Sir Humphrey at Batch Hall

Humphrey and Clem marry and plan their future at Batch Hall - a future which soon threatens to be short lived.

The celebrations after Humphrey and Clem marry.

Chapter Three

 

The church fête was not all that was al fresco after a champagne reception in the Hall.

     The celebrations, organised by the Regatta committee, who did this sort of thing every year, were held on Taddlebrook Leasow, a long stretch of pasture running down to the Cluny, the property until last year of the estate and donated for the day by the new owner as a wedding present.

     And it seemed that the entire valley and beyond, both sides of the border, had turned up for them.

     Under red, white and blue bunting and the flags of three countries, something like a small county show had sprung up.

     There was a dog and a goat show, ferret racing, a tug-of-war, bale-tossing and log-splitting, and nail-hammering competitions - the later won with ease by John Beecher, driving with a single blow a six-nail as straight as a bullet into solid oak. A falconer with an amber-eyed golden eagle lifting its wings in a river breeze, a juggler, a fire eater, and an escapologist, chained and padlocked in a sack suspended from the back of a truck. And to bells and tambourines, an all-girl troupe of Morris Dancers, in Lincoln-green silk shorts and singlets, watched by a largely male audience with a sudden and thoughtful interest in folk dancing.

     And later a trad jazz band, The Church Myddle Stompers, warmed up on a large grain trailer under more flags and bunting. And when the newlyweds, dressed for the train afterwards and a fortnight’s honeymoon in London, stopped in front of them to receive more best wishes, and to have another photograph taken for a village family album, the band, for want of a more appropriate number, broke into Ain’t She Sweet, the vocalist belting it out, while Humphrey, who couldn’t have agreed more, grinned and held her to him in a beefy grip.

     The couple had a ride each, once round the field on a pony and trap for a pound, lost two more pounds betting on Owain Owen’s hob ferret, rolled pennies, played skittles, shot arrows, and threw hoops, coconuts and darts, and following an invitation to get into practise for married life, plates, a pound’s worth each at the crockery-smash stall.

     And while Clem dutifully stopped at the WI’s stand, under a sign ‘New Things To Do With Fruit’, Humphrey watched a sword swallower, standing avidly among a small group of village children, their mouths open between licks at the jumbo ice-creams he‘d bought himself and them.

     After putting in an appearance at the beer tent, where more champagne was waiting on ice, Humphrey paused alertly, his nose picking up another smell on the air, mixed with that of beef burgers and hot-dog onions from the food stalls. Roast lamb, he identified. A whole lamb, skewered and turning on a spit above a bed of coals on the other side of the ground.

     Clem firmly steered him in another direction, towards another tent.

     Jasmine Roberts, who lived on the Cluny Queen, one of the four houseboats on the river, was a psychic, a ‘World Famous’ one, according to the sign at the entrance to her bell-tent, with ‘A Special Rate for Pets’.

     Clem had an appointment.

     Jasmine, her hair with a shine to it like coal falling almost down to her waist, was sitting in front of a fold-up table, dressed for work in a voluminous green silk dress printed with golden sun faces and zodiac circles, and wearing her crescent-and-hand necklace and Egyptian charm bracelets, her plump hands heavy with fish and abraxas  rings.

     She smiled up at them when they came in as if through tears, and sniffed, a happy memory of the wedding service throughout which Jasmine had wept quietly and steadily.

     Clem took the chair on the other side of the table and Humphrey stood solemnly next to her, big hands clasped in front of him.

     Jasmine asked for Clem’s plain gold wedding ring, and holding it her, her breasts filling the green silk like pillows as she leaned forward over it, she closed her eyes on their future.

     “Ahhh,” she breathed then, smiling indulgently at what she saw there.   “There’s nice! A family in the Hall again, warming its old stone and timbers …”

     She looked up at Humphrey.

     “You’ll need to put in a couple more bathrooms, Sir Humphrey,” she said cheerfully.

     “Humph,” Humphrey said automatically.

     Clem looked aghast. “All girls?”

     Jasmine closed her eyes again.

     “No ... No, not all girls - there’s boys there as well.”

     “How many?” Clem asked, her voice going up a couple of registers.

     Jasmine frowned. “Hard to tell, darling, really … They won’t stay still long enough, see. They’re all over the place, like ferrets. Up and down the staircase, in and out of rooms and the outhouses, down on the river. Everywhere they are. Like my lot. Still,” she added reassuringly, “perhaps some of them are friends, like, from the village.” 

     Clem looked up at her husband and smiled weakly.

     Humphrey was rubbing his hands, his expression making it clear that, no matter what the future number of their children might be, he for one couldn’t wait to get started on them.

 

 

He would have like to have kept his present to Clem a surprise, but that had hardly been possible.

     Erected on Taddlebrook during the morning, when she had been otherwise engaged, it was now the highest structure in Batch Magna, topping both the church tower and the Hall’s chimneys.

     Humphrey had hired the big wheel for the day from the funfair which turned up annually for the Regatta. It stood on the same spot at the river end of the ground as it had last year, when he and Clem had ridden on it as near strangers, on the eve of his return to New York and what he had thought was his future.                                             

     He put an arm around her now, as he had then �"  she had made sure of that, Big Clem, who was always among the first in the field to put her mount at the riskiest jumps, and who, for a bet one winter during repair work to St Swithin’s tower, had skimmed up the outside of the scaffolding in the dark to the top, clinging to him and screaming with fright like a teenager.

     The wheel rushed the sunlit air, showing them for that brief moment the blooming valley spread before them, as it had done unseen in the darkness that night, the reflected light then on the river glimmering below them at its heart like something hidden and shining there.  

 

 

Author's Note

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