A potential story!

 One of the leading gangsters in New York in the Prohibition era was neither Sicilian nor Jewish, but was born in England. His name was Owen Madden, and he came to New York as a child, to live with his aunt in a notorious slum  on the West Side of Manhatten, known as "Hell's Kitchen". He joined the local street gang, the Gophers, and rose to be their leader. He was known as "Owney the killer".

   In the 1920s he made a fortune in bootlegging and the "numbers"  gambling racket; he owned the elite Cotton Club in Harlem, and was nicknamed "the duke of the west side". But in the early 1930s he retired to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he founded a hotel and casino that played host to many of his fellow-gangsters, including Lucky Luciano when on the run from the authorities.

Madden remained there until he died peacefully in the 1960s; long enough to have met the young Bill Clinton as he was growing up in the state. Clinton's mother certainly encountered Madden, since she once had to prepare him for surgery, and recalled that the old bullets in his body lit up the x-ray screen "like stars in a planetarium!"

Although there is no reason to believe that Clinton himself ever met Madden, wouldn't an imaginary meeting make a splendid story, as the aged gangster imparts to the future president his advice on how to become a success in life!      

The great prize-fight: a discarded episode from my historical novel

 I received a message from Sir Anthony Pardington, telling me of a great prize-fight soon to be held at Harley Green, a village a few miles to the north-east of Brackenridge hill. He had invited all the local gentry to the event, and had himself put up a purse of twenty guineas for the winner. He suggested that I might ride over to meet him at the fight, and then continue onwards to stay a few days at one of his houses, which was not far away. Chancing to meet Sir James Wilbrahim, I mentioned said in jest that he should be pleased that I was visiting a place sharing its name with our last Tory prime minister. “But he betrayed us in the end.” was his response. So, on a fine bright morning, I set forth on Alexander for my first experience of prize-fighting.

  

   The fight took place in a ring (for such it was called, though it was square in shape) that was marked out with ropes in a field. A disorderly crowd pressed on this arena, while a group of gentlemen watched from a nearby mound, and it was there that I met Sir Anthony. The two prizefighters, I learned, were Chesney Harris, who came from our county, and Tom Maguire, who was billed as “The Irish Champion”, though I was told he actually hailed from Cronley, a coal-mining town some fifteen miles away. Many of his supporters had walked to Harley Green that morning to cheer for their hero.

  The gladiators stood in opposite corners, conferring with their seconds and occasionally turning to glare fiercely at each other. Both were stripped to the waist. Their faces bore the scars of earlier battles. Both fighters took the same stance: leaning back slightly with the chin tucked in, the left arm extended, the right held back in defence. A young gentleman I did not know, who had been appointed referee, called them to the centre of the ring and the great contest began.

   I was not familiar with the sport, but Sir Anthony, who was viewing the proceedings with much excitement, explained the rules: kicking the opponent was not permitted, neither were punches delivered below the belt; and when a man was down, his seconds had half a minute to get him back on his feet and to the mark. It made me think of what I had been told concerning the Pankration in the ancient Olympic Games, in which anything was permitted with the exception of eye-gouging.

   Maguire was short and stocky, and looked very strong; Harris was taller, with long legs and arms. I was soon able to see how these qualities dictated the different tactics of the two men; for Maguire strove to close in and grapple, whereas Harris sought to keep him at a distance by delivering blows to the head and chest.

  The fight continued for seemed like many hours, and I quickly lost count of the number of rounds as the two men pummelled each other almost to a standstill. Both were bloodied and bruised on the face and chest and neither looked fit to continue: even remaining upright on their feet appeared difficult. Their rival teams of supporters, far from being satiated with so much blood, became more and more animated.

   Then Maguire attempted to seize his opponent’s wrist and draw him in close, but Harris jumped backwards, causing Maguire to lose his balance and stumble so that he had to place his right hand on the ground to support himself. As he went down, Harris felled him with a savage blow to the head. Seconds rushed on with buckets of water, but Maguire was unable to rise beyond a crawl on hands and knees, and the young referee proclaimed Harris the winner.

  The part of the crowd where Maguire’s partisans were congregated erupted in fury, crying foul, since Maguire had already fallen, and demanding that Harris should be disqualified and their man should be awarded the victory. Curses and abuse filled the air, and the Cronley men were shaking their sticks in a most threatening manner.  Regardless of the result, there were many ruffians present who wanted yet more blood. The young referee precipitately fled from the arena and sought refuge with us. Fear was on his face as he gabbled that he had been persuaded to fulfil the position against his better judgement, and that he was resolved never to attend prizefights again. By my side Sir Anthony was obviously worried. He was a magistrate, but what could he do in the face of a hostile mob?

   Suddenly a Herculean figure vaulted the ropes into the ring. The crowd fell silent as he cast off his hat, wig and coat and strode towards the contestants in his shirt. He advanced on Harris, who was shorter by a head and, shouting so that all could hear, challenged him to fight, at any time or place of the latter’s choosing, for a purse of two hundred guineas: more if his opponent’s backers were prepared to put up the money! The crowd forgot for a moment their differences as they watched this new development.

   “Who the devil is that?” Sir Anthony asked.

   “His name is George Davies,” I replied, “I met him in London. He is a friend of Lord Staines”.

   “Well, it is easy to see why Staines should idolise him. Do you think he really would fight Harris?”

   “He might. He is mad enough for anything.”

   “He is a brave fellow in any case,” said Sir Anthony, “and with more intelligence than some might give him credit for. See how he has caused the mob to forget their quarrels and look at him instead!

   “Now it is incumbent on us to support him”, he added. To my astonishment, he bellowed, at the top of his voice, “A hundred guineas on Davies to win!” There were cheers.

   “And a hundred of mine on Harris!” I shouted, taking the hint. Davies turned round and bowed to the crowd.

  Following our lead more bets were shouted from different parts. Gradually the crowd, discussing the prospective combat among themselves, began to disperse, and Sir Anthony thought it was now safe for us to withdraw. We were followed by the other gentlemen, with the young referee relieved to accompany us. We afterwards heard that the Cronley miners ransacked a nearby inn and, very drunk, left a trail of wreckage on their march home.

    The fame of the memorable contest soon spread even to London. Not long after, I heard a hawker of ballads singing of it in the street, and I was curious enough to buy it from her. It began well enough: 

   “Chesney Harris and Tom Maguire

     Both champions they

     Fought till dusk on Harley green

     For a purse of gold one day”

And then proceeded to a description of the contest, which, though dramatic enough, did not appear to have been composed by someone who actually watched it. Further interest was added by telling how that the vicar of the parish, portrayed as a jolly sporting clergyman, had offered the victor the hand in marriage of an orphan girl under his care, together with a dowry; and how Harris took her and then discovered she was the long-lost heiress to a great fortune. I fear, however, that this romantic tale was the purest fiction.

   George Davies’s challenge was not mentioned at all by the balladeer, which led me to conclude that not only had this unnamed hack not been present, but that he had not even spoken to those who were there. Such neglect was only too common among the laureates of St. Giles.

   But did Davies ever fight Harris? If so, I never hear mention of it. I did not see him again for more than a year, by which time more pressing events had intervened.

 

Pagan Philosophy; appropriate to current events

  Over the endless plain of the frontier

The courageous Don Cossacks once rode

Free as birds in the boundless sky

And fish in the mighty rivers

Bowing to no master, but knowing

That to preserve their freedom

They must fight.

 

Silly people in the cities

Talk of dying for a cause

But a serious man knows

That for your cause to triumph

You must kill.

 

 In the end we shall all die

What matters is how we die

And what better way to die

Than in defence of your home

Surrounded by the bodies of your enemies?

 

 

The only immortality that is certain

Is when your children’s children

Tell stories of your valiant deeds.

 

The endless plains of the frontier

Once inspired Tolstoy, and Babel, and Sholokhov

And now they inspire

Vladimir Putin –

A serious man..

The Turnpike: a discarded episode from my historical novel

When it was time for me to leave, Sir Anthony suggested that I travel home by the new turnpike road, and detailed a servant to guide me on my way. Alfred Redman was the youth’s name, and it suited him well, for his hair was indeed of a fiery shade. He rode a pony alongside my horse. We fell into conversation, which quickly showed that he was worldly-wise, never at a loss for words and entirely fearless in his manner. He would never have suited a master who expected silence and deference from servants, but as it was, his chaffing passed the time pleasantly.

  Before long he was able to tell me that we were approaching the start of the new turnpike. But before the tollbooth came into view, there came on the breeze a smell of burning and the noise of shouting and huzzah-ing from many throats. Alf quickly pulled my horse and his pony under the shadow of some trees as a man, covered in dirt and bleeding from a head wound, came running for his life down the road. He dived into the bushes and disappeared from sight, and not a moment too soon, for his pursuers now appeared round the corner. Instead of searching for him, they saw us, and advanced in our direction.   “What’s your name, and what are you doing here?” one of them asked.

      They were the most extraordinary bunch. Though they were obviously men, they were all dressed as women, apart from the boots protruding beneath the long skirts, and many had their faces blackened. They were armed with sticks, though two carried axes and one a blunderbuss of antiquated pattern, and were clearly in no mood to be trifled with. They could see from my clothing and my horse that I was a gentleman and they regarded me with considerable suspicion.

  I was wondering whether to answer them quietly and politely, giving them my name and explaining that I was a stranger in the district and desirous only of returning to my home near Brereton, or whether I should defy them, stress my status as a Member of Parliament and threaten them with the law. I could explain that I was in favour of turnpikes, and had voted for more than one Turnpike Bill during my brief time in the House. The roads north and west from Brereton, towards the Dee and the Mersey, were notoriously bad, and in winter impassable to wheeled vehicles of any kind, and I could argue that trade and commerce could never flourish until this was remedied. However, these men in women’s dress did not look susceptible to reasoned argument of this kind, and some of them fingered their weapons in a threatening manner.

  While I hesitated, young Alf took control of the situation.

   “Let me handle this, sir!” he whispered, and proceeded to embark on a most ridiculous farrago of lies and nonsense, explaining that I was the unfortunate brother of a tenant farmer, who chose to dress like a gentleman (he implied that I might be somewhat feeble-minded), but was quite harmless and hated all turnpikes and enclosures, and that his master had ordered him to show me the way home, fearing that I might get lost, and that if they asked politely I would not fail to pay them. He then whispered to me, “Just keep smiling, sir, and pay them the toll”.

   They held a brief consultation before the one with the blunderbuss, who appeared to be their leader, and a man of some intelligence and education, addressed me with the accompaniment of much ludicrous bowing and deference, which caused laughter from his followers “Then sir, my lord, you may proceed, for we have no quarrel with you. But first, let us show to you our determination to achieve justice for our cause!”

   Round the corner we came to the entry to the turnpike. The gate had been chopped to pieces and was now burning on a bonfire, and beside it the newly-built toll-keeper’s cottage had had all its windows smashed. A painted board, which carried the sums to be paid for using the turnpike, was also burning. I guessed that the man I had seen fleeing away had been the toll-keeper, who could have counted himself fortunate to have escaped with his life.

   “Now you have seen what we have done”, the spokesman told me, speaking in the manner of an inferior actor. “Know that we are Mother Goose’s Maidens, and that we fight for rights and justice for all Englishmen against tyranny. For how can it be just that that we should be charged tolls to travel upon this road, which our forefathers used for uncounted ages? So we have destroyed the tollgate, and the road is again free for all to use. And now, sir, my lord, you may go and tell the world what you have seen: but before you go, you might wish that we should drink your honour’s health?”

   Keeping my face fixed in a grin of idiocy, I gave him a few shillings. They then gave me a cheer, and I was allowed to pass on my way. I reflected that it was fortunate that my name had not been revealed.

   After we had left the turnpike, Redman left me to return to Sir Anthony’s house. But in parting, he informed me that, should I ever be in need of a servant who, he assured me, could turn his hand to any task with the utmost efficiency, then he, should he happen to be freed from the household of Sir Anthony Pardington, would be happy to place himself at my service.

   The rest of my journey home continued without incident. I would continue to support the building of more turnpikes, but reflected that I had not fully considered their effect on the local people.

Christmas

A very merry Christmas to everyone!

These splendid angels are from the Priory Church, Great Malvern, Worcestershire.

 

Moscow 1981; a true story

Going to Moscow for the 1981 Gymnastics World Championships: a true story 

I had been reporting on gymnastics events for a variety of magazines since 1975, and was keen to visit the Soviet Union for a major tournament. When I heard the Americans would be boycottting the 1980 Moscow Olympics, I thought I might stand a good chance, so I wrote a request for a press pass, got a colleague to translate it into Russian, posted it off and waited. Some weeks later I got home to find the post office had left me a docket telling me that they had a registered letter from Moscow awaiting collection. "It's my tickets!" I thought. I charged down full of excitement and was handed a suspiciously thin envelope, which proved to contain a single rather grubbily-photocopied sheet of paper informing me that I had applied to the wrong place. Not only must this item have cost a fortune to send by registered post all the way from Moscow; it probably got me on some M15 list of suspects.

 Things weren't much better when later that year I applied to attend a tournament in East Berlin. In this case I did receive a very friendly invitation; the only drawback being that my the time it reached me, the event had already finished. A check of the dates on the letterhead and the postmark suggested it had sat on someone's desk for a whole month before being posted, and the fact that it was addressed to "Stoke-on-Trent, USA probably didn't help. There was less visible co-operation when I applied to the organisers of the World Student Games in Bucharest: in fact I received no reply at all; but a German friend who attended the tournament informed me that the Romanians had actually set up facilities for me in the press centre, and I should have gone. I protested that they hadn't bothered to let me know. "Oh, the Romanians never tell you anything!" he replied. "You just have to turn up!" 

However, in 1981 I did receive tickets for the World Gymnastics Championships in Moscow. The next problem was getting a visa. When there was still no sign of mine a week before the start, I rang up the travel agent, who told me that patience was needed and I shouldn't start to panic until 24 hours before the flight: such delays were standard for Soviet bureaucracy. "And I tell you, it's getting worse!" he exclaimed, "And Reagan's afraid of these people invading us!" I had visions of a mechanised offensive into Central Europe having to be postponed for lack of visas. But his advice proved right, and my documents duly arrived a whole three days before departure. 

I was the only person in our party to be searched at customs on the way in. The official read through my address book and notebook, leafed through my wallet, and carefull scrutinised the crushed Remembrance Day poppies, old tickets and screwed-up sweet papers that he found in my coat pockets and the bottom of my bag. having failed to find anything interesting, he then asked, "Vy have you come?" "I've come to see the gymnastics world championships", I explained (it said this on my visa anyway) "I sink you are too late; it has finished". "No it hasn't: it's going on till Sunday!" Since I had avoided this little trap, he lasped into apathy and let me through. 

A fellow-enthusiast, Maurice Knight from Birmingham, then caused enormous confusion at passport control. For a start, he had a joint passport but had come without his wife, so he had to explain why he had left her at home. The following dialoguethen took place:- "Your name is Maurice Kerr-niggt?" "No, my name is Maurice Knight!" "Your name is Maurice Kerr-niggt". This time it was a statement, not a question. "Yes, I know it's spelt like that, bit actually it's pronounced Knight" "Your name is Maurice Kerr-niggt". Voice from the back of the queue, "For heaven's sake, Maurice, tell her you're called Kerr-niggt or we'll be here all day!" "Oh all right then; my name is Maurice Kerr-niggt" "Go through!" Honour was satisfied: the foreigner had done as he was told. 

When we boarded the bus to our hotel, we were told that the first gymnastics we would be attending would be the women's finals the next day. Maurice and I immediately protested: what about the men's tournament that evening? We had been promised entry to all events! Elena, our guide, was sympathetic but firm: she was very sorry, but it was impossible; no tickets were left. We were thus not in a very good mood when we reached the hotel, where we found another British party about to leave for the stadium. Yes, they also had been told there were no tickets, but when they complained sufficiently some had materialised. So Maurice and I approached their guide and explained the position. Within a couple of minutes she had managed to locate two spare tickets, so Maurice and I abandoned our luggage at reception and went off to the stadium, and the competition we watched was so exciting we wouldn't have missed it for anything.

 The tournament was in many ways not well organised. The Russians were incapable of producing a printed programme for the spectators, who thus had nothing to tell them what was happening next, or who was wearing what number, let alone having nowhere to keep the scores, so at the close few had any notion of the result until the parade of the medal-winners. A few privileged officials were given printed scoresheets at the close, which I had to cadge and then spend hours copying scores out by hand. Even this was not as easy as it sounds, since the names had been translated into Cyrillic script and then back again, by someone whose command of English was distinctly shaky, with the surnames first. The resutlts were often comic. Who in the British team were Prais Heili, Iang Liza, Vezerstoun Cheril and Deivis Dzheffri? (Hayley Price, Lisa Young, Cheryl Weatherstone and Jeffrey Davis). Other nationalities were just as bad, and for the Chinese, just to be different, the surnames had been put last. Even the entry tickets were substandard: whole blocks were printed on single sheet of cheap paper without perforations, and then clumsily and inaccurately torn off one by one. 

Moscow in Novemberis cold. during the day the temperature may creep up to above zero, and the sunlight glitters on the gilded domes of the Kremlin cathedrals, but there is a bitter chill in the air when the wind blows and everyone has to wrap up well. The ground is iron-hard, there are flurries of snow, and ice begins to float on the river. It was at this precise time, forty years before our visit, that Hitler's armies ground to a halt on the Sparrow Hills within sight of the city and suffered astronomical casualties as they tried to dig in for winter. Our hotel was a modern one, opposite the Park of Economic Achievement, looking out on a monument to Soviet astronuats that consisted of a great curved rocket-trail looking like a bronze ski-slope. The hotel food wasn't bad, but when two British businessmen at our table asked for champagne they were told there wasn't any. Since several bottles were promonent on other tables this wasn't very convincing, and it took considerable badgering before someone looking like a manager appeared and contrived to locate a couple of bottles in quick order. (It was at this same hotel three years later that I had a surreal experience involving the crockery, which was rather crude and often chipped. Living as I did in Stoke-on-Trent, the world centre of china-ware, I performed the ritual of the "upside-down club": turning a plate over to find where it was made. This proved to be somewhere in East Germany, and the trade name, amazingly, was "Colditz"! In next to no time, everyone in the room was turning over their plates too and exclaiming, "Ooh, so it is!" The staff, of course, had no idea what the joke was, and when we came down for our next meal we found our party had been screened off from the everybody else. "People complained about the noise", we were told. 

Between he hotel and the stadium was a large shoe-shop. Every time we drove past on our coach, even late in the evening, there was always a long queue outside, spilling down the pavement. Eventually one of our party asked Elena the guide, "Why are all those people always queuing outside that shop?" Without batting an eyelid she replied, "It is because they have plenty of time". This was such a splendid answer that none of us could think of any riposte. And in a sense she was speaking the truth, because with goods coming into the shops so irregularly, any Muscovite who saw a queue would be advised to join it, and find out what was on sale later. (See footnote 2)

There was also a functioning Orthodox Christian church close to the hotel, with attractive bright blue onion-domes flecked with gold stars. I looked in once, to see old ladies bowing and scraping and crossing themselves before the icons: they seemed to constitute the entire congregation. The priest looked exactly like Rasputin in films. 

We were taken round the usual tourist sites each morning before going to the stadium. I didn't bother to visit Lenin in his tomb (I had seen him on a previous visit: we thought he was a waxwork), but I did go to St Basil's Cathedral on Red Square. It was much brighter externally than I remembered: perhaps it had been repainted for the 1980 Olympics. All eight of the miniature domes surrounding the central tower were different, and beneath each was a separate chapel, some being scarcely bigger than chapels. Old ladies sat inside them, swathed in blankets against the cold and lookingup from their knitting to shout "Don't touch the icons!" at the tourists. There was a guided tour of the Kremlin, with its splendid cathedrals, plus the Tsar's bell (so big that it could never be hung) and the Tsar's cannon (so big that it could never be fired - something very Russian about these!). In the Treasury was a fine collection of Sevres porcelain. I told Elena that, coming as I did from Stoke, I was interested in ceramics. She knew about Wedgwood, and said how much she liked the blue-and-white jasper ware. I told her it was still being made. "Can anyone buy it?" she asked. I felt like telling her that it wasn't reserved for high officials of the ruling party, if that was what she meant. I asked if she would like me to send her a small piece, but she was most insistent that I shouldn't. Elena was also puzzled by the fact that I owned my own house. "How can you have your own house when you're not married?" she asked. She still had to share a flat with her parents, despite being a university graduate. 

It goes without saying that we were approached on the street by locals wanting to change money or buy our clothes. A group of us met a bunch of young Muscovites headed by a youth with blond-dyed hair, a black leather jacket and an acid burn down his cheek. "You guys got any shoes you wanna sell?" he asked, with an accent suggesting he had learnt his English from old James Cagney movies. One of the American coaches described to me how he was engaged in selling his jeans to a taxi-driver, the way one does, and was haggling about the price, when the taxi-driver had a bright idea. "If you accept my price", he said, "I will give you a nice Polish girl!" "Look, mate", replied the American, by his own account, "I don't want to go home with something I can't wash off!" The taxi driver deduced from this that here was a tough bargainer. "If you don't like that", he riposted, "then I will give you a nice Russian girl!" This would appear to tell us something about he relative status of the two races. "And do you know how much we were arguing about?" the American told me, "Two bucks! He was going to give me a girl for two lousy bucks!" I never had an experience to match this, but I remembered how on a school visit some years earlier, one of the boys wanted to go swimming. There was in those days a vast open-air swimming pool in the middle of Moscow (it isn't there any more: see footnote 1), and the man in charge of the party taught him the Russian for "swimming pool" and told him to take a taxi. What happened was that the boy instantly forgot the Russian for "swimming pool", so instead waved his towel and bathing trunks at the taxi driver; who promptly made him an offer for them; and so instead of swimming he went back to the hotel and spent his gains on vodka. 

In fact there wasn't much point in selling clothes,or in changing money on the black market, since there were special shops called "berioskas" which only accepted foreign currency, and in any case, when we returned to the airport we had to account for all the roubles in our possession and then change them back at iniquitous rates. An hour into the flight, the pilot announced we were leaving Soviet airspace. A mighty cheer went up from the passengers, and two businessmen, fuelled by alcohol, started a game of cricket in the central aisle. But despite all the nonsense, none of us would regret our trip to Moscow.

 Footnote 1: the swimming pool. There was in the centre of Moscow an enormous 19th-century cathedral, dedicated to Christ the Redeemer. It was demolished under Stalin, with the intention of building a grandiose Palace of the Soviets in its place, but in the end the site became a swimming pool. After the collapse of communism, the swimming pool went and the cathedral was rebuilt. A sign of changing priorities? 

Footnote 2: a joke from late in the Soviet era. Ivan Ivanovich hears a rumour that a local shop has sausage for sale,and decides to go and buy some. "Don't be silly!" his wife tells him, "Even if they had any, they'll be out of it before you can get there!" Nevertheless Ivan goes. There is a very long queue already formed at the shop, and long before Ivan can reach the front a man comes out and announces that the sausage has all been sold. Ivan is furious. "It's a disgrace!" he shouts, "I've worked all my life for this country, and now I can't get any sausage! Our government's useless!" A large man comes up to him and says, "Comrade, calm down! Think of what would have happened in the old days if you'd spoken like that!" (he points a finger at Ivan's head and says "Bang!") "So calm down and go home!" When Ivan gets home his wife asks, "Well, was I right? Are they out of sausage?" "It's worse than that", Ivan tells her, "They're even out of bullets!".

.

Taking a Photograph

 Our new vicar had asked me to take some photos of the church in a neighbouring village, so I walked there on a path through the woods one very hot afternoon.

   The church was small and built of red sandstone, which was somewhat decayed in the tower which stood at the western end. I stood in the churchyard to the south to take my pictures, but found the view was interrupted by a number of ancient gravestones. One of them, facing the south-west corner, was the size and shape of a cabin trunk and covered in moss; its inscription left quite illegible. I climbed on top for a better view of the church, saying to the unknown occpant as I did so, "Please excuse me for this indignity; the vicar asked me to do it. I promise to say a prayer and put some money in the collection-box when I'm done!"

  I took several pictures from this position before dismounting and walking to the church door. I noticed high up on either side of the entrance two peculiar faces carved in the crumbling red stone. The right hand one was clearly a cat, grinning, but the one on the left, being somewhat decayed, was so grotesque as to be neither clearly human or demonic. It had its mouth open in a snarl, revealing a scattering of teeth. I took a photograph of it, and made a mental note to ask the vicar about it, before entering the church.

   Inside it was rather dark, but I couldn't see any way of switching on lights. There was a rather heavy rood screen, beyond which was an altar with no cross on it. The silence was absolute. I attempted to take a photograph, but my camera was dead. The battery must have expired, and I had forgotten to bring a spare. Damn!

  For no good reason, I felt increasingly uneasy. In consequence I muttered even the most perfunctory prayer before retreating, and on failing to find any collection box for my promised offering fled the building in a somewhat ignominious manner. I took one glance backwards as I walked out through the churchyard. The cat was still grinning at me; not, I thought, in a very friendly fashion. 

   As I passed through the gate I heard a bell toll, to sound the hour, I supposed; and an unpleasing sound it was; less a deep tone than something resembling an old saucepan being struck with a ladle.

   My uneasiness persisted in my journey home through the woods. I kept glancing back to see if anything was following me, though I never saw anything, nor did I meet a single person, and I was glad to reach home intact.

   That night I dreamed that a hooded and shrouded figure was standing beside my bed and leaning over me. I could not tell whether it was a man, a woman, or some creature that was entirely unhuman. I dreaded that the figure might throw back its hood, revealing the grotesque face I had seen on the church, opening its mouth wide and grinning with anticipation of a bite. In a cold sweat of fear I woke up and sat bolt upright.

   "It's not my fault!" I exclaimed out loud. " I didn't mean to insult you! The vicar asked me to take a photo! It was the only way I could do it!"