Thread: The Eight Bells.

The Eight Bells.

"You going to rest now Dad?"

"No, later sweetie. I thought I would just pop down to the Eight Bells in Old Hatfield for a swift half. Have not been there for ages."

"OK, will drop you in the car," she replied almost protectively.

In the wake of an over energetic daughter I grabbed the nearest book I could find as I went through the house front door. Like a fighter pilot in the Cold War, the BMW, complete with
warmed up engine was ready for takeoff, even before I had lowered myself into the jump seat.

"Your driving too fast and too close to the car in front Toots."

"Sorry Dad, but that's how you taught me!"

"Better to shut up," I thought. "Your not going to win with this daughter. Too much like her mother!"

What seemed like ten seconds later, I alighted as if from a time machine. The after-burn of the in-house rally driver disappeared up the road and there I was outside "The Eight Bells," circa 1226 and watering hole to the late novelist Charles Dickens and eighteenth century highwayman Dick Turpin.

Ducking my head under the entrance door I stepped down onto worn stone flagging. Low ceilings, dark old wood beams and alcoves with uncomfortable old style bench seats were the first impressions. They mixed incongruously with the superficial adornments of; a plasma screen, real ale and Elton John turned up too loud.

Mine host behind the otherwise empty bar was in an off-white, lived in shirt, and luckily obscured from perusal; what I presumed to be similar indeterminate trousers.

"A pint of Bombadier please," I asked drawing myself up straight and endeavouring to attain in both attire and attitude, that understatement of lank British conformity in which we set ourselves apart from other breeds. An aged wind cheater jacket,corduroy trousers and an expression redolent of a Viceroy of the late Empire completed the picture.

"What's the book?" the barman asked, endeavouring to bond; a trait never quite attained with ease in this island of ours.

Glancing down it became clear that I'd apparently grabbed "Jude the Obscure" in my hurry to leave the house.

"Oh, it's something by Thomas Hardy," I replied in what I hoped was a suitable conversational, yet formal tone.

I don't think he recognised the author, although he was kind enough to reassure me that he had read a book once.

On a blackboard behind the bar under "Plat de Jour" was advertised "Sausages, peas and chips" at £7.50. A soup starter did not seem an option.

I wonder what Dickens would have eaten here in 1835 when as a newspaper reporter he had covered the Hatfield House fire which had killed the Marchioness of Salisbury.

"Had the menu changed since then?"

I took my pint to by one of the windows, where the sloping pavement outside seemed on a par with the ankles of any passing pedestrians. Not that there were any, for one could sense the urban desolation that afternoon and feel the external damp and cold.

By now I was quaffing away on the second measure of beer and commencing that personal ritual I always executed when starting a new book. It was akin to making tentative enquiries of a potentially companiable fellow traveller in a shared railway carriage; an intercourse of enjoyable possibilities?

The book lay easy in my left hand and after viewing a rather interesting detailed portrayal of a woman in an elaborate bonnet, with mature yet distinctive features, I turned to read the back cover.

"You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude and a tragic Don Quixote," it began, and then it proceeded to précis with academic insight what one was supposed to attain from the work.

By now I must confess, that the condition that alcohol induces in one, was making inroads into my literary endeavours. Letting the imagination soar off unrestrained into the realms of the unknown is one thing. To get one's head, in a non-superficial manner, around the craft of a major novelist is a different prospect. In circumstances such as this, (and to which I am no stranger), I invariably slow down to a crawl, turning words and sentence structure around in my brain until the welcoming shafts of comprehension make subtle, yet essential entrances. It was thus, in such a state of earnest concentration that I proceeding to the authors' Postscript to the Preface to the First Edition. I was edified to discover references to the earliest feminist movement; "the slight, pale, bachelor girl - the intellectualized, emancipated bundle of nerves, who does not recognise the necessity for most of her sex to follow marriage as a profession, and boast themselves as superior people because they are licensed to be loved on the premises."

Good old Thomas Hardy! I was again warming to him; the insight, the humour and the wordmanship.

I looked around and a group of tentatively lost German tourists had entered. Furtively they hovered near the door, possibly anticipating imprisonment from local partisans. One easily recognised Gruppenfuhrer quickly read the menu from one of the tables. Mutterings of "Wurst, peas and kartoffle" reached my ears, and making an orderly retreat they proceeded panzer style up the hill towards the church.

The barman gave one of those shrugs at his lone customer. No wonder the eighteenth century highwaymen used this as a GHQ, for it was as foreboding a twilight zone as could ever have been wished for by gentlemen of that ancient profession.

One really could not put flesh on the bones of all the old ghosts in this place. No Harry the peddler offering to remove the blood of the murdered Nancy from Bill Sikes hat. No hideous imprecations as he overthrew a table and burst out of the house with his dog. Even the Germans had moved on without occupying.

I finished my drink and left. It was just in time as the music switched to "Hotel California."