Mention the name of Jack Macauley

Suddenly, it seems as if everyone wants to talk to me. The window cleaner must have released some vital trigger when he told me all those things about old Lady Macauley the other day; you have only to mention the name of Macauley in these parts, apparently (that of Jack Macauley, for preference) for tongues to be loosened and reminiscences scattered. I’ve begun to scatter the name about a little myself, as a matter of fact. I mentioned it to my hairdresser and to the milkman, and the man who stood beside me in the post office queue. It just happened to come up, yesterday, as I chatted with the woman who runs the little gift shop on the high street; and then it came up again, an hour later, with the other, very talkative one who works behind the counter in the local bakery. I did all this as discreetly as I could, of course - I didn’t want people to think me a lion hunter, or worse, an idle gossip. And the surprising thing was, that the response was positive in almost every case. It would seem that whatever else might fail in one’s attempts to blend in round here, when it comes to talking about Jack Macauley (or ‘Old Jack’ as he seems most often to be known), everyone in the village has an opinion to express, or a story to tell

Most of the opinions I heard were highly favourable. Most people smiled broadly at the mention of him, wanting to tell me what a great character he was: how philanthropic, how convivial – how uncommonly charismatic indeed, and somehow several sizes larger than the usual run of men. This is not to say that he was entirely without detractors, of course. No man can have been so philanthropic or so charming as to have been loved by everyone; and for every three people who smiled at the mention of Jack Macauley, there was another one who scowled, telling me the man was an upstart, who brought nothing but disgrace and scandal to the village. The old house still bears his name, for all that. It had another, more dynastic name at one time. It was Something, or Somebody-or-Other's House or Hall; a connection, probably, with the district, or with the family who had owned it without interruption for more than three hundred years. But that name apparently fell out of use at some point in Jack Macauley's long occupation; nobody seems to remember it now, and they call the old place Macauley's house instead. Which must make Jack's more severe detractors ask themselves, sometimes, if it’s after all not the meek, but the disgraceful – the upstarts and the scandal-makers – who most of all inherit the earth; or who are at any rate remembered longest after everything else has gone.

I went down last night to have another look at the old Macauley house. I wanted to see for myself how it could be that the old lady and her daughter should still be clinging on there, in semi dereliction, and so very many years after Jack had gone. I approached it by way of our little footpath, which was once a Macauley avenue, and stood a long time peering through the bars of the tall wrought iron gates. It was dusk by then, so that large portions of the house were thrown into deep shadow, giving it a spectral look. It is decidedly not a beautiful house. Not even by daylight, not even in its heyday under Charles the First, can its admirers have claimed that virtue for it. And to me, in that uneasy half light, it looked forbidding, ugly almost. I’d have walked away without turning round; and shivering a little, though the night was warm – had it not been for the fact that the place had become invested so, for me, with all the romantic remembered history of Jack Macauley and his Theodora.

I have my own little remembered story to tell about Sir Jack and Theodora, as I mentioned yesterday. I ought to have started out on it at once, today; instead of allowing myself to become side-tracked like this, with hearsay, and opinions expressed long after the event. My story will keep though - I’ll tell it tomorrow, for sure. For now, well it’s almost lunch time, and Bill will be hungry. I have capitulated so far as to consent to cook for him for just so long as his convalescence lasts; after which, as I remind him daily, he’s on his own.

I have deputed Bill, by the way, to go out there and test the responses to Jack Macauley among the other dog-walkers on the common… But I have to report that his appetite for the task has so far been a good deal less than enthusiastic.