The Pump in Thorp's Spinney

1

The present that pleased Philip Falmer most on his fourth birthday was the wooden working model of a garden pump sent to him by his Aunt Sarah. The accompanying letter informed him that it was the handiwork of young Simon Tubbins, the gardener's boy at Sockstead Hall, where Aunt Sarah's husband, Sir James Redlaw, reigned as Squire over the two parishes of Upper and Nether Sockstead. The model stood on a tripod, which could be placed and held firm by Philip's left hand in a basin of water, while his right worked the handle up and down and brought the water pulsing from the spout. Philip felt that he was now one up on his one-year-older brother, to whom, three months earlier, the same aunt had sent a model of a stationary steam engine. Edgar was not allowed methylated spirit for this engine, except when Miss Williamson, the nursery governess, was there to superintend its operation: for Mrs Falmer had declared it a dangerous gift for a child. Edgar disliked being called a child, and could not view as a gift to him anything of which he was forbidden sole and unrestricted use. The pump, on the other hand, was rated by the mother as 'most sensible and suitable', and, for a week or so, Philip and his pump were in reciprocating, and almost perpetual, motion. It was only when he tried pumping brilliantine taken from the bottle on his father's dressing table as a variant from water that some few parental restrictions had to be enacted and enforced.

It may be doubted whether the generality of aunts, uncles, godfathers, godmothers, parents and other customary donors of presents to children sufficiently realise the dangers of unintelligent generosity. If your godson asks for a pump, by all means give him one; for his request shows that he is already pump-minded. But to walk into a toy shop and there order a steam engine for Edgar, a pump for Philip, and a pistol for Arthur without knowing whether Edgar wants an engine, Philip a pump or Arthur a pistol, involves a terrible responsibility. Just as a twig thrown into a mud bank may in time deflect the channel of a river, so may a chance-chosen toy determine the course of a child's psychology. Thus it came about that Philip, who had never previously paid any attention to pumps, soon began to search them out as objects of prime interest in the houses and gardens of his parents' neighbours and friends.

One afternoon indeed he made bold to work the handle of the large and ancient pump in Tarrington Churchyard. The Sexton must have been cleaning up the vestry when he heard its sonorous clanking, for, to Philip's consternation, he came fiercely running out of the door in the south aisle. The boy need not however have been frightened, for the old man, seeing who he was, seemed vastly amused and bade him go home and tell his father, 'as he had found where to draw white wine with plenty of body in it'. Philip, though not understanding the message, disliked the rather sinister cackle with which it had been confided; and, because of this dislike, he did not repeat it to his father, but suppressed it. He could not however forget the incident, which caused him thenceforward to classify pumps in two categories, nice and nasty, and to suspect all pumps in lonely or unusual places as likely to belong to the latter. Philip's new interest soon extended to other items of hydraulic apparatus besides pumps. Although his parents never traced the disaster to his agency, the overflowing one morning of their main cistern and the consequent fall of plaster from the ceiling of the bedroom beneath, resulted from Philip's first self-introduction to a ball-cock. For many months he could never resist the thrill to be derived from pressing the copper float under water and then allowing it to spring up again—a sudden, jerky movement for which the mechanism was not designed.

Then there were taps. Here, again, a dual classification suggested itself. There was the honest straightforward tap with a spout which, if you turned it, showed clearly what it was doing; but there was also the mysterious and secretive tap (to be found in dark cupboards, long passages, or under iron flaps in the outside pavements), whose purposes were hidden. Experiment in regard to the latter was hazardous. When the bottom of the kitchen boiler was burnt out for lack of water, Philip, overhearing cook's loud complaint to his mother, rushed speedily upstairs to readjust the tap in the wainscot of the housemaid's closet with which he had previously meddled, thereby flooding the kitchen range, putting the fire out, and spoiling the dinner. Luckily Mr Falmer, on the data before him, decided that there must have been a temporary blockage in the supply pipe, and his son went unsuspected. Strangely enough, it was a tap of the straightforward variety that shortly afterwards led to his temporary undoing. It was the First Sunday in Advent, and he had greatly enjoyed joining in the singing of hymns about 'Rejoice! Rejoice!' and 'dee-he-heeply wailing', when he noticed a dribbling and a bubbling, and heard a slight sizzling, from the escape-cock of the radiator at the side of the family pew. The temptation was too great and he gave the little tap a smart twist. There was a merely momentary interruption to the Vicar's recital of the Litany, but permanent injury to Miss Williamson's smartest hat, damage which clearly necessitated a beating from his father, even though it was Sunday.

Once a week Mrs Falmer would drive over in the pony trap to do shopping in Bludborough, and it was there that Philip caught his first rapturous glimpse of that apotheosis of a pump, a fire engine in action. It was in Bludborough, too, that, at the invitation of the Waterworks Superintendent (who was Miss Williamson's brother-in-law), Edgar and he were allowed to inspect the huge beam-engined pumps that lifted water from the marsh meadows up to the town reservoir above the railway station.

The hydraulic ram which supplied the large tank at Tarrington Hall Philip found not altogether pleasant. The nature of the apparatus at the intake on the bank of Tarrington mill-pond was explained to him by his father, with the aid of the letter scales on the library writing-table. The slow, rhythmic click-clack which was audible above the iron plate protecting the intake reminded him somewhat of the tick-tock of the grandfather clock on the stairs. The din coming from the ram itself in its shed below the mill dam (a 'clang and a scroosh', as Edgar described it) was a very different sort of noise and, Philip felt, rather alarming. Nor was his apprehension lessened when, finding the shed door open one day, he ventured to peep inside. The man who was doing repairs or making adjustments undoubtedly meant to be kind; but, accustomed to preach in a neighbouring chapel, he proceeded, 'after explaining to Philip the principle of the ram, to point a religious moral. 'You'll have took heed, young sir, as how precious little of the water that comes down from the pond gets into this small pipe as leads to the 'all on the 'ill. Most on it spills out, as you see, and runs down the drain: which be a true parable of the Lord's working; for it's only His elect as may be squirted through the valve of grace up the narrer pipe to 'eaven, while most on 'em goes splashing down the sewer of sin to 'ell.'

The half-light, half-gloom of the shed; the alternate thump, squelch and gurgle of the dimly discerned ram, and the awful admonitions of its guardian, put poor Philip in a sudden fear of he knew not what. Precipitately he rushed from the shed, banging the door behind him, and made off home as fast as his legs would carry him. As he ran, his fear became gradually submerged in a sense of shame at having been a coward; but, before reaching the front gate of Gorse Lodge, he had regained his self-possession sufficiently to try to dismiss both fear and shame from his mind. When, therefore, his mother asked where he had been (it was Miss Williamson's afternoon off and both boys were left to their own devices), he replied that he had walked down along the fields by Highbarrow to have a look at the cows and pigs. So, indeed, he had—on his way to Tarrington mill-pond. But he couldn't forget that ram; or its noise, or its keeper!

2

During the next year and a half nothing much occurred of relevance to our tale. The model pump lasted only a matter of months, Philip having soon become tired of it. Its final breakdown was due not to fair wear and tear, but to use as a missile against a too vocal cat. Philip's interest in hydraulic paraphernalia, which the model had aroused, nevertheless persisted and expanded. In spite of parental, and even fraternal discouragement, he paid surreptitious visits to the Bludborough sewage farm. But, beyond this, there is nothing else to be told of the period which intervenes between the events already recorded and those about to occupy our attention.

The scene now is Sockstead Hall, where the Falmers are paying a spring visit to the Redlaws. The reader will remember that Lady Redlaw, donor of the model pump to Philip, is Mrs Falmer's sister. The two boys, now nearly six and seven-and-a-half respectively, are on their best behaviour; being slightly overawed by the grandeur and dignity of ancient Sockstead as compared with the modest modernity of their own home at Gorse Lodge.

It is the third afternoon of the visit, and the whole party, except Philip, have driven off in the wagonette to Penchester to see the reconstructed retrochoir of the cathedral and the new reredos. Philip was considered too young for such an architectural treat; and, moreover, there was no room for him in the wagonette. Having ascertained that the cathedral was, apart from its font and an antiquated system of hot-water pipes, barren of hydromechanical devices, Philip did not at all mind being left out of the party. He had in fact been waiting for an opportunity of having an uninterrupted yarn with Simon Tubbins, the artist of the model pump. Simon was in due course found in the big potting-shed between the greenhouses in the walled garden. Although still called 'gardener's boy' Simon seemed to Philip to have grown to full-size manhood since they last met two years ago. He was, consequently, shy in starting conversation; but, at the first mention of the model pump, all reserve melted away and they were soon jabbering together as old friends. Yes: Simon still made models in his spare time, if he could find any. He was now at work on one of a windmill pump. What! never seen a windmill pump? Well, Squire had had one put up by the home farm, and it was well worth looking at. It would certainly be working today, with this spanking wind. No: the model her Ladyship had bought two years ago for a Christmas present wasn't a copy of the pump in the kitchen garden, but of the one in Thorp's Spinney. Where was Thorp's Spinney? Well, if the bull weren't out, you could take the short-cut and it was only two fields away beyond the home farm. The pump had been put there to water the cattle, but the well ran dry most seasons; so there were no cattle kept there now, and nobody used the pump.

No, unfortunately; Simon couldn't possibly go there with Philip that morning, because he must get these three dozen flower-pots ready filled for Mr Lewkin to put the cuttings in at twelve o'clock. But if Master Philip would like to go by himself he couldn't possibly miss the way. You walked straight as far as the home farm gate, where you would see the windmill pump in the field on your left and the stile leading to Thorp's Spinney on your right. If the bull were out there was always a notice by the stile, and then you walked on down the lane and followed it round instead of cutting across the fields. There wasn't more than five minutes difference really.

With these directions Philip found his way easily enough. As Simon had foretold, the windmill was spinning round merrily in the strong wind and the water spurted resonantly into the cistern below. After a brief inspection Philip walked on towards the stile and saw, propped against it, a board on which 'Ware Bull' had been crudely daubed in tar. So he continued down the lane and, after a quarter-mile or so of its meanderings, found himself in Thorp's Spinney and in sight of the object of his exploration.

The pump stood just outside the spinney fence; and that neither it nor the trough below it had been in recent use was shown by the riot of nettles and burdock that surrounded both. Slipping under the fence Philip found, as he rose on the other side, something to engage his attention besides the pump. His steps had till now been directed westward, but he was now facing east and what he saw there did not please him. The sky above Thorp's Rise was inky black, and as he gazed on it in surprise there was a glint of distant lightning. He also became suddenly aware that the westerly wind had dropped and that the scene before him lay wrapt in a stillness of expectancy. Snugly abed, with sheets to cover his eyes and pillow-ends to smother his ears, Philip did not bother about thunderstorms; but outdoors and all alone he found himself in fear of one. His first impulse was to bolt home and leave the pump uninspected; but his second thought, prompted by self-respect, was to pay it hastened attention before he ran. His nerves were, therefore, in a state of high tension and apprehension when he grabbed hold of the handle and worked it jerkily up and down. This was not easy, for the bearings had rusted, and at the fourth or fifth downstroke the plunger came out with a rattle and the shaft jammed.

At this moment there grated on Philip's ear a most horrible and unearthly sound. Frozen in stark fright he was unable even to lift his hands to his ears to keep out the awful moaning that seemed to proceed now from the spout of the pump and now from the very ground beneath his feet. It was a hideous ululation, expressive of abysmal pain and despair, and how long it continued Philip was never able to tell. It might have been a matter of seconds or of minutes; to him it was a timeless agony. What released him from its spell was a clap of not very distant thunder. With a quick dive beneath the rail of the fence he dashed back into the lane. Two things only impinged themselves on his numbed senses as he raced along. One was that the bull, after the manner of cattle, kept pace with him on its side of the dividing hedge; and the other was that the windmill had ceased to turn for lack of wind. He noticed these irrelevancies as in a dream.

But although insensitive to other external impressions Philip was already turning a problem in his mind. What should he tell, if anything, of his horrible experience? The truth was plainly incredible. Edgar would not merely disbelieve but laugh. He must either keep silence altogether about his afternoon's expedition or pretend that it had passed off without incident. Before he had arrived at a conclusion he had reached the potting-shed and heard himself hailed by Simon from within.

'What? Back already! Why, good gracious, Master Philip, what be the matter? You're as white as chalk. Don't tell me as you forgot what I said and have been chased by the bull?'

Philip jumped at the explanation thus suggested. Invention was always pleasanter than suppression, and Edgar would envy the fictitious adventure.

'Why, yes!' he answered. 'I stupidly forgot on the way back, and had to run for it. Luckily, I found a hole in the hedge.'

Simon's manifest admiration of this brevity showed Philip that a laconic touch would serve also in imparting the lie to Edgar. As he left the walled garden a crash of thunder made him run towards the short-cut to the Hall which lay across a footbridge over the river. Rain had already begun to fall in large ominous drops when he discovered that the bridge gate was locked and that he must needs go round by the drive; a detour which resulted in his being soaked to the skin before he arrived at the porch. There was no shelter en route against a shower of tropical heaviness. It had hailstones in it too, and was shiveringly cold.

Edgar found his brother very poor company at supper that evening. He evinced no interest whatever in descriptions of Penchester Cathedral, and very little more in the mysterious disappearance of Lenny Gurscall, the village idiot, about which all sorts of strange tales and rumours were current in the servants' hall. Nor was Philip's account of his escape from the bull such as to excite or amuse. The fact was that the hideous reality of the experience which he was suppressing prevented him from giving to the fictitious taurine encounter any sufficient veneer of verisimilitude. Beginning the meal with mere lack of appetite he ended it with a positive feeling of nausea.

Coming in with Lady Redlaw to bid both boys good night his mother quickly saw that all was not well with the younger. A clinical thermometer confirmed her apprehensions by recording a temperature of a-hundred-and-two. Philip was therefore put promptly to bed and Edgar removed to a separate room.

'Not,' Mrs Falmer explained, 'that I suspect anything infectious, but one can't be too careful. Running away from that bull must have made the boy hot, and then on top of it he got caught in that icy downpour. He's probably got a chill.'

So, indeed, it appeared; for, in spite of a hot-water bottle, Philip was taken with shivers and passed a night far from peaceful either for himself or for those in the adjoining bedrooms. The reader may be left to guess for himself the nature of the dreams that caused him to wake up, screaming, not less than three times in twice as many hours.

3

It is not the purpose of this tale to curdle the reader's blood or make his flesh creep by presenting Philip's dreams in horrific detail. For a proper understanding of the trouble that temporarily overwhelmed him after his shell-shock in 1918 it is, however, necessary to sketch the development of what might be called the pump motif in his subconsciousness. The trouble indubitably arose from the fact that neither of his parents, excellently kind as both were, was sufficiently sympathetic or appreciative of childish fears and imaginings to encourage confidences between him and them on such subjects. In conversation with his brother, moreover, Philip was studious to avoid any appearance of juniority such as might lead Edgar to patronise him. The consequences were that he kept the unpleasant episodes of Tarrington churchyard, the mill-pond ram and Thorp's Spinney religiously to himself; that his secretive repression bred recurrent remembrances of the incidents in his dreams; and finally, after his shell-shock, a critical condition of neurosis.

At his preparatory school he was nicknamed 'Screamer', and often awoke from his nightmare with a cake of soap in his mouth. This treatment proved successful in putting a stop to his habit of actual yelling and saved him from later persecution in the big dormitories of Winchingham where a tooth-jug of cold water was accepted as the only remedy for even loud snoring.

The common source of all his dreams lay in the three episodes already recounted, and especially in that of Thorp's Spinney; though they differed and divagated in detail. Sometimes, for instance, the pump usurped the fictitious role of the bull as pursuer and came lunging, lurching, and clanking along behind him with its handle swinging viciously up and down in an effort to reach and strike him. Another night the pump would wear a foul bestial face, of which the spout formed a trunk that trumpeted at him. There were nights, too, when it was robed in a silk academic gown like that of the headmaster, and its handle became an arm brandishing a cane. There were hundreds more of such variations but each of them augmented rather than diminished the offensiveness of the nightmare. There appeared no rhyme or reason about its periodicity. Sometimes Philip would be without it for as long as three months at a stretch, and then suffer it for two or even three nights in succession.

He grew up into a man of strong character who was not going to let himself be beaten by a dream. He disciplined his sleeping self so well, in fact, that he would often succeed in waking himself up at the very outset of the familiar vision. It was not until shell-shock deprived him of his self-control that the nightmare proliferated and reproduced itself so incessantly as to threaten his sanity. In this tragic plight he was wisely counselled by a friend to consult Dr Hasterton, whose success with such cases was beginning at that time to become well known.

Philip took to this specialist at once, and in the course of general conversation at their first meeting it transpired that Hasterton had just returned from Sockstead, where the Hall and surrounding property had been acquired by his brother after Sir James Redlaw's death in 1913. The conversation then turned naturally to shooting and the doctor mentioned how he had brought down two high birds with a marvellous right and left just above Thorp's Spinney. To his own immense surprise Philip heard himself enquiring whether the pump were still there. Such an unusual question gave the doctor a cue, which he discreetly and cleverly followed up; with the result that in less than half an hour Philip had made a clean breast of all his silly pump, ram and ball-cock secrets. Finally, Hasterton suggested that, as he was running down to Sockstead again the next week-end but one, Philip might accompany him. If so, they could ramble round the old place together and possibly shoot a rabbit or two. To this suggestion Philip gladly agreed.

Arrived at Sockstead Hall, Philip found Hasterton's brother as companionable and easy to get to know as the doctor himself. After Mrs Hasterton and her daughter had gone to bed, the three men sat up late over the big log-fire in the smoking-room. Their talk turned on sport, and the doctor couldn't resist mention once more of his prowess at Thorp's Spinney.

'Talking of Thorp's Spinney,' said his brother, 'we made a rather gruesome discovery there the week before last. It landed us in a coroner's inquest too! No; it wasn't murder or anything of that sort. 'Death by Misadventure' was what they brought it in; but the odd thing is that the accident must have happened some twenty years ago. But perhaps this bores you?'

'Far from it! Please go on.'

'Well, about a fortnight ago my bailiff, Horton, suggested that we put the three fields on Thorp's Rise under roots, but Gumwell (the new man at Home Farm) wouldn't hear of it. They were such excellent pasture, he said, and he wanted to use the old cowsheds below the rise if only water could somehow be led to them. Only a few days ago he had come across the remains of an old pump by the spinney. Its suction pipe had been broken away and he could find no signs of a well. But there couldn't very well have been a pump there without one and he suggested that I should send a man down to dig about and see. So I sent old Comper, and it wasn't long before he came back to report the discovery of a large flat stone that rang hollow and looked a likely well-cover. The same afternoon Horton, Gumwell and I with two farm hands, in addition to old Comper, took down two crowbars and a rope, and sure enough we found a large pit under the stone. It wasn't a well though, but a large underground tank some fifteen feet in diameter. About seven feet from the top there opened into it a large circular brick culvert, large enough for a man to crawl through, and within five minutes or so we had traced its other end. It led from the big ditch above the Spinney, but the opening was so blocked with brambles and weeds that I had never noticed it when rabbiting. The downhill side of the ditch had scoured out a hundred yards higher up, and any water it brings down nowadays runs away on the other side of the wood. Consequently the tank was dry and I gave instructions for a ladder and lanterns to be brought down after breakfast next morning, so that we could inspect the condition of the brickwork. I was delayed on the morrow by the arrival of some important letters, and by the time I got to the Spinney they had already made their discovery of human remains at the bottom of the tank. I was there, however, when old Comper brought up the clue to their identity. It had once been a silver hunter watch, but now looked like a black pebble. On the inside lid at its back were engraved the words 'JUDE GURSCALL, 1859'.

'Well, to cut this long story short, Jude Gurscall's widow is still alive, and the remains were undoubtedly those of an idiot son. The unfortunate fellow is still well remembered in the village, for on reaching puberty he had shown signs of becoming dangerous and the question of getting him locked up had begun to be raised by neighbours when he unaccountably vanished and was seen no more. One of his madnesses had been to crawl down holes, and platelayers once had great difficulty in extricating him from the culvert under the railway embankment at Bemsford. He had undoubtedly met his end by creeping along the Thorp Spinney drain and falling down into the underground tank at its end, a good twenty-foot drop. If there was more than his own height of water in it he must have been drowned; if it was dry he probably broke his bones and perished of starvation. However loudly he called for help his cries could never have reached human ears.'

'That,' Philip interrupted, 'is where I'm sorry to say you're wrong: because they happened to reach mine!'

4

Dr Hasterton's concern as to the likely effect of his brother's narrative upon his patient had waxed greater as the tale unfolded. If he could have anticipated such a sinister dénouement he would certainly never have brought Philip to Sockstead. There was indeed a grave risk that what had just been told might cause a recrudescence of the young man's dreaming and re-establishment of subconscious obsessions. The doctor was therefore relieved to note that Philip's face, which he kept under constant but unaggressive attention, indicated neither distaste nor apprehension but only intense interest as the story proceeded. Philip's sudden interruption of it provided the opportunity for preventing the development of any tendency to self-reproach on his part for having, though unwittingly, left a man to his death. This opportunity the specialist promptly seized.

'And now, Falmer, please explain to my brother how a kind providence used your childish fears, and your disinclination to relate your experience in the spinney, to prevent discovery of the lunatic and the lifelong misery for him of incarceration in an asylum.'

Thus encouraged Philip gave a full and unrestrained account of that terrible episode in his boyhood. In doing so he showed neither repression nor self-criticism. His two auditors listened sympathetically and made it clear that Philip's conduct had been perfectly natural in a small boy and that they would have behaved similarly.

'As my brother remarked,' said his host at the conclusion of Philip's confession, 'your silence was providential. A return of the lunatic after his merciful disappearance would have been a tragedy. The first words that his old mother uttered when they told her of our discovery were 'Lord help us, but don't let him back here!' Only when she realised that he had been dead these twenty years past did she become maternal and proprietary. Then her imagination ran quickly to a fine funeral, and in this the whole of both Socksteads were with her. Her better-off neighbours contributed to the cost of an interment which could be fully enjoyed without necessity for any pretence of sorrow. A large crowd turned up for the ceremony and the Penchester Pioneer sent over a special reporter to take pictures. Favourite hymns were sung vociferously at the graveside and, as the country saying goes, a good time was had by all. Only the parson objected to the levity of the coffin being matched by that of its bearers. To cap all, they sent round a subscription list for 'a tombstone. It's in that desk now, together with a drawing of the design. Horton tells me that the inscription is to be partly in Latin. We'll have a look at it!'

The drawing was duly unrolled, and the proposed epitaph ran as follows:

In Memory of
LEONARD JOB GURSCALL
Born November 16, 1876
Died circa May 9, 1894
'Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the
pit of corruption.'—Is. xxxviii, 17
'What can Horton have meant about the inscription being partly in Latin?' the doctor enquired.

'Well,' laughed Philip, 'one would hardly call "circa" English!'

Hasterton noted the laugh with satisfaction. It looked as though the cure might prove permanent and complete. So indeed it proved: but the specialist was slightly chagrined some weeks later to learn that his patient in no way ascribed it to his professional ministrations. 'Of course,' Philip declared, 'the nightmares were bound to stop as soon as they discovered and removed the presence in the well.'

Clarke,
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