THE RE-ENACTMENT
by Richard Banks
It
seemed an odd thing to be celebrating. I mean, no one would be celebrating if
it happened now. Think about it, you’ve just turned in for the night when
there’s an almighty commotion and all these hairy Vikings break down your front
door and make off with everything that’s not nailed down. And that’s not the
worse of it, the village men who don’t run away fast enough are stabbed all
over and their womenfolk taken away in stripey sailed rowing boats and sold to
the highest bidder in a Byzantium
slave market. Well, who knows, it might have ended up quite well for some of
them, the younger gad about girls who wanted to travel and see the world. A
long sea voyage might have been just the ticket for them, especially if they
were snapped up by a Sheik who looked like Omar Sheriff. But it wouldn’t have been very nice for the
rest of them. Oh yes, I know it all happened hundreds of years ago and I
shouldn’t be fretting about it now but neither should anyone be making a song
and dance about it. But then, why do I bother? I’ve said all this before.
According to the organising committee, it’s going to be a commemoration of the most significant event in the village’s
long and lackluster history. It will put Whitmouth on the map and bring
visitors to the village who will spend money in the Chequers and the local
shops, and maybe come back at other times. “Why would they?” I say. We’re a one
church, one pub village with a beach and harbour that reeks of fish and
seaweed. Who in their right mind would want to come back here? Once bitten,
twice shy is what I say, but I might just as well be speaking to myself.
We now have a date when it will happen
– Saturday, 10 August. That’s one week before the tennis at Eastdeen and one
after the Pembersey Regatta, so we won’t be in competition with them and other
events; so if you’re desperate for something to do it’s us or nothing. There’s
going to be a craft fayre in the High Street, skittles in the pub, and country
dancing on the village green. And if that’s not enough - and it certainly isn’t
- we’re all expected to dress up like the olden folk who were here all those
centuries ago.
At first, it’s only us ladies in the WI
and Church League that want to get involved but then the men in the Rotary Club
smell a nice little earner, and hey presto they’re all but taking over; that’s
when the Committee is formed, and what’s more, they’ve got Lord Spentmore to
chair it. If the truth be told he’s a bit of a pain in the beam end but
anyone’s better than the Vicar; if you’re ever heard one of his sermons you’ll
know what I mean. Still, it’s good to have an honest man as Treasurer so he’s
duly elected and we get the use of the church hall for free.
So, it’s all speed ahead except that
one of the men thinks we don’t have enough things organised. That’s what I
think, I say, not that you’ll find it in the minutes. He says, if we want to
draw the crowds we’ll need something special, and that’s when the idea of having
a re-enactment of the actual landing becomes the main event in the program.
“It’s genius,” says the same man, “why didn’t I think of it before, and the
young fellas in the rugby club can be the Vikings.” Then someone else says,
“who’s going to be the Saxons, there must have been a battle, even though it’s
not written down, it stands to reason there must have been a battle.” The Vicar
thinks not and for once I agree with him, it was nighttime, all the Saxons
were in their beds, you can’t do too much fighting when you’re tucked up there.
But why let logic get in the way of a
money-spinning idea, so the rugby club are invited and, when it's decided
there’s not enough of them for a battle, the cricket club and Young Farmers
also get the call. This is just the sort of rough and tumble they’re used to on
a Saturday night after closing time, and their girlfriends are more than
willing to play the part of Saxon maidens or Viking camp followers. Never have
the young people been so enthusiastic about a village event and it’s not long
before the rugby boys are sprucing up an old launch to look like a Viking longboat. This means the cricketers have to be the Saxons which they’re not too
pleased about because they’re on the losing side, battle or no battle. However,
they gain a vital concession when they argue that the Vikings didn’t have any
camp followers so all the girls will have to be Saxon maidens which means if
there’s any hanky panky while they’re waiting for the Vikings to arrive the
Saxons will be one-nil up before a blow is struck. However, when the cricketers
and farmers have a meeting in the upstairs room of the Chequers it soon becomes
apparent that things are being planned that never happened in any history book.
The next thing we know is that the local bikers have been recruited by the
Saxons and the rugby club are buying baseball bats from Sports Direct and
threatening to use them if anything should happen to their reassigned camp
followers. In the end, Constable Lewis has to read them all the riot act and the
Committee decided to dispense with the battle and just have the Vikings land
unopposed, set fire to the Saxon hovels that have been put up next to the
scouts’ hut, and retreat back to their boat with bags of swag and any of the
rugby club girls who are up to being part of the booty. An uneasy peace having
been restored the rest of us get on with preparing the other events.
Come the day we’re ready and raring to
go, the village is decked out with bunting and almost everyone has made some
attempt at dressing up. The weather could not be better and by 2pm, when
the craft fayre begins, the village is heaving with people most of whom have
already paid good money for parking on the school field. All the craft stalls
do good business and the village green has never been so full of people. And
what a show we give them, we quite surprise ourselves - country dancing, sheep
shearing and corralling, a display by the bird sanctuary, all kinds of music
and races for the kiddies.
The day is more successful than we
dared hope and we haven’t yet got to the main event that is to take place in
the evening as the sun is setting over the sea. There must be four hundred
people at least on the Quay when the boat is sighted in the gathering gloom. By
then we have flaming torches down both sides of the harbour and the bell
ringers in the church are sounding a death knell for dramatic effect. Even
better is the sight of the boat as it runs aground on the shingle beach. The
Rugby boys have done us all proud, the boat is just like the ones in the
history books we had as kiddies, there’s a red and white stripey sail, a dragon
head on the pointy bit at the front and a crew of bewhiskered warriors who
have done a fine job of the rowing are now racing up the beach brandishing
their battle axes and swords.
On cue, the Saxon hovels are set on fire
and the girls in the scout hut scream so loud you would have thought they were
doing it through loud hailers. Fifteen minutes later the Vikings are back on
the beach with their bags of swag and the girls, in shifts that are far too
short, are being carried off on Viking shoulders. And then, as quickly as they
came, they are off and we watch them row away into the dark.
What a round of applause we give them.
It is a triumph, a fitting climax to a wonderful day. The crowd begins to
disperse, some going to the car park and others to the Chequers. I’m on my way
home when I come across Archie Moss, the Secretary of the Committee, who is
talking into his mobile phone. The expression on his face I will remember for
the rest of my life, a look that changes from surprise to utter bewilderment
and then to horror. One of the crew has phoned him to apologise for not making
it to Whitmouth. They have, he says, been blown off course and are now a mile
down the coast lucky to have got back to land.
“He’s having you on,” I say. “They’re
all be down the bar at the Rugby Club having a fine old time.” So he phones him
back, all angry now, saying that if anything has happened to his daughter and
the other girls in the boat he will hold him personally responsible. This time
it’s the rugby guy who sounds surprised. “No,” I hear him say, “we don’t have
the girls, how can we, we never arrived!” Then Archie flies into a rage, uses
language I never heard him say before, and threatens to call the police. The
rugby guy gets halfway through shouting something back when Archie ends the
call and starts phoning the police.
“No, no,” I say, “phone your daughter
on her mobile. You know what these young folk are like she’s bound to have it
with her.” So he does just that and we hear a phone ringing in the Scouts’ hut.
It’s hers. This time Archie does phone the police and a few minutes later when
we see Constable Lewis we tell him too and he gets in his car and hares off to
where the rugby boys say they are. He finds them still on the beach waiting for
one of the Dads to pick them up in his van. The girls are not with them and no
one knows where they are. At least that’s what they say, and when the van
arrives Constable Lewis makes sure they go straight to the police station. And
that’s where they stay until the following evening when they’re taken to the
prison. By then the first body has been washed ashore, and all but one of the
others follow the next day. Each one cut and bruised by the rocks and stones
against which the sea has tossed them.
The village is in shock, people
struggling to make sense of what has happened, desperately hoping it is a
nightmare from which they will awake. Then good news for the parents of Lindsey
Medhurst, she alone of the girls has survived and is found wandering aimlessly
on a private beach two miles away, deeply traumatised and unable to speak. The
families of her supposed abductors brace themselves, waiting for her to say
something that will either condemn or absolve their young men from blame.
The rugby boys continue to protest
their innocence. Forensic tests provide no evidence against them and they are
released from prison all charges dropped for lack of evidence. Their claim not to
have landed in the harbour is corroborated by the crew of a herring boat who
saw them off-course and in difficulties, half a mile from land only minutes
before the Vikings landed. How could they be in two places at once protest the
families, and indeed they can’t. Nevertheless, the police interview everyone who
saw the re-enactment; there are over one hundred witness statements, only three
of which claim to have seen someone among the Vikings whom they recognised, in
one case a man with no connection to the rugby club who was one hundred miles
away in London.
***
When
Lindsey speaks we will know the truth but who knows when that will be. Some say
that what has happened has robbed her of her reason as well as her voice. She
can sometimes be seen at one of the windows of a large, grey brick building
that used to be the workhouse.
“And do you see her from the inside or
the outside of the window,” asks the Chairman of the Committee.
“Both,” I say.
“From which side now?”
“From the inside, of course. I’m here
on a visit. That’s what I do, what you’re doing, and also poor Archie whose
daughter drowned.”
“Is he here too?”
“Yes, of course, that’s him watching TV
with Constable Lewis.”
He scribbles something down on a
notepad. “And all these people are in your story?” he says.
“Yes, your Lordship, but it’s no story,
every word is true.”
“And what is the name of your
character? Surely the person relating this narrative should have a name.”
I disagree, but he says that names are
important, that they tell us who we are and who we are not. “If we lose our
names what else do we have?”
I make no reply.
He smiles. He could tell me my name if
he had a mind to but he wants me to say it. Until then he will continue
to call me what he usually calls me: his friend the author he says, the
unreliable narrator.
The End.
Copyright Richard Banks
