Reader, I Buried Them and Other Stories

Formidophobia

An ugly word. Formidophobia is a terror of scarecrows and I want to get over it if I can. I came across a magazine article recently that said trying to make sense of a phobia by writing about it is a useful exercise, so here goes.

One of the first films I ever watched on TV was The Wizard of Oz. I must have been five or six when my mother decided it was suitable viewing. The wicked witch of the west scared me a little and I was disappointed in the wizard himself, but I loved Dorothy and her three companions on the yellow brick road, the tinman, the cowardly lion and, most of all, the scarecrow who longs for a brain.

Yes, at that age I felt no fear of the things. We lived in the country and I’d seen them in fields mounted on cross poles and made from old clothes and sacking stuffed with straw. Some moved in the wind, but so what? The idea that such an object could come alive and speak didn’t trouble me at all. The Wizard of Oz scarecrow didn’t have a hay stalk of menace in him.

The seeds of my phobia were sown when my brother Ben, who is six years older than me, was told to take me for a walk. I was eight by then. Our mother, who was divorced, had a friend she told us to call Uncle Serge, but who wasn’t a real uncle. He didn’t even speak much English. He was one of those foreigners who arrived in the summer to pick fruit because the farmers couldn’t get enough of the locals to do the work. Most of them left when the season ended, but Uncle Serge stayed on. I didn’t like him and neither did Ben. He quickly changed from friendly to bossy. He expected Mum to pour him drinks and make a fuss of him and then he would put his arm round her waist as if he owned her. We’d watched him get increasingly possessive. I think he was planning to move in with us. Lately, Mum had started turfing Ben and me out of the house and telling us not to come back for two hours. We knew this meant Uncle Serge would be calling.

Ben was annoyed at having his small brother for company when he could be doing more grown-up things with his friends. At fourteen, he’d done his growth spurt and was as tall as a man. He walked ahead quickly. I always had to jog to keep up with him, but I tagged along hoping he would take me somewhere exciting. One afternoon he started across a freshly ploughed field. I knew it wasn’t a place Mum would have wanted us to get into, but she’d shoved us out of the door with orders not to come back before five, so what did she expect? Our shoes sank into mud that reached our ankles in places. We thought it was a laugh.

Ahead I could see a scarecrow and we headed straight towards it. As we got closer, I saw it had a face made of sacking with a mouth and eyes crudely painted on. It was wearing a trilby hat that had gone green from being out in all weathers. Its trousers were frayed at the ends as they should be. It didn’t look much like the friendly scarecrow from the film, but I wasn’t troubled until I noticed the jacket it was wearing.

‘That’s Uncle Cyril’s.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Ben said.

‘It is. He was wearing it when he called on Boxing Day and did the magic show.’

Uncle Cyril was our real uncle, Mum’s sister’s husband, and his visits were always fun. Each Christmas, he came for dinner with us because he lived only five minutes away and after Aunt Peggy died we were the only relatives he had. This year he had put on this show specially for Ben and me. We didn’t know he could do tricks. He made a walking stick dance to music and he produced two white mice out of nowhere and we were allowed to keep them. He made shiny silver coins appear from his empty hands and gave them to us. They were American quarters. I don’t know where he got them from. As far as I knew, he’d never been to America.

The sportscoat he had worn that Christmas was dark green with yellow squares. Mum had called it loud. I thought it was just right for a magic show.

The scarecrow was wearing Uncle Cyril’s jacket.

Ben said, ‘Never.’

I said, ‘I bet you.’

Ben said, ‘Rubbish.’

I said, ‘He was wearing it on Boxing Day. It had slits at the back.’

Ben said, ‘They don’t call them slits. They’re vents.’

I said, ‘I don’t care what they’re called.’ I went round the back of the scarecrow. ‘See?’ I pointed at the slits. I knew I was right, but I wasn’t going to touch anything.

Ben was bolder. He lifted the flap and showed the string looped around the waistband instead of a belt. Straw was poking out. ‘Double vents. Doesn’t prove a thing.’ He went round the front again and started feeling in the jacket pockets.

‘What are you doing that for?’ I asked.

‘Something might be left here and show who it really belonged to.’ After he finished checking the outside pockets he started on the inside ones. ‘I expect it was an old coat the farmer didn’t want anymore.’

‘It’s Uncle Cyril’s.’

‘Why would he give his coat away for a scarecrow to wear? You’re talking bollocks.’ But he carried on with his search and found something in the tiny inside pocket under the breast pocket. ‘There’s money here.’ He scooped out two silver coins and showed them in his palm.

Shiny American quarters.

‘See?’ I said.

Ben was frowning. ‘I don’t get it.’

Uncle Cyril was a legend in the village. Thirty years later, the locals still talk about his triumph over the biggest housing developer in the land, when planning permission had been given for an estate of three hundred new homes on what had once been common ground to the south of us. ‘We’ll put a stop to that,’ he said.

No one knew how. An edict from the government had instructed county councils to make great swathes of land available for building. Morally you couldn’t argue. For as long as anyone could remember there had been a national housing shortage. There wasn’t even much consultation. It was a done deal. Our community of sixty cottages, a pub, a school, one tiny shop and the church was about to be changed out of all recognition.

Uncle Cyril had no influence with ‘County’ — as they were known — and no pull with our Member of Parliament. He was living alone in a rented end-terrace cottage opposite the phone box. His wife, our aunt Peggy, had died seven years before. He made his living as an odd-job man. ‘Whatever your problem,’ he would say, ‘leave it to me and I’ll fix it.’ Cancelling the three hundred homes would be a major fix, even for a man of Uncle Cyril’s ability.

Every house in the village was sent a glossy brochure from the developer informing us what a boost to our lives the new estate would be. The houses ranged from five-bedroomed luxury homes to single-occupancy affordable dwellings. A selection of the existing trees would be allowed to grow and ‘an avenue of attractive new conifers’ would be introduced. There would be a playground with a climbing frame and a balcony fort, swings, springs, seesaws and spinners. The older children would have a ‘concrete wave’ skatepark. Central to the site was the blue lagoon.

‘What’s that?’ someone asked in our village pub, the Cat and Fiddle.

‘Work it out,’ Jim the landlord said. ‘East of the main road behind the church. It’s the village pond.’

‘Our pond isn’t blue. It was never blue. It’s too mucky for that.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ said someone who knew about building projects. ‘They give it a bright blue PVC liner. Basically, the lagoon will serve as a retention pond for storm-water runoff. You need to manage the drainage on a big estate.’

‘The ducks and moorhens won’t like that.’

‘The ducks and moorhens can find somewhere else.’

Some of the villagers were thinking they, too, would find somewhere else.

On a Friday afternoon in November, two bright yellow excavators trundled into the village and were parked near the telephone box ready for action. They stayed there all weekend.

On Monday, Uncle Cyril was waiting. ‘Don’t even think about starting work,’ he told the drivers. ‘You’ll be in breach of international law.’

‘Yeah?’ said one of them. ‘What law is that?’

‘The European habitats directive, article 17, regarding areas of special protection.’

‘This bit of scrub?’ the driver said.

‘This bit of scrub, as you put it,’ Uncle Cyril said, ‘is the habitat of a colony of great crested newts.’ He made it sound as if our village had been chosen for the Second Coming.

The driver uttered two short words of disbelief.

The second driver asked where the newts were supposed to be.

‘All over,’ Uncle Cyril said. ‘They spawn in the pond in spring and then come out and spend the rest of the year tucked out of sight among the tussocks and under hedgerows.’

‘Show us one, then.’

‘Too late. They’ll be hibernating by now. We aren’t allowed to disturb them, even if we could find one. Next March you’ll see them in the pond.’

‘That’s four months away.’

‘Better speak to your governor, hadn’t you?’

The heavy machinery remained in place for two weeks and wasn’t used. One evening it was driven away and wasn’t seen after that. Uncle Cyril became our local hero.

At some expense to the developers, an ecologist carried out a newt survey the following spring. Three great-cresteds were found in the pond. No one asked how they got there. As a result, our village was deemed to be a special protection area. The developers left us alone.

Although the great crested newt is a protected species, they aren’t uncommon in Britain. In Europe generally, they have suffered a steep decline in numbers, which is why it is an offence to disturb them.

All of us were cock-a-hoop except Angus White, a landowner and farmer whose family had lived for generations in a handsome Georgian farmhouse at the edge of the village. He owned several cottages and made a tidy income from the rent. ‘In all my years here I’ve never heard of newts of any sort in the pond,’ he said. ‘The coots would eat them. We’ve always had hungry coots.’

‘The ecologist found them,’ Jim the landlord said.

‘A put-up job, in my opinion,’ Angus said. ‘Cyril must have given him a backhander.’

‘Clever old Cyril if he did.’

‘It wasn’t clever at all,’ Angus said. ‘The village children are going to suffer. They would have benefited from the playground and the skatepark. They’ve got nothing now.’

‘They’ve got fields and woods to play in just like we did,’ Jim said. ‘And a real pond with ducks and moorhens.’

‘And newts,’ someone added.

‘And coots,’ Angus said. ‘If there’s a newt left in that pond, I’m a Dutchman.’

‘You’re right, Angus,’ a voice spoke up. Uncle Cyril had just come into the pub. ‘They’re not there now.’

‘See?’ Angus said. ‘Do I need to say any more?’

But Uncle Cyril hadn’t finished. ‘They’ll have moved out of the water foraging for food. They won’t be far off.’

Everyone laughed except Angus, who made a dramatic exit, slamming the door after him.

‘What’s he so fussed about?’ Uncle Cyril asked.

‘Don’t you know?’ Jim the landlord said. ‘He’s the managing director of Swingsnslides, the playground equipment suppliers. They would have had the contract for the play area and the skatepark. You’ve made an enemy of him, Cyril.’

How big an enemy became clear over the next few months. First, Uncle Cyril’s rent was raised. Then a goat mysteriously appeared in his back garden and ate the crop of sweet peas he was growing for the annual flower show. The only goats in the village were Angus White’s. Then one night a huge load of slurry was tipped on the street in front of Uncle Cyril’s house. When asked, Angus claimed one of his farmhands must have misunderstood an instruction. The heap was removed, but the stink lingered for months.

Swingsnslides had been a failing company before the newts put a stop to the housing development. And now it went into liquidation. Worse, it turned out that the company had been mismanaged and there were big debts. Angus was accused of wrongful trading. His properties in the village had to be sold to pay the company’s creditors. He was left with the farm and he had to sell the livestock and lay off all but one of his farmhands. The anger was all too apparent. At sixty, he was forced to do farm jobs he’d not touched in twenty years. Not long after, a for sale board appeared in front of Angus’s farmhouse. Nobody had much sympathy. He had never fitted in.

And then Ben and I found Uncle Cyril’s jacket on the scarecrow in Angus’s main field.

‘Shall we tell Mum?’ I asked Ben.

‘Better not,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t like to know about us being in that ploughed field.’

‘Let’s tell Uncle Cyril, then.’

‘You can if you want. Leave me out of it.’

I felt brave striding up the main street of the village and knocking on the door of my uncle’s cottage.

Only he wasn’t in.

That evening I asked Mum if Uncle Cyril had gone on holiday.

‘Don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘He’s got a life of his own. He doesn’t tell me each time he goes away.’ She’d never had much time for Uncle Cyril.

I tried again at the end of the week and still got no answer at the door.

On the Wednesday, the estate agent arrived at Angus’s farmhouse with a potential buyer. They let themselves in with the spare set of keys and found Angus in the kitchen with his brains blown out and a shotgun beside him.

The potential buyer was a man of strong nerve with a dark sense of humour. He said to the agent, ‘I think you’re going to have to lower the asking price.’

When the police came, they found a suicide note on Angus’s computer. Typically of Angus, it wasn’t even nicely worded:

The arsehole who destroyed me is under the scarecrow.

The dig started next morning and they didn’t have to go deep. I was told Uncle Cyril was only nine inches below the surface. He had been murdered, shot in the chest at close range with a shotgun, presumably the same one Angus had used on himself. Nobody paid much attention in the village when we heard a gun go off. Most of us kept them for dealing with foxes and squirrels.

Mum, as Uncle Cyril’s only living relative, had to go to the mortuary to identify him. Not a nice experience.

Yet I’m the wimp with formidophobia. I get the horrors when I think how I stood in that field with Ben and walked on the ploughed soil that covered my lovely uncle. A few inches of earth. Thirty years on, I still can’t look at a scarecrow without feeling ill.

I had enormous respect for Mum, going through an experience like that. She had to attend two inquests, into the deaths of Angus White and Uncle Cyril. Then she had to sort through Uncle Cyril’s possessions and sell his collection of antique china. I think she came into some of the money because we moved away from the village that same year and became townies, with a comfortable flat in Cheltenham. I’m glad to say Uncle Serge didn’t follow us there. We were a closer family. Mum took driving lessons, got a little car soon after and we started taking holidays abroad. That sounds grander than it really was. They were only short trips across the Channel, renting a holiday home in Brittany. Ben and I enjoyed ourselves because we were both growing up and wanting more freedom. We’d go off for most of each day cycling around the French countryside. Ben did so well with the French language that he got into university and did a degree. He married Marie-Rose, a girl he met in Nantes, moved to France and taught English there.

I wasn’t so adventurous. I took holy orders, became a vicar, and lived with Mum.

I think the rest of Mum’s life was happy. She joined the Townswomen’s Guild and made plenty of friends. She never discussed our tragic last year in the village, not even with me. When she died at home last year, she slipped away peacefully.

I led the funeral service myself and it was well supported by Mum’s TG buddies, as she used to call them. Ben and Marie-Rose came over from France. Mum had asked for the simplest of ceremonies, so it took place at the crematorium rather than my church. I invited Ben to give the address and I spoke the words of commendation before the committal.

Ben had given me a copy of his tribute to Mum. He’d even rehearsed with me so that when he came to the front to speak, I wasn’t hearing it for the first time. I stood to one side facing the congregation and I could see how moved they were. I must admit that, although I was listening, one part of my brain was taking in the scene. Most of the faces were known to me, but there was one I wasn’t prepared for, an elderly man with silver hair and not much of it. He must have been one of the last to arrive because he was right at the back near the door. Like most of the others he was in a dark suit.

Something about his face was familiar, creases at the edges of his eyes that made him appear sympathetic, as you should on such an occasion, but there was more. Those creases were capable of fun in a happier situation. I knew the face could turn mischievous in the nicest way — but how did I know that?

I realised with a jolt that I was gazing at my Uncle Cyril, thirty years older than when I’d seen him last.

A trick of my imagination? A wishful thought that my dead uncle should be there in support? As a man of the cloth, I believe in the life everlasting and the possibility of miracles. Why shouldn’t I? I glanced along the rest of that row to see if any others of the departed had joined him — my aunt Peggy perhaps. But all the others were people I used to see every day.

He was real. I was certain.

How was this possible? My thoughts raced when they should have been reflecting on spiritual matters. All those years ago, Mum had identified the body in the field as Uncle Cyril’s. She couldn’t have been mistaken. It was Uncle Cyril’s coat the scarecrow had been wearing. The police had said Angus White’s last act before shooting himself had been to dress the scarecrow in that loud jacket because he had wanted everyone to be in no doubt he blamed Uncle Cyril for his misfortunes and he had taken his revenge.

With a great effort I pulled myself together and spoke the words of the commendation and touched the button that closed the curtains.

The last hymn was ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’ I watched the man I believed was my uncle joining in as lustily as anyone. He was only eight rows back and I could hear his voice. I knew that powerful tone shifting from register to register. He was flesh and blood, no question.

I spoke the words of the Grace and headed down the aisle with unseemly haste to be at the door as everyone left. I wanted to be sure of speaking to him.

But it wasn’t the place or the occasion for the questions I wanted to ask, even though he was one of the last to leave. When I thanked him for coming, he gave the smile I remembered from his magic show — that faint twitch of the lips that said he was glad we’d enjoyed the trick, but nothing would persuade him to explain how it was done.

I shook his hand and let him know in the gentlest way that I had recognised him. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here.’

He said something about wanting to pay his respects and then in a trice he was through the door. I couldn’t follow. There were other hands to shake.

But you don’t rush away from funerals. The floral tributes are displayed outside the crematorium and you spend a few minutes looking at them. That’s where more words are spoken. And then the mourners move on to a local hostelry. We’d arranged to have refreshments served in the Cat and Fiddle. I’d already announced that everyone would be welcome to join us. Jim the landlord had long since left us, but one of his daughters had taken over and was a brilliant cook.

I saw him standing well back from all the flowers, looking at his watch. I went over. ‘You are my uncle Cyril, aren’t you? May I have a word?’

He said, ‘No offence, but I’d rather not. I have to be on my way.’

‘Aren’t you joining us at the pub?’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It would be too emotional for me. I’m glad I came and now I must leave.’ With that, he turned and walked away.

My pastoral duties kept me from following him. I needed to be there for the other mourners. I waited until the last of them had moved on before approaching my brother Ben and saying, ‘That was our uncle Cyril who came to the service, wasn’t it?’

For a moment he was stone-faced. Then he nodded. ‘He insisted. He came with us.’

‘From France?’

‘He’s lived there ever since... ever since...’ His words trailed off.

‘And you knew he was alive?’

‘We all knew except you.’

‘All? Who are you speaking about?’

‘All the family. That is to say, Marie-Rose and me, and Mum, of course.’

‘Mum knew?’

‘It was a family secret. We took a decision to spare you from the moral conflict of shielding a...’

‘Murderer?’

His eyes left mine. ‘That’s not the word I would use. We simply thought that you, as a priest, would have been faced with a dilemma too painful to endure. I hope you can forgive us.’

‘I’d rather have the truth,’ I told him. ‘I don’t need to be spared, as you put it. I know what goes on in the world.’

‘Let it go, Chris,’ he said. ‘For all our sakes, move on.’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘It pains me that our own mother knew he was still alive and died without ever sharing it with me.’

‘She loved you. She had your best interests at heart.’

‘Come on, Ben. You’ve started to tell me. I’m willing to believe Uncle Cyril pulled off his most spectacular magic trick and got away with murder. I won’t turn him over to the police.’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Ben said.

‘Well, it’s obvious he fled the country and started a new life abroad. I’m surprised he took the risk of coming over for the funeral. Some of the locals from thirty years ago are still alive. They could easily recognise him. I did.’

‘He took the risk because of what Mum did. He felt the least he could do was pay his respects at her passing.’

What Mum did. I understood. I remembered how Mum had been asked to identify the body buried under the scarecrow. She had been to the mortuary and identified it as Uncle Cyril — a blatant untruth. She had committed perjury twice over, at the inquests into the deaths of Angus White and Uncle Cyril. Maybe today of all days it was right to refrain from pushing my fact-finding to a cruel conclusion. I mumbled something to Ben about speaking to him later.

That night I lay awake trying to understand why my mother had acted as she did. Uncle Cyril was her brother-in-law and never close to her. Although he’d lived in the village he’d seldom visited the house except for Christmas. When she spoke of him, it was never with much affection. He was the man who had married her sister and that was how she thought of him. She was sympathetic when he was being victimised by Angus White because of the failure of Swingsnslides, but sympathy was all it ever was.

My troubled brain moved on, trying to see her behaviour from a different perspective. Whose corpse was it? The only individual I could think of who had pushed my uncle to the point of desperation had been Angus, his landlord and tormentor, but Angus had committed suicide. Everyone assumed at the time that he had taken his persecution of Uncle Cyril to its ultimate, murdered him, buried him and then was unable to live with his guilty conscience and shot himself, leaving the message on his computer suggesting that the body was that of the man he blamed for his downfall. The coroner had dealt with both inquests the same day, accepting my mother’s identification as reliable. Two deaths, two tragic deaths, but linked and easily resolved.

Whose body had my mother falsely identified if it wasn’t Uncle Cyril’s? I continued to wrestle with the problem for hours, finally falling asleep towards dawn and no wiser.

My brain must have worked at some level during that sleep, processing the disorganised thoughts that had kept me awake. I’ve read that during these hours our mental machinery is just as active as when we are awake, performing housekeeping functions, removing unwanted toxins that build up and make it difficult for us to think clearly.

The next morning, I woke later than usual. To my dismay, it was after eleven. But my thoughts were clearer. The explanation came to me while I was showering.

I called Ben on the phone. He said it wasn’t convenient. He’d just arrived in France and had a two-hour drive ahead of him. I asked if Uncle Cyril was with him.

Ben said, ‘He is.’

‘May I speak to him?’

‘If this is about what I think it is, you’re wasting your time. It’s a closed book.’

‘One question and I’ll be satisfied.’

I heard a muffled consultation going on. I could imagine the three conspirators in the car deciding how much I should be told. ‘What’s the question, then?’

‘The man buried under the scarecrow. Was he Mum’s friend Serge?’

After a beat, Ben said in the same terse tone, ‘He was. Now will you get off the line and let us continue our journey?’

I’m a man of my word — or try to be. I thanked him and ended the call.

Now I felt free to make sense of those events from long ago. Ben and I had noticed how Serge’s friendship with Mum had developed into an unpleasant relationship in which he had become increasingly assertive and she unwilling or unable to escape. We’d noticed bruising on her arms and neck. She had become tense and short-tempered before his visits, at the same time putting on excessive amounts of lipstick and eyeliner and dressing herself in low-cut tops and short skirts that weren’t her style at all. Even to us boys there was a sense that she didn’t know how to deal with this demanding man. I think she was desperate for help. She must have been, to turn to Uncle Cyril. Either that, or he saw what was going on and offered to take care of the situation. He carried out the murders — yes, murders — of the two most unpleasant people in the village, Serge and Angus. Then he performed the best piece of trickery of his career as a magician. With Mum’s help, he vanished. Supposedly he was dead, so no one searched for him.

Other things made sense to me now. I could understand why Mum decided to leave the village as soon as possible. She was guilty of worse than perjury. She had committed conspiracy to murder. She must have discussed the plan with Uncle Cyril.

Clearly our trips to France after we moved to Cheltenham had been an opportunity for Mum to visit Uncle Cyril and take him bits of his property she had cleared from his cottage. Ben and I had gone cycling for hours, leaving her free for the rest of each day. With hindsight, I can hardly believe how dense I had been to miss so much.

But I couldn’t stop myself feeling unhappy — if not jealous — that Mum had chosen to share her secret with Ben, but not with me. Was it my priesthood that came between us? Did she think as a man of God I would feel compelled to inform the police? Maybe I should have been thankful that she spared me that choice. I believe I would have kept the knowledge to myself at the cost of a considerable burden on my conscience.

I reconciled myself to having arrived at the truth of the story so late that nothing much could be done to put things right. Even if it all became public knowledge now, Uncle Cyril would deny everything and there would be no evidence left from all those years ago. The police keep items from unsolved cases and still make arrests many years later, but these deaths had been satisfactorily explained at an inquest. There was no reason to have kept DNA, fingerprints, used gunshot cartridges or photos of the scene.

I resumed my uneventful life and immersed myself in pastoral duties until one morning a letter arrived from France. It came from my brother Ben and it was another huge shock.

I have read this letter many times over if only to remind myself how mistaken I was. I use it as a warning against making false assumptions. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t sometimes speculate on whether Uncle Cyril shot Angus. He had reason enough to hate him, but by this time Angus was a defeated man and it’s not impossible that he took his own life. It would have been a coincidence, I concede, that this happened within a few days of Serge’s death, but such things are not unknown.