www.wrington.net
Another favourite subject was a friend of his father’s, who
articulated in short, staccato sentences, prefacing each with the
exclamation “Ho !”, as in “Ho ! I’m a bit late this mornin’ there’s a
lorry up at Langford that’ve high-jacked”, or “Ho ! can ‘e tell me
the way to Bath, I’m not one for the sense of di-rec-tions”, or “Ho !
I’d got to get off early, only I’ve got to shift me sister’s man-ure”.
Then there was Miss X, a rather grand lady who lived along the
Congresbury road. But before telling of her, it might be helpful for
modern Wringtonians to appreciate the attitude, the flavour, the
idioms of life in the village before and up to the second world war,
to relate a little incident concerning another rather grand lady.
The story was told by the daughter of Mrs H in about 1950 to a
young listener, of a little event concerning her mother just after
the first war. Mrs H looked in the larder one morning and
discovered they were getting rather short of cheese, and she
must rectify the matter, wouldn’t you know. She instructed her
daughter to summon the young man, which she duly did, and he
came round with his pony and trap, and they set off to Cheddar to
purchase the cheese. Up the long steep hills in and out of
Cheddar, of course, the young man would have to have had to
walk to spare the pony.
No word would have passed between Mrs H and the young man
on this journey, save to pass on instructions. When they arrived
at the shop, the proprietor would have greeted Mrs H, touching
his forehead with his right hand several times. He would have
addressed her as “Ma’am”. To use her name would have been
much too familiar. She wouldn’t have mentioned the weather or
had any small-talk - not with a shopkeeper. He gave her his
undivided attention as she discussed the cheese, its provenance
and quality, not the price, as that would not have changed. When
she had made the purchase, he would have given her a final
salaam as she trotted off.
She did not, however, take the cheese. To have done that would
have been as far beneath her dignity as answering the doorbell
herself, or putting coal on the fire herself. Is this the sort of thing
to which the American poet Alice Duer Miller referred when she
wrote of this country that “there is much to hate here.” The
cheese was delivered by another young man in another carton
another day.
Miss X, from the Congresbury road, did not have transport, and
had frequently to walk into Wrington, where you could get most
everyday things in those days. One visitor in the 1950s said it
was the Paris of north Somerset, and, even in recent months, an
estate agent has highlighted its ‘myriad’ facilities.
As she walked quite briskly, Miss X gave the tarmac a good,
authoritative thump with her stick at each step. Occasionally,
when she heard a vehicle approaching, she would decide that a
lift was the thing. She would not, of course, ‘thumb a lift’. No, no,
that kind of behaviour was for the humble and meek.
No, what one did if one perceived oneself to be in the elite of the
greatest super-power on earth, whose young men, chosen for
their character and leadership qualities, went out to civilise and
govern and judge and teach a goodly portion of the world’s
populace - what one did if one was desirous of a lift, was to stop
pounding the tarmac, turn, take a half step into the road, and
thrust out one’s stick to STOP the driving fellow.
But by the 1950s, of course, this tactic was not working all that
well. The empire was in retreat, the navy no longer had armadas
of wonderful great ships sailing the oceans of the world with
proprietorial authority. And, although we might not become, as
General de Gaulle liked to say, “only an island”, our superpower
status, real or illusory, had passed.
On the home front there was full employment, the social security
net was beginning to unfold, the rank and file had never walked
so tall. Paternalism had evaporated, curtseying and salaaming
had melted away like snowflakes on the river. Inevitably,
economics had been evolving. Understandably, for a Victorian
lady in her senescence, this was all going to be slow to
assimilate.
She did have occasion one day in the village, to acknowledge
her common humanity with the peasantry and proletariat, when
she knocked on the door of Roger’s parents’ home, urgently
requesting use of the lavatory. On his next visit, omitting no
detail, Roger mimicked this fraught interview with irreverent
relish.
In his later years, Roger moved into a specially adapted
bungalow in Winscombe, next door to a close friend, also
physically impaired, who encouraged him to be more
independent. It was sometime after her death that he moved
into a care home. He died in 2009, at the age of 73. Since, at
birth, as he liked to remind us, he had been given only a few
days to live, that was quite a triumph.
In spite of the odds, Roger enjoyed his life. There was always
something of the boy about him, which made it all the more sad
when he passed.
12 May, 2016
