Horatio's burden

I’m out of practice with this driving lark. And so, it seems, is everyone else. Some car users are overly cautious, and perhaps I’m one of them. Others rush out of side roads, oblivious to oncoming traffic, and yet others flagrantly ignore speed limits. No half measures are apparent. I find concentrating rather difficult, or maybe I’m concentrating too much, gripping the steering wheel too tightly. It’s a good thing there are fewer cars and lorries on the roads than you’d expect, even now.

I’m going to North Luffenham in Rutland, close to where I left the Big Walk more than two months ago, before ‘lockdown’. First time out I won’t be very ambitious. This will be a short stroll to North Luffenham’s southerly twin village and back again. I’m carrying some emotional baggage as well as re-adjusting to the semi-normality of a thirty mile drive to a beauty spot (This is a cheap shot. In recent days, Boris Johnson’s guru, Dominic Cummings has been much in the headlines because in March he breached lockdown ‘rules’ by making a fifty mile round trip to visit Barnard Castle, described by news outlets as a ‘beauty spot. In the ‘couldn’t make it up’ category was the subsequent revelation that in North Eastern parlance to ‘do a Barney Castle’ is to do something as an excuse or on flimsy pretext. Mr. Cummings claimed that this journey, complete with child on back seat of car, was to test his eyesight post-Covid.)  

Back in February, charmed by the village of Preston, just a handful of miles from the Luffenhams, we made an offer on a charming cottage in its lovely Main Street. It was accepted too, but then came the Covid crisis. As the banks led by HSBC began to understand what was to come, they tightened the securities needed for a loan. This delayed the purchase, and just a few days ago we heard that the deal’s dead, apparently for good. Many, many people will have suffered far worse, but still, it takes some adjustment, and we feel a little bereavement: there’s a small tug at the heartstrings as I cross the Rutland border.

There’s something about the Luffenhams that reminds me of rural France in the way that each of the villages twists and turns on itself in unexpected ways. It’s a sunny, warm day, and the noon heat catches me out in the way it can at this time of the year, reflecting off the metalled surfaces of the lanes. This is the ‘track temperature’ phenomenon reported on the Formula 1 Grand prix telecasts we used to watch, where the discrepancy between tarmac and air temperature is frequently in double figures centigrade.

But first I linger in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist whose generous length and style so impressed me when I passed through in March. I can’t go in, of course, so I try to remember what I saw inside, and what I felt then, the tranquillity undercut by the weeping woman I’d seen at the church school gate. Then I heave my rucksack over my shoulder and drop down over the field towards the stream at its foot, a tributary of the River Chater, which itself feeds into the Welland. The ground is now rock hard. The unrelenting rain of the late winter is a distant memory: this will have been a record-breaking May for sunshine and lack of precipitation – virtually none. I cross the railway bridge and turn left along the lane to South Luffenham.

In the village I cross the stream again and pull up to the little green in front of St. Mary’s. Derek is tending his daughter’s garden in the house directly facing the church, and we talk. He asks where I’ve come from, and I explain what I’m doing. I don’t have the impression that Derek’s a regular churchgoer, but he takes an interest in the village’s place of worship. The story he tells me is both interesting and mind-boggling. He thinks it’s a shame the church hasn’t been kept open during the crisis, and so I give the party line – the problems of cleaning etc., though I happen to know that Rutland is one of the least virally affected places in England, and it also strikes me that in such villages there’s probably a willingness to clean relentlessly and repeatedly which may not be present in more urban settings. Nevertheless, if a building is open, one has no control over who comes in, does one?

When Derek talks about a princess being buried in the church, he assumes that I know what he’s talking about. But my mind is leaping to Althorp and the conspiracy theories about where Diana is or isn’t buried – in Great Brington church? – on an island in the Althorp grounds? etc. etc.. Then, as I quickly gather, this isn’t a discussion about conventional royalty. Derek is referring to Rose, the gypsy princess, who’s buried in St. Mary’s chancel. Her father was the ‘King of the Gypsies’, Edward Boswell. Rose died of consumption in February 1794, at just seventeen years of age. The affecting inscription on the tomb reads: ‘…what grief can vent this loss, or praises tell, how much, how good, how beautiful she fell.’

Derek’s story. He came across an Irish gypsy woman (this was how she referred to herself). She tried to sell him some linen, but he was reluctant to buy. As a traveller’s sweetener /commercial inducement she offered some unsolicited information about his family. She said a relation had just returned home from overseas (one of his children had just come back from Dubai), that his daughter was pregnant with a grandson (he didn’t know this but he rang the daughter and it was true) and that his wife was hiding a bottle of brandy from him somewhere in the house, and if it was OK with Derek she wouldn’t mind a snifter. Derek was sure his wife wasn’t – he drank only whisky – but on checking this also turned out to be true.

The pay-off line. The woman was looking for Rose Boswell’s tomb, but was puzzled that she and her partner couldn’t find it in North Luffenham church. Derek was able to tell her she would find it in St. Mary’s, South Luffenham, though the inscriptions on the marble are apparently worn smooth and not-so-readable. Thus the esoteric mysteries available from the one side were balanced by local knowledge on the other.

Derek had subsequently offered the church that he’d find a way to make the inscriptions pristine, and had both sourced a mason, and a means of finance, even ringing the Bishop to make it happen. He tried suggesting to the Bish that a Perspex cover might be a good idea, in view of the historical interest: this last was refused. (I explain about ‘faculties’ and so on, not knowing whether I’m telling Derek something he already knows…)

All of which leaves this pilgrim struggling for suitable response. I bring to this encounter my inheritance of supernatural stories from the salvation-history of the Bible, and have my own personal testimony. However, common courtesy means I now listen rather than speak, and when I do, say goodness gracious, how astonishing. I smile and nod my head appropriately, like Churchill the dog. I come away from the encounter knowing I’m in good company. South Luffenham is still a place of pilgrimage for ‘travellers’ to this day.

Beads on the rosary:  6 km. 2 hours. 22 deg C. 2 stiles. 8 gates 2 bridges.

Father
I wrote to Boris this week.
About his 'svengali'.
About arrogance.
About one rule for the generals
And another for the poor bloody infantry.

When should I challenge?
And how should I challenge?
The politicians
The clerical hierarchy
The fake news
The quackery
The misleading and the misled.
Give me by your Holy Spirit
As you promised
The words which speak truth
But do not belittle;
The words which show a willingness to listen
And learn
But are not just avoiding the issue;
The words which comfort
And illuminate
But do not patronise.
Amen.