Out of Time

Out of Time

by Joy Calvert

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2013 Joy Calvert

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Chapter One

The man had been in a coma for over six weeks. He lay in the same position, with monitors recording his vital signs; blood pressure, heart rate, the subconscious flickerings of his dormant brain, without movement or acknowledgement of the outside world, the people attending him or those standing vigil and praying for his recovery. The family leaned towards him when he seemed to stir but the unchanging graphs on the monitor were practically flat lined. His prolonged coma was watched over in the Leeds Hospital intensive care unit. His suffering did not make the newspapers and his family were modest people without fame.

It was in ignorance of this that the summer holidaymakers drove to the Dales, rejoicing in their brief respite from work and their hoped-for experience of fresh air among the hills and by the lakes.

If you ever travelled north on the A65 in the 50’s or 60’s on your way to Kendal and the English Lakes you'd have passed through Settle but missed Giggleswick by a hair's breadth. Today, because a bypass has been built, you would miss both of them on your journey, blithely continuing to extend the focus of your eyes over the green fields and stone walls which stretch to the horizon one side and the cliff faces of Giggleswick Scar on the other. Motorways and bypasses have the same effect; treasures, in the shape of villages with ancient churches, are passed by, overlooked and over-ridden by the urge to arrive at a given destination in the minimal time.

Settle, and Giggleswick adjoining, are small places full of mystery. The stones, from the hills and quarries, aeons old and from warm, shallow seas, mark the fields and shelter the local people within stalwart walls. Many of the buildings date from the seventeenth century, with windows blocked in and doors walled up. They are mysterious as they prompt one to ask questions such as who lived in this or that building during the last four hundred years and who were the householders and what violence might they have witnessed? Between the houses run narrow alleyways, inviting but mysterious and threatening. They smell of damp and decay. The walls each side of them tower, stone upon stone, to the sky, feeling higher because of the narrowness of the passage. If you entered you might feel the past isn’t so far away. Could you stand still and see what happened? This is one of the effects I get from these old buildings. I feel the past lurking just out of reach.

Hiring a car from Bernard, who owned a garage not far from the centre of Leeds, we had time to catch up with his news. The business was not doing very well and his accountant was in hospital in a coma. Matthew, he called him, would have advised him if he had been able. Bernard was glad to talk but not sure that, when we next hired a car as we had done for the last five years for our holidays in the Dales, he would still be in business. His secretary, Katy, confided in David that since Bernard’s wife had left him he had very little enthusiasm for work and she feared for the business and her job. We sympathised and promised to enquire how things were, when we returned the car in four weeks’ time. Matthew had often been around when we had called there in the past and it was sad to think of him being so helpless.

When we finally reached Settle we decided to lunch at the local inn; itself a building dating back to 1671, at least as far as its massive fireplace is concerned, called ‘The Golden Lion’ in Settle. A massive stone lion lay watchful on a ledge above the main entrance, its golden coat shining brashly and its huge paws temporarily at rest. This portico was not at the original site of this inn, which had been a coaching inn on the route from Malham Moor and trading posts such as Ripon and Fountains Abbey in the east and Lancaster and Sawley Abbey in the west. It had been moved ‘round the corner’ from its original site on the old coaching route though it still had spaces for stables and a yard that would take a coach. At least five of its windows of various sizes had been blocked in by stone and mortar, to reduce the number which were liable for tax but their lintels and surrounds are still visible. The Spread Eagle Inn retained its position further down the main through-route towards the east but that is now a family home.

We were holidaying in the town but were not yet retired and my job as a history teacher continued, as did my husband's job as an engineer, allowing us very little time to talk together as we were now planning to do. I looked around the ancient room and felt very privileged to be able to plan to live, eventually, in such a rich historic environment.

While David, my husband, was at the bar I looked at him as if at a stranger. His hair was cut short but still dark and with no bald areas. He had dark eyes and took in details of his surroundings in quick glances, leaning familiarly on the bar and throwing out comments to the other men there. He knew what I would like to drink and had left me to find a place for us to sit. He was wearing a jacket and open neck shirt and grey flannels, relaxed and sure of himself as always. It still gave me a kick each time he returned to me. It was easy to forget that he had spent much of his early career in Hong Kong, passing on invaluable engineering expertise and learning to speak Cantonese at the same time. His tales of day to day living in an apartment block and being jostled every day by hundreds of city dwellers, all intent on getting to work about the same time as he, on the Star ferry, helped me picture the one-time colony. He was very conversant with Chinese food but thought that the menu in Chinese restaurants in England was tailored to the British palate and local ingredients. He told of genuine sharks’ fin soup, hundred-year-old eggs and the Chinese love of chilli. Our children were always asking about his early days there and whether he would take the family one day. He always refused and was adamant that he would never return. His conviction did not include advising his children never to go there, however, and he said he would always be interested in how things had changed if they ever made it.

‘Retirement seems to mark the end of things; a loss of friends and workplace plus a regular and sizable income. Now we are planning to give up the house we have loved and where we made a home for our children and take a leap into the dark. What on earth are we going to do with ourselves? ’ David was saying as he put a glass of wine in front of me.

‘I don't agree with you’ I replied, in a rare shared moment, ‘Retirement is a chance to try all the attractive occupations one has always wanted to do.’

‘And what is it that you’ve always wanted to do?’ he answered, ‘I’ve never stopped you from doing anything’

‘Well, watercolour painting, for instance.’ I responded without much thought.

‘Fine, there’s nothing to stop you. You could practically start today,’ he replied with a flourish as if there was nothing more to be said.

‘I can’t possibly start today. There are lots of things I need to buy before I can do that. I’d like to look for a teacher too. You can’t expect to produce anything worthwhile without tuition. It’s classed as a leisure pursuit but there is a great deal of work to it.’

‘Well don’t go buying too much. If we downsize we won’t have much room for fancy equipment and don’t you go to great expense on a whim,’ he countered negatively.

I could see that he was losing interest and really wanted to bury his nose in the newspaper. I decided that in this dark mood there would be no more to be gained by pursuing the argument. Deep down I knew that his passion for railways and trains had already led him to make contact with the Friends of the Settle to Carlisle railway and that he would spend much of his retirement at the station.

My husband, of twenty years, and I were supposedly discussing the world in general and philosophically examining what our new role was to be. We were shortly to retire and the years of working, commuting, coming home late and not enjoying our weekends as much as we might were coming to an end and I thought we would be discussing what the future might offer and what we could gain from our new-found leisure.

My name is Margaret. I’m fifty-four and planning to retire early. I’m five foot six tall and have straight hair cut into a bob. I have a square jaw and appear very ordinary, with brown eyes and a fairly large nose. Handsome might apply to me rather than good looking or even beautiful. I have never aspired to be beautiful at any time in my life but have overcome my standard features by force of character. I have enjoyed my years in teaching but now find it is increasingly paper orientated with more focus on keeping pupils on seats than on disciplining them and sharing the joys of learning. The advent of mobile phones was a bitter blow to the peaceful atmosphere that should prevail in the classroom and television has such visual impact that most of the excitement an enthusiastic teacher can generate pales into insignificance.

Increasingly disenchanted with the occupation that had been my life’s work I’d begun to wonder if retirement was a time of just waiting to die and putting a brave face on it. But maybe, I argued in my lighter moments, it was a chance, not given to all, to enjoy occupations that a working life had allowed no time for. I had been hoping for an in-depth discussion with my husband and perhaps some agreement about sharing interests, as much of our working life had been spent apart. Though I’d opted to spend my life teaching history I had at one time a fair knowledge of archaeology and spent time scraping and marking out sites in several interesting places in Britain. The old inn wakened in me a curiosity that I have always felt about the past and I knew that this ancient place would hold my interest for many years to come. Its uniqueness lay in the way its old buildings had been preserved, modified but not destroyed since the late seventeenth century as if the frugal, local people knew what architectural gems they lived with.

Having achieved a completely grey head of hair and several frown lines my optimism had taken a battering in recent months. School was taking up every waking minute and the problems of coping with each new directive from the authorities and each new insult from cocky students, were weighing heavily on my mind. I’d suffered for several years with a frozen shoulder, which gave me great pain and had migraine headaches on a regular basis. Each weekend I would resolve not to try to cope with all the paperwork that came across my desk every day and to rely more on my experience rather than spend hours planning lessons every weekend. But five minutes into the first lesson on Monday morning the futility of this resolve would come home to me. There was only one way to cope and that was to be as conscientious as I always had been and hang on.

But now I had retirement in my sights and was really enjoying four summer weeks in the Dales town I had earmarked for our retirement. We had been coming to this same area for the last eight years and were fairly well known, so the prospect of living there permanently was very attractive. It seemed to have everything that we needed and was set in an amazing landscape. In addition the town and the surrounding district were full of history. The building we were sitting in was built in the 16th century and apart from the archways for carriages and stabling for horses it had a small door in its outer face which would only allow persons less than 5 ft 5 to enter without bending. The ancient chimney, usually alight with log fires and surrounded by all the paraphernalia of a bygone age, was the focus of the lounge as it always had been. The place had always been an inn and now, though modernised, was still a place of shelter that gave one time for reflection. This planning of the future also involved considering the past. One cannot help reflecting on time past and present and our short duration on the earth when surrounded by so many reminders of past events and people who are no longer here.

Close by us reared an ancient fireplace blackened by centuries of fires and with a hearth tall enough for a man to stand upright in. The brass firedogs each side of the roaring flames stood stiffly and looked, with melancholy, into the inn. Perhaps they were wondering how time had changed the people who took warmth from their welcoming and well-guarded hearth. Beside the fire was a heap of logs drying and waiting for their turn to be cast into the flames. The rich odour of wood smoke and the bright sparkle of the flames held my eye. Red-hot caves of fire glowed in between the logs and as each one settled on its way to extinction the fire coughed and choked as if to express its satisfaction at a job well done. In the deep chimney brickwork, incised with the date 1671, were three niches, home to small farming instruments at present but perhaps planned for more interesting items originally.

Perhaps we could get involved in helping to renovate or preserve the older buildings in the district, I mused. There was Preston's Folly built by a rich wool merchant who died in 1695 which was never completed in his time and now in need of repair and upkeep generally. It is Grade 1 listed and houses the Museum of North Craven Life. It gained its name, perhaps, because it was occupied for a mere thirty years before being sold, divided up and let to a series of tenants over the next 250 years. I could volunteer as a steward or a documentation assistant but this would be in the future when we had, at last, found our new home. There was a Protestant church too, in the town, built in 1838, which needed running repairs to stop the damp and to enable the disabled to enter. I resolved to attend there in the future but had somehow been drawn to the really ancient Giggleswick church, which appealed to my fascination with history.

Continual damp was an ever -pressing problem in the town as rainfall from the west fell on the hills almost without ceasing, during some months. This made the ancient river worthy of its ten-foot deep bed and allowed artists and philosophers to gaze upon its rushing waters reflectively and regularly, never seeing the same river twice. Now where did I read about not being able to step into the same river twice? The source eludes me but while we are here in this past-become-present, perhaps we shall have a chance to make our mark before we become distant memories.

So what were we going to start with and what were we going to get involved in when we were free to move here permanently? This was supposed to be part of the conversation that day. The ancient local churches attracted many visitors as they were full of history and full of mystery. The thought of a Norse foundation to the Giggleswick church actually filled me with dread. I would need to know more than I might like of this ancient church. What was the origin of its saint’s name ‘St Alkelda’? How many centuries of the dead are buried in or around its walls and where are the very ancient stones of the original building? As I mused and resolved to find out more about these places I gradually realised that I was staring out of the window and not really listening to comments about our lunch from my husband. Passing the window were tourists and local people intent on their errands and engrossed in their own worlds and lives. They never raised their eyes and never spared a glance towards me but I picked up on several of them with interest. Realising at last that I had David’s full attention again I pressed on with the conversation, putting down my glass I order to make a point.

‘I must find out more about the local churches. Did you know that Giggleswick church has foundations that were laid down around the year 1200?’ I began.

‘No, that surprises me. Are there ancient ruins there?’

‘Not at all, it’s a thriving church with modern facilities and enough money from local bequests to be planning extensions and renovations.’

‘Will they be excavating at all? You’d like that.’

‘Yes I would get involved for certain if they did. Imagine what secrets there could be in a building with such an old foundation.’

‘When would you start? We’ve not much time at the moment. When we move here permanently you could get involved.’ David added decisively. He’s too practical for my liking. Did he think I’d pick up my trowel and brush this morning?

‘There is a history shop not far from here. I plan to visit it and find out all I can about the churches and more of the history of the area. Perhaps there are already excavations going on that I could be involved