Footfalls Echo

Chapter one Life appeared much as usual in the village of Frincham, a place of little significance except to those who choose to live there. Barely a spot on the local map, it sits there, struggling to retain its integrity in the 21st century, situated in leafy West Berkshire and nestling quietly between its neighbouring village of Yattley, and the larger market town of Newbury. Since the dawn of time English villages are traditionally agricultural in origin and were at some point constructed on private land, normally owned by the local squire, to provide housing and a community for workers on his country estate, and normally tied to their employment. So if they moved on or lost their job, they became instantly homeless too. These small pockets of former agricultural industry usually include a village square, or main street, where the traders and the pub, or pubs, might be found, but in this particular village, the village square is actually more of a slightly wonky triangle. Dominating one side of it is an imposing and extremely old Michelin starred and thatched bar stroke hotel and restaurant called the Royal Oak: named after a legend that King Charles II, during an escape from Cromwell’s Roundheads via a tunnel from nearby Shaw House to Donnington Castle during the second Battle of Newbury in 1644, (by what must have been quite a circuitous route), apparently hid in the tree at an unspecified moment. The bar stroke hotel now leans slightly drunkenly to one side from hundreds of years of subsidence, and its leaded window panes all twinkle like fairy lights in the sun from slightly different angles. The remaining tree stump from which the Royal Oak takes its name forms the centre of a modern mini roundabout in the centre of the triangle, and cars now park in regimented herring bone pattern parking spaces up the centre of a main through road that once saw only horse drawn carriages, and the occasional bicycle. The butcher’s shop stands on the corner of the second angle. Double fronted, it still boasts its two huge Dickensian and rather saggy bow windows, through which one can daily see the array of meats and homemade sausages and pies that are temptingly on offer. Very much a family run business with traditional values, on entry to the premises one can be assured a hearty greeting from the current custodian, Ken Griffin, and probably a free pie, or a bone for your dog in addition to your purchases when you leave too. Directly opposite the Royal Oak, and along the third angle, stands a row of three terraced ‘chocolate box’ style Elizabethan black and white cottages. These are numbers one to three Stanton Cottages: thatched as one building, and all with their downstairs bathrooms built onto to the back as flat roof extensions rather as a second thought after indoor plumbing became the norm. Their emerald green external paintwork identifies them as still belonging to the local squire, which in this case means the owner of the rather imposing Stanton Court Estate, an impressive stone mansion that stands alone in its many acres of manicured park outside the village, on the rather aptly named Stanton Court Road. At the far end of the triangle, by the grocer’s shop, Mattesons, (also the post office), stands a fairly large property, set farther back with a sweeping semi circular and deeply gravelled driveway. The original Manor House for the village, it is Jacobean in style with characteristic windows and lintels, and it has a front door right in its centre that on first sight makes one wonder if the owners still use its original key; that must be the size of a spanner. The village has a second pub called the White Hart, which is most popular with lesser mortals than those that frequent the Royal Oak, though its regulars do include the Oak’s esteemed chef, Gareth Carey, who has a slight addiction to the Landlord’s Irish stew. The Hart, as it is known locally, stands to the side of the road just down the lane from the square, sitting comfortably between the slightly dilapidated village hall, and the school. Opposite the school and set back with a slightly raised aspect of very old churchyard and a war memorial, stands the square towered and quintessentially English looking St Mary’s church, whose pews still have little doors on them to keep out the riff raff (and the draught), and whose clock chimes every quarter of an hour with comforting regularity, but only until 10pm. The Rectory, a rather old and shabby house of somewhat confused and wildly unsympathetic vintages stands adjacent, but with what remains of a convenient garden gate between the two to ease the Rector’s commute time to and from work from roughly three minutes to roughly one. Directly behind St Mary’s Church flows the gently meandering River Kennet, still dotted along its entirety with concrete gun emplacements, or ‘pill boxes,’ dating back to the unrealised threat of German invasion during World War II, and including one at the very bottom of the Rectory garden that makes a convenient play den for the Rector’s children. As a gift from the river that adds to St Mary’s many charms, the churchyard also boasts a regular congregation of all creatures great and small to bask in the sunshine, or eat the leftovers from the church kitchen. The particular favourites are the numerous wildfowl, especially when accompanied by a row of chicks that take advantage of all the peaceable nooks and crannies and provide an excellent topic for sermons around Easter time. On this particular day, the school day had finished and all the children had gone home, when the recently restored afternoon peace was broken as a rather battered old Ford Escort pulling a trailer of mysterious bulges secreted beneath some shabby bed sheets made its way noisily into what passed as the square, and eventually pulled into the little lay-by at side of the road outside the post office.There were just three occupants inside the car: the driver, a man smoking a roll up cigarette, who had greasy black hair and a face that made you reach into your pocket for your wallet to make sure it was still there. In the passenger seat next to him sat a teenage boy of about seventeen. Gypsy, with strikingly hypnotic black eyes, he had a mop of jet black hair that fell in tight curls to the neck of his black T shirt, but without quite concealing a small gold hoop earring through one ear. Completing the family trio and seated in the back was a woman whose cheap and dowdy appearance showed her age to be quite a bit older than she actually was: her grubby blonde head cast downwards, she was visibly mouse like in her timidity and she worried constantly at the nail on her left thumb. It was the boy who stepped out of the car, looking around himself moodily. His jeans were way beyond distressed, being considerably more hole than whole and, heading for the doorway of the shop; he hawked and spat disgustingly on the pavement just in front of him. ‘Just find the notice board and see what cards they’ve got Dan… window cleaning, gardening, that sort of thing…’ said his father from inside the car. ‘I know what I’m doing…!’ the boy replied shortly, turning impatiently back towards the car. Then, pushing the shop door open he mumbled, ‘I’m getting to be a friggin’ expert...’ A woman and her three young children were leaving the shop as he tried to enter, but he pushed himself rudely on past them without holding the door, as if he had not even seen them there. Shaking her head in disbelief at his lack of manners, the woman was dressed in what looked at first glance like an ordinary dark pink skirt suit; but she was, on closer inspection, wearing the badge of office of a vicar; the dog collar, poked through the buttoned up neck of her pale pink clergy shirt.