The Stranger ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 17 )

The storyteller returning from a walk shares a bench with a stranger 

who tells the story of a visit to his birthplace, but does he, or the place, exist? 

It was late afternoon by the time I had descended Croft Hill and the rise onto the common from where the village settled in the valley below becomes visible. A commemorative bench has been sited where the view is best and it begs you to take a seat. A man of perhaps eighty or ninety had arrived before me so I asked him if he minded me joining him. He shook his head so I perched on the end and I took out my OS map with a view to identifying what I could see. I’m no stranger but it fascinates me to see in print what lies over the miles before me.

‘Been walkin’ then,’ the man said. I answered with a smile and asked him if he did.

‘Not any more,’ which I thought was a bit of a contradiction considering where we were.

I was about to put the map away and continue down to the village when he asked me if I’d ever heard of a place called, Skimmelpenny?

I told him I hadn’t and asked him where it was. He told me it was about five miles west of the village. I opened up the map to give me a good view of at least five country miles. I looked closely for the place but nothing resembling Skimmelpenny was printed. There were places I had driven through, and some walked to, but Skimmelpenny was a name I had never seen or heard mentioned.

‘I can’t find it,’ I told the chap.

‘You won’t,’ he replied and I thought at first maybe it was a name known only to locals but there was something about his tone that implied there was more to it.

‘What’s it like?’ I asked, ‘Is it a village . . . ?’

He turned to look at me in a way that judges if you are ready to hear something, ready to believe.

He told me how he remembered tradesmen travelling through the countryside. They might be selling pots and pans, gardening implements, he recalled a sharpener with a push cart. Gypsies too would call selling not only lucky heather, but a range of oddments, pegs for instance. To a small child these travellers were an entertainment and they would gather a group of children behind them, not always to the sellers liking. 

He remembered one gentleman calling who wore a stove pipe hat and a long dark coat. He seemed very tall, but he reminded me he was a small child at the time. There was some debate at the front door between the caller and his father. There were raised voices but eventually they subsided and the ‘dark man’ left pushing his wares along the lane to the next village. His father closed the door and placed a map on the kitchen table and he presumed that it was what his father had just purchased and the debate was over its price. It seemed an odd purchase when there were other necessities far more pressing than a map of the local hills and villages, but then he pointed out, it may not have been what it appeared to be. He thinks back and it could have been that his father was trying to sell the map, and the ‘dark man’ refused to buy. 

‘That wasn’t the only time,’ he told me now he looks back, ‘father tried to sell the map to anyone who called, and then they stopped calling.’

He told be his name was George and that his father Albert Harris died soon after and the family, his mother and younger sister, moved to the outskirts of Shipston. In his twenties he, and his new wife moved to the village to take up an agricultural job and the tied cottage that went with it. It was when he was moving that he found the map that his father had been trying to sell. It was printed on a kind of cloth, well worn and the colours had faded. After the move he took out the map and looked for the place where he had grown up, Skimmelpenny, By a stream with a dozen or so houses, a mill and a road that travellers might use heading to or from Shipston, it was exactly what he remembered.

One Easter when George’s wife was nursing their son he decided to take a walk having some time off to visit his birthplace. He set off with the map navigating the footpaths and trying to interpret the landmarks making steady progress towards Skimmelpenny. It was a concern to George that it seemed to be taking far longer than he thought. It was almost dusk when he sat down to take a rest before admitting he would have to turn back having failed to reach his destination. 

He was awoken by the sounds of a cart and someone asking if he needed a lift. The bright sunshine prevented him from seeing much but he asked the driver if he could be taken to Skimmelpenny. George thought that there he should be able to get a message to his wife that he was safe and would be returning straightaway. The driver seemed amused and told George it was where he was heading. No sooner had George climbed aboard than on the verge next to where he had spent the night he saw the sign Skimmelpenny. How he hadn’t seen the sign the day before he couldn’t understand.

Arriving at last at his destination George noticed a building resembling an old tavern. He went in and asked if there was a telephone he could use. The response baffled him, they had no idea what he was talking about. Certainly the place was devoid of any modern conveniences. George asked if there was a chance of some breakfast and produced a few coins as a offer to pay. The coins caused more confusion, and neighbours began arriving, curious to see the stranger having been alerted by the carter. 

George began to notice the clothing was unusual their speech was broader and there were words he couldn’t understand. Their confusion and curiosity had turned to suspicion. Someone called Simon was sent for and when he arrived the situation took a turn for the worse. Simon was a kind of clergyman come village elder full of his own importance and looked upon George as a threat, he was different, something to be feared. George was searched and the map they found was proof as no ordinary person would have such a thing. Proof of what they didn’t say. The difference in his clothing, the way he spoke, all were evidence of George being dangerous. Fear ran through Skimmelpenny that more like George could soon be on their way. The magistrate was sent for to make an example so as to discourage others and to await his arrival, George was locked in the cellar. 

George’s pipe and tobacco had been left with him for fear such personal items may carry disease or some evil intention. Everywhere was prejudice and superstition and as day drifted into night George began to fear the next day might be his last.

George took out his box of matches, struck a match in the darkness to get his bearings and to scare away the rats and mice. He lay amongst barrels and the trap doors through which they were lifted was his only way out onto the lane. The smoke caused the tavern dog to bark but not before George had burnt away the lock, opened the trap door and escaped.

George spent two days evading his pursuers in a countryside without any modern machinery, populated by dozens of workers toiling in the fields with hoes and forks, what they couldn’t do horses did. Sheltering one night beneath a haystack, George was woken in the morning by a fall of light rain, the haystack had disappeared and a tractor driver was telling him it was dangerous to sleep in the middle of a field in the middle of harvest. Using the farm’s telephone George was able to tell a neighbour to inform his wife he was safe and on his way home.

George never risked trying to find Skimmelpenny again and has never found any other map that mentioned it, only the map his father had bought, or tried to sell.

‘So where were you born?’ I asked George.

This stranger, George, gave me a knowing look and said,

‘Maybe I wasn’t’

Listen to Village Tales and other short stories from the HONKEYMOON CAFE

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Written and read by Barkley Johnson.