The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER NINETEEN

How can I describe the last incredible week in Beadle without giving the impression that the whole lot of us were as mad as March Hares? Sometimes I have wondered whether we were, in fact, completely mad that week: at other times I have thought that we behaved as we did because we were all so incurably sane!

The majority of the village, it is true, had no conception of the peril that lay over them, and the Defence Committee, inspired, no doubt, by Sapper Evans, did everything it could to sustain this blissful ignorance. They organised what I can only describe as a ‘gala’ week.

Fate was at least kind to us in one respect, for the critical night was due to fall upon a Monday. Monday was by far the best day of the week for a crisis, because it gave us a last full week in all its glorious freedom, ending with a final Sunday in which to compose our minds.

And so the Committee strove to fill that last week with every possible diversion to keep the villagers from morbid inactivity.

The week began with a ‘sing-song’ around the camp fire beside the dugout in Burgin Park, and was designed to celebrate the successful completion of our work. An immense fire was made from the brushwood, and the whole village sat around in a great, unbroken circle with the Committee and some of the special ladies in chairs brought from the Fox & Hounds.

The choir-boys opened the entertainment as twilight came. They sang ‘John Gilpin was a Citizen of Credit and Renown’, ‘Sweet and Low’, ‘John Peel’, and a few old English folk songs as an encore. I thought at first that it was going to be rather tedious, but as the darkness fell, as the boys in their grey flannel suits merged into the dimness of the hillside, all that you could see was a little pale cluster of faces that seemed to flicker and glow with the gentle crackle of the brushwood fire. There was a wonderful cheer as the last notes died away. The boys broke up with smiles of shy embarrassment, and the Vicar’s wife gave each a bottle of ginger-beer and two sponge cakes as a ‘prize’.

Dr Hax followed with ‘Trumpeter, what are you sounding now?’ which was not good, although greeted with polite applause. His voice was too loud and assertive, and his manner so condescending that he contrasted very poorly with the sincerity and charm of the choir-boys. I was glad when it was over.

But Sapper Evans retrieved the situation and turned the evening from the failure threatened by Dr Hax’s song into an uproarious success. He was acting as ‘Compère’, and when he came into the centre of the circle to announce the next item someone shouted: ‘Song from Sapper Evans!’ The little man vigorously shook his head, but his announcement was drowned by the whole village shouting: ‘Song! – song!’

It was quite clear that he could not get out of it, and I was sorry for the plucky little man when at last he nodded in surrender, and silence fell. I was sorry and ill at ease, for it was cruel upon him if he had no voice. I watched him as he screwed nervously at the sheet of paper that contained his announcements, and then he stood back a pace and raised his head, and began to sing an old Welsh song in a sweet tenor voice. He stood as I had once seen a small Welsh boy standing, singing for pennies upon the slopes of Snowdon, in a curious attitude of alertness, with heels together and shoulders squared, with eyes half-closed as if straining to draw the melody from the far-off mountains of his home. Although the song was in Welsh and none of us could understand, every word came as clear as crystal to us, and as he sang, the new moon rose behind the cedars upon the hillcrest of the Park.

I had drunk a pint of strong, sweet cider. I was not intoxicated, but the power of it mingled with the weirdness of the evening to bring a sense of unreality to the scene. I was facing the hillcrest, and as I watched that immense, incredible golden scimitar rise slowly behind the trees it seemed to entwine itself in the branches of the cedars and become part of a fantastic, imaginative backcloth to a stage.

I had no sense of fear: I just sat there admiring it. I do not think that I should have been surprised if a Pierrot and Pierrette had danced across the hillside, climbed the cedars and sat in the crescent of the moon to sing a love-song to us. It seemed so incredibly near to us: for a moment it appeared to balance itself lightly upon the tip of a cedar branch before ghostly scene-shifters behind the hill hoisted it clear into the pearl-grey sky.

I was so entranced that even the clear Welsh voice upon the hillside died away. It needed the cheers that greeted the final song to bring me back to a conscious belief in my surroundings.

Only for a moment were the eyes of the audience turned from the brushwood fire. In the silence that followed the applause for Sapper Evans someone called out: ‘New moon! – wish!’ There was a ripple of laughter and a queer sound as if a hundred bodies suddenly and in unison drew a sigh of wonderment. The great moon was clear of the cedars and rising steadily in the sky. It was not, I think, the glowing crescent that awed us so much as the immense, jet black globe to which that crescent clung – the immense bulk of the moon as yet in darkness. The crescent, vast as it was, seemed merely like a forest fire licking around the edges of the moon, and as I watched I half expected to see the fire spread and envelop the whole bloated body…

And then from the silence came the voice of Sapper Evans: ‘I now have pleasure in introducing Mrs Gump, Mrs Gamp and Mrs Gumble, the Beadle washerwomen!’

The audience was at first bewildered as three apparently large, fat washerwomen, with rolled sleeves and white aprons, ran into the circle and bowed, and I honestly believe that nothing in the world could have made us forget the moon more completely than the amazing antics that followed.

The ‘washerwomen’ turned out to be three lusty farm boys. How much of their entertainment was rehearsed I do not know. It was ‘knockabout’ comedy of the broadest type but uproariously funny. They knocked each other about in the most incredible way and only the soft parkland grass saved broken bones. One was a really remarkable acrobat. He twisted himself up in his apron and skirts to such an extent that the other two completely failed to unravel him. He then rolled off down the hillside in a series of somersaults, the audience making way for him as he disappeared into the gloom. The other two pursued him, carried him back in a bundle, and threw him down the dugout steps with such force that I thought for a moment that the Vicar would intervene.

He emerged, however, smiling if somewhat subdued (for I think the other two had rather overdone it in the excitement of their sudden theatrical success), and they finished with a song and a dance. I am afraid it all sounds a little crude and elementary when described in words, but it reduced us all to such helpless laughter that Sapper Evans had to wait at least a minute before he could announce the next item.

The evening closed with a few old, well-remembered songs which the whole audience sang in chorus so finely that I felt tears coming to my eyes, and as I walked home through the fading, tarnished moonlight I thought how strange it was that it had never before occurred to the village to organise an evening like this – and why it should need the end of the world to inspire them to it.

On Tuesday we had a whist drive and progressive games in the Village Hall. It was not so inspiring as our Camp Fire Concert: the Hall got very stuffy towards the end but everybody was cheerful and I won a packet of marigold seeds.

On Wednesday there was the first Fancy Dress Dance ever to be held in Beadle – another proof of Sapper Evans’ genius, for the invention of the dresses had given the villagers of Beadle almost as much diversion as the dugout itself. I went as Doctor Livingstone in a white tropical suit which I had purchased for a cruise to the Canary Islands some years previously, but the majority of the dresses were less conventional, and some almost too daring, such as young Peter’s, the blacksmith’s son, who came as an Ancient Briton.

This occasion was distinguished by a visit from old Lord and Lady Burgin themselves, who very rarely entered into village amusements owing to their advanced age.

But an awkward incident occurred concerning Lady Burgin. The Vicar, eager no doubt to bestow a compliment, awarded the First Prize for Ladies’ Fancy Dress to Lady Burgin and referred in his speech to ‘the lovely, graceful costume of Early Victorian days’. It was discovered afterwards that Lady Burgin had not realised that the dance was to be Fancy Dress, and had come in her ordinary evening clothes. Fortunately she was extremely old and almost stone-deaf and she accepted her prize of a trinket box with a little red balloon tied to it with a face wreathed in smiles.

But nothing in that strange week compared with its extraordinary ending upon the Saturday night. It was so unexpected and spontaneous, so full of brave defiance yet so horribly upon the brink of the macabre that every detail remains graven in my mind.

A concert had been arranged at the Village Hall that night, but during the afternoon an idea developed in the hare-brain of Charlie Hurst, the Captain of our village cricket team: an idea that caught the imagination of Beadle and swept all thought of the concert aside.

Under normal conditions the opening cricket match of the season was played upon the first Saturday in May, but for obvious reasons the fixture list had not been arranged this year. Charlie Hurst stood at the door of the Fox & Hounds that afternoon. He looked sadly across at the deserted cricket ground – the field of his many triumphs, and the sight of it was too much for him. An idea flashed into his mind that caused him to dive into the crowded saloon bar and hold up his hand for silence.

Within half an hour a large, hand-painted poster appeared upon the gates of the Village Hall. I had been down to the village to settle one or two small outstanding accounts in order to face Monday with a clear conscience, and as I paused in the small crowd to read the poster I did not know whether to laugh, or to be angry at the sheer impudence of the thing: –

Charlie Hurst never did anything unless he could do it in style. A gang of boys was already streaming down the road to the cricket ground with the chairs that had been arranged in the Hall for the concert, and as I passed Flidale’s barn I saw Charlie himself superintending a party of men as they unstacked the big marquee and hauled the tent poles from the rafters.

I have never been fond of cricket. It is a game too slow for my restless temperament, and after our hectic ‘gala week’ I would have preferred an early bed. But as I sat in my garden that afternoon, as I heard the distant thud of the mallets as the marquee and canvas bowling screens were hammered into place, as I heard the familiar ‘chock’ of bat against ball as the teams practised for the game, I knew that I must go – if only to be with the village upon its last defiant night of gaiety.

After dinner I sat in my hillside arbour and waited for the moon to rise. Twilight came quickly with the sunset and for half an hour the world was swathed in a darkness that was almost terrifying. I could not even see the white gate of my meadow: with trembling fingers I struck a match to assure myself that blindness had not come to me.

Gradually, along the hillcrest of Burgin Park, there came a golden glow as if all the cities of Eastern England were on fire. From the centre of that glow appeared one tiny strip of pure yellow light, creeping out in both directions till it spanned the whole hillcrest from the beech trees to the tower of Beadle Church.

The breathless glory of that rising moon robbed all terror from it and left me humbled and speechless: a blazing, golden mountain range that seemed to press the dark earth from it: clear rays of amber that caught the hills beyond The Manor House and crept down to drink the jet-black darkness of the valley – that flowed over the church and onwards to the cricket ground, emblazoning that shabby marquee and the threadbare bowling screens into a Field of the Cloth of Gold.

A thrush began to sing in the arbour above my head, and beneath me, in the winding lanes, I could see the village people, upon their way to the cricket match – clusters of pale faces staring upwards – motionless and speechless. In olden times the whole world would have been upon its knees.

I walked up to my house to get my coat. Mrs Buller had turned on the light above the porch, and as I entered I flicked off the pale, incongruous little speck. My chickens had risen with the rising of the moon, puzzled, no doubt, by the shortness of the night. On my way to the cricket ground I paused to cover the wire of their houses with sacking, as one covers a canary cage in a lighted room. They looked at me with perplexed faces as I did so but I heard them returning to their perches almost at once.

All the way to the village the birds sang in chorus as birds only can upon a dawn in May: I think the singing of those birds in the moonlight was the strangest sound that I had ever heard.

As I entered the gates to the cricket ground I expected the same ‘gala’ atmosphere that had marked every evening of the week. But I was surprised at the uncanny stillness. I had to glance around before I could believe that the village was assembled here.

About fifty people sat in the chairs: the white-clad cricketers were assembled in little groups by the pavilion, but the strained quietness told me at once that we had overdone it this time. We had asked too much, even of these trustful, unimaginative people of Beadle, to expect them to enter with gaiety into this weird, unearthly ceremony. For ceremony I can only call it: a farewell ceremony to the game that had graced the meadows and greens of England for so many years and now was over. Those white-clad figures, standing by the pavilion, were no longer men to me – they were ghosts from a forgotten past: memories of summer days that would never come again.

Charlie Hurst, feeling no doubt responsible for a gay prank that had miscarried, did his utmost to enliven the event. He raised a forced laugh from the spectators when he tossed the coin with the opposing Captain – caught it between the back of his neck and his shirt and shook it out of his trouser leg. I could not laugh: I could not take a placid seat amongst those silent awestruck people: I nodded to a few acquaintances and strolled around to the far side of the ground where some old wooden seats stood underneath the trees.

As I did so I saw a tall man climb the stile behind the trees: I saw that a girl was with him, a girl in grey skirt and white pullover, and I was glad that I had come. Colonel Parker and Pat were home again. I waved to them and they crossed the field to share a seat with me.

As I took Pat’s hand I thought that her face was pale, even in the golden light of the moon, and Colonel Parker’s voice was quiet and grave as he spoke to me. Our casual words of greeting were interrupted by some laughter and applause from the spectators. Sapper Evans had appeared from the pavilion in a long white umpire’s coat that enveloped his squat figure like a nightgown. Beside him walked Alec Williams, the riding master, as tall as the Sapper was short, and the two umpires made a really comical pair, perfectly selected to dispel the awed silence of the onlookers.

‘A gallant effort,’ muttered Colonel Parker, ‘brave, but silly, I think – they’d all be happier inside the Village Hall.’

‘It seemed a good idea – in the afternoon,’ I answered. ‘They didn’t bargain for such a clear night. If only there were just a cloud or two – to break it.’

I had tried to keep my eyes away from the sky above me – I glanced up as I spoke and once more that incredible thing in the heavens held me in its thrall. I thought of it no longer as the moon: it hung like a great amber, pock-marked lamp above a billiard-table, so vast and enveloping that the little white-clad cricketers moved without shadows to their appointed places on the field.

The voice of Colonel Parker came remotely to me in the darkness of the trees: ‘I suppose our earth must always have looked as big as that to the moon.’

I had never thought of that before: our earth, with its so much greater size, must always have been a huge, awesome thing to our little satellite.

‘It’s getting its own back now!’ said Pat in a low voice. ‘How terrific we must look from the moon tonight!’

‘There was a radio message – just as we left,’ said the Colonel – and as he spoke on I understood the reason of his gravity – ‘there’s been some kind of a hurricane – following the moon as it waned over Russia and America – they didn’t say much – just warned people to the dugouts.’

‘When was this?’ I exclaimed.

‘Five minutes ago – just as we left the house.’

I rose from my seat, trembling. ‘We must tell them,’ I cried. There was something horrible in the deathly calm surrounding us: in those twittering birds and silent, floodlit trees.

‘No!’ said the Colonel – and there was a sharp command in his quiet voice that I had never heard before. ‘Leave them! – If it’s a… hurricane then it’s safer in the open. If they go to that dugout they won’t return to it when they need it most – on Monday night.’

I did not understand his meaning, but I felt confidence in this quiet man and accepted his word. I think that he visualised a horror in that sealed dugout that must at all costs be kept until the end…

Pat gave a little laugh beside me.

‘There’s Robin!’ she said.

I looked across the cricket field. There was Robin, with Charlie Hurst, walking across the field to open the innings. Charlie was fooling no longer: I honestly believe that he had forgotten the moon: he was back in the dreamland of a summer afternoon – his jaw thrust out: his sleeves rolled to the armpits, his bat gripped in his hand, grimly preparing to defend his nickname – ‘The Beadle Smiter’ – against all comers. Robin, in immaculate white flannels, was wearing the striped cap of his House Eleven: he walked to the wicket as any boy might walk to open the batting of his school at Lord’s.

It is incredible that we were able to concentrate upon that eerie cricket match, but despite everything I found myself held by the fascination of it. The village, unaware of the radio warning and growing more accustomed to their surroundings, warmed up with a cheer when Charlie banged the first ball high over the bowler’s head to land with a resounding whack against the bowling screen. They responded with their first genuine laugh when Charlie took hold of Sapper Evans’ arms and showed him how to signal a hit for six (for the little Sapper clearly knew nothing of the game and soon became a target for good-natured jokes). There was a delightful contrast between those two young batsmen: between Charlie Hurst, Beadle-born and bred, who slammed the ball by the light of nature, and Robin, playing with the grace and ease of expert coaching. Robin’s tall, slim figure contrasted strikingly with the squat, brawny frame of Charlie Hurst – but when the boy stepped out to drive the ball his perfect timing seemed to throw a giant’s strength behind the stroke and the ball would flash across the meadow like a shot from a gun.

I could not help smiling at Colonel Parker’s pride. He, too, had forgotten the ghastly menace of that calm night as the magic of the game enthralled him – as he called out: ‘Well hit, Robin!’ – ‘Good shot, boy!’

Robin came and sat with us when his innings was over: he had made forty-seven runs in half an hour and his eyes shone with pleasure. ‘Sheer luck,’ he said. ‘I’m not a batsman, really. I’m a wicket-keeper – never make more than a dozen as a rule.’

‘That last drive was a beauty,’ said Pat, ‘a fluke,’ she quickly added, ‘but a beauty.’

Robin mopped his brow – in the light of that moon his bronzed face was like a Red Indian’s.

‘Put your sweater on, Robin,’ said Colonel Parker – and the pathos of the words wrung my heart. We said little more as we sat there together under the elms.

It was nearly eleven when the first innings closed, and everybody gathered around the marquee for cakes and coffee. Beadle was its happy self again: Charlie had knocked up eighty runs in just under an hour, including three mighty hits that landed the ball across the road, and Sapper Evans had delighted everybody with his attempts to conceal a complete ignorance of the rules of the game.

There was an eager buzz of conversation and a chinking of cups in the marquee: the moon had passed its zenith and its dazzling splendour was sinking to a reddish glow as it began to wane. I was hoping that everything would end happily on this last ‘gala’ evening despite the warning issued. I saw Colonel Parker, talking earnestly with the Vicar beside the pavilion at a little distance from the crowd. I imagine that the Colonel was telling the Vicar of the radio warning and discussing the proper action to take. I saw the Vicar standing silently in thought: I saw him glance up, say a word to the Colonel and begin to walk with him towards the crowded marquee. What decision they had made I shall never know: whether they were going to cancel the game and advise the people to go to the dugout, or whether they had decided to carry on, will remain in doubt, for as they approached the marquee the hurricane was upon us.

I call it a hurricane for want of a better word: it was the strangest disturbance that I had ever experienced. It began with the long-drawn murmur of distant thunder, but the murmur did not die as the murmur of thunder dies. From far across the valley came that deep, gathering growl, and the whole countryside seemed to spring from its uneasy slumber: the tree-tops quivered, the dogs in the village took up the plaintive howl of the dogs upon the plains.

The strangeness of the hurricane lay in the manner of its leaving us almost unscathed, ‘licking us’, as it were, with an occasional twitch of its dreadful tongue.

With awful swiftness the murmur grew to a roar that passed over the valley like a mighty river in flood – a river through which a hundred express trains ploughed, and as its volume grew it became a long-drawn howl of pain. Swiftly the moon’s brilliance faded. It became the colour of an old brown boot as the dusts of the Russian Steppes and the dusts of the plains of America streamed overhead in a vast cascade towards the west – towards the Atlantic and towards the deserts from whence they came.

We stood together on the cricket field in silent wonder until the hurricane gave us its first ‘lick’. Under any other conditions the scene would have been comic as a sudden airspout whipped round us and took a score of hats, cricket caps, trilbies and bowlers soaring into space. Mine disappeared as if jerked by a string: fortunately it was not my best, but an old one used for evening wear.

Somebody laughed – and then the marquee was hit by a resounding buffet. Every peg upon one side was wrenched from the ground, and for a moment the marquee was like a giantess standing grotesquely upon her head with skirts flying upwards, hanging to the ground by a few surviving pegs. I only saw it for a second because suddenly the hurricane seemed to rise from the very pores of the earth: I felt my trouser legs billow out and rise upwards: I found myself overwhelmed in stuffy darkness as my coat flapped around my face like an umbrella inside-out.

There was a woman’s shriek: a crash of coffee-cups – and through the turmoil came the voice of Sapper Evans:

‘Get down! – lie down!’

In a body we flung overselves upon the smooth turf of the meadow, clawing our fingers for absurd protection around the tufts of grass.

And then it was over – as suddenly as it had begun. With a tired sigh the murmur died away: the light of the moon flowed back to us – a golden, waning light. I rose to my feet and pulled down the legs of my trousers. A ripple of nervous laughter came – a woman, crying quietly, began to gather up the broken cups. The marquee hung forlorn and lopsided from a couple of slanting poles and in the far corner of the field the chairs were heaped like driven, autumn leaves.

‘Missed us again!’ shouted Charlie Hurst. ‘Now let’s see what the other team can make!’

But his attempt at bravado was pathetic: there was no panic, but I saw several little groups standing around distressed old people and leading them quietly home.

Sapper Evans, the Vicar, Colonel Parker and Dr Hax were having an emergency Committee Meeting. I cannot believe that they were contemplating a continuation of the match. I think they were discussing the alternative of returning home or going to the dugout. Then Sapper Evans went over to the waiting cricketers.

‘No good, boys,’ he said, ‘moon’s waning. In half an hour we shan’t have the light. Better pack up and go home.’

It was a sad ending to our heroic ‘gala’ week, but I am glad we played the cricket match instead of having the concert. The hurricane would have been far more terrible in a crowded hall than in an open meadow.

There was a tired smile in Pat’s brave eyes as I said ‘goodnight’ to her beside the cricket pavilion. Robin was upon his knees beside his cricket bag, packing his bat and pads and gloves, and Colonel Parker stood by to help him.

Robin stood up, pushed his tousled hair from his forehead and grinned at me. ‘Lucky to get my innings before the fun began!’ he said. ‘Look at that heap of chairs! – looks as if there’d been a big speech-day rag!’

I watched them walk across the meadow to the stile that led them to The Manor House. The Colonel was helping Robin with his bag, each taking one of the leather handles. I saw Pat’s white pullover: a little pale cloud moving in the shadows of the trees, and they were gone. I felt terribly alone as I turned to make my way back to my home: everything was over now – the ‘gala week’ – the work upon the dugout – my last meeting with those three people whom I loved.

I called ‘goodnight’ to a white-clad cricketer in the lane beside the gate to my meadow – it was too dark to recognise him, but he called out: ‘Goodnight, Mr Hopkins!’ as he passed upon his way.