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Word from Wormingford
Whitsun has fallen with a shadow this year, Ronald Blythe notes
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I PREACH on the Comforter, and when has he been more needed? Oh, the unique bereavement of all those Chinese parents, now that the earthquake has taken their one and only ewe-lamb! “O Comforter, draw near,” we sing. What inspired Christ to christen his Spirit such? “I will not leave you comfortless.” Rachel weeping for her children would not be comforted, however. Now and then, here and there, the earth’s surface cracks up, and our topless towers fall on us beautiful, delicate mortals, as we do our maths and revise our lessons. Or the typhoon rages through our estuaries so that their benign waters can wash us away. These huge tragedies are neatly slotted between the telly chefs and the football. I remember a William Empson poem, “Aubade”, which I put in the Second World War anthology: Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake. My house was on a cliff. The thing could take Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row. Then the long pause and then the bigger shake. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. Go where? For the poet, the war was the earthquake. His youthful life of reading, drinks, girls, was shattered by it; so the best thing was to accept it. He is witty and philosophical. As for me, I give up trying to imagine the unimaginable, these vast disasters, the loss of so many only-children, and go out in the early evening to put anti-badger netting around the kitchen garden. The late birds sing — a monotonous chiff-chaff, and a solitary white-throat. The badgers in their sandy sett could be watching. I sprinkle the runner beans using a fine rose. A cold wind rises. Whitsun, I think. The Australian relations arrive, but have driven off to Stratford-upon-Avon. I miss them. They were so good. Terry, the driver, was enchanted by the cow-parsley lanes in which the cars passed with such civility. “No hassle!” His return waves gradually took on a quite Elizabethan flourish. The ladies on the back seat added their smiles. And now that East Anglia is over, it is on to Shakespeare, and Cornwall. Emails have been flying to and from Queensland. No one is really away from home these days. People get up and go, but never out of technology. Our weather meets their weather in seconds. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Flower Festival looms in view; little boards all along the roads into the village proclaim its eminence. Although no judge of these things, I am told on good authority that the Wormingford Flower Festival is quite something. Visitors arrive from miles away. The flag flies on the Saxon tower, the Stour glints through the trees, the marquee bulges from its ropes, and the church is Chelseafied, and I tell myself that it is good for our souls, as well as the quota. “You will miss the flower festival,” I told the Australians. They looked puzzled. What with spidery, flower-blocked lanes, what with Gainsborough having walked them, the density of England is what they had not reckoned with. And I have never done with it; for who could? It is the May growth that retells each year. One should live to have many Maytimes, and to be comforted by them. |
