UNCLE GEORGE [Part 1 of 10]
by Richard Banks
When
I stood up in church and did the eulogy it was only too obvious to the dozen or
so persons present how little I knew about my uncle. We had met only three
times, at my christening and twice when I was a small boy not yet at school –
at least that’s what I’m told. If so, then uncle would have been in his late fifties, an unmarried
man, who my mother described as a confirmed bachelor. Father puffed hard on his
pipe when she said that, always a sign that something had met with his
disapproval, a something that might be shared with his brothers at the Feathers
but nothing that could be said in the presence of the womenfolk. Not that they
didn’t have chapter and verse on whatever it was but to them the good name of
the family demanded that knowledge of the miscreant, and his misdeeds, be
hidden away inside them, in a part of the brain
labelled ‘private, keep out’.
Thus in 2015 when the solicitor’s
letter arrived informing me that Uncle had left me his house in Norfolk, and
everything in it, mother was not as pleased as I thought she would be. The
property, she said, would likely be rundown and in need of repair. Uncle George
had no money, never did have, was nothing more than a casual labourer working on
farms when there was work to be had. He only had the house because it belonged
to his father who brought it up cheap as a sitting tenant. Nothing in it was
likely to be worth a penny piece and I would probably have to pay someone to
take it all away. As for his papers they must be burned unread. No good, she
said, ever came from reading a man’s private papers. Indeed, she would come
with me to make sure this was done. Given her aversion to lengthy car trips
there was little prospect of her doing so and, once she had my assurance that I
would do as she decreed, her involvement was restricted to the buying of a
large box of matches.
I set out, on a Friday morning from my bedsit
in Clerkenwell for the offices of Matlock & Wells in Cromer with the uneasy
feeling that they might have more to gain from my uncle’s demise than myself.
However, by the time I pulled into the car park at the rear of their premises I
was in a more optimistic mood. The day was unusually warm for May, a clear blue
sky, and the sun shining brightly on a countryside bursting into life after a
long winter. The thought occurred to me that if my uncle’s house was in
reasonable condition it might be possible to both live and work there. Why not
I thought. Other people do it, why not me? Almost all my work was done on
computer and it mattered little where it and myself were located. Even if I did
have to show up at the office once or twice a week it was definitely doable
and, who knows, Ally, my girlfriend of nine months, might well be amenable to
life in the country.
My meeting with Mr Wells did nothing to
dent my good mood and having been given a road map of the local area and the
keys to the house I was soon out of Cromer and making my way down country lanes
scarcely wider than the car. Nothing in
Four young
men dressed in army camouflage tops and slashed jeans spilled out onto the road
and advanced towards me shouting abuse, the most vocal of them brandishing a
crowbar. With the prospect of worse to come, and neither fight or flight being
an option, I locked the doors and sat tight. It was time for soothing words,
but my opening observations that everything was cool and that no damage had
been done were not having the desired effect. A guy with a tattoo on his face
was pummelling my bonnet with clenched fists while another was threatening to
break my nearside window if I didn’t open up.
It is at
moments like this that you wish you had a Guardian Angel who would
suddenly appear and make everything OK. Thankfully for me such beings do exist,
although not usually at the wheel of a Ford Mondeo, clad in plus fours and a
tweed jacket. Having pulled up behind the jeep my saviour was now striding
fearlessly into the fray demanding an end to hostilities. Remarkably his
intervention could not have been more successful, my assailants now as quiet
and inoffensive as a turned-off alarm clock.
“Get back in your vehicle,” demanded my
deliverer and, without so much as a whimper, they did as they were told. Having
dealt with them he proceeded, stern faced, towards me.
“You’ll have to back-up,” he said.
“There’s a passing bay thirty yards back. You will need to pull into it and let
them through.” He was, evidently, a man used to being obeyed and although he
spoke civilly enough he seemed no better disposed to me than he was to them. It
was time to put myself on the side of the good guys so I thanked him warmly for
his intervention. He looked a little surprised but made no comment except to
say that he would walk back with me and that I was to tuck-in as close to the
hedge as I could; they weren’t, he said, likely to be too careful on their way
past.
A minute or so later the jeep roared
past with my benefactor observing their departure from behind my rear bumper.
“Have you business here?” he asked, his voice wary but not unfriendly. Bearing
in mind that his car was still parked in the middle of a narrow country lane I
wasted no time in telling him that my uncle had died and that I had come to
take possession of his house in the
“So, you’re Phillip Jones’s, George’s
kin. Yes, you’re not unlike him. The house is two
miles along on the right, but there’s no village, Petherdale is a row of
cottages built by a farmer of that name. There’s a driveway at the side and
parking spaces at the back. I’m sorry for what happened back there. You’ve just
made the acquaintance of the Beale boys. They’ve been having a little trouble
lately with a gang from
A few minutes later he was by and I was
on my way again, thankful that my journey was soon to end. Ten minutes later I
was parked at the rear of Uncle’s house and using the key so often in his hand
to open what was now my back door.
(To be
Continued)
Copyight
Richard Banks