The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It took me the best part of the following morning to attune myself once more to the calm atmosphere of Beadle.

When I set forth at nine o’clock to report for work at the dugout I half expected to see groups of armed policemen lurking behind the hedges. I expected every moment to be held up by armed bandits, but all that I saw between my house and the village was the fat, red-faced baker’s boy, sliding ponderously to and fro upon the seat of his bicycle in order to reach the pedals of a machine three sizes too big for him. He grinned at me as he passed: he touched his cap, and as I smelt the warm loaves in his basket and listened to his cheerful whistling die away down the winding lane, the peace of Beadle began to seep back into my bones again.

It was fine to walk up the slope of Burgin Park once more and hear the cheery voice of Sapper Evans shouting: ‘Come on, slacker!’ After those haggard, drifting crowds in London and the lurking menace of those city streets it was a tonic to see the sturdy men of Beadle hauling tree trunks and lashing them together. I was given a saw and was told to cut the branches from the trunk of a young cedar to make one of the rollers for the rafts.

Towards midday a heavy shower drove us for refuge to the dugout. We sat upon the steps and ate our lunch in the dim, slanting light from the doorway while Charlie Hurst, captain of our village cricket team and leader of the Beadle String Trio, sang popular songs, and we joined in the chorus.

When the rain stopped, one of the men poked his head out of the doorway and called out: ‘All clear, boys! – Come on! – the moon’s missed us!’ How desperately I hoped that this grand comradeship would hold until the final, uttermost moment of these last ten days! I was thankful now that I had suffered those wretched hours in London. They had given me an increased love for the village of my home.

When I had finished my job upon the cedar tree, Sapper Evans put me onto lashing empty petrol cans around the sides of the rafts to give them buoyancy. I was sorry to hear that Colonel Parker, with Pat and Robin, had gone off to spend a couple of days in Winchester with an aged relative. I missed Robin’s boisterous fooling, and the tea made by the village woman who deputised for Pat was weak and tepid in comparison with the hot, strong brew that Pat had made. But I now had many friends amongst the village people. We shouted jokes to one another as we worked: we whistled and sang in chorus, and although my hands were blistered I quite resented the arrival of the new shift that came to take over from us at five o’clock.

If the people of Beadle were slow-witted and deficient in imagination, they certainly did not fail in practical precautions. As I walked home to my dinner I noticed several people at work, boarding up their windows, and Mr Westrop, the postmaster, was on a ladder unscrewing the swinging sign that advertised tobacco. The flagstaff had been taken down from the Club gateway and I even discovered Mr Flidale, the carrier, burying some china ornaments in his garden.

‘Wedding presents,’ he explained. ‘I nearly lost one of them when they had that big explosion in Mulcaster Powder Mills. Our mantelpiece isn’t broad enough for big stuff like this: a real storm might shake ’em off.’

I felt inclined to laugh at Mr Flidale’s puny precaution, but on my way home I decided to follow his example so far as taking down one or two of my favourite pictures and putting them in the cellar. I also decided to remove the antlers from above the hall door, as they might cause personal injury if they fell. But I decided not to do these things until the last moment to avoid alarming Mrs Buller, my housekeeper.

Mrs Buller puzzled me that night. She seemed absent-minded and preoccupied while she served my dinner – quite different from her usual self, and when dinner was over she surprised me still more. It was an iron rule that I was not to be disturbed in my library when once I had retired after dinner, and I was astonished when a timid knock came at the door, long after Mrs Buller’s usual bedtime.

In answer to my summons she entered the room. She had a sheet of paper in her hand, and I had never seen her so nervous and ill at ease.

‘What is it, Mrs Buller?’ I enquired.

The poor woman was almost inarticulate, and it needed all my patience to calm her and help her to explain.

It appeared she had received a letter that morning from an old lady in Bristol with whom she had been for many years in service. This old lady had taken the gloomiest view of things: she was convinced that the world would end on Monday week and had written to bid Mrs Buller goodbye – urging Mrs Buller to meet her end in a manner befitting one who had served her so excellently for seventeen years.

Mrs Buller explained to me that she had never realised, until receiving this letter, what a serious thing it really was. She had thought the matter over very carefully all day and felt that it was only right to make her will. She had a little saved up in the Post Office, and wanted to leave it to her favourite nephew, Harry Fuller. She wanted to know if I would help her with the wording.

I was quite touched by the old lady’s confidence in me, and although not an expert in legal documents, I offered her all the help I could give.

Mrs Buller had often spoken with pride of her nephew Harry Fuller. She had told me that he was considered by many people to be the most promising young tram conductor in Cardiff. I drew up a simple, dignified wording, which she signed. I appended my signature as witness, and the old lady retired with many grateful words of thanks.

‘I shall sleep happy now, sir,’ she murmured as she left the room.

It was not until I was getting into bed that I realised with a shock how fruitless the thing had been. If the cataclysm were sufficiently powerful to envelop Beadle and Mrs Buller, there was every reason to fear that it would also envelop Cardiff, nipping off Harry Fuller before he had the opportunity to benefit by his aunt’s will.

I had accepted Mrs Buller’s request that I should take care of the will and had put it in the bottom drawer of my desk as being safer, in the event of a catastrophe, than the top one. It now dawned upon me that Beadle, Cardiff and every drawer of my desk without distinction would receive impartial treatment from the moon if it hit us.

It took me a long time to get to sleep. The bigness of the whole thing ahead of us was bewildering. It prevented one applying normal common sense to anything.