The Fen Blow & the Pumpkin Kings, 2

Members of the Pumpkin Club at Witchfordley gather to discuss arrangements for the show.

 
The Pumpkin Man's Return
‘The pumpkin is more than an oversized vegetable or a jack-o-lantern. It has, in fact, a very long history – once considered a symbol of the whole world, a container of everything ever created. Early societies saw symbolism and spiritual significance in many natural objects. Today, as grown-ups, we have forgotten a lot of the awe and magic, but not the children, who, in their innocence and unbridled imagination, see all kinds of suggestions and meaning (like ghosts) in even the most ordinary objects.’

Club Meets
It was mid-April in Witchfordley, and the spring evening was crisp as Shirley Midnight prepared for the meeting of the Witchfordley Pumpkin Club. The meeting was to be held in the Village Hall, starting at 7:30 p.m. sharp. Her three cats would stay with Samantha, Shirley’s sister, who was not going to the meeting and she was more than happy to spend the evening with Bast, Sparkle and Little Mo. She would be able to watch the television and progress her knitting project and she would be there in case Ranjit, Shirley’s fiancé, decided to telephone and check if Shirley was all right. Ranjit and Shirley were engaged to be married, but they hadn’t yet set the date for that happy occasion.

At the Village Hall, the meeting commenced with the usual formalities. The Minutes were read, signed, and filed away, and the new agenda was handed round. Mr. Chapman, Chairman of the Pumpkin Club began the proceedings. He was a little deaf, which necessitated the other members speaking with a forceful voice.

“I want to welcome you all to tonight’s meeting,” he bellowed. “We are here tonight to discuss the Pumpkin Show, to be held in October, and how we shall spend the club funds we have raised over the last twelve months. Any suggestions?”

“Halloween is a very special time of the year,” stated Shirley, with a glint in her eye. She knew all about that night, as it was the night of the year for her and her group of twelve special friends. “I think we should celebrate it this year with a Barn Dance, like the successful one we had a couple of years ago. It will draw a good crowd and raise more funds.”

“Good idea,” said Ted North, the reigning champion grower. “Barn Dances always go down well, and it will enable us to all be together, you know, in case anything scary wants to happen.” He wasn’t smiling. He was serious. The thought of the looming October date had already curdled the anticipation of the harvest.

“I love a Barn Dance,” agreed Pete South, his rival. “We don’t want anything ghastly to happen, do we?” He coughed nervously, looking around the room at the familiar faces.

Shirley’s Ambition
This year, however, might be different. Shirley was going to join the competition, and she had more than just green fingers. Her fingers were so green and luminous that they glowed in the dark, and when she clicked her fingertips together, strange things began to happen. On the wall in the hallway of the Village Hall was a wooden plaque showing the role of honour. Never once in the history of the Pumpkin Club had a woman won the title, and Shirley Midnight intended to change that. Samantha told Shirley that the competition was always very fierce and that Ted North nearly always won, much to the annoyance of his old friend, Pete South.

The Fen Blow Legend
It was Mandy Tweedy, one of the younger members, who finally dared to voice the collective anxiety.

“What happens if the Fen Blow comes at Halloween?” she asked, her voice small against the captain’s booming introduction.
The older members exchanged a familiar, shared look of knowing dread. Mr. Chapman, sensing the shift in the room's temperature, leaned forward on the table.

“If the Fen Blow should occur at Halloween,” he began, his voice dropping to a gravelly, compelling whisper that carried even without volume, “it is said to release the spirit of the Pumpkin Man, the vengeful ghost of a monk who lived here in the Abbey hundreds of years ago. When his spirit is released, he returns to the Abbey Gardens, where our allotments are now, because that is where he finds his lovely Alice lying dead. He seeks vengeance for the loss of his love, and for the loss of his own life… for he was found dead the next day, lying amongst his vegetables.”

Every member of the room that night was only too aware of the old ways and the dark possibilities.

“When did we last have a Fen Blow at Halloween?” he asked the room, though it was a rhetorical question.

“It must have been twenty years if it’s a day,” Shirley confirmed, a flicker of genuine concern, unrelated to her Barn Dance, in her eyes.

Mr. Chapman's words had summoned the memory. It was an autumn afternoon, not yet October, but the air was already damp with the promise of frost.

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Circa 1450 – The Abbey – Witchfordley



“Where are you going, Alice?” asked her husband, his voice flat.

“Only to gather herbs and to enjoy the air,” she replied, taking her basket. Her cheeks were flushed not from the cool air, but from the lie. She walked away from her cottage and down the track which led to the Abbey gardens.

The Abbot, wise and stern, looked across the sprawling gardens. He saw the beautiful young woman approaching, a red ribbon entangled in her dark hair. He saw Brother Richard, kneeling among the peas, ostensibly tending to the monastery’s vegetable patch: but the Abbot’s eyes watched Richard as Richard watched Alice, and he understood the forbidden, dangerous communion taking place.

“I must talk to that young man, and soon,” the Abbot murmured to himself, his hand trembling slightly against his staff.
Brother Richard, unaware of the Abbot’s gaze, saw only the sun glinting on the spiderwebs, heavy with dew sparkling on the rosemary bush.

‘Would that my love's dark eyelashes be spiders to spin and circle in these webs,’ he thought, the yearning a physical ache in his chest. ‘Would that I was the web to feel the touch of those eyelashes on my skin. If only these arms of mine could circle my lovely Alice and feel her close to my heart.’ His love was his devotion, and it was a devotion that would prove fatal.
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The King Pumpkin Rivalry
Back in the Village Hall, the shift from ancient history to modern petty concerns was jarring, but necessary.

Ted North and Pete South were the twin pillars of the club. They were both in their early sixties, and in almost every way, the exact opposites of each other. Ted was a quiet man, a miser when it came to money, renting his two hundred and fifty square metre allotment from the Council and putting off the annual payment for as long as possible. Pete was extrovert, spending money as if there was no tomorrow.

“While you’ve got it, spend it!” was Pete’s motto.

He bought the latest equipment for his allotment using his credit card, a new shed, a new greenhouse, a new rotavator and accumulated debt with cheerful abandon. Despite all these acquisitions, his produce was never quite as successful as Ted’s, a fact that drove him mad.

“Another thing I want to bring up,” Ted said, cutting across the discussion about the Barn Dance. “Is the subject of vandalism down on the allotments. Last year we had a lot of trouble with those yobs, you know the ones I mean, stealing our crops and vandalizing the pumpkins. I don’t want anything to happen to my pumpkins this year, or anybody else’s!” he added pointedly, looking straight at Pete.

The three main offenders, Stephen, Bill, and Charlie, were a source of communal dread. Each year the vandalism got worse, and the allotment holders felt powerless. They weren’t really bad lads, just bored, full of energy and always looking to cause mischief somewhere.

“They don’t realise what they are playing with,” worried Mr. Chapman. “All the fires of Hell will surround them if they dare to interfere with the burial place of that lass Alice in the legend we are all familiar with.”

“They don’t believe the legend,” Ted insisted grimly.

“That’s the problem,” said Mr. Chapman.. “By the time they take it seriously, it will be too late. Too late for them, too late for us!”

The meeting finished at 9 p.m.

As Ted gathered his things, Pete approached, wearing a falsely casual grin.

“Have you bought your seeds yet, Ted?” Pete asked.

“I don’t buy them,” Ted replied, his voice laced with the pride of the self-sufficient man. “I keep them from the last year.”

“You don’t buy them fresh every year then?” Pete prodded.

“They are fresh,” Ted retorted, looking down on Pete with unconcealed judgment.

The surprise on Ted’s face settled the matter for Pete. He was going to be King Pumpkin this year, and Ted's old-fashioned seeds were clearly superior. An idea, cold and sharp as the Fen wind, formed in Pete’s mind right there in the Village Hall: he would get into Ted’s shed and ‘take’ a few seeds to sow on his own pumpkin patch. If he used Ted’s winning genetics, his own pumpkins would stand a better chance of being giants. A bit of petty theft was nothing compared to the glory of the crown.

Shirley walked back to her sister’s house, her black boots crunching on the forming frost and her thoughts turned to how she could change the animosity between the two men, Ted and Pete. She pulled her warm scarf more tightly around her neck and looked forward to a steaming mug of cocoa when she got back to the house.
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