The Visitor

by Chris Simpson

  DEDICATION

  To the memory of George W. Smith, who died tragically on the 14 April 1911. He was a farmer and the grandfather I never knew and, to the very best of my knowledge, he was an essentially good man in all aspects of his life. He was the role model for the character of Jos Robertshaw in this story.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1: SUNDAY, 22 DECEMBER: EVENING

  CHAPTER 2: MONDAY 23 DECEMBER

  CHAPTER 3: THE SAME DAY

  CHAPTER 4: LATER THAT SAME DAY

  CHAPTER 5: TUESDAY, 24 DECEMBER

  CHAPTER 6: TUESDAY, 24 DECEMBER. LATER THAT SAME DAY

  CHAPTER 7: TUESDAY, 24 DECEMBER. EVENING

  CHAPTER 8: WEDNESDAY, 25 DECEMBER. CHRISTMAS DAY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many grateful thanks are owed. To my gorgeous wife, Cathy, ever a great love and companion, whose capacity to put up with the author’s ‘little moments’ borders on the miraculous. To the late Frank and Mary Simpson, without whom there would be no Visitor. To Spencer Leigh for opening the door to the publishing house McNidder & Grace; to the painstaking Andy Peden Smith, publisher extraordinaire and the people of Nidderdale and Wharfedale who unwittingly lent so much colour to this story. Kate Smith, farmer of Ripley, whose late mother’s legendary farmhouse table at Christmas is reproduced here unabridged. Laurie the postman, Andrew Jackson the Doctor and the many Walters and Jos Robertshaws I chanced to meet along the way, all adding to the richness: such timeless characters who enriched the potpourri of Dales life, and to whom I am deeply grateful.

  They are the bastions of a sadly vanishing world.

  Chapter 1

  SUNDAY, 22 DECEMBER: EVENING

  THE NORTH wind had come far.

  A restless traveller, he never paused even for a moment and his icy breath, born in the jutted ice and frozen deserts of the Arctic, withered all it touched as it dusted the land with dry powdery snow.

  Above, in the great arch of the sky, the stars winked and flashed between ramparts of cloud, while across the hill country below an awed hush hung suspended in time between keening gusts of wind. In the breaks of pine that dotted the fellsides, the sound was akin to the scend of the sea upon some forgotten shore.

  Here and there among the wild landscape, solitary lights, like pin holes through the blanket of the dark, shone brave and tiny in the black winter night.

  It was Christmas time and for every light there was a little world of warmth and bustle, of steaming kitchens and clattering farm machinery. Each was an island, a refuge from the iron fist of winter that could so easily crush everything in its path.

  Far away, on either side of the hill country, to the east and the west, the glow of the great cities paled the sky. It was a different world, albeit with the same purpose: to prepare for and celebrate Christmas.

  This was a world of clamour and dazzling lights, of crowded pavements and human rivers about to burst their banks and overflow on to the roads. To untutored ears, unaccustomed to the ways and sounds of the city, it was a bewildering cacophony of voices and car engines, myriad footsteps and the incessant tinkling of cash registers in the overheated department stores, of music, loud and raucous, pumped from the doorways of the brightly lit boutiques and the endless bars advertising “festive” discounts and jammed to bursting one minute and spilling their cheerful clientele back out onto the street the next. All was hurry and excess, with year-long caution dissipated in a lemming-like rush to spend.

  * * *

  Far away from the cities, the halo of man-made lights dwindled to nothing and the power of the heavens took over again. The wind twisted and turned between the flanks of the hills and whirled spinning columns of snowflakes across a cobbled street.

  It was a simple north country village. The houses were of stone, built to stand against the weather, and across the square the coloured lights tapped against the shop windows as the Christmas tree swayed in the wind.

  It was quieter here, much quieter than the city. The imposing mass of the uplands flanked the village on all sides like great unmoving whales, their tops dusted with snow, spectral white in the occasional glimpses of moonlight between the driving squalls.

  One main road linked the village to the market town a dozen miles away. Another led upwards, connecting the villages at the head of the dale where it wound in a series of hairpin bends up and over the summit, to descend into the valley beyond.

  There was one other road that climbed steeply up into the hills on the northeast side. It was as if the original road builders of long ago had run out of inspiration, for the tarmac ended among the decaying workings of old lead mines and only a rough road carried on, bestrewn with ruts and potholes. Even that primitive highway finished abruptly where the moorland began.

  Where the road ended there was a platform for milk churns and a gate in the wall over the cattle grid bearing a wooden sign with the faded legend “Keld House Farm”. Beyond, a twin-track gravel road wound downwards to disappear around the contours of the land towards the Ghyll.

  In the primeval darkness the welcoming lights of a farmhouse, nestling like a mother hen among its buildings, were the only signs of life in the bleak landscape. Here the force of the wind was broken by the hills and, ebbing and flowing in the night air, came the sound of the beck, tumbling between the boulders on its rocky course down the valley.

  The house was a “long house”, built in the style of the ancient Norsemen who bestowed the name “dalen” on this landscape, reminiscent of the lands they had left across the North Sea. Double-storeyed and roofed with great stone tiles, its mullioned windows glowed with curtained light. The barn and mistel were also part of the house, because, with the insight born of centuries of experience, the original builders knew that the warmth from the animals gave added heat. And when the snow was deep or storms raged over the land, they could still reach their beasts.

  Overall, the heady scent of wood smoke mixed with the pungent aroma of a working farm.

  Apart from the barn and mistel and big winter cattle shed, the outbuildings clustered about the farmhouse in no apparent order. An ancient tractor, rusty harrows and assorted machinery and straw bales filled one; scattered logs piled around a saw bench another and, beyond the pigsties, the terraced garden, walled to keep out the rabbits, sloped down to the tumbling beck.

  The orchard lay to the south side of the house, raspberry canes around the perimeter. Plum, apple and pear trees, now crusted with snow, their sinews gnarled and twisted like old men, stooped away from the prevailing wind. A cobbled yard of old river stones lay before the house, warped and polished with time. Sheep pens stood on the one side, tool stores and yet more outhouses on the other.

  The sheep dogs, Tip and Bess, were apparently oblivious to the weather, and lived in two barrels beneath the rusty old diesel tank. Chained at night, they were still within snapping reach of anyone who came to the door. By day they ranged far and wide, mudsplashed and sleek-bellied, close to the ground, working as one with the old man, reading his commands and anticipating the manoeuvrings of the sheep.

  A narrow porch kept the wind from the kitchen door – the front door was never used – its roof consisting of two great stone slabs rooted in the fabric of the building. A lucky horseshoe hung from a peg at the apex together with snares, weathering before use, and the worn, carved stone that bore the date, 1612.

  Within the porch itself, smelling strongly of midden and cowshed, were several pairs of rubber boots, a shepherd’s crook, a hurricane lantern on a hook and the old man’s faded Barbour, draped carelessly from the haft of a yard broom.

  * * *

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sp; Jos Robertshaw sat, legs outstretched, before the fire in the living room. The floors were stone-flagged with a rag rug before the old range, where a kettle whispered listlessly on the hob.

  Above his head, the great beams supported the floor above. They were of seasoned oak and hard as steel, with strangely assorted cuts and grooves that bore no resemblance to the joists they supported, suggesting their probable origins as ships’ timbers.

  In the corner by the stairs a grandfather clock ticked sonorously, unhurriedly, as if each stroke of the pendulum might be its last, measuring the onward passage of time with ringing chimes upon the hour, the echoes of which still seemed to linger in the nooks and crannies of the room.

  Against the opposite wall, a Welsh dresser supported a mixture of Delft pottery, pewter plates, cricket cups and sepia photographs of relatives and prize-winning animals. The television sat on a squat-legged table in a corner to be viewed on occasion but never turned on without good cause.

  In the centre of the room stood a long, scrubbed pine table, knotted and scarred with the passage of years and laden with jars of pickles, mustard, a Christmas cake baked the year before and fortified with brandy, various cheeses, a cold joint of beef, a goose ready for stuffing, trays of sausage meat, mince pies, a large pork pie, a bottle of sherry, one of whisky and a deceptively potent home-made elderberry wine.

  Hospitality was a matter of pride with the hill farmer and, from the postman to the vicar, anyone coming over the threshold was assured of a dram or a drop of home-brewed beer, known affectionately as “lotion” and arguably more lethal than the dram.

  Jos removed his glasses, pausing to wipe each lens with the slow deliberation that came from years of thinking carefully about anything before it was done. He came from a long line of Robertshaws who, as far as anyone could tell, had lived there since the living rock was quarried to build the house and the now great sycamores had been planted as saplings at the “weather end” to absorb the force of the gales. Different days, he mused, but none the worse for that, when a man toiled from dawn to dusk often for small returns, but in close harmony with the seasons.

  He was, sadly, the last of his line to run “Keld” as a working farm. The big men far away in Brussels were making sure of that, with policies he hardly understood or could do nothing to prevent, slowly but surely throttling the life out of the hill farmer, with no regard for heritage or tradition. He was weary of the continual reminders of a changing world and the rush to be new and improved. Even Arnold, his only son, had seen no future in endless toil for no visible return and had headed for the city.

  Jos put down the unread Yorkshire Post and once again picked up the letter.

  ‘It’s no use worriting Jos. We’ve agreed. He’s coming and that’s all there is to it.’

  Emily sat in the chair opposite him, as ever, a rug over her thin frame, the grey eyes missing little. It cut him to the heart to see her like this, his rock and strength for so long, slipping slowly but surely away from him, prey to an illness now so common but bit by bit spreading its cruel fingers through her frail body. It had been some time ago that the pains had started and then the slow slide down into the weight loss and the frailty that soon accompanied the onward spread of the disease. In times gone by she was usually up before the sun – his “second good right arm”, as he always called her – baking, washing, cooking, and making butter.

  The tasks followed the round of the seasons; haymaking, lambing and clipping, birthing livestock, bottling and pickling were all part of the routine to Emily. That was until she was confined to the world of her chair. Now, he carried her to bed at night and Laura, the wife of Walter, his farm man, came in to clean and take care of baking and provisions.

  Jos weighed his answer with care. ‘Aye, but don’t you think we’ve enough on what with Arnold and his, what do you call it, partner, coming Christmas Day?’ He could not for the life of him understand where it was all going. In his day, marriage was marriage and mostly for life. Now they had all these new-fangled words to disguise the fact that permanence was out of style. God help us, but these days folks changed “partners” like he changed coats.

  ‘We’ll manage, Jos. We always do.’

  * * *

  The first letter had arrived many weeks ago. Jos had fingered it cautiously, musing over the South African stamp before reading it. After all this time, it was still hard to believe. Half a lifetime ago, his only sister, Winifred, normally so timid, surprised them all and upped and off, eloped and married in secret to some fellow with a lorry called Barnfather. They’d lived Richmond way for a while, then the next thing anybody knew they were in Cape Town. Apart from a card and letter at Christmas, not much was ever heard, except for the birth of a son, Ambrose, named after his grandfather. That was until four years ago when they had heard the news that Winifred had died. It had been too late and too far to go for the funeral.

  The blue airmail letter in Jos’s hand was written in a bold italic by someone well versed in the use of language, he reckoned. It was signed, “Your loving nephew, Ambrose”.

  He was apparently a minister of the church in Bloemfontein, South Africa, who had suddenly found himself invited to attend an Ecumenical Council beginning early in the New Year in London. The upshot was that he had asked if he could stay with his uncle and aunt over Christmas for, having heard all the stories from when he was knee high, he had a yearning to see Keld House and Aunt Emily in particular, after which he would make his way back south for the Council.

  After much deliberation, Jos had written back to say that Ambrose would be welcome.

  He had enclosed details of train times from London to North Appleton, the nearest station, and a map of the whole area with a ball-point cross marking Keld House above the village.

  All had then gone very quiet, almost to a point where the matter had been forgotten, when the next letter arrived from Bloemfontein, confirming that Ambrose would be in North Appleton on December 23rd. He would telephone when he arrived.

  A dalesman’s soft spot is the loyalty of family, blood ties and hospitality. Jos was no exception and, but for Emmy’s fragile state, he would have looked forward to seeing his nephew. Now he was not so sure, but Emily was adamant.

  ‘Shame on you, Jos Robertshaw. A man’s word is supposed to be his bond and you’ve invited him. If you hadn’t, then believe you me, Winnie would be turning in her grave.’

  ‘I was only thinking on you, love,’ he muttered sheepishly.

  The telephone rang suddenly and startlingly. Jos heaved his tall, lean frame out of the chair, walked over and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Robertshaw.’

  Brevity was one of his major attributes. He listened, nodding here and there, absentmindedly noting the bursts of snowflakes drifting past the light outside the window and ending the brief conversation with a desultory, ‘Aye, see thee in t’morning then’.

  ‘That were Walter,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Apparently he’s been trying to get us about pickin’ up that stuff from Mason’s but t’phone’s been out of order. They must have only just got it re-connected.’

  A thought suddenly occurred to Emily.

  ‘What if Ambrose arrived early and got himself up here and hasn’t been able to get hold of us? Eh dear me, a stranger in a foreign land he’s never seen before, let alone knowin’ no one, an’ to cap it all, snow as well. I hear tell they don’t have snow where he comes from.’

  ‘Well lass, whatever, there’s not much we can do about it.’ Jos scratched his greying head. ‘Anyway, wherever he is, surely he’ll have had the sense to stay put.’

  Emily watched as he wandered over to the window, drew back the curtain and looked out across the yard. There were so many sides to him that she could never quite fathom and, given that, when she thought about it, who ever really knew anyone anyway? What gave people the right to think they understand all the hidden nooks and crannies in a soul, when half the time they don’t even know themselves? But, oh, Jos was a steady o
ne. She watched him stooped in the recess of the window, his hands spread along the sill, peering out into the night. She loved the way his hair curled in duck’s tails over the oily collar of his jacket. Here was a man who always thought carefully about any decision that had to be made, be it moving sheep down from the high pastures if there was the “smell” of snow on the wind, to deciding which tie to wear with his ‘Sunday best’ before going on down to the chapel.

  ‘It still can’t make up its mind whether to snow us in or keep on pretending,’ he muttered. ‘Whatever, it ain’t worth stayin’ up for, that’s for sure.’

  Of all their memories together, most momentous of all was the day that he proposed to her. The vision of the scene was as sharpedged in Emily’s mind as if it were yesterday, an evening close and heavy, the air thick with the scent of stocks and rose petals drifting up from the garden, and the swallows hunting like arrows amongst the columns of midges above their heads. The clouds were massed along the hillsides that day, heavy with the promise of rain and Jos was ill at ease, shuffling from one foot to the other, torturing and twisting his cap in his hands. Here was a man whose sinewy shoulders could bring the axe whistling down, the sap sticky on the blade as the logs split asunder hour after hour with no visible effect; a man who thought nothing of being out half the night in a blizzard and then emerging in the dawn light with a rescued lamb over his shoulders and his hair and brows crusted with ice.

  ‘I’ll just go and do t’rounds,’ Jos said then.

  He went into the porch, putting on his boots and the old Barbour coat. Clamping a shapeless felt hat on his head, he trod noiselessly over the dry snow. In places the wind had blown the cobbles clean and piled the drifts up against the doors of the toolshed. There was a rattle of steel on steel and Tip and Bess came a chain’s length to greet him.