CHAPTER 16: Westercoombe

A week before they were all due in Thornhampton, Tory and Jack were sharing a frugal meal with Jenny and Kit at a village public house. When Jack got up to go settle their bill, Tory remembered to tell their friends that she and Jack would be spending their last week of liberty across the county line in Dorset.

“Whatever for?” Kit grimaced. “Have you not had enough of sheep?”

“Jack spent his winters there when he wasn’t following the fairs with his parents. His foster-parents, I mean. They were tumblers on the summer fair circuit.”

"I expect they’ll be happy to see him," said Jenny.

"I’m sure they would, if they were still alive," said Tory. "But they died years ago, when Jack was out of the country. He’s never been back to visit their graves, but now we’re so close, he’s made up his mind to go."

"Fostered out, was he?" asked Kit.

"Oh, aye, it’s a great mystery.” Tory smiled. "He was a foundling, an abandoned infant squalling in a box under a briar bush at some rural May Fair. The tumbling couple discovered him and raised him."

"And?" Jenny demanded, eagerly.

"And what? They brought him up a tumbler and then he went into the acting profession." This was the essential, if not the entire truth.

"But where did he come from?" Kit persisted. "God’s blue blood, woman, do you never read romances? Inconvenient heirs cast off into the countryside? A true son deposed by a bastard brother reclaiming his birthright just in time to save the kingdom? He’s a bit tall and good-looking for a FitzGeorge, I’ll grant, but there are plenty of other noble and wealthy lineages lurking about. He must be connected to one of ‘em."

"Yes, do tell," prompted Jenny. "Who has he turned out to be?"

Tory gazed at them both in complete amazement.
    
“He’s turned out to be Jack."




The village of Westercoombe was nestled in a sloping valley west by south of the town of Dorchester. High wooded hills sheltered it on all sides and the few tumbledown yellow stone cottages on its outskirts seemed to have been chiseled out of the rocky, furze-covered foothills. There was a smithy located along the Broad Street, and a baker and a little triangular village green. But Jack did not linger at any of them, leading Tory on to a little parish church at the top of the street.

They had traveled a day and a half by coach to Dorchester and walked these last few miles through the country, but when they finally arrived at the vicarage door, Jack almost lost his nerve. For a moment, his dark eyes searching Tory’s face looked so lost, she was afraid he would bolt. But she put her hand through his arm to steady him. It could not be easy for him, facing the ghosts of the parents he had convinced himself his negligence had killed.

A prim housekeeper of ancient vintage answered the bell and led them into a small study, sparsely furnished with a desk and two indifferent chairs, but almost entirely lined with books. Jack stood in the middle of the room as if he had stumbled into a dream, turning slowly round to drink it all in, very nearly smiling.

"Mr. Dance?" A thin fellow of middle height and middle years stepped into the room, blinking inquisitively at Jack. Greying hair hung almost to his collar from a balding dome, little wire spectacles perched on his nose and he was soberly dressed in plain, dark clothing. "How do you do? I am . . . "

"Schoolmaster Loring.” Jack gaped.

"Why . . .  so I was called, once, when I was curate here, more than a dozen years ago. I am vicar, now." He paused and squinted again at Jack. "Do I know you?"

"You did once, sir. A long time ago. You taught me to read in this room."

The vicar’s soft brown eyes widened behind his spectacles.

"Why . . . it’s never Master Johnny? Old John’s boy?"

Jack nodded. "I’m afraid I’ve changed a great deal."

"As who has not, my boy, who has not?" Mr. Loring reached out to pump Jack’s hand, smiling at him. "And yet, not so changed as all that. Old John’s boy, fancy! Your father was a dear, good man, Lord rest his soul."

Jack’s cautious smile evaporated and his eyes dropped to the floor.

"And what brings you this way, Mas . . . Mr. Dance?"

Jack looked up again into the vicar’s curious eyes.

"I’ve come to see my parents."


Two small, square stones lay flush in the earth together in a corner of the churchyard behind the vicarage. Jack crouched down to brush away a litter of dirt and dead leaves off the cold stone with his bare fingers, as light as a caress. The name John Chester was engraved in the first, above his dates. Nothing more. Maude Lamb Chester was carved on the other. Their death dates were only months apart. Tory remembered that after Old John’s wife nursed him through his last illness, there was no one left to nurse her through a fever the following winter. Their runaway son was far away in the Indies, by then, pressed into the seafaring life against his will with no means of getting home again. Even if he had known that the people he loved most in all the world were dying.

Mr. Loring had retired discreetly to his study. Jack stayed crouched there for so long, without moving, his expression so utterly impassive, that Tory, too, decided to leave him to his memories. She trailed her fingertips very lightly across his shoulders, Jack nodded very slightly in response, and she drifted off to explore the churchyard.

Some of the graves were marked with plain wooden crosses, but most had upright stones with lengthy inscriptions. Browsing through these, Tory was astonished to realize how many people had lived their entire lives in Westercoombe, born, raised, married and laid to rest in the same tiny hamlet. For generations, in some cases, judging from the many groupings of headstones all bearing the same surname. Jack’s parents were tucked in among a profusion of Lambs, his mother’s people; Tory remembered his father had come from Cornwall. They had travelled all over Britain, even to Europe, as acrobats and tumblers, yet they had always come home to this place. Jack’s home, where the family had spent its winters. And Tory wondered what it must be like to live in one place all your life, a place where everyone knew you, where you never had to play a part. A place to come home to.

Then she scolded herself for her melancholy. It must be the gloomy influence of all these dead. She'd come to a yew hedge bordering the yard from which she could gaze back down into the nearly deserted Broad Street and glimpse a few other pathways fit only for sheep winding away for the tiny cottages and little thatched barns in the foothills. How long could she have ever been content in such a place, when she had found all of Boston too confining? She had gambled with Fortune and won her freedom, her living, and Jack. It was the sheerest hypocrisy to let the ghosts of what might have been seduce her into sentiment when it was the very freedom of her nomadic life she most loved. Besides, it was dangerous to stay too long in one place. Yet, it might have been different had any of her own family survived. Her mama, dead in childbed. Her papa, out of his mind with grief. One step-brother lost in the war, the other run off to sea, never to be heard from again. But it was no use regretting the past. And she turned back to see that Jack had once again risen to his feet above his parents’ graves, gazing down on the stones. A chill March breeze had sprung up, but Jack did not appear to notice as Tory went back to stand beside him.

"I was just telling them how much they would have loved you," he told her, very softly, not looking up. She slipped her hand into his. "I only wish it were a warmer place," he added, scarcely a whisper. "They disliked the cold and damp, it played havoc with their rheumatics . . . "

His words expired, and when he turned his face away, Tory put her arm around him, and pulled him to her. He did not resist, only hid his face in her hair and held tightly to her. He had long since spent all his tears for his parents; still, he needed her closeness.

"They never stopped loving you, Jack," she whispered. "They love you still. Can you not feel it?"

"I wish I knew that," he murmured.
    
"I know it," Tory insisted gently.


Mr. Loring stood at a back window of the vicarage watching his visitors with mixed emotions. He felt sadness, satisfaction and the prick of a troubled conscience. The Dear Lord forgive him, but he had entertained ungenerous thoughts about Master Johnny over the years. Such a loving and eager child he had been, so enchanted by the world of books the young curate had opened up to him. Poor John and Maude Chester could not read a word between them, but they were so proud of their foundling boy’s accomplishments. He was the brightest pupil Mr. Loring had ever had, no matter how dubious his birth. And then, one autumn, at the end of the fair season, Old John and Missus John had come home without him. "We always knew he was not ours to keep forever," was all they’d ever said about it. But it was a shame the lad had never once called upon them in their retirement, after all they had done for him. It would have given them so much joy.

And yet, to see the boy now — for boy he would always be to Mr. Loring —  moved him deeply. He was sorry, now, for his uncharitable earlier opinion. It was not his place to judge, after all. Perhaps something more might be done for him. For Old John Chester’s sake.

Half an hour later, Jack and Tory were invited back into the vicar’s study for a pot of tea.

"Your parents would be so pleased you’ve come home," Mr. Loring ventured, to Jack.

"Far too late, I’m afraid," Jack murmured. "I was such a young fool when I ran off, I never got the chance to tell them how much they meant to me."

"You gave them much happiness," the vicar assured him. "They always said so. Even . . . in later years. Other theatrical people would visit them on occasion, and once or twice they produced a notice from some publication in the north about your performance on the stage." This last word came out hushed, as if Mr. Loring were afraid to utter it so near the church. "Your parents were always so glad to hear them."

Jack did not seem capable of responding to this information, hunched forward on the edge of his chair, staring at his clasped hands. Looking a little distressed, Mr. Loring stood up suddenly and bustled over to a little cupboard in the corner.

"I’m afraid the Chesters had no effects to speak of," he continued, rummaging at the back of a deep shelf. "What poor possessions they owned, they were kind enough to leave to the parish church. But for these."

And he extracted an old, fraying burlap sack reeking of dust and age, a lumpy parcel he carried over to Jack with both hands. Tory sat forward to get a better look, but Jack’s face was transformed upon the instant from melancholy to awe. He set the sack reverently on the floor, pulled open the drawstring, and pulled out three objects Tory recognized as juggling pins. The wood was worn and chipped here and there, and the red paint was faded and peeling, but Jack handled them as if they were the Crown Jewels.

"Just before Old John was called to his maker, he asked me to set these aside for you," Mr. Loring told Jack. "‘These are for my boy,’ he told me."

"He said that?" Jack whispered.

Mr. Loring nodded. "He supposed you might return, some day. He wanted you to have them."

Jack was speechless. Tory could see the tears he had fended off in the churchyard stealing up on him now, as he dropped his eyes again.

"It was so kind of you to keep these all this time, Mr. Loring," she said. "This means so much to Jack."

"Not at all, my dear, not at all," the vicar smiled, grateful to have brought some comfort, at last. "It’s what his parents wanted."

 

Top: Eastleigh, North Devon, James Bateman, ca 1940

Above right: The Old Church, William Holman Hunt, 1847

Above left: Vintage juggling pins