A broken down car, a cold winter's night and a long walk home.
They say that the temperature in the North of England can be six degrees lower than in the South. I can attest to that, at least from the North’s point of view. Razor sharp gusts of rain-laden wind had found their way through every stitch and seam all because of an ancient a resolutely broken down Ford Popular. Popular? A misnomer if ever I heard of one. At the point of my greatest discomfort, it sat at the side of the kerb where it had rested for the last nine hours while I taught class one and then attended and led the rehearsal for the class’s Christmas play and occupied myself for another hour trying to get the “Pop” to start. What could go wrong with the simplest of engines? Eleven hundred and ninety-seven cc, flat four cylinder simplicity?
The school was on a corner, go left and walk towards lights and telephones, all aglow in the distance, go right and face the three miles of complete darkness of rain and wind towards Sunny Bower another misnomer, especially on a night like this. Guess in which direction my home lay.
A sudden flash of inspired memory and I remembered I had a heavy coat folded in what passed for a boot, (trunk if you live on the other side of the Atlantic). The coat dusty and oily was intended to stop the box of tools rattling as the inadequate suspension passed over the smallest of lumps or potholes.
The coat had been, in a dim and distant past, an Army great coat, khaki, heavy and with a collar that turned up almost to cover my half-frozen ears. After pulling my hat down as far as I could, I was ready to face the bleakness of my dark, wet walk home.
Strangely, the worst part of the walk was past the school playing fields where open iron railing provided no shelter from the frequent freezing wet gusts the swept across the two football fields. Soon my trouser legs were plastered against my lower legs and the greatcoat was fast gaining weight, but that at least was serving to keep a little warmth inside. In the dark, I could not see the young trees that had been planted a few years earlier and were too young to provide any form of break and any form of light was provided only by the frequent flashes of sheet lightning.
The walk past the open space of the sports field was a soul-sapping ordeal but at least, by the drumming of the rain on metal I judged that I was passing the Nissen hut, a half cylinder of corrugated metal designed forty years before as barrack rooms for WW1 soldiers, now a school changing room in the far corner of the sports field. I knew then that there was a hundred yards of allotments gardens and then the solid wind break of the cemetery wall.
Relieved, I plodded on, whether it was the approaching wind break, imagination or sheer acclimatisation, I felt the weather ease, the gloom remained, adding the danger of falling over some obstruction.
The long headlight of a car coming towards me helped temporarily as it crested the rise from the two miles long stretch from Sunny Bower. The car rounded the very slight left hand bend, the lights surprised me by picking out the silhouette of another victim of the weather making slightly slower progress up the rise of the pavement. The wind carried a cheerful whistled tune to my ears from him, which made me marvel at the lone walker’s indomitability; I could barely conserve the breath for normal breathing and, in that icy air my mouth would not hear my command to prepare for whistling so noisy was the chattering of my teeth.
Human nature is strange in some ways, as I began to overtake my fellow traveller, the conflict of whether to fall back to avoid startling him, or to continue the approach and bid him a cheerful good evening. I decided on the latter and in my most confident voice bade him a good evening. In the flash of sheet lightning he was almost completely blanched face and body melded a uniform grey. Nonetheless he turned a cheerful face to me a responded to my greeting. I fell into step at his side. His voice carried the polish of education,
“What brings a young chap” out on such a dark evening?
“Purely circumstance,” I answered, reluctant to mention the abandoned car.
“Not such a good idea to be abroad, in this” I added glancing at the weather.
“No,” he said, “But, these days, I hardly notice one change from another.”
“I know what you mean” I said, “for want of something to say to this remarkably seasoned fellow.
“I try,” he said, “Now that we have a new and ever so young Queen on the throne, I try to keep up, I trust old Billy was right and she has a long and happy reign, she has done so well at least over the past year.”
“Taken aback by this, I thought, “Yes, it’s been a good sixteen months since the Coronation”, but said nothing.
The other seemed content to recommence his cheerful whistling tune, and at last we reached the windbreak that was the cemetery wall, everything, wind rain, the very air seemed to pause for breath in that sudden relaxation of the elements.
Human nature demands that we communicate, psychologists say they get more from their clients by silence than by asking questions, yet I felt constrained to break the conversational hiatus.
“Isn’t it strange,” I said, my voice hushed in the sudden quiet,” “We move into a shelter from the weather and the whole world seems to change.”
“Does it, by Jove?” he said, “I hadn’t noticed, I must confess.”
“Yes,” now feeling more compelled to speak, “Did you not really notice as we came to the wall, how everything quietened so eerily.”
“Eerily?” he questioned.
“Yes”, warming to the desire to express feelings, “”It became so quiet, almost as if a machine had stopped, it was, a good choice of words, eerily, reminiscent of a place of spirits.”
“Machine? Spirits?”
Another sheet of lightning, much further away showed his friendly smile in that grey face.
“Well,” said I, we are in the right place, just by a cemetery wall just the place for ghostly occurrences”, smiling as I said it.
“He laughed, beginning with a slow chuckle and developing in timbre to an out and out laugh. Bringing an overwhelming sense of embarrassment to redden my face.
He laughed heartily, and was still laughing as he waved a hand, turned and disappeared through that grey solid wall. Shocked I stood listening as the laughter changed to that cheerful little tune I had first heard.
Suddenly possibly to fill the shocked space, the names ‘Victoria’ and ‘Elizabeth’ entered my mind.
