I have long since been an atheist myself but I remain grateful and glad that I have a Church of England background. It gave me so much, not only musically but also with regard to the English language, architecture and other cultural spin-offs. I doubt if I would feel the same if I had met it a century or more earlier, when it still held real sway over people’s minds and lives, but I seem to have met it at just the right moment in its decline. In spite of all the sexual inhibitions and guilt that it left me with I remain indebted to my Church of England background that has brought me so many unexpected riches. Our national religion was all around us in those days, at school, in our language, on the wireless, in our national consciousness, in a way that it is no longer. It gave us boundaries and shape to our view of the world and it was Auntie Rose who set us on the road by insisting that we went to church and Sunday school, and Uncle Jack who made us listen to the beauty, both musical and verbal. I still use for reference, or just to read the language, my King James Bible and
The Book of Common Prayer
presented to me in September
1940
and September
1942
for Sunday-school attendance and inscribed by the shadowy Reverend Oatey. Unfortunately I have lost my
Hymns Ancient and Modern
, which probably has ‘September
1941
’ written inside it. The best of religions, full of glory and utterly ineffectual.
I used to go and play often with the Burfords, Pat, June, Peter and Derek, at Little Treburgey Farm,past Treburgie Water and across the Lostwithiel road, where they lived. An avenue of magnificent beech trees led to the farm. As soon as I reached it I would start to sing. This avenue formed a natural nave which sent my voice echoing back to me. Alone in my beautiful cathedral I used to let rip with all my being into whatever we were rehearsing at the time and into my favourites. ‘Jerusalem’, of course, was one of them and I would send it soaring up into the branches to come back at me. My voice never sounded better and it gave me the confidence to stand up and sing it in the East Cornwall Silver Voice competition one anti-acoustic day in Liskeard cattle market when sound was shredded by lowing cattle, bleating sheep and a gusting wind. The marketers stood in respectful silence while we children entertained them but it must have been thin gruel. I won, possibly because I was the loudest, and was presented with a half-crown’s worth of National Savings stamps and a bucketful of pride for Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack.
One Christmas towards the end of my time there Betty Cormack and I sang the carol ‘Good King Wenceslas’ in costume to the school, indeed the whole village. She was the King and I was his/her page. Auntie Rose sat beaming at me from the audience and Uncle Jack looked suitably critical. The downside of that was that I had to write about it in detail to Mum and Dad. Well, at least I had a subject for my letter that week.
Cornwall is probably the warmest county in the country but when the wind swung round the wrong way and came down off the moor it used to cut through us as we walked to school and back; we would run home to get out of it. One Christmas had a brief, very cold snap. There was more than a smattering of snow on the ground being blown into your face by a biting northerly wind. Under the snow were sheets of ice, which had fallen as rain and froze before the snow came. By Boxing Night we children must have been driving our parents and foster-parents mad because we were all let out, or perhaps sent out, to play. The Plummers, Jack and me huddled in the Court. We hit on the idea of going carol singing, unusual, as far as I remember, in our world. We collected Jimmy Peters, the Bunney children, Harold and Alan Packham. Eight or ten of us gathered. Someone found an old tin and we punched a slot into the lid. We had our collecting box. We wrote ‘Mrs Churchill’s Russian Red Cross’ on the side of the tin, so it must have been
1941
or more likely ’
42
, by which time the Russians had been invaded by the Germans and were on our side. We started singing in the Court, were given some money and set off into the blackest of nights. We didn’t notice the temperature or wind-chill in our enthusiasm. Half a mile up the road to Dobwalls were some cottages down a lane. We sang and knocked, were given some money, sang some more and went on our way. Down the road to Crago’s farm. The same story. Across another half-mile of frozen field to the houses on the Lostwithiel road at Treburgie Water, where some sort of party was in progress. We were asked into the glorious warmth and stood in rows, singing the parts, solos and in unison to the householders and their guests, who smiled benevolently at us as we performed. They applauded us, gave us food, drink and money, and off we went. Another trek across fields and down lanes. More coins clanking into our tin. We stopped at a crossroads, crouched in a circle and emptied it on to the icy tarmac to count it by the light of a torch. On through the bitter dark night with tingling fingers, ears and toes to other isolated houses and finally triumphantly home. Fifteen shillings, we raised. We got a postal order, sent it off and proudly showed everyone our letter of acknowledgement signed by Mrs Churchill herself.
C
hapter
S
eventeen
Some sort of a Silver Voice competition was held every year in many villages. Jack and I were to sing a duet, coached by Uncle Jack: ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ by Johann Sebastian, Jack singing the alto line, me the treble. Uncle Jack wanted us to win this for many reasons: his Welsh pride in singing; his previous work with Gwyn; his desire to beat the ‘God-botherers’ in their own backyard. It must have been in
1943
because Jack was due to go back to London to the Poly and Elsie was heavily pregnant. The competition was to be held in Dobwalls Methodist Chapel, the largest space in the village – someone had realised that the cattle market was no place for children’s voices. Jack kept complaining to Uncle Jack that his voice was ‘going funny’.
‘Don’t you dare let it break till after the competition,’ Uncle Jack said.
We arrived at the Methodist chapel along with most of the district. I had tried to persuade Elsie to come but she had refused; she was too shy or ashamed to go to such a gathering with her burgeoning stomach and, had she asked, I am sure Miss Polmanor would have refused permission for her even to leave the house in such shape: literally publicising her sin. We all sat in a state of excitement as the chapel filled. Auntie Rose pulled my sock up, straightened Jack’s tie, ineffectually smoothed our cropped hair. ‘There. You look a pair now, both of you.’ Her favourite compliment.
‘Nervous, boys?’ asked Uncle Jack.
‘A bit.’
‘That’s good. You should be. Take good big breaths, you’ll see ’em all off.’
The congregation sang ‘Ye Holy Angels Bright’ with its glorious descant and all the competitors’ voices were warmed up.
The Reverend Clifford Buckroyd welcomed us all while the Reverend R. O. Oatey sat beside him and smiled vaguely: joint denominational events were rare. Buckroyd led us in a prayer which beseeched God to give the children tuneful voices and the judges clear minds. Like all prayers of whatever denomination it finished with ‘. . . and bless all our forces, army, navy and air force, wherever they may be’, always followed by a fervent ‘Amen’ from everyone.
During the prayer, while everyone’s head was lowered, someone slipped onto the bench beside me, nudging me along. It was Elsie. She grinned covertly, proud of her own daring. I was both glad and embarrassed to see her there.
Uncle Jack had no such qualms. ‘Hello, Elsie,’ he said, none too quietly. ‘You decided to support us, then, is it?’
Elsie grinned briefly as I was aware of something else going on. Miss Polmanor was on her feet. ‘Mr Buckroyd. Mr Buckroyd.’
‘Yes, Miss Polmanor?’
‘In view of the fact that most of the children of the village are here this evening, I wonder if you fully approve of the congregation?’
What on earth was this? Some sort of attack on the fact that C of E people were in her Wesleyan chapel?
Buckroyd was equally confused. ‘I don’t think I quite understand, Miss Polmanor.’
‘This is a children’s occasion. We should be protecting them. From corruption. From lewdness.’
The penny was dropping all round the chapel. There were murmurs and a muttered ‘Hear, hear’.
Elsie squirmed beside me. ‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’
I must say, no matter what I thought of Miss Polmanor, she had guts, the conviction of her beliefs. She had already reported Elsie to the authorities, sparking off the decision to have her sent away to a home, but she hadn’t kicked her out, that would have been unchristian. But now she was prepared to stand up in public and make a fuss about Elsie attending this gathering when she should have been invisible at home. ‘While our menfolk are away fighting God’s holy war we womenfolk should be setting an example, not pointing the way down the primrose path to damnation. I think you all know to whom I refer.’ She didn’t even need to point at Elsie.
There were more murmurs, a louder ‘Hear, hear’, and Elsie got to her feet. Whatever battles Elsie had fought and won against Miss Polmanor when they were at home, she was thoroughly cowed now.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Buckroyd. I am, honest. I only came to hear the boys sing. I’ll go – I—’
A hand came across me and grabbed her. ‘You bloody sit down and don’t move,’ growled Uncle Jack. It was the showdown he must have been dreaming of for twenty years since the
1918
armistice.
Elsie was crying. ‘No, no, I—’
Everything started to go very fast. People were talking loudly as Miss Polmanor said, ‘I saw her. She slipped in while we were all at prayer’, as Buckroyd said, ‘Please, Miss Polmanor, I am sure there is no need—’ and Uncle Jack topped it all with, ‘What’s she supposed to have done then, eh, missus?’
Auntie Rose pulled at Uncle Jack’s sleeve without much conviction. ‘Oh Jack, don’t make a scene,’ but I am sure she was on his side; it was only her natural aversion to public display that prompted her to object.
Miss Polmanor’s voice rose above the hubbub. ‘Sinned. As well you know, Mr Phillips. Sinned again and again.’ Three years of failure with Elsie’s morals tinged her voice.
Buckroyd managed to get in with ‘Please, please, this is a house of God.’
‘Durst we not mention sin in the house of God now?’
‘Elsie may have transgressed—’ began Buckroyd.
Uncle Jack had the best pair of lungs there. He used them now. ‘Let him or
her
that is without sin cast the first stone.’
‘I was about to use those very words,’ said Buckroyd.
‘Then what’s all this transgressing?’ said Uncle Jack. ‘She did what come natural.’
‘I intended no censure,’ said Buckroyd.
‘Then why
not
?’ Miss Polmanor was indignant.
Poor Buckroyd, under attack from two directions. Oatey, as far as I remember, wisely stayed out of it all. The place was seething by now, with people taking sides, joining in or just sitting, fascinated by some entertainment they had never expected, much better than children warbling.
Uncle Jack continued without pause. ‘And if anyone should leave this house, you should order
her
out . . .’
Mr Buckroyd chimed in, ‘Mr Phillips, I’m not ordering anyone out. That’s not my—’
‘. . . for the sin of envy. We all know she’d like to have been in this state years ago only no one’d touch her, bloody dried-up old haybag.’
We were all shocked at this. It took the row into another dimension.
Buckroyd showed his dismay. ‘Oh, now, Mr Phillips, that is not Christian.’
‘Well, I’m not one of them, thank God. Come on, Rose. Come on, boys, let’s breathe some clear air outside. Elsie, you want to walk home with us, is it?’
As far as I know East Cornwall never did get its Silver Voice for
1943
, but I can’t be sure because events in my life crowded out what went on in Dobwalls. The voice of propriety, the voice of conformity, had a strength then that went far beyond the outbursts of frustrated old maids, as we all discovered when the vackies’ billeting officer came and went one day. Though what followed seems antediluvian as well as inhuman to us now, it happened. I suppose all one can say is that millions of children were sent away from their parents in the evacuation and someone, somewhere had to make some rules. I was not allowed to hear what he said and he missed Uncle Jack, which was just as well. He had an order: I was not to associate with Elsie again for my ‘moral welfare’. She was unmarried, fifteen, underage, and pregnant; I was ten. Breach of this could result in my being taken away from Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack, again for my ‘moral welfare’. By the look of him when I saw him walking away up the Court the billeting officer had not enjoyed his mission any more than Auntie Rose had.
‘Has the world gone mad?’ Auntie Rose asked me rhetorically, not even seeing me before her.
Uncle Jack got home from work. He was predictably purple. ‘God save us all from the clutches of the bloody Holy Ones,’ he spat. ‘The sooner they all join Him in heaven and leave us down yere in peace . . .’ He threw his jacket across the room.
Auntie Rose went out to gather eggs while he calmed down.
I was coming out of school a day or so later when I met Mr Buckroyd. He greeted me as usual and got a half-hearted or surly response. ‘What’s the matter, Terry?’