HINDSIGHT

 HINDSIGHT 

By Richard Banks 

The first time I started seeing things was from beneath the shelter of my umbrella on the corner of Dean Stanley Street and Millbank. The rain was about to turn to sleet and the girl I had arranged to meet was nowhere in sight. I was, I admit, in a state of nervous agitation, cold, wet through from the knees down and very much fearing that I had been stood up. Two minutes later she made her entrance, alighting from a number 87 bus which she blamed for her late arrival. By then she was out of my thoughts, almost forgotten.

 

         “Hi,” I said, the stunned surprise in my voice only too apparent.

         “What’s wrong?” she asked. 

         “Nothing,” I replied. “Didn’t recognise you in that mac. Is it new?” 

         It wasn’t. In fact it was the one she had been wearing on our first date. It was not a good start to an evening for which I had high hopes. Thereafter it improved – it could not have got worse – and we had dinner at Pizzaland followed by a West End show for which I had discounted tickets. 

         I never did tell her what I saw in the thirty seconds or so before her arrival. But then, how  do you explain seeing a black robed monk walk down the middle of the road, heedless of the rush hour traffic and the rain which should have soaked him but had no way of doing so. And if that wasn’t enough, watching him being struck by a Waitrose delivery van - a collision that had no visible impact on monk or van - before turning right and disappearing from sight through a stone wall that would have repulsed a ten ton truck.        

        Had I related these details to Julie, the girl I was dating, I have little doubt that this, our third date, would also have been our last. In fact I needn’t have worried, three weeks later she abandoned me for a young man who drove a two seater sports car and took her for lunch at the Savoy. Even so I’m glad I said nothing. What I had seen was weird, too weird to let on to anyone else, particularly a young woman I was hoping to attract, not repel. 

         Normal is what I wanted to be, a nice, straightforward, uncomplicated guy at ease with himself and the world about him. This did not include the seeing of the monk, a monk who - had I seen what I thought I had seen - could only be a ghost. Either that or there was something very wrong with my mental functioning. As I didn’t believe in ghosts it seemed only logical I should confess all to the medical profession and swallow whatever tablets they prescribed.        

         Fortunately, I made my confession to Herbie Sutcliffe in the public bar of the Westminster Tavern. Quite what I was expecting him to do or say I don’t know, after five pints of Newcastle Brown my thinking was less than clear, but instead of him expressing the grave concern that seemed appropriate to my disclosure he was as cheerful as a semi-inebriated man could hope to be. Against all reason and expectation, I could not have chosen a better person to confide in. 

         Herbie, when he wasn’t making a bob or two flogging second hand books from a market stall, was a tourist guide operating in and around Westminster Abbey. In the next few minutes he told me everything I needed to hear. The monk, he said, was affectionately known as Old Skinhead on account of his tonsure which had laid bare a large part of his scalp. All that was known of him was that he was a Benedictine monk from the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. He had been seen not only by Herbie but by one other guide and a few of their clients. Seeing Skinhead, he asserted, was a gift, not a curse. It was a precious moment in history that I had witnessed, an insignificant but fascinating insight into the distant past. “There was nothing to be afraid of. Some people can see such things, others can’t. Be glad that you can. Who knows what wonderful things you might see: the coronation of a King or Queen, the arrest of Guy Fawkes, the trial of Charles I, or maybe an unknown slice of history, suppressed and excluded from the public record; ripples in time that make you a looking glass into another age. Believe me there’s not an historian alive who wouldn’t give everything he had to be like you.” 

         “So will it keep happening?” 

         “Bound to, it’s not like a TV you can switch on and off. Now it’s started this is you for the rest of your life. We should be celebrating your good fortune. So get along to the bar and buy the next round.” 

         I did, and although I had one heck of a hangover the next morning it was nothing to the realisation that I was not only normal but at the same time kind of special. Nevertheless, it was a talent I thought best kept to myself and at first only one other person apart from myself knew that my senses numbered more than five. I was, as Herbie almost said, like a TV set without an on and off switch, and although the transmissions came whenever they had a mind to they seldom numbered more than three a week. Almost always they are of ordinary people going about their working life. Sometimes they are at their leisure - at fairs, in the tavern, playing skittles, singing, dancing - and sometimes at prayer in their churches. There are thieves and vagabonds, but mostly the folk I see are honest strivers who work hard to live and are more than deserving of their small pleasures. 

         Despite Herbie’s fond hope that I would, one day, see a King or Queen my ‘visions’ have so far only identified one person I have been able to put a name to. I was at Stamford Bridge watching a less than enthralling nil nil draw between Chelsea and Derby when in a much more entertaining match a burly centre forward rose majestically above the other players to head the ball into the goal with such force that it rebounded back onto the field of play. The player wiped a muddy smear from his forehead and, with the air of a man who had done no more than what was expected of him, jogged back to the half way line for the resumption of play. Immediately, two things were clear to me: one, that his playing kit belonged to the early days of club football; and two, that I would never forget that dour, moustachioed face. A month later I saw him again on a cigarette card, one of a set of thirty players published in 1908. He was, according to the information on the reverse side of the photograph a Scottish international by the name of Billy Steele who played his club football for Newcastle. If I needed any further proof – which I didn’t – he was wearing the same black and white striped shirt in which I saw him play. As for famous events I once saw a riot of which I can tell you little beyond the fact that windows were broken and the rioters put to flight by soldiers on horseback. That this first happened in the early 1800s was apparent to me from the clothing of those taking part.

         All this I kept to myself in the pursuit of ‘normal’ but as I was beginning to find out there are many shades of normal and some of us have little choice but to be what we are. My next eureka moment came when I was having five o’clock tea at my mother’s house and a soldier in chain mail armour came striding through the wall against which our table was placed and, without upsetting anything on it, continued straight ahead before disappearing through the party wall into number 56. Although I had by this time become well practised at concealing surprise or alarm the sudden appearance of the warrior, sword in hand, caused me to emit a startled cry from what was, no doubt, an equally startled face.

         My mother’s reaction was restricted to a few words of weary resignation, “Oh no, not you as well.”

         “As well as who?” I asked. 

         To cut short a long story that was not allowed to commence before tea had been eaten and the dishes washed I was told the family secret that had up to then been kept from me. My father also had the ‘scourge’ as my mother called it and once jumped off Lambeth Bridge to avoid a runaway hansom cab that had mounted the pavement. Fearing that the incident would do nothing to advance his career in the Midland Bank he claimed to have jumped into the Thames to rescue a dog caught up in the current, an act of heroism widely reported in the local press which may well have influenced the bank to promote him to First Cashier. Thereafter he had no other choice but to conceal his ghostly visitations which he did by tightly closing his eyes on the pretence that he was light sensitive and sometimes needed to rest his eyes. Unsurprisingly this did not go down well with his line manager who expected his front desk staff to keep their eyes open when receiving or dispensing the bank’s cash. Rather than terminate his employment it was decided to transfer him to a backroom job that he did for the next seven years until he died at his desk from a heart attack, his eyes tight shut. 

         “Well, he did what he could, I suppose,” my mother said, evidently unimpressed by my father’s efforts to make good. “Can’t be blaming him too much for the way he was. His father and grandfather were just as bad. Caught it from them, I don’t doubt. Would never have married your father had I known what I was letting myself in for but he kept it from me until we were wed; too late then to say no then. Don’t do that to any girl you have a mind to marry, better still don’t marry. No good will ever come of it.”

         Needless to say I returned to my small bed sit sadly reflecting on everything my mother had said. To her my father’s unusual ability to see into the past was a curse to be kept secret at all costs, and in the ’50s when conformity was valued above all else, it is not difficult to understand why she felt that way. My father, who died when I was ten, evidently took the same view and far from taking any pleasure in his visions found them a cause of stress and unhappiness which no doubt shortened his life. I determined not to make the same mistake. As Herbie said, I had a gift not a curse and in an age more forgiving of those who are different I have no intention of being anyone but myself.

         However, one thing my mother and I were agreed on was that any girl likely to become my partner in life had to be fully aware of what she was taking on. I therefore resolved that on a fifth date I would explain all and leave it entirely to her as to whether or not we went on to date six. It was an honourable way forward but not one that got me past five until I discovered that Herbie had a kid sister, ten years his junior but only one year younger than myself. Like Herbie she also had the gift and loved every moment of it, claiming to have witnessed the Siege of Sidney Street and the coronation of Charles II. She also had the most wonderful head of cascading blond hair, a kind face and blue eyes that sparkled with the joy and wonder of life past and present. 

         Leila and myself have been together now for nearly seven years. Our separate visions we share with each other like other couples talk about films or plays they have seen. Sometimes we have the same vision, see the same things and compare our sometimes varying perceptions of what has come our way. Whatever we see, good or bad, we are drawn ever closer together.

 

         Sometimes I think of my father and feel sad.

                                                                                                           

MAG

                                                                                                                      2 July1978

A memoir found among the papers of the novelist and spiritualist, Martin A Greening, 1947-2020.

Reproduced here by kind permission of his son and executor, William Herbert Greening.

 

Copyright Richard Banks