Tales from Clara s Cottage by Winthrop Murray
29 September 2022 { Comedy }
In the county of Shropshire, in the back of beyond where even the postmen and the Ocado vans don't deliver. There is a row of three cottages, no road, just three quaint cottages on an old drover's path that eventually joins the main bypass road about two miles from Ludlow.
Down this green lane walked a tall and slim young lady. She seemed a little nervous and kept playing with her hair and tugging down her skirt to stop it riding up, but she had a determined stride. She paused in front of the three cottages with her feet set to quarter to two. She listened intently; there was nothing but the sound of songbirds crooning, ravens croaking and the unmistakable rumble of worms wriggling deep beneath the verdant sod. She pushed through the squeaky gate of number one Railway Terrace, ducked under the overgrown honeysuckle framing the front door and then frantically flailed around removing spider's webs and leaves from her now dishevelled hair. She composed herself, took a deep calming breath and rattled a little metal door knocker cleverly emulating the sound of a woodpecker in the nearby copse.
The door was opened by a lady in a care worker's tunic with the logo Fairy Friends embroidered on the lapel.
"Can I help you?" She said, flashing a clinical smile and generously exuding a nosegay of Rive Gauche.
"Yes, my name's Verity Moore? I'm here about the article?" the upward inflection at the end of each phrase was irritating but our Fairy Friend had more important things on her mind.
"Oh yes, do come in Verity, Mrs Valdoone is expecting you in the harbour, I mean parlour." she added, tutting at her own malapropism.
The carer, or Mrs Dora Crannage to her enemies, opened a large wooden door and shoved just her head through the gap as if keeping back a pack of wild dogs.
"Hello Clara? The lady from the local paper has arrived, 'member? I said she'd be coming to interview you about the cottages and all the neighbours you've had over the years. You said she could come and have a chat with you?" She was greeted by a totally blank face.
"Did I? Well I s’pose it's alright then. Send her in." Clara briefly thought about putting her dentures back in but decided not to bother as it was only a local paper.
Verity was shown into the front room which smelled strongly of polish, lavender and honest to goodness history. The sunbeams entered diagonally through the window, illuminating the dust in the air and the myriad of antiques carefully arranged around the room. She looked around, her journalistic super powers piqued. An elderly lady was sitting in an armchair in the corner. She had rosy cheeks and a mass of curly grey hair tucked under a Jacqmar headscarf. Her eyebrows were pencilled in, giving her the startled look of someone who’d just seen an unusually shaped vegetable poked through the letterbox. Mrs Valdoone, for it was she under the Jacqmar, was smiling and holding out a bejewelled and wrinkled hand in welcome. On the side table next to her, was a pair of false teeth swimming in a frothy tumbler, a half eaten bacon bap, and an enormous Satsuma.
A nervous looking Verity tiptoed further into the room and gently shook her hand, performing a sort of half curtsey. This was going to be her first interview since starting her job on the Ludlow and Cravenhope Gazette. She'd dressed in her idea of journalist's attire; a pleated skirt and sensible shoes, a neat blouse with what looked alike a small runny egg stain down the front but which was a quite trendy logo. Her long hair was held back with an Alice band sprinkled with sequins. She was carrying a notepad with the cover neatly folded over to hide the Hello Kitty logo. Obviously nervous she kept licking the end of her pen thinking it was a pencil, this left her tongue covered in little blue biro dots like she'd had an attack of the tongue measles.
“Hello Mrs Valdoone”
“Pleased to meet you luvvy, you can call me Clara, come in and grab a pew.”
Verity surveyed the room looking for said pew, as she surveyed she said
"So Clara is that your Christian name then?
“No.”
“Oh, then why Clara?”
“It's after Clara Bow a famous actress from the silent film era.”
“Ahh and you were a fan of hers?”
“No, not really”
“But you were a fan of silent films?”
“Me? Noo. Daddy wouldn't let us see them. He said they were the devil's work and your soul could be sucked into the screen. As it turns out, he was right.”
Verity knew she was on a hiding to nothing with this line of questioning so she gave up. She removed a small pile of quilting squares and an angle grinder from a nursing chair opposite Clara and slumped awkwardly into the low seat. She sat there all arms and skinny legs sticking out, like an apprehensive spider. She smiled and continued her discourse.
“So anyway, I'm here to find out a bit about these three wonderful cottages and all the people who've lived here over the years.”
“Well you've come to the right person dear. I've lived here all me life, if not longer. I remember my father telling me they were originally built in the 1850s as houses for the station workers, although the nearest railway's twenty miles away. There was some sort of problem with the drawings apparently. One of the surveyors turned out to be a cobbler with absolutely no training in the building arts. He got all his sums wrong and these cottages ended up being built in the middle of nowhere. Still, nobody minded.
I was born in this very cottage 102 years ago, number one Railway Terrace. My mother, God rest her poor deceitful heart, nursed me here in this front parlour. It's still the same wallpaper, I mean it’s faded and torn to buggery but it's the same wallpaper.”
“Well I'd particularly like to hear about your neighbours over the years, there must have been some real characters?”
“Well let me see now. I suppose my first memory is of the Johnson's they moved in next door about 1930-ish. Jack Johnson was working away so his wife Lorelei had to organise most of the move on her own. I think they must have done a moonlight flit coz they turned up late one evening with all their belongings on the back of a donkey cart. I remember she was heavily pregnant at the time but still managed to get a double wardrobe on her back and up the stairs. It was only a few days later that she went into labour, it was a difficult birth with what turned out to be twins, one was breech and one was lying sideways. Eventually she gave birth on the washhouse floor and you know within ten minutes she was up finishing the mangling. We were tough in them days.
As I said, it was twins, one boy one girl, one with a full head of curly ginger hair the other as bald as a coot. They were christened Rosemary and Fellatio, you know after the saints? Well it should have been Rosemary and Horatio but it was a Catholic Priest who did the baptism and he was deaf as a post. By the time they'd realised the mistake he'd written it all up in a big leather bound Baptisms book. It was all copperplate with elaborate swashes and curlicues, ooh he did have lovely penmanship. Terrible priest though, he ran off with a girl from the Lyons Corner House, she fell pregnant, they married, moved to Pant Y Gwyddel and went Chapel."
Mrs Valdoone paused for a moment as a speck of dust floated by, she slowly reached out a thin delicate hand and tried to grab it like a preying mantis would catch a mosquito. She missed, stared blankly in to space for a few seconds then said
“Now where was I? Oh yes the handwritten details in the baptism book. They looked so beautiful the parents didn't have the heart to make the priest correct it, so the names stuck. Any road up, everyone ended up just calling 'em Rosie and Filo, you know like the pastry?”
Dora came into the room with a tray of tea and sandwiches and placed it on the table by the window. Clara walked slowly over to pour and cleverly managed to put her teeth back in unseen, en route. She smiled at Verity and her mouth frothed a little.
Once refreshments were apportioned the conversation resumed.
"First person I remember in number three was a Mrs Gatsby a very well to do and highly educated widow. During the 1940s there was some top secret war work going on in there. There were men in uniform coming at all hours with important papers and such like, there was even a rumour that Churchill visited. It was only after the war ended that we found out it was a knocking shop, anyway when the rationing started she had to close down.
She got married again not long after, and moved to Devon. I still get a Christmas card from her daughter. Funny thing is it’s always penguins, and I'm not too struck with penguins. As a child I was bitten by a Rockhopper when I poked a finger through the bars at Chester Zoo, still we live and learn.
Now the Johnsons didn't stay long at number two because they had a bit of good fortune. You see after the twins were born Jack started moonlighting as a big band singer at the Hippodrome in Bishops Castle. He had a bit of success with one of his songs, it was called "Oh Mrs Johnson, why don’t you come and give me a cuddle." He made a lot of money with the sheet music and when Bing Crosby recorded it in 1938, well they had enough money to move to London, never to be seen again. Now that's when Gert and Bert Tattershall moved in to number two, they were a similar age to us, in fact me and my Stan used to go to dancing with them. During the war, Ludlow Town Hall was bombed, I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a tea dance that evening and me and Gert were there early, preparing the tea, you know polishing cutlery, buttering scones and making those tiny triangular sandwiches, Gert did the sandwiches because she'd brought a set square from home. I remember Max Lipton playing the Wurlitzer, he wasn't away fighting because he was in a reserved occupation. He was the army manicurist. So there was Max having a practice and right in the middle of Bye Bye Blackbird there was this almighty crash. A direct hit from a butterfly bomb sent with love from Adolf. The ballroom ceiling came down and we were trapped in the basement for two days, nothing to eat and drink but scones and cold tea, it was hell. I never really got over it... I can’t stomach scones and I still jump if a car backfires.”
The hours passed quickly and pleasantly as Mrs Valdoone told more and more local stories. Verity's note pad filled up with all the details, she could hardly keep up. Stories like the exploding coal house when old Mrs Reason at number two was distilling vodka in an old tin bath, and the daft bugger lit her pipe. Then there was the escaped German prisoner of war hiding in the attic of number three, four months he was there. Mrs Gatsby thought it were only mice, Clara told her she ought to do a bit more siding up.
The best story was perhaps the time Vladimir Lenin stayed the night. He was on his way to a meeting in Manchester and there was some sort of family connection so he stayed over in one of the cottages. Apparently while he was there he wrote the preface to ‘State and Revolution’ in Mrs Smith's back parlour, sitting on her grandmother's leather pouffe. We bought the book and read it cover to cover but there was no mention of the cottage.
Eventually Verity's notebook was full and as night would soon be falling she started to make a move. She really didn't fancy that long walk along the green track in the dark, so she brought the collaboration to an end.
"Thank you for all the information Mrs Valdoone. You've been so helpful. I promise I'll be in touch if it gets into the paper.”
Dora showed Verity to the door.
"Did you get all the stories you need love?"
"Oh yes thank you. I just can't get over how good she is for a hundred and two"
"Hundred and two my backside. She's just turned seventy eight, though I admit she does look a lot older. She's had a hard life, bless her."
Dora pulled the front door behind them, and standing at the gate she said solemnly,
"I think there is something you should know about Clara. You see she's a bit of a Walter Mitty character, she makes stories up all the time."
Verity looked crest fallen,
"So her husband's war exploits?"
"She never married"
"And the bombing of Ludlow Town Hall?"
"No dear, there was just the one bomb that fell on Ludlow during the war. It landed in a field, and the only fatality was a sheep, called Nigel, he died of shock."
“The queen’s visit to Ludlow?”
“Sorry, that was a case of mistaken identity. It was just a look-alike heading for a fancy dress party.”
Verity was bitterly disappointed but she said her goodbyes and retraced her steps along the green lane.
She thought about the hundreds of drovers who’d ushered their cattle down this route on the way to market. She was glad she was a writer and vowed to record this precious history while the old characters were still around. As she walked she was accompanied by dancing butterflies, buzzing mayflies, echoes of the past and the baaing of some of Nigel’s distant relatives. Her first interview had gone well although it was totally unusable journalistically. However, she took it all as a learning opportunity and with time and experience she became a rather good journalist. Her name was often mentioned in the same discussions as Bob Woodward, Martha Gellhorn and Lois Lane. Eventually Verity went on to report on some of the most important stories of the twenty first century, covering the Iraq war, the Darfur Conflict and the Wagatha Christie Trial.
Many more years down the line she had moderate success with her first published piece of fiction, "Tales from Clara's cottage" which ultimately became a Netflix mini-series.
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