Engel's England Page 3
The vulnerability of plum blossom is very real. Because it comes so early, it is at risk from equinoctial gales and late frosts. Many gardeners believe plum trees fruit in alternate years, which is sort of, but not precisely, true. With plums, it is always famine or feast. My neighbour on the bus remembered her mother, in pre-war Birmingham, getting word that they were being sold off at a farthing a pound, one-tenth of a modern penny: ‘She made a hundred pounds of plum jam that year.’ In such seasons, the slender boughs often get snapped by the sheer weight of fruit.
My theory is that English soft fruit, unreliable though it is, always tastes best because it is on the edge of its range and so ripens more slowly. That’s another argument that wouldn’t go down well with a Tesco manager.
I realised only with hindsight what an appropriate place Worcestershire was for the start of this journey. Nowhere better represents the England of the imagination: the idealised, disembodied England of folk memory and fantasy.
Small towns, all of them close to each other, nestle in the lowlands, the hills never far from view. Each of them became famous for producing something now more likely to come from thousands of miles away: plums from Pershore; nails and buttons from Bromsgrove; carpets from Kidderminster; needles from Redditch; salt from Droitwich. They are separated by villages that are absurdly rich in thatch and half-timbering and ecclesiastical overstatement, rather less rich in natural vibrancy. Broadway is a theme park of bogus Englishness, maintained for tourists. But there are others just as nice and far less famous, like Elmley Castle, which appear to have been hijacked by commuters to Worcester and Brum.
Perhaps no county has been mucked around so much by boundary-fiddlers. Small-scale land swaps with neighbours have gone on for centuries. Until 1911 the south-western suburbs of Birmingham were part of Worcestershire. Long after that, the county included parts of the Black Country, including Dudley, retained as an island enclave in hostile territory. (Dudley was built up by the seventeenth-century ironmaster Dud Dudley, who one might have assumed was an American blues musician.)
Most of the guidebook writers were so appalled by this aspect of Worcestershire they recoiled in horror: ‘Hideous,’ said Hutchinson’s Britain Beautiful. In the late twentieth century, Worcestershire had a brief, discreditable reign as an occupying power when the absurd county of Hereford and Worcester was created, and little Herefordshire was crushed under the Worcester jackboot. (I may be overdramatising just a fraction.) Even now, Worcestershire has a pleasingly irrational shape, full of peninsulas and inlets, ensuring that Broadway and Tenbury Wells are in and Tewkesbury is out.
The imperial overlordship of Herefordshire was an uncharacteristic phase. The typical Worcestershire town has generally been dozy, inward-looking, entire of itself. Perhaps that’s why, in the 1640s, Worcester was the Faithful City, the one that failed to get the message about the swing from the king: the first to declare for Charles I; the last to surrender – more Royalist even than Oxford. There was a sense at the time that Worcestershire could remain loyal and be self-sufficient if necessary, though the passage of armed convoys down the Severn to reach the sea might have got a little wearing after a while.
And now there cannot be a town in the kingdom that feels as removed from surrounding reality as Malvern. As I left Evesham for the forty-minute drive, Jane Mason’s husband, Nick, said he couldn’t understand why anyone retired to Malvern because everything was uphill. When I arrived, I went to see George Chesterton, a former Worcestershire cricketer and later deputy head of Malvern College, who explained that was the secret of its success: it keeps ’em fit. ‘People come to Malvern to die,’ he said, ‘and then they don’t.’ At eighty-eight, thoroughly perky, having spent almost his entire life in the town, he was the evidence for his own case.
What a distinctive town this is. ‘In my childhood,’ wrote Jonathan Keates in the late 1970s, ‘it always seemed full of old ladies and schoolgirls – the former have, alas, broken ranks, but the latter remain in force – four girls’ boarding schools, the famous Malvern College for boys, and six prep schools.’
Since then, the balance of power has switched back again. The second-division schools have all closed (Chesterton recited them to me: ‘Lawnside, The Abbey, Douglas House, Ellerslie …’) and the old ladies and gentlemen dominate the place. It is a town where men go out in jackets and ties for no obvious purpose; and the menswear department of Brays may be the last in Britain to display pyjamas prominently in the window.
On the one hand, Malvern is the most English of towns. On the other, it feels curiously foreign, like an Indian hill station in the last years of the Raj – Simla or ‘Snooty Ooty’. In some ways, it seems dull as ditchwater: ‘Hey, let’s go and buy some pyjamas.’ Yet the setting is freaky, dreamlike. The hills, as Keates put it, are ‘triumphant in their suddenness’, and the town girdles them, the atmosphere changing street by street. Sometimes one seems to be in an Italian painting. Next moment the Rhondda.
And ditchwater you never get in Malvern. The place grew rich because of the purity of the water that permeates the rock and escapes through dozens of springs. It is not that Malvern Water contains any healthy minerals: its secret is an absence of anything unhealthy. There was a local verse about the town’s eighteenth-century pioneer:
Malvern Water
Says Dr John Wall
Is famed for containing
Nothing at all.
Which, in that pre-sanitary era, was in itself a benefit. Wall’s ideas mutated into the nineteenth-century pseudo-science of hydropathy, which was held to cure anything. Everyone came to Malvern: Florence Nightingale was a regular; Henry James was anxious to improve his bowel movements. Hydropathy can hardly have done anyone much harm, unlike the billions of plastic bottles which cater to the modern version of the obsession and then infest the oceans. On that basis, it sounded like good news that the works producing bottled Malvern Water were closed down in 2010 by its owners, Coca-Cola, even though the Queen, a great enthusiast, was said to be unamused.
Initiates use God’s benison more wisely. The most popular spring is Hay Slad, the great gusher that pours out of the hillside in West Malvern. Always a line of cars, I was told … people from as far afield as America and Australia … you’ll see it. It took some finding; and when I finally discovered Hay Slad – not signposted, just an open secret – there was no one around at all. So I wandered up the road to have lunch at the Brewers Arms, in a garden overlooking Herefordshire (‘Best Pub View in Britain 2005’). When I got back to the spring, one of the locals, Philippa Lee, was filling two dozen bottles, all glass. ‘Plastic leeches into the water,’ she said.
Does everyone come here? ‘People don’t talk about it, they just do it. Tea tastes rubbish made with anything else.’
‘So where does the water come from?’
‘No one knows. It’s not run-off from the hills, it’s from somewhere deep in the earth. If it’s ever been through anyone, it was hundreds or thousands of years ago. Since we’ve got this facility, we might as well use it, though I always feel guilty when I leave it running. I keep thinking I should turn the tap off.’
Finally, bottle no. 24 went into one of her bags-for-life. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll get home. If the neighbours hear the clink, they’ll think I’m on the booze.’
The author James Lees-Milne, born in Wickhamford, wrote that Worcestershire was ‘pre-eminently an autumnal county … smells of the muddy river after rain, of hops and cider apples, of walnuts, blackberries, Michaelmas daisies and rotting sycamore leaves’. Nonsense: it’s a springtime county.
Since 1899, Worcestershire has had first-class cricket, which has given the county a celebrity it would never have had otherwise. First and foremost, Worcester is renowned as the most beautiful of county grounds, with its encircling trees that do not quite obscure the view of the cathedral. It is in fact an ugly ground in a beautiful setting. The old pavilion was quite charming, but got demolished because it was regularly inundated, alon
g with the playing area, whenever the Rivers Severn and Teme felt a bit full. The new pavilion, though believed to have Noah’s Ark qualities, is in keeping with the Worcester tradition of repulsive modern architecture. ‘Words fail me,’ wrote Lees-Milne of the city centre.
What is wholly spring-like is the tradition (now more often breached than observed) that touring teams – especially Australian ones – begin their visits to England in Worcester. In the 1930s Donald Bradman came here three times and on every visit made a double-century. In 1948 he returned, and failed – out for 107, watched (judging by the number of people who have said they were there) by a crowd of at least half a million.
These famous matches all took place at the end of April, beginning of May, the customary start of the cricket season. However, the game’s rulers have great faith in global warming and in 2011 the opening match, Worcestershire v Yorkshire, was scheduled for 8 April. Their trust was rewarded. It was another peach of a day. Or a plum. And a surprisingly large crowd survived the horrendous one-way system and made their way into the ground to begin their pre-match rituals. They chatted with old acquaintances, poured tea from their Thermoses and read their Daily Telegraphs.
The first day of the season always has a special buzz of anticipation. The players, who usually look as though a day’s cricket is a less enticing option than a shift in a call centre, certainly felt it. As the cathedral clock struck 11, Ryan Sidebottom of Yorkshire bowled the opening delivery; the Worcestershire captain, Daryl Mitchell, defended routinely to mid-off, and all the fielders fizzed with enthusiasm as though the bowler had taken a wicket at the first attempt. The spectators, however, chatted with old acquaintances, poured tea from their Thermoses, and read their Daily Telegraphs.
They weren’t wrong, because the cricket soon settled into a gentle, pleasant rhythm. It seemed safe to nip out to visit the cathedral, something I had never done in decades of watching cricket here. The great architectural historian Alec Clifton-Taylor implied I was no bad judge, and that Worcester Cathedral was best observed from across the river – i.e. from the cricket ground. The local building stone was ‘friable New Red sandstone’ and the masonry had ‘suffered cruelly at the hands of time’. He was also appalled by the Victorian restoration (‘platitudinous … very nasty … horrible … lamentable’). Luckily, he never saw the new cricket pavilion. Anyway, embarking on this book, I had set myself a subsidiary task: to light a candle for my late son, Laurie, in every Anglican cathedral in England, and I duly went across to start the list by ticking off Worcester.
The building is particularly long and thin and if – of the two struggling institutions – the Church should precede county cricket into oblivion, the cricketers could take it over and use the nave for net practice. They would comfortably fit in two wickets, one behind the other.
Not being wholly certain which bits Clifton-Taylor most wanted me to hate, I concentrated on finding Worcester’s three most significant memorials. King John lies buried here, in accordance with his wishes – under a Purbeck marble effigy close to the altar. However, the accompanying notice to visitors refers to his reign as a ‘tyranny’, which is presumably not what he requested. Close by is the chantry dedicated to Arthur, Prince of Wales, elder brother of Henry VIII and first husband of Catherine of Aragon. He died suddenly, aged fifteen, in 1502, with all kinds of consequences. His funeral lasted four days. ‘I should like the same,’ commented Barbara, one of the guides.
However, Arthur’s remains are no longer in the chantry. ‘He’s somewhere in the cathedral,’ said Barbara, ‘but we’re not quite sure exactly where.’ There is a third memorial hereabouts, to a man who – from less promising beginnings than Arthur’s – did rule England: Stanley Baldwin, son of a Worcestershire ironmaster, prime minister for seven years in three separate spells between 1923 and 1937 and regarded with awe for his sagacity and skill. ‘No man has ever left in such a blaze of affection,’ wrote Harold Nicolson on his retirement. When war came, Baldwin was blamed for Britain’s failure to rearm and reviled almost unanimously. His death, in 1947, was little noticed. He was cremated, his ashes being brought here and tucked away under a discreet memorial just inside the west wall. ‘Can I see it?’ I asked Barbara. No. It turned out the stone was hidden under the deck of seats used for concerts – notionally temporary but now virtually permanent. ‘You might be able to see it in August when they clear the nave,’ she said. ‘Oh no, not this year. It’s our turn to hold the Three Choirs.’
Baldwin’s reputation has recovered somewhat. He is now mainly thought of, if at all, as an unpretentious rustic, emblematic of his own county. This is not a unanimous view, though. A few years back, before the seats went up, a man asked to be pointed towards Baldwin’s ashes. ‘He jumped up and down on the spot,’ reported Barbara, ‘and said, “I’ve been wanting to do that for years.”’
I walked back to the cricket in the sunshine, past the largest convocation of swans I have ever seen. On the way, I heard a distant cry of ‘Owzat?’, and by the time I was back, the Worcestershire batting had started to collapse. The crowd was now approaching 3,000, quite extraordinary for a Friday in early April. I wandered round, engaged in a few conversations, eavesdropped on others. Topics included: rugby union, the December snowstorms, the winter climate in Rome, French holidays, the plight of freelance cricket journalists (that was in the press box), Aston Villa goalkeepers, the virtues of Thatchers cider, the difference between a Honda and a Toyota, train times from Wolverhampton, and the breeding of labradoodles. I even heard two people discussing the cricket.
The fifth wicket fell with the score on 129. ‘Someone’s going in,’ a man said urgently. Of course, you might think, it’s cricket: one batsman is out, another goes in. But I am an old hand here and knew otherwise. The someone in question was wearing a navy-blue sweater, not cricket whites, and he was heading not for the middle but through a glass door into a small wooden building. It was 2.50 p.m., nearly an hour before official tea-time, but the most glorious ritual on the cricket circuit was under way: tea in the Ladies’ Pavilion at Worcester.
By the time I arrived – and I moved fast – the queue was already snaking out of the glass door on to the steps. By the time I reached the counter the first of the lemon sponge cakes was already disappearing. But there were plenty more in reserve, and twenty-three types of cake in all, provided by the ladies of the county, as if this were a village fete rather than a professional sporting event. I added a slice of cherry and sultana to the lemon sponge, ordered two cups of tea (not for my imaginary friend, but to avoid queuing for seconds), paid £3 and returned to the secondary delight of watching the cricket.
The pleasures of Worcester are not always so decorous. This is a beery town and the long bar in the old pavilion used to be a heck of a place after play. I have never once gone to bed in Worcester other than rat-arsed. Fortunately for my increasingly delicate constitution, I was heading home before nightfall. But there was something healthy I wanted to do first.
I drove back south towards Pershore and, after a few wrong turnings and enquiries, parked near the romantically neglected churchyard at Great Comberton. This is the start of the route (or one route) up Bredon Hill, northerly outcrop of the Cotswolds and great sentinel of southern Worcestershire. In the churchyard I saw the stone commemorating Robert and Lily Lee, ‘a dearly loved father and mother’. It gave their dates (1891–1966 for Robert, 1899–1981 for Lily) and added simply: ‘In Summertime on Bredon’. What a gorgeous summation of two lives, a marriage, a family, their love, a village, of Worcestershire and of England.
In summertime on Bredon … began Housman,
My love and I would lie
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
My love being otherwise engaged (which was a long-term issue for Housman), I was alone save for a bag of sherbet lemons, somewhat stuck together. The route was poorly marked, which was pleasing since it made me feel mor
e of a traveller than a tourist, and not a problem, since the summit was quite obvious. I scrambled the last bit among some stunted hawthorns and emerged into an improbably lush, flat meadow.
I heard no larks, though a couple of buzzards hovered. I saw a few ramblers and runners. But even the evidence of humanity was muted. The landmark on the top is Parsons Folly, built as a summerhouse for John Parsons, MP and country squire, in the eighteenth century and now requisitioned and rendered fit for purpose, with uncharacteristic good taste, by a mobile phone company. Naturally, some visitors have left their markers, but not in ink: they had shifted the rocks lying around the folly to form their names – KEV AND PAT WOZ ERE … TOBY … EVIE … ADAM … RYAN … CALUM – in a way that could be recycled by others.
They say you can see eight of the coloured counties from here on a clear day. Some say fourteen. I couldn’t tell. Nature doesn’t give them different colours, as the old mapmakers did. And anyway, as the sun grew lower and the heaven-sent day drew to a close, the air was growing hazy. But one could see enough colours. Every shade of green from pea to bottle; the white of the houses; the yellow of the early rape fields; the grey-brown of the church towers; the bluish tinge of the Avon and of what looked like rippling lakes but were actually fields covered by polytunnels.