Then and now
Jeremy Clarke
Tesus Loves You Passionately. That's what J the poster on the gate said. As I went in, the disturbing mental image of being violently slogged by Jesus gave way to the very real and cheering sight of cherry trees festooned with bunting and a string of Union Jacks, I gave my name to the lady at the door and she urged me to go in and help myself to tea and cake.
Sixty years ago, Mr Churchill lent our village and the eight surrounding ones to the US army. It needed somewhere to practise amphibious landings and the beaches here are remarkably similar to the ones at Normandy apparently. Three thousand residents were evacuated at short notice from an area of about 30,000 acres. On Sunday afternoon the Blackawton and Strete Historical Society (BASH) organised a reunion for the evacuees at Strete village hall.
The elderly evacuees were seated at tables, café-style. Trestle tables piled high with home-made cakes lined the wall. BASH committee members weaved in and out dispensing tea in blue china cups. It would have been rude of me to take an immediate running headlong dive into the home-made cakes, so I lingered momentarily at the display of historical documents and photographs just inside the door.
A Short Guide to Great Britain issued to all US servicemen stationed over here caught my eye — in particular the advice contained in the following paragraph:
Don't he misled by the British tendency to be soft-spoken and polite. If they need to be, they can be plenty tough. The English Language didn't spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists.
I was wondering what a panty-waist was, when one of the BASH ladies came up to me and asked me how I liked it, I accepted a weak cup of tea from the east end of her tray and took it over to the table where Brian was sitting. Once a week virtually the whole year round, Brian brings to the front door a carrier bag of his home-grown spinach. Before I met Brian the only people I have ever known to rival his sublime disregard for the conventions of modern dress were constrained by Section 60 of the Mental Health Act. Today, however, the only word to describe Brian was dapper. He had on a laundered white shirt with a natty stripe. His colour-co-ordinated tie was secured with a gold tie-pin that would have stood the test of a spirit level, It was as if Birnarn Wood had gone to Dunsinane. I goggled frankly at him.
As usual, Brian gently took my elbow, leaned in close and told me how lovely I looked. 'So tell me, Brian,' I said, when I'd sufficiently recovered from the shirt, tie and tie-pin, 'are you a panty-waist?'
Milk-chocolate irises contemplated mine from a mahogany face. Like most people who grow things from seed, Brian likes to keep an open mind. 'I might be,' he said.
Before my arrival on the scene Brian had been deep in conversation with what looked like a coelacanth dressed as a farmer. Out of respect for the coelacanth we let the panty-waist business drop for a moment so they could carry on where they'd left off. They were debating whether the good old days were really so good. The coelacanth's point of view was that although nobody had any money, and there was little to eat, at least they had the death penalty. Brian argued that you could reduce the argument about whether things had improved or not to one simple question — was there jam on the table? One of his huge calloused palms swept the room in the same way that a magician's assistant heralds a feat of magic. There was no getting away from it. There was jam on every table. And I suppose Brian has a point. A society that preserves its fruit instead of gobbling it off the trees the moment it ripens, if not before, isn't doing so badly.
One of the BASH ladies stood on a chair and announced that all evacuees should now evacuate the hail and congregate outside under the cherry trees to have their photograph taken.
I went out to watch them line up. •The young photographer had camera trouble and it was stinking hot outside. The sun was directly in the evacuees' faces. The men, quietly-spoken, massive forearms even at their age, squinted at the sun without being discomfited by it, and carried out the photographer's orders and counterorders without complaint. The ladies, all of whom had grown up without knowing what a tap was, withstood the heat by sitting still and saying little. The US government official who wrote that pamphlet was right. Panty-waists? I don't think so.
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