The turnpike: a discarded scene from my historical novel

 When it was time for me to leave, Sir Anthony suggested that I travel home by the new turnpike road, and detailed a servant to guide me on my way. Alfred Redman was the youth’s name, and it suited him well, for his hair was indeed of a fiery shade. He rode a pony alongside my horse. We fell into conversation, which quickly showed that he was worldly-wise, never at a loss for words and entirely fearless in his manner. He would never have suited a master who expected silence and deference from servants, but as it was, his chaffing passed the time pleasantly.

  Before long he was able to tell me that we were approaching the start of the new turnpike. But before the tollbooth came into view, there came on the breeze a smell of burning and the noise of shouting and huzzah-ing from many throats. Alf quickly pulled my horse and his pony under the shadow of some trees as a man, covered in dirt and bleeding from a head wound, came running for his life down the road. He dived into the bushes and disappeared from sight, and not a moment too soon, for his pursuers now appeared round the corner. Instead of searching for him, they saw us, and advanced in our direction.   “What’s your name, and what are you doing here?” one of them asked.

      They were the most extraordinary bunch. Though they were obviously men, they were all dressed as women, apart from the boots protruding beneath the long skirts, and many had their faces blackened. They were armed with sticks, though two carried axes and one a blunderbuss of antiquated pattern, and were clearly in no mood to be trifled with. They could see from my clothing and my horse that I was a gentleman and they regarded me with considerable suspicion.

  I was wondering whether to answer them quietly and politely, giving them my name and explaining that I was a stranger in the district and desirous only of returning to my home near Brereton, or whether I should defy them, stress my status as a Member of Parliament and threaten them with the law. I could explain that I was in favour of turnpikes, and had voted for more than one Turnpike Bill during my brief time in the House. The roads north and west from Brereton, towards the Dee and the Mersey, were notoriously bad, and in winter impassable to wheeled vehicles of any kind, and I could argue that trade and commerce could never flourish until this was remedied. However, these men in women’s dress did not look susceptible to reasoned argument of this kind, and some of them fingered their weapons in a threatening manner.

  While I hesitated, young Alf took control of the situation.

   “Let me handle this, sir!” he whispered, and proceeded to embark on a most ridiculous farrago of lies and nonsense, explaining that I was the unfortunate brother of a tenant farmer, who chose to dress like a gentleman (he implied that I might be somewhat feeble-minded), but was quite harmless and hated all turnpikes and enclosures, and that his master had ordered him to show me the way home, fearing that I might get lost, and that if they asked politely I would not fail to pay them. He then whispered to me, “Just keep smiling, sir, and pay them the toll”.

   They held a brief consultation before the one with the blunderbuss, who appeared to be their leader, and a man of some intelligence and education, addressed me with the accompaniment of much ludicrous bowing and deference, which caused laughter from his followers “Then sir, my lord, you may proceed, for we have no quarrel with you. But first, let us show to you our determination to achieve justice for our cause!”

   Round the corner we came to the entry to the turnpike. The gate had been chopped to pieces and was now burning on a bonfire, and beside it the newly-built toll-keeper’s cottage had had all its windows smashed. A painted board, which carried the sums to be paid for using the turnpike, was also burning. I guessed that the man I had seen fleeing away had been the toll-keeper, who could have counted himself fortunate to have escaped with his life.

   “Now you have seen what we have done”, the spokesman told me, speaking in the manner of an inferior actor. “Know that we are Mother Goose’s Maidens, and that we fight for rights and justice for all Englishmen against tyranny. For how can it be just that that we should be charged tolls to travel upon this road, which our forefathers used for uncounted ages? So we have destroyed the tollgate, and the road is again free for all to use. And now, sir, my lord, you may go and tell the world what you have seen: but before you go, you might wish that we should drink your honour’s health?”

   Keeping my face fixed in a grin of idiocy, I gave him a few shillings. They then gave me a cheer, and I was allowed to pass on my way. I reflected that it was fortunate that my name had not been revealed.

   After we had left the turnpike, Redman left me to return to Sir Anthony’s house. But in parting, he informed me that, should I ever be in need of a servant who, he assured me, could turn his hand to any task with the utmost efficiency, then he, should he happen to be freed from the household of Sir Anthony Pardington, would be happy to place himself at my service.

   The rest of my journey home continued without incident. I would continue to support the building of more turnpikes, but reflected that I had not fully considered their effect on the local people.

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My novel, entitled "The shadow of the past, by Peter G. Shilston", is available on Amazon Kindle

Stories: The other bag

 Harry stepped off the train onto the busy platform. He was wearing a blue waterproof, although it was a cloudless day, and he carried a green sports bag. He asked where he could find someone at the station who dealt with general security and similar matters. He was shown into the inspector’s office.

   “I’ve got a problem”, he announced, “Or rather, two problems. Firstly, I’m afraid I got on the wrong train, so I don’t have the right ticket. I should have left the train earlier, but it was very crowded and I was tired, and I’m not familiar with this route. So I’d be most grateful if you could help me get a ticket to return back home so I can start again.”

   He produced the ticket. The inspector looked at it and reassured Harry that this would not cause any difficulty.

  “But the other’s rather more complicated”. Hary continued, “You see, this isn’t my bag, and I don’t know what to do with it. My bag looks just the same, it's the same make, but it doesn’t have this little padlock on the zip. Also, mine wasn’t as heavy. I left my bag on the rack at the end of the carriage, and I picked this one up when we reached the station, thinking it was mine. I don’t know what had happened: I didn’t see any bag like mine. Perhaps someone else took my bag by mistake at an earlier stop, and left their own: I don’t know. But what should I do now?”

    He  asked if his bag had contained anything valuable.

  “Oh, just clothes and shoes and a few bits and pieces: nothing of any importance. But it’s the annoyance, and it makes me feel such a fool, picking up the wrong bag. I’m sorry to be a nuisance. Can you help?”

  The inspector suggested Harry should provide his name and address, so he could be contacted if his own bag was handed in somewhere.  Harry told him, as he had been instructed, “I’m James Harklid; that’s H-a-r-k-l-i-d, and I live at 14, Merrial Street, Reading…” he found he had forgotten the postcode he was supposed to have memorised, but he remembered that Reading began with RG-something, so he made the rest up and added an improvised mobile phone number and email address. He was much relieved when the inspector noted them down without question.

   Harry then asked, “Look, do you mind if I nip off to the loo? I’ll be back in a minute!” He was directed to a public toilet further along the platform.

   Once in the cubicle, Harry pulled from his pocket a tightly rolled bag, into which he stowed his waterproof, then he produced a black baseball cap which he placed on his head. Confident that he would not be recognised, he left the station by handing in a legitimate train ticket to that town, and without much difficulty identified the car that was ready to take him away. He gave it a wide berth and walked on.

  He was greatly relieved to have made his escape, and although it was no longer any concern of his, he mused vaguely on what might be found in the bag he had contrived to leave. Certainly it was heavy, and felt like it held a number of different large objects. Would it eventually be claimed, and by whom? Or would it remain for weeks, perhaps months, before people decided to open it? And then they might get the surprise of their lives ….. those who survived.  

 

…………………………………………………

 

Alternative ending

 

   Harry took his seat in the getaway car and explained his actions.

   “I sensed right from the start that the operation had somehow been compromised. That’s why I bought the two different tickets – and of course I was careful to buy them on different days, and paid with cash, not a card. I was certain I was being watched on the train, and I recognised two men at the barrier, waiting to intercept me. But after I changed clothes, they didn’t spot me when I left; and anyway I didn’t have the bag. Oh, and I think the inspector might perhaps be one of ours; you’d better check with higher up. Anyway, I’ve got the goods this far, so it’s up to you and higher up what to do now.”

   He felt greatly relieved, and silently swore never again not to be involved in such a perilous transaction. It never occurred to him that his companions might view his actions in a more critical light.

    

Musings: English and American heroes

  George Orwell once said that the traditional British hero was Jack the giant-killer: the little man fighting against heavy odds. This reflects the fact that for most of our history we were a small country facing a much bigger one: until well into the 19th century the population of France was several times that of Britain, and the French army massively greater. In the first half of the 20th century, the immensely powerful enemy was Germany, to be succeeded after 1945 by the Soviet Union.  By contrast, the traditional American hero is Superman, who crushes all opponents with little effort, and this reflects the position of the United States as a superpower. There is, however, an interesting contrast in James Bond: in the novels, he is invariably on his own, and triumphs over a powerful foe solely by his own courage and endurance, whereas in the films he is supported by ingenious technology. There is also an unpleasant sado-masochistic element in the books, Bond being savagely beaten-up or tortured in every one; and this is (perhaps understandably) absent in the films, where Bond always appears to take his troubles extremely lightly. We can in general postulate that in the British tradition the hero triumphs over a bully, whereas in America the bully is himself the triumphant hero; and James Bond transitions from being a typical British hero to something more ambiguous.   

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Musings: The hand of God

 

Donald Trump's followers, and even Trump himself, have been quick to detect the hand of God in his narrow escape from assassination during the election campaign: divine intervention to ensure his survial in order to carry out God's will for America.  This set me thinking about other narrow escapes, and deaths deaths, among our political leaders, and, if we accept that the hand of God was present, how it was manifested in these.

   Winston Churchill, unlike Donald Trump, came under fire on many occasions as a young man, and describes his narrow escapes from death in his autobiography, "My early life". Once he had risen to mythic status after 1940, Churchill's supporters might attribute his survival to divine intervention, but Churchill himself never attributed his survival to any recognisable Christian God. Churchill in any case could hardly be described as a believing Christian. Similarly, Ronald Reagan survived as assassin's bullet early in his presidency, but did not link his good fortune to the hand of the Christian God.

  Obviously, we may, if we wish, detect God's hand, rather than luck, in these episodes, but when we examine other survivals, then the working of divine intervention become more than a little puzzling. If God does intervene to save the lives of famous leaders, then why did He enable Lenin to susrvive in 1918, when the Bolshevik leader was shot and seriously wounded? Why did He allow Hitler to survive many attempts on his life? On the other hand, God singularly failed to intervene to protect Abraham Lincoln and the Kennedy brothers. Presumably God wanted them to die, but why? God also did not interpose His hand to save the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which presumably means He wanted the First World War to take place. Neither did He save Tsar Alexander II of Russia from the terrorist bomb that killed him in 1881, thereby, as was said at the time, "replacing an intelligent and reforming Tsar with a stupid and reactionary one." If Alexander II had lived, there might never have been a Russian revolution!  What was in God's mind?

  Thomas Hobbes, in the 17th century, argued as follows: Let us suppose an innocent child is dying. If God is unable to intervene to save the child, then He is not omnipotent: if he is able to save the child, but does not do so, then He is perverse. In our time, the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, whose wife was dying of cancer, was moved to ask whether there was any reason to believe that God was, in any sense that we could understand the term, "good": didn't all the evidence suggest otherwise?  Neither of these arguments is easy to answer. 

  Seen in this light, God's intentions in intervening to spare some people but neglecting to do so in other cases is difficult to explain. As the hymn puts it, "God moves in a mysterious way". Or are there, perhaps, other forces involved? One idea, which had its roots in ancient Persian mythology, is known as Manichaeism, after its prophet, Mani. This postulates that the world is the scene of a titanic struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness; or, if you like, God and Satan. Although God's ultimate triumph is certain, Satan is enormously powerful, and we need always to be on our guard against his influence. This has never been an official Christian doctrine, but elements of Manichaeism have crept into Christianity, and also into Islam. When some good people die, with disastrous historical consequences, should we see some hand other than God's at work?

  So, if some people are spared assassination when others, who are at least as worthy, are not, is something more than blind chance or luck involved?  And if so, what? 

 

Cricket: My ideal women's team

This is my ideal women's cricket team, chosen from those currently playing. It is purely a list of those I most enjoy watching, regardless of statistics.

Laura Wolvaardt (capt.)

Danni Wyatt-Hodge

Phoebe Litchfield

Jemimah Rodrigues

Deepti Sharma

Annabel Sutherland

Amanjot Kaur

Sophie Ecclestone

Alana King

Rhianna Southby (wk)

Lauren Bell

I think this team could do well in any format: the batting especially looks very strong. Southby has yet to play international cricket, but I'm sure she'd be able to cope.

   It can be seen that (as in other sports too) I prefer those who are supremely talented and often brilliant, but also vulnerable and liable to make mistakes, rather than those who are constantly and reliably successful; so that I'm perpetually on the edge of my seat when watching them. The same has always applied to all my sporting heroes and heroines: Colin Cowdrey and Moeen Ali, Olga Korbut and Anna Pavlova, Emma Pooley, and many others. 

(Postscript: I'm pleased to see that most of my selection have done well in the "Hundred" tournament, and are now featuring in the ODI World Cup!)

England: A mysterious piece of stained glass

This strange little creature, in a piece of stained glass only a few inches square, can be seen in the southern entry to the church of St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury. The wording appears to link it to the astrological sign of Cancer, the crab, but the animal looks more like a louse than a crab.What is its significance? Nobody knows!

 

Doctors differ: a scene from my historical novel

 (The year is 1763, and Sir James Wilbrahim has suddenly fallen ill. The full text of the novel can be read at pgvshil.blogspot.com )

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Wishing to learn more, I next proceeded into Bereton to search out Doctor Stump. I had never consulted him myself, having had so far the great good fortune to suffer neither illness nor injury while living at the Priory, but I knew him by sight: a man of strange appearance that scarcely inspired confidence, for he was short and crouching in posture, his eyes were never still and his face bore a dark pustule above his right eyebrow. He had but two teeth in his mouth, and they were very yellow and very long, giving him a carnivorous appearance when he spoke. He smelt constantly of snuff, which stained his coat. 

  He worked, I discovered, from a small, dingy shop in a side street, situated, perhaps appropriately, next to a butcher. A sign proudly announced him as Theodore Stump: physician and apothecary. The window displayed bottles of coloured liquids, but their faded labels could barely be read through the dirty glass.

   An ancient female conducted me through to a back parlour, where I found Doctor Stump in conversation with another man who was the exact opposite in appearance, being tall and cadaverous, with a motionless face that was as white as chalk. He was dressed entirely in black, like a cleric. Had he been lying prostrate, I could have taken him for a corpse.

   Doctor Stump welcomed me to his home and hastened to introduce me to the other man, who it transpired was a most eminent physician from Mulchester, by name Doctor Lawton. Stump was unusually effusive in his manner, as if boastfully proud that a Member of Parliament should be paying him a visit.

  I explained that I was concerned about Sir James Wilbrahim’s state of health, and wished to know what could be done to cure him.

   “And you were quite right to come, sir,” said the visiting doctor, speaking in a voice so soft that I could barely hear him, “for we were indeed discussing his case as you entered. I shall allow my esteemed colleague here to state his opinion first.”

   Doctor Stump, evidently eager to impress both me and his visitor, now embarked on a lengthy discourse on the four humours. He attributed Sir James’s collapse to an excess of Black Bile in his blood, leading to an imbalance which needed to be remedied by bleeding; and should the symptoms persist, the treatment should be repeated until the correct balance had been restored. If he, the doctor, was unable to be present, then a number of leeches might suffice. In that eventuality, he said, a treatment favoured by some authorities was to counter the Black Bile with a Red Cure, which could include replacing the green bed-hangings with scarlet ones and feeding the patient only red food and drink. He also recommended a certain elixir that he could supply, involving snails and millipedes plus other secret ingredients, bruised to a paste and mixed with claret wine, which was certain to produce what he described as “a plentiful evacuation”.

   Doctor Lawson shook his skull-like head firmly, with a frown on his face. “Your diagnosis is incorrect,” he pronounced in condemnation, his voice now rising to take on a harsh tone. “Even if your patient’s affliction had indeed resulted from an imbalance of the humours, then in my opinion he suffered from an excess of Red Choler, in which case your Red Cure would only make his affliction worse. And your elixir too contains red wine! Make it Moselle, sir: Moselle! Otherwise you will infallibly kill your unfortunate patient! No, sir: the unhappy gentleman has plainly suffered an attack of the flying gout.”

   When I asked him for the meaning of this strange term, he explained, in a most superior and patronising tone, that whereas the proper focus of gout was, of course, the feet, but in the case of Sir James the affliction appeared to have suddenly transferred to his brain; and for this he proposed a treatment of the application of hot mustard-plasters to the feet, in order to attract the gout back to its proper home.

  The expression on Doctor Stump’s face suggested that he strongly disagreed, but did not dare contradict his more eminent colleague. I said that for my part I agreed with Doctor Stump’s treatment, for good quantities of claret would at least put Sir James in good heart, whereas I believed that he did not like Moselle wine. I then asked whether, in furtherance of the Red Cure the room should perhaps be lined with red roses and poppies, gathered when Mars, the red planet, was in the ascendant?

   I had intended this comment to be light-hearted, but the learned Doctor Lawton took it with the utmost seriousness. He shook his head impatiently, dismissed the use of flowers as a mere superstition of the uneducated, and informed me, in the lofty tone of a schoolmaster addressing a recalcitrant pupil, that I, as a mere layman, was lamentably ignorant of the astrological sciences. His investigations, he said, had revealed that Sir James was under the influence of Saturn, and could not expect a full recovery until that planet appeared in the constellation of Virgo.

   “Mars has nothing to do with the matter, sir! Nothing at all!” He pronounced with contempt. His voice was like iron scraped over gravel. I felt I had nothing more to contribute to the discussion, and so we parted.  I was still without any ideas as to how I could help the good people of Stanegate, for it appeared unlikely that I would be admitted to the house.