News from Norfolk

Category: Fiction

10/09/2025

The Scarecrow

The Scarecrow? Well, therein lies a tale! Perhaps it’s best that I simply tell you all the facts, such as they are, and let you draw your own conclusions.  

Jeremy and the twins invited themselves to stay up at Pagets for a few weeks. Had I told you they’d moved back to Pimlico? After Jenny died, I was hardly using the London place — maybe two or three times a year at absolute most — so when Jeremy was offered the new job, he and Mai decided that the time had come to bid sayonara to old Tokyo. 

The twins had just celebrated their fourth birthdays, so it wasn’t too late to swap school systems. Also, young children are hugely resilient, aren’t they? They thrive on change. They aren’t set in their ways like the rest of us miserable old reactionaries. 

All that was left to do, anyway, was for Mai to tidy up a few loose ends in Japan, while Jeremy made a start on sorting out the Pimlico digs with the twins in tow. 

Late-summer London, however, was hot and airless — especially so, one assumes, for little ones accustomed to ultra-modern, high-rise flats. I suspect they’d lived their whole lives amid artificial air conditioning — a noisy, charmless, soul-destroying abomination, if you ask me! — not that you did. Meanwhile the Pimlico flat had been taken over by a local firm of builders, along with their power tools, radios and nonstop cheeky-chappie banter. It was all too much. 

Hence the improvised sojourn with Grandpa amid the quieter charms of the twins’ ancestral rural Norfolk. 

It had been a while. When I’d last seen the twins — Jeremy, as you’ll recall, had offered them up as a sort of peace-offering to a dying if still alertly aware, acid-tongued Jenny — they were hardly more than two interchangeable bundles of life, sporting wild crests of raven-black glossy hair, mostly distinguishable by the differently-coloured dummies, one pink and one blue, permanently lodged within their chubby little faces. Jenny disapproved of dummies — just as she disapproved of Mai, Japan, Jeremy’s career changes and quite a lot else that came her way — but, for once, said nothing. Perhaps she had finally realised that there was, at that point, very little more to be said. 

That, though, is bye-the-bye. I had better get on with the story — in particular, how the Scarecrow got mixed up with it all. 

August was almost at an end. The three of them rolled up, after various delays, mid-afternoon, in Jeremy’s little car — Jeremy, Ren and a reluctant, sleepy Kitty who had to be prised out of the car like a clam from its enveloping shell. 

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26/03/2025

Pilgrimage

“You argue by results, as this world does
To settle if an act be good or bad.” 

TS Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

For three nights in a row, Agnes dreamed the same dream. 

On the morning after that third night, she washed her face, put on her best red damask gown, fresh linen and also a hood in the new fashion, and went to see the parson.

Sir John rarely visited the village, a wealthy little port on the Norfolk coast. His other livings — there were perhaps half a dozen of these now — were all better situated — closer to the places frequented by mighty men and their wives. Nevertheless, he happened to be in residence at the moment, dealing with a lawsuit, an unreliable bailiff and contested tithes. So it was that Agnes found him there in the parsonage, enthroned at the high end of the hall, holding court as members of his flock, more or less welcome, offered up to him and his secretary their complaints, petitions and grievances.

The parson’s eyes lit up when he noticed Agnes at the far end of the room. Somehow the crowd of people — friends, neighbours, relations — parted before her, so that within a few moments she was standing in front of the parson, who looked her up and down, rose, and, almost before she knew it, had shepherded her into the parlour beyond. 

“Ah, Mistress Wright, we must speak about that husband of yours, and the roof of this, my poor parsonage house, and why it lets in the rain!” he declaimed, loudly, as he shut the door, for the benefit of those waiting outside.

The two stood alone for a moment, regarding one another. Each thought the other had aged a little. This was, of course, true. All the same, there was a kind of agreement between them, even a sort of familiar warmth, which they enjoyed in silence for a moment.

“Why are you here, Agnes? I trust Valentine keeps well?”

“Oh yes, the fits have passed entirely these last few months. I think Hubert sent you word of him? Valentine is like any other six-year old child now, God be praised.”

“God be praised,” agreed the parson, his dark eyes shining, unable to look away from the woman who stood before him.

“And that is why I must go to St Thomas, the blessed martyr, to give him thanks.”

Here the parson sighed, laughed mirthlessly, shook his head, and started to pace around the room. 

“You are a foolish headstrong woman, Agnes. If you want to thank St Thomas, why not thank him here? Your husband is an officer of St Thomas’ own altar gild, here in this parish, for heaven’s sake! Also, why are you so certain it’s St Thomas you should thank? Why not Withburga or Walstan? Or Felix? Or Our Lady of Walsingham, as far as that goes — although if you wish to bother her yet again, I’d advise you, in all confidence, to do so sooner rather than later? 

“No, Agnes, you’ve troubled every saint between here and the German Ocean and some besides with Valentine and his business. I have no time for a theology lecture this morning, my sweetheart, my darling, but you also know very well that the grace that healed Valentine — assuming that it was Becket that healed him, which seems debatable to me — flows ultimately from our Lord. You really needn’t travel all the way down to Canterbury — unless you simply want a holiday from Master Wright, which I could well imagine. 

“Speaking of which, send him to me, won’t you? I wasn’t entirely in jest when I spoke at the door. The roof over the curate’s room is letting in water every time it rains here. He complains of it endlessly. They are very wearisome to me, the curate’s eloquent, unanswerable complaints. And the floor in the buttery is always wet.”

Agnes simply looked at the parson, who eventually stopped pacing about.

“Agnes, my dearest, my heart, don’t go to Canterbury. Not now.”

“I must go.” Calmly, she told the parson about the dream.

“Oh, very well then. I suppose you want some money for the journey?”

“No, I need no money, thank you,” she replied. “My husband has enough. We’ve done well these past few years. God has been merciful to us. I am only here to seek your blessing.”

“And what will you do about Valentine while you are away?” the parson asked. “Will you leave him with your sister?”

“No, I will take him with me,” Agnes replied. “He must thank St Thomas too! He’s well enough now. Valentine and I will go together.”

So the parson, formally and in Latin — although they were already in a season when Latin prayers had fallen out of favour — offered Agnes his blessing. Then, as she had known he would, rather gently at first — later rather less so — he folded her into his arms and began to kiss her. 

Sir John smelled of oranges and cloves, civet and vetiver. The marten fur of his robe was very soft.

*           *           *

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16/10/2024

A Doubtful Attribution

On that afternoon when I first learned of Lucinda’s death, it was as if some sort of filter had fallen between me and the rest of the world.

The bright September sunlight was suddenly dim, irresolute. The shadows lost their crisp autumn rigour. They became almost apologetic. When, on a whim, I went to the edge of our garden, from which one could just about glimpse the distant chimneys of the large house in which Lucinda had lived (“and, indeed, in which she had died — where she’s probably lying dead even now” the unhelpful voice inside my head stipulated), the battered corn-stubble, which at lunchtime had look as if it were picked out in purest old gold, was dun-coloured, dull — devoid even of its habitual population of gleaning rooks and wood-pigeons. 

One lumpy little cloud hung pointlessly in the sky. I found myself disliking it, because it added nothing to the scene and looked wrong there. How ridiculous to dislike a cloud! Almost as ridiculous, in its way, as disliking death, although most of us do that all the same.

 It’s not as if, I should perhaps add right away, I had known Lucinda terribly well — not as if we were the closest of friends. We were certainly not. 

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29/09/2024

The Lammas Ghosts: now available in print

For several years now, I’ve shared examples of my short fiction here on this website.

Today, though, sees the start of something new — the publication of The Lammas Ghosts, a collection of fifteen of my own original, Norfolk-based short stories in printed form. You can find out more here.

For me, ghost stories have, first and foremost, been a way of talking about two specific places — often, the North Norfolk coast, and later occasionally the Marshland area, just to the south and southwest of King’s Lynn. They’re what happens when history, topography, folklore and errant day-dreaming run up against the dry stuff of everyday life, fizzing over into uncanny narrative.

Sometimes, the stories give voice to the very real anxieties and frustrations of life in these places. At other points, I hope they evoke the beauty and magic of localities that have, even now, by no means lost their distinctiveness.

Mostly, though, they convey a real truth about East Anglia — that it’s a place where the past is always present, unfailingly ready to leap out and surprise us just when we least expect it — but perhaps also when we need it most.

You can order The Lammas Ghosts here.

11/08/2022

The Lammas ghosts

‘It’s going to be a hard winter.’

There are few joys known to the Norfolk-born so profound as the joy of well-informed pessimism. The three of us were standing in the kitchen courtyard, looking ruefully at the hawthorn tree that grows in the centre, at the edge of the old dipping pool. Brian’s face, lean and wizened through a life lived largely in the open air, had a rapt look, mirrored exactly by that of his much younger cousin Benjamin, who was helping that day. 

‘The start of August, and the hawthorn haws gone red already — whoever heard of that?’ 

‘Well, it’s the lack of rain, isn’t it? Or the heat, maybe. It’s brought on the autumn early. The sloes in the hedge are so ripe that they’re falling, and the Michaelmas daisies have been out for weeks now.’ 

Brian and Benjamin listened politely to my contribution, but the little silence that followed was a reminder that although this was my kitchen courtyard, my old parsonage, my land, I was still an outsider, having only lived in the village for a dozen years or so, hence there was a great deal I didn’t know about the place — a great deal I didn’t know about, full stop. 

‘Well, it’s a strange old year, no doubt about that,’ said Brian, gently. ‘Best enjoy the sun while we can.’

Brian and Benjamin were there to help lift the pump out of our well. The pump engineer, who drove up from Norwich, had long ago learned that he needed an extra pair of hands, or maybe more, when dealing with our well, which was much older and deeper than most of the others around here. 

‘It’s near one hundred foot deep, your well’ he would say with gloomy relish. (He was Norfolk-born, too.) ‘Imagine being the poor sod who had to dig it out at the bottom, with someone else at the top hauling up the earth in a basket — that’s how they done it back then. Imagine being all that way down in the dark.’

‘Hope they thought to haul him up again at the end’ opined Benjamin, pleasantly. ‘Hope he ain’t still down there.’ 

‘Fancy goin’ down to have a look then, do you?’

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24/10/2018

Old Tom: a ghost story

When I was a little child, not more than four winters old, my mother used to sit up with Parson Poynter, when he was dying, in his chamber upstairs at the parsonage. Sometimes, she would take me with her. This was in the year before the old king died. I mean King James.

My father didn’t like it. He knew what everyone said about Parson Poynter and, more to the point, what everyone was likely to say about a young woman — for my mother was still young then, better-looking than some, and sharp-witted, too — who sat alone with Parson Poynter, in his chamber, even though he was almost dead by then, or at any rate so feeble and diminished in his powers as to be past much mischief. But in any event, my mother, who in many matters would defer to my father, would simply take up her things, grab me by the hand and set off up the hill toward the parsonage, as if my father had said nothing at all.

Be quiet, said my mother. We were in the kitchen. It was a long, low room. Two massive oak beams ran the length of it. On one of the long walls there was a huge brick hearth, surrounded with pots and cooking irons and so forth, with a bread oven in the wall to the right it. The kitchen smelled of smoke, meat, fat, spices, ale, cats and warm bodies. Be quiet. Just sit down and don’t bother Gartreud and for heaven’s sake don’t bother anyone else, either. Just sit down and be quiet.

There was a bench along one of the short walls, near enough to the fire to be very warm, so I sat there. Don’t you worry, little one, said Gartreud, once my mother had gone up the kitchen stairs. Read the rest of this entry »

18/10/2018

Incomers: a ghost story

Of course, when an ‘incomer’ arrives from London and moves into the big, old, rambling, tumbledown house sitting deep in its grounds on the landward edge of a Norfolk coastal village, the first thing that local people do is to make sure that she’s fully informed about all her neighbours — in particular, the resident ghosts.

‘Oh yes, Peggy’s round here all the time,’ said the lugubrious handyman who used to look after the house back before we made our offer for it, when the developer was seeking planning permission to turn it into a boutique hotel. ‘Often I’m in the kitchen here’ — to be fair, at the time it was one of the two dry rooms in the house — ‘and I see her looking in at me from across the way’. He gestured vaguely in the direction of an acrid-smelling room across the corridor, all peeling lurid wallpaper and abandoned plastic garden chairs, that used to be the old servants’ parlour. ‘Trouble is, ma’am’ — and here I could see where the conversation was going — ‘Peggy’s been lyin’ in the churchyard twenty-odd years now. But I know it were her, because I see’d her as good as I see you now.’

Perhaps I ought to have shivered, but instead I smiled politely, and turned the conversation back to the return of some keys, because even by then I had learned all there was to know — or so I thought — about the tales that local people tell just to frighten the incomers.

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27/11/2016

Resistance: a short story

“At this time the king began to be haunted with sprites by the magic and curious arts of Lady Margaret, who raised up the ghost of Richard Duke of York (second son to King Edward the fourth) to walk and vex the king” – Francis Bacon, The History of the Reign of Henry VII

Robert Poxwell turned in his bed. Or at least we may imagine him turning in his imagined bed, unwilling to rise but unable to sleep.

That surname, Poxwell, tells us that his people came from the West Country. On this particular night, however, he was not in the West Country. He was on the north coast of Norfolk. Under the sea to the north of him — or in front of him, rather, when he turned onto his left side, hoping to find rest there that he could not find on the right — lay that hard long spine of submerged land, still larded in its watery exile with the remnants of human business, that used to connect East Anglia with Denmark. And above that vanished causeway sailed the king’s ships, similarly sleepless, keeping watch against an invasion fleet.

Or at any rate, Parson Poxwell believed that the king’s ships were keeping watch against an invasion fleet. That, after all, was what James Hubbard had told him, or at least implied. And it wouldn’t be like Mr Hubbard to be ill-informed, would it?

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