by David Ruffle
“Have one of what?” asked Judy.
“A purse.”
“We are not talking about purses, Katy; we are talking about a curse.”
“What’s a curse?”
“Shush now, Katy. We’ll tell you later, much later. Mr Williams, perhaps you can enlighten us.”
“It’s cursed, missus.”
“Thank you, would there be any chance of any more detail with that?”
“Cursed three hundred fifty years or more,” said old Mr Williams adding as much detail as he thought the occasion warranted.
“Mr Williams, the house is less than three hundred years old so what you say is nonsense.”
“But, Judy...,” started Michael.
“Shush now, Mike. Mr Williams?”
“You are right and all, missus, but...”
“But what?”
“It’s cursed.”
“Oh for God’s sake. You try, Mike.”
“I see, you don’t want to shush me now then. I have my use now do I?”
“Not now, not in front of the children and Mr Williams, just be a darling and try for me.”
“How is it cursed? Who says it is?”
“Can’t say no more now,” old Mr Williams ventured, glancing at Katy and Annabelle. “Kiddies here you see.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But...”
“Yes?”
“It’s cursed,” he whispered, displaying a great sense of the dramatic.
“For crying out loud,” cried Judy out loud. “How is it cursed?”
“Can’t say, missus.”
“Well, I don’t believe we are any further forward with that,” remarked Judy, “but let’s agree to accept it as a local quirk belonging to a local eccentric,” she said in an aside to Michael.
Old Mr Williams glided away. Not literally, that would be hideous.
“All the same Jude, it makes you think doesn’t it?”
“You maybe, not me. Right, home time. We’ll head off up Cobb Road.”
“Bit steep for the girls isn’t it?”
“For you, you mean!”
Leaving the Cobb behind them, they strolled up the road. Judy positively. The girls happily and Michael reluctantly (very).
“Why has Daddy stopped?” asked Katy.
“I think he is a bit tired darling.”
“Are you tired, Daddy?”
“What? Oh no, sweetheart, I am just looking at the view.”
“But you have seen it before.”
“We should always make the time to stand and stare and enjoy what we see, girls.”
“In other words, Daddy is tired,” Judy said to her daughters;
“Or it may be his knees again,” added Annabelle.
“My family, the cynics,” gasped Michael as he looked at the view once again, pulse racing.
“He’s stopped again,” sighed an exasperated Katy.
It wasn’t the first time he had exasperated his daughter, nor would it be the last.
8 A good example of this is in the 1938 film ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’. The result was always the same: Flynn alive, Rathbone dead.
9 Written and illustrated by Graham Oakley who lives in Lyme Regis.
10 “The Cobb”, Lyme’s iconic man-made harbour wall, features in Jane Austen’s Persuasion published in of 1818 and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman of 1969. It was of great economic importance to the town and surrounding area, allowing it to develop as both a major port and a shipbuilding centre from the 13th century onwards.
11 Reckoned by some to be the steps that Louisa Musgrove stumbles on in Jane Austen’s ‘Persuasion’.
12 A much-loved British situation comedy.
Chapter Four
Much Earlier Days
The smell of horse-dung defined Michael’s childhood, it clung to him like a badge of dishonour. It followed him around. Other children had imaginary friends; he had horse-dung. Other children knew the price of gob stoppers; he knew the price of horse-feed which of course in turn begat horse-dung.
It didn’t help that he had an aversion to riding horses which amazed his father although that did not stop him saddling every horse in the neighbourhood for Michael to trot out on. It’s a minor miracle that he didn’t break more bones than he did (at the last count, it was three) as every horse he mounted sensed his nervousness and lack of horsemanship or was that horseboyship? Consequently, every horse he mounted deposited him at various locations in the Cotswolds. There was a particularly painful moment involving the King’s Stone[13] at Rollright. The railings certainly looked as though it would be impossible for him to get his head caught in between, but he reckoned without the equine positioning skills of Champion who sent him flying at just the right angle. Wonder horse indeed.
His lack of riding skills also extended to bicycles, a balance thing he told everyone. His ears were obviously not designed to help him achieve any kind of balance on any kind of speeding machine be it mammal or a mix of metal and rubber with a bell. It’s fair to say even though it sounds harsh, but he was an exceptionally non-talented (very) boy. When not mucking out stables he could be found in a fantasy world where he would alternate between being Johnny Norfolk, star of Barton United and England (a forward with an unerring accuracy for finding the back of the net) and Johnny Stevens a secret agent modelled on James Bond, but without the (yet to be sampled) delights of alcohol or sex. He sought his spirit of adventure through imagination and found it there.
He could also be found committing to memory the season’s point to point races that his father would quiz him on from time to time. Where? Charlbury. Correct. When? October 5th. Correct. How long? Four furlongs. Correct. How many jumps? Six. Correct again, you have a talent for this, Michael. Groan.
He displayed an unhealthy (according to his father) interest in the Civil War and their associated battle fields. Fortunately there were several of these nearby and he took advantage of his father’s many and frequent trips to look at horses to visit some of these. There have always been horse whisperers, but his father had no pretensions there, he was a horse looker. All Michael knew about it was that he could wander as he pleased around battle-fields and skirmish-fields. Mention Edgehill, Cropredy Bridge or Middleton Cheney to Michael as a grown man and he was still liable to go glassy-eyed.
Home was in Adlestrop, famous for a train stopping there once and some bloke writing a poem about it[14]. Nothing else has ever happened there since. It was quiet, leafy, entirely rural and held no attractions whatsoever for a growing lad except for a growing girl, Sarah Higginson. She was a winsome (i.e. buxom) girl who singled out Michael for her favours or so he thought. To this day he can never look at a hayrick without thinking of her. In fact he purposely avoids looking at hayricks for that very reason.
The word frolicking is under used in the English language, a pity for it captures perfectly those idyllic summers spent in pursuit of buxom (not to mention winsome) lasses. But he and she frolicked all through the summer of 1989. From Cornwell to Rollright, from Evenlode to Barton on the Heath, they frolicked. They frolicked in Lower Oddington. They frolicked in Oddington, but that kind of behaviour is frowned upon in the rarefied atmosphere of Upper Oddington[15] so the full set was not to be theirs. If it proved anything to Michael it was that the spirit of adventure was not always to be found in imagination. His knees had not become dodgy at that point, of course it could well be that the strain they were put under that summer may have begun the whole deterioration process, but that’s a question only the medical authorities can tell us so we’ll not dwell on it.
They continued their summer of frolicking up until the point that Joe Higginson, Sarah’s father came up before the magistrate. Yes, Mrs Hamilton. Joe had never attended one of M
argaret Hamilton’s cheese and wine parties, not having been invited would have been somewhat of a hindrance anyway to his attendance. Small time poaching, a fine maybe would be the worst he could expect. But the three months sentence took everyone in court by surprise with the exception of Mrs Hamilton of course. Sarah never spoke to him again. Life can be so unfair. He sent letters. He sat next to her on the school bus. He camped outside on her lawn. Nothing. So much for the spirit of adventure.
Many years later he bumped into her in Camden Market, both shopping for overpriced clothes, although they didn’t know they were overpriced until they arrived independently at the stall in question. I would love to report they shared a laugh and a fond remembrance or two about those halcyon, frolicking days of summer, but alas I cannot, for not a word passed between them. It was not the first time that he had coffee from a plastic cup thrown in his face, but it was by far the most humbling occasion.
Meanwhile...........
Over in suburbia, Judith Kennedy, was looking at her sister, Fay with less than adoring looks. They had been sitting quite happily at one of the tables on the pavement outside the Albion in East Molesey. She could not understand why, when their parents returned with the drinks, that Fay should want to tell them how Judy had been there picking her nose all the while they had been gone. Well, the next time that Judith saw Fay having a pee in Molesey Hurst rec while their parents had their weekly tennis lessons it would be her doing the telling.
Sneaky things sisters. And Fay was the favourite even at that early age. She had poise, Judy was ungainly (very). Fay should have tennis lessons it was decided. Her parents thought she showed some promise which might reflect well on them. Everyone at the Molesey boatclub could claim at least one talented offspring to their name. Perhaps Judith could stand around and try and learn something or be helpful by retrieving the over-hit tennis balls. Judy the ball girl, what a pinnacle of achievement that would be. And of course as they grew older Fay always had the boys sniffing around her, the golden girl. There were slim pickings for Judy although that is not to say she didn’t have her moments, it’s just that they were fleeting, few and far between.
Her father had always been something big in the city for as long as she could remember. She knew not what, she hardly saw him. If he wasn’t doing that certain something, whatever it may be, in the city then he was at the cricket club or the sailing club holding court with his cronies. Like all good cronies they were always ready to toady up as long as the drinks flowed freely. Her mother hosted various WI get-togethers which usually involved all the members monopolising the local hair salons for hours at a time yet still coming out looking exactly the same. These were meetings where the jam flowed freely and the spirit of adventure was entirely lacking apart from the isolated proposal to produce a Hampton Wick branch nude calendar. Fortunately this was vetoed owing to the failure to gain permission to use the Hampton Court maze as the location of the photo shoot. The wonders of topiary in hiding certain elements of the human body would have to wait for another day. Besides, Judy had seen all the members clothed and that was a hideous enough sight. Rubenesque was a kindly word for them.
Judy’s boy band stage lasted far too long, even in her opinion. The very epitome of a fan-girl, posters adorned her walls, pictures pasted into scrapbooks and those fan-girl fantasies, oh my. She dreamed of her idols by day and night, imagining their long, lingering kisses, their declarations of love. In reality she ended up with Christopher Drummond, for whom the word geek must have been invented, but he was the only one to look her way and we all know about beggars and choosers don’t we?
Let’s not be too quick to castigate him though. He was sweet in his own admittedly peculiar way and whilst it is true that Judy had to tutor him in the mystical art of kissing he did turn out to be a quick learner. Sadly, it was all to fizzle out before too many weeks had passed, it may have had something to do with Judy’s reluctance to learn Klingon[16]; it may not, who can tell? Christopher’s insistence that it was the language of lovers did not find favour with her, she was amazed that he should think it would. Goodbye Christopher. Or as she put it in a way he could understand; Qapla’. That was more or less the extent of her linguistic skills apart from her impressive, ‘lupDujHomwIj luteb gharghmey’, but she quickly realised that there would be very few conversations where, ‘my hovercraft is full of eels’ could be satisfactorily introduced.
School was a hindrance for Judy, something that interfered with her life, but she was hardly alone among teenagers in that. Fay was of course the more academically gifted, Judy followed along in her ungainly fashion in her sister’s slipstream, picking up the crumbs of learning that fell from her sister’s chair. Not literally of course, that would be hideous. Studying came hard to her much the same way as with learning Klingon although one of those was a life-style choice or to be more exact a non-choice.
Judy’s mother, Elspeth, proving that Women’s instituting was not her entire life also worked, after a fashion, at one of the many antique shops that adorned East Molesey. Hampton Court tourists sometimes made their way across the bridge and some were even eager to part with baffling sums of money for equally baffling items. Judy’s horizons were narrow, hemmed in by the railway lines and the Thames in a physical sense and a lack of confidence, an unhealthy dose of low self-esteem in the emotional sense. Somebody tell this girl she is beautiful please.
Then someone did. Jason Wilkins. A bad boy, not that bad, but bad enough. They met when she was helping out her mother at the shop (antiques for the discerning customer) when he wandered in having mistaken the premises for a tattoo parlour. Not the sharpest bad boy in the knife drawer. Elspeth Kennedy was about to read him the riot act for his stupidity, to which no doubt would have been added a lecture on lax morals, personal hygiene and why would anyone want a tattoo anyway when her daughter stepped in and shepherded Jason out of harm’s and Elspeth’s way.
“I know there is a tattoo place on Ember Lane,” Judy offered.
“Who was that cow? She needs a good shagging,” Jason replied.
“Hey, that’s my mum you are talking about!”
“Yeah, so, you should get your old man to do something about it.”
“Like, ‘pass the sauce, Dad and oh yeah why don’t you pork mum a bit more’?”
“I was just saying that’s all,” he said with a shrug and began to walk off in the direction of Esher Road.
Judy bounced along (not literally of course) after him. For someone who appeared not to lift his feet he moved surprisingly quickly, panther like Judy thought, but then she was beginning to feels the stirrings of attraction and panthers spring readily to mind at times like those. Everyone said so. She drew a deep breath as she came alongside him.
“Perhaps it’s me, you know.”
“It’s you what?” he asked, panther like.
“That needs it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes I bloody well do!”
“Jason.”
` “Judy.”
“Nineteen.”
“Seventeen.”
“Good.”
“Where?”
“Dunno.”
“Your place?”
“Nah.”
“Have to be mine then.”
The conversation continued on at this sparkling pace, the verbal jousting rivalling anything Romeo and Juliet[17] could have come up with. But the details or lack of them will be spared you. Be assured you missed nothing of particular note.
At Judy’s there was a frenzied (very) clearing of the bed; books, magazines all tumbled to the floor in a whirlwind of the printed word. In Judy’s admittedly limited experience he was the best. The brevity of the act was more than compensated for by the quality and intensity. Judy, breathing hard, considered her response to this wild, but pleasurable interlude. Her response when it came was simple enough.
“Bloody hell, Jason!”
It was the season of ‘bloody hell Jasons’, the cry was heard frequently and often loudly. Judy’s neighbours could confirm this if required and no doubt the Noise Abatement Society too had they been consulted. If only she had this much fun at school she thought. But some things remained impossibly out of reach. But for now, life was rather good.
13 A stone belonging to the Rollright Stones group, an ancient stone circle whose usage and origins are unknown.
14 The ‘bloke’ in question was Edward Thomas whose poem ‘Adlestrop’ is probably his most famous.
15 The Oddingtons congregated around the mid-point between Chipping Norton and Stow in the Wold.
16 A constructed language spoken by Klingons in various series of various Star Treks. If you wish to learn...ah...but of course you don’t.
17 Come on, you know who they were.
Chapter Five
Present Day
It may look like the result of an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter Scale or a small explosion in an enclosed space, but the explanation is simple; it’s a school day. For Judy, Katy and Annabelle. For Michael, it’s another of those ‘trying to decide what to do’ days. But first there was the small matter of getting the girls to school. The hunt for school uniforms was on, it was always a bit of a guessing game as to where they may have ended up. Logic could be applied, but that was no guarantee of success. Invariably they appeared in some corner five minutes after they should have left the house. This particular day was no exception. Uniforms and lunch boxes not to mention shoes had conspired to be far removed from where they should be.
“My family, the great organisers,” said Judy as she slipped out of the door, “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thanks Jude, thanks a lot.”
