The Fen Blow and the Pumpkin Kings, 6

Ted North encounters a very strange looking man whilst walking through Witchfordley.

Throughout the summer, the pumpkins grew and grew. Shirley Midnight was growing hers in her sister’s allotment and most days she visited the site to make sure the pumpkins had plenty of water and that they hadn’t been eaten by slugs or snails. The pumpkins were growing very quickly, but so were Ted’s and Pete’s and compared to those two gentlemen, Shirley was a novice. I must do more research, she told herself!

Most of the allotment holders were very helpful. There was usually somebody to ask if things weren’t going too well and as communities go, they were a very friendly lot, but there is a competitive streak in every allotment holder and Shirley couldn’t help smiling as she watched from her chair by the potting shed as competitors walked by to take a sly look at her progress.

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Witchfordley – September 2005

At the end of his busy day, Ted took a walk for relaxation. The early evening sky had turned a haunting pumpkin colour and black night clouds began to move across. From the Chapel, Ted walked briskly down the hill and past the old bake-house, turning left down St. Etheldreda’s Street to the crossroads at the bottom. He waited there for a moment, leaning on the ancient well. He could hear the distant hoot of a train leaving the station at Wicken to journey back to Cambridge. He allowed his thoughts to travel back through the day, the day of the Scarecrow Festival. Suddenly a movement in the distance caught Ted’s attention. As he looked up and focused his aging eyes, he became aware of a figure walking from the direction of Crowley. It was the tall figure of a man in a scruffy black suit. On his head he wore a black hat with a velvet band. Straw poked out from under the hat and from the sleeves of the jacket and the bottoms of his trousers. As the man got closer, Ted could see that the stranger’s face was a shade of green and his eyes were orange. The nose on his face was huge and his mouth wore a sneer. Over his arm he carried a black cloak.

Ted blinked twice and looked again. The stranger walked into the near distance and past Ted, without looking at him. It was as if he didn’t see Ted at all. He continued walking and turned left past The Frog & Rhubarb pub, down the track to the allotments. Ted’s feet were rooted to the spot and he was unable to move until the stranger was out of sight…

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The Scarecrow Festival was a popular annual event in the village of Witchfordley. Back in the Spring, when Samantha told Shirley about it, she was excited to come and stay with her sister for a few weeks and help however she could. She brought her cats with her, but Ranjit was staying behind to look after Shirley’s house. She was hoping he would be able to join her soon.

Months before the day of the festival, the villagers were busy planning and designing their scarecrows.

“I hope it holds fine for the Scarecrow Festival tomorrow,” she said.

The weather had been kind during the month of August but by 2nd September there was a chill in the air. Ted North consulted his barometer and remarked to his wife that the pointer had moved to the left, indicating that stormy weather was coming.

“Pete’s scarecrow is very splendid, have you seen it?”

“Where’s he stationing it, Ted. Do you know?”

“He’s going to put it on his allotment, to scare the birds away from his pumpkins.” Ted told her.

“Well, that’s a good place for it.”

“It will serve a dual purpose there. Do you think it will be a good idea though, to draw attention to the allotments?”

“Well, it’s only once a year, isn’t it.”

The festival started at 10 a.m. and finished at 6 p.m. The helpers assembled in the village hall and made ready for the visitors. They would be required to register in an anteroom and then, armed with a map and a voting form, they could walk around the village, observing the scarecrows and voting for their favourite. The main room in the village hall was filled with pretty little tables covered in green and white checked gingham tablecloths. Baskets of flowers sat colourfully on top and each table had a bowl of sugar with a spoon in it to sweeten the numerous cups of tea, which would soon be sipped.

Marjorie South and Mary North were leading figures on the organising committee. With military precision, they had lined up the plates of cakes, salads and bread rolls on a long trestle table in the kitchen ante room, off the main room. They discussed the line up together.

“Shall I put the salad cream on this table, or that one?” Marjorie asked. She always looked up to Mary, who she admired for her looks, her manners and most of all for her wide range of magnificent hats. The hats gave Mary the opportunity to wear a different one each week when she went to church. She seemed to own so many, Marjorie wondered how she had room for them all.

“Put the salad cream up on the shelf behind the plates, otherwise the children will be squirting it all over the place,” Mary replied, sensibly.

As Mary watched Marjorie bending over and fussing about with the plates of food and cups and saucers, she smiled fondly to herself. ‘What a good friend Marjorie is to me,’ she thought and, ‘what a lovely hourglass figure she has retained, even after all these years.’ Privately she hoped that Marjorie and Pete would not move to Spain if the sale of the allotments went through.

As they worked to set the tables, one of the kitchen windows slammed shut with a bang, making the ladies jump and blowing a pile of paper doilies on to the floor, like a shower of large white snowflakes.

“The wind’s getting up,” said Marjorie. It certainly was and nowhere more so than over in the 100 acre field where wisps of the wind had began to spiral round, picking up the black alluvial soil into trails that looked like smoke.

At 9.45 a.m. there was an eager queue of visitors waiting outside the village hall. The clock struck 10 o’clock and the queue of people began to move forward. Soon they were purchasing their maps and keen to view the scarecrows.

An hour later, Ted thought he’d take a walk round himself to see which scarecrow he was going to vote for. He walked up to the church first and chuckled at the wedding party of scarecrows lined up for their photographs to be taken, outside the church. The bride scarecrow had a beautiful long white dress on. The veil was blowing about her face like a mischievous cloud teasing her.

The church at Witchfordley was well maintained and well loved by the parishioners who visited it every Sunday. It was in good repair except for a vertical crack in the wall near the door. This was allegedly caused by a bad lightning strike in the middle of the 15th Century. The damage was part of the legend of the Pumpkin man and mentioned in whispers in the pub at Halloween time.

Ted was a churchwarden and as such, responsible for the building and the well being of the incumbent. He took his duties seriously. He was also a bell ringer. The church boasted a ring of six light bells, hung in a metal frame installed in 1971 using metal from the old tenor bell, which was cast in 1717. There was no clock on the church. Time stood still in the church and the surrounding graveyard, which was very well maintained by the Parish. It was a true rural churchyard, a delight at all times of the year.


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