Hattie Halfbrick

Most of what has been written for the Fekenham Tales has been of a humorous nature; sometimes slapstick with the occasional bawdy bit thrown in for good measure. I didn't want, and still don't, even if my wildest dreams of being a published author fail, to be a one dimensional writer. This chapter features Hattie Halfbrick, the character of which was floating around my old brain box, unfleshed and unnamed as it were, until I heard this wonderful song by Robert Wyatt from his equally wonderful album, ‘Comicopera’. Here is a Fekenham chapter that features Hattie Halfbrick.

Hattie Halfbrick lived on her own in the crumbling cottage that she had shared with
her long dead husband Harry. As far as Hattie could remember, Harry had gone. She
didn’t know where he had gone but the sense of his not being there was a hole that
bore into the centre of her being, a desperate feeling of inexplicable loss. There had
been a time when she had thought he would return; she imagined his head peeking
around the doorjamb and shouting out, as he always did, that he was home. That had
never happened and as the years, not that she counted time any more lest it was a tick
and a tock of the damnable clock, had evaporated, she had given up on that idea and
now just thought of him, whenever and if ever she did, with a long, lost need.

Hattie was old, very old but again, she had forgotten how old and couldn’t truly recall
when her birthday was although May seemed right somehow. Something to do with
clouting and flowers coming into blossom and cherries, yes, cherries, she liked a
cherry did old Hattie. Cherries and May. Hattie also liked to visit the canal where she
would stare at the canal boats as they passed and sometimes, without any visible
reason, she would hurl abuse at them as they passed, shouting foul obscenities which
she would never have used back when Harry was alive but, without her knowing why,
Harry and the flat, dark waters of the canal were inextricably linked. Bonded by some
mysterious quirk of nature that was a fog of her memory, a depth of hidden
consciousness that welled up whenever she approached the languid waters.

She sometimes visited the railway line as that didn’t invoke in her the feelings of rage and
murder that overcame her when she stood by the canal. The trains speeding by as
flashes of silver upon a green backdrop had a mesmeric effect on her, much like her
childhood, when she sat in front of her parlour fire watching the flames rise and
dance. Often, when the thought occurred, Hattie would go up into the sooty attic of
her home and there, among the cobwebby collection of memories, she would sit,
knees to her chest, huddled like a child, leafing through old photos that carried a myth
of faces, faces that meant nothing to her now although the act of touching them was
deeply reassuring as was the act of leafing through the musty books that lay, scattered,
upon the floor. Scents and touch carried a greater wealth of history than the images she saw.

Few people came to see Hattie now. Once a day Maurice Tinkercuss, who doubled up

as the local postman and milkman, would call on Hattie leaving her a pint of milk and
any mail she may have received, bills mostly, all of which Hattie used as fuel for her
kitchen stove. She rarely sat anywhere in the house apart from the kitchen. The
parlour door had been closed for years shutting away the ghosts of her marital
evenings with Harry. The bathroom she used once a week with a clock-work likeritual when she would take her bath: it was the only room she truly cleaned. Her
bedroom creaked with a mass of long-read magazines and newspapers that mounted
the walls in solemn, grey stacks.

Loneliness wasn’t a concept that Hattie thought of consciously but if haunted her
nights nonetheless and only the promise of a new day brought a hint of solace. When
the morning broke she would wander into the village and into the butchers where , as
he did everyday, Neil Beefshanks would give her a pie that he had prepared and
baked the night before. She would take the pasrt from him, without a word of thanks,
only to eat in front of him in total silence. At first, Neil had found the way she looked
at him a little alarming, her grey unblinking eyes that stared at him like a fox
watching a boy with a stick. Crumbs would drift from her jaws and fall onto her chest
where some would float to the floor while the rest collected on her coat like snowdrift.
Once she had finished she would leave without a sound whereupon Neil always called
out behind her, “Bye Hattie, see you same time tomorrow.”

Hattie didn’t like passing the school, certainly not when it was play time and the
children were gathered in the school yard. The name calling was more childish
mischievousness than calculated malice and the children didn’t think of the harm
or hurt their words might cause. Besides, Hattie was so old now and so distant that
their name calling appeared to have little effect. It wasn’t the names though that hurt
Hattie but the faces of the children. Ttheir faces were like the dark depths of the
canal’s water, a flat reference point that held a forgotten truth, a truth that refused
recollection. No one in the village could remember a time before Hattie not even
Brigadier Largepiece: she had always been there, as much a part of Fekenham as
Metlok Tor or the ancient woodlands. At a guess, and many had tried, the best
estimate of Hattie’s age was around ninety but, if she was that old, and she seemed so
very nimble, then by God was she doing well for her age. November was a cruel time
for Hattie as the nights were long, the days short and the bitter winds of early winter
bit hard into her old bones. To be trapped in doors was an anathema to Hattie as she
couldn’t stand confinement, and if those that thought she was already mad could only
have known how wrong they were, how desperately sad she became when shut up at
home, on the verge of irrational hysteria, then they would have felt nothing but pity
for her. Her only glimpse of joy was to wander free around Fekenham, around the
areas that she had known since a child, the places that had always been there for her
throughout the years which now gave her the constant reassurance that she so needed.

November moved pale and grim into December; a wraith that swept autumn away
with frosty fingers ushering in yet another change in the life of Hattie Halfbrick.
Christmas meant nothing anymore although she liked the Santa Claus that stood in the
post office window and the tree in the high street festooned with gaudy tinsel and
lights. Beyond Christmas another year was waiting but what was one more year to
Hattie when each day was perishing long in itself?

With grateful thanks to Robert Wyatt whose song gave flesh to the bones of this chapter.

PS. My new team blog site can be found here: http://fishyfarts.blogspot.com/
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all words and art are copyright © of C.J. Duffy.

Dawn break raises a question.
Blackbird sings a lone truth.
Today is the first day.

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all words and art are copyright © of C.J. Duffy.

A part of the 'sell' that has to go to the literary agent is the 'blurb' that you would choose to use to help market the book. Here is mine for the Fekenham Tales:

In a corner of Wessex lays the peaceful hamlet of Fekenham Swarberry. Where ale is pulled from wooden barrels, leather balls smack resoundingly against bats of willow as the local vicar smokes weed while the publican consorts with loose women. In the skies above Albion, airships silently glide while below, canal boats chug, laden with the goods of industry beside railway lines that throb to train wheels speeding by at one hundred and twenty miles an hour. The Village Tales of Fekenham Swarberry is a postcard from an England that never was sharing its dreams of an Albion that will never be.

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“If ‘Sir Henry at Rawlinson End’ is the missing link between Monty Python and ‘Withnail and I’ then Fekenham Swarberry is their bastard offspring!”

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“The Village Tales of Fekenham Swarberry is written as though by Anthony Buckeridge while on hormone therapy.”

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all words and art are copyright © of C.J. Duffy.

shadeland

another night of stagnant recall.

plumped pillows fold without a sound.

crease of duvet - blank response.

silence in birdsong dawn.

the air crackles with an absence.

breathing in solitary air.

i miss your heartbeats rythm,

miss your teeth grinding dreams.

find no comfort in the shadeland.

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all words and art are copyright © of C.J. Duffy.

The First Chapter (Initial Sketch) for The Village Tales of Fekenham Swarberry

Evening in Fekenham

The road twisted sideways and then bent around Tollbunt Hill and bore on down towards the mole blind village of Fekenham Swarberry with its curtained windows and honey glow glass. The night was warm and softly black and the moon waxed a splendid silver whilst a single owl hooted a solitary sound of winged wisdom.

The hedgerows wove a curious shape that flowed about the road as if they were the flesh to the roads bone: a sinewy twist which ribboned the multi-coloured fields with a crow black tributary. Mrs Humshaw stood outside her front gate wearing a frown and a rose patterned frock ; haloed by a host of flying gnats that buzzed about her head. Her husband, Terrence, fifty four, ruddy of complexion with a plump disposition and a shallow pocket, was late and had been, according to the local whisper of passing interest, "unavoidably detained on a matter of some urgency" at
the local pub, The Frog and Radiator.

"Unavoidably detained my elbow," thought the aggrieved matron.

She had murder in her eyes, poison in her heart and a large rolling pin in her hands.


Each and every evening Terrence, or Tel, as he was called by his chums, Terry by his wife when happy with him and Terrence when she was not, having finished his day’s business at the local brewery went to his local for a swift pint. The swift pint was then followed by three or four more pints before moving on to his favoured nightcap, a glass of Scotch. After the alcohol warmed his fuzzy senses, Terry knew it was time to be heading home for his evening meal and a possible night of passion. (Well it had been three weeks for goodness sakes).

The night drew its arms in tight to keep out the chill and the hedgerow shrank to a small hush of rustling leaves as the footfalls of Terrence Humshaw ricocheted down the tumble stone, cobblestone roadway.

With lust in his loins for his full bodied wife, a belly a-swishing with warm ale and a bladder to match, he whistled a broken tune that scratched the nights pale eye. Unaware of his darling wife's foul mood he wobbled on toward his home. He looked like the rudderless wreck of some ancient Spanish Galleon. She looked like the stone sentinel at the gates of hell.

In faraway Fekenham Woods the self same owl fluted a low note before gliding down on silent wings to snatch a field mouse in its claws. For a thousand years Fekenham had lay beneath various waxing moons and a multitude of incandescent summers.

Far back in its ancient history Druids had gathered around Metlok Tor where they had performed ritual acts of worship often with a sacrifice to their hallowed gods.

Without the faintest notion of what lay ahead for him the squiffy Terry shuffled and tripped along. Unaware that a certain likeness to both the field mouse and the Druids sacrifice could be seen in him.

It was midnight at Rose Cottage and things had a skewed perspective but one thing was certain for Terry, passion was off the menu replaced by a new dish of pain a la rolling pin.

Over at the local church, St. Whipplemores, seated at a desk in the vestry sat

Fekenham's wayward vicar, Elvis Linkthorpe. Before him lay an A4 pad of lined paper containing an illegible scribble that appeared to have all the elegance of a dying, epileptic spider that had been dipped in blue ink and then set to crawling a cracked and wobbly path over the page. Letters ran like jazz notes, up and down and across the page within no apparent semblance of order or constructive meaning. Like their author they flew in a general direction but without a rudder for guidance just a set of random jottings that seemed like code to anyone else but had a coherence and depth that gave vent to a passionate plea from the good vicar.

Whilst he wrote, a green plume of smoke hung above his head, smoke that came from the hand-made reefer that hung from his lip with a gravity-defying, limpet-like quality. Occasionally, he would take a deep drag upon the cigarette before picking up the glass tumbler that sat beside his left hand. A golden liquid filled a third of the glass and Linkthorpe took a deep swig from it before putting it firmly back on the desk. He smacked his lips as if to make sure that the whiskey hadn't, as yet, removed sensation from his mouth. Satisfied that he wasn't yet drunk the besozzled vicar began to write again at a furious speed. Words were spun onto the page in a weave of mystic runes that caused him to smile as he scribbled.

Linkthorpe was a man of some fifty years of age who smoked marijuana like a Sixties hippy but, then again, he was a Sixties hippie and so why not? He drank whisky like an Irish navvy and he fancied the knickers off Delores Dewhip, the local barmaid. He was, as he often told his flock, a man made of but flesh and his flesh grew rigid and firm at the thought of the delectable Delores. Linkthorpe was about five feet nine with long, wavy hair that threw it self from his head in a mild panic and disarray of elongated ringlets, a fallen cherub’s haircut. Linkthorpe took another drag on his reefer and then another swig from his whiskey. He blinked once and then again before crashing head first onto his writing desk in a drunken, narcotic stupor.

The morning, when it came calling, would find the vicar still there.

Not so very far away, in an ageing cottage, Mildred Pierce, headmistress at Fekenham
Comprehensive, sat facing her bedroom's vanity mirror. Her hair was down, streaked with the early stages of grey that gave her a witch like look, a brush in her hand that she guided through her locks with a delicate elegant swish of her wrist, a pale and thin wrist, a wrist veined with marbled lines of blue that threaded and then disappeared up the length of her thin arm. As she brushed her hair she looked at her self but not with a hint of narcissism but rather with a degree of self examination.

Mildred, like Vicar Linkthorpe, was in her early fifties. She carried herself with a dignified grace that exuded a formidable energy and mighty discipline. Her pupils did not care to defy her but then again few would. She had a tongue that was as sharp as her intellect and she used both with an alarming alacrity. She had been Fekenham Comprehensive's headmistress for nigh on thirty years and she had remained its head with her innate ability to run both teachers and pupils as a ship’s captain ran his crew and steered his vessel, with a fist of steel wrapped in a leather gauntlet.

When she finished brushing her hair she took a large jar of moisturiser into which she dipped her fingers into and then spread the cream across her face with tiny, circular movements. She maintained this strict regime each and every night massaging the lotion into her flesh until every last remnant of the moisturiser had been absorbed into her lactescent skin.

She sat for a moment reviewing her self and then turned her head to face a small photograph that sat on the side of her dressing table. It was a photo of a young child, a girl of about ten who had small features and large liquid eyes. Beneath the picture and written with an elegant hand was the date 1987. The photo was framed by antique silver that had an ornate design engraved about it.

Mildred picked up the frame and stared long at the picture of the girl. She tenderly placed her fingers against the glass and then, with a sigh, returned the photograph to the dressing table. She rose from her seat and moved to the side of her bed where she drew back the duvet and then slid beneath its comfort.

Out in the Fekenham countryside an owl hooted and prepared to swoop down, with talons drawn, onto a singularly stupid rabbit that had come out of its burrow to sniff the night air. As the owl steadied itself a single shot rang out and the rabbit fell dead. The dark, phallic shape of an airship crossed the silver disc of the moon making its way to the continent. Fekenham moved from evening into deep night and life went on as it always had, as it always does.







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all words and art are copyright © of C.J. Duffy.