Dateless ARTICLES: Book Two - Melcaster Monologues

By Michael Powell

Still in a fictional region of Yorkshire we follow our young Grimfordians as they establish themselves in the cathedral
city of Melcaster, having finally left for good the industrial landscape that was once their home. Many are
facing new horizons, providing the reader with an additional set of anecdotal stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Powell
• Release date: Apr 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311134974

Michael Powell

MICHAEL POWELL was born in Yorkshire in 1939. After a short career as a classical counter-tenor recitalist he spent thirty years as a university arts administrator. Married, with three children and grandchildren, he and his wife live in retirement in rural Cheshire,

Book preview

Prologue

We continue our selection of short tales woven around two Yorkshire cities, each located somewhere between the 'Licorice fields' and the `Rhubarb triangle'. Reader, before you reach for a road atlas, you will be hard pressed to find Grimford or Melcaster on any map, plan or website. As with the legendary 'Brigadoon', many have tried to locate the area and even Barney Pickersgill, a dedicated rambler and retired Ordinance Survey cartographer, failed in his mission. After approaching the perceived Barkston Abbas area on foot, Barney turned left at Bolton Abbey. Although he followed the River Wharfe for fifteen miles, regrettably, he was quite unable to locate the mythical Melcaster. Foot-sore and weary, he caught the bus back to Arnoldswick; it had been a long and tiring day.

To the Reader

Our earlier volume followed the individual reports of a group of young Grimfordians detailing their humble beginnings in the city's suburb of Exelby Hill. Now, in our sequel, the most ambitious amongst them have left behind their formative backgrounds and, fired by their innate Yorkshire grit, talent and determination, they have ultimately been transported to the culturally stimulating environs of medieval Melcaster where our narrative continues.

Melcaster is a very old city of Roman and Viking origin. Its quaint tree-lined streets are a pleasing mixture of brick and timber framed houses. Capped with sloping red pantile roofs the buildings look clean and well maintained, not smoke stained and ugly like their Grimford counterparts. In the centre of the bijou city, there sits a large central square with quaint half-timbered shops on all four sides. Here, at six o'clock each evening, outside the town hall’s classical edifice, the costumed 'Wakeman' or town crier blows his horn. Now merely a tourist attraction, it remains an old custom signifying a curfew in former days. Ascending a steep cobbled hill leading off the main square, a series of long narrow ancient streets fan out as they lead up to the medieval cathedral. Dedicated to St Columba it was formally a Cistercian abbey of Norman foundation.

Choral Un-Evensong

Exelby Hill church choir member, alto Basil Worsnop, had done rather well in managing to get himself a place in the prestigious Melcaster Cathedral choir where he had just passed a rigorous audition. Moving from the unprepossessing mill town of Grimford to the attractively medieval Melcaster was for him a sea-change. Basil was thrilled with his new appointment grabbing the opportunity with both hands even though the stipend for the 'Singing-men’ at St Columbas was poor. In order to supplement his meagre income Baz came across a part-time position at the Melcaster premises of ‘Music and Melody’, purveyors of sheet music, records and instruments. This particular December day in question it was two weeks before Christmas and he was busy serving a lady customer in the shop. She wanted a copy of the latest hit ‘Stranger on the Shore’ recorded by Acker Bilk and as he got down a brown box of sheet music from a nearby shelf he noticed that the shop owner, Miss Barclay, had written ‘Strangler (sic) on the Shore’ neatly upon it in large black letters. He contemplated for a moment picturing in his mind’s eye the seaside murder scene conjured up by her spelling error and consequently had to smile to himself. Struggling to complete the transaction he quickly looked at his watch hoping to get away as soon as possible. It was now 3.45pm and getting dark outside. Basil could hear the steady mechanical peal of bells at the nearby cathedral heralding the four o’clock start of choral evensong. It was a tuneless repetitive sound, each bell pulled manually everyday by Clifton Greenwood, the tower sexton.

He was a small, bent, ugly looking man with more than a passing resemblance to Charles Laughton’s ‘Quasimodo’ or a look-a-like for Laurence Olivier in Shakespeare’s Richard III - ‘scarce half made up.’ Clifton came from old English stock, one of three Greenwood families who had worked for the Dean and Chapter for generations and quite possibly since the cathedral’s consecration in the thirteenth century; he certainly had a medieval aura about him.

Basil needed to move fast. Eventually concluding the sale he grabbed his jacket and breaking into a run headed down the ancient street dodging the random groups of browsing tourists and day-trippers who, owing to the inclement weather, had decided to terminate their trip to the coast at Melcaster. Fearing he might be late he rushed towards the towering cathedral into the close. Once across a zebra crossing he entered the now familiar south door turning left up the central tower’s spiral staircase, located just inside, and taking the steps two at a time he entered the first floor choir vestry.

Fortunately Baz had already been into blind tenor George Farmer’s room where he'd agreed to assist by indicating with a Braille tag which cassock he should wear that day. Today it was a ‘plain day’ and consequently the choir were expected to be in blue robes rather that red, the latter being reserved especially for Saint’s days. There was activity in the stone-walled choir vestry. Down one