The Spinner of the Years

By Hadyn J Adams

Births, Marriages, and Deathsan ancient myth is resurrected in the late twentieth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477251515

Hadyn J Adams

Hadyn J. Adams is a graduate of Durham and Cambridge Universities in the United Kingdom. He has worked in education in the United Kingdom, and since 1997, he has worked abroad, founding schools and working in management in schools in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the People’s Republic of China where he now resides. He is a keen musician (being a french horn player) and his major interests are in sports, travel, and writing. Ecstatic from One Lie and Catching Mice have also been published by Author House in 2012.

Book preview

PART 1

As Confucius said, A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step; but it is an unfortunate traveller who discovers after the first two hundred miles or so that he has been going in the wrong direction.

Sybil Marshall: An Experiment in Education.

Chapter 1

The Fenland fog covered the flat, Cambridgeshire landscape and enveloped the city itself in a self-sealing greyness. Saturated by the dampness, the trees, with their branches clutching a few, surviving, skeletal leaves, tired of being sponges and became instead slow-motion sprinkler systems for the ground beneath them. The claustrophobic condensation not only limited visibility but made it subject to water’s refractive index so that shapes appeared to loom nearer but were distorted before whatever brought them into view. The twin chimney towers of the large hospital lying to the east of the city just succeeded in penetrating the surface of the mist like heavenly pointing periscopes of a submarine but the college towers, turrets and the few church spires were firmly part of what had become a vapoury Atlantis.

Slowly, down the small rise of the Gog Magog eastern approaches which pass for hills in this region, drove a sleek, black, Humber Super-Snipe submerging and disappearing as it came down the incline into the depths of the fog which was at its most dense along ground level. If to be is to be perceived then this car and its driver did not exist. However, the signs of something making its way into the city could be construed from the yellow, gauze-gas-light spots made on the fog by a set of car headlights separated by a distance of approximately twelve feet from a spiraling emission of white exhaust fumes, looking like the fog itself was being cleansed and recycled, beside a splash of crimson rose water, the effect created by the tail and fog lights. The car, displacing its own volume in instantly replaceable mist as it progressed, made its way to the north eastern side of the city and came to a halt in a narrow road beside a large block of council flats.

The flats, three storeys high, were set in a quadrangle with one of its longest sides missing, thus forming a square ‘C’ shape, which enclosed a patch of rough, worn grass which could never be mistaken for a lawn though an estate agent might describe it as such. The ochre colour of the flakey-surfaced bricks used in the construction of this building emphasised the general shabbiness of the area with the faded, peeling blue paint on the doors complementing the rusty black of the guttering and piping which latticed the external walls. In this mist, the lights switched on in the flats seemed to make the windows, through which they were trying hard to shine, like giant, khaki breeze-blocks set in the brick surroundings, sealing and enclosing the rabbit-warren impression of the tenement rather than acting in their transparent glass capacity.

The weather had brought a quiet serenity to this high density habitat, its occupants clearly content to stay indoors in such conditions. The hubbub of their general living was trapped inside the squalid rooms, the fog acting as the literal dampener and the metaphorical sound-proofer.

Parking and leaving a car unattended in this district was normally a decision made in the interests of the only locally-known growth industry, the crime rate. Cars were particularly vulnerable to the environmental scavengers who fed on such scraps dropped from the rich man’s table. Externally exhibited features such as hubcaps, wheels, tyres, aerials, logo badges, light-fittings, bumpers, spoilers and wing mirrors were ready prey; internally, there was a veritable Aladdin’s cave with stereo-radios, speakers, seats, mirrors, carpets not to mention items which owners may have left assuming the protection of locked doors and, at times, alarm systems. In this instance nature afforded the best protection the vehicle could want. Ironic that as the mist protected the man-made machine from the covetous ravagings of mankind it was, by its insidious mixture of air and water, seeping into its being and sowing the seeds of the ferric virus that would eventually cause its death.

A tall figure emerged from the automobile. In terms of colour coordination, the black hat, black coat, black gloves, black scarf, black trousers, black socks, black shoes and even black glasses in which this figure was dressed were entirely in keeping, being at the bottom end of the spectrum of greyness which predominated the night. The soft interior light of the car struggled to be seen in the gloom and it seemed as if the atmosphere acted as a wadding, muffling the sound of the car door being opened and then closed. The figure surveyed the scene, or what there was of it to be surveyed, and then opened the back door of the vehicle, stretched in and lifted out a black bundle the size of which was indeterminate due to the camouflaging effect of the figure’s clothes on the bundle’s material. Handling this wrapping most carefully, the figure leaned into the open back door and closed it by a body motion of intimacy between the person, the door and the car to which it was attached.

Clutching the bundle close to the chest, the figure proceeded across the grass to a central point of the building and disappeared into one of its stairwells leaving only the watery outlines of the imprint of the soles of the shoes to indicate someone had walked that way. A few seconds passed and the figure re-emerged, as if being disgorged from the edifice, but there was nothing being carried out, a fact only evident by the figure’s arm now being in the more natural, anthropoidal position at the side of the body. The bundle, whatever it was, had, it seemed been a gift, a sacrifice to the god of the building, left secretly on its mean altar by a worshipper unknown and not wishing to be known!

The oblations now completed, the figure returned to the car, got in, put the key carefully into the ignition and switched on, bringing the beast into life in all its glory; engine, radio, heater, fog lights, head lights, tail lights, and the exhaust pouring out a carbonaceous, gaseous mixture, the whole giving the appearance of a dragon with great potential that had had water poured on its fire which had considerably dampened it down. Slowly, inexorably, it moved off, away from the flats, through the labyrinths of the city’s streets, out past the city’s boundaries, over the hillocks, into rural East Anglia and perhaps even beyond that with ever increasing speed as if it were being chased; but its pursuer was lying surprisingly stationary in a black bundle in the stairwell of the flats in the east of the city.

Chapter 2

The holiday in Halkidiki had been everything John had expected it to be; temperatures well into the nineties, clear, sapphire seas plenty of wind-surfing and water-skiing, late night discotheques, excessive quantities of Greek cuisine washed down by plentiful mixtures of retsina and German lager (and the occasional cocktail when the aforesaid mixture had had more than a mellowing effect) and the excellent company of two of his closest student friends which had been complemented throughout by several attractive female students on their summer holiday just like they were.

But after such pleasure… pain. Money all spent. A bank overdraft and a Barclaycard in arrears and still the thirty long days of September to be lived through until starting back in his final year of studying philosophy at Durham. He had suffered a severe haemorrhaging of money which would not get the healing transfusion until at least in the first week of October when his final grant would come through and, although it would not be sufficient to keep him out of debt in his last year of studies, at least it would cure some of the current problems and buy him time until work on the post at Christmas and English language teaching at Easter, both of which occupations paid quite well and had always arrested the descent deep into the red at those crucial times. Now, however, in order to stem the outflow and get some basic cash for the melancholy burden of survival over the next four weeks, the application of a tourniquet was necessary. There was, therefore, no alternative but to take up the only task locally which offered cash in hand on a daily basis and which would keep him occupied for such a length of time; apple picking.

When biting into a delicious Cox’s apple, the eater, on feeling the fresh, cidery tang burst upon the mouth as the teeth leave an impression from which a set of dentures could readily be created, no doubt reflects with a Wordsworthian romanticism on a sweet smelling orchard, perhaps situated somewhere in the south-west where the labourers pick the succulent fruit as they enjoy the balmy temperatures and gentle sunshine of a September Indian summer; and where, at the end of a tiring but rewarding day’s work they head homeward, earthy from the day’s toil, their autumnal colours complemented by the amber sun’s dying light and the chiaroscuro sky, but with the knowledge that they have, like Longfellow’s village blacksmith, honestly earned their wages.

John, on bended knee on damp earth which stained his trousers and which soaked through to his skin, and with the twigs of the surrounding apple trees prodding into his back felt, to say the least, distinctly uncomfortable. He stretched his cupped tight hand to the clusters of hanging apples feeling a twinge of tendonitis which had set in after the first two days’ picking. As he felt for the apples he remembered all the admonitions about ‘treating them like eggs’ but above all was impressed by the fact that dare he bruise them—a heinous crime!—for then he would lose his piece work bonus and be earning a mere 85p for each hour’s hard labour. Reflecting on this made him smile, for even on the piece work rate he, and most of the others working the 88 acres of orchards, barely bettered £3.00 an hour for the back-breaking work. Capitalism, a la Victorian mode, was alive and living on the fruit farms of Essex and no doubt throughout the rest of the U.K. wherever apples were grown!

Given such mind-numbing work, John’s thoughts went everywhere. Essex, he felt, did not quite have the cachet of Somerset when it came to apples. He pictured the Tarot card bearing La Pendule, the hanging man, and reflected that a pun might be formed from the French, La Pommedule! The hanging apple. Sometimes the apples felt like cool, firm, nippleless breasts in the palm of his hand; at other times, the coarseness of the russeting on an apple’s skin seemed to sandpaper his palm as he made the upward turning movement to release the apple from its branch. The skin blemishes could make some apples appear like miniature Halloween pumpkins or the blotched features of a punch-drunk pugilist. Sometimes he picked fruit containing wasps that had burrowed into the apple and become inebriated by the intoxicating cider; such an apple had much in common with Blake’s sick rose. Occasionally he knelt in rotten fruit; apples that had turned autumnal brown and soft and were more liquid than solid. This only added to the dampness caused by the earth and, indeed, it was worse, for it stained his clothes and left an aroma like the stale vomit left by a drunk.

Each bin he gauged held something in the region of 3,000 to 4,000 apples, depending on the size of the fruit picked. Each hod load contained 40 to 60 apples depending on the size of the fruit picked. It therefore took between about 60 and 75 visits to and from the bin with the hod to complete the filling process and earn the rate of £7.85 for the full bin. The hod with its halter made all the pickers know their place; the subservient workers. Only the foam fitted round the collar prevented it from giving the labourers running sores around their necks. The knee muscles, the neck muscles, the arm muscles, the back muscles were certainly exercised repetitively between the picking, the transporting and the delivering of the loads, each cycle taking approximately 2 minutes. At the end of the day, walking upright, free from any load, to collect the wages earned on the previous day was positively pleasant and therapeutic.

The start of the working day, usually around 7 a.m. meant working amongst the damp trees left wet by overnight rain or a heavy overnight dew. Having to move in, out, under and, with ladder work, over the trees therefore meant soaking up the moisture into the working clothes; if the day remained dry, so over the 8 to 10 hours worked, there was a drying out process which was occasionally arrested by excessive dampness in the earth or a plethora of rotten fruit which had fallen to ground. If there was rain, the dampness never went but often intensified giving a feeling at the end of the session of having camped out in a grassy field, in a leaky tent, with an ineffective ground sheet and no sleeping bag. When suffering from the effects of such dampness, John wondered if he might develop rickets since the sogginess of his clothes clasped them to his body and the pervasive moistness seemed to percolate through his skin into his bones. Was it dampness that caused such a disease? If it wasn’t, it certainly ought to be, he thought.

Everyone who had ever experienced such a job for any length of time certainly would appreciate the phrase slave labour. Perhaps it was a task that might suit convicted prisoners. Stationing guards with their dogs at the end of the rows of trees would prevent escape, not that anyone would be in a fit state to leg it, to coin a colloquial phrase and make the metaphorical have literal interpretation, after about an hour’s work. John pictured scenes from Cool Hand Luke transposed to the orchard; and the analogous transfer was entirely in keeping with the original! Was there an apple-picking equivalent of Stakhanov? If not, a Stakhanovite award was certainly merited by the nature of this task. Not even miners, John surmised, had to do the bodily gymnastics and contortions required to get at some apples and suffer the scratches, scars and pricking of the twigs of the trees. Well, it was perhaps only the trees getting their revenge for being deprived of the fruit they had so carefully nurtured (with a little help from the farmer!) over the year. Having their off-spring so rudely wrenched away (a verb the boss would not wished used for a task that was meant to be so delicately done!) was, no doubt, a much more painful experience to them. Then again, compared to mining at least this was done above the ground and in the light and was a whole lot safer.

Though much of what he thought thus centred round the monotony of the job being done, John had time to reflect upon his own personal past, present and future. His parents were fiercely proud of him. Here he was, the son of an engine driver for British Rail and an ordinary housewife, the latter quite a rarity nowadays, but then his parents had had him quite late into their marriage and at times they did seem a bit dated even to him in their morality and their attitudes. However, with such family security and a strong, maternal, loving background he had made it to the local grammar school, an archaic institution even in his time, and from there to read philosophy at Durham which, if it could not as a university quite be held in the same esteem as Oxford or Cambridge, certainly had an air of tradition, scholarship and history so lacking in so many of the new universities of the sixties and even more absent in the renamed polytechnics or punyversities as they had been, rightly in his opinion, dubbed. Home of the Oxbridge rejects as Durham was sometimes said to be was infinitely preferable to that eponym.

Although his scholarship distanced him at times from his family and their friends, John had grown to appreciate after the angry immaturity of his teens, the value of his parents and the home life they had given him. Though he resented the Methodist tradition in which he had been brought up with its seemingly killjoy morality he had to accept that the Sunday school lessons, the sermons he had suffered and the hymns, especially those Welsh hymn tunes such as Hyfrodol, Rachie, Diadem and many others, had certainly added to the traditional education he had received in school. It had certainly given him a love of words and literature and during the better sermons he had, instead of adding up the hymn numbers and working out ridiculous arithmetical computations with them, endeavoured to offer counter arguments to those presented by the preacher. Perhaps this is what had