38. LESSONS FROM HISTORY

Time to sample the blackberry wine!

The blackberry wine was a triumph even though it did remind them of old bones and a sad death.

Innocent, who called on Christmas Eve on his way to take Sarah to visit her parents, was reluctant to take a glass at first because, he told them, he was driving to a police Superintendent’s house where his in-laws lived, and didn't fancy being pulled up for driving under any kind of influence while he was doing that.

“One glass won’t hurt, silly,” teased Sarah, “it’s only home made wine, not a powerful spirit in the megaton range.”

But Innocent was resolute and it was probably a pity that his lovely wife Sarah wasn’t. Wallace poured her a modest glass of the ruby liquid and she noted two things about it.

“Why, it’s delicious,” she said, smiling broadly, then “are you sure it isn’t whiskey?” she added, smiling even more broadly.

“It’s Christmas,” Maureen told her, “even Eloise can have a glass, and she’s not of age yet!”

“Are you sure you haven’t cheated, dad?” asked Wallace’s daughter as she sipped her own glass of the wine, “are you absolutely certain you haven’t slipped to the offy and bought a bottle of their most expensive luxury plonk and substituted it for yours?”

“You helped pick the blackberries,” smirked Wallace.

“And pricked my thumbs,” reminded Eloise, “my beautiful thumbs, mutilated for the first time since I was born and forever punctured!”

“So what do you think of it?” asked Wallace of the small gathering, and they all agreed, every one of them, that it was possibly the best wine anyone in the neighbourhood would have to drink that Christmas.

“I hear they’re building a row of houses where the witch’s cottage stood,” remarked Innocent, “there’s a bet going round in the newsroom that when the story of death and dusty old bones gets out they might find it less than easy to sell them.”

“I wouldn’t like to live there,” muttered Maureen, “knowing what I know, I mean. That poor girl.”

“That doesn’t make sense, mum,” protested Eloise, “I should think most houses that have been around for a few years might have a dead body or two associated with them. People do die, you know, and it’s not uncommon for them to die at home.”

Wallace took a sip of his wine, and grinned at them both. “She’s right, love,” he said to his wife, “think how many tortured souls have bade farewell to this world where we are now!”

“But this house isn’t that old!” protested Maureen.

“No, but it’s not the house we’re thinking of, but the land that it’s sitting on, and I happen to know a thing or two about the land this place is sitting on!”

“What, dad?” asked Eloise, shivering in anticipation of a juicy and macabre exposition from her father,

“Well, I don’t think I ought to spoil the night by telling you some of the things I might have heard!” he grinned, knowing that he would do just that.

“You better had now that you’ve started it,” warned Maureen.

“Then let me see. What do you lot know about history? I don’t mean kings and queens and the house of this or the house of that nonsense, but real history about real people?” he asked, and there was a general shaking of heads in response.

“Especially local history?” he continued, and he was rewarded with a second round of head-shaking.

“Well, back in the olden times there was a lot of fuss about witches,” he murmured, “and I don’t mean just one, like the one who was said to live in the cottage where Innocent and I had our nuclear shelter, but loads of them, every where. It was an obsession for a short time as though there had been an epidemic of warty old ladies in league with the devil, and there was even a highly paid Witchfinder General to search them out in some parts.”

“It was mentioned in history at school,” confirmed Eloise. “It made me shiver, thinking how evil old women were once upon a time.”

“It wasn’t the women who were evil,” Wallace continued, “but the very threads in society that stirred people up to believing in what a bit of thought on their part would have shown just wasn’t true. It was all tied up with the church and the way it was put out by priests that witches were soldiers of Satan in a Heavenly war against their god. People were encouraged to report anyone they thought of as a witch to the authorities, and the authorities were the church, of course, and those same priests revelled in passing sentence on old grannies and the like. Quite a lot of really harmless old ladies were arraigned before courts and many were executed as witches, some, they say, even burned to death because of their sin. I mean, it’s hard to believe these days, but it actually happened. And what became of the condemned witches before they were put to death? Why, they were locked in a dingy dungeon and it so happens that the very dungeon that housed twenty or so witches and where they were executed was...”

“On the land where this very house was built!” laughed Eloise, “dad, you do make them up!”

“Is that true, Wally?” asked Maureen, “if it was I wish I’d known. I wouldn’t like to live in such a horrid place!”

“My point is, places like that would have to be somewhere, and history is full of human nastiness,” said Wallace darkly. “There has been a huge catalogue of cruelty and spitefulness over the centuries. And even in my lifetime … I was born during the war, you know, and who can tell how many wounded soldiers, maybe rescued from Dunkirk, were brought back home to die in pain and anguish? None of them were the actual masters of war, of course, none were the perpetrators, but the young men they sent off, that’s a different story. And it wasn’t just that war, there have been others, civil wars, international conflicts, the battles of man against man have gone on and on.”

“Hey, Wally, it’s Christmas Eve!” said Innocent, clapping him on the back. “And I’ll bet for every miserable piece of human cruelty I can produce a bright light in the form of human kindness and generosity.”

“Of course you can,” laughed Wallace, “I was only making a point, and by the way, I’ve seen the plans at the council for this estate and there never was any kind of prison or gaol or condemned cell anywhere near it! And those old plans go back a year or so, I can tell you.”

“And before then?” asked Eloise darkly, “What about before then? In the dark, unrecorded years?”

“Darling, you’re getting to be as bad as your dad!” laughed Maureen, “all we really need is love. Lives of love for us and our dear ones.”

“Yes,” murmured Innocent Umbago, “but we should never forget the darkest years of our history lest, by forgetting them, we repeat them.”

“Exactly,” murmured Maureen, “now who’s for another glass of Wally’s wine? Before we all fade away in a cloud of old miseries and forgotten lives?”

“I’ll have just a thimble-full,” murmured Innocent, “I must be careful, but I must find out just how delicious my old friend Wallace’s home made plonk is, but not get legless doing it!”

© Peter Rogerson 23.07.19