof. He dropped everything and ran outside to see, then returned a few minutes later with a glum expression and told me that it was no longer there and must have flown off.

  Hetty Pepper is a travelling tinker woman who criss-crosses the country selling her wares and who passes this way every three months or so. She is small and weatherbeaten, of gypsy origin I think, with large rings in her ears and on her fingers, and a great mess of hair piled up on her head like a chicken’s nest. Hetty sells all manner of interesting tat and it is always a cheery day when I hear her cart clanking and jangling down the track towards Tooth Acre. Last time she came I purchased of her three bear traps, an old cavalry sword and a bishop’s mitre. She always turns down the offer to stay overnight in the house and instead sleeps under her wagon in the garden, but not before we have sat up and she has regaled me with tales of her travels and the divers people she has encountered. She is most stimulating company.

  Monday 13th July 1778

  Today as I was paddling in the brook and looking under rocks for crayfish I found something that set my mind a-thinking. Clinging to the leaf of a bulrush was the empty shell of a dragonfly nymph. Nothing unusual in this as I have oft seen them before and, indeed, last summer spent an enjoyable afternoon watching a beautiful hawker hatch from its larval clothes and dry in the sun before taking flight across the moor. The specimen I found today, though, was much larger, perhaps twice the size of any I have seen before.

  This discovery has awakened in me a memory. Many years ago, when I came to the moor to look for the warbler that I raised and released, and again on the sad day that
I found my grandfather’s clothes abandoned, I remember sighting at a distance two huge dragonflies, quite the largest I had ever seen. Could this be the nymph of that elusive species? I am convinced of it and, if I am right, it is surely a species that has never before been described.

  Monday 20th July 1778

  Dreamt last night that I was eating a tough-skinned baked potato.

  This morning I can’t find one of my shoes.

  Friday 31st July 1778

  Today as I was bathing in the brook I spotted on the bank what I first thought to be a giant snake. At over two yards in length and of a dark brown, almost black coloration, I knew it was not one of my friends the adder or the grass snake and feared it to be some venomous cobra or the like. I climbed out of the water and edged cautiously closer only to discover that it was a fat female eel slithering like a serpent across the grass. There have been no great storms of late, the river has not burst its banks, so I can only conclude that the fish left the water by choice. I followed it for some distance before I suddenly remembered that I was stark naked and though it would have been easy to catch (I had nothing planned for dinner) I decided to let it go, so intent was it on getting wherever it was going. It seemed to be heading towards the sea. An enigmatic creature, the eel. I have never witnessed them spawning and wonder whether this gravid hen fish was off to a secret breeding ground.

  Curiously, when I returned to my clothes where I had left them by the brook, all of the buttons and buckles were missing. Had somebody been spying on me and played a joke? Was it a thieving jackdaw? It is a mystery.

  Sunday 2nd August 1778

  A revelation!

  For the past fortnight I have been thinking constantly of those huge dragonflies and the nymph case I found at the brook. Something has been niggling at my brain like a déjà vu or a half-remembered dream.

  Today it struck me.

  There is a striking similarity between the nymph and that strange design that I saw first in Farley Cupstart’s drawing and then again in the plaster relief above the door at Church Street.

  After all these years I feel as if I’ve stumbled upon the beginnings of an answer to that infernal mystery, though I am still a long way from solving it.

  Did Grandfather discover this creature first? He was certainly a keen explorer and interested in many things. He was a knowledgeable man and had learnt a great deal about natural history. So how was Cupstart involved? He, I am sure, was not an accomplished naturalist. Did he mean to gain from Grandfather’s discovery? Had they ever really been friends? Somehow I doubt it.

  Next step? To find this giant dragonfly.

  *

  Dined today of hot oyster porridge.

  Thursday 13th August 1778

  Today when the baker’s boy arrived with my supplies I decided to try to inspire him with my work. As I explained my drawings and described the complex environment of the moor he fell quiet and I thought that I had fanned the spark of his imagination. But when I turned to look I found him studiously picking his nose with great focus and concentration.

  I fear he will never be my student and protégé.

  No matter. His skills at delivering bread are beyond compare.

  *

  Dined of a bowl of ox-tripes and hogg’s pudding.

  *

  Abed early with the Belching Sickness.

  Christmas Day 1778

  I have seen one! At long last I have seen one of the great dragonflies I have been searching for. However ‘dragonfly’ seems hardly an appropriate nomenclature any more, for what I saw is something quite different. As in my previous sightings, years ago, I only spotted this specimen from a distance and would possibly have not given it a second glance but for the time of year.

  It is midwinter and Windvale Moor is carpeted with snow to a depth of several feet. The brook is frozen over, the trees are bare and the black gorse, itself blanketed in ice, is the only visible vegetation. What on Earth is a dragonfly or any other insect doing flying at this time of year? No, this was not an insect, this was no cold-blooded creature. This is something entirely different, entirely new.

  I am close, I can feel it. Close to making the discovery of a lifetime.

  New Year’s Day 1779

  Another sighting. Again infuriatingly distant but unmistakable. This one was skimming across the south face of the downs, occasionally dipping to touch the snow in a movement similar to that of a damselfly laying its eggs in a pond. But though it moves in a similar way to an insect its movements are too deliberate, too thought-out, as if searching for something, not randomly darting and zigzagging like a dragonfly.

  It was not two hundred yards from the spot where I saw the other a few weeks back and not far from the brook where I found the nymph shell last summer.

  I shall set up some sort of hide close to this position and keep watch.

  Friday 15th January 1779

  The best sighting yet! And so astounding as to be almost unbelievable. This time there were two of them and closer than before. What I saw I almost hesitate to write down as it would seem utter madness to anyone reading it. Journal, these were not insects, they were, my hand is shaking, they were tiny people with wings! There, I am finally going mad. My isolation on the moor has turned my brain to lime jelly. And yet I am positive that is what I saw. Tiny people, no more than six inches tall, with dragonfly wings, looking for all the world like … no, I can’t bring myself to write it. I must go and lie down.

  Later

  As I lay on my bed trying to clear my brain and think straight about the day’s events I heard my grandfather’s voice in my head. It was a memory from my childhood and a time when he would tell me stories to send me to sleep. He told tales of a race of miniature people with wings who lived peacefully in a far-off place. I always took these tales to be inventions of Grandfather’s imagination but the more I think of it now the more I am convinced that he knew of these creatures on the moor.

  Saturday 16th January 1779

  I shall not use the F-word in this journal or in my field report book. It is vulgar and unscientific. Suffice it to say that these creatures resemble a popular mythical creature that oft features in children’s stories. I shall think of a different word to describe them.

  Sunday 17th January 1779

  The two creatures that I saw were frolicking and playing, chasing one another, and looked to be positively enjoying themselves. I may be mistaken but through my telescope it appeared they were throwing snowballs at each other. At one point, though, they stopped their gambolling and seemed to become aware that I was watching. After looking in my direction for a few seconds they took fright and in a flash they were gone.

  This again is not the behaviour of an insect. The hawkers and darters that hunt on the moor during the summer months seem all but oblivious to my presence when on the wing. True, when they are at rest on a bulrush it is difficult to get close but when they are flying they will head straight towards me and only change direction at the last instant. The timid nature of the playful two is more akin to a mammal or bird.

  In the past, when observing other wild animals I have found patience to be the best virtue. Sitting still and in the open, the subjects eventually become accustomed to one’s presence and if they feel no threat they will become steadily more courageous, making observation easier. Therefore I have decided to abandon my hide and from now on brave the elements so they become used to me and know that I mean them no harm.

  Wednesday 3rd February 1779

  ‘Sprite’ is the word I have decided upon to describe this new creature. It still invokes regrettable images of the mythical or supernatural but for now, until something better occurs to me, they shall be known as sprites.

  Sunday 7th February 1779

  I now think that both Grandfather and Farley Cupstart knew of the sprites.

  Grandfather’s interest, I’m sure, was scientific but Cupstart would only have been concerned with personal monetary gain. Maybe he discovered Grandfather
’s secret. Perhaps he blackmailed him.

  Another thing that I cannot ignore is that both men lived to an unnaturally old age. I feel sure this is a factor somehow in the mystery.

  *

  A light snack before bed of lardy cake with egg and butter gravy and pig-syrup suet dumplings with cream.

  Friday 19th March 1779

  At last today I felt the first welcome breath of spring in the air. These past two months of staking out the moor in the bitter cold and driving rain have taken their toll on my health and I have the weatherbeaten appearance of an old saddle. With not a single sighting since the two I spotted in mid-January I at times have come to think they were a figment of my imagination. But I will keep faith for if what I saw was as astounding as I believe then I may be close to an Earth-shattering discovery.

  If nothing else I have been able to observe the changing of the season in such detail that I sometimes feel I am part of the fabric of the moor itself and have an affinity with the grass, the furze, the rocks and the hills. I may even pen a poem.