From time to time I may include the writing of others here … this is an essay my father wrote after he had retired and was taking a Creative Writing course. Parts of something like this may find their way into a projected memoir I am compiling….
Grandfather Newmarch
By
John Graham Shaw
You
must refer to the register in the old Parish Church of Thornton Curtis, in the
county of Humberside, England, for an unbroken succession of Newmarch
generations, dating back to 1536 AD in the same village. However, with the
passing of my maternal grandfather, Frederick Neville Newmarch, followed by the
death of his only sister, my great aunt Ada Mary Newmarch, and predeceased by
his only son, Daniel, the family name has ceased in that district.
For
many years this rural community regarded Fred and Ada as characters, among its
many other eccentric personages, where he was the village postman and she, a
late-married ex-school teacher, owned the only general store on the high
street.
When
on duty he wore the official uniform provided by the General Post Office, and,
while not frail, he was painfully thin, and the high-necked, navy blue jacket
enveloped him too generously, and the red-striped trousers were too baggy at
the knees and seat. However both of these garments looked tailor made when he
donned his shiny black leather belt, and crowned with his special cap, with its
patent leather peaks front and back , and his silver badge of authority, he
mounted his once pillar box red bike and made his daily rounds, delivering the
mail, in all weathers, throughout the hamlet from the carriers affixed to the
handlebars and over the rear wheel.
It
was when he was off duty that this minor government official blossomed into an
authentic north-countryman, and the real Fred Newmarch emerged, as a wiry,
strong, healthy individual, with irregular, tobacco-stained teeth and a walrus
moustache; short, sparse, grey hair, bright blue, humourous eyes behind small
much-repaired spectacles; all with a broad Lincolnshire-accented manner of
speech.
The
better items of his civilian attire had once belonged to the local squire, and
had been given to my grandmother Newmarch by his widow after her husband’s
demise. The lord of the manor had been of robust girth, and the jacket,
waistcoat and trousers provided their new wearer with more than ample room to
wield a scythe, plunge a garden fork, or swing an axe, without restriction or
restraint.
The
materials of these cast offs were of the finest weavings of selected pure
wools, in the subtle earth tones so favoured by the gentry of England. It was a
further tribute to their high quality and durability that they served their
quite unimpressed recipient so well through so many more years of hard wear,
and total neglect, before he, in turn, discarded them as being tattered beyond
the limits of respectability.
This
once new clothing soon took a more comfortable, lived-in aspect, and the earth
tones became downright shabby, even when set off by an inexpensive watch chain
hanging between the pockets of the once canary yellow waistcoat. The weather
beaten, thin face was topped by a battered, shapeless tweed hat, and his feet
were encased in enormous, muddy, hob-nailed boots. This picture of elderly
rural manhood was always replete with a gnarled, cherry-wood pipe, with a
smouldering wad of foul smelling navy shag tobacco.
In
either of his guises he addressed everyone, young or old, male or female, with
“Halooo theeer, Bill” and he, in his turn, was affectionately known everywhere
in the district as Old Bill.
At
all times he deliberately cultivated the broadest of rural Lincolnshire
accents, and enjoyed the farce of being tape recorded by earnest students of
dying north country dialects. They were most anxious to capture his archaic
speech patterns before the BBC succeeded in inflicting a standard English
pronunciation across the land, to almost perfectly emulate its continuous
output of radio and television broadcasts.
During
the summer months grandfather Newmarch joined great aunt Ada’s husband, Fred
Lacey, and on their bicycles, with ther elderly but able-bodied men, took their
hand scythes, sharpening stones, oil cans, homemade bread, sandwiching thick
slabs of fat pork bacon, wedges of cheddar cheese, homegrown tomatoes, an apple
from their jointly owned tree, accompanied by a dark green bottle filled with
refreshing, cold, sweet tea, to augment their meager incomes by cutting and
tidying the long grass and edges at the sides of the paved roads throughout the
Parish. They each received a miniscule stipend from the local municipality for
this strenuous chore; but successfully negotiated an unofficial bonus from a
local farmer in exchange for the grass cuttings to supplement his store of
cattle fodder for the winter season.
These
roadside maintenance duties were regularly extended by the same team of scythe
wielders into the churchyard, where grave visitors admired the high quality of
their graveyard maintenance performance.
Clad
in their Sunday best suits of serviceable dark serge, wearing squeaky, black,
medium duty boots, and sporting freshly laundered, but tieless shorts, many of
these same men, including Old Bill and great-uncle Fred, made up a team of
accomplished bell ringers. Each Sunday morning the village of Thornton Curtis
was filled with the exquisite sound of differing peals and complex changing
sequences from the large number of bells in the tower, all tolled manually by
long, tasseled ropes from an upper gallery platform by this modest body of
experts.
In
addition to these daily, weekly, and seasonal activities, “Old Bill” panted and
dug up all the vegetables and fruit needed by his large family. At the end of a
long, narrow, cultivated garden stood, next to the outhouse and chicken run, a
well-kept pig sty with its well-fed occupant; bought as a piglet, and brought
to an impressive size by a regular diet of swill and kitchen scraps. At the
proper time, the fully grown pig was taken to the village butcher who, for a
small fee, processed it humanely into hams, roasts, bacon, pies, and sausages
in sufficient quantities to serve as meals for several months to come; during
which time the next piglet was installed and nurtured towards a similar future
fate; but always addressed by my grandfather with “Halo theeer, Bill”, with the
utmost courtesy.
His
post office route, garden, chickens and pig-keeping chores, gossiping with his
cronies, quaffing an occasional pint of ale, were interrupted at regular
intervals by the need to fetch drinking water from the single pump, which
served the whole village. The imposing edifice of weathered, unpainted wood,
with its shiny, well-used timber handle worked surprisingly well, considering
the total lack of any systematic, authorized maintenance of its mysterious
working parts, and its constant year round use. The water, brought to the
surface from an inexhaustible subterranean spring was copious, cold and crystal
clear at all times. Conveying the water from this pump to the large clay urns
in the cool, stone floored kitchen larders of each household, depended on a
variety of means; ranging from two buckets suspended and balanced from a wooden
shoulder yoke to a quite sophisticated vertical, open-topped, cylindrical
vessel of galvanized iron, pivoted from the trunnions of a two-wheeled trolley
of cast-iron, propelled manually by two handles and equipped with a floating,
circular, wooden board to control wave action and to prevent spillage during
its travel over rough terrain. Because of their cost these mobile water tanks
were jointly owned and shared by several families, and my grandfather
subscribed to one of these mutual arrangements.
Water
for laundry, ablutions and gardening were separately supplied from rain
barrels, replenished by rainfall drained from the tiled roof slopes of the
individual cottages.
Although
a man of amiable disposition, popular with all those on his postal route;
especially with babies and school children, who all loved to be greeted by the
uniformed postman with “Haloooo theeer, Bill”, he nevertheless had a short
explosive temper. This manifested itself most often against his faithful old
bike, whenever it gave trouble through a breakdown of its elderly moving parts,
or when the oft-mended tires sprang yet another leak. At such times he has been
known to kick the offending steed, throw it at the nearest wall, and at times
of extreme provocation to lay it down and jump on it, while filling the air
with loud blasphemous oaths peculiar to that part of Lincolnshire.
As
was usual with north country folk, the meals were always regular, ample and
nourishing. The only unusual arrangement at the Newmarch table concerned the
mid-day dinner, at which the dessert was served and eaten before the main
course of meat and vegetables. As my grandfather explained to me: “…sithee,
Bill lud, tha doesn’t neard soo mooch meart ufta thy pudd’n…” which one of the
forementioned students of country dialects might have translated as: “…see
here, after a great helping of inexpensive suet pudding and custard sauce, even
an active ditch digger has a reduced appetite, satisfied by much less of the
expensive meat course to follow…”
The
effective economics of this unusual meal sequence had been necessary to sustain
his large family on a small weekly wage from the Post Office, and with other
unusual practices became his lifelong pattern for the stringent management of
his very limited resources. His supper, before retiring to bed, never varied
from a large bowl of cubed, stale bread, soaked in hot milk, with sugar,
accompanied by a huge mug of strong tea.
Notwithstanding
his normally frugal attitude to material needs, he had an ungovernable passion
for old, non-functioning clocks. Each year he would visit the annual Brigg Fair
in search of yet another one of these to add to his large collection, with nary
a “tick” or a “tock” between them. His avowed intention was to repair each and
every one, one of these days; but like all true procrastinators, together with
his lack of patience, and absence of manual dexterity, that day never dawned;
and the ever growing collection of dormant old clocks became an ongoing family
joke, and a progressive strain on available, suitable storage space in his
small cottage.
His
peaceful passing, the result of old age, came after keeping intact his lifelong
avoidance of the medical profession and its related institutions. Attesting to
his popularity a great number of people attended his funeral, where only a few
hundred feet separated his cottage, with his surviving widow, from the
well-tended churchyard, where he lays in a modest grave, with a small granite
headstone, the last male of a long respected lineage.
The
Newmarch surname has been continued as a Christian name in the person of my
eldest granddaughter, Florence Newmarch Shaw, of Toronto, Canada. She will
likely travel to England one day, curious to pursue the Lincolnshire source and
ancestry associated with her middle name; and to explore the village of her
great-great-grandfather, “Old Bill”.
