‘The water is wide,
I cannot get o’er.
And neither have I wings to fly . . .’
—English folk song
Spencer 1997
After the ’61 reunion Spencer had said he wouldn’t ever be back, but this was different. This time, it was a pilgrimage of an entirely personal kind, made on his mother’s behalf.
No one apart from Caroline – not even Hannah – could have persuaded him to change his mind. And even she had influenced him from beyond the grave. He’d half promised that he would take her back to England for a holiday, but she’d never pushed the matter and when she became ill she deteriorated with such terrifying speed that it was clear no such trip was going to take place. After she died he tried to clear his mind of the whole thing. But his seventy-seventh birthday, when he could no longer avoid thinking of himself as old, caused him to take stock, and Caroline’s wishes were right there in the debit column. He suggested to Hannah that they go together as part of a longer trip to Europe.
‘Europe we should do,’ she said. ‘Some time. But the England bit’s all yours.’
‘Not really, I’d be going there for my mother.’
‘Yours and hers then. Whatever.’
Spencer didn’t press her. She was nobody’s fool, she sensed a no-go area. She had always treated the past, and particularly the war, with a reserve that was part discretion part self-protection. He didn’t kid himself that it was only he who had secrets: he still knew almost nothing about his wife’s lost years, and the lost baby. They’d rebuilt themselves and there was nothing to be gained by digging up the foundations.
In the end he did go on his own, and it felt right.
He went to Church Norton for a day, but only to see what the locals had done with the money. Over the years he’d resisted all further attempts to get him back, responding first with many excuses and expressions of regret, and winding up more recently by dumping the invitations unread in the bin. All that was over, not just the war but the subsequent meeting with Rosemary. They had not exchanged so much as a letter since. What happened had been a good and fitting farewell.
It was a cool, playful English summer’s day with high cloud, splashes of pale sunshine, occasional handfuls of rain on the breeze. But they’d done a good job with the memorial – a P–51 propellor mounted on a handsome stone triptych bearing the badges of the various flying groups, and flanked by flagstaffs – and he was touched to see that a small memorial garden by the gate on to the road was carefully tended and bright with flowers. The litter bin was overflowing, and he picked up a Coke can that had gone astray and stuffed it back in, wiping his hand on the grass afterwards. Inside the gate was a a small plinth with a bas-relief layout of the airfield as it had been during the war, and ‘You are here’ to help sightseers orientate themselves. All around, it was much the same as his last visit, the same runways still intact, the ready rooms full of straw and sugar beet, one smart new barn, and the munitions sheds at the bottom of the hill pretty well gone back to nature, their brick skeletons all tangled with bindweed and bright with willowherb, daisies and dandelions.
He heard the rumble of an engine and saw a tractor making its way up from the direction of the new barn, where there was road-traffic access. He felt conspicuous standing there in his baseball jacket and cap, such an obvious Yank in this rustic English scene, and sure enough the tractor pulled up at the intersection. The driver killed the engine and got out, walking slowly towards him looking at the ground as the English so often did, to show that although they were coming your way they were not going to embarrass anyone by too much early eye contact.
Spencer decided to make the running.
‘Morning! I was taking a look at this fine memorial.’
‘How do you do?’ The driver, a man in his mid-forties, held out a hand and they shook. ‘Don’t mind my asking, but have you got a connection with all this?’
‘I was here in the war, yes.’
The man nodded, not one to make a big song and dance, then repeated the nod in the direction of the propellor. ‘You fly one of those?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Lovely job.’
Spencer recognised this as some kind of British idiom encompassing the memorial, the plane, himself, the war, this chance meeting, but to him it seemed more specific than that and he responded accordingly.
‘You bet it was.’
‘Are you staying round here?’
‘No, no – just passing through.’
The man looked past him at the brimming garbage bin, and sucked his teeth disapprovingly. ‘Dear, oh, dear, that doesn’t give a very good impression of the modern village, does it? I’m afraid this layby’s a bit of a snog-spot, if you know what I mean.’
‘What – like a lovers’ lane?’
‘That’s right. Not quite the ticket but can’t be helped.’
When they’d shaken hands again and the man had gone back to his tractor, Spencer realised that on the contrary he was quite pleased about the courting couples. Good luck to them. After all when the Yanks had been here there had been only two things on their mind: winning the war and getting the girls. It was appropriate that with one of those out of the way, the other should continue unabated in the shadow of the Mustang.
* * * * *
The other village, the real focus of his trip, presented particular problems. Not only did he not know it personally, but what he did know came only from Caroline’s imagination. This was the perfect English village that her friend Cissy had told her about. The place where Cissy herself had been born and raised and several generations of her family before her. Spencer had prepared himself for a let-down. Where a place had so much hope, memory, and – to put it bluntly – fantasy attached to it the reality could only disappoint.
He’d made a few notes to himself based on what he could remember, and once he’d checked in at the pub he left the car in the carpark and set out to get his bearings before lunch.
It was eerie, like taking part in a film that he’d watched and enjoyed many times. There was plenty of new development, but the core, the old part of Fort Mayden which he’d heard talked of so often, was exactly as Caroline had described it. It was easy to imagine how Cissy, a country girl working in a drab city house, might have idealised the place, and talked it up to her rapt audience of one lonely little girl. Yet here, incredibly, it all was, the landmarks showing through the veneer of modernity like a hidden pattern in a child’s puzzle book. He was enchanted to see the high street with its snaggle of uneven roofs and chimneys, the houses made of that particular bland mix of honey-grey stone that he recognised as typical of this area, the Flying Horse pub with its distinctive sign, a palfrey-like Pegasus with great feathered hooves and snorting nostrils . . . the row of terraced cottages set back from the stream, each doorway accessible by its own narrow bridge . . . the fine tower of the parish church of St Catherine, topped by a listing weathervane . . . At the church he was reminded of something and looked up towards the hill to the north of the village. To the west he could see the crown of trees that must mark the site of the big house, but to the east he could make out nothing of the tiny ‘fairy church’ that his mother had mentioned. He decided that after lunch he would walk up that way – or perhaps drive – and see what was there. A tad selfconsciously – he was never especially at home in places of organised worship – he went into St Catherine’s and found it mercifully empty. He put a pound coin in the wooden plate near the font, and took a couple of postcards from the rack, slipping them into his breast pocket. Then he slowly patrolled the side aisles, studying the plaques and engraved scrolls on the walls.
He found what he was looking for on the wall of the chancel, behind the choir stalls – a whole flock of Latimers, each one with a fulsome encomium, some in verse and many stanzas long. He scanned them carefully and found ‘Henry Felix Latimer, Captain 8th Hussars, killed in the heroic charge at the Battle of Balaklava, October 1854. A beloved son and a valiant officer of the Queen. May rest eternal be his, a good and faithful servant’. A little to one side and lower down was a simple stone tablet with the name ‘Colin John Bartlemas, Pte, 8th Huzzars, groom to the above. Died in the service of his country, in Varna, Bulgaria, June 1854’.
Checking a little sheepishly that no one was about. Spencer took a photograph of the Latimer inscription with its two warlike angels, and of the humbler one below it. Then on an impulse he stepped back and took a second photo of the whole wall. Then he went out into the churchyard.
Here again it didn’t take long to find the Latimer plot, notable among whom were the twin graves of a Maria and Percy, ‘Joined in death as in life’ just in case that might have escaped one’s attention, and presided over by more angels, with trumpets, and some portly cherubim carrying garlands to preserve their modesty. The plot was mowed and weeded, but not attended in any personal way that he could see, chiefly he supposed because the most recent grave was the large double one, and there appeared to have been no Latimer issue after that point. The Bartlemas tribe on the other hand seemed still to be going strong, and the latest to shuffle off his mortal cod was Barry Bartlemas, 1921–1995, ‘much loved and sadly missed’, who could still boast a perforated urn full of brown-edged roses.
Spencer took a photo of that, too, and went to the saloon bar of the Flying Horse for lunch. He was pleasantly surprised by the extent and range of the menu, and the presence of Budweiser in the cooler, but in a when-in-Rome spirit he ordered steak and kidney pie and a pint of IPA. The place was weekday-quiet and he fell into conversation with the guy behind the bar as he sat waiting for his food.
‘You’re a long way from home.’
‘Couldn’t be much further,’ agreed Spencer. ‘Wyoming’s where I come from.’
‘That what they call cowboy country?’
‘Sure is. The most beautiful country on earth. Have one with me?’
‘Thank you, squire, I’ll have a half.’
‘Tell me . . .’ Spencer watched the bartender fill his glass. ‘Is there still a family called Latimer around here?’
‘Latimer.’ The man gulped, wiped his upper lip, narrowed his eyes. ‘It rings a bell, but I couldn’t say. I don’t know anyone of that name.’
‘There’s a few mentioned at the church. Did they used to be up at the big house or something? Kind of squires?’
‘Could be. You’re right.’ He pointed a finger. ‘But not any more, for as long as anyone can remember. Bells is an arts centre these days – potting, painting, poetry. Packs ’em in all through the year, people who can’t cope with a holiday unless there’s a bit of self-improvement thrown in. Beats me, give me sun and sand any day, but there’s a lot of it about.’
‘Is it open? I mean, can a person go and look round?’
‘Don’t see why not. A couple of the outbuildings have been turned into private houses, but the main house is a business concern.’
‘I might just do that . . .’ Spencer decided to pursue the advantage. ‘What about people called Bartlemas? Are there any of those around?’
The landlord chuckled and shook his head. ‘I should say so. It’s like they say about rats, you’re never more than ten feet away from one in this village.’
‘Still going strong, huh?’
‘Yup. Parish Council, cricket club, boules out the back here. There’s scads of the buggers, pardon my French.’
‘Really, is that so? My mother – she was English – used to know someone called Cissy Bartlemas.’
‘Cissy, yeah, round in the sheltered housing but still going strong.’
Spencer caught his breath. ‘You’re telling me she’s still alive?’
‘Very much so.’
‘But surely – she must be a colossal age?’
‘Got the telegram from Her Majesty in April.’
‘And she still lives on her own?’
‘With a little help from her friends, and a lot from her family and Social Services. No, she does bloody well does Cissy, got all her buttons on.’
‘Do you think she’d mind if I called on her?’
The landlord gave a wry grin. ‘You like sweet sherry . . .?’
If Spencer hadn’t been told her age, he’d never have guessed it. Cissy Bartlemas was skinny and wrinkled and her snow-white hair was thinning, but her eyes were bright and her voice was firm. She wore a big old pleated skirt that seemed to begin under her armpits, and a flowery blouse. On her feet, in a concession to the fine weather, she wore short white socks and rather fearsome punched-leather sandals. The little chink of leg that he could see between skirt and sock was surprisingly smooth and comely. A cheerful girl in platform trainers and a blue uniform asked him if he’d like tea, and when he havered, Cissy said: ‘Well, I would, so put the kettle on.’
He perched on the sofa. It was unusual at his age to feel so much the junior of someone else, he couldn’t quite get the weight of the occasion, but Cissy was more than up to it.
‘So what can I do for you, Mr American?’
‘Spencer.’
‘Mr Spencer.’
‘No, it’s rather confusing, it’s Spencer McColl.’
‘Mr McColl then.’
He gave up. ‘Okay, I’ll jump right in. Cissy – my mother used to know you.’
‘And what was your mother’s name?’
‘Caroline Wells.’ He didn’t add any more clues for the moment, he wanted to see what reaction the name caused.
‘Little Carolina, yes.’
He could scarcely believe it. ‘You remember her?’
‘Carolina, of course I do.’
It all seemed too easy, but maybe this was the famed ability of the very old to recall the distant past. He leaned forward, smiling and frowning, wanting to be polite but to pin her down, too.
‘So when was it that you knew her?’
‘When I was in domestic service in Oxford before the war.’
‘That would be the First World War.’
‘The Great War,’ she agreed, as if there were only one worth mentioning.
Incredibly, she was for real. Over one hundred years old and sharp as a tack. He could feel the frown dissolving as the smile spread.
‘Tell me about it. My mother used to talk about you such a lot, your friendship meant a great deal to her.’
‘We were both lonely, you see, both lonely. There was lots of love in my home but I was a long way away from it. She was in her own home but there was no love in it at all.’
This observation made Spencer’s eyes sting. He realised that while his mother had never said as much, he had always known it.
‘How old were you then?’ he asked, no longer trying to soften the question for her benefit.
‘Quite young, let me see . . .’
At this point the care attendant had arrived with the tea tray and said: ‘Cissy, remember when your nephew was round that day and you were talking? He said you were sixteen when you went into service.’
‘Sixteen? Yes, that would be right.’
‘Good lord, you were just a child.’ Spencer was shocked.
‘I was not, I was a hard-working girl making my way.’
The care attendant smiled indulgently towards Spencer. ‘That’s telling you. Milk and sugar?’
As the tea was poured he realised that there hadn’t been such a very great difference in the ages of the two girls – his mother had been about nine or ten during that time when she’d escaped and run up the ever-narrowing stairs to the attic floor and sat gazing out across Barton Wood and the dewpond towards a happy home she didn’t even know. And now she was dead, having faded away in a nursing home while Cissy, the tough little parlourmaid, was still living under her own roof. He felt as if the whole pattern of his life had been grabbed and violently shaken, the past nudging the present and threatening to blunder right through.
The attendant put Cissy’s mug, and a plate with two chocolate biscuits, on the table next to her, and did the same for him, though he raised his hand to ward off the biscuits.
‘Well then,’ said the girl, ‘as you’ve got company, I’m going to pop and see Mr Murchy and I’ll look in on you again on my way through. Della will be over at half-past five to give you your tea, okay?’
‘Yes, you run along. This gentleman will look after me.’
Spencer must have looked alarmed, for the girl said: ‘She’s got a wicked sense of humour, haven’t you, Cissy?’ and winked at him as she left.
He watched with some trepidation as Cissy lifted the mug and stretched long, trembling lips towards it to sip. When she’d put it down and was dunking a biscuit, he remarked: ‘There are lots of your family still in this neighbourhood, I believe.’
‘Oh, there are . . .’ She took a mouthful of tea-soaked biscuit and swallowed it down. ‘In the village and in the churchyard.’
‘Yes, I had a look around the church. I see one of your ancestors was killed in the Crimea.’
‘That was my uncle. My father’s brother, Colin. He and my brother worked with the horses at Bells.’
‘So your father’s name was . . .?’
‘Ben Bartlemas.’
‘I’ve not heard of him.’
‘He was the naughty one, the bad boy. The one who ran off with Belle Latimer.’
‘Did he now? Ideas above his station, huh?’
‘Depends which way you look at it,’ said Cissy sharply, not to be patronised.
He let it pass. ‘So what happened?’
‘She got tired of him, double-quick. Tired of him, tired of everything, went off to Italy. It broke her mother’s heart and my father’s spirit. He came back to Fort Mayden with his tail between his legs, they say, married my mother – did as he was told from then on.’
‘Great story,’ said Spencer. Cissy grunted. ‘So what about the mother?’
‘Rachel Latimer. She was a widow so that left her with nothing.’ She pursed her lips disapprovingly. ‘Grew old and cold up there on her own, but I hear she was a cold fish anyway.’
‘You can hardly blame her.’
‘Did I say that?’
He took this as rhetorical. ‘And Bells is the big house on the hill?’
‘A beautiful house. Beautiful. But there are no Latimers now, you see . . . Lots of us Bartlemice, but not a single Latimer left.’
‘You’re sturdy stock, you –’ he tried it ‘—Bartlemice.’
She didn’t react to this, but said: ‘You want to go up and take a look.’
It might have been a question, a statement or a suggestion.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do. I will.’
He drove the two miles up to the main road, turned off in due course into the lane, and then down the long drive. He parked in front of the big house. The open front door revealed a reception area with a desk, noticeboards and a table covered in leaflets. He could hear the muted murmur of voices in other rooms, a soft burst of laughter. He went over to the desk and explained to the receptionist that he wasn’t a prospective customer, but would like to look round the gardens.
‘Certainly you may,’ she replied heartily. ‘Would you care to see the house? We have a group here this weekend but they’re all in workshops at the moment.’
‘No – no, thank you. I’d just been told it was pretty up here and I have a distant family connection, so—’
‘You’re not some long-lost transatlantic Latimer, surely?’
‘No, far more tenuous than that. A long story.’
‘Please.’ She waved a large, commanding hand. ‘Feel free. The barn and the stables are private houses, but they’re a very tolerant lot.’
‘Thank you.’ He turned to go and then remembered something. ‘Say, would you happen to know – is there some kind of little church up around this way?’
‘There was. It’s tumbledown now, but well worth a visit. A numinous place.’
‘Numinous . . . is that right?’
‘I should warm you there’s no road access and it’s quite a climb. But if you leave Bells by the stableyard gate—’ she gestured firmly with her right arm ‘—you’ll see the bridleway sign and you just keep following it. The view is quite wonderful.’
‘Thanks, I might give it a try.’
He walked a slow circuit of the grounds, not wanting to overstretch himself if he was going to attempt the hill-climb afterwards. He crossed the wide lawn, where a badminton-net and some croquet hoops had been erected, and entered the woods. In amongst the trees he fetched his foot a painful crack on a random lump of stone sticking out of the ground. It was so unexpected that he parted the long grass for a closer look, thinking it might be the last vestige of some tied cottage or other, but it turned out to be a single rock like a milestone, covered in moss and lichen.
He hit a footpath and turned left. When he came out on the brow of the hill he found he was looking right over the valley and the village to the White Horse on the other side. It was a fine sight, with the cloud shadow rippling over it, and he paused to catch his breath and drink it in. Then he set off along the crest, returning to the house through a small gate at the side and going round the back through a more formal garden with gravel walks. At the far side of the house was a parking area, bounded by the house itself, a post-and-rail fence and the blind back wall of a barn. He rounded the side of the barn and came to a five-bar gate at the intersection of the driveway with a sign reading FOOTPATH TO OLD CHURCH HILL. At the side of the gate was a stile, and remembering the words of the woman on reception he climbed over.
The development of the outbuildings was nicely done, with the old pump and mounting block left in place, and two horse troughs filled with trailing geraniums. The barn seemed closed and quiet, but the door of the stable-house stood open and a large chocolate-coloured labrador trotted out and wagged round him, followed by a small girl of about four.
Spencer liked kids about the same as he liked adults – some more than others.
‘Hallo there,’ he said. ‘Okay if I cross your front yard?’
‘It’s allowed,’ she replied, and was joined by a nice, bluff-looking heavily pregnant woman whom he took to be her mother.
‘Morning!’ he said to the mother. ‘Is that right, I’m allowed to come through here?’
‘Absolutely. You’ll see the footpath signs on the other side.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It’s lovely up there, quite magical.’
‘So I hear.’
‘Good luck!’
He thought for a moment that the dog was going to follow him as Tallulah used to do at Buck’s, but when he reached the stile on the other side it returned to the sunny doorway.
The receptionist had been right, it was a long climb, and a tough one for a man of his age, but he took it in easy stages, pausing every hundred yards or so but trying not to look back, saving the view till he reached the top.
The church was a ruin, its squat outline and scattering of graves like a partridge with her chicks amongst the long grass and high-summer wild flowers. Up here there was a wind, its long breaths combing the hill, shivering through the arches and between the standing stones. Spencer sat down and leaned his back against one of the tilting graves, its surface warmed by the afternoon sun. Seen from this angle the village was a tiny huddle of ancient roofs and the White Horse leapt away from him. He recalled a hymn they used to sing during the war. He hadn’t thought of it once till now, didn’t even realise it had lodged in his memory. Before the hills in order stood, or earth received her frame . . . It seemed to him that these small English hills, and the valley between them, represented that order, created by divine will or the budding of the earth’s crust, and now bearing the hallmarks of man’s endeavours, old and new. Tomorrow, with the long tedium of the transatlantic flight ahead, he’d walk up the other side to see the horse close to.
He dozed for a little while and was woken by a drop in temperature. The sky had clouded over and the wind had become cool and blustery. It was hell getting to his feet, he was glad there was no one about to see him. He got on to his knees and used the grave stone to haul himself upright, noticing as he did so that it was another Latimer, ‘Hugo, beloved husband of Rachel, 1830– 1854’ – another Victorian life cut cruelly short by something or other. Poor Rachel. All the same Spencer found himself thinking of the funeral cortege winding its way up the hill – how in hell had they done it? She must have loved him.
He began to retrace his steps, descending slowly, chary of his knees. At the first bend, taking a breather, he glanced back and saw to his surprise the silhouette of a woman in the churchyard, a youthful, hippyish figure with long strands of hair and a billowing skirt whipped by the wind. He hoped to God she hadn’t witnessed his undignified struggle a few minutes ago.
He continued on his way and when he next looked back, she was gone.