Coleshanger

COLESHANGER

Norman E. Williams

Panda Bo oks Australia Sydney — New York — Tokyo — Berlin

Coleshanger First published in Australia by Panda Books Australia in 2016 Copyright (c) Thomas Corfield All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry Williams, Norman Coleshanger.

ISBN 978-0-9945306-0-8.

1.Williams, Norman – Autobiography – Historical 2. Humour 914.6 Panda Books Australia Limited Level 29, Chifley Tower, 2 Chifley Square, Sydney NSW 2000 pandabooksaustralia.com Text design by Stephen Guest, Highway 37 Cover design by Mamfred Holland Typeset by Letter Spaced Garamond 10 Printed and bound by National Press, Wollongong 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Neither Thomas Corfield or Panda Book Australia are responsible or liable for information pertaining to names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents recounted in this publication. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is wholly without prejudice. This transcription is presented “as is�, without any guarantee, in any form whatsoever, explicitly or implicitly, including but not limited to guarantees concerning merchantability, uses, non-infringement, and accuracy.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

I cannot know my grandfather’s reaction to having his manuscript published. He was a sensitive, humorous and awkward man, apparently, who might be more touched than impressed that it finally has been. The manuscript has been around, unread, longer than he was alive. And seventy years after his death, and a century after the book’s setting, there is a strange irrelevance in even pondering such matters. Nevertheless, I’m pleased to have revived its faded and brittle pages, and brought his story into the immortal realm of infinitely spinning electrons.

Norman’s recount of English village life is charming, lighthearted and self-deprecating, and because it was written in 1952, has a poignancy that’s impossible to conjure were it written today. It has an authenticity that I hope goes beyond any ancestral intrigue it holds for me, and gives readers a taste of village life in the English midlands during the early twentieth century.

Coleshanger tells of a village and the people within it; villagers who lived far simpler lives than ours. Either we have too much distraction in this day and age, or perhaps Coleshanger hadn’t enough. Regardless, Norman Williams’ Coleshanger suggests one thing clearly: that despite all that humanity has endured over the last century, people have changed very little. And although this could infer that we’ve learnt nothing from such tribulations, it might equally suggest we have a resilience and spirit unwavering.

—Thomas Norman Corfield, 17th March, 2016.

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BIOGRAPHY

Norman Ellis Williams was born in the small village of Greens Norton, Northamptonshire, England, in 1906. He was the youngest of five children. His brother, William Washington Williams, who became Bursar of Fitzwilliam College Cambridge, was ten years older. His three sisters died in their twenties from tuberculosis.

After a childhood and adolescence in Greens Norton and Towcester, Norman was accepted at Cambridge University, where he studied Literature and Classics, culminating in First Class Honours.

In 1939 he married Margery Bosworth, whose family were from Northampton. They had one daughter, Alison, mother of Thomas Corfield. Shortly after his marriage, Norman signed up as a gunner at the outbreak of war. He served mainly in North Africa and rose to the rank of Captain in Intelligence. After the war he joined the British Council, with postings to Egypt, Holland, Czechoslovakia and India.

His final posting, in 1958 was to Australia as British Council Representative and Cultural Advisor to the High Commissioner, during which he was awarded an O.B.E. He and Margery lived in Sydney, until in 1968, he was diagnosed with acute leukaemia. He died within three months at the age of 60. When Margery returned to England a few months later, it was arranged that his ashes should be interred with the rest of his family at Greens Norton church. In 1988, Margery’s ashes were also buried there.

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FOREWORD

Coleshanger is the village of Greens Norton in the county of Northampton, three miles from the small Watling Street of Towcester (the Polcaster of the book) and about eleven miles from Northampton. It sits on the Banbury lanes—a series of by-ways and still deliciously rural1—taking in their embrace the small town of Banbury and a number of tiny villages. Amongst these is Sulgrave with its Manor House, purchased in 1539 by Lawrence Washington, a shrine of pilgrimage for Americans ever since Washington Irving introduced it to his compatriots. I understand that Norman’s mother (although not herself a native of Greens Norton) was connected with the Washington family, which accounts for the naming of her first-born, William Washington Williams. And certainly, on visiting Sulgrave Manor (where the Washington arms appear on the porch) certain resemblances can be seen between some of the old portraits and my late mother-in-law.

I feel more than ever, after reading the manuscript, that it was right, following the big, official funeral in Sydney, to fly Norman’s ashes to Greens Norton. I contacted the Rector (whom I did not know but who has since, with his sister, become a friend of mine) asking if he could arrange to intern the urn in the family grave in the churchyard. This he did, preceding it with a simple service in the church. Although a private matter and no invitations or notices were sent out—I myself was still in Australia—hundreds of people turned up for the occasion: they came from Greens Norton and the 1

In 1980.

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villages around, and from Towcester and Northampton. I think Norman would have been happy to find that his world was not entirely lost2 and that many of the old loyalties still lingered on.

And at a magnificent tea-party Canon Worthington-Hardy and his sister threw for me on my return to the UK, I met again around a festive board many of those who shared Norman’s reminiscences and his sense of values, if not his pointed humour.

—Mrs. Margery Williams (1908-1988).

From a letter regarding the book, 10th March,1980.

2

The manuscript was originally titled “My Lost World”.

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“If it can be said that a village has a life, then this is a biography.”

—Norman Ellis Williams, (1906-1969)

THE SCENE “The people lived in darkness and vassalage.

They were lost in the grossness of beef and ale.”

—T. L. Peacock.

V

isitors to Coleshanger received an impression, not so much that they had gone backwards in time, as that they had gone sideways. Some of them, in spite of their struggles, never managed to return but stayed in the village, wandering around with a lost look on their faces and despair and dejection in their hearts until they died. But even the contemplation of death brought them no consolation. They seemed to feel that when their souls were freed and shot upwards at the resurrection they would be incorrectly aimed, and would go whistling past the gates of heaven into a cold and featureless infinity. My aunt Margaret married one of these unhappy creatures.

He used at first to speak regretfully of the town he left, and was soon known in the village as Johnny Come-from, for it seemed to us incredible that anyone admitted to our society should have regrets for the outer world. Johnny Come-from and Aunt Margaret had a son named Mordred who was a warning to us all in the matter of mixed marriages and of whom I shall have much to say in the less pleasant passages of this book. One day a man came out of the county town in the course of a lecture and in the schoolroom explained that educated men now agreed that they were descended from apes. In concluding, he said that he hoped we should not take offence at anything he said which was, after all, scientific and not personal. Pious Dackers, speaking for the village, said, “No, it wasn’t our place to be upset.”

“Would he please explain?” the visitor asked.

“No marriage outside the village for as long as we could tell,” Pious said, “at least, not with educated peoples, so we was let off.”

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“What then,” demanded the lecturer, “did we think we were descended from?”

“Coleshanger men,” said Pious.

And I sometimes think there was a deep and alarming truth in his contention.

To the visitor, Coleshanger, during opening time, must have seemed very much like any other Midland village: empty and ugly, with a church, a chapel, three pubs and a school. There was a third place of worship known as the temple of the Eighth Day Creationists, a sect which never gained much ground outside Coleshanger and which in my day had only eight, or nine adherents.

It was started by a blind and deaf lady who had left London to live with us in the country and who had a strong feeling one morning that she was, as it were, in the Garden of Eden on the first day of its full activities. She went into an ecstasy over the peace and tranquillity around her, and dictated to a friend the principles on which these could be perpetuated. It was unfortunate that amanuensis missed a great deal of what she said owing to a fight between the Withams and the Hotchpennys which was going on outside the window at the time, but enough was taken down to encourage a small secession from the Wesleyans and to set up a persistent, though not dangerous, spiritual opposition. There was already a bitter rivalry between the chapel and the church. The former attracting, in general, the middle sections of village society, and the latter retaining both ends. Real theological differences we only imperfectly understood, but our general impression was that the church looked to the First, the chapel to the Second, and the temple to the Third Person of the Trinity. It seemed, therefore, that the village was reasonably well looked offer, and most of us felt we could occasionally take time off for other interests.

The amount of original sin in Coleshanger was probably no greater than in any other village of the same size; but it was different, and on the whole, more original. Sins venial and moral had an honoured and accepted place in our daily routine, and a catholic missionary who visited the village for a week’s assault is said to have left in despair on the second morning, having encountered several kinds of vice not accounted for in the very comprehensive catalogue issued by his superiors.

We had, however, other qualities, equally rare and surprising.

Generosity, kindness and loyalty, for example; and in the summing up of spiritual accounts the balance was probably in credit.

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Certainly we all loved the village, and there was an old saying current among us that everyone who left Coleshanger came halfway back, which alluded to the lunatic asylum which lay midway between us and the county town, the greatest distance that anyone might expect us to travel.

We hated change, and were as much annoyed with a reformed drunkard as with a man who substituted slats for thatch on the roof of his cottage: our society was framed with room for drunkards if they developed—as long as they got drunk in the village. Any man who changed his character, even for the better, was liable to forfeit our confidence.

The one exception to this was Dan Patchworthy (or Padgery).

Pious Dackers described him as a “Jack-of-all-faiths and master of none.” It was not quite accurate, but as a short description we could not improve on it. Up to the age of twenty-two, Dan had not been particularly interested in religion, but in 1864, and for some reason I never understood, he suddenly became a regular attendant at divine worship. This lasted only six months, however, after which he became lost again in the ways of sin and general village activities.

But the next year, a home missioner came to the chapel, and Dan was converted again. His previous election had been to the Eighth Day Creationists, and his change of front was not all jam for the chapel, which we Williams supported. Dan’s approaches to the Almighty at the weekly prayer meeting seemed to us to have something of the manner and delicacy of the bum-bailiff, and one of the older members once said to me, “Mr. Williams, Dan Padgery goes on so in them prayer meetings. If your grandad ’adn’t built the chapel, I’d expect the Lord to cause the roof to collapse and crush us all.” On the other side, the Creationists felt he was conveying information to the enemy, and ultimately the situation became a little strained. The village feast, however, which fell in September, seduced Dan from this new righteousness, and it was not until the next spring, following an unfortunate experience with a barrel of ale which he breached and had to spend an entire night with his mouth to the bunghole, that he turned over another leaf and joined the church. It reminded some people of the dove and the ark, and it gave Dan quite a lot of pleasure for a time. He had a healthy voice which he used at first with a rather endearing timidity, and they put him in the choir, which was a mistake, for it went to his head. Many of the hymns he did not know at all, but he felt he must earn his promotion and succeeded in drowning everyone but

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the Squire, and could only come level with the loudest parts with a vigorous “tally-ho”, which was not always in sympathy with the hymn’s sentiments. It was the Squire who got rid of Dan in the end by asking him in to the hall and requesting his opinion on such a variety of liquors as laid Dan up for three days and kept him for some months afterwards searching and experimenting to discover what the mixture was. The next year he joined the Creationists again, but he fell out with his brother, and showing too much sympathy with Cain, was ejected. A spring conversion was now, however, a habit with him, and for the rest of his life he went on doing the rounds, finding salvation in March or April, and losing it in the early autumn, and always sticking to his strict rotation of faiths like a contentious theological husbandman. When he was about to die, his family wanted to call the parson, but Dan insisted on a chartered accountant instead.

When the accountant arrived, Dan told him to get out his pencil and paper and take down figures, and for half an hour there was writing down and adding up until Dan began to grow impatient.

Looking whitely at the ceiling he demanded, “Come on, Mr. ’udson, what is it then?”

Mr. Hudson sucked his pencil and fiddled for a moment longer. “A debit balance of three years four months and nine days,” he said at last.

“Well, I’m damned,” said Dan, and it was a statement, not and oath.

The accountant chewed his moustache. “How do you sleep, Mr. Patchworthy?” he asked.

“Sleep? Why, allus sleep like a log.”

“And do you dream, sir?”

“Aye,” said Dan, fretting to get back to the figures.

“And what sort of things do you dream?”

“Most ’an general about the devil.”

“What kind of things about the devil?”

“Well, us be allus a-chasin’ between the pubs, the church an’ the chapel,” Dan said. “Sometimes ’e be chasin’ I, and sometimes I be chasin’ ’e.”

“Do either of you catch the other?” asked Mr. Hudson, leaning forward eagerly.

“No,” said Dan, regretfully. “Never.”

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Coleshanger

“Then I reckon you’re alright,” said the accountant, looking at the figures. “You’re seventy-two years old, you’ve slept a third of the time—that’s twenty-four years. Half of that we’ve taken in already. That leaves twelve. You were first converted at twenty-four, so even counting you being a limb of Satan until then, which by all accounts seems pretty certain, we’ve got four years left over. Take away the debit and seven months and twenty days in hand.”

But Dan could not see it at first.

“Look here,” the accountant explained, “if you were chasing the devil, then you were on the right side, and so you were if you were running from him. You must have been saved in your sleep.”

Dan thought for a minute and then sent for the doctor.

“Doctor,” he said, “how long have I got?”

“Well now,” said the doctor, and began hum-ing and ha-ing.

“Come on! Out with it. It’s for a bet.”

The doctor’s eyes lit up: he was a sporting man. “A week at most,” he replied. “It’s even you don’t last six days, ten to one against seven, and a hundred to one against eight. You couldn’t bet on nine, but I’ll take any money on my terms up to eight.”

Several of Dan’s friends put small sums on then and there, but Dan called his daughter-in-law to him.

“Lize,” he said, “bring me a pint o’ bitter with a noggin o’ brandy in it. I’m about six months to the good.”

At his funeral, eight days later, burial services were read by the church, the chapel and the Eighth Day Creationists. Not because they all wanted to claim Dan, but rather to be quite certain that his spirit would not, from force of habit, came forward as an unwelcome fruit of evangelisation next spring.

As I said, however, we were, on the whole, opposed to any kind of change: we regarded it as inimical to the spirit of Coleshanger. We even resented marriage outside the village, but there were just enough adventurers among us, bringing their brides from four, five or even six mile distance, to prevent the stock from deteriorating: and at the same time, the dilution was small, and never amounted to a dangerous adulteration. The life of the newcomers was a little difficult for the first thirty years or so, after which pity and charity began to assert themselves. But their children were always half foreigners, and regarded with something like awe by the rest of us. We used to wonder what they looked like with their clothes off.

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Norman E. Williams

Our attitude to time, or our disregard for it, was perhaps exemplified by the incident of the schoolmaster’s father. When the old man retired so that he might have more time for serious drinking, his son was appointed in his place, since the managers did not want a complete stranger about the place. This arrangement was quite ideal as the son had been a poacher with our fathers and they could rely on him not putting any nonsensical ideas into our heads, if for no other reasons than that he had none of his own. It is, I think, well known, or I should not have heard of it, that school teachers come in time to look upon the whole world as one puling riot of irritating infantilism. The schoolmaster’s father had this at least in common with his profession, and one morning, having quarrelled rather violently with his son, he came down to school, ordered him to bend over the desk, and gave him six with a rough stick he had cut from the hedge outside. The schoolmaster was then made to sit with us, and his father took charge. The lesson then went on something like this: The schoolmaster’s father, looking down at his son, “Twice seven.”

Schoolmaster, “Fourteen.”

Father, with infinite scorn, “Fourteen, indeed! What a brain!

Exactly what I would have expected from a child of seven! And I expect you learned it from someone else. Fourteen, indeed!”

Schoolmaster, trucently, “Very well then, what is it?”

Father, beginning to lose interest: “What’s what?”

Schoolmaster, “Twice seven.”

Father, in despair to the rest of us, “Do you hear this, children? Your schoolmaster has to go round asking what twice seven is!”

And so we bickered our way through mathematics, history and geography, and it was not until the end of the morning, when the schoolmaster’s father suddenly leaned towards us and whispered, “And now children, some music!” that we reached accord. The song he chose was not in our books, and had never been sung in school before, and drunk though he was, he had the decency to send the girls home before teaching us. At first we were a little nervous, for every verse was more coarse than the last, and we didn’t really understand them. The adventures of Sally and the Red Major seemed at times a bit obscure. But gradually we rose above what are now, I believe, called our inhibitions, and then let

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them go altogether in the end, the schoolmaster, encouraged by flourishes of his father’s ash plant, singing as loudly as anyone.

Strangers sometimes caused a little trouble, but if they were men they were thrown into the river. The women were more difficult to handle, as in the case of Miss Porritt and the order of precedence, which caused fights all over the village for some months, and of missus Souster, who used to suffer from diseases we refused to accept so that when she died she had to be buried in the next village as we declined to recognise her death.

But on the whole, all these disturbances which are so necessary to a healthy community we were able to raise by ourselves. And if internal affairs did get dull, we could always have a cricket or football match with a neighbouring team which would start up any number of fights and keep us occupied until our own affairs demanded attention again.

Our public houses were the Greyhound, the Gordon Arms and the Duchess and Trumpet. The latter, as I first knew it, was a very old inn with a sign representing an hermaphroditic figure blowing a kind of cornet, with dozens of small, white figures all around standing sharply to attention. Some said it had originally been called “The Angel” or “The Reckoning”, but others maintained that the sign was a portrait of Her Grace the last Duchess of Gordon, who had lived in the village many years before and who used to waken her household at any hour of the day or night with a blast of hunting horn. She always kept all the shutters closed as she could not be persuaded that the Gordon riots, which on hearing mentioned she had taken personally, were over. Day began when she felt like it, and ended when she had lost all interest. Some days she did not keep at all, and when she died she was found to be eighteen months behind the times and the servants’ wages had to be made up by the executers.

The Gordon Arms lay on the way to the allotments and there was a convenient back door and a gap in the hedge at the end of the garden giving easy access to the fields. More gardening was done in the taproom of the Gordon Arms than all the land of the village put together.

The Greyhound was kept by a woman who, in consequence of her mother having had a chair pulled from under her while in an interesting condition, lived in constant dread of an earthquake. The snug looked like the saloon of an ocean going steamer, and under the bar she had a little iron shelter into which she would plunge if a

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Norman E. Williams

door was slammed or a heavy cart went by. She also had, hanging above her, a curious contraption she had made out of bells and bits of tin, which she said would ring if the earth began to tremble.

Once, the string broke and it fell on her head: it was then we learned that she wore a toupee with a metal lining. I shall have more to say of our amusements in later chapters. On the surface they looked innocent enough, but they had deeper significance which a mere outsider could not guess at.

There were several clubs, or “lodges” and a Band of Hope to set against them. Grandfather was a notorious if dignified drinker, so that Father, preserving the family’s reputation for living at one extreme or the other, went in enthusiastically for temperance, and the success of the Band of Hope was wholly a result of his efforts.

Its members were, in the main, preadolescents who liked to come out of the cold to which they were otherwise condemned by a callous law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic liquor to young persons under eighteen years of age. They used frequently to recite, when Father would creep behind the tortoise stove in the schoolroom and hide his head in his hands. Once a year they went on an outing, and once a year they had a party. It was at the latter that my cousin, Edmund, got the lantern slides mixed up, including a few he should not have bought in Paris, and my cousin Mordred, who wanted the French slides himself, gave Edmund away. Fortunately, Father was so angry that he got the affair all muddled, thought Mordred was confessing to the outrage and gave him a beating in public. This, of course, delighted everyone but Mordred: all the same, Edmund, who almost worshipped Father, was terribly upset by the whole business and shortly afterwards emigrated. He ultimately distinguished himself by being twice elected president of a small American republic. The first occasion was a genuine mistake, since he was down there on business and was having his cards reprinted in the same office that was printing the ballot papers. The typesetter was drunk, and not being used to having two jobs in the works at the same time, printed two unknown foreign names on Edmund’s card, and put Edmund’s name alone on the ballot sheet, so that he got the only four votes recorded. He argued a little, but they did not understand him and he took office. Two day’s later, however, there was a revolution, and he just escaped with his life. He wandered in the forest for a week and then suddenly, to his horror, emerged in the town where he had achieved such unwilling eminence. His arrival coincided with a counter-revolution, and most reluctantly, he

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found himself back in office. Later in the week, however, there was another revolution, and we never heard of him again.

Looking back, it seems to me that the village had a coherence which contemporary planned communities seem to lack, or shyly conceal under a show of cold indifference or dull, ingrowing individualism. We spent all our time together, buried each other and fought amongst ourselves. The relative prosperity of every person was essential to the well-being of the whole, but we not only felt that we had a responsibility towards our neighbours, but that they had one to us. This bred a sort of genial anarchy amongst us which seems now almost entirely to have disappeared, giving place to an ill-tempered self-assertion.

Father and Grandfather were builders and wheelwrights, doing a bit of framing on the side: they were quite considerable employers of labour, but their relations with their workmen were odd to the point of fantasy. Rueben the carter lived only for his horses and would stand no nonsense from Father: sometimes he refused to put them to work for days on end.

“How would you like it,” he once demanded, “if I was to put a bit in your mouth an’ make you pull a damn great cart up an’ down the street all day?” And he stamped into the stable, slammed the door and began to blow the horses’ noses on his handkerchief.

Jack Pavel, the blacksmith, turned up to work a few minutes late one morning and Grandfather met him at the entrance to the yard.

“Now jack,” he said, “this just will not do: it’s gone six already.”

“Ah, master,” said Jack, “an’ later it will ’ave gone five.”

To this, Grandfather knew there was no reply, so he did not try to make one. On another occasion when we were adding a new room to the chapel block, Grandfather went along to find Enoch Mayo coming out of the Greyhound, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Grandfather reprimanded him.

“Now, Nocher,” he said, “I can’t have that, you know.”

“Well, you’re right there,” Enoch replied, “As I’ve just ’ad it myself.”

It was the sort of friendly bickering which goes on in a large family and on the quiet, we all enjoyed it.

But we were not solely on the lookout for our own advantage. Jack Pavel, for example, worked for Father for ten years without taking a day’s holiday. Father frequently expostulated with

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him, but to no effect, and in the end it began to get on his nerves.

In the tenth year, just before Stratford Mop, he called Jack into his office and pleaded with him.

“Listen, Jack,” he said, “I’ll give you your day’s wages, and I’ll give you a fare to Stratford and I’ll even give a pound to spend if only you’ll go there for the day and enjoy yourself.”

Jack’s first reaction was to give notice, but after much argument he relented, and with a bad grace agreed to go. The day after his visit he came to Father, thanked him somewhat sulkily, and gave him twelve and fourpence change.

Then he went to the shops. The rest of the men were very interested in his journey, and he told them of the things he’d seen.

“An’ what did you do for grub, Jack?” they asked him.

“They was a-roustin’ a bullock and selling plates o’ mate for a shillin’, so I ’ad some,” he told them. “Taters an’ gravy was another tuppence.”

“Didn’t you ’ave no puddin’?”

“Aye. I ’ad some cakes. An ’a’penny each, they was, two for thruppence, so I ’ad a couple.”

“You what?”

“I ’ad a couple.”

“But they done you down, butty,” they pointed out. “An ’a’penny each? They should ’ave bin two for a penny!”

Jack didn’t see this at once, but after they had worked it out several ways on the walls with bits of chalk, he became convinced that he had, in fact, been cheated. Normally anything but a profane man—swearing was rare in Coleshanger—he demonstrated without fear of contradiction that he had been practicing restraint and that the normal purity of his language was in no way due to ignorance.

He dashed off to Father and demanded another day’s holiday so that he might go back and fight the swindler. Father dissuaded him in the end, but Jack insisted on giving him a halfpenny more, feeling that he should himself pay the price of his own stupidity. The next year, Jack led a party of all the men to Stratford, and for a long time the trip was an annual event. I do not think they ever found the pastry crook, which must have been their hope and intention, but they always came back looking smug and self-satisfied so that I imagine Stratford gained very little by their visits.

I suppose we were stupid on the whole, but it was, among ourselves a warm, friendly and general stupidity with a comfortable texture and pleasing pattern. It suited us and as I remember the

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village, no one ever seemed to advance into a crabbed cage, but to mellow with the mild and genial decline of a summer day’s sunset.

It used to be said of us by the envious country around, that Coleshanger men died when they wished to, but until then they enjoyed themselves.

Ruskin remarked in his essay “Of Kings’ Treasuries” that “the greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, and its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.”

He was probably right. But in Coleshanger we made no efforts to earn praise, nor any excursions after pleasure. We were not indifferent to them, by any means, but we had no fuss and trouble with them. If we wanted praise then we praised ourselves until our craving or our vanity was satisfied; and our days were passed in a glory of exciting inconsequence which brought with them a regular diet of pleasure. Excursions beyond our limited circle brought us excitement, but also the uneasiness of the uncontrolled and unassimilated, and we were not really happy again until they were over and we could relax with the circumscribed perils of our own illogical routine, and begin to digest our experiences in the safety of tranquil recollection.

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WILLIAMS AND OTHERS

F

ather, who was a shortish man with a grey moustache, as I remember him, wore a bowler hat in cool or wet weather and a boater on hot days in summer. He had a quiet serenity of manner which caused all manner of people to come to him in trouble and such a transparent honesty that most of his clients never asked him for more than a verbal estimate, however costly the work they wished him to undertake. But he was seldom cheated: he seemed to perceive the presence of a rogue and would suddenly alarm him by bursting into merry laughter at his plausible dishonesty. Oddly enough, they seldom took offence at him. On the other hand, though he spent little money on himself and we lived simply, he was always giving money away, or lending it to friends and relations and then destroying their notes of hand, When he was dying, he said to Mother, “Maud, there’s a little bundle of papers in the drawer of my safe. Be a dear and burn them, will you?” Mother burned them, but not before she had seen that they were bills from about two dozen people who father thought might be hurt by repayment.

There was something pleasantly Elizabethan about the university of his interests, and so much that was saintly in his character that I have never heard him spoken of with anything other than affection and respect. Thirty years after his death the old Coleshanger men shake their heads to me and say, “Ah, Mr. Williams, things would be different if your father were alive,” as if this Gadarene age, under his kindly restraint, would have paused on the edge, turned about and walked quietly back to its grazing.

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Coleshanger

He was the oldest of Grandfather’s many children, and when Grandfather began to lose interest in the business Father, at the age of sixteen, left school and took control. He had been reasonably brilliant in his studies and his mind was not content with the dull and protracted labours of a builder’s office. He learned to play the flute, violin, ’cello and viola, and was a first-class performer. He took land and learned to farm it, and was not content until it was the cleanest and most productive in the district. By himself, he studied architecture, and designed and built many houses, including our own: he got a name as a careful restorer of old buildings. He designed and constructed carts which are still eagerly bought at sales. He could do anything with his hands—carpentry, ironwork, painting, plastering—every bit as well as his men. He was an enthusiastic engineer, and from the earliest days had always some sort of unsatisfactory motor vehicle with which he would tinker in his spare moments. He chose, cut, felled and seasoned his own timber, and made his own bricks, drainage pipes and tiles. He designed and built a mill which ground our own corn and we produced our own butter, eggs and cheese. He was very active in village affairs and a non-conformist local preacher. His principles— how they worked I could not understand—would not allow him to use motor transport on Sundays unless he was in bad health and he frequently cycled thirty miles a day to his “appointments”. He never used trains on Sundays, his principle there being simple—neither to work, nor cause anyone else to work on the Sabbath. And with all this he had an exquisite sense of humour which was quite impersonal and entirely without malice.

Father probably inherited some of his natural gifts from Grandfather, but their characters were their own and entirely different. In a curious way they respected each other, but I think that Grandfather, dynamic and overbearing as he was, was secretly afraid and not a little proud of his son.

Father had, of course, his eccentricities, relating chiefly to food. Stranger dishes were placed before him at his command than ever repelled explorers in impossible lands. He ate them and thought they did him good: certainly they could have given him no pleasure.

This maggot became worse towards the end of his life— when he was really ill. Though we did not guess it. But even in his youth the extravagance was apparent. He was the only person I have ever met who wished on principle to be seasick.

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Norman E. Williams

With a friend and my Uncle Rhys-Lewin he crossed one summer to Ireland. It was a filthy day, and the friend and Rhys-Lewin immediately capitulated and went below, praying for the end. Father spent the whole journey going from one to the other giving what help he could, but no commiserations. On the contrary. Apparently his too frequently repeated remark was, “You’re very lucky, you know. It does you a world of good being seasick. Clears out your system. I do wish we could change places.”

That night they landed at Belfast and went early to bed. In the morning, Rhys-Lewin found a note by his bed in father’s almost illegible handwriting.

“The seas look very rough today. If the boats sail I shall go back, as it looks as though I might be sick.”

Poor man! He wasted his money. He was never seasick in his life.

Grandfather, who was a tall, black-bearded figure with a perpetual frown and beetling eyebrows, and a habit of talking to everyone as if he was condescending from an altitude slightly lower than theirs—a curious mixture of humility and arrogance which no one ever really sorted out—had a most unjustified reputation as a liar. He did not always, it is true, stick to dull veracity, but he was not a liar, he was about the most truthful man living at the time, but he never got that time properly located, or the realms of other men’s’ fancy and his own world of fact clearly sorted out. He was a great reader, principally of history, but also of novels, and used to get so excited that if he was studying anything at all violent we children were sent out of the room for safety, and once, when, in spite of all Grandmother’s efforts, he got hold of a translation of “The Three Musketeers” we were all sent away from the village for a week. One of my earlier recollection is of Grandfather reading “Kidnapped” with an old, rusty sword beside him and jumping up from time to time, waving the sword about and shouting, “Let me get at the damned pirates!” He seldom swore in daily life, but when with one of the strokes he cut the hanging lamp down so that it fell on him, his language as he fought with it was terrible and his rage so violent that it was some minutes before we could part them. My brother, Washington, tells me that when, shortly before I was born, Grandfather read an account of “The Marathon”, he tore out of the house, reading as he ran, and finally fetched up in the cool of the evening fifteen miles from home and had to spend the night with some people he knew in the neighbourhood.

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Coleshanger

We of the family understood this grandparental eccentricity.

We saw it as its worst when he was reading “Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, when we never knew where to get him. One moment he would be all sweetness and light, and the next dark and sinister, regarding us all with a twisted smile that might have meant he had put arsenic in our porridge for a joke. But other people did not understand it, seeing only the effects and not the causes; and when, arriving late for a Parish Council meeting he explained that he had been delayed in a fracas with a group of eight Saracens whom he had fought single handed, leaving seven dead in the field, even those who thought that a Saracen was a small kind of rabbit called him a liar, which to Grandfather, with the scene still fresh in his mind’s eye, was intolerable.

When my cousin, Emery, first brought one of his young ladies home, Grandfather, who was then very old, was invited to meet her. Emery was, by our standards, perfectly normal, except for a deeply ingrained fear of something he called a “billoth”, but what this was we never found out. It seems to have dated back to his early childhood, and he took it very seriously, apparently expecting it to dart out from any corner, drop down from the ceiling, or pop out from the leaves of a book. He would never discuss it with anyone, and of course in those days he could not be psychoanalysed. Once we had him mesmerised and he was told he was a billoth, whereupon he sat quite still, but with such a horrid expression that the mesmerist ran out of the house and leaped on to his bicycle, and we had to offer him a double fee before he would come back and release Emery from his influence. It all ended in the same obscurity, for one night Emery was knocked down by a bicycle and had to be taken to hospital. No great damage was done, however, and when he came round he said, “Well, it’s done its worst and it can’t get me,” and he never spoke of the billoth again.

On the occasion I am writing of, Emery, had brought this young lady home for the first time—she was not a Coleshanger girl—and Aunt Hazel did her best by showing her around the house. Aunt Hazel had an exquisite old bureau which she was just about to open when Emery snatched at her hand and said, “No! No! The Billoth!”

“The billoth isn’t here today,” my Aunt said, humouring him.

“It went out this morning.”

“I know it’s there,” Emery insisted. “It wouldn’t go out on a day like this.”

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Norman E. Williams

“It did,” Aunt said, very firmly. “I saw it.” And she began to open the drawer.

Emery, with a cry, ran upstairs and shut himself in his room.

“There!” said my aunt, ignoring his departure, “you see?

There’s no billoth in there.”

“Excuse me,” the girl said, “but what is a billoth?”

“Bless the child, I don’t know,” was the reply. “Now, we’ve a lovely Elizabethan coffin upstairs—” At that moment, Grandfather came in. He kissed the girl warmly, as he did all our young ladies except some of those Mordred invited. “Pleased to see you, my dear,” he said. “I must apologise for being late—just this minute back from South America.”

“South America?” she almost hiccupped, for she was already losing her confidence, quite certain she’d seen Grandfather in Polcaster only two days before.

“Yes,” he went on. “South America. Had a terrible time in the forest. Indians ran away—had to shoot one of them. Found an old crater full of prehistoric animals, some of them as big as a church—and an ape man—terrible chaps they were—throw you over cliffs, you know. Got away alright in the end, though, and brought a prehistoric beast back with us, but it got loose just five minutes ago—brute of a thing—men screaming, women fainting all over the place...”

This was the last straw. The unhappy girl, wondering what sort of family she’d be getting involved with, shrieked like a steam engine and rushed out the front door. Grandfather later swore that she disappeared so quickly that the door was not even opened, and to his death maintained, with growing conviction, that we had all imagined her and she did not really exist. Certainly she never came near us again, which was a pity, for Emery came downstairs whistling cheerfully about ten minutes later, and in half an hour Grandfather had completely forgotten his book and was with us again in all his healthy, if somewhat splenetic, wisdom.

Though a tall, handsome and impressive figure, Grandfather could never be made to take an interest in his appearance. He was probably the worst dressed man in Coleshanger. Once, after two years of bitter argument, Grandmother persuaded him to order a new suit. It was agony for Grandfather to choose clothes and be fitted and at various states he would lose his temper with the tailor and call him a “little whiskered sewing-maid”, or something equally

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Coleshanger

objectionable, then Grandmother would have to go down to Polcaster and make the peace again. On this occasion, however, things went pretty well for a time, for when Grandfather entered the shop he saw a piece of cloth which looked relatively harmless, and he said, “I’ll have that.”

“I’m afraid that’s an order,” the tailor spluttered apologetically.

“You’re quite right, it is an order!” said Grandfather, looking at the little man so fiercely, that the tailor didn’t dare explain it was for the Squire of our own village.

“I’d better measure you, Mr. Williams.”

“Measure me? What for? I’m just the same as I was last time!

Never an ounce of fat in all my seventy years, moderate drinking, plenty of beef and potatoes—and always in their jackets—” “Yes, yes,” the tailor tried, “but coats are being worn longer now, for example.”

“Much longer?”

“Quite a bit longer, yes.”

“Right,” said Grandfather, “you can cancel the order: the one I’m wearing will last me longer then: another year at least.”

But it was over his hat that we had the most trouble. Grandfather had such a decrepit, discoloured and altogether disgraceful bowler hat, broken in the crown and frayed at the edges, that it looked less like a hat than a dark, discoloured cabbage. It was so much with us, and was raised so often with such disastrous results to the family prestige, which could afford no setbacks, that it was known among us as the bar sinister, and we did our best to conceal or destroy it. Grandfather, however, was much attached to it, and I think he felt that after a time his clothes began to take on something of his own personality—which they did—and that to get rid of them would hurt and maim him like a major amputation.

The hat lingered on for years, and was fastened together in many places with string, thread, wire and glue. Raising it to a lady was a perilous operation, at any moment it might come apart, and most of the ladies we knew, rather than meet Grandfather and be saluted with such complete disintegration, used to turn into a side-street or shop if they saw him coming. Often this forced them into making entirely unnecessary purchases, and it was once calculated by a committee which met for the purpose, that in this way alone the hat had involved the family and its friends in a completely useless expenditure of a hundred and thirty pounds and some shillings.

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Norman E. Williams

Once Grandfather met Lady Knuckleman, the Squire’s wife, in Polcaster, and trying to raise his hat, broke the rim off and got half of it entangled in his beard: his difficulties were so acute that Lady Knuckleman had to stop and help him, and for more than forty minutes she and Grandfather stood on the steps of the town hall with bits of hat in their hands, under their arms and between their knees, and their mouths full of wire, pins and rubber bands, trying to put the thing back together.

Now, although Grandfather had only one hat, he had several suits. Some worse than others. And it was in one of the merely bad ones that he used to drive to the county town. One Saturday night, he came back to us, apparently angry, but inwardly excited and flattered: his hat had been stolen. He had left it in the cloakroom at a hotel where he sometimes ate, and handing in his ticket after the meal he was told none existed under that number. Grandfather claimed that he had made a scene, and that they’d been very apologetic, offering him a wide range of other hats to choose from, including, Grandfather began to hint, after seven or eight relations, a ducal coronet. He had, of course, refused any substitute, and had come away in anger. At first we were delighted, but we soon discovered our error.

Grandfather was far worse without a hat than with one. He refused to buy a new one: instead, he would apologise. “I’m sorry, missus Haycocks, that I can’t salute you properly, but my hat was stolen the other day. I’m difficult to please in the matter of hats, and haven’t yet found another that satisfies me.” On his visits to the public house he became quite unbearable, and many people began to give up drink altogether. Grandmother accepted most things philosophically—she had much to put up with—but in the end even she began to tire of the business. Suggestions that Grandfather should, in fact, buy another, only enraged him: we stopped making them.

Then one day, Grandmother, taking down his market suit to press it, found one or two old cloakroom tickets in a waistcoat pocket. Grandfather was always imagining he had lost them and reclaimed his goods by description and identification. It seemed probable that on his last visit to town he had handed in an old one and had happened to draw a complete blank. Grandmother said nothing, but sent all the tickets to the hotel, together with a nonetoo flattering description of the missing headgear. After a few days, it arrived with a note apologising that at the time of Grandfather’s

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Coleshanger

visit they had not recognised it as a hat. Letter and hat were laid on the breakfast table.

Foolishly we’d thought Grandfather might be pleased, but his wrath was terrible. At the time he was reading “Coriolanus”, and he cursed all the unfortunate townsmen with such vigour that we children fled the room. He took his hat away, hid it, and was strangely silent.

In the afternoon it was raining and I found him in his workshop with the punch used for making gun-wads, hammering holes in his hat and muttering to himself: he had obviously decided they must part. Then suddenly he was called to the telephone in the village post-office (he refused to have one in the house) and he could not go bareheaded. There was only one solution: he must wear what was left of it. He did so, and wore it for more than a year afterwards as well. In fact, he still had it when he died.

Grandfather had one or two interesting if embarrassing prejudices. He did not like Saint Paul and if ever he was mentioned or read from in chapel he would pick up his Bible and begin to read about Job, with whom, he felt, he had much in common. Grandfather was never sufficiently restrained on the subject for us to find out for certain what it was that he had against the apostle, but we did discover that it had something to do with a reference to the Hebrews as “holy brethren”.

He also had a great dislike of twins. He resented them as being irrational and unnecessarily complicated, and he refused to accept their dual identity. It was very fortunate that we had none in the family, for certainly one of them would have had to be sent away. But we had twins in the village, and that was bad enough.

Their names were George and Barnaby Fenton, and they really were very much alike. But Grandfather, disliking the name Barnaby, decided that George should live, and he ignored Barnaby completely. If he saw Barnaby it was George, if George got into trouble, Grandfather would thrash Barnaby: when Barnaby married, Grandfather sent George a present, and he told George’s wife such atrocious stories about Barnaby, calling him George, that there was nearly a separation, and Grandfather was threatened with a libel action to which he retorted by a counter action against Barnaby. In the end, George left the village in despair and although Grandfather caused little further trouble, he continued to speak of Barnaby as George until most of the village did the same and the name disappeared altogether.

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Norman E. Williams

When Grandfather died, which he did comfortably and quickly at the age of seventy-three, they wanted to put “At Rest” on his tombstone. Quite rightly, the family did not agree. “That would be hell for him,” said Uncle Rhys-Lewin. Instead, we inscribed, “Fight The Good Fight”. He was a good man: his faults, in the main, were only virtues carried to excess.

I should like to do justice to Great Uncle Joel, but when he was in his middle fifties he went to America where he and his family achieved such eminence that I dare not use his real name. He has, of course, been dead for many years, but few of those who knew him find it easy to believe. His personality was so aggressive and prickly that it was only in secret that his children had any of their own: they were controlled and motivated entirely by him. He was a religious man, according to his lights, but none of us liked him. His religion was based on the threats of the Old Testament with none of its spiritual promises, though he took up the material ones pretty strictly. Even his prayers were on a worldly and well reasoned basis. Mordred, who detested him more than any of us, said that he once heard him saying, while on his knees, “Good evening, Almighty Sir. I’ve just been looking through our agreement, and I find that several items mentioned in Deuteronomy twenty-eight seem to have been overlooked. I should be grateful if they could be attended to as soon as possible. An agreement is an agreement, after all, as I surely need not remind you.” Of course, Mordred was a noted liar, but on the other hand he was an indefatigable listener at keyholes. Even if his story was not true in detail, however, it was psychologically true and gives a clearer picture of Great Uncle Joel’s character than any amount of explanation.

For a long time, Great Uncle Joel wanted to go to America to make his fortune, but Great Aunt would not let him. He used all kinds of persuasion, and even threats, but they could not move her, and they always in some mysterious sway recoiled on Great Uncle’s head, to his mystification and chagrin. But he did not despair, and finally got his own way by truly Machiavellian means which, though we deprecated them, we were forced to admire. He had his eldest daughter, Clara, trained as a missionary and sent out to convert the Native Americans, after which he so worked on his wife’s fears and anxieties that she gave way one Sunday after supper, and within two months, Great Uncle’s affairs were wound up and they were all on their way to America. They got there just in time, for they found

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Coleshanger

Aunt Clara wearing Native American dress, riding bareback and smoking a pipe: she was on the eve of becoming the squaw of a gentleman who called himself—unlikely though it seems—Chief Hanging Fire. Whether there was or wasn’t any notable procrastination in his temperament, I do not know, but he missed Aunt’s partnership by one day only. Great Uncle was not noticeably well received and would have failed rather miserably at the outset of his mission but for a quickly discovered likeness to the tribal totem, which gave him a social pull to which he was not entitled and which, being an unscrupulous opportunist, he immediately exploited to conclude a trade agreement which was the foundation of his later prosperity. Apparently the Native Americans, when it came into operations, saw that they had been twisted, and burned their totem before moving west.

The Squires’ family had lived in Coleshanger since 1588 and were the oldest family there except for the Williams. A little behind them in length of residence came the Wilson-Walkers, relations of the Duchess of Gordon, who had been there since 1620. The dates were unfortunate, since the Wilson-Walkers accused the Knucklemans of having moved inland for fear of the Armada, while the Knucklemans made a counterjibe suggesting (they were inclined by the low church) that they had set out to join the Pilgrim Fathers, but lost their way. On this interchange they were more or less equal, but in my time the honours went to the Squire for always insisting on treating the Wilson-Walkers like complete newcomers, pointing out to them, whenever they met, features of interest in the buildings and landscape, and telling them of our institutions. In fact, perhaps the Squire took things a little too far, for he gradually persuaded himself that the Wilson-Walkers had only just arrived and used to bore them to desperation with inaccurate relations of village gossip which they knew far better than he. We Williams never entered into the competition which was socially far too lofty.

But in any case, none of us except Grandfather had any more sense of time than a child of six. Grandfather, with his deep and uncanny knowledge of local history, could easily have made hay of both parties, but even in the family circle he kept quiet. What the reasons were for this wholly uncharacteristic reticence we never knew, and the village records revealled nothing. Probably there was something darkly discreditable in our sixteenth century ancestry: my guess is that we were inclined to popery: I can think of no other flaw which would have sealed Grandfather’s lips, for he was acidly tolerant of

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Norman E. Williams

all human failings and was only really annoyed by a too oppressive righteousness.

If the rector does not appear very frequently in the chapters which follow it is because he took only a small part in the life of the village, and we of the chapel were not intimate with him. He remained, quite naturally, a stranger during the thirty-odd years he was with us and had inevitably to face repeated and alternate charges of indifference and interference. He was sincere in the main but in the end he became completely passive providing three weekly services for the loyal habitual congregations, but acting principally as liaison officer between the village and the bishop in matters on confirmation and consecration. When he first arrived he tried to come among us and understand us, but he soon fell into a dazed bewilderment. Our customs struck him as crude and pagan, and our way of life, coarse. We were his first charge, and we so sapped his confidence that though he was not happy with us he did not dare to move; the awful possibilities of life began to dawn on him, and being an imaginative man, he left them unexplored.

His wife, too, was kindly, but she had won too many prizes at Sunday School. As soon as she got to Coleshanger she settled down to good works, and began sending soup to the poor. Now, if there was one thing the poor of Coleshanger made really well, it was soup. They all grew their own vegetables, kept their own pigs and poached the Squire’s rabbits and pheasants. Occasionally a deer from the park at Strawford three miles away found its way among us under the subtle wrappings of night. So when Mrs. Cordell sent her soup out in a wide and loving distribution, the poor, with generous response, send their own in return. The presence of whole pheasants in the pots alarmed her, and she asked the Squire what she should do.

“Eat ’em up, ma’am,” he replied, rather pleased that some of them were finding their way into his circle.

Mrs. Cordell tried, but after a while they stank in her nostrils like quail in those of the children of Israel.

Quite early, too, she offered Grandfather a cast-off suit of the rector’s, under the impression that he was a tramp. Grandfather took the suit and put it on a scarecrow, together with the clerical collar, in one of his fields just beside the rectory gates. After these two efforts, Mrs. Cordell gave up the works of charity altogether and spent her spare time in the higher society of the surrounding villages.

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Coleshanger

The Squire, on the other hand, was a true Coleshanger figure, and he was so used to us, and fell in with our ways so enthusiastically, that his friends doubted his sanity. In many ways he was a brilliant man, and though he knew nothing of practical matters he had a wonderful store of useless knowledge which the village thought of very highly indeed, and occasionally we used to get him to lecture in the schoolroom for the sheer pleasure of being completely mystified by someone we had the honour to know personally. Our self-conceit swelled abominably on such occasions, and after one such lecture of which not one word had been understood by anyone, we telegraphed cancelling the next day’s football match with a neighbouring village because we could not have born to mix with people so far below our intellectual level.

But if we respected the Squire, we revered lady Knuckleman.

Not only was she naturally intelligent, and therefore generally acceptable, but she was so discriminating and educated up to such a pitch of critical keenness, that she could see faults in everything and everybody, even where we could not. Nothing, we used to boast, had ever been known to give her real pleasure. We, in our simple and untutored way, used to find enjoyment in the most simple things—things which annoyed her infinitely. Once, in an attempt to be more like her, we wound up the sports clubs and stopped having concerts or going to the pubs, and instead just mooned about the village picking holes in each other. At the end of the week there was not a more miserable place than Coleshanger in the whole British Isles. We realised we were not in her class and went back to our old ways of stupid and uncritical content, but we admired her all the more, and a movement was started to give her the freedom of the village. None of us really knew what this meant, however, and some of the women, who were even hazier than the men, and jealous of their husbands, objected. Lady Knuckleman was still young and good looking, and they weren’t going to take any chances.

The Clerk to the Parish Council was, as one would expect, a sad man. It was said by many, and even authoritatively stated by his family, that he had begun his life in a reasonably normal manner, as a child, but when I knew him he showed no signs of it. He had the air of a weak-minded man determined not to appear bewildered, but worried as to why he had come to such a useless resolution.

Hair sprouted from his head at unexpected places, but the dome of his skull was quite bare, and appeared to be highly polished. He was

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Norman E. Williams

known in the village as Brasso, and when he signed documents in his own name he was frequently accused of forgery. He was a teetotaller, maintaining that he had to keep a clear head. Pious Dackers said his head was, in fact, so clear that “if you was to put your eye to one ear’ole, you could see the church clock out the o’ the other.” He walked furtively, as if he were forever on the track of a small and unsuspecting deficit, while certain a bigger one might be trailing him behind. He had once been to the south coast of Devon. “Think of it!” he had said upon his return. “Only the sea between me and America!” Those of us who had never seen the sea, and believed the world to be flat—and we were in the majority—saw in our minds’ eyes our adventurous Clerk gazing across a narrow strip of water, with a cluster of skyscrapers on the other side, and dodging the bullets of American Indians who peered at him out of the windows, chewing gum. We came to regard him as an authority on American affairs, though he suffered a temporary eclipse when Uncle George came home for Grandfather’s funeral. I have often thought I should like to see the minutes of the Council meetings as they were kept by Brasso. He must have had a difficult task, but I imagine that his own contribution to chaos was not by any means negligible.

The village was, in fact, a collection of eccentrics, and it is perhaps significant that our one acknowledged eccentric, the person we all agreed to be odd, was a man of decent and sound education, who worked diligently and with monotonous regularity in the county town, and who spent his spare time reading improvement books. We could not understand him. He took no part in our pleasures or discomfitures, and he did not appear to enjoy our oddities. He was a misfit, and we thought he was cracked. But in retrospect, I recognise him as a fair example of the normal man.

He had no burst of happiness, or of anything else, of course; and the graph of his life, which he probably kept in his bedroom, must have been a steady, unwavering horizontal line. That is what we are aiming at now, all of us, and it would be pleasant to achieve it. All the same, it was not good enough for Coleshanger.

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Coleshanger

CATASTROPHE

T

WO DAYS STAND out in my memory as having been particularly exciting. On one, the world came to an end, and on the other, the Duchess and Trumpet was burnt to the ground. Of course, the world did not come to an end, but in many ways it would have been better if it had: anyhow, we were expecting it to finish, and the day fixed for the cataclysm found us all in a desperate state of anxiety about our future. The burning of the Duchess and Trumpet, however, overtook us suddenly and was not unpleasant while it lasted, but its after effects were more considerable than those of the end of the world, and even less enjoyable.

The end of the world was not our idea. It was first suggested to us by the London newspapers, which printed a statement by an astronomer to the effect that we should shortly be passing through the tail of a comet and that life on this earth must come to an end.

Many similar predictions were made about this time, but we only got caught by one of them. You can make a fool of a Coleshanger man once, but if there is to be a second time he will attend to it himself.

Grandfather read it out at breakfast. “I see,” he remarked, “that the world is coming to an end in November.”

Grandmother’s comment was characteristic.

“Oh dear,” she said, “and Daniel and his wife were coming down for Christmas.”

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Norman E. Williams

“Well,” Grandfather muttered, for he hated visitors, and Uncle Daniel was a regular one, “I suppose the world would come to an end if they didn’t.”

After that, the subject was changed. I, however, was rather disturbed, and I went to find Mordred. He was in a particularly foul mood, having just received a letter from the bishop refusing him ordination. He was then sixteen years of age and had been writing regularly to the bishop since he was nine.

“Grandfather says the world’s coming to an end in November,” I told him.

“Bloody good job, too,” he said, kicking at a stone. “Perhaps the bishop will take it personally.”

Grandfather, naturally, had not been the only one to read of the comet. It was discussed in the public houses where the first reaction was that it was certain to ruin the beer. But Grandfather was probably against it more than most. He objected to science in any form, whereas the rest of us, however illiterate, respected its claims provided they didn’t come anywhere near us. The truth was, I suppose, that Grandfather had more vision than any of us, and believed you gained nothing from science without losing the rational required to understand it. “This age,” he once cried, “is all blasted fal-lals and ichabod!” Into which category he put the comet I have no recollection.

But after a time we all began to feel that science had overreached itself. The end of the world was a topic which had frequently been dealt with in sermons at chapel when it had been depicted as a rather glorious occasion which would be attended by many angels and their subordinates. We’d imagined the dead rising from their graves and joining us, presumably with spades, and there’d been considerable debate as to whether we should bring along our own as a sign of comradery. But this unattractive reversal seemed ichabod indeed. However, there it was. In print, no less.

And we had to face it.

As the time drew closer, we began to prepare ourselves.

Father began to receive payment of a number of accounts which he’d previously written off. And Elijah Witham, the father of Brasso, who had a general shop, ceased to stretch the elastic when he measured it, or put his thumb on the scales. All these were pleasant things, of course, but trouble started when people began to forgive their neighbours for faults, the culpability of which were angrily denied. This caused much unpleasantness and not a few

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Coleshanger

fights in the village. In the end, sermons had to be preached in both church and chapel on the virtue of being willing to be forgiven, as a result of which something of a premium was set on past sins and most of us felt that the blamelessness of our early lives had cheated us of a good thing: Mordred was looked upon with envy and was almost smothered with forgiveness of different kinds.

Oddly enough, the newspapers did not give the impending cataclysm the space one might expect. They continued to mention it casually without expressing any doubts or opinions, but at the same time referred to events which would take place afterwards. We had always, of course, regarded them as irreligious and when Uncle Rhys- Lewin remarked that “since they didn’t believe in the beginning of the world, you could hardly expect them to believe in the end of it,” we felt that he had hit the nail on the head, and ceased worrying any more about their shortcomings.

What we felt very strongly was that no real guidance was given by the authorities. We did not know if we should hold special services, or sit at home in the bosom of our families or go out into the fields. Pious Dackers was certain he would not remain in the bosom of his eight children. “With all them about,” he said, “the end o’ the world could come an’ go without anybody noticin’.” On the other hand, he was no frequenter of places of worship and he felt the fields were the places where you kept animals. It was quite clear that he was going to have as bad a time as anybody.

The Creationists alone, being a very localized sect, decided to have special services. The chapel and the church both suffered from higher direction, and did not make any arrangements. But on one occasion, a few days before the end was due to take place, the chapel’s preacher asked divine comfort for “our dear brothers the Creationists, whose world is to come to an end on Thursday of this week.” And when, at the end of notices, he said, “The preacher next Sunday, God willing, will be Mr. Amons Arlidge of Polcaster.”

He looked at us very hard, and we knew what he meant. On our last night on earth we were all very sober and silent and the pubs were almost empty. Grandfather sent out for his beer and drank it at home, looking very moody and grumbling about newfangled telescopes and the fools who used them. “Why can’t they mind their own business?” he said. “There’s enough mess going on down here without finding more to worry about up there.” Father got out his ’cello and Mother played the piano: Washington played his violin and my sisters sang, and we had an evening of sacred music.

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Norman E. Williams

Nowadays I like to hear those sentimental tunes occasionally, but that night they made me more miserable even than usually, and Jock my dog and I sat under the stairs, sniffing and howling, and comforting each other. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want any of our family to die either. But the idea of anything happening to Jock drove me to tears.

I don’t think we slept very much, and the next morning the whole village was awake early, all dressed in their best clothes and washed with such thoroughness that several were unrecognisable.

The day was fine and a bright sun shone over the distant woods.

The men stood about in little groups, gazing uneasily into the sky.

We children had to go to school, which we considered unfair, having thought that we might have been allowed the consolation of a holiday.

The schoolmaster seemed a different person. We had prayers as usual, but no lessons. Instead we had ’libry’, a corruption of library, by which we meant silent reading from books of our own choice. This, for those of us who could read, was quite pleasant.

Then we had guessing games, the main theme of which was when the world might end, with the irony being that the winner would have little opportunity to revel in victory. At break we went out into the playground wishing the world would end every day if it resulted in days like this. Playtime, I remember, went on for a long time. So long, in fact, that we got rather sick of it and began to get into clusters in its corners.

“What will you do, Norman, when it happens?” one particularly unpleasant schoolmate asked me. “Will you pray? I certainly shall!”

It surprised me that George Tasker should think of praying.

“Of course I shall pray,” I said. “Although I often pray. You, however, might find yours go unanswered, considering you’ve never done anything of the sort.”

Later on, I gave another boy my penknife under the impression that I shouldn’t need it again, and I had great difficulty in getting it back from him two days later.

After playtime we had singing, with all our favourite songs, and were let out early for dinner. By that time we were all badly on edge, but fortunately Mother had prepared a hearty meal—she had refused the maid the day off, saying that the end of the world was not a time for cold cabbage—and, the sun shining brilliantly, some

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Coleshanger

doubts began to creep into the minds of the more independent spirits as to whether they’d got the date quite right.

And Grandfather was one of the first sceptics.

“Telescopes!” he said, scornfully. “They’d get a better view if I rammed the things down their throats! Where’s my newspaper?”

It was then discovered that our newsagent, feeling that neither his business nor the news mattered on the last days had not made his customary journey to Polcaster to fetch the papers.

Grandfather stormed at him.

“But Mr. Williams,” he quavered, “the last judgement—” “Last judgement, indeed!” Grandfather thundered. “The last judgement will be nothing to mine if I don’t have my newspaper!”

“You shall have it, Mr. Williams. You shall have it, judgement or no judgement,” the poor man promised, and he got out his tricycle and rode alone down the twisting lane to Polcaster.

I have often wondered what thoughts passed though his bewildered mind as he pedalled away, a lonely end in a shattered cosmos seemed preferable, I suppose, to the unreasoning wrath of Grandfather.

The afternoon bell for school went late that day, perhaps because it expected not to be needed, and we trudged back miserably.

The schoolmaster still had no heart in his work and he tried to amuse us by making coal gas with a churchwarden pipe in the fire.

Then he took the piano to pieces and showed us how it worked, and after putting it back together again, that it didn’t any longer.

After that he could think of nothing more to distract our minds, so he gave us a little talk and said that he hoped we had always been good to our parents, and that he was looking forward to seeing us in heaven. We didn’t share this wish, though we daren’t tell him so.

Heaven we were all in favour of, and we hoped he might get there too, though we doubted it. But as to seeing him there, we were rather banking on heaven being busier than it had ever been before, and that we might give him the slip.

Suddenly, however, the church bells started ringing, and there was shouting in the streets mixed with sounds of men swearing and women laughing hysterically. Following the teacher, we rushed out of the school.

The newsagent had returned, his old legs going round at a furious rate, and he had fallen to the ground outside our house with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. Grandfather took one and looked at it. In a corner he found a reference to the comet. It had

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Norman E. Williams

missed us, apparently, by some ninety million miles. “Telescopes!” said Grandfather, looking at half the village surging around him.

“Telescopes indeed! They’d have no need for measuring anything at all, had I rammed the things down their throats! Let’s hope to goodness they’re never trusted with a shot gun!”

Grandfather, for all his insistence on his newspaper, became the hero of the day. He was considered to have saved us from the comet and to have given humanity a respite. Although we’d escaped judgement for the moment at least, we resolved to live better lives in the future. And I believe that one or two of us did for a time.

The destruction by fire of the Duchess and Trumpet was an entirely different matter: we enjoyed ourselves while it lasted, but when it was over we realised that a glory had in fact, departed, and a black despair descended in the village from which many never emerged.

No one ever discovered for a certain how the fire started.

The chapel people, with the exception of Grandfather, said it was a judgement of God, and waited for the Greyhound and Gordon Arms to go up, while the drinking community blamed Mordred who about that time used a catapult to shoot pellets of burning pitch or sulphur at any attractive target. Who was really of responsible we shall never know. Both had minds we could not fathom.

At twelve-thirty that night, Emma Keyes, licensee of the Duchess and Trumpet popped her head out of the bedroom window and shouted, “Fire!” Then, being a truthful women—she had a sort of complex about it and always qualified her remarks such that in the end, like any Arabic word, they meant themselves and their opposite (though rarely anything to do with a camel)—she popped it out again and said with even greater agitation, “Beg pardon, I mean smoke. But I think there’s a fire somewhere about.”

At this point there can have been no danger, but a neighbour, Tar Bennet, who had once been to sea but had disliked it and returned to Coleshanger to recover, rushed into the house shouting, “Women and children first!” and caught hold of Mrs. Keyes and shied her out of the window. Fortunately, she landed in brambles where, if she was not exactly comfortable, she was at least safe, so she was left there and interest was directed to the pub.

She had been right: there was smoke in the house, and it was belching out of all the open windows. It was an interesting sight and the spectators stood around discussing the possible causes.

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Coleshanger

After a time, tongues of flame began appearing at which most of the nonconformists took off their hats and murmured, “Praise,” the church people cried, “Goodness! Save the liquor!” And Uncle Edward went considerately over to the brambles and remarked, “Make yourself easy, Emma, there is a fire after all. And the pub’s going up wonderfully.” Emma’s response was disappointing since she showed no pleasure at the news, and regarding the suggestion that she make herself comfortable in the present lodging, she urged that this was unreasonable, and called on several names not usually mentioned to witness her protest. At the end of this interchange, Uncle Edward was in his way hurt and as wounded as Emma herself, and he returned to contemplation of the fire for comfort.

The Duchess was as dry as tinder and nothing could have burnt better. They of the dissent for the most part sat about on walls and on the edges of pavements and watched it with a mixed religious and aesthetic pleasure. Grandfather did not enjoy it so much, but since he could not be seen mixing with the opposite church faction he passed the time checking on the Gordon Arms and the Greyhound incase the whole occasion was contagious. The rest of the village struggled manfully, retrieving what they could of the drink first, then any furniture that wasn’t ablaze. All this salvage they dumped in the garden at the back of the house.

While all this was going on a fire brigade arrived from Polcaster. Its members were unpaid but enthusiastic about anything proving itself combustible. Mordred had set out at once to fetch it, as no one in Coleshanger was on the ’phone. The captain was a retired schoolmaster, and the first difficulty was when Mordred, in reply to his cry, “The Duchess and Trumpet is on fire!” received a lengthy lecture on the iniquity of employing a singular verb with two nominatives. In ordinary circumstances, Mordred would have argued it out, but he didn’t want to miss out on the blaze. So he said, “Well, the Duchess is burning, and the Trumpet is sure to follow.”

This sounded as though the end of the world, continually expected, was really about to take place on orthodox lines, and that the Duchess, whoever she was, had, so to speak, stepped out of the queue. The schoolmaster emeritus, who had spent a long life asking for divine favours for his betters, responded at once on behalf of nobility, donned his overcoat and sent Mordred to round up the brigade’s other members. Several of them were found, and after

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Norman E. Williams

some difficulty in harnessing the horses, they set out for Coleshanger.

Their arrival in the village was spectacular, though disappointing to some people who thought of a fire brigade in terms too closely associated with its function. The Duchess and Trumpet lay halfway down a steep hill leading from the main Polcaster road, and when the brigade, catching its first glimpse of the village, realised what was drifting away in so much fire and smoke they forgot in their dismay to put the drag on the wheels. The weight of the engine was more than the horses could hold, and gathering impetus as they descended, they clattered past the spectators at a speed which reminded Ted Hotchpenny, the oldest resident, of the Independent Tally-Ho when one day the off-leader had been stung by a hornet. In a moment they all flashed red, white and gold in the wide circle of light, then disappeared again into the darkness. It was twenty-five minutes before they came back again, by which time there was little left of the Duchess and Trumpet to douse.

However, they arrived, and began to look around for wood with which to light the fire in the engine. And since Emma’s remaining furniture had to be retained for the insurance company, the only things available were smouldering pieces of building or Pious Decker’s leg. There was a short debate over this, but Pious had been a good customer of Emma’s’ and neighbourliness won the day.

Then began a search for water. No one could remember where the hydrant was or even if one existed. This meant Brasso, the Parish clerk, had to be sent home to look up the records, and while this search was being made members of the brigade wandered around with their hands in their pockets talking to the spectators. There was a moment of excitement when the roof caved in and a great vomit of flames and sparks burst toward the heavens. And then, twisting its luminous whorl with almost cosmic dignity as it bent slowly over the dull crimson roofs, drifted to fade across the fields. And there was another when the furnace of engine now furiously alight, was discovered to have no water in the boiler. The burning coals were rapidly raked out and the machine left to cool.

During this last crisis, however, the more observant spectators were a little surprised to see only three of the fireman taking an interest. Nine had come with the engine, including a drunkard who’d insisted on paying two pence to join the party, under the impression it was a merry-go-round. The Williams and other chapel

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Coleshanger

people had, of course, no anxiety whatsoever on behalf of the Duchess and Trumpet, but as loyal subjects they felt a justifiable concern for their country’s institutions, and they made search for the missing members. The result was astounding.

The six missing firemen were found in the garden behind the blazing building: they had broached two casks of beer and opened twelve assorted bottles. Three of them were unable to stand and had climbed into Emma’s best bed—two with their boots on. The other three were hard at work over a small keg of brandy, and Grandfather, as the biggest and most impressive man in the village, was brought to speak to the captain. They hailed him as Guy Fawkes, for which they might be forgiven, put a helmet on his head and gave him a fireman’s lift three times around what was left of the place. Grandfather, as a protestant and a student of history, was very angry at this, but could not escape and the best he could do to vindicate himself was to shout, “Down with the Pope!” as his constricted position would allow. Few of the children knew anything of Guy Fawkes’ position in history and it seemed that most of them imagined this to be a ritual always observed in the event of fire. Certainly they performed it during subsequent blazes.

But running around with Grandfather was thirsty work, and when they left off they collapsed into the garden, by which time most of the village had joined in the drinking, and a large number of chapel people had opened bottles that were not alcoholic. A peppermint syrup, known as Cream Dementhy, was handed out lavishly to the children, with a few old bottles of a fizzy lemonade which was said to have been rightly called Champion. Most of the adult abstainers went for a sticky concoction named, according to the headmaster, after a school: Charterhouse, which George Daniels agreed was the regular stand-by for teetotallers. This quiet refreshment in the garden under the morning stars, with the air’s chill quelled by a mountain of cinders, wiped out all our differences. Drunks and abstainers, young and old, married and single, top and bottom end, seemed filled with such a spirit of tolerance as from the stroke of an enchanter’s wand. Aunt Hazel, whose abstinence normally had a worrying active quality, was heard to promise Pious Dackers that she would have a beautiful new leg made for him the very next morning and have it French polished in the afternoon. A collection was started, and nearly everyone contributed handsomely. It was unfortunate that the next morning, no one could remember what the collection was for.

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Norman E. Williams

The millennium seemed properly to have set in when Brasso arrived with the plan of the water undertaking. No one, of course, had anything against the man, but his announcement was not conducive to the mood of tolerance. All shades of opinion were voiced, the papers wrenched from him, and several more irate residents crammed him into a recently emptied beer barrel and bowled him away down the hill. His cries waned into the dawn, and his reiterated threat of a penny on the rates was heard no more.

The happy dwellers in the golden age examined the plan.

It was immediately clear that there was only one hydrant, and that was nowhere near the Duchess and Trumpet. In fact, this did not matter, but the brigade felt strongly that they should do the best they could, especially as they had been so generously entertained; with the help of the entire village, therefore, they moved the engine down to the bottom end of the village, filled the boiler, lit the fire and waited for something to happen. What was left of the drink had been piled on the engine, so that the time of waiting passed very pleasantly and the comradely feeling grew. The chapel keeper swapped their new organ for the church bells with the help of the people’s warden, and although afterwards neither side insisted on the exchange being carried out, it shows how far they had gone in general friendliness and give and take.

Steam seemed to get up very quickly, and the hose was unrolled with everybody’s help in a complex figure that looked like an exotic dance. The Duchess and Trumpet was now a heap of ashes, very far away. The brigade squirted hopelessly in the general direction, but without confidence or any result whatever, except the discomfiture of a late and blasphemous cat which was caught in the torrent and shot fifty yards off its lecherous course.

The brigade’s inability to reach the Duchess was a disappointment to everybody. They had looked forward to seeing water splash about where it had no right to be, and they might, in spite of everything, have grown disgruntled about it if Jack Pavel had not suddenly suggested that perhaps they ought to make sure of the Greyhound.

As far as anyone knew, the Greyhound was in no immediate danger, but then no one had been aware of any threat to the Duchess and Trumpet. It seemed quite reasonable, therefore, to take advantage of the presence of the fire engine and put the matter beyond doubt. After all, Coleshanger had only two public houses left and they could not afford to lose another. Fortunately,

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Coleshanger

the Greyhound was close beside the engine, and it was a matter of moments to turn the hose on the front of the house and break all the windows. The brigade then smashed in the door, dragged the hose into every room and searched for Mrs. Coggin. They did not find her for some time, as she was already in the shelter under the counter, trembling as though febrile. So they drenched her with water anyway. She caught such a cold that for weeks, every time she sneezed she shook her earthquake alarm and everybody dived for cover. This was very inconvenient when, owing to the disappearance of the Duchess, the place was so crowded. It was simply one of those things people have to put up with. In a short time the Greyhound was so completely wretched and soaked with water that even the hardest drinkers felt it would be safe for the night, and so, to finish off their charitable work, they all crossed over to the Gordon Arms. It was closely barred, and the iron gate before it was locked. The captain of the fire brigade, suddenly remembering a lithograph he had seen of the Storming of the Bastille, raised his axe aloft and struck an attitude which was, unfortunately, impossible outside art, and fell over. Faithful to the last, however, he leaned on his elbow and ordered his men to bring him a ladder.

The ladder was brought and placed against a window, and he climbed it with his empty hose. He reached operational level, turned round and shouted, “Let her go!” to the man at the engine, and was just directing the nozzle into the bedroom window when a small boy, the youngest of the landlord’s sons, put a pistol to the fireman’s ear and pulled the trigger. The captain said afterwards that a bullet would not have affected his presence of mind, and we believed him: had he met tongues of flame he would have laughed lightly and put them out. But a jet of cold water is the last things a fireman expects, and he slid down the ladder with a bewildered expression on his face and the nozzle still in his hand. He just stood there looking surprised, and while he stood, the hose filled with water and sprayed over his admiring audience. A dozen were soaked at once, and as soon as he saw what he was doing, he was even more upset and turned the jet from them onto another group to compensate. By repeating the process he managed, in a very short time, to wet the skins of more than half the village. The fun was then over, and they all went home.

As I have said, the results of the fire were considerable.

Brasso resigned, several children were sick, and, the licence of the Duchess and Trumpet having been bought by a brewery, a new pub

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Norman E. Williams

was built which was so luxuriously furnished and so full of modern improvements that we dared not go inside it. With the spread of the motor car, people used to drive out from the towns at the weekends or during the long summer evenings, and they seemed almost to like it. But for us there were too many tables and chairs, too many windows and too much ventilation. If you went into either of the other pubs the smell of beer and tobacco clung to you for two days afterwards and you could continue to enjoy the experience: but you could spend a whole day in the Duchess and Trumpet and find no scent of either even in the bar. It did not look like a pub either. Even the older chapel people disliked it. It looked, they said, like a House of Sin. When I lived in Coleshanger, I had no idea what a house of sin was, and I am only very vague about it even now. But I am sure that if anyone said to me when I was bored and had nothing else to do, “Come on, Norman, let’s go to a house of sin,” still ignorant of its attractions, I should immediately think of the Duchess and Trumpet and say, “No.” ####

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