What happened at the Railway Hotel? (conclusion)

[Short story, Part II - Part I here]

I was elated – a sense of having found something, proof of something – but what? Who were they? They must have been the same people I'd been seen with at the Railway Hotel, The realisation came with a sudden, purgative jolt. I felt I must listen – open my mind and just listen. It was cold and draughty in the compartment. I tied my woollen scarf into a thick knot, pulled my hat down over my brow and settled into the corner by the window, ready to have a doze once the ticket inspector had passed through. I shouldn't really be feeling tired, but I was. I was falling ill, coming down with something, a cold or the 'flu. By the time the train had reached Brackley, the fever must have been high – I was shivering and feeling wretched. I felt myself dozing off, half an eye on what was going on outside.

I fancied a different world outside; oil-lit halts, milk churns, rectories, horse-drawn dogcarts in station forecourts; not today's world of BOAC 707s crossing the Atlantic, television shows and countless motor-cars parked outside neon-lit, plate-glass-windowed shop fronts. But out there in the passing countryside, my mind's eye could see quieter times half a century ago, before the Great War, well before I was born. The fever was altering my perception. I was forgetting about yesterday's strange happenings, and losing contact with reality. Quainton Road, Wendover, Great Missenden... villages passing by, repositories of our island nation's history; thatched roofs, garden gates, footpaths over the Chilterns; greys, browns, greens, moss-covered walls, dead leaves, damp. Cough. Shivering. Lousy. I drifted off into a fitful sleep, dreams of earliest childhood, the texture of reality - floorboards, carpets, wallpaper patterns, tiles in the nursery...

At Marylebone station I was woken up by a railwayman shaking my shoulder. "Wake up, sir! End of the line!" For a while, there was some discussion about whether I needed an ambulance. A first-aider was summoned, who found that I was running a fever of 102 degrees. I said I just needed to go home, and was helped into a taxi.

Back at Folyer Court, Winifred Atwell or Russ Conway hammered away at full volume on a television or wireless in the next-door flat. I changed into my pyjamas, crawled into a mercilessly cold bed, yearning for my Edwardian nursery. I was soon asleep. The fever turned the bed into an oven, I was sweating profusely and dreaming again, tight, circular, frustrating dreams from which there was no escape, minor problems exacerbating themselves in my mind, unable to break free from them unless I woke up, which I did frequently. I'd have preferred a terrifying nightmare to such annoying dreams.

Three days later I was well enough to go outside into the street, buy some groceries from Budgens and a newspaper from across the road. Recuperating at home, I went back over that day at Woodford Halse, that early-November Wednesday that had become obliterated from my memory. What did it mean? I really had no clue. Not even any speculative theories.

While I never let myself become obsessed by the event, it never went away. When an opportunity arose to return on a work visit to the motive power depot at Woodford Halse to discuss a few problems with a recently repaired signalling installation, I took it. 

I returned the following May, and quite a different atmosphere met me. I was not staying overnight; I'd be there and back in a day. My first port of call was the Railway Hotel, but to my surprise it was closed. The downstairs windows were boarded over and a large 'TO LET' board stood by the front gate. I asked a neighbour who was mowing his front lawn what had happened to the inn, saying I'd stayed there last November. I was told that after her divorce, Mrs Frobisher hadn't been able to make the place pay, so she emigrated to Canada. No, Australia. No – definitely, Canada. 

At the depot I talked through the technical problems with the engineers, but the word was that the yard, and the depot – and possibly even the whole line – would be closed within a few years. There was an air of resignation among the workers; morale was poor. 

Over tea, I casually remarked that I'd last been in Woodford Halse on the night of the meteor, hoping to jog some memories. It worked! Suddenly, the men sitting around the table perked up and struck up a more animated discussion. The consensus was that this had been something more than a shooting star. Why, the very next day a couple of RAF chaps in a staff car turned up at the depot with this American officer, and were clearly investigating an incident that was far more interesting than a lump of rock falling from space.

I listened to many different stories from that night, but I got the sense that the storytellers were either exaggerating somewhat, or else holding back what they knew. Clearly something extraordinary had occurred, but what? No one was able to offer a rational explanation. Before long, the talk turned to flying saucers. 

I returned to London that evening none the wiser, but on the train I met a nice young lady, on her way to a job interview with the LCC as a teacher. She was a petite woman in her mid-twenties, with short mousy hair and a ready smile. Her name was Philippa, she came from Rugby. We fell into a conversation with unusual ease – unusual for me, at least – I told her of my previous journey to Woodford Halse and of my strange meeting at the Railway Hotel. 

She was amazed by my story – because, as she said, the same thing had happened to her. Literally, the same thing. A Nordic-looking couple had stayed at her aunt's bed and breakfast at Priors Marston; they said they were on a canal holiday and wanted one night ashore to enjoy a hot bath and a proper cooked dinner. This was also last November; Phillipa was on half-term and helping out. Some details were identical: Philippa was no memory of the couple with whom she had gone for a walk with. And she had fallen ill with a high fever soon after they left. Apart from what her aunt had told her, she could remember nothing of the incident. 

Before we parted at Marylebone, we had a drink at the Globe; I bought Philippa a port and lemon, while I drank a light and bitter. We agreed to meet again – she got that job – we continued to meet, and within the year, we were married. We both said that fate had conspired to bring us together. 

In the spring of 1965, our twins were born. A boy and a girl. A mass of fair hair – though fair hair ran in neither family. Long babies, too. We  named them Lars and Lara on account of their Nordic appearance. Both have had remarkable careers. Neither ever married, nor had children. But Lars went on to devise some of the most cutting-edge IT solutions (including some highly classified computer-security systems), while Lara works in DNA research and her work has repeatedly been described as Nobel Prize material.

In our retirement in Mevagissey, Philippa and I have sometimes dared to ponder whether there is any connection between our children's contributions to science and that strange night in November 1960. Some intervention  that we could not begin to fathom? It is a possibility that we have never dared examine too closely. We have kept the thought to ourselves never mentioning it, even to our children.

This time three years ago:
Demand and inequality in the global economy

This time four years ago:
Sorry, takie mamy koleje

This time five years ago:
Visit to Warsaw's Jewish Cemetery

This time six years ago:
Under Rondo Dmowskiego 

This time seven years ago:
My Most favourite bridge

This time eight years ago:
Street lighting under the snow

This time nine years ago:
Ul. Poloneza - archival video before the S2 was built

This time ten years ago:
Aerial juxtaposition over Jeziorki

What happened at the Railway Hotel?

[Short story, Part I]

I woke up in my room over the saloon bar at the Railway Hotel, Woodford Halse. How I got there I knew not – I checked my wristwatch, it said ten. Ten? Nonsense! Ten? It felt like eight. I jumped out of bed, feeling unusually bright and full of energy. I glanced across at the electric clock going tsyck... tsyck... tsyck on the mantelpiece. It also said ten. Ten a.m.! It seemed... quite wrong.

Pulling back the curtains, I surveyed an overcast day, terraced houses on either side of a B-road, the wind rattling in from the west, pushing the rain clouds across a leaden sky. In the distance I could see a steam locomotive hauling a long freight train.

What had I been doing? My head felt fine – this morning no hangover, no aches. I sat down on the edge of the bed, covered in a lilac-coloured candlewick bedspread and pondered. I had no recollection whatsoever of the previous evening – none. In fact, everything after breakfast the previous day was a blank.

I remembered arriving by train at Woodford Halse on Monday evening, the thirty-first of October, and my first day here – visiting the railway motive power depot and the marshalling yards, talking to the manager about the installation of new signalling equipment.

But yesterday? Wednesday... What happened yesterday... ? I sat there for a while and sorted the things in my suitcase. I switched on the wireless on the dressing table, BBC Light Programme, Northern Dance Orchestra playing some Duke Ellington tune. But about yesterday. What happened then? I stood up, tidied the room a bit, had a wash and a shave using the small basin in the room, all the while trying to piece together a picture of the previous day. And failing. It would soon be opening time downstairs. I made my way along the landing, then down the creaking wooden staircase, straightening my tie, and came across the landlady getting the bar ready.

“Good morning, Mr Langdale!”

“Good morning, Mrs Frobisher.”

“How did you sleep? It was a most unusual night last night – did you... see – anything?” asked the landlady.

“No, I slept unusually soundly,” I said, unable to conceal my curiosity.

Mrs Frobisher seemed agitated, concerned.

“D'you know, I woke at around three – the dogs were unsettled, the light switch in the bathroom was broken, I went downstairs – none of the lights were working – so I went back up and looked out of my bedroom window and I couldn't see any street lights – just the whole village in the moonlight. Very unusual; I felt troubled – anxious, didn't know why.”

Mrs Frobisher running up and down the house in her nightie... it was a pleasant enough fancy.

I replied. “I slept right through the whole night”, I replied. “Strange dreams, puzzling dreams – I couldn't make sense of them... But I've also got something unusual to relate. Tell me please, what had I been doing yesterday evening, Mrs Frobisher? D'you know, I – I don't remember. I remember, well – I remember breakfast yesterday morning, but that's about it, really, nothing afterwards! A complete blank...”

I felt foolish admitting it, but I had to know what had happened.

“Well, you weren't overdoing it or anything – it's not as though you were drunk or even tipsy,” she giggled. 

“Was I with anyone?” She looked at me strangely before replying.

“You were with those two people, remember, brother and sister I guess – they looked Norwegian or Icelandic or something, very tall, wearing cagoules.” 

“What were they like?”

“Nice, polite people – I could hear them clearly – you sat with them over there in the snug all lunchtime – she drank orange juice with soda water, he drank light and bitter, like you did, two pints. I served you with cheese and pickle sandwiches, you ordered some pork pies and a packet of crisps, then, after closing time, you told me that you were going for a walk – and you came back together just as I was opening the bar for the evening.” 

“What happened then? I'm sorry, I can't recall any of this!”

“You ordered exactly the same as you'd had at lunchtime, and sat there with them, all evening, chatting calmly – then some apprentices came in from the depot and had a rather rowdy game of skittles in the games room, but they didn't bother anyone, then came last orders, they went, your guests went their way, you retired to your room – that was it.”

Who were those two people? Blimey. 

Why couldn't I remember? 

According to Mrs Frobisher, I'd spent the best part of 12 hours with them, including a two-hour walk. Four pints of light and bitter. A man and a woman – brother and sister? – Scandinavian in appearance – I knew no one like that. Why would I be spending time with them here? I felt a strange blend of emotions – I was perplexed and yet there was a persistent feeling that I knew them, or at least knew of them, like someone recounting a faded dream they'd once had. It rang true. But details... I had no details.

“You said you could hear us talking – do you remember what we were talking about?”

“Yes – just snippets, you know – you were talking about nature mostly – jungles, deserts, the planet, icebergs, very clearly spoken, slight foreign accents – nice polite well-spoken people...”

The more she related of this meeting, the more frustrated I felt. Yes and no – it felt to me like something that happened many, many years ago; like a film I watched in my youth, whose plot and actors I hardly remember, yet I know I'd seen it – and here was an event that had happened just yesterday and – this blankness.

The large clock over the bar showed that it would soon be time to slide back the bolts on the doors and pull the towels off the taps. An elderly regular in a flat cap turned up, on cue. A nod of acknowledgement; Mrs Frobisher poured him the usual, the beer spluttering and hissing reluctantly at first.

"Did you see it, love?” he asked. “Comet or something, meteor – maybe a Russian rocket, lit up the whole valley for a second or two, then it disappeared over towards Daventry.”

“Didn't see that, but we were without electricity for a while, and the dogs were behaving strangely, still, all was fine this morning,” replied the landlady.

"Bit early for Guy Fawkes," I joked.

“Oh it's you,” said the man turning to me. “Them foreigners left, 'ave they? 'Ere all day they was. Been wondering who they were.” 

“They were here on holiday – walkers,” I replied, trying to elicit more information from him.

“Oh.” And then: “Well, they're gone now. Anyway, seemed nice enough people. Not like the student rabble from the Polytechnic.”

And that was that. Nothing more to be said on the subject. For God's sake – why couldn't I remember anything more?

I ordered a ham sandwich and a pot of tea. Having finished my late breakfast, I settled up with Mrs Frobisher, said goodbye, and set off to the railway depot, a short walk past rows of terraced houses. As I did so, I became aware of that tickling sensation you get in the roof of the mouth, where the palate meets the sinuses, that I usually associate with the start of a heavy cold.

“We'd thought you'd gone back to London yesterday, only you hadn't signed out, sir,” said the foreman from behind the desk at the front gate. He got up to poke around in the coal fire warming the small room.

 “Well, I'm here to do just that, then I'll be on my way,” I replied. He pointed at the book, and I signed it in the appropriate place.

“Everything went well?”

“Yes – we'd finished up over there. All done!”

“Did you have a power cut overnight, sir? The rest of the village did. The night watchman reported a short power outage, the electricity people must have fixed it really quick, before he'd had time to find an oil lamp, he said. Also said he saw a shooting star around that time. Odd that was – d'you know, my dogs wouldn't stop yapping half the night?”

I signed the paperwork with the foreman, said my goodbyes, and set off to Woodford Halse station to catch the 1:05 to Marylebone.

The wind whipped up. I shivered. Surely it's not that cold, I pondered. Dark clouds scudded by as I stood on the 'up' platform, holding on to my hat, collar turned up against the weather. Heavy drops of rain began to fall. In the distance I could make out a plume of smoke blown sideways by the wind; my train to town? It was indeed. Hauled by a grubby engine that hadn't been washed in years. At least it was on time. It gave a short whistle as it approached the station. I got on, double-checking my travel warrant – indeed, I was permitted to sit in first class all the way to London. I found an empty compartment and took my seat. An early copy of the Warwickshire edition of the Coventry Evening Telegraph lay on the seat opposite.

There was a delay up ahead, the semaphore signal was set against us; the train sat at the platform as I scoured the paper looking for any mention of odd goings-on overnight. Nothing. Not a paragraph. While I was turning the pages, a northbound train pulled in heading for Rugby. I gave it a cursory glance – and there in the window a pair of blond heads – a man and a woman, around thirty, perhaps thirty-five. They both looked up and across at me in unison. Benign faces, solemn, yet kindly. For a second or two they held their hands up, palms facing me, fingers together – then the two locomotives whistled simultaneously and jolted forward in opposite directions, steam hissing.

[For conclusion of this story, click here...]

This time last year:
How to annoy the passengers

This time two years ago:
Zloty symbol - your suggestions 

This time three years ago:
The future of Warsaw's public transport

This time four years ago: 

Snowdrifts and trains in winter

This time six years ago:

Back to the blackboard

(on the superiority of Polish schools to British ones)

This time eight years ago:

Greed, fear, fight-and-flight - and the weather

This time nine years ago:

Where the new expressways will meet

This time ten years ago:

Early spring in London

Catesby Tunnel in the early 1980s

A place that fascinated me, ever since I borrowed Main Line Lament – a classic first published in 1973, about the final years of the Great Central Railway – from the public library in Earlsdon, Coventry, in 1977. Here's the front cover:

It inspired this shot, taken by me in June 1980. 

The Great Central ran down to London (Marylebone) from Sheffield via Nottingham, Leicester and Rugby. The stretch between Rugby and Quainton Road – where it met the London Underground - fascinated me the most. I've written before about John Betjeman's Metro-Land, his televisual poem about the Metropolitan's (the world's oldest underground railway) further reaches. Catesby Tunnel is an extension of that mythology – a sparsely populated corner of rural England of profound beauty that once resounded to the steam whistle as trains hurtled down the track towards London. Thundering into the tunnel, the second-longest in England at 2.7km (2,997 yards), those Edwardian expresses would have represented the cutting edge of technology a hundred years ago.

Below: the north portal, bearing the tunnel's date of construction. The line was closed in 1966 as part of the Bastard Beeching Cuts.

Below: a longer view with telephoto lens. Not a photo that you could capture today. Back in the early 1980s, health and safety was not what it currently is; people could just wander into disused tunnels. 

It was wet; much of its floor was under water, there are deep manholes running along its length, along with other traps to the unwary. I made several passages into the tunnel, though only one all the way through, with two members of the Warwick University caving club, who joined me in June 1980 to pass through the entire length; all of us were equipped with wetsuit trousers, helmets and lamps. Stalactites, calcite deposits, late-Victorian workmanship. Most amazing were the permanent-way workers' cabins. One was huge – the height of the tunnel itself, large enough to hold a large dinner party!

There are several air-shafts poking up through the hill, all visible on Google Earth. Sadly, access to the North Portal has been all but cut off to casual walkers, as my son Eddie and I discovered last summer when we visited Catesby.

Below: view from the top of the North Portal, looking towards Rugby, many miles away. "And quite where Rugby Central is/Does only Rugby know/We watched the empty platform wait/And sadly saw it go," observed John Betjeman in Great Central, a poem written just before the evil Dr Beeching ripped up the tracks here in 1966.

Coincidence corner (we know full well that the universe is held together by a web of coincidence)... Among the condolence messages I got after my mother's death was one from Richard, who was at Warwick University with me. In his e-mail, he mentioned a trip we made to the Catesby Tunnel. The following day, while clearing out stuff in my mother's bedroom, I came across some colour slides I took in the early 1980s. Four rolls of film - lo and behold, one of them included snaps from this very trip to Catesby. Summer 1982, I guess, as I moved into my own house in November 1982.

All the photos, apart from the book cover, are scans from that roll of film. Using my PlusTek 35mm film scanner, I've had to do a fair amount of manual removal of dust and scratches in Photoshop. The graininess of the Kodak Ektachrome 200 becomes visible under high magnification. Camera? Leica M2 with 35mm f2 Summicron lens (which I still have. Will sell. Big bucks.)

Below: Richard explores the boundaries of Existentialist Silliness. Behind him the North Portal; though it is visible a tiny spot of light (click to enlarge) – that's the South Portal at Charwelton. The tunnel is as straight as a poker.

Below: Richard emerges from a manhole into a drainage culvert that ran between the tracks. In the tunnel, the culvert was filled to the brim with water.

Below: The Infinite Shining Heavens. A post-punk quartet? My brother Marek (centre, background) and Richard's future wife Clare looking bored in the red jumper. A platelayers' bothy towards the Catesby Viaduct, to the north of the tunnel.

The Catesby Tunnel looks likely to be put to new use – as a wind tunnel for testing the aerodynamic resistance of racing cars. I'd rather it be turned back to use as a railway tunnel for a line from Rugby down to Quainton Road, or just as a footpath/cyclepath, like the Snoqualmie tunnel in Oregon. At least it will not be filled in.

FURTHER COINCIDENCE: It's now 2021. The tunnel is indeed being turned into a wind tunnel. And the concrete contractor chosen to carry out the screeding and concrete pumping on the project is Burton Concrete Pumping, the company belonging to Richard and Clare's two sons, Peter and Patrick.

These photos, courtesy of Burton Concrete Pumping, show the tunnel in the process of transformation into an all-weather test track, where cars (passenger cars as well as racing cars) can be aerodynamically tested at speed in a controlled environment, the tunnel being long enough for cars to reach 100mph. 

Below: a new asphalt surface for the tunnel floor.

Below: and so, 123 years after its opening, 55 years after its closing, the tunnel is being put back into use.

If you are interested in the history – and the future – of the Catesby Tunnel, Rail Engineer shot a short video in September 2020 – worth a look!

Finally, links to my three short stories set around this moft magickal part of England; read them here, here and here. Set in 1921, 1912 and 1960, respectively.

This time two years ago:
Crumbling King Coal, Katowice

This time three years ago:
Street cries of Old Poland

This time four years ago:
The gorgeousness of Warsaw at dusk

This time five years ago:
I'm so glad I'm living in Warsaw

This time six years ago:
Candid photography

This time seven years ago:
Archival photos of Jeziorki's Rampa in action

This time eight years ago:
Red sky in the morning...

In search of quintessential English countryside

Long have I postulated the profound difference between the English countryside and the Polish wieś. The former is where one wants to retire to, the latter where one wants to escape from. Any opportunity to visit some beautiful English countryside should be seized with delight.

The further south you go in England, the more gentle the landscape. In place of rocks, crags, cliffs, mountains, rushing streams - rolling meadowland, soft contours, meandering watercourses. The Derbyshire Dales are gentler than the Peaks, which are less craggy than the Pennines. But south of the Watford Gap*, the English countryside becomes gentler still.

On our way down from Derbyshire to London, my son Edmund and I explored some of the rural landscapes that I loved most when still living in England - south-east Warwickshire, south-west Northamptonshire, north-east Oxfordshire; where the Midlands yield gradually to the Home Counties. Villages that I visited many a time as a student - on foot or by bike, later by car; villages along the course of the old Great Central Railway as it ran south from Rugby via Woodford Halse and Brackley towards Quainton Road to become part of Metro-Land. Bounded by the M40 to the west, the M1 to the east and the M45 to the north, this is countryside with very low population density. Staverton, Catesby, Hellidon, Priors Marston, Napton-on-the-Hill. Landowners cleared the peasantry off common arable land to farm sheep more profitably, thus beginning England's destructive class distinction.

So off we went, leaving the car in Upper Catesby, in search of the quintessence of unspoilt England. Below: Eddie's trained eye scours the horizon for a glimpse of the remains of the Great Central Railway - the Catesby Viaduct lies down there, somewhere... And into the Catesby Tunnel the train used to run, until the barbarous Beeching ripped up the tracks. Since 1966 the valley no longer resounds to the steam whistle and the rush of express train headed for London from the Midlands and the North.

Below: looking down into the valley. Note how beautifully the public footpath is maintained. Private land and public right of way - clarity of ownership and purpose. For walkers, the countryside remains accessible along these ancient byways. But the history of enclosure and how the peasantry lost their right to the commons is also visible here, unlike in Poland, where you can ramble pretty much at will over the countryside (as long as you're not trampling crops).

Below: the footpath turns 90 degrees left into a nicely laid gravel path. Neatly trimmed hedgerows and clipped grass verges show that the landowner cares about the aesthetics of the property. Where will this path lead us? Let's see...

Below: on to a lovely barn; late-Victorian or Edwardian; fine brickwork. Other than one man mowing his lawn seated on a small tractor, we saw no other sign of human life this fine Sunday afternoon. Looking at the cars in the drives, the local residents are people who made their money in town and moved out to live in rural ease.

Below: a row of former almshouses, now probably each worth a third of a million pounds a piece. For who would not love to live in Lower Catesby, ten miles from the M40, even less from the M1; an hour's drive from London Town?

The church of St Mary and St Edmund, Lower Catesby - and there's Edmund, hemmed in by local sheep. Built in 1861 on the site of a church that had been here since the 14th Century. It was Sunday but the church door was locked; there was no sign saying at what time services were being held. The Anglican Church is losing sway even in its rural strongholds, as well-heeled urbanites, seeking sanctuary from the madness of city life, displace local folk.

Indeed, once in London, we watched a BBC1 TV programme called Escape to the Country, in which people seek the dream property from which to get away from it all, amid Views and a Wealth of Exposed Beams. Right: looking along the avenue of trees, the footpath leads us back up towards Catesby House, a 19th Century Jacobethan building that stands on the grounds of Catesby Priory, a Cistercian nunnery dissolved by Henry VIII in 1536.

I've written two short stories set around this magical part of England; read them here and here.

Onward then, to London, via Harrow-on-the-Hill (see post before last). And that's it for this summer's holiday.

* The Watford Gap is an important reference point in English culture. Some 100km north of Watford (an exurb of London), the Watford Gap lies along the line south of which people say 'bath' and 'grass' with a long 'a', 'luck' and 'cut' with a vowel that approximates a Polish 'a', while those to the north would say 'bath' and 'grass' with a short 'a' and 'luck' and 'cut' with a vowel approximating a Polish 'u'.

This time last year:
Behold and See - short story, Pt III

This time six years ago: This time six years ago:
Another return to Penrhos

The Devil is Doubt - Part II

[Part I here]

We exchanged initial pleasantries; Mrs. Frobisher, having heard that I'd served in the Boer War, was keen to talk about her husband, a captain with the Warwickshire Yeomanry. He died of dysentery fever in Cape Town; he hadn't fired a shot in anger. His contingent of replacement soldiers arrived from Britain just as the war was coming to an end. The Yeomanry stayed on for over a year to police the country; he died while awaiting transport home. And yes, their daughter Louise, papa's favourite, could not bear his loss. That was now over six years ago but she has yet to regain her full powers of speech, and her hair keeps falling out. “We have been to see a specialist in London, but to no avail,” said Mrs. Frobisher.

I was truly saddened and had no ready words to cheer the poor widow, although I was most impressed by her fortitude, strength of character and her striking features; she was a fine-looking woman indeed. There was little sense, I thought, of telling her of my own wartime experiences in South Africa, for those were matters far too unpleasant to speak of in such civilised circumstances.

As we spoke, a pair of dragonflies, larger than any I'd ever seen around these parts, their iridescence made all the more splendid by the setting sun, flitted above the reeds and the rushes, where the paved garden path gave way to a narrow muddy trail leading down to the river bank. By now the water surface glowed gold, a moorhen and its chicks making their way downstream.

"Look," I said, pointing to the sight. I could see that she too was under the spell of the evening's charm. We stood in silence for a while; I sensed a smile lighten across her face, a smile of such enchanted innocence that suddenly turned her face into the most beautiful one that I had ever gazed upon. On an instinct I reached out to grasp her hand. She let me hold it; and so we stood for an intense moment of the most sublime magic, a moment at which I'd want for nothing more. Then –

“Tell me – quickly – what are you thinking?” she asked, registering a sudden trace of sadness fleeting across my face.

At a instant of such sublime beauty, the briefest, most transcendent moment of happiness in my life, my mind had slipped away, slipped from this moment of perfection and strayed towards what had been preying on my mind ever since I left the Raj; a conviction that once again war was imminent; that Man was innately unable to cease from conflict. Beauty – love – indeed, could exist here on earth, signs of God's presence among us – yet what of that dreadful instinct within us to fight? For King and Country, for Britain's dominion over other peoples? That doubt was there, once more. But it was not a doubt for me to share. Not now, not here.

I told Mrs. Frobisher of my return home to England that previous autumn. I had travelled overland from India, via Persia and across the plains of Ottoman Anatolia, through an empire clearly in the throes of decay, unstable and therefore dangerous. Then onwards, through Austro-Hungary I travelled, and then into Germany; rival empires – all rivals to our own empire. “I talked to many people along the way, educated men, and I could sense it all the while. It would not be long,” I told her. "A year, maybe three or four, and we'd be at war again, but this time in Europe."

“And to finally answer your question; do you know what was going through my mind the moment you asked that question? Primarily, that I would not like to see you widowed again...”

This short story is an extended version of a dream I had on the morning of Friday 2 March this year.

This time last year:
"A helpful, friendly people"

This time two years ago:
A familiar shape in the skies

This time three years ago:
Feel like going home

This time four years ago:
Mr Hare comes to call

The Devil is Doubt - a short story - Part I

I stood on the vicarage lawn, holding a glass of white wine and marvelling at the day. The late-May sun was strong and low, illuminating the house, the garden-party guests; behind the vicarage, banks of dark clouds brooding in the eastern sky. I believed I could discern the merest trace of a rainbow. Somewhere over distant Northamptonshire, a cloudburst; but here in my native corner of rural Warwickshire, it was a blissful sunny and warm evening. What a watercolour someone could paint of such a scene! Alas, not me. Alone at the edge of the garden, I was enraptured by the sight. 

It took me back to my last days in India not so long ago; suddenly an evening just like this one came forcefully to mind – low sun to the west and high, dark storm clouds retreating eastwards. Bombay, the Esplanade Park by Victoria Terminus. It was early in the monsoon season; mid-June 1909. I'd soon be heading back to England, my duties in India complete.

Some children were playing on the vicarage lawn. I noticed a girl running with a hoop, following the neat lines made by the roller on the wet grass. She was 11 years old or so, wearing a gold silk turban; yes, I'd heard about her. Her hair had started falling out as a small child; a reaction, I was told, to news of her father's death in the Second Boer War. It had started growing back recently, but in unsightly clumps. Yes, I too had served in South Africa. A dreadful war that shook my belief in God and Empire – for whose God were we fighting? Protestants both, Boer and Britisher. So much cruelty; so many deaths. My wine glass empty, I surveyed the scene with a sense of quiet contemplation, not unduly wishing to talk to people, not just yet, anyway.

And now, the vicar comes towards me, he's smiling, holding out a half-empty wine bottle in my direction; I force a smile in return. “What a splendid vicarage!” I observe. Indeed, how beautifully located it was, with such a delightful and well-maintained garden sloping down to the riverbank. “And what an exquisite wine!” “Yes, it's French, actually.” I let the vicar pour me another glass.

As he does so, I'm minded of the sadhus, the Hindu holy-men of India, who bestow blessings upon the faithful, living in absolute poverty, having renounced all worldly goods. Here, back home, the Church of England, the Established Church, could afford to keep its ministers in comfort, an agreeable vicarage, wife, children, servants, horse and carriage... The vicar and I exchanged pleasantries. It struck me there and then as the effects of that glass of wine coursed through my bloodstream, that the Indian holy-men were poor because they believed in the wrong God; our vicar here believed in the One God, the one who was supervising the manifest destiny of the British Empire, under our King and Emperor, Edward VII. There can be no doubt here. And yet there was; there was very real doubt in my mind, but it was not a doubt that I'd dare enunciate to anyone.

“Our duty – Oh yes, I've served my King and Country – South Africa,” I told the vicar, a propos of nothing.

I had returned from Bombay in the autumn; my father had secured me a job in the Colonial Office, though this would not commence until September. So I had a few months of comfortable ease on the family estate before setting off to London.

My sister-in-law, a good friend of the Reverend Whyteside’s wife, had engineered to have me invited to a garden party at the vicarage at Priors Marston, eight miles distant. Together with my brother, we took the dog-cart, and together we trotted over past Fenny Compton, talking to me all the way about improvements to the drainage in the lower fields and the new pig house that would help him double his pork production. But I was more interested in just gazing at the landscape of my childhood, the gently undulating hills, the railway line, the canal, Wormleighton, just as I remembered it; it was so good to be home after more than a decade in Africa and India.

“Let me introduce you to Mrs. Frobisher,” said the the vicar. “Her husband died for his country in South Africa, you know...” He was referring to the mother of the girl in the gold turban. We walked up to a woman in her mid-30s, illuminated by the sun, wearing a long white dress, quite lovely yet sombre, not long out of mourning. Having introduced us to one another, the vicar moved on.

Part Two here.

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God's dwelling place - Part II

“I must believe. I have a generous monthly stipend – and accommodation in the vicarage! A flock to attend to! Were I not to believe in Jesus, we'd be homeless, I'd be without employ! And my flock - so many bereaved parents - 20 other boys from this parish as well as Matthew and Timmy did not return home alive from war. I can't let my parishioners down,” said Reverend Whyteside.

His daughter replied glumly: “I don't believe in Jesus. I still believe in God, though - don't know whether He's all good and omipotent... " She looked anxiously at her father to see what effect her blasphemous words had had on the Vicar of Priors Marston. In the moonlight, she could discern a resigned expression on his face. He seemed indifferent to what she'd said.

"Let's be angels, Papa – let's not be us any more – let's leave this place and fly away and come into people's lives and bring them cheer - help them forget their sorrows...”

“What in heavens possessed you to say such a thing, girl? I help in practical ways; as a vicar, I am Jesus's intermediary here.”

“Well, neither you nor Jesus could save Matthew or Timmy or Mama...”

Reverend Whyteside looked grim. He knew Constance was absolutely right. He'd gone over this night after night after night. And that sermon - he'd surely earned God's wrath - assuming God was indeed a loving God. And if He was not a loving God - should he be serving Him?

They crossed a stile into a field full of sleeping sheep, the lambs close to the mothers. Another stile, and the path took them through an orchard in bloom.

The spring night was full of the most delicious perfume of nature in its fullest force. They walked on along a succession of footpaths in silent contemplation. Tentatively, the vicar reached out for his daughter's hand; he held it tight, this brought back some of the feelings of fondness he had for her as a child. But the thoughts were mixed; he could not think back to Constance as a five year-old without thinking of Matthew as a seven year-old and little Timmy, three. That happy nursery; such bliss. Gone for good. He'd never be a grandfather. Tears began to well up in his eyes.

At half past four, the eastern sky was decidedly brighter; quarter of an hour later a magnificent strip of orange-red expanded before them along the horizon. They stood still and watched. Birdsong accompanied this marvel, and their ancestors, born of the same Warwickshire earth and returned to it century after century would also have felt the unison.

The sun rose gloriously over the hill above Staverton. It touched more and more of the small clouds that had spread in from the west with pink pastel hues before flooding the sky with brightness and warmth, enhanced by the smell of the fecund soil under their feet. The both felt overwhelmed by a sense of total elation of the senses; this is what it was to be alive!

“When our plans and are hopes are shattered, we shouldn't dwell on them; we should not dwell on our loss, we should just live for moments of beauty such as these, moments that allow our spirit to overcome the sadness,” said Constance suddenly, with a look of wild abandon.

The vicar pondered his daughter's words, and gestured to her that she should continue to develop her thoughts.

"These moments transcend the grief, the everyday pain of what often seems like a futile existence. If you can't make plans any more, then let us make the most of our time living for moments of joy, such as this one, Papa," said Constance, hugging him around the shoulder.

“I shall have to alter Sunday's sermon accordingly!” replied the Reverend Whyteside, allowing a trace of a smile to cross his lips.

“What did Jesus have to say about this?” she asked.

“I can't say that I know,” he answered, truthfully.

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God's dwelling place - a short story - Part I

The night calm was pierced by the distant shrieking whistle of the night mail as it thundered over the Staverton viaduct shortly before plunging into the Catesby tunnel. The Reverend Herbert Whyteside lay in bed, awake; he'd been awake for a long time. Downstairs in the study the clock chimed; it was quarter past two; the train was on time. It was another night when sleep would not come to him.

May 1921. Earlier that year, his older son Matthew had passed away at the nursing home. The boy had been confined there after a shell explosion left him crippled, just weeks before the end of the Great War. The Reverend Whyteside's younger son Timothy was killed during the Battle of Arras a year and half earlier. After the death of Matthew, the Reverend Whyteside’s wife tried to commit suicide. She ended up causing permanent brain damage brought on by oxygen starvation, and was committed to Rugby Asylum.

So the Reverend Whyteside was left alone in the vicarage with his daughter Constance, an ungainly girl prone to sadness knowing that fate would be unlikely to ever provide her with a husband, especially with so many young men having lost their lives in the War.

That May night, Herbert was as usual dwelling on the loss of both of his sons and the insanity of his wife. These thoughts would not leave him. Tonight something new was troubling him, some memory he thought he'd successfully pushed from his mind. He got out of bed and went downstairs to his study. Through the window he could see a full moon outside and a cloudless sky. Reverend Whyteside lit the gas lights and approached the bookcase, looking for a box of old sermons. Each Sunday after service, he'd file away his hand-written notes, a habit he'd maintained since moving in as the vicar of Priors Marston nearly 30 years ago.

He searched through the well-organised box files and found the year – 1914, the month – August... and... Sunday 8th August. The first Sunday after the declaration of War. He pulled it out a foolscap sheet of paper and started reading. He could not believe how readily he'd swallowed the lies, the banality of what he'd written. "Over by Christmas, our lads victorious, give the Hun a bloody nose, good cheer, chance to play up and play the game, (he remembered titters from the congregation) "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (those who knew their Latin were more serious now). He looked at his words and remembered the spirit in which they were said. Thinking back to that mellow August morn, when God was in His Heaven, God – an Englishman, how could that God have allowed the Empire to lose so many men, how could that God have allowed him to lose both his sons. He could see them now; sitting before him in church with their sister and mother; Timothy, still at Rugby School then, and Matthew, home from Cambridge where he was reading Divinity. Boys, just boys; now under the earth. And for what purpose?

Herbert took off his reading glasses and sat back, paper in hand. He poured himself a Scotch, which eased the grief just a little. He could hear footsteps on the stairs. Constance popped her head around the door. “Can't sleep, Papa?” “No, I can't,” he replied irritably.

Hiding the sermon under other papers in shame lest she should see it, he groped around for something to say. His daughter, half a head taller than he, heavy-boned and plain-featured, was not an easy person for him to get along with. While he had loved her dearly as a child, as she grew older, he found it increasingly hard to communicate with her. It was only when, in the solitude of the church, he playing hymns on the organ with his daughter accompanying him on the flute, did they feel truly comfortable in one another's presence.

Constance stood in the doorway. “Papa – do you remember, when Matthew and Timmy and I, when we were small, one night – I think it was Easter Sunday – you woke us up and we all went for a walk with you and Mama and the dogs – down to the river... it was a night like this; a full moon, no clouds – Papa, let's go for a walk together...?”

Why not, he thought; maybe the walk would stop his mind from dwelling on their loss. He nodded assent, put away his old sermon, filed the box where it had come from, and said, “Let's get dressed and go. I'll take old Folly from the kennel; let's aim to set off in before the clock strikes three."

The Reverend Whyteside, dressed in tweed trousers and thornproof jacket, stout walking shoes and dog collar – without which he never left the house – waited by the large kitchen table for his daughter to join him. Constance came down in her mother's black coat and an incongruous white cloche hat. Slipping into a pair of wellington boots, she opened the back door to the courtyard followed by her father.

With their black Labrador Folly on a leash, they set off along Vicarage Lane towards Priors Hill. The night was beautiful, the moon casting strong shadows of trees and buildings and hedgerows, so many stars so clear against the blackness. Constance took her short, stout father by the arm. They walked in silence. Suddenly she asked: “Papa – do you still believe in Jesus?”

Part II here.

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