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