Believe It Or Not ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 51 )

If someone pays you in advance for a story, especially if it’s the landlord of your local pub, you want to give good value. And if it’s as a result of some banter, then you have the freedom to be creative, even if the landlord might regret asking you.

I’d called into the Drum on some business and was about to leave when landlord Dave asked me what evil wind had blown me into the village from which it was never likely to recover. Dave has a way of engaging you in conversation with an insult. It’s banter and it confirms he and the person to whom the insult is aimed are on friendly terms. It’s badinage, typical of male company, but not solely, and invites a playful response. It’s like play fighting, but there are limits, for instance, a man’s virility, a woman’s figure, and the landlord’s beer.

My repost was that I’d been hoping in vain for the same evil wind to blow me back to where I came from. A direct enquiry into my arrival might have been interpreted as nosiness, as it was, it gave me the opportunity not to take it seriously. There’s more to banter than meets the ear.

‘I was in Clifton, Bristol,’ I told Dave.

‘Antiques yeh?’

I nodded as Dave poured me a half and raised a hand to indicate it was to be payment for what I was about to tell him. Payment in advance can be risky, but I was determined he shouldn’t be short changed. 

‘I had a customer,’ I began, ‘a Dr. Nick,’

‘Medical?’

‘Yes, but retired. He came into my shop one Saturday morning and said he was just browsing, so I left him to it. On about the third Saturday I asked him if he was looking for anything in particular as I might have something in my store . . ’

‘In your store?’

‘Yeh, most shops don’t have enough room to display all of their stock and it’s where I kept stuff, unsorted, unpriced, sometimes even unseen. There usually a space for cleaning or repairing, it’s how you fill your time when your not buying or selling.

‘So this Dr. Nick . .’

Yes, apparently while a student he’d started collecting old medical equipment and instruments, then later narrowed it down to Victorian surgical instruments, but was open to anything quirky or unusual.

‘A collector?’

Yes, and I’m sure you know, there are those that want to keep what they collect a secret in case you use it to up the price, and then there are those that share it in hopes you’ll put some effort into finding more of what they’re looking for. 

‘That’s a win win, they get what they want and you get a ready sale. So which was this Dr.?’

The second, after we had got to know each other.

‘Fair enough.’

He brought in some surgical instruments for me to sell on his behalf. As you know Bristol has an excellent medical school . . . 

‘I didn’t, but go on . . ‘

‘Well, student doctors have a fascination for old methods and the instruments, the more gruesome the better. So that arrangement worked well.

‘Great, so how did you land up in the village?’

Ah well, about six months before Nick appeared I had a house clearance in the Redcliffe part of Bristol. The widow of a well known surgeon who had died some thirty years before, had herself expired and the family were in South Africa. They suggested that the Medical school have first choice of anything they might find interesting amongst this surgeon’s library and ‘curios’ which he’d collected. After which I was asked to clear the house.

‘Nice one . . ‘

It got better. When practically everyone stores things in attics, it’s funny how often it’s a place that’s overlooked,

‘True, if you can actually overlook an attic.’

Quite, so when I poked my head through the hatch into the space I was greeted with years of stuff that had been stored and forgotten. Clearing that, there was some weird stuff which I moved on pretty quickly but the rest went into my store room.

‘What do you call weird?’

Well, for instance there were two mahogany boxes with brass plates each containing a human skull.

Now, I have to tell you, Dave’s expression was no surprise. I knew he was queasy about such things. For an ex-London cabby he’s easily unsettled. So when I told him there was also about thirty sealed preserving jars with a variety of human parts and diseases, in a couple of suitcases, he began biting his lip and his parlour took on a definite hint of green.

You alright Dave?’

‘Yeh, just.’

Well, all that went to the school of tropical diseases. What was in my storeroom I forgot about until Dr. Nick turned up, always on a Saturday because he was visiting his ninety year old mother in Clifton. He actually lived near a place I’d vaguely heard of called Shipston, somewhere near Shaftesbury in Dorset.

‘Ah, right.’

So, I eventually got to the surgeon’s boxes and sorted out a few for Nick to investigate.

‘I don’t need to know what it was in them. . .’

I didn’t even bother to look, just left them out as a favour to let him have first dibs.

When he came in I pointed out the boxes, but let him get on with it. I had a busy morning so I didn’t get to see what he’d found until nearly lunch time.

‘Not sure I’m going to like this . . .’

‘Nick’s was examining just a box of bones, actually a tin trunk. There was a lot of paper in the trunk, I think to protect the bones, but when we looked closer they were all religious texts, prayers and pages from a bible. There was a skull, and Nick pointed out that inside the mouth of the skull was a crucifix and some rosary beads.

At this point I thought Dave was going to be ill. So I then told him that Dr. Nick pointed out metal links and swivels attached to the bones, so what we were looking at was just a medical school type skeleton. Nick then pointed to the bracket where, if all the bones were connected, it would hang from a stand.

‘Oh! Like in ‘Carry on Doctor’ or something.’

Exactly, it what these days are made of plastic.

Anyway, I left Nick to it as I had another customer, but when I returned he was trying to see if all of the bones were there. After an hour or so he said that the major bones were present, vertebra, pelvis, scapulas, etc. but not sure about all the smaller bones of the hands and feet. He then pointed out a faded inscription, which was illegible but Nick thought it was typical of the mid to late 1800’s. That reminded me of the medical pamphlets and papers from the attic that were dated about the same and we came to a deal for them all. He called in later, pick everything up, paid and I said I’d see him the following Saturday.

‘And did you?’

‘No, but he messaged me during the week that he had assembled the skeleton and it was complete except for its left hand. He could tell by the slight damage to the radius and ulna of the lower arm that the hand had been cut off violently at the wrist, perhaps as a punishment. 

‘Yeh, I suppose they did things like that in those days.’

They did Dave. Nick didn’t appear the following Saturday, or the one after. Then I read that he’d had a terrible accident.

‘Go on.’

‘A neighbour found him in his woodshed and phoned the services but he’d been dead for a while, but there was something the police couldn’t understand.

‘What was that?’ 

They presumed it was whilst Nick was splitting logs one night, that he’d cut of his own hand and by the expression on his face, died of shock. But they couldn’t find it.

‘What?’

His hand, his left hand, quite a coincidence eh?

The police were searching when another neighbour said she saw a pale thin figure leaving Nicks about the same time as the accident. There was ‘something else’ that couldn’t be found, you see, I did the clearance . .  

‘You did? 

‘Yes Nick’s mother asked me to do it. Nick had mentioned the Drum so I dropped in here  with the boys before we went back to Bristol. It was then I saw the cottage up for sale, and well, the rest is history.’

‘So you got the skeleton back?’

‘No. That was the ‘something else’ that couldn’t be found. You see I think there was something about that skeleton. All that religious stuff that surrounded it, the crucifix and the rosary, were to ‘keep it safe’. When all that was removed, there was nothing stopping it. Nothing stopping it searching for the hand it had lost, any hand.

Dave, Dave, you alright Dave?

Dr. Nick sadly has no longer any need to visit Bristol, instead we occasionally meet up in Shaftesbury, or at an auction.

Dave has promised never to ask me again how I came to live in the village.

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

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Written and read by Barkley Johnson.