Nights of Old

By James Court

Short stories set in rural England in the late 1700s and early 1800s

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Court
• Release date: Jun 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386533368

James Court

James was brought up in Hove, Sussex, on the slopes of the South Downs, but with some of his childhood time spent in rural Huntingdonshire. From an early age he wrote fiction, including co-writing a well received comic pantomime for the local YMCA in his teens. James is best known for his humorous novels. Especially his series of four volumes describing life in Peckham, South London, in the 1960s. The Peckham Novels are set in a factory, staffed by idiots and run by an incompetent boss, until the beautiful Tracey Mulligan takes a hand in its management. They are quirky, comedic and highly improbable. One reviewer described them as ‘The Carry On’ team meet Tom Sharpe’. Book 1 - Strudwick's Successor Book 2 - Mulligan's Revenge Book 3 - Paint the Town Red Book 4 - Farewell to Peckham Also set in the late sixties is The Parsonage Plots, another comedic novel set around a number of idiosyncratic allotment plot holders. Set in Bournemouth in the 1960s, Percy’s Predicament tells the tale of lost love, and crime in the world of accountancy. But not everybody is what they claim to be, and bets on the colour of hippy’s nail varnish are an established office pastime. Moving back in time to 1955, Publican’s Progress is a Wodehouse style humorous murder mystery set in rural Dorset. The main character is a young man who has always wanted to run a pub. But, like the wishes granted by fairies to greedy children, when he does get offered a tenancy he quickly finds that having your wish come true does not always end happily, and life can get very complicated. Then the body count starts to rise... James’s humorous rural romantic two part novel, The Whitedown Chronicles, which is set in post-war Kent, describes an isolated community as it struggles to put tragedy behind it. James is a member of a group of writers who collectively form the INCA Project. The project is a set of like-minded authors who aspire to meet a simple criterion as set down by the late Oscar Wilde, who said, and I paraphrase here, "There are no such things as bad books. They are well written or badly written, that is all."

Book preview

The Long Night

August 1752

Thomas Bradshaw nursed his almost empty tankard in both hands as he  shook his head. Harry Peters tried again to explain why in the current year the month of September would have only nineteen days. But Thomas could not see why, even if that was the case, that the fourteenth day of the month should be the day after the second.

But fourteen can’t follow two, Thomas protested vociferously. It has to be three. Besides I work at the ditching for the first week each month, and hedging for the rest. If there be only nineteen days in September then I shan’t get those willows coppiced to make hedging truncheons, and I’ll have nothing to repair Brambly Leas with, nor time to do the work. There will be cows getting out all over the place, and you will still be cutting corn in October when the weather turns. Crop will be ruined!

No, no, Tom, soothed Harry wearily for the third time. The weather won’t change its habits, t’will be the same as before, just the day names come early. T’would be like you calling your youngest George instead of William. He would still be the same boy.

Thomas thought on this for a while, then another thought struck him.

My eldest boy will still miss a birthday this year. How do I explain to a five year old that he is a year older, but not had a birthday. He’ll think I’m trying to save the penny.

Thomas shook his head, stared at his tankard, and then round at the other men in the smoky little parlour.  None of the labourers sitting at the bench with him offered to refill the vessel, for they were all of similar mind, and similar empty purse, to Tom.

The debate over the government’s new law, called The Calendar Act, had raged for months: long before the old year stopped three months short at the end of December, instead of in late March, and all sorts of strange notions had formed themselves in the minds of the drinking men of Long Penfield.

Nobody in the alehouse could offer a satisfactory explanation why the government had seen fit to mess about with time, and the one thing that the men all agreed on was that there would be trouble when man interfered in God’s nature. Now it seemed that by fiddling the calendar it was likely that there would be no snow until after Christmas, and how could that possibly go unpunished by the Almighty?

But it was not only the wrath of God that frightened the men. It was the scorn of their wives when they counted their housekeeping money. Most would be paying the rent due on their cottages next Michaelmas Day, and the parish or landlord would expect a full quarter year’s payment. Yet, as day labourers, they would be eleven days short of wages. There was a suspicion that the change was a device created by the government to cheat them, and a device that might be used again since they were powerless to stop it.

Thomas theatrically drained the last drips from his tankard, and hung it up on one of the row of pegs over the alewife’s chimney breast. The woman shook her head sadly, as she watched yet another customer fail to buy his usual number of drinks. The weather was dry, and harvest work was both hot and dusty as they gathered in a bumper crop. Even the cut branch that she put out on a pole to advertise a fresh brew had wilted in the heat within a few days.

Encouraged by the hot weather, she had brewed a full hogshead of ale, which would have normally lasted her thirty or so regular customers a week in such conditions, yet on the sixth day she had sold less than half of their usual consumption. Her little front parlour and garden were both full with men, all too busy debating the calendar and bemoaning their financial state to sup liberally. In any other circumstances she might have put out dishes of salted hazels to encourage their thirst, but she knew it would be of little use since most had few coins in their pockets to spend.

Thomas took his leave and headed for home. The children would all be asleep, and his dinner ready by the time he stooped to undo his boots, and step onto the rushes that softened the hard rammed earth floor of his dwelling.

As he entered the cottage he could smell fresh bread, for his wife and eldest two girls had been gleaning in the cornfields all the past week. Their quick nimble fingers seeking out the grains left behind in cracks and crevasses in the dry soil, after the crop was cut and the ripened sheaves carted away. Both the rat proof stone corn jar and a pillow case were full to the brim with wheat and barley kernels.

Thomas pulled off his heavy linen smock, and rinsed his face and neck with water from the enamel bowl that they bought at the fair last Lady Day.

You be early! said an accusing voice from the dark front room of the house.

No point in staying with no money to spare for ale, replied Thomas moodily.

We’ve got ale here, responded his wife abruptly, as she reckoned how much of their diminished income had gone into the alewife’s pocket.

Thomas shook his head. Nettle beer was no substitute for the hops based brew at the ale house, and women’s chatter could not compare with the debates he held over a pint or two. He sat in the chair by the hearth and opened the fire door. He was not cold, for it was a still night after a hot day, but the chair was the only one that eased his aching body after a day digging ditches, and the fire that picked up as the air rushed in shed some light into the room.

He sat gazing round at the sparse interior of the cottage for some time before he spoke. Perhaps he was looking for something that they could sell to stretch their meagre income. Nothing obvious came to eye.

Harry Peters says that changing the calendar will make no difference to us. But where’s the nine shillings coming from that I would have earned ’tween the third and fourteenth, I ask you?

Never mind, husband. Think of it this way. We can go abed on the second, and stay there until the fourteenth. I’m sure we can find ways to amuse ourselves the while.

Thomas smiled. Put that way it was not so much a loss of days, as the opportunity for a very long night.

Wet Nights

April 1771

Bernard Woods dropped his bag on the floor of the open sided lean-to shelter, and put his dripping hat on the handle of a barrow. He reached up and struggled to pull his cape over his head, water running from the folds onto the cobbled floor as he did so. He laid the heavy mutton-fat dressed canvas garment on a pile of stones used to mend the highway, then dashed the half dozen paces to his toll-house door.

Bernard had overseen the turnpike for eleven years, ever since he had returned to the village from India as a hero of the struggle known as the Second Carnatic War. He had been one of the temporary sergeants from the East India Company whose 500 men under Captain Clive had captured Arcot. They had marched for days in monsoon rain, wading chest deep across crocodile infested rivers, and hauling their cannons knee deep in mud.

The defenders of that fort and town had fled in awe of men capable of marching in such conditions, and they captured Arcot without firing a shot. Bernard always smiled when others in his home village complained about the weather, for none of them had experienced a tenth of the conditions he had seen in his travels.

His valour brought him a small pension from the East India Company, but took from him much of the use of his left arm, ruined by a French sniper’s bullet through the elbow in a subsequent defensive skirmish. His reputation and glowing reference from the company were of little use in seeking employment in England, except perhaps in the stink and smoke of a port like London, Bristol or Plymouth, and Bernard had taken his fill of such overcrowded places. His return voyage to England on an East Indiaman heading for a refit at the company dock, allowed him time to recover some function in his injured arm, and reflect on what the future held for him. But by the time they docked at the company’s repair wharf at Deptford he had no illusions about a full physical recovery.

On disembarking Bernard had walked along the bustling riverside to Westminster, where he lodged at the East India Club in St James Square: planning his journey home in the lounge overlooking the stairwell where more illustrious company employees hung their school crests.

Travelling on foot was not a particularly safe occupation for a well dressed single person of apparent means, for highwaymen and footpads abounded both by day and by night along the commercial highways. He followed the custom of banding together with several of his fellows who desired to travel in the same direction.

Armed with his pair of company pistols, and some light provisions he had set off with six similarly prepared men one morning towards Islington, and the start of the Great North Road. One of their number was taking up a post with a turnpike company, and recommended Bernard to seek out their office in Huntingdon. Eager to employ men of his calibre, the Trust took him on to manage a stretch of some twenty miles through the county, and he soon found himself installed in the toll house where he still resided.

Bernard was an administrator who liked things to be orderly, and his wife, Ruth, was of a similar mind. Tonight, as he entered the building he found that she had set out his desk exactly as he had expected her to. He turned up the oil lamp she had left on a low light for him, and stood at his desk in the bay window that overlooked the road. She had trimmed three quills before retiring for the night, and left them, together with a small glass of port and a thick crust of bread topped with Stilton cheese, on his desk. The pewter ink pot had been filled and stirred, and a fresh dish of finely ground chalk dust was there to blot each page before turning to a new one. A leather pouch with the crest of the Post Office sat beside the ink pot.

Ruth, a barren widow some five years his junior, had kept house for the elderly previous incumbent until he was killed by a lead musket ball. It was never discovered whether it was a robber who mistook him for a wealthy traveller, or a passer along the road unwilling to pay his toll, and the murder went unsolved.

Ruth had stayed on after the man’s death, looking after things as best she could. She had little formal education, and the Trust had been keen to appoint a literate successor as soon as possible. Bernard approached them at exactly the right time.

After he took up his position Ruth continued to keep house and relieve him at the toll gate as required. The pair found that were in so much of a common mind about life, and the world about them, that their relationship had quickly developed into one that needed sanctifying by the church.

Bernard set about writing his nightly report on the condition of the road in the leather bound ledger. Using a system of abbreviations of his own devising, he logged those areas in need of repair, and the extent of each repair required. Much of the work resulted from rain washing off fields rather than wear and tear by traffic. He made notes to see various farmers and landowners over the next few days to enforce their obligation to maintain the ditches and ridges that the law required of them.

Bernard had been more successful in this than many other turnpike keepers. Despite his weak left arm he was an imposing figure, and had a persuasive tongue. Perhaps his habit of carrying his pair of pistols in his belt restrained many an otherwise disagreeable landowner from resorting to violence.

Bernard established his reputation for not putting up with the high-handed attitude of the local gentry quite early in his new career. When visiting a minor aristocrat to point out the illegal use of the road as his private carriage park and cock fight arena, the man had set a bull mastiff on him. Bernard shot the beast, and reminded the man that he had a second barrel charged and ready.

The carriages were removed and the crude arena dismantled. When the offended landowner complained to the Board of Trustees running the turnpike Bernard was summoned to Huntingdon. There he was handed a formal written reprimand, and advised to purchase a dog of his own to ward off similar future attacks. Then the Chairman of the Board took the letter back from him, and used it to light the table candles from the fire, before inviting Bernard to join himself and the other trustees for a meal.

Whilst officially decrying his actions they privately commended them. Too many petty members of the aristocracy still viewed the land and its population as objects to plunder as they wished. Since the event there had been several disputes along the Trust’s highways settled quickly, to the Trust’s financial benefit.

He flipped the lid of the ink pot, and picked up one of the quills. Ruth had left the ledger open at the point where he had written the date and his proposed route for his inspection patrol. He dipped the quill, and started to write. He had almost completed his task when he heard the horn blast heralding the approach of the mail coach. He rested the quill in the pot and picked up the pouch. Then he stepped out into the drizzle to lift the barrier for this toll exempt traveller. It was not the tinny sound of the cheap yard long post horn provided by the Post Office that warned him of the carriage’s approach: rather, in common with many coaches, it was a richer note from a brass horn supplied by the guard himself, and capable of the range of calls used by the men as they communicated with other coaches, toll keepers and post office installations as if on the battlefield. He raised the barrier and stood holding the pouch up high.

The four horses dragged the coach at the gallop towards his house and he tried to assess the number of passengers in the swaying vehicle. According to law the coach was limited to four, and there was much debate about infants and small children when counting that number. It was impossible to count under these conditions, and Bernard suspected that on those journeys when the coachman hurried his horses on the approach then that number was often exceeded.

As the coach passed the guard threw down a small leather pouch and snatched up the one that Bernard waved at him. Many coach guards were old soldiers, and Bernard recognised this one as such a man. He was employed by the Post Office, unlike the coachman who was supplied by the person from whom Post Office hired the carriage, and sat upright and alert as he nursed his blunderbuss under a square of canvas to keep the rain away from the pan and flint. As the coach rumbled away he picked up the pouch and wiped a little mud off the crest that proclaimed it to be Post Office property. He wondered how large the stipend paid to the constable was for his role as village postmaster: for his own one for receiving the pouch would scarcely cover the cost of tobacco for his clay pipe, and he was a frugal smoker.

The coach disappeared into the gloom and drizzle of the night. He left the barrier raised and stepped back inside the house. Today was market day and before dawn a dozen wagons would have rumbled past, observing that the lamp in his window told them that their passage was noted, and marked on the tally that Bernard kept for them.

Giving such credit was strictly against the rules of the Trust, but Bernard knew the farmers were grateful for their heavy wagons not being brought to a halt, and would pay for both directions on their way home, once produce had been converted into coins. Throughout the country there was a shortage of coins, and many people had monthly or even yearly accounts with tradesmen: even the poorest of families traded in this manner, for the convenience of not constantly finding and handling farthings and mites.

He put the pouch on the desk to be collected by the parish constable later. He was on good terms with the constable, an ex-soldier with a powder burn disfigured face, and occasionally they would patrol together when reports of attacks on the road gave them matters of mutual concern.

The next hour was tedious and predictable, with only two unexpected chargeable passers-by: an old pedlar riding a brown mare and leading his pack-horse, and a quack doctor with his wagon load of blue glass bottles and firkins of patent medicines. Both were heading for the weekly market.

As the light of a grey dawn slowly strengthened Bernard heard Ruth come down the stairs, and set about her morning chores. The crackle of twigs in the firebox of the range reminded him that the night had chilled him somewhat. Wistfully he thought of his time in India where, as a senior clerk for the East Indian Company, he would breakfast on the club lawn, on hot muffins and honey followed by curried eggs or mutton, washed down by endless tea from the char wallah who wandered unobtrusively between the diners, as the peacocks foraged for scraps under the sunlit tables. Or even richer fare during his temporary role in the campaign under Clive. Today’s breakfast was more likely to be porridge, although Ruth would do her best to improve it with fennel seeds or anise and similar herbs from the garden and hedgerows.

As the sun finally broke through Ruth appeared from the kitchen with two bowls. Her starched apron rustled as she came and stood beside him. She placed the bowls on his desk so that she could retrieve two spoons from her apron pocket. He took his spoon from her and picked up his bowl. Even the thick wooden bowl allowed some heat to travel through to warm his hands.

Anything happening? she asked, as she dipped her spoon in her bowl and held it up to cool a little before eating.

Nothing much, wife. Farmer Wickers needs reminding about that ditch again, but he may be more cooperative now. I stopped one of his men from using the road early last night. And widow Fullbright tells me that old Kennelworth hath passed away. ’Tis a blessing after the way his mind went ahead of him, leaving his hulk abed to be fed like a baby.

A clanging bell sounded along the road, and Ruth put her bowl down to fetch a jug from the kitchen. Outside a milkmaid stopped, and placed her stool beside the cow she was leading. Ruth took the jug out to her, and waited while the girl tied the animal to one of the whitewashed marker posts before coaxing it into milking. A farthing changed hands and the girl picked up her stool to go on to her next customer. The cow, who had found some interesting weeds in the hedgerow, was reluctant to move until the girl delivered a sound whack across its rump with her cowpox scarred hand.

The Turnpike Trusts were limited by Parliament with prescribed maximum tolls, but Bernard knew that few of the farmers had any knowledge of the law, and he would hint that landowners could be surcharged, or barred from using the road, if they failed to meet their obligations.

In fact the Trustees had deliberately kept their tolls below the maximum allowed by law in order to persuade long distance travellers to use their roads instead of competing routes to the East and West, and Bernard was not adverse to turning a blind eye to the occasional poor traveller with a weary animal who looked far more in need of the penny that his unladen beast entitled Bernard to charge. The milkmaid was one such beneficiary of his occasional waiver of the fees.

In return for his largess many beneficiaries would pass on information of use to him, such as instances of stones being pilfered from the piles intended to mend potholes: stolen to build walls or cottage paths. Bernard welcomed such accounts, and used them to retrieve the stones, and extract unpaid labour from the miscreants filling potholes over short stretches of road, as an alternative to an appearance before the justices.

He preferred this unpaid labour to the alternative means of repair,for he disliked using the official statute labour available from the workhouses. He considered it little short of slavery, and in many cases the persons supplied were in a sorry state and unfit for the work. The members of the Trust often remarked on how well he kept down the cost of repair to the compacted stone surface, and how few complaints they had from the Post Office regarding damage to their carriages.

His breakfast finished, Bernard took his ease in a bed-chair while Ruth minded the barrier for the morning. He had taught her how to handle a weapon, and she would carry in her apron the little muff pistol he had bought her as a wedding present. At first she had been concerned that her aim could never match his, but Bernard pointed out that he slept clothed with his pistols beside him. The sound of her firing would bring him to her in an instant, and was more important than the accuracy of her own shot.

By late morning the rain had returned, and set in for the day. When a mail coach approached just after noon the guard’s warning woke him. It was not the usual rising seven notes that he recognised as ‘post call’, but ‘turn out under arms’, and as the vehicle came closer he could hear that it was slowing down. This was most unusual as the coaches were obliged to travel at full speed between Post Inns, and it was this combination of speed and a heavily armed guard that made them virtually immune to the criminal gangs that infested the open road.

Bernard grabbed his pistols, and was beside Ruth in the road before the coach stopped. The guard was not on his seat beside the coachman, but soon appeared as the door burst open. The man ignored the iron step and jumped directly down to the ground, then turned and helped an older man down. Bernard recognised the old man as the pedlar who had passed through earlier that day. The cravat that had been about his neck was now fashioned into a sling for his right arm, and his scalp had a gash that was caked in mud and blood. Across his neck was a bruise which Bernard immediately understood. A young man stood behind the injured pedlar in the doorway.

Some four miles distant there was a wooded spot which was notorious for footpads. Travellers, if unable to group together, would try to pass the area at the gallop to minimise the risk of being held up. The mark on the man’s neck told Bernard that they had strung a cord between two trees and unseated him as he sped through.

Found him at Rookery Bend, said the guard. Nearly ran over him, but I recognised him from earlier in the day, and that lad there pulled him in the coach while I stood guard.

Bernard nodded. The guard was employed to protect the mail, not the passengers, and he could be disciplined for stopping to help a traveller. Indeed, many a villain had met his death by laying in the road as if injured, to stop a coach for others hidden nearby to plunder, and had the misfortune to find it was the mail coach rather than a private carriage approaching.

The pedlar was lucky he was attacked in daylight so the guard could make out his distinctive bright blue coat and his wide-brimmed hat lying in the road before him. His position facing along the roadside rather than across it also suggested a genuine person in distress.

Bernard ushered the guard and pedlar into the house, where he set about cleaning the man’s wounds. The pedlar opened his mouth to thank him, but could not speak. It was probable that his voice box was damaged, and his future career selling door to door and at markets was in question. Bernard was more concerned with the wound on his scalp. Mud from the road was rarely just of vegetable origin, with two hundred or more horses a day travelling along. The risk of lockjaw was high, and the result was often fatal.