Fiction Factory: World War Two And The Warwickshire Warlock

A short story for Christmas, Easter, Harvest Festival, the choice is yours!

The war was over. Well, nearly over. There were news reports every day that the Russians were weeks away from walking into Berlin. Either that or the wire carried stories of how the Nazi high command were about to take a well-eared break at Berchtesgaden. As it turned out, there’d be another three months of fighting. But that St Valentine’s Day in Meon Hill, Warwickshire, the sun felt more of spring than of winter and raised spirits weren’t only to be found in The Fat Ox.

Though I’d been in Stratford to interview local dignitaries that fine lover’s holiday, I wouldn’t make it to Meon until the following month by which time there was something to report on - an event so far removed from the modern Midlands, we might as well have been back in the Middle Ages.

Charles Walton was a land man, a seasonal labourer, who still cut an impressive figure even though he’d long ago seen in his 70th year. When there were no more apples to pick or little hay left to bail, Charles was prone to wander the county, sleeping wherever the fancy took him and making friends less with the local people than with the local wildlife. According to Alfred Tonks, landlord of the aforementioned Fat Ox, the day before St Valentine let fly his arrows Walton had been seen feeding sparrows from his hand with the crumbs left over from his lunchtime sandwich.

Mr Tonks also told me that Charles Walton, hard worker though he was, wasn’t someone country people spoke kindly of. His fondness for things feathered and furry was matched by an appetite for ale that invariably left him in no mood for niceties. He was also, explained Tonks - a man more prop forward than fly half - in thrall to pagan practices.

I never discovered the shape such practices assumed, nor the extent to which Mr Watson pursued them. But as everyone from the landlord to the local vicar pointed out, witchcraft was still illegal in His Majesty’s United Kingdom in 1945. A hundred miles or so away, men were killing one another with devices that their First World War counterparts couldn’t have imagined. But in Meon Hill, as had presumably been the case in periods of plague and Civil War, the only thing everyone had an opinion on was witches - or in Mr Watson’s case, warlocks.

Yes, Charles Watson was a warlock according to the village folk. But was it because of his having a thing for magick that Mr Watson ceased to reside in Meon Hill on February 14th? And could his affiliation with the demon hound that prowled the Warwickshire hedgerows explain how Charles Watson all but lost his head while everyone else was handing around hearts?

For anyone who’s wondering, Charles Watson’s death most certainly wasn’t an accident. While farm work brings with it a variety of dangers, it seems unlikely that Mr Watson could have skewered himself with a pitchfork, only to them use the implement a second time to all but remove his head from the rest of his torso.

In my search for the responsible party, there was some talk of ruffians from the neighbouring village, town, county; the location changed depending upon who you were talking to. The police - who one might assume would be very up on such matters - claimed to have interviewed all the townsfolk and had made enquiries in the aforementioned hamlets and such much. The upshot of their detective work was that, since Charles Watson had no family nor direct ties to the area, it was very hard to surmise who would have had a motive to do him in.

But what about Laidlaw the local land owner who argued with Watson over his fee for the summer’s work? Or Mr Tonks who’d regularly had to escort Charlie from his premises when the latter’s brawling left him with a bill for damages and an empty pub? There were even a number of Italian POWs in the areas who, while they mightn’t have had anything to do with Watson’s decapitation, certainly ought to have been eliminated from the constabulary’s enquiries.

After a few long days of bashing my head against a brick wall, the time came to take my leave of Meon Hill. While I waited beside the churchyard for a photographer friend to pick me up and drop me off at the station, the town cleric took a moment to commiserate with me.

“It’s very hard, isn’t it?” said the young man whose bad eyesight would have kept him out of the war even if his beliefs had not. “Country folk don’t tend to trust outsiders. I’ve been here five years and I only feel I’ve got to know the people in the wake of Mr Watson’s misfortune.”

“Misfortune?!”

“Sorry,” he corrected himself, his hands raised in apology. “It’s a tragedy what befell Mr Watson. Still, the town will recover, as will the land.”

Closing the door on the photographer’s vehicle, I thought of winding down the window to tell the rector that the sorry state of Meon Hill’s fields seemed fitting given the terrible thing that had occurred in them, only to think better of it. A return to London and real life was in order.

I might never had given Meon Hill or its mute townsfolk another thought were it not for a photo that crossed my desk the following September. With both theatres of war closed for the season, the editor was keen to cover more pastoral subjects. So it came to pass that I was handed a photo of the Meon Hill’s townsfolk, their glasses charged as they welcomed a harvest unlike any in living history. The land had recovered, recovered and how.