Bernard
was a countryman. He was ill much of his
childhood, so he hardly went to school, but he spent a lot of time with his
step-father Charlie, a woodsman, in the forests. And, a child alone at home,
his friends and playmates were the draught horses who pulled the plough on the
farm next door to his family’s cottage.
Everyone
Bernard knew, as a child, worked on farming, gardening, building ~ husbanding animals,
creating shelter, caring for the land. As an adult, he himself lived in a tiny Victorian
artisan cottage on the fringes of Flatropers Wood in Beckley. When he took it on, it was semi-derelict, overgrown with brambles, last used for housing chickens. A master-builder (and in later years an artist-blacksmith), he made it into a home of beautiful simplicity. Seven years after the death of his beloved
wife Anne and a year or so after my first husband found a new life companion,
Bernard married me; but he died not much more than a year later, at the very
end of August. So this month of August in 2004, I and my daughters spent
watching over his last days, caring for him. Especially I remember the nights ~
the huge, bright, silent moon gazing in through the window of the cottage.
Listening to the silence. Waiting for his death. A very vivid time. Surrounded
by prayer we were, the whole place charged with love. You could feel it.
Bernard
was a difficult man ~ impossible might be a better word. Touchy, moody, tender,
creative, imaginative, über-honest and direct, funny, generous and kind,
incredibly rude if he thought the occasion demanded it, intensely private.
Sometimes surpassingly patient, often dismissive and not patient whatsoever. A
soul of sensitivity and perception. A man of carefully-thought-through and
strongly held views. Distrustful of religion but deeply reverent. What
Yorkshire people call “wick” was Bernard ~ fully alive. Laughter in his eyes.
Memorable.
And
Bernard had a cousin whose name I’ve forgotten ~ apart from his dearly loved
son, he thought his family little worth any attention. But he told me one day
of a conversation this cousin had with his wife. The cousin had been out
working in the garden on a fine summer’s day. Everything had been growing fast
– the grass, the hedges, all of it. The man’s objective for the day was to
restore order. This involved mowing the lawn, and then the edges of it would
have to be trimmed with a spade or an edge-cutter; and also trimming the hedges
back into shape.
Though
capable and possessed of many useful skills, knowing the ways of birds and
plants and animals, these were not polished or highly educated people, and they
would have spoken ~ as Bernard did ~ with the distinctive Sussex country accent.
Thus
came about the following conversation at the end of a long day’s hard work:
Man:
I’ve done the garden.
Wife:
Yes. But you ’aven’t trimmed the edges.
Man
(indignant): I ’ave trimmed the ’edges!
Wife:
No you ’aven’t.
Man:
Yes I ’ave! …
Ah,
the misunderstandings of language and marriage, the power of a humble H!
Always
used to make Bernard smile, that story.
