The residents of Stanmore Crescent in the suburb of Manning’s Heath, Horsham, in the south of England, were feeling rather smug. Two weeks ago the Crescent had won first prize for the best kept gardens in the area, third year running if you please; a conceited satisfaction, if satisfaction it gave, for the affluence of its residents ensured the highest care was lavished on anything sown, planted, blooming or showing in the manicured grounds around their spic and span show houses.
Sour grapes? Perhaps, but my position with a security firm in the district gave access to information barred to most. Recently, I had cause to check the background of the Shebden family, occupiers of number 45, or ‘Cranleigh’ as the old English lettering on the security gate declared. Nothing serious, just one of those checks required by firms who have certain dealings with the government. I found the Shebdens to be quiet, unassuming, affluent and generally well-disposed to the various charities calling on them, receiving the nods, smiles and greetings of others with an amiable enough spirit. And why not? Scientifically well-qualified, Vaughan Shebden enjoyed his exalted position as Director of the Institute of Horticultural Science on the outskirts of the town, while his wife Jane, of the Gaffeny family, gifted intellectually with a PhD in science herself, maintained the family name on the board of the University of Guilford as Registrar.
Her name considered plain by some, could not have been affixed to this Jane. I can tell you that in one of her frequently suggestive but hitherto non-productive playful moods, she presented a certain kind of book to Vaughan, one of her best friends at the time. From that moment on Vaughan felt himself poised on the upper-most level of exciting husbandry, for the contents of the book, being avant-garde, boggled his mind and knees, accompanied by a most pleasant tingling feeling just below his navel, introducing him to a variety of bedroom games with highly erotic eastern flavours. And in case you’re asking if the book that changed their lives was calm and sultry, I can tell that calm, it was never was, but sultry? Yes, indeed!
A week later, the evening of Simon’s conception as it happened, they’d dined together. Jane, as then unfettered by ring or promise, had enjoyed the carefree flings at country hotels over a number of months, and with the oven remaining empty, flings aplenty beckoned her on. Friends later pondered on whether the hotel at Lythe Hill, on the Petworth Road just out of Haselmere in Surrey, could have had something in the water that opened the door. Others reasoned that the prelude was the atmosphere of the Auberge de France, smaller of the hotel’s two restaurants, aided further by the delicious meal they were served that evening. The prime Scottish fillet of steak, pan-fried with a puree of pickled walnuts, Vaughan demolished, or poached rainbow trout with a compote of prawns and coated with a light mustard sauce which Jane consumed together with a most appropriate glass or two of the best white wine . Whatever, the door was opened and delivery made sometime that evening or in the early hour of the following day in the snugly comfort of room 69, adding considerable weight to the saying of estate agents: Location is everything.
However, strange customs are still practised by country folk who gather in wood or vale performing at unearthly hours rituals best not seen by decent clean-living people. I’m certain Benjamin Belchin, elderly kitchen-hand at the said hotel was involved. He insisted that his name Belchin be pronounced following the custom of his forebears, as wind is noisily emitted from the stomach through the mouth, enjoying the discomfort it gave to gentle folk unfortunate to be within hearing. He witnessed what he described as a most dastardly deed committed by Jane as she drove up the hotel drive earlier that fated day and in the process of parking her red two-seater, she’d nonchalantly reduced Spiky, Benjamin’s pet hedgehog, to large dinner-plate size and skipped into the hotel without giving it a moment’s thought. This callous action irked Benjamin’s ire a notch or two beyond his safe working scale, evidenced a short time later as pots, cooking utensils and crockery flew in all directions around the kitchen. You could understand; he’d cared for Spiky as a surrogate parent since finding it a twitchy splodged hog by the side of the road side some months earlier. Mouth to mouth had proved tricky but a straw successfully restored some shape to his small, snail-munching buddy. It ended more your oblique oval than normal I’d say and sadly resulted in Spiky being snubbed by hogs local and itinerate squashing through the area or hitching rides in the treads of vehicle via the by-pass.
Which brings us to the question: Did Benjamin Belchin in a fit of spite pronounce some kind of jiggery-pokery high step spell in the wine cellar just before the arrival of Vaughan Shebden? He accompanied himself with spoons, banging two pan lids strapped to his inner thighs, interspersed with strange cries and mutterings through pursed lips. Whatever, the child conceived the day of Spikey’s demise under the wheels of her car was born safely after the normal time had elapsed, with nothing outward giving evidence that Benjamin’s jiggery-pokery had worked.
Delighted that he was now a father, Vaughan named the boy, Simon, wisely dropping the prefix Karma moments before notifying the birth at the registry office, and no doubt the ghosts of the Gaffney’s of Surrey smiled again.
The thing is, one would have expected the offspring of two very gifted minds to be of similar ability. Sad to say, Simon turned out to be more than a little off-centre, he failed to measure up intellectually, started a commune and took to hippy ways with the result that Momma and Poppa shut their nursery door for good.
One is thus drawn to the conclusion that in chemistry when two substances unite, the new substance is called a Tertium Quid, or a third party which shall be nameless. Vaughan and Jane with all their knowledge ought to have known that. I hope you’ll approve of my writing to the suggesting they change Simon’s name by deed poll; I’ve suggested Tertium.Quid, for Simon is certainly not the full quid, only one-third to be precise.
© Dennis Crompton 1999
The writings of a Lancashire lad 