The Blue Field (25 page)

‘Listen!' said Betty. ‘Please do listen! I've got an idea.' She paused and took a deep breath, for she was already, Jaky thought, beginning to find it difficult to put things into words. Then she made a momentous statement.

‘I think the village should have it,' she said. ‘The whole village. After the funeral. You know he always liked people being happy.'

‘Oh, Betty,' said Joan, ‘I think it's a
beautiful
idea!'

‘Oh, Betty, how
clever
you are,' agreed Pru.

‘We'll have it taken down to the Horse and Harrow,' Betty went on. ‘They'll be glad of it, because they're always
short of beer. And everybody in the village can drink a health to poor old Dad! Think of it, the village all crowded elbow-to-elbow in the bar, and Joe says, “Ladies and gentlemen, here's to William Hart, God Bless Him, and—”'

At this point Betty's moving speech was suddenly interrupted by a loud crash. The indecorous wind had blown down a chimney-pot from the roof of the farmhouse, and as it crashed on to the gravel path in front of the window Pru remembered her two babies in the pram outside and with a squeak of alarm ran out to make sure that they had come to no harm. Betty and Joan ran out after her; and Jaky followed.

The babies were sleeping peacefully (and indeed they were so used by now to moving accidents by flood and field that they would probably have taken no notice of an earthquake!); but as the three sisters stood arm in arm beside the pram the fresh air began to affect them, they swayed slightly, and suddenly a gust of wind seemed to blow them together. Each leaning inwards, they formed a pyramidal pattern, like a camera tripod, said Jaky, or the piled rifles of soldiers; and if one had let go they would all have fallen down. Thus they hung on to each other with their heads almost touching and their legs forming the base of the pyramid; and as a turbulent eddy surged about them, Joan gasped, half-crying, half-laughing:

‘Oh, Betty, listen, listen—'

‘The wind!' cried Betty.

‘Boisterous he was'

‘He always loved a wind. Often he'd laugh and shout when it was blowing.'

And suddenly, said Jaky (‘for to tell the truth, Matey, the sloe gin was beginning to work on me too!') – suddenly it seemed as if the air was full of voices. It chuckled, sang,
shouted, bellowed, hollered its joy like old William taking leave of the pub or for that matter like old William taking leave of the world.

On the twenty-first of December, the day of the funeral, when they carried William down to the churchyard in his own yellow wagon, the wind blew harder than ever. It had been William's wish that he should make that last journey in the great wain; and George Daniels with Susan's help had washed and scrubbed the flawless paint and groomed the old horse and polished the head-brasses till they glittered. The words ‘W. Hart, Wainwright' on the side of the wagon looked as clear and fresh as on the day when William had stencilled them.

Almost everybody in the village, and some people from far away, turned up at the funeral. The Fitchers and Gormleys were there in full strength, dressed in their best clothes, and wonderfully sober; but they would be drunk later, we knew, for their grief was deep and genuine and they would be constrained to drown it. Halliday arrived with Vicky at the last moment, having just driven down from London; he seemed very upset, and blamed himself, he said, for not acting quickly enough. But we all felt that nothing which Halliday or anybody else could have done would have altered the course of events; it was destined and somehow fitting that William should have died when he did.

While the coffin was being lowered into the grave which Jaky Jones had dug for it the wind reached its crescendo. Mr Chorlton whispered to me:
‘He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music',
and just then a flock of geese with a wild cry went over towards the south.

After the funeral Pru in her mouselike way padded to and fro among the people in the churchyard inviting them in a soft meek voice to go to the Horse and Harrow in the evening to drink William's health in his own home-made wine. Her step-sisters, Betty and Joan, invited some more. As a matter of fact, because we live so close to the Welsh border, it is not at all unusual in our parts to hold a kind of wake after a funeral; and nobody except perhaps the Hallidays was unduly surprised.

So in the afternoon the yellow wagon, driven by George Daniels, made its second journey down to the village, this time filled with bottles and casks. Joe Trentfield had gone up to the farm to help with the.loading; and he, with Susan, Betty, Joan and Pru, rode in the wagon sitting on top of the casks. It is said that some of the bottles exploded as they were loaded into the wagon, and that the party drove down the hill to the accompaniment of a violent cannonade; but nobody minded, because as Betty remarked it simply showed how powerful the stuff was – and what were a few bottles lost among so many?

It is said, too, that as the party were loading up outside the farmhouse the cork blew out of a bottle of parsnip wine; and rather than waste it they invited various passers-by whom they encountered in the lane to have a drink with them. Among these were a group of Fitchers and Gormleys, and the Frolick Virgins, bicycling up the hill to their afternoon work, and Dai Roberts coming back from his round. Now Dai Roberts is a strict teetotaller, and it seems unlikely that he would have accepted any of the wine. Nevertheless I assure you that I saw him going down the village street in the late afternoon, pedalling as fast as he could with the wind behind him, and singing very loudly indeed a song so cheerful that he would normally have considered it Profane – the merry little song called
Sospan
Fach.
Moreover, a party of Fitchers and Gormleys were certainly involved in a fight later in the day – the cause of the trouble, I understand, was an allegation that the recently-married Gormley youth had beaten his Fitcher wife – and for half an hour at least a rout of these gypsies ran up and down the village crying to each other their customary insults of ‘Hatchet!' ‘Gallows-birds', ‘Wife-stealers!' – and ‘What's in the salmon-nets today?'

As for the Frolick Virgins, they certainly did no sprout-picking; for General Bouverie and his hounds suddenly appeared in the neighbourhood in pursuit of their usual phantom fox which nobody had actually seen and land girls tearing after the hounds on their bicycles while General Bouverie clattered down the village street shouting ‘Fishcakes and Haemorrhoids!' and demanding of all and sundry: ‘Have you seen my fox, damn and blast you?'

At about half past five I called for Mr Chorlton and we walked down to the Horse and Harrow to drink a toast to William Hart as we'd promised to do. Sir Gerald told us that he would come down later; he was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by hundreds of razor blades, giving the final touches, he said, to the Improved Model of his patent mowing-machine.

There was a fitful moon, and by its light the antic aspect of Brensham was enhanced and exaggerated. The bare branches of the goblin trees, tossed by the gale, seemed to grope about the roofs of the queer-shaped huddled cottages and their twigs tapped at the windows beneath the shaggy thatch. The hanging sign of the Adam and Eve squeaked like a banshee as it swung to and fro. On the wind from time to time, now faint, now loud, came the harsh and terrible and nerve-tickling cry of the wild geese. Crack-brained Brensham! Any strange thing might happen here, I thought – in weather like this, what might not happen? I
was aware of the adventurous wind blowing away at the very topgallants of my spirit, and as recklessly as any drunken pirate's my heart cried: ‘Let it blow!'

When we got to the Horse and Harrow Joe was busy tapping the casks of wine, and Mrs Trentfield, Mimi and Meg were decorating the bar ready for Christmas with sprigs of holly and a great bunch of mistletoe which bore such a crop of berries that it made you think of a rich dowager overdressed with pearls. The Frolick Virgins were there already, with about half a dozen of their young men, and everybody kissed everybody else under the mistletoe a great many times. I asked where Susan and George had got to, and Wistaria said ‘Hush! It's a great secret. You'll know later,' and all the Frolick Virgins giggled and began whispering together like a flock of agitated starlings.

Soon Alfie Perks and Sammy Hunt arrived, and Briggs dressed up in his black Sunday suit with his thick gold watch chain and a red rosette in his buttonhole because he was going to take the chair later at Halliday's meeting. Then Halliday himself turned up, with Vicky looking unusually wind-swept, and Jaky Jones with his bowler hat on the back of his head. As the bar filled up, Betty, Joan and Pru began to pour out the wine and to hand round the glasses. At last when there were about thirty people in the bar, Betty nodded to Joe Trentfield and he climbed ponderously on to the counter and calling for a silence in his sergeant-major's voice asked everybody to drink a silent toast to William Hart.

So we drank to old William in the wine which his own hands had so skilfully concocted. The brew, I think, was
Raisin Wine Extra Strong,
but whatever it was, Lord, it was cockle-warming stuff! ‘Like a brazier glowing in your vitals!' said Jeremy Briggs. Pru, like Hebe, refilled our glasses, it seemed, before we realized that we had emptied them, and so we drank again. Mr Chorlton, smacking his lips, announced that the wine was Extremely Carminative, adding that one of his schoolboys in an examination paper had defined Carminative as ‘something that makes you sing'.

‘Bless me,' said Mr Chorlton, ‘if we have a few more glasses of this we shall begin to prove that he was right!'

As Betty filled my glass again I happened to hear a curious aside spoken by her to Joan.

‘Do you think Pru ought to have another?' she asked doubtfully.

‘The Nurse said I must never touch a drop when I was having our Ivy,' whispered Joan, and I realized that Pru was in disgrace again. ‘She said it might bring me on else.'

Betty gave way, however, and filled Pru's glass. Meanwhile we were all, I think, beginning to feel the effect of the heart-warming drinks. Sammy Hunt was fairly launched on his story about the Engine-Room Mutiny (‘There were little yellow men all round me, and I felled them one by one with a clip behind the ear'), Joe Trentfield uttered from time to time his deep chuckle which was really very much the same noise as the
Minnehaha Laughing Water
of the tank filling when the plug was pulled, and Halliday, with reckless empiricism, had changed from Raisin Extra Strong to Plum Jerkum ‘just to see what it tasted like'. ‘Please do remember,' said Vicky in alarm, ‘that you've got another meeting in Elmbury after your meeting here.' But Halliday only laughed and said the wine would make him talk better.

Betty came round again, holding the bottle rather unsteadily, and pressed us all to have ‘just one more'.

‘But not for Pru,' she said firmly.

‘Oh, Joan,
please
' – and Pru's enormous china-blue eyes looked as if they were about to fill with tears.

It was impossible, for long, to resist the pathetic stare of Pru, as half the young men in Brensham had discovered. So Betty relented, and indeed she was feeling so benevolent by now that she would, I am sure, have bestowed the whole bottle upon anybody who had asked for it. Pru, as a matter of fact, was the only person in the room who looked completely composed. She took her drink, in her quiet mouselike way, as she took life – as it came.

It was about this time (though one tended to lose count of time) that Halliday, Vicky, Briggs and a few more went off to the political meeting; but their places were taken by new arrivals, and half Brensham was packed elbow-to-elbow in Joe's little bar. Among the new arrivals was Sir Gerald, who made a spectacular entrance, for both his hands, were swathed in blood-stained bandages.
‘Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands,'
said Mr Chorlton. ‘What the devil have you been up to, Gerald?' Sir Gerald gave us a wan smile. Something had gone wrong with the Improved Model, he said. In some mysterious way the razor-toothed blades of the machine had ‘sprung back and sort of snapped at him'. He added with pride that the machine had nevertheless demonstrated its cutting power in a remarkable fashion: if he had not been wearing stout gloves he would certainly have lost his fingers.

I was in no mood for politics so I didn't go to the meeting which Halliday, elevated by a mixture of Raisin Wine and Plum Jerkum, addressed for nearly an hour. I don't know what he talked about (save that Vicky remarked later that if there had been a reporter present he would have lost his chance of an Under-Secretaryship) and I don't know what resolutions were passed nor what terrible threats against the
Tories were uttered by Jeremy Briggs as he stamped about on the platform in his Sunday suit and gold watch chain. I only know this, that a dozen reliable witnesses affirm that as they passed the Village Hall about eight o'clock they heard the sound of singing. And the words of the song with which, it seemed, the meeting was being wound up were the words which Brensham men had sung in their pubs for generations but which nobody, I am sure, had ever before sung at a political meeting.

Roll Me Over,
came the chorus, borne up the street from the Village Hall on the wings of the north wind,
Roll me Over – in the clover
–
Roll me Over, Lay me Down, and do it agen!

Now I shall find it difficult to write coherently of the remaining events which happened on Brensham's craziest evening, the evening of December the Twenty-First which, as Alfie Perks remarked, quoting an old rhyme, was

St Thomas's grey, St Thomas's grey,
The longest night and the shortest day.

First of all the crowd came back from the meeting, a sudden rout swirling into the tight-packed bar, and they told us that there were trees down all the way along the Elmbury road and there was another blocking the lane at the top of the village, so that the Hallidays could neither return to their house nor go on to the meeting at Elmbury. ‘Tory Plot,' said Halliday with a sideways grin at his wife, who surprised us all by grinning back; she did not, as a rule, think that Tory Plots were anything to make fun of. Halliday added with obvious satisfaction that the telephone-lines
were down too and it was impossible to get through to Elmbury. It gave him the greatest pleasure, I think, to picture his Agent anxiously biting his nails, and the little bespectacled Secretary running about in a flap in the horrible cobwebby Tolpuddle Memorial Hall. How much more pleasant to stay in the Horse and Harrow and drink William's cockle-warming wine than to stand before the dusty carafe of water with the glass upside down on top of it and face the persistent heckling of the unspeakable man with the pimply red face and the rainbow-striped Old School Tie!