Mrs Bryant

 

The last time I saw Mrs Bryant was on a warm, sunny morning in early September. I always enjoyed popping in to what had once been the village post office but was now the nearest thing we had to a shop in our small village, although the range of goods for sale was always somewhat limited.

Mrs Bryant had been the village postmistress for many years, being the last in a long line of her forebears who had played this role. She was widowed quite a long time ago, the marriage having produced twin sons who were now in their mid-40s.

One of her sons had followed the family tradition but was based at the sorting office in the nearest town, from where he drove his delivery van round all the tiny villages in the locality. Mrs Bryant had been in the habit of delivering the post to the villagers and local farmers, and was reluctant to give up this role. James therefore deposited the village post with her while he used his van to save his mother the trouble of pushing her bike up all the farm lanes. This had become more important since she had started to develop a heart condition which meant that much exertion made her very short of breath.

Mrs Bryant now sold local produce in her shop, such as milk, eggs and whatever vegetables were in season, as well bread that she had baked herself. She also gained a small income from the campsite up the hill at the back of her house. This was a fairly small field that was entirely surrounded by high hedges and was therefore not visible from the road or any nearby footpaths. It had become quite a popular venue for campers who valued their privacy.

However, it was the current intake of campers who were on Mrs Bryant’s mind as I visited her that morning.

“I’ve got a bunch of naturalists on my field this week,” she told me. “None of them wearing a stitch of clothing. They might call themselves naturalists, but I ask you – that’s not natural, is it?”

I thought the obvious answer one that she might struggle to understand, so I didn’t give it. Neither did I point out that her campers were unlikely to be there for the purpose of studying the flora and fauna of the neighbourhood, and the word she wanted was nearly in her vocabulary but not quite.

Instead, I was happy to listen to Mrs Bryant as she went into one of her regular panegyrics about her other son, Graham. She was proud about what both her sons had achieved, but Graham had given her something that she could never have imagined coming her way, namely an extensive knowledge of parts of the world that she had not known existed before Graham was able to tell her all about them.

This was because Graham had gone to sea as a steward on board a cruise liner and he regularly sent her letters and postcards from the places he visited all over the world. On one of his periodic returns to the UK he had given his mother a globe of the world and a compass and he showed her how, wherever he had gone on his voyages, she could work out exactly in what direction he might be from where she was now, in the village.

Mrs Bryant was therefore willing to indicate to anyone who cared to know – as well as those who did not – precisely where Graham was. Not only that, but she could tell them the names of all the places and put her finger on where they were on the globe before pointing in precisely the right direction. I never knew her to get this wrong.

However, if you were to ask Mrs Bryant where somewhere was that was beyond the confines of the village, but still within England, she would not have had a clue. She had been born in the house she lived in now, and certainly knew every square inch of the village as far as the limits of her original postal round, but that was it. In her younger days she had occasionally visited the local town, without really knowing where she was in geographical terms, but these days she did not even do that. Everything she needed was either brought to her by her son James or came in the post.

Later that day, after James had called with the post for the village houses, Mrs Bryant paid a visit to the campsite up the hill in order to deliver a few letters. As she approached the gate that led through the hedge she suddenly felt unwell and fell to the ground. Some of the campers had seen this and rushed over to help, forgetting to cover up as they usually did when a non-camper approached.

Presumably it was the sight of four completely naked men and women leaning over her that brought on the heart attack from which Mrs Bryant failed to recover.

Poor Mrs Bryant, who knew so well her own little world, much of what was thousands of miles away, but almost nothing of what lay between. I won’t forget her in a hurry.

© John Welford