The Weight of a Voice – Chapter 1
24 August 2010
There is a place to the north of Sheffield, a grimy, hard-working industrial city in the county of Yorkshire. Wardsend. World’s End. People say it’s from the Old English, and of Viking or Roman origin, but they can’t be sure when their sources don’t seem to carry the same authority as the Good Book. Although there is one particularly amusing anecdote that seems to do the rounds; apparently, a few years ago the folk of Ecclesfield, not three miles to the north-east, were of the opinion that Wardsend was the south-western limit of human civilization – quite what they thought lay beyond it is anyone’s guess. The Sheffield Telegraph reported the story of an Ecclesfield publican who had avoided prosecution after serving a group of locals outside of licensed hours. The judge accepted his argument that as the group in question had walked all the way from Wardsend after attending a Christening service, they were in desperate need of refreshment….
Just imagine a place named after the very boundaries of what is known to exist; boundaries that are unreachable, that sailors spent centuries upholding before someone told them the Earth was round and that they’d never reach them. They used to think that they’d come to a point where the boat would perch momentarily over an abyss of cascading brine, before descending forever into – well, who knows what horrors came forth at that moment when they awoke bathed in sweat? And did they imagine that they could they see daylight beyond this place, or did they see a magnified version of the midnight sky, with stars the width of a finger held up at arm’s length and a moon three feet in diameter?
Jude Langston used to wonder about matters such as this. Matters that most would quickly dismiss as daydreaming; perhaps even blasphemous (for even the working class boys knew that the Lord had created the world as a wonder for us to behold, not to fathom for ourselves through misplaced endeavors….). He had a mind prone to wander amongst the corridors of a whole range of puzzles relating to the infinite, the supernatural and the divine, much more than would be expected of a boy gainfully employed in his family business and of modest – but comfortable – means. There was much to be learned, his father regularly reminded him, in a tone that implied that he was well off the pace when it came to the slow and steady race to secure his future.
Jude wanted to absorb all that his father taught him, not because he was desperate to become a tailor but because he didn’t want him to fall from the emotional tightrope he had been walking ever since the death of Jude’s younger brother just after Christmas. It had happened like this – Louis, who was just three at the time, had been playing at the side of the street outside the home, under the occasional watchful glance of his mother (who, like most, allowed her offspring a freedom that fitted nicely with her never-ending housewifely duties. Having seen this approach work successfully with her eldest, she naturally followed suit with her second). His attention drawn to something a short distance away, on the opposite side of the track, the unfortunate Louis was in such a state of single-minded intention that he was oblivious to the oncoming horse-drawn carriage of Mr Barton, who was, ironically, arriving with a delivery of cloth for Mr Langston. Despite the best efforts of Mr Barton (whose devastation at the outcome led to his decision to never drive the vehicle again) to avoid the collision, Louis’ head was crushed by one of the carriage’s sturdy wheels, the small mercy being that he died instantly. A few days later he was interred at Wardsend, and this was the start of the fascination that Jude felt towards the place. It was also the birth of a new way of thinking that felt to him like the opening of a box.
It was a box that he could clearly visualize, appearing as it had in many of his dreams, during both conscious daydreaming and the recesses of darkest sleep. Its basic shape and its purpose were clear to him, but no matter how he tried he could never add any detail to the image. He assumed that the box was wooden, and that the huge lock (one of the only features he knew to be present), was of iron. He had never seen the key that had opened the box for him, but he imagined it to be several inches long, sturdy and heavy. Upon its opening, Jude had peered inside, and had been surprised at the infinite space he had seen within. The box contained only an endless night sky.
Wardsend always set Jude’s mind to the puzzle that was the world beyond what he knew; the contents of the dream-box, its secrets, its treasure. Although he didn’t fully understand it, there was a part of him that believed that his brother was simply beyond the end of the world, still unsteady on his feet and unable to catch his elder sibling, still liable to cry at the slightest hint of torment, still placed high upon that pedestal built by his parents from nothing but pride, expectancy and the glue of disappointment in the firstborn. Jude’s curious but unschooled imagination had yet to grasp the concept of death. To him, one world ended and another began just like villages, towns and counties; the only difference was that these boundaries between worlds were solid, physical structures that were transparent yet totally impenetrable, and if one were to be so inclined as to actually desire passage from one to the other then that person would find themselves not only frustrated but bound from that moment on to live out an existence based on one principle – that we are surviving in a place that is cold and utterly lonely, meaningless and empty when placed side by side with the alternative.
Anyone unfamiliar with Wardsend may deduce, from reading of its mysteries, that it is remote – a place distant and deliberately separated from civilization. In fact, it is extremely reachable – you’d struggle to get any distance beyond it though, and this must give a rather large clue as to how it got the name. It’s the cliff face that towers up behind it; a sheer, rocky facade like the outer defences of a giant Medieval fortress, making the walls of the Garrison, on the other side of the wide valley, seem a little inadequate. The chapel of St. Philip nestles at the feet of these forbidding monsters, where the flood plain of the Don starts to climb as though making an attempt to scale the cliffs and erode them down to the mirror of its opposing banks. It’s only a little chapel, but the graveyard extends for at least a quarter-mile up this slope, and the same to the north and south following the course of the river. The graveyard is heavily wooded; tall, hardy English trees form a dense, verdant carpet that extends along the base of the cliffs as far as the five arches railway bridge to the north.
The reasons that Wardsend is so huge are twofold. Firstly, it is used by the Barracks to bury those unfortunate enough to be killed in action (actually, no small number of soldiers buried there died in training manoeuvres, and even in freak accidents that may have involved a drop too much of the local ale). Secondly, and more significantly, the land was actually purchased by St. Philip’s of Lower Walkley, itself a much more populous area, as an overflow for its own crowded burial ground. Anyone who didn’t know this would be forgiven their bemusement at how such a small chapel could produce such a rapid and consistent turnover of the deceased.
When the chapel was first constructed at Wardsend, and the land consecrated for burial, an untraceable but clever rumour persisted that it had been designed in such a way that on a clear night, the clock face of the main St. Philip’s would catch the moon’s beams and reflect them across the valley onto the chapel and graves. It was at around this time that the despicable practices of the Resurrection Men were at their most prominent, and it didn’t take much for the story to proliferate amongst the congregation. They clung to it like a talisman against all that this vile group represented.
Jude had always thought of graveyards as majestic places; all those exquisite carvings, the well-tended plots, the twisted and gnarled yews and the sense of peace and rest from the sufferings of the grime-coated city. But Wardsend always was a decidedly uncomfortable place. There was never any birdsong; even the sound of the valley’s industry, the clanking of machinery and the roar of the furnaces, echoed a distant warning as though calling the listener back from a place of emptiness and into an unforgiving but familiar world. Even before this strange affair came about, Jude always knew that there were others present whenever he was up there – other eyes, other minds and other souls, separated from him by that invisible and impregnable wall that marks the boundary of the worlds of the living and…..well, wherever it is that those who leave us end up.
He didn’t know what he thought of the idea of heaven. Or Hell. But he reckoned that there was more truth in the idea of the latter. He certainly seemed to hear a great deal about it at church every Sunday. The average working class man knew that as things stood, he’d got, at best, a slender hope of reaching paradise and so his mind tuned into all references to eternal damnation, gradually resigning itself to being tortured and roasted alive along with anyone else who wasn’t rich, white and English during their time on Earth. Gradually, the whole idea had, for him, lost its threat and with it the sense of urgency to try and avoid it. Eventually, every man comes to an understanding about the situation, but it’s just not the ‘done thing’ to admit that you know. Jude was more of a man than those who were already men perceived of him. To them, being a man was equated with the mastery of a trade, the production of as many sons as possible and the right to consume a gallon of beer of an evening. His father saw a little further beyond the material, being grounded in the teachings of his father and the church, and sought, in an often feeble way that gave the impression of a lack of conviction, to impress some sense of moral duty upon his heir.
Maybe the drama of Wardsend has been exaggerated to some degree over time. But Jude would argue that its sense of being a stage, its tragedy, was there for all to experience and to live, if consumed in the right light. He didn’t care so much for the physical light that hung moodily around the place like a troubled drunk dispensing with the glass in the corner of a dingy tavern, but the light of context – knowing that what happened there delves deep into the spiritual nature of humanity. Yes, even into the nature of those poor wretches living in the squalor of factory housing; in fact, even more so as they were, in his view, the ones most in touch with the naked flame that flickers and struggles inside us throughout our fleeting existence on God’s good Earth, the expendable, replaceable commodities that stoke the furnaces and line the pockets of the few that manage to obscure, or at least ignore, the flame.
What Jude knew of Wardsend, both before and after the events of those few days in June, confirmed much in his mind. He felt sure that beyond the end of this world, thriving beyond the barriers, there were others.
2 Responses to The Weight of a Voice – Chapter 1:
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John, this is very interesting especially as I am involved with Wardsend cemetery. Anymore to come? George Proctor
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Hi George,
Sorry – I only just picked up your comment. Yes, I’m planning on posting the whole of the novel I’ve written, and the bulk of it takes place at Wardsend. Chapter 2 is now up, and I’m about to post chapter 3. What’s your involvement with Wardsend? I’ve been up there quite a few times for research and inspiration, but I’ve used quite a bit of artistic license!
Jon