Memories are made of this

What right did she think she had
“Hang on, Maisy; just let me find your dog lead. I know you haven’t been out for a walk with me for over a week…but I tell you…you didn’t miss anything. If I could have got on the plane and come back to you then I would have done”.
As she walked through her pretty town she thought of her unique holiday. A shack in the hills of Budapest, a line of dead flies on the windowsill, buckets and ropes on the floor and no real bed to sleep on nor, they found out later, water turned on for over a year. Perhaps she should have been alerted when the owner of the villa where most of her work colleagues were staying for a week of yoga and health said that she should take a Hoover and a wheelbarrow for that long trek on a hot summer’s day in July to that house on the hill.
She didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry when, on complaining about the state of the place and the fact that there were no basic comforts there, that maybe her standards were too high. Then she had slept overnight on a mattress at the villa and near the store cupboard until, the following day, the frankly pleasant owners apologized for their oversight and moved out of their own room. Esther had tried to adapt to Vegan food, her day in the kitchens and being chastised for taking a bottle of Baileys to share with the other residents. How pleased she was when that holiday ended and surely there could never be another holiday any worse than that.

Maisy looked up at Esther as they walked together into the belly of the town where so much had changed since she had arrived as a scared kid from Essex. Other folk’s memories now lingered since she had been talking to them and was much more aware of her town’s history as she and her cherished terrier walked together down past the parish church. Walking in the footsteps of the Inns of Court with their billycans from their billets spread throughout their town to the metal hut in Summerlee Road all those years since. Frightened kids evacuated from London to be dispatched like parcels, with no jurisdiction where they fell. Some had stopped with Mr Donaldson, who ran the farm, whilst others boarded in a room above the butcher’s. Others with a nice kind benevolent chap of Christian principles that had done so much for the town.
The original village of Finedon, she now knew, consisted of a main street, a lesser street running parallel plots on both sides running down to the stream. She could barely imagine how, in the sixteenth century, there were probably only about seventy-five houses in Finedon, housing about three hundred people. They were lucky to still have buildings dating back from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the old Boys’ School her brothers had attended, which had been endowed in 1595, and then the old vicarage in 1688, and the Meeting House in 1690, which were said to lie at the edge of the village at that time and these were untouched by the Great Fire of 1739. Thirty-nine parishioners, some of them widowers, were excused paying hearth tax because they were too poor – that a harsh fact to get your head round! At least no-one was as poor as that now, thought Esther as she walked, then stopping to look at a lingerie shop where she was certain Arthur wouldn’t have stopped and looked for one moment. “God, how much would I like to get into them” she murmured to poor puzzled Maize as they walked on past size-ten tops. She had as much chance of going back to those days as wing-walking, parachute jumping or never wanting to eat another chocolate bar. Her mind then turned to her new project. She was never happy unless she had a new plan of action. She had been amazed just how much space 500 books called Memories of........... had taken up, now stored in dozens of cardboard boxes throughout her house. She had taken the risk and gone ahead with self-publishing at a cost of about nine hundred pounds, but to her it was worth every penny, knowing how important memories actually were, and still having huge gaps of her own history.
The next question surely was; would anyone buy them? If she had been unable to find her paternal family, despite her years of fruitless searching, perhaps it was time to stop seeking and record a little of the small town in which she had grown up.
Despite a slow and shaky start an amazing display/exhibition was mounted at their Community Centre in the millennium year. She thought the task might have been quite boring, yet it was anything but that and residents shared their rich memories with her as she scribbled them down, each time returning to ensure what she had been told by them was accurate and complete. It was amazing. Over time her file grew to more than fifty people, spread right across the social strata. In the end there was such a collected mass of social/historical material it was a matter of sticking it in the attic or sharing it with the town. She had stumbled across many fascinating stories and characters. She learned about local pit-men being injured in mining accidents, with no compensation or type of benefits coming in, and would never realize how tough times might have been back then.
How thankful she was for the help of her daughters and their friends, who had made the effort to set up the posters and nineteen stories Esther had displayed in the Community Centre. Her daughters and their friends had been keen to help, but wanted to go to the pig roast and the fun of the tug-of-war in the recreational field opposite their old junior school, and then there was a dance at night and a drink in the next town.
The crowds had appeared through the swinging doors first for refreshments, and then to see the various displays available, including a display upstairs, by the local historical society, on the yards and they could see how once life used to be .
How shocked she was to see the interest her own display had created, probably underestimating the mounting interest in history in the millennium year everywhere, not just in Finedon. Even more delighted at some of the history she had discovered as well as photos, important for some residents who were looking at filling their family gaps in the same way that, for many years, she had been aiming to do.
There on the wall, near the main entrance, was a large photo of a Boxing Day hunt in 1939, with children on bikes or running beside the huntsmen in red, passing by what would one day be Bank’s Park, where beautiful scented roses grew and Esther’s mum had probably walked with her dad, and then out by the yellow AA box and only a few cars on the road.
A picture of a carnival day in what must have been the early 1900s, with women in long dresses pinched at the waist and frilly blouses, a box camera and a box pram, all frozen in time.
There on the wall typed in 18-point, bold, were the memories of their village bobby who said that, when he trained, there was no fancy gear, no radio, but just a bike and how every hour he would be instructed to go to a certain conference point, such as the local telephone box, or the police box and then wait there for at least five minutes, which would make him accessible to the general public as well as contactable. He remembered how panda cars had been introduced and believed that this was a retrograde step, as the police could no longer be easily stopped by anyone wanting to report anything suspicious or to talk about a problem. One evening, he remembered how, having parked his panda car, his flashing blue light was pinched off the top. He said how he was responsible for Contagious Disease Notification as well as issuing Movement Licenses for animals, issuing firearm certificates, and also worked as traffic warden and did road-safety work in local schools. He said in his story how he remembered a local character digging up lead piping from the ground down at the pits and when the handle of the spade broke he left without his spade handle or the lead. He broke into the cricket ground for a drink and a quick arrest was made as the spade left behind had the culprit’s name on it. He remembered the biscuit warehouse fire, which spread right across the A6 and how eleven fire engines had to be summoned.
She had met the costs of self-publishing. It seemed only right that those who had contributed to her project should be given a book for free. Not wanting to make a profit from what was a community project, she decided to donate to charities close to home as well as thousands of miles away; to a local doctor who was treating children with facial cancers as well as street children. The daylight centre for the homeless in the next town was remembered and given items such as socks and tents, etc. Money went to Orbis, which gives sight to people in other parts of world; the surplus into meeting the costs of holding displays as well as paying for mounts, etc., for forthcoming events.
It had, in truth, been quite an interesting hobby, which had taken her six years. Her lovely friend Peter Inns patiently instructing her over many Sunday afternoons about how the book might be presented well. His wife Wendy proffering cups of tea and, once, a fried egg sandwich, which had caused hilarity at the time.
It was a shame that there was a little sprite out there making life a little more difficult when it came to distributing the books, after her car was stolen and burned out complete with several boxes of books going up into flames and then it being found later at the bottom of a lane nearby. The indignity of this was emphasized when, on identifying the same burnt-out shell which she had been able to recognize, for in the back of the boot were very blackened slates which she had been planning to take to her mum’s grave. This increased tenfold when, on identifying the same car, she had been requested by the police to pay for it to be towed to the nearest yard.
Then there came one of those days when Esther again learned nothing stayed the same forever.
“Anything else we might tempt you with Esther?” the minister asked, with his blue and white striped apron stretching considerably across his waist, splashing coffee again into the once-clean white saucer, and then pushing the cup toward the serving hatch where she had been patiently waiting her turn that November Saturday.
“A mince pie would be nice, especially as I hadn’t time for any breakfast in my rush to get my books sorted for book signing here”. She wanted to pinch herself, and also felt awkwardly proud as she walked towards the back of the church rooms, thinking just how much the room had changed since their, now adult, children had gone to Sunday School there. For a few months James had belonged to the Boy’s Brigade where Arthur was an Officer. The same room where, at the last moment one tense Christmas morning, a rapid replacement shepherd sought after James had suddenly dug in his heels and remained in the church pew rather than be seen with a tea-towel wrapped around his head. He had watched with a triumphant grin as the replacement shepherd strolled by to join the other shepherds there on the stage on Christmas morning. The same room where, years since, her own mum Laura had been presented with a complete set of leather-bound Braille hymn books after months earlier she had shown such enthusiasm and sung with gusto as she stood at the back of their little chapel and found such joy in religious words, in spite of being a atheist. Then they had been returned months after her death, them wishing another blind person to reopen the same books and sing with as much joy.Then on that book signing day, she noticed Alan joined the queue,
“I want a copy of that there book as soon as they are printed and for you to sign it”. He had said to her, months earlier. Alan had interviewed two of the people in the book and had been a constant source of encouragement, asking,
“How is the book going Esther?”
Her response and answer always the same, “Very slow!”
“You will have to do it,” he grinned, “as the whole town waits to see their story in print. One day I want to do the same!”
She couldn’t, of course, appreciate just how gifted he was at the time, or what he had been creating in his solitary way, not just for their town, but the surrounding district also. Just as she remembered where she was when the World Trade Center had been attacked, President Kennedy assassinated, what she was doing when she heard of the death of the Princess of Wales, she would see Alan forever with his hat and winter coat, bending to put on his cycle clips, before waving and going out of the chapel doors on his way to the next town of Irthlingborough, having popped his signed book into his bag. It had been an uneventful day at work that following Monday and she had finished work at 4 pm. as usual and then, on a whim, called into the news agent's on the main street in Finedon for a magazine.
“You must have been one of the last people to see Alan on Saturday. I didn’t know him as well as you, Esther, just really through him interviewing me for your book as well as him coming here most days to get his evening paper”.
She wondered what Gordon was talking about. Esther felt puzzled as she stood there now at the head of the queue, forgetting what she had gone in for and wondering why was he talking in the past tense. It was then that Gordon gestured to the stark headlines, and she learned how Alan’s journey had tragically ended, despite the efforts of the emergency services, soon after she had seen him on that last Saturday down at the chapel.
About nine months later, Esther was able to appreciate just what a special and skilled artist Alan was when his grieving mum gave over three hundred pictures dedicated to everyday ordinary people like Esther and her deceased mum. Without hesitation she promised to share his love and his gift to the town and, who knows; one day there might even be a book.
So it was that, some time later, a display was held at a local library as well as the Community Centre and the Woman’s Institute, arranging that any donations were given to a wildlife project as well as underprivileged children; that had been something close to Alan’s heart.