Ulverton Page 23

  The Squire was sporting a white blazer and trousers, with a gold watch hanging lustrously from his white waistcoat. The crowd were mostly in their Sunday best, so that the scene resembled an old sombre painting of, say, St Michael before a host of sinners. Nothing about the Squire betokened a military demeanour: his shape was that of a William pear, his pince-nez sported a red silk ribbon, his hair was mounted above his head in two polished waves either side of a deep trough, each wave ending in a small curl over the forehead. His hands were small and his feet likewise, but they were the only dapper parts: there was a general air of dissipation about him, most especially in the creamy pallor of his face, which blurred the edge of neatness and admonished his attempts at moral heartiness. His vigorous fury spluttered with an element of indignation, lacking the cool deadliness of the true autocrat. He struggled against himself as much as his perceived enemies, but without that essential intelligence that might have allowed him to grow in stature and self-knowledge. In short, he was the model of an English country gentleman of those pre-war years – and he was (almost) never hateful.

  The first part of his speech was a comfortable rug woven from the fleece of that familiar flock, consisting of Native Spot, Bosom of the Hills, Lord Nelson, Rich and Happy England, and Admiral Rodney – the last mainly on account of some blood shared with the weaver. The second part of the speech began to snap and flap a little, holding aloft Valour, Enterprise, Sacrifice, Boadicea, Heroic Zeal, and sundry other gilded sentiments, taking their shine from their proximity to Barbarous Foe, Tyrannical Ambition, and The Hun. The Destruction of Frederikshald was slowly unrolled as anecdote, at which point some of the listeners evidently grew weary of defences being staunch and resistances being vigorous – the fate of a Norwegian town in 1716 holding no immediate interest for them – and began to talk amongst themselves. The Squire saw this, and two small spots of red rose in his cheeks. Frederikshald was abandoned mid-cannon, there was a splutter and an adjustment of the pince-nez, but the foolhardy few – particularly the group of fellows in smocks, from whom a guffaw was to be heard now and again – continued to brandish their lucifers above the exceedingly dry tinder of the Squire’s wrath.

  The Vicar coughed, the Major scowled, I lowered my head, a louder guffaw sounded, there was a brief silence. Having head thus lowered, and eyes fixed firmly on the ground, with all the comfort of a chap sheltering beneath an ammunition lorry, I was mightily surprised to hear, instead of an explosion, a long ‘Ooooo’ from all about me, rather as if a flock of giant doves had winged happily into the square, and nested amongst us. Looking up, I saw a most remarkable sight: the Squire was holding aloft a large curved sword, polished to a mirror, which flashed the evening sun across our eyes and caused me to blink hurriedly. In the other hand he was holding its tasselled crimson scabbard, from which it had evidently just been drawn. Where this magnificent weapon (identified by the frumpy lady on my right as a cavalryman’s sabre) had emerged from I cannot say, but it transformed the Squire thoroughly, as if its magical properties of Valour, Enterprise, Sacrifice and Heroic Zeal had trickled down into his arm, and then his chest, and so on, and filled his whole otherwise unremarkable frame.

  He then opened his mouth and delivered a single sentence, which had neither the Valours nor the Zeals about it, but was memorable for its simple earnestness. In its own small way it could have jostled in some Heavenly Mausoleum for Oratory with Queen Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury (‘I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman …’ et cetera), which were it not for dusty schoolrooms I would now probably find as invigorating as the oaken-hearted soldiery were reported to have done. The secret of the Squire’s earnestness, however, was in its straightforward childishness – perhaps boyishness would be a kinder term. He transformed the essential boyishness of all these abstract sentiments into something touchable and felt. He caught the nursery mood of the country in this microcosm of place, and moved our hearts; for we saw the little boy in him and so felt the little boy in us; each small hand enclosed in a firm grasp that was History bidding us from above to come.

  ‘My grandfather,’ cried he, ‘bore this sword at Waterloo!’

  Another ‘Oooo’ extended the final syllable, and the Major and the Vicar smiled at each other. The sword’s magical properties increased. It flashed back at us the golden dazzling moments of British victories. Its needle-sharp point proclaimed our freedoms. Its sleek curve was as perpetual as the spumed steely coastline of our island. The Squire swung it through the evening air, and its high hiss was the civilised thrum of the great Empire, quietly valiant, subduing only the primitive and bloody places of the world, erecting Industry in its stead.

  Yes, dear reader, all these moth-eaten images spun through my mind, and allowed me for a moment (the sentiment was short-lived) to comprehend the effect, to be buoyed up, as it were, on the swell, and not sink in spluttering condemnation.

  The Union Jack draped over the front of the podium swelled slightly in the evening breeze, that carried on its bosom the scent of golden fields awaiting the reapers’ blades; and the Squire lowered the sword and touched the front edge of the podium, so that all eyes followed its line to the heart of their flag.

  ‘Once again we are called. Once again the foe knocks at our gates. Once again our young men, our hearts of oak, have the opportunity to join this great march, to wield this same sword, to follow this same flag. The flag that says we are free forever. No Napoleon, no Hun, no barbarous tyrant will ever tear it from us.’

  The effect, as I have said, was short-lived on me, once the usual threadbare patches had returned. But for the humble folk gathered in the square, whose lives were generally field-hedged, or scullery-encompassed, whose intellects then (even more than now) resembled their living rooms – shut up and musty, turned into parlours for the odd Sunday or the once-a-year guest, the odd jolt in an unchanging routine; and whose concerns therefore barely rose above the washing-tub or the driving coulter or the pennies in the sugar-tin – for these people the Squire’s speech somehow unbarred the bolts and blew open the doors: some featureless excitement was emerging; something to harass boredom out of its hole, to arrest the mangle in its squealing, eternal revolutions.

  There was one exception to this depressing phenomenon: the under-gardener of the Manor remained transfixed not by the venerable sabre that had slashed flesh at Waterloo, but by the house-martin. Whether his interest was real or otherwise, I did not, and still do not, know; the several conversations on matters botanical and ornithological I had had with him made me pretty certain of his deep knowledge. But I fancy the house-martin was a kind of point of meditation, whose real purpose was to deflect that hypnotic flash. I felt ashamed of my own brief thrill, and there arose in me a corresponding defiance – even a sense of disgust at the emotions unleashed across this still summer’s evening in rural England. But the Squire was now at the climax of his oratorical symphony: this was the point of the meeting, and an injection of the lowest element of that ‘radical Fire’ which binds love and wrath, and is called Envy.

  ‘The Major has asked me to tell you that any man here who is willing to defend our country, to fight for freedom, in the name of God, may step forward and declare himself. Yesterday, the village of Bursop gave to the cause thirty of its young vigorous men. Thirty! And, I hear someone call out – harvest is only a week away! But the women and children of Bursop are doughty enough, apparently, to gather the corn, and free their menfolk for an even nobler harvest. Shall Ulverton be bested by Bursop? Shall Bursop be the name that rings down the annals of history, as the village that stepped forward when the hour called, and laid itself upon the, ah …’

  There was a brief pause, as the Squire’s grasp of metaphorical nicety gave out, and the choices had evidently narrowed to a morbid few, reeking of pagan rather than Christian virtues, and being altogether too passive (I assume ‘pyre’ and ‘altar’ were prime candidates) for the occasion. In retrospect, how fitting would that metaphor have been! This hitch
in the proceedings was saved by a shout from one of the smocks, to the effect (I paraphrase) that Bursop folk were ineffectual layabouts, and we could do better – whereupon the whole crowd roared to a man, or shrieked to a woman. Such behaviour would not have seemed so hateful had they been picking teams for their annual cricket match, but memories of my nephew’s facial injuries in the South African war loomed before me, and refused to evaporate. I began to feel nauseous, and spun a mental thread between myself and Percy Cullurne, who remained unsettlingly oblivious to the proceedings.

  The Squire grinned and adjusted his pince-nez, and my fondness for him was as the melting snow. Suffice to say that a few more shovelfuls of the poorest quality coal, and the blaze was undousable. Another great roar, a shifting and shoving about, and suddenly there they were – the spoils of eloquence: thirty-two strapping fellows (well, most of them were strapping) in a neat line between the people and the podium. They shifted from foot to foot, they tossed pebbles from one hand to the other, they scratched their noses, they grinned ostentatiously at loved ones. I thought of Carlyle’s dictum, that ‘there is nothing in the world you can conceive so difficult, as that of getting a set of men gathered together as soldiers’. I reflected: here are a group of agricultural labourers, or whatever, in their Sunday best, which was not saying a great deal, who would no more ‘walk into the cannon’s mouth’ for one man as they would wipe their dirty boots on entering the scullery – and yet in a few months or so, that is exactly what they will be doing. I remain with ‘cannon’s mouth’, for my notions of war were then as outmoded, dear reader, as the flashing sabre was – and if you were to conquer the temporal flux, and return as you are to that square, and stand beside me and whisper of all that you now know – of spitting machine-guns and lumbering metal monsters, of men cut down like fairground toys, of hideous waste in a universe of sucking mud, of gas and shrieks and drowning horses – I should think of you as utterly mad!

  For did not the poignancy of that moment clutch even at my cynical heart? India and my wife’s death had not quite corroded all my softer faculties, I fear: a faint tinge of pride, that my newly-adopted home had pipped Bursop by two runs, as it were, crept into my visage. My mouth found itself curving into a satisfied smile, my head nodded at the frumpy lady to my right, and the cantankerous gent to my left, and for a moment I was sealed in tight with the lot of them.

  It was at that moment that I realised, with an unwarranted jump to the heart, that Trevick and the other ‘diggers’ were absent. This thought was all but instantaneous with a sudden concern that all our barrow ‘team’ would be despatched forthwith to Flanders. There was a flurry, a straightening of backs, a darting in and out from under a black cloth, a shuffling of the three Important Persons into a group beside the Sacrificial Lambs, and the flashlight exploded like a tiny bomb, making the Vicar jump a little, which explains why his face is a thankful blur, his deadly role forgotten to history (I have the photograph before me now). I fretted at the absence of my companions on the barrow. An awful truth began to dawn upon me. And as this livid light rose in my mind, I saw Percy Cullurne leaning against the water-pump that dribbled into its trough between the podium and the New Inn, and is still tenaciously known as ‘The Well’; he was cupping a handful of water to his mouth. The line of men were having their hands shaken by the Major, and the crowd were waiting for the next stage in the proceedings. The Major stepped onto the podium for a final address. There was quiet. Then as he opened his mouth there was a squeak from the water-pump, then another: it had (and still has) an infernal squeak. Percy Cullurne had a hot face, and was bathing it, snorting and shaking his great wide head. I was reminded of the baptism of our Lord, for some reason. Anyway, there was a hint of purification about the action.

  The Major turned; the Squire turned. Up to that point the Squire had not noticed Percy Cullurne. Now all eyes were turned on Percy Cullurne. Percy Cullurne stood upright and saw us watching him. He scanned our eyes and shook his hands free of water, as he had done on that very spot thousands of times before, I am sure. He sniffed. He spat, though not in anger: it was a practical, working-man’s expectoration. He sniffed again and passed a hand across his mouth. Every action of his had become entrancing. One almost expected him to start dancing and singing, as in the music-hall, or produce a rabbit from his cloth-cap (needless to say, Percy Cullurne was not in his Sunday best). But then he fell still, and merely stared us back. It was our turn to move.

  ‘Ah!’ came from the Major. The Major thought that enough, evidently.

  The Squire had no choice. Anyway, his Furies were at him. His moment of personal glory was crumbling before his very eyes. He cleared his throat. He could, with a great effort of will, have turned his back, and said nothing. ‘The greatest events,’ as Fielding puts it, ‘are produced by a nice train of little circumstances.’ How different things might have been then!

  ‘Ah!’ came from the Squire.

  Percy Cullurne cocked his head slightly, like a faithful dog who has just received an unfamiliar command.

  ‘Cullurne,’ said the Squire. He lifted his chin up, and placed his small hands behind his back, and rocked to and fro on his heels. His hair-oil gleamed in a decent imitation of St Michael’s helmet.

  ‘There’s a place at the end, Cullurne. Make it thirty-three.’

  The crowd murmured its approval, along with one or two shouts from smocks, to the effect that Percy could stop a regiment with two fingers, if he could find them – which from the laughter that followed was clearly not meant to be complimentary; but its probable vulgar import, hidden in the multiple folds of village irony, was wholly lost on me. Percy Cullurne rested an elbow against the pump and continued to stare at us with nothing but puzzlement showing across his features. The frumpy old lady to my right leaned across in front of me to the cantankerous gent on my left and whispered, ‘Village idiot!’ To my shame, I did not flick her hat off, but merely wrinkled my nose at the stench of naphthalene, and emphatically cleared my throat.

  Small beads of perspiration began to run down the Squire’s nose. He compressed his lips and puckered them in and out, like a child about to cry (‘bivering’ – as the local dialect rather charmingly has it). He looked anxiously about him for what I could only imagine was an escape route. Fury was grappling with a sense of absolute funk. This was extraordinary. His fingers locked themselves behind his back, then writhed. I believe to this day that he knew he was defeated. Percy Cullurne had probably terrified him for years, though he was twice Cullurne’s age, and of course immeasurably superior in social position. I know men of impeccable breeding who live in abject fear of a particular domestic servant (often the butler). It is, I think, a need, a profound desire, acting within them. Percy Cullurne has never grappled with himself. He is, in one way, as insentient to his own soul as a plant or a tree because he has never felt a need to query that inner self. His soul is commensurate with desire: his desire is his soul, and the soul remains content merely to be.

  ‘Come on man,’ said the Squire, ‘come on.’

  Cullurne passed a big hand across his big face, which appeared to wipe away the puzzlement, pushed himself off from the pump and began to walk towards us. It was a space of only some thirty yards, but his slow, shambling gait, the ease of his great limbs, the utter silence that surrounded the strike of his iron-shod heels against the hard ground, the sudden shattering of a big dry whorl of horse-dung by an oblivious boot, his long shadow dancing over the stony earth – all this made his progress as slow as a Titan’s, as if a figure from some Homeric bronze-hammered past had loomed, had risen again into our midst. I can’t honestly say now whether I knew what he was about to do: perhaps all of us thought he would shuffle onto the end of the line, to a cheer no doubt, and the meeting would have been accounted a great success. Whatever Cullurne was or was not to do, we knew we would never forget that slow, methodical advance towards us, transfixing time itself; bespeaking slow, hard hours in the field, or in the dusty barn, or in the gr
eat lavish garden of the Manor; and arresting, for a long minute, our madness.

  Whatever we were thinking, two Important Persons were in no doubt of his intentions: the Vicar, his head on one side, his palms together, was ready to grant his blessing; the Major had come down from the podium and was standing with an equally ready hand extended from a crisp cuff; the Squire, however, was rigid from head to toe. The Sacrificial Lambs watched Cullurne from the corner of their eyes, until Cullurne came to a stop two paces from them, and from the Squire. The crowd were eerily quiet. The whole square appeared suspended in a great silence, into which Cullurne’s voice broke – I was tempted to say like the blows of a blacksmith’s hammer, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was not violent, it was not thrust from him: it seemed to branch as naturally from him, in those soft syllables, as a tree from the earth. I cannot put it into words. Suffice to say that he spoke quietly, as if only to the Squire – but there was not a man or woman in that wide square who did not hear him.

  ‘I’d rather,’ he said, ‘bide at home.’

  The Squire swallowed. His fingers writhed.

  ‘Stay at home, man?’

  The man nodded slowly. There were a few titters in the crowd, and a smock snorted. The cantankerous gent on my left tut-tutted violently.

  The Squire lifted his chin still higher.

  ‘Duty, Cullurne. I would be proud for one of my servants to answer the call of the hour. His country in need. And so on. Duty, Cullurne. Duty.’

  The Major’s hand drooped, but did not fall. The Vicar’s mouth puckered into a mew of distaste. My heart, I have to say, was hammering wildly. There was a curious taste of metal in my mouth. The church rang the quarter, thudding its fleet hooves across our temporal defiance. As the echoes washed away, the under-gardener spoke again.