The
land in our valley is flat, and so if you were to climb even a small hill, you
would find large portions of the county suddenly thrown out before you like a
roll of turf, disappearing only in the white light of summer or the fog of
winter.
It is winter now, and
the land has become a patchwork of empty green fields, the edges of which are
overgrown with nettles, being free from the curious hunger of the cows that
usually roam there. For now the
creatures have been heaved in to sheds, and are protected from the rain and
snow by an arc of corrugated metal, under which they make a nest, warming the straw
with their hot steaming breath, piercing the sweet smell with the acrid scent
of grass.
Amid the endless
horizons of ankle-engulfing grass, the dog-walker or wanderer may come across a
floor of stiff brown peaks, mud long ago ploughed and left to harden in the
frost. In this season the landscape is
calmly homogenous in its colouring, on a cloudless winter day the blue of the
sky soaks up the colours of the earth and blanches it, the edges are sharper,
the contrast is up, but if you seek colour, it’s the heavens you must look to. Under cloud the air is heavy and moist, and
the colours, though dull, are thick and tangible enough to rub off on your
skin, were you to brush against the soft wet bark of a walnut tree, or place a
hand on a red brick wall. This is the
pollen of the winter; it is Warwickshire reminding us that it is still fertile.
On this boundless map
one can make out the hard edges of slate-grey roofs pointing up in clusters,
mimicking the tips of the bare trees beside them. These houses, old and new, huddle together in
the chill, expelling endless trails of smoke, and they hum with life, even in
the steeliest winters. The inhabitants
collect around a flickering heat, they listen to radios to fill the silence of
the windless valley, or watch television in search of the colours so absent
from their window seat. The weekly roast
fills the air with the dense smell of beef, thyme and hot fat, smells which
spill out, with the steam, through open windows, quickly dispersing into the
icy air.
Our valley is a small
one and serves mainly as a tangle of stealthy routes to places of more interest,
namely the road which edges the south of the valley, the roaring tarmac of the
A52. Thrown across the summit of Red
Hill, it scores through patches of defiantly upright conifers before peaking
and disappearing from sight. This road
leads culture-hungry travellers to the historical towns of Horston-on-Wove and
Langley.
However, beside this
road, divided by a much smaller mound, lie the hamlet-come-villages of Whompton
and Elmcote. The two make up a parish;
they share a vicar and Christmas carols and a 5th November bonfire,
they share babysitters and dog-walking paths and gossip.
Elmcote sits on the
west side of the hill, and cannot be spoken of without first announcing its
church. ‘St Mary and All Saints’ has,
for nine-hundred years, rested upon its eponymous mount like a squatting toad –
sometimes gruesome, sometimes stubborn, sometimes charming. It squats much as the country does upon its
colonies: conspicuous and quietly ashamed, as, through crenulated headpiece,
our church has witnessed the waning of its empire.
A reminder of this sits
a mere ten yards from St Mary’s rear, on the Whompton side, beyond the kissing
gate and hidden in a copse of chestnut trees.
It comes in the form of a square block of stone, each edge a metre long,
reaching up to about the knees. In the
centre of this block is a thick groove several inches long, a wound left from
the removal of an unknown symbol which was too offensive to survive the
Christianization of England. Thus this
small bulge of greening-grey is all that marks the site of an eradicated faith,
which the land once celebrated. The
fifty pence historical leaflet available inside St Mary’s does not mention
this; neither does the bi-monthly parish newsletter.
This lump of stone has
been rounded over the years, villagers passing through from either side of the
hill mark it as a point of rest after the demanding climb, its surface is
smoothed by decades of friction from jeans and cagoules, the edges are marked
by the graceless rub of wellington soles, where mud and cowpats have needed
dislodging. Passers-by give this stone a
glance, but seeing no plaque they quickly return their gaze to the looming
church before them – though accompanying dogs frequently show some interest in
the stone as a point of territorial marking.
Animals sense these things.
Merely whipping up a leg over the edge of St Mary’s passageway could not
claim propriety over All those Saints.
This slab of debunked faith is a comparatively easy target, and one that
Anne Fallow’s exuberant golden retriever, Lottie, is more than happy to
challenge. One can’t help but wonder
why, in the passion of the Christianization, the forces of the Lord did not
remove the stone altogether, rather than leaving that small, sad relic. It was most likely left to stand as a symbol
of dominance – like Farmer Goldbourne hanging gutted crows on the barbed wire
of his fields to warn away curious birds.
Beside this stone’s
niggling presence, the church sits privileged as the only survivor of a lost
hamlet, as the fields which roll down from it were in fact the original site of
Elmcote. The village was one of many which
didn’t survive the plague. In those days
of tradition, of duty, of predetermined life, the static community swiftly
found itself lost without trace.
Families ended at that generation, their name forgotten and their homes
burnt to contain the infection.
However, nothing is
ever truly obliterated, such events leave a stain, they scar the earth. As such, not far from the mysterious slab of
stone is an equally disfigured space, a dip in the terrain which is too sudden
to be natural, and on too far of an incline to ever have become a natural pond. It is a plague pit. This is where you can find the Elmcote that
was, somewhere deep beneath, where the earth is busy with those diseased bones.
The village that exists
now is in fact an amalgamation of the parishes of Upton and Elmcote (it appears
as ‘Upton’ upon Ordinance Survey
maps, though to whose advantage no one is sure) and rather than smothering the
hill, the village neatly follows the line of a road, making a V around the
church. Church>Elmcote. After the loss of its parishioners, this
ecclesiastical protrusion sat up on its high chair of Arden Sandstone for many
centuries, lonesome but alert and anxious about the return of disease, and keeping
its toes out of the nearly annual flooding.
It remained alone until the mid-16th-century when the land
was rejuvenated as farmland. Crooked
black timbers can still be seen in the remaining Tudor houses, and amongst the
more resilient beams of barn-conversions.
Besides these low-ceilinged Tudor homes, the village is largely made up of
red-brick, Jacobean buildings, these houses, though not so romantically
reminiscent of the Shakespearean checkerboard edifice, are broader and more
generous with their windows. Children of
the Jacobean home will always draw their houses red, and not for many years be
aware that this is a signifier of their middle-classness.
Susan Grant was one
such child, and though she left Elmcote thirty-two years ago, in her armchair
some three-hundred miles away, she cannot discuss the village, or her
childhood, without continually returning to the church. Susan grew up in a house (its countenance
already illustrated) situated on the bend of the road (which happens to also be
the peak of the V), and from this vantage point she could not avoid sight of
the church. And upon this topic she
soberly recalls an unshakable vision: the head of a Cyclops glaring across the
fields at her; the back-lit clock a large yellow eye, experiencing the
awakening of Shelley’s monster each night
This head (more like
that of an exiled King than of a mythical creature) is humbled by his 700-odd
years of survival, and peers shyly out from the collar of his green cloak. And though this cloak is no longer occupied
by cottages, the fenced-off walnut saplings that line the path remain as
evidence to its new inhabitants, cattle, which come spring will once again
appear, treading slow and heavy across the moist green fur of the King’s
pelt.
And so, history is hazy
and often unkind. And for most who know it now (save, perhaps, those who cannot
avoid its gaze), St Mary’s encompasses all that a village church should. It is a place of peace and contemplation for
both orthodox and secular and in defiance of the fear of this age, no wanderer
shall ever find it locked.
The arched oak doors
are worn down at the edges, their outline reminiscent of a child’s sketch – a
wax crayon held by a fist outlines a castle door not quite fitting its frame,
with an over-sized keyhole. It is into
this caricature of a keyhole, a good inch in width, that you must slip your
finger in order to pull and gain entry, for there is no handle.
Charlie Whitehouse, son
of what locals call ‘first-generation settlers’, goes up the hill a few times
each week, a habit he picked up in youth from daily perambulation of Church
Hill with Fred, his border collie.
Charlie grew up in a house down Apple Grove which was, and still is, the
only diversion from the road that carves the path of the village.
In many ways Apple
Grove is its own neighbourhood, despite being much smaller than the name
suggests. Being so narrow, the one-way
lane is neglected by the street-cleaners who attend to the roads
post-flooding. So the tarmac is brittle
and comprises largely of cavities which only the well-acquainted driver will
know how to avoid. The inhabitants of
Apple Grove find their path always denied of sun, the trees grow densely there
and curve over the road from either side until, half-way down, one is entirely
swathed in shadow. The season is immaterial
in this effect, the orchards that flank the road make up for their autumn
shortcomings with vines of evergreens, curling from branch to branch to
telephone pole indiscriminately, and the trees’ annually dropping extremities
layer the tarmac, making the road in to a strip of moist brown marshland. The marsh fills the holes and makes the
ground appear even, but wellingtons must be worn. Nature gives and takes. For Fred, this frequently meant being picked
up and carried in the arms of his walker until the end of the lane, to avoid
his spindly white legs sinking into the swampy potholes. Fred always took advantage of this position,
finding himself so suddenly close to a human face against which he could
affectionately press his wet nose.
The orchards of Apple
Grove are far more diverse in their trees than the street’s title would
suggest. In their harvesting, the
inhabitants have been known to produce plum jam, elderflower cordial, damson
gin, quince jelly and raspberry vodka alongside their apple pies, apple juices,
apple ketchups and John Parr’s infamously strong and notoriously self-consumed
cider.
Leaving his cottage in
Apple Grove, Charlie and Fred would jump over the short fence to a field
frequently empty of cows and rich with long grass. Circumventing the footpaths was necessary as
Fred would get over-stimulated by the scent of rabbits which burrowed deep in
between the thuja trees. Cutting across
the path they would walk around the borders of the livestock fields, following
the old road, a path that since the mid-20th century has been used
only by tractors and hacking horses.
Their path made a large U around the summit, almost perfectly following
the contours of the hill. Thus, as a
child Charlie never quite reached the church, another necessary avoidance as
Fred’s only visit there, accompanied by Charlie’s Mum, had been an unforgivably
boisterous one where Fred had begun digging up the turf beside
gravestones. The hysterical way in which
this story had been recalled to Charlie made him careful to always avoid the
church, lest Fred anger some resentful spirit.
This winter, Charlie
turns 22, he has a full-time job as a chef at The Red Stag, the gastro-pub at
the top of Red Hill. As Fred is no
longer there to dictate his path, Charlie visits the church as often as he can.
Charlie, among many
other villagers, makes a habit of reading the visitors book, noting the
monotonous comments from appreciative city-dwellers: ‘what a calm place’, ‘a
beautiful spot’, ‘such a peaceful location’, these comments rarely deviate from
this formula, and, when collated, read somewhat like an estate agent’s
catalogue. However, these are merely the
grout which fills the edges around comments such as ‘In loving memory of
Margaret’, or ‘we miss you Grandad’.
These are the words which Trevor Barnsley notices.
Trevor, who, with his
bad knee, finds it difficult to climb the hill, has successfully made it a
matter of course that his son’s home-comings end in a visit to the church. With his arm around Josh’s neck the climb is
not so hard on his knee, though his doctor would still protest if he ever found
out. Trevor does not, of course,
advertise his interest in the documented sentiments, instead he navigates
around the pews until he finds something of vague interest which he can call
Josh’s attention to, be it a newly-interesting segment of sewing in the W.I.
tapestry, or a previously unseen crack in the floor. Once Josh is distracted, Trevor nods in
affirmation of his discovery and casually circles back round to the entrance
and the visitors book. Whether his son knows
of this routine is not particularly important to Trevor, they both abide by it
and either way Trevor is allowed his time with the book.
Trevor flicks through
the pages, travelling back to the date of his last visit and reading through to
the present, finding these snippets of humanity in amongst the gushings and the
elaborate cursive script of American tourists.
For him, these are the true story, moments of authenticity in a book
which could so comfortably remain superficial.
These crystallised fragments of life, thinner than paper, extracted from
the momentarily exposed cross-section of a human are precious, almost
exquisite. What makes them so is their
specificity, having been recorded at a specific time, in a specific place, in a
condition of candidness which can be encouraged or restricted by so many
surrounding elements which effect human mindfulness. The long-grieving adult-child may be comforted
by the presence of their own children, running up and down the pews before
them, and consequently leave a joyful expression of remembrance, in the vein of
acceptance and sweet nostalgia. Trevor
remembers a particularly cheerful entry: ‘Mum, today the kids used your recipe
for cookies, thanks for the smiles’.
While the lone adult-child, perhaps nagged by a night of ill-sleep and a
badly digested breakfast may find it impossible to find such harmony, and will
leave a note such as Annie did in October of this year: ‘I have never stopped
missing you’. To whom this note refers,
Trevor cannot know for sure, but, based on the freshness the pain and the
dramatic turn of phrase, he supposes it is a young woman who lost her husband.
Trevor does not revel
in the pain of others, nor is he a bored voyeur, indeed his own life has been
one of joy and satisfaction. What he
feels in reading these comments is a realism rarely afforded by any other
medium. He sees the television spilling
over with imaginary people telling imaginary stories, and he never believes the
newsreaders.
Trevor’s wife, Sally,
died a few years ago, and he has dealt with this by sending the occasional
remark her way; while he hoovers, when he drops a mug, while he rearranges his
pristine garage. In this, Trevor is amiable,
he does not do it in front of his son in case it worries or upsets him. Trevor understands that Sally’s life was, for
Josh, unfulfilled – he has not had the pleasure of watching Sally enjoy a long
and exhilarating life, and thus cannot accept her sudden departure. This theory on grieving was imparted to
Trevor by his own father, upon his mother’s death, and he plans to one day
repeat it to Josh, yet he has so far found it an impossible subject to breach.
In investigations of
the visitor’s book, a careful observer, such as Trevor, may note the
reoccurrence of a certain handwriting, a visitor who caps her a’s with hoods
and elaborately curls the tails of her g’s.
This visitor is in fact an enthusiastic native; she uses nick-names,
initials and pseudonyms so as to not appear over-zealous with the pages, but
adores flicking back through them and marking her dedication. In fact, the frequent appearances of Becky,
R. A., Rebecca, L’Apricot, Rachel, Ms Abbott (and others) are recorded through
the last thirteen years of St Mary’s visitor’s books, beginning with scribbles
and working up to an established penmanship.
With her ascent to
teen-hood, this girl, who we can with certainty only call R, was delivered into autonomy, and discovered herself on the brink
of a world so suddenly vast that its purpose became confusing. After the initial dizziness, she quickly
learnt that the mission put before her unhindered feet was that of spiritual
discovery. And so she wanders through
the fields of Elmcote, ignoring the uncouth sounds and smells of the animals,
wrapped up entirely in the quest of understanding the universe.
The trees teach her
that the wind blows. The dew on the
grass teaches her that daytime is only half of the story. The burrowed holes teach her that there are
hidden depths. The birds that coolly
soar above her teach her to respect unknown forces. The nettle teaches her not to reach blindly
into hedgerows. The uneven ground makes
her stumble and teaches her to watch where she’s going.
Though R does visit the church, it is only a
matter of accounting; she does not like to sit in the pews, and keeps her head
down in order to avoid sight of the altar.
Since a visit to Catholic church in Spain many years ago, R has remained acutely
ecclesiophobic. Despite her age, which
she is proud of, she remains incapable of erasing the image of the saviour’s
extravagantly bloody palms, and the pointed capes which hung on the walls in
preparation for Semana Santa – Holy Week.
R saw nothing but hate in
these Spanish costumes, despite never having been exposed to the notoriously
identical outfits of the Klu Klux Klan.
The mind of a child works in shapes and colours. The red of these capes beside the purple of
the altar correlated too closely with the colours she recognised in scraps of
lurid tinfoil, freshly ripped open to reveal the precious chocolate egg
within. Shapes and colours. Blood and decorative packaging collided;
ghouls appeared in the sweet melting taste.
So, despite the St Mary’s stained-glass window being a rather tame
Church of England design featuring a blue-draped Virgin Mary with not a drop of
blood in sight, R is comforted by the
plain grey stone underfoot, the austere white walls, the brown timber of the
beams and does not look to the gaudy altar, at the risk of ruining her archive
space.
These people, a mere
few among many, live their lives across the hill, their footprints spread out
across Elmcote like a web, they following certain paths every day. Up and around, down and across, up and over,
down and away. These paths are well
established in the earth, trodden and flattened by boots, paws, hooves and
tyres.
These paths,
incidentally, are rarely endorsed by the fat little green arrow that indicates
a public footpath. It is an
over-optimistic term; the general public would probably choose the
pavement-less road or the centre of a well-populated, well-fertilised field
over many of the footpaths designated by the county council. Elmcote’s public footpaths take you across
bridges of rotting wood, over bogs of questionable muck, slithering down hills
of slick mud, up exceedingly vertical trails paved with the slippery
contributions of the adjacent livestock and, most dauntingly, through a narrow
gap behind a hay barn which, after years of ambiguity on the subject of
maintenance responsibility, has been reclaimed by nettles. For the past decade of summers they have
formed an impenetrable wall, their eager stinging hairs creeping over and under
the stiles at both ends of the path.
These paths are only walked by people who planned their route before
they left the house, who carry plastic-coated maps and have an ETA.
Of course, Elmcotians
are not truly choosing their own paths, they follow the contours of ground,
they dodge unnecessary dips and peaks, they avoid the bee’s nest in the
graveyard and detour round the long-established rabbit warren on the north face
of the hill. The ground still makes the
rules, rolling humans side to side on a zigzagging path like a hamster in
ball. The rambler has to navigate around
patches of goose grass, obligingly side-steps around the vast trunks of trees
much wiser and older than they.
Upon the turn of the
millennium each Elmcote family planted an oak along the border of the field
that ends at the edge of Apple Grove, and they’re now rooted in a neat row,
protected by wire fencing on either side.
With their slender stems and tidy, modest branches they appear like
daisies beside the giant on the other side of the fence. This vast oak is almost certainly the oldest
tree on Church Hill, it erupts from the ground like the grey, gnarled hand of
one of Hades’ giants, it twists and bends its fingers, but so slowly in
comparison to human scitterings that it seems not to move at all. Its roots are visible on one side where the
ground has dipped and transformed around it.
It is these raised roots which gives the oak its legend and its title as
The Fairy Tree. The swells and
depressions in the base of the trunk form a miniature city which has been
carefully inspected by many generations of children. Some years ago the discovery of a pair of
wings from a daddy-longlegs caused uproar amongst the youth of Apple Grove, and
was kept securely in a jar upon a sacred pillow of moss. These celebrated wings were left on a window
sill so that they could be viewed by passing fairies if they so wished. Once the excitement died down the jar was
used by Mrs Hillering for a new batch of quince jelly, and the wings met their
end outside the kitchen window.
The Fairy Tree has been
a site of mystery and joy for all children who pass it; its roots make loops
through which a child can fit a whole leg and platforms on which a child may
proclaim ownership over the land. The
saplings opposite, which still hold their colour in their flushed limbs, are
but fledglings beside this oak and, in accordance with the wind, seem to lean
away from it in fear.
Of course one must not
forget those Elmcotians who are exceptions to the rules of the determined paths;
those who move across the ground with impunity, and can at any moment tug at
one of the many strands of the web and know where the people stand. These few, licensed to defy nature are of
course the dairy farmers, the Goldbourne family. The Goldbournes and their endless litters of
children roam across the fields on quad bikes, moving in great loops, obeying
no logical course. And far from being
subject to the whims of the land like the neighbouring corn or wheat farmers,
the dairy farmer has the privilege of determining its condition, moving creatures
in and out of fields and transforming the state of the terrain. Altering the earth is no small task, and
while the Goldbournes knew their land well, there have been some who have
offered less restraint. The most
infamous case of this was the action of an out-of-town farmer who filled in the
rabbit warren which once thrived on the south of the hill. After this act, which was to the Elmcotians
just short of genocide, he found himself rather unpopular among the children,
who pointed at him at village fetes and scowled at him in the street, quickly
moved along by apologetic parents. But
through summer plant sales and winter carol singing, the sacred words ‘Rabbit
City’ were muttered under many breathes, and thus, he did not stay for long. Later, the destruction of the south-facing
warren instigated growth a once small, north-facing warren, which the sensible
Goldbournes know better than to touch.
In this season, the
Goldbournes stay secreted inside their small enclave of barns, their home is
squat and veiled by a thin layer of ivy, the windows are small and made of many
rectangular panes of thin glass, slotted between slim metal lines, tacky to the
touch, always heavy with dust. The ivy
stops the cold from slithering in between the old bricks which, though being
thickly coated with white paint, crumble more with each application. The structure that stands now is the
accumulation of decades of licks of paint, applied by the Goldbournes that came
before them, and those before them. This
house has a well-worn face, subject to years of ladders propped on ill-chosen
surfaces, a broken sill here, and a replaced pane there. A particularly recent wound runs down the
wall beside the upstairs window, the bottom of the ladder had slipped back into
the gravel of the driveway, while the top was dragged down and cut into the
paint, revealing a scar of red brick dust.
This house is a relic, serving the Goldbournes as ably as the headstones
in the churchyard.
To tread the ground of
the churchyard is to walk across the history of such families. Those headstones that have endured, and not
given in to the lure of a more horizontal pose (roofs for opportune rabbits),
are marked with familiar names. John
Parr lies beneath a mock millstone, beside his father’s worn out millstone,
overlooking the East of the hill. The
generations of Stewarts are shaded under the dark-skinned fir tree in the
centre of the churchyard; they are used as vantage points by the squirrel
population. The Goldbourne patch sits at
the base of St Mary’s front, clustered around the toes of her left foot, and it
will continue to grow, under the time-weary watch of her yellow eye.
