Darkest England

by Christopher Hope

  I asked the name of the place and he told me it was called Green Meadow. Nothing could be less green or further from any notion of a meadow. But muttering spells and incantations over the place, said the wingless cleric, made the horror of it, for the most part, endurable. People sprinkled charmed names over their despair: Beechwood Gardens, Pleasantlands, Happy Fields, Golden Grove, Oakcroft: names that looked over their shoulders to happier times when God was in his Heaven and all was well with the world.

  Motioning me to remain where I was, ex-Bishop Farebrother walked cautiously towards a group of young women, calling in a low voice such pleasantries as he thought would soothe and reassure them. We do much the same when stalking birds like the bustard, which are very susceptible to the sounds of their own voices. The quarry seemed surprisingly tame, and their young, batches of filthy six-, seven- and eight-year olds, were obviously very easy in his presence; even the little ones in their prams, or clutching their mothers’ skirts, screamed happily as their older siblings tried to attract the Bishop’s attention, sometimes punching each other in the face, slashing at friends with pieces of glass, or throwing stones through nearby windows, all in a very natural, high-spirited way.

  Encouraged by this show of friendliness and high spirits, I forgot his words of warning and I stepped forward to meet them.

  With the shrill clarion call to arms you will hear when the she-elephant sees a hunter approaching her child, the females began trumpeting the alarm. Wheeling and pointing and gibbering, like a troop of baboons sensing the arrival of the ravening leopard. The young took this as an inducement to attack and came at me like hyenas. The ex-Bishop, keeping just in front of the pack, ran towards me, shouting to me to enter the vehicle or perish!

  He ran well for a man more used to flying, and we reached the safety of our vehicle ahead of the mob, though their howls were so loud and so near they quite drowned the sound of the engine as the ex-Bishop raced the motorcar away.

  We were almost clear of our pursuers when a rock flung by one of the most determined of them shattered our windscreen, and shards of milky glass rained on the two of us. Although somewhat cut about the face and bleeding from the eyebrows, Mr Farebrother clung to the wheel for dear life and, with a burst of speed of the sort you will see when the locust bounds over the head of the pursuing meerkat, we suddenly found ourselves among safer, quieter streets.

  My hat protected me when our windscreen shattered. Mr Farebrother was not so lucky. My friend and protector drove gamely on, wiping blood from his face and expressing his deep sympathy with his little flock. I was further amazed when he suddenly pulled over to the side of the road, parked the car in what he called a ‘lay-by’, saying that this was a very old English custom and I could not really be said to have visited his country if I had never had tea in a lay-by. Whereupon he set up a table and chairs, cleverly assembled from the boot, covered with a fine red-and-white cloth, all the while apologizing for neglecting his hospitality towards me, blaming for his negligence his concern for his poor little flock, which made him forget how strange all this must seem to me.

  He produced a flask of tea, and when I suggested we should rather treat his wounds, he said perhaps later, but first a cup of tea would do him the world of good. And so there we sat in our lay-by while enormous lorries raged by like charging rhinos.

  I should understand, said my friend, that he would do all in his power to ensure that I achieved my ambition of seeing the Queen. If I were to achieve my goal, then I must first learn something of the temper of the people. When in Rome, one did as the Romans did. I would need to learn survival skills. Street-craft. Combat preparedness. Although, to the trained eye, England might seem peaceful by comparison with the hell I had escaped in my own land, where assassination and racial hatred and wild animals and poverty threatened little fellows such as myself, he would be less than candid if he did not admit that England too, had problems, as I might have noticed. Oh, yes, indeed. He apologized for the reception I had received. It was the children – and they could be deadly.

  I begged him to say no more. Had I not been given the most vivid introduction to local conditions? How many foreigners had experienced the sight of native young roaming their natural habitat? It was a kind of bushwalking. How else did one encounter local fauna? I reminded him that I was, after all, a child of the veld, the son of hunters, and I was well aware that on a safari of this sort a traveller must expect a little discomfort.

  Only after I had refused a second cup of tea did he allow me to clean his wounds with the remains of the tea and to bind them with strips torn from his little white bib, and all the time the good man apologized for the behaviour of his flock. Their lives, were mostly nasty, British (sic)3 and short. Sadness had driven them quite mad. But I should remember that, however badly they may have felt when they attacked us, they would be feeling a lot worse when they realized they had come close to killing a fellow whose life was actually far worse than theirs. I need have no doubt that a handsome apology would follow. Just as soon as they had simmered down. And reason prevailed. And fairness returned.

  Believe you me, said ex-Bishop Farebrother.

  And, of course, I did. Since my arrival in England, I had been inspected, detained, dropped on my head, almost expelled and saved. Now I believed I was on the right track.

  The village of Little Musing lies deep in the isolated western reaches of the kingdom. It is larger than, say, Scorpion’s Hole, but a trifle smaller than Pumpkinville. It has about it nothing of the rough and dusty nature of a Karoo town, being situated in deliciously wet and beautiful country, where emerald fields divided by tall hedges run as far as the Black Mountains, beyond which, the locals say, there live savages. Worshippers of leeks and hut-burners.4

  A cluster of ancient houses in a green hollow: a scene, I imagined, that was little changed from primeval times when the ancient English lived in wooden huts surrounded by a stockade to protect them from their warring neighbours, for even then they had been a turbulent people.

  Lovingly held by its wooded hills (they call mountains), the way you might lay a child in the fork of a tree to protect it from the leopard s leap, in the early mornings it is hidden in a little mist. In the evenings it is bathed in the setting sun that sends great golden fingers across the brow of the hills which cradle the village, as if stroking a favourite child to sleep.

  Little Musing comprises roughly a hundred individuals, Remote-area Dwellers, we would call them. A single road and a stream wind through the heart of the village, passing close by the church door, where beloved ancestors rest beneath mossy headstones. A flock of ducks splash and squabble by the humped-back bridge which crosses the stream where it meets the road in the middle of town, opposite the single grocer’s shop and the little butcher.

  Little Musing, my guide and mentor felt sure, would soon warm to me. He pointed happily to the homes of his friends. Old Jed lived down Duck Lane, in the cottage with the broken roof tiles, and Miss Desdemona over there in Aga Close; she was cousin to the local Lord who dwelt in Goodlove Castle and was the good Lord’s eyes and ears. And legs, he added rather mysteriously. His two very good neighbours were simply dying to meet me. Absolutely everyone was watching us go by.

  But all I saw were rows of blank, heavily veiled windows; in a tantalizing hint of hidden watchers, from time to time I thought I saw a lacy veil twitch. Once a child wandered into the garden and stared at us silently as we passed, only to be reclaimed by its mother, dashing from her house at full gallop, who scooped up the infant and disappeared inside, slamming the door behind her.

  People were bound to be a bit shy, at first, explained my friend. Only natural. Never seen someone quite like me before. If I saw what he meant?

  I thought of the pink Sea-Bushmen heaved up on our shores, helpless as prawns. Yes, I saw what he meant.

  Not that the good folk of Little Musing were ignorant of foreigners, said my guide. Their own butcher had married a person from Thailand. Forced to do so. Ma
rriageable women being pretty thin on the ground in those parts. He’d ordered her by post. Blossoms of Siam Friendship Agency. But the woman had pined. It had been a terrible disappointment. After everyone had been so friendly. Waving when they caught sight of her behind her lace curtains. But she faded away. Which had left people sad and puzzled. There they were, taking to their bosoms a strange woman whom their butcher had decided to import – they might not have liked it, but it was a free country, wasn’t it? They had made every effort – and it had not been easy – to adjust to the presence in their midst of someone with pretty odd habits, dietary, cultural, sexual and so on. And she went and popped off.

  Little Musing had emerged from this experience sadder but wiser. One had to allow developing people to develop – at their own pace – and not expect them to behave as one did. If ever I thought he was in danger of forgetting this truth, I would do him a jolly special service if I reminded him. Everyone in Little Musing had learnt something jolly important when the butcher’s wife did herself in. And everyone would remember what it was when they came to deal with me.

  The former Bishop lived in an ancient house built from what looked to me like wattle and daub, with a crooked chimney and tiny leaded panes. He shared a courtyard of cobbles and a garden with his two neighbours. Peter the Birdman, lived on his left and Julia, the widow, on his right. Both neighbours came out of their houses to greet me.

  Peter was a rumpled, sleepy, friendly man, his hair and beard and even his ears stuck with plumes, stray feathers, so that his head looked like a recently vacated nest. He welcomed me warmly and congratulated me on escaping from oppression in my own country, expressing the hope that I would settle happily among them. He believed fervently that men, like birds, should be free. But the world was imperfect, and men were not free. Birds, too, were oppressed. He made it his mission to find birds in the fields threatened with attack and brought them home. He had forty-two refugees in his house, victims of farmers, hunters, children, cats, and thought of them as his family.

  But how did he allow his birds freedom inside a house which looked to me somewhat cramped, with its little windows and low roof?

  With a sweet smile he explained that all internal doors were left open and he had broken through the floors and walls to encourage his friends to fly between rooms; he had removed all the furniture but for a small bed, and a stove, to increase the area of exercise available. He cleaned his windows frequently and used no curtains so these refugees and exiles might enjoy a clear view of the surrounding countryside. Of course, even among birds you got hoodlums and killers, and so he allowed no owls or hawks or other predators into the house. But then birds did not have exclusive rights to the butchery of their brothers and sisters. As he was sure I would know to my cost.

  Julia wore a weatherproof coat and a dark-green scarf pulled tightly over fine grey hair. She had the stabbing manner of an ostrich, bobbing beak beneath exasperated eyes. She now addressed me as if her words had each been purchased at great expense and she was loath to give them up. She was, she told me, a serial widow. She had had several husbands, all deceased. I commiserated. She advised me to think no more of it. Much more interesting to her were my thoughts on black magic. She seemed delighted with her fortune, but appalled by the manner in which she had acquired it. Since I came from Africa, I would have a natural understanding of occult forces, in which she too took a scientific interest. Perhaps I might give her some advice? Was she occult? Certainly she seemed to have fatal effects on her husbands. What could be done to remedy this situation? Did my knowledge of the dark forces suggest some answer? She had consulted English witches but found them – like so much of modern English life – hopelessly ineffectual.

  I explained that my people practised only the Trance Dance, and knew nothing of witches.

  Well, then, would I throw the bones for her? Surely I knew how to throw the bones?

  I said I was sorry, but we did not throw the bones either.

  At this Julia’s eyes became even larger, and her nose seemed to grow longer and sharper. In a voice in which were mixed honey and knives, she wondered aloud why Bishop Farebrother had gone to the trouble of bringing to Little Musing a person who appeared so inauthentic? And for that matter, if I did live in Africa, why did I not bother, if not to practise witchcraft, at least to throw the bones from time to time?

  In the silence that followed these questions, she examined me from head to toe and pronounced me an odd little beast, adding that I would not have looked at all out of place in the menagerie at Goodlove Castle.

  Then, growing even sharper, she demanded to know whether Mr Farebrother expected to accommodate me without paying extra rent. Everyone was taking in refugees. The Farebrothers had me. And there were nearly fifty in Peter’s place. But she lived entirely alone. In a house of the same size she used one room, never turned on the heating, for it cost the earth, and she was not made of money, yet paid a whacking rent. It did not seem right. More bodies meant free heat. She intended to take up the matter with Miss Desdemona, when the landlady next called for the rent.

  With that, she returned to her house, tossing over her shoulder the opinion that since I knew nothing of throwing the bones and zero about witchcraft, some activity to occupy my days in Little Musing would be welcome, and I might, if I liked, mow her lawn from time to time.

  Which, the ex-Bishop said, was a sure sign she liked me.

  Edward Farebrother threw open the door to his house, and announced that I was as welcome as an angel of the Lord. Small and humble though his home was, it was mine for as long as I wished to stay.

  They have forgotten how rich they are. Humble! His home was as large as the church hall over Williston way. My bed would have slept a family of six.

  Now there stepped forward a young woman, quick and graceful in her movements, very shy, with hair almost as dark as the ex-Bishop’s, though she was not very much taller than myself; her eyes were of a blue we never see except in Heaven. I put her age at about thirty, though it is always difficult to tell with them. Being younger than they appear is one of their peculiarities; preferring to look back to how they were, to value the past over the future. And such sad clothes she wore: a dark and shapeless jumper, fraying grey trousers and heavy, ugly shoes.

  She told me I was much younger than she had expected. Even though my face was so lined.

  They associate the puckering of skin, so natural to us, with excessive age. To them, a young person is always a smooth person. They like their skin to be wax-like, pink and grey and tightly stretched across the face through which the bones press in what to us is an eerie and somewhat repulsive fashion, like stones glimpsed through an inflated goat’s bladder.

  But then she turned. I felt my heart leap once, twice, in my breast, as a hare will when thrown into a hunter’s sack, kicking at my ribs. For this woman, otherwise unexceptional by our standards, pale, of course, as one would expect in this sun-starved island, lifted my brown suitcase and preceded me to my room. Such a simple thing. But in doing so showed the truth of her, full of flesh; quivering tautly with each step she took, globular, generous, sweet as watermelons, round as the moon and sun. Or, like some otherwise nondescript village the passer-by would scarcely glance at which suddenly shows to its rear a glorious, generous dam filled to the banks with shining, shifting life, so did Beth now reveal her delectable hindquarters, a rump the equal of anything I have seen in the loveliest of our women; this English woman was, in a word – steatopygous.

  She was very sensitive about it too. For she felt my eyes admiring the lovely rhythms of her haunches, and turned and began pulling at her shirt to hide her charms and I wanted to cry, stop! What a crime to hide such an adorable protuberance! I saw how she flushed, red as the flame lily, and saw that this was not, as it is for us, a source of great pride, but a bad and dismal saddle of flesh she deeply regretted, a hateful fundament she wished to hide.

  Addressing me through her father, she begged me to stand beside the door
jamb and produced a tape measure. Once my height had been marked off, she exclaimed with delight that I must be a pygmy.

  Her pleasure at my arrival was rather touching. She asked if she might take me into the garden and play with me. Or would I like a run? She was sure that we would be the very best of friends. And she lifted my hat and looked with amazement at my curls.

  It is a moot point as to how much enlightenment the English native can understand or tolerate. Very gently I explained that the First People of Africa were not to be mistaken for the pygmies. We came from the south; the pygmies lived in the north, in forests so distant from us that if you travelled from one end of England to the other, repeating that journey once a month for an entire year, still you would not have covered the distance that separates the Red People from the pygmies. An even greater distance lies between our natures, origins and physical appearances.

  Beth made an honest effort to follow my explanation. As I have noted, to them the entire world has shrunk to the size of their island. The primitive belief that their island land is so large it leaves room only for places which are very small (or very far or very filthy) has been useful to them, and has gone largely unchallenged through the centuries. Nothing will convince them that theirs is not an enormous land lying at the very navel of the known world. The wise visitor will not exhaust himself attempting to remedy this delusion. The configuration of their brains does not allow it.

  The grounded Bishop’s ungainly daughter took one look at me, the first English person I had met who did not peer down upon me as if from some lofty plane, and decided that here was the stalking companion of her dreams. It was a relief, she said, to meet someone as small as herself.

  I replied that it was a joy to meet someone so perfectly formed. My eyes drawn irresistibly towards that wondrous fundament.

  She blushed formidably. I presented her with a copper bangle and beads of jasper and tiger’s eye. Trinkets, but pretty enough.