Abby Ch. 15

The next evening Abby drove to Gallow Farm for her dancing lesson. Sam and Mavis had prepared for this by shifting the furniture in their Lounge back against the walls to leave enough space to dance. Sam had opened up what he was proud to call the Radiogram, a huge piece of furniture, with large speakers either end and in the middle under an opening lid there was a record turntable. Abby found this fascinating as the spindle in the centre was at least four inches tall, with the top inch kinked to one side. Sam explained that it was possible to load the top part with up to ten records, which the machine would automatically drop into place to play, once the preceding record had finished. Mavis produced with triumph a load of twelve inch records, saying to Abby, "I knew we still had these, and look, none of them have been broken." Abby examined one of the records, surprised at how heavy it was, until she realised that it was made from a hard substance like a brittle plastic. The label in the centre showed not the HMV logo with which she was familiar, but the name 'His Master's Voice' spelt in full, running in a half circle over the top, with below a picture of a little black and white dog, listening at the trumpet of an antique phonograph. The credit on the label was for Victor Sylvester and his orchestra.

Mavis, all businesslike announced that they would start the tuition with the Waltz. "It's the easiest to do and you really only have to remember the three steps." She then proceeded to coach Abby through the steps, watched by Sam, who then interrupted the proceedings.

"Wouldn't it be better if I took Abby through the steps, then she can see how they fit in with her partners?"

"What's the point of her dancing with a partner." Mavis immediately bit back. "When she doesn't know the basic steps? I'll show her those, and then when Abby understands them, you can dance with her to show how it all goes together."

Abby got the hang of the Waltz quite quickly, and was soon moving around the floor with Sam, who held her at a respectable distance, so that she could look down and see how their steps interacted. Then Mavis put on one of the records, and the strains of Violin, Piano, and Saxophone filled the room. The most notable feature of the music was the strong beat, which made the music so easy to follow in time. "Victor Sylvester was renowned for this," explained Mavis as Abby and Sam danced. "He was a

champion Ballroom Dancer himself, so he knew how important it was to keep to a strict tempo." Again Sam took Abby through her paces, with Abby managing the steps with little trouble. It seemed quite easy, as Sam seemed to indicate what they were doing with subtle pressures, either with his hand, holding hers, or with an inclination of the body. The proof of this was when he took her through a turn, which she followed as if she had prior knowledge of the steps.

"How did we do that?" she exclaimed. "You didn't teach me those steps."

Mavis laughed. "It's easy. Sam was, no is, a very good dancer. And a good male lead can get you doing all sorts of steps as if it was natural. Now do you think you could do that again?" They went through those steps a dozen times, yet Abby somehow stumbled over them every time.

Sam said to her. "Abby you are trying to think what steps are coming next. Don't! Your feet know the steps, just listen to the music and follow my lead. The steps will come automatically." This worked and Abby again floated around the room in Sam's arms.

Later Abby sat and watched Sam and Mavis dance and marvelled how they seemed to accomplish quite intricate steps together moving as one.

She said as much to Mavis who explained. "Don't worry about those steps. On a crowded floor you will not get the chance to dance those, and if you try will annoy everyone else, because they cannot do them. Just get the basics and you will do fine."

They sat down for a cup of tea, and Mavis asked if Abby had got a dress for the Ball. Abby described it to her, and Mavis suggested that she bring it down next time. "I would love to see it." The look on Sam's face suggested that he too would love to see it. The next suggestion was that perhaps Abby would like to come down to Gallow Farm and dress, and have James pick her up here.

Abby gave that some thought and shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but I would have to bring everything, my make-up and all the other bits and pieces down here, and would be sure to forget something. So if you don't mind I will dress at the Inn. But could you come up there? I could probably do with some morale boosting before I go." Mavis smiled, happy that she was being involved.

"Yes Love, of course we will."

Abby was waiting the next morning, sitting on one of the benches at the back of the Inn, when James arrived, leading Jason on the rein. Jason immediately moved to Abby, and nuzzled her, then stood quietly, waiting for her to mount. The riding hat was looped over the pommel on the saddle. "I see Jason has fallen under your spell, as well." remarked James as he dismounted Cassie, and helped Abby mount. Mary hovered, with the picnic lunch she had prepared for them; a smaller lunch, totally inadequate in Mary's view, but she acceded due to Abby's urging that too large a lunch would prevent her, Abby, from enjoying the evening meal. James comment was not lost upon Mary, who tucked this morsel away in her memory for future examination.

"Now you two have a good day, and James, don't ride too far."

"Mary, I shall look after Abby as if she were the Queen of Sheba." James replied with the grin just flickering around his mouth, as if he was undecided to be flippant of serious.

With the lunch packed in the saddle-bags, Mary waved them goodbye as they left through the gate and out into the field, heading towards the old station once again. Abby quickly found her seat, and settled comfortably in the saddle. Looking across at James she asked. "So who else has fallen under my spell?"

"Just about everyone in Combe Lyney." James avoided the trap adroitly. "Sam, and Mavis especially. Why? Were you thinking of anyone in particular?"

"No. I just wondered."

James grinned. "Talking of spells. I think that you may have fallen under a spell as well."

"Perhaps you would like to explain that?"

"Combe Lyney. I think you might have fallen under the spell of Combe Lyney."

Abby thought about that for a while, and they rode in a companionable silence. "Yes. You are right. This place does get to you; I could easily spend the rest of my life here, if only I could find something to do."

"There's so much you could do," replied James. "There's milking cows for a start." The laughter in his voice alerted Abby to the fact that his flippancy was back, preventing the conversation from getting into too serious an area. Abby laughed with him.

"Oh I couldn't do that; grandfather would have a fit, or at the very least spin in his grave."

They were riding along the old railway track now, and the old station came into view. This prompted James. "I have some news for you. My solicitor has had a reply from the Land Registry, and it is confirmed that I do own this land."

"That was quick."

"Yes, Cobbold usually take an age to do anything, but I think he was so embarrassed that he hadn't spotted the Way leave clause, he felt that he had to move quickly to get back into my good books. So there we have it. This place is now yours as soon as you sign the lease." They had stopped alongside the platform.

Abby looked around and smiled. "James, you couldn't know how pleased I am. I feel at last as if I am connected to something."

"Oh I think I can understand."

Abby came back quite sharply. "No James, you can't. You have always been here, where your family have lived for generations. You have always been part of this place, and it has been part of you. I have never had that feeling. When mum was alive we rented small flats, constantly moving in order to get a lower rent. Mum was the only family I had, and because she wouldn't talk about it, I had no history. Now I have discovered a history, and I am going to own a part of it. You could never understand how good a feeling that is." James, taken aback by Abby's vehemence said nothing. Abby feeling guilty because she had reacted so strongly was also quiet.

After a while James broke the silence. "I am sorry, Abby. You are right; I did not understand what you were saying." He leaned over and put his hand over hers as she held the reins. "Forgive me."

Abby smiled, turned her hand over and clasped his. "I am sorry too, I overreacted." He squeezed her hand and relinquished the hold.

They had started moving again, drawing level with site of the signal box, and shortly after crossed the lane at the level crossing. Abby had assumed that this lane had only ever led to the goods yard, but from the different perspective of Jason's back could see that another lane had once branched off, heading in the general direction of the river. She pointed this out to James asking where it went.

"That's Mill Lane. Well it was once, it was never anything more than a track, and I doubt that anyone has been down there for years."

"Mill Lane? So presumably there would have been a Mill at the end of it?"

"Yes, a Water Mill. Nothing left, except a few crumbling walls. The Pond and the Mill Race are still there, but the wheel's long gone. The leat has been filled in."

"So what would they have milled?"

"It would have been for local grains and such. Lasted until the early nineteen twenties, I believe, when it was abandoned.

"I thought that the Valley had only ever supported livestock."

"Livestock has always been the main farming practice, but until the turn of the century there was always a good percentage of land given over to cereals. That was another thing your granddad's railway changed."

"How so?"

"Well, they would grow wheat for bread, barley for brewing, oats for livestock feed, but all intended for purely local consumption. When the railways came it was possible to get all these commodities at a cheaper price, because they were grown on a larger scale elsewhere. It was a gradual erosion, but eventually there was no point in cereals here, so the land was switched to pastoral farming, and the Mill just became redundant."

They were now riding on a low embankment, which James pointed out kept the railway above the level of flooding. "All these meadows will flood from time to time, that's why the cottages were built up there. He pointed to the right, where Abby could see the isolated cottages, built on the side of the valley, not on the valley floor. The track curved gently, avoiding the small hills that encroached, only occasionally had there been cuttings, where going around the small hill would have entailed bridging the river.

"So how long has your family lived here?" she asked. "Forget the Boys Own story, of smuggling and nefarious practices. Give me the truth."

James laughed. "Well the truth is not easy. But I believe that there have been Comberfords in this valley from the thirteenth century."

"How long?" Abby was amazed.

"Seven hundred years, give or take. The trouble is that the Church burnt out sometime in the seventeenth century, and they held the only records of Hatch, Match, and Despatch."

"So how can you reckon that your family goes back to the thirteenth century?"

"Tithe records, now held at the County Museum in Taunton. They only tell you who owed tithes on which bit of land, but the Comberfords do show in those records. The name has changed slightly, but it is pretty certain to be us lot."

"What was the name then?" Abby enquired.

"It was spelt differently from time to time, but essentially it was C O M B Y R F O R D E . You know how a person's name would be a corruption of their work skill, or place they lived. I suspect that the name came from some serf, who was a Wool Comber, and lived by a ford. Probably the ford which was close to where the river bridge is now."

Abby thought James was elaborating on a slim fact. "Go on, this sounds like an extreme fantasy."

"Abby, me, fantasise." He laughed. "No, it's mainly conjecture, based upon some little supporting evidence."

"O.K., I accept the origin of the name, I believe that happened a lot. But, James how does a serf, as you described him, become Lord of all these acres?"

"In a close community as this would have been then, it was quite possible that everyone was related in some way to everyone else, so when you have something like the Plague, they called it The Black Death, come along and kill off close to a half of the population, you suddenly find a new class of landowners, men who had inherited all those small strips of land given to their various relatives as pay for their services to the Lord of the Manor. If they added all those small strips to their own, they could build up a reasonable holding. It didn't happen all at once of course, it would take years, but when the Black Death; after its first onslaught in thirteen forty-eight would ravage the Country for the next fifty years, it was inevitable, that if one branch of the family could survive, they would come out richer than they ever thought possible." He paused for a moment, then went on. "There was something else, some families would be completely wiped out; the plague halved the population in this country between thirteen forty-eight and fourteen hundred; so the holdings of those who died should have reverted to the Lord, but if there was no Lord around, others could annex the holdings, and yet again increase their wealth."

Abby listened in delight. She had become used to and enjoyed the stories that Sam, Mary and others would relate and now James was regaling her. "James you are either a born story-teller, or this is the truth. I cannot believe the plague could kill that many people. Now come on, own up, this is all a story, isn't it?"

"Abby, I cannot claim that this is the truth, all I know is that people with this name, or something close to this name, became increasingly responsible for Tithes in the late forteenth and through the fifteenth centuries. As for the plague, yes it did kill all those people, it is well documented. In fact some villages were wiped off the map completely as no one survived there."

"This is fantastic, so where does all the smuggling and nefarious practices come in?"

"They would have come a little later. If you can imagine this guy, now calling himself a Freeman, who had all this land, but none of it contiguous. He would have set about persuading his neighbours that the sensible thing to do was to have one large plot of land, rather than a number of separated plots, so how about doing a deal? If they were happy to do so, that was fine. If they weren't, then possibly other means of persuasion could be employed. If our guy had money obtained from activities that were not too legal, like Poaching that would help, he could make them an offer they couldn't refuse, so to speak. There would also be land, that wasn't being used. Start farming it, and eventually the law of Adverse Possession would come into effect."

"Adverse Possession?"

"Squatters rights."

"But surely the Lord of the Manor would have something to say about that."

They clattered over a bridge crossing a minor stream. The horses seem to like the sound of their hooves on the boards and nodded their heads vigorously. James waited until they were back on the embankment.

"Yes, but bear in mind that the Black Death would have been visited upon them just as surely as it had upon the peasants. Their lands could now be held possibly by some distant relative who lived a hundred or more miles away. Back then a hundred miles was probably a two or three day journey. This relative would probably not even be aware that this distant cousin had died, and that he had inherited the holding. Another fact that comes into the equation is that the Lord, if he had survived would not now have hundreds of Serfs bound to give him service. They were dead. To maintain his land he was now in a position of having to purchase labour. They tried unsuccessfully to regulate wages but those Lords who survived were desperate and would offer higher wages to tempt Serfs away. Under the Feudal system a Serf or Villeyn could not leave his village without the permission of his Lord. But now they didn't care, all a serf had to do was change his name, and no one was any the wiser. So with all this going on, a shortage of labour, which was becoming expensive anyway, land which was remote from the Lords main location could be forgotten as unviable. The Feudal system was dead, and the law of supply and demand started to rule." He grinned. "It was the birth of Capitalism."

Abby felt that this story, although somewhat fanciful, could have a germ of truth. She challenged James. "You speak as if you know that these things happened, or is this the conjecture you spoke about?"

"No, History was one of my subjects at 'A' level. I was toying with the idea of reading History at University. But if you want to know more about the period, check it out on the internet, there's hundreds of references to it."

For a while Abby had taken little notice of the land they were riding through, their conversation had been fascinating, and she was once more reminded of how much she missed her own past. James could, albeit with a little stretch of the imagination, tie himself to a history of some six hundred years. Whilst she, had only recently discovered a family, and a history of little more than sixty years.

The horses plodded contentedly onwards; nodding their heads in that manner that suggested a conversation; with James and now Abby sitting easily in the saddles. The old track bed had meandered lazily between river and the valley sides, enlivened occasionally by a farm crossing, or a small bridge crossing a stream hurrying to join the main river. The land was quite open, just small copses of trees dotted haphazardly on hillocks, or along the course of the small streams. Cattle and sheep grazed and browsed, unfazed by their passage, only the odd individual raising a head to watch them pass. Looking to the right she could see a road, ascending steeply out of the valley, and realised that this was the road she had taken when she first arrived here. Looking back to that day she felt a sense of wonder that so much could have happened to her, just by a whim to seek a place that her mother had mentioned.

They rode on in companionable silence for a while. James broke the silence when he asked.

"So what started you in the City, which I must say is very impressive to many people around here?"

Abby thought for a while before answering. "It was an accident more than design. I started working in an Insurance Brokers office, and went on from there."

"Come on, Abby, there's got to be more than that."

"Well yes there was. They did very little for their commission, advising customers on the best place to get insurance, the best place always being the company which offered the greatest commission to the Broker. I moved into Financial Services, only to find the same thing. The best investment would always be the one which offered the adviser the best commission, whether it was right for the customer or not. It didn't take much of a brain to work out how it was done, so when I was offered the chance of becoming an adviser I jumped at it. At that time you didn't need any qualifications. Working with money all day tends to make you a little blasé about it, and the challenge was not how much money you were dealing with, but how much you could make it do. Sometime later I heard of a chance to work for one of the Merchant Banks, not dealing of course, that came later, but doing administration for the dealers. If you just regard the job as placing papers in the right order, and in the right place, then you will do it for ever. I read the paperwork to try and understand what was happening. I spent time at the on-line computer as well, watching the movements. Everything else was luck. The Director came into the office one day and caught me working at some figures. I had in my imagination taken up an offer a few days before, and made a good profit on my supposed investment. He asked me what I was doing and I explained. He said to keep making the supposed investments, but to keep a full record. He would check them from time to time, and obviously thought I was doing alright. A few months later he told me that I was to start dealing."