Eternal crackle

We left as planned today, although not as early as we’d hoped. I slept the night on Lee’s floor, woke at ten and we actually set off an hour or so later as Watermouth was preparing itself for another scorching day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the heat was already intense and uncomfortable as we struggled to the bus stop with our bags.

Caught the No. 31 to Binston Park and hitched from there, getting a lift from a man who saw my kitbag and thought I was in the RAF. He took us to Junction 8, right at the start of the M354. For ages we tried to persuade cars to stop, enduring the usual thumbs-ups, blank looks and those bastards who indicate they’re stopping and then drive off laughing, before moving to the opposite side of Junction 8, which was all but devoid of traffic. Scores of cars turned off towards Watermouth but only the odd one or two came our way, and none of the drivers seemed inclined to even give us a glance.

All those people who swept past us in otherwise empty cars angered us, but eventually we were lucky and a lone driver pulled up, dropping us at the M3 turn off where we’d scarcely put our bags down before a Ford Transit van pulled up. The driver was a big W. Indian who was taking his wiry insect-like New Yorker passenger to Brixton, so we had an entertaining journey all the way into S.W. London, the American regaling our chauffeur with various tales and stories that reduced the latter to helpless hoots of laughter, which he frequently interspersed with “wow” in his gravelly, incredulous voice. He was deferent towards his passenger, as though he was impressed by his cosmopolitan authority.

We were dropped at Chiswick, and from there we gave up hitching, having saved just a pound for our efforts. We caught a bus into Kensington and from there we got the tube to Victoria. A coach ticket to Sudbury cost £3 each and we had a two-hour wait.

Our journey out of London and through increasingly rural vistas of cornfields, copses of green verdant trees, and tiny country roads was marked by a growing sense of excitement. As the coach headed into Essex we were in high spirits, passing through Romford, Brentwood, Ingalestone, Chelmsford, Witham, Rivenhall (a tiny place marked only by its old church tower lit by the dying sun), Braintree, Halstead and eventually, at 9 p.m., Sudbury.

As we climbed down from the coach the sun had just sunk below the horizon.

Sudbury was a few shops and Church grouped around a market square, the streets nearly empty even at this early hour, except for the usual gangs of local youth who always seem so prominent in these sorts of towns. We bought a burger from the back of a mobile fast food stall parked in the middle of the square, and set off along the road towards Long Melford and Borley, some two miles distant.

It was getting dark, and our route took us off the main road, down a footpath and into fields alongside the placid River Stour and out through a herd of cows that seemed alarmed at our sudden appearance. The buildings of Borley Hall were silhouetted black against the fading sunset sky, its windows lit and lonely in the blackness.

We came upon a roughly tarmac’d road which wound its way past an orchard and joined with another road, and we were in some confusion as to where Borley actually was, wandering along this road between high hedges (our imaginations working overtime) but seeing no signs of a church, only new and expensive looking houses sheltering behind trees and imposing driveways.

We finally turned round and walked back in the other direction, past a couple of semi-detached houses and the village hall (1878), the road climbing gently now through fields toward the blackness of trees ahead, crowning the hill. Numerous cars passed us, heading in the same direction. The distant trees were occasionally illuminated by torch beams, and the road turned left and swept away towards Borley Green as Borley church loomed up on our right, black and massive among its sheltering trees. As we drew nearer we realised with a sinking feeling that Pete’s predictions were about to be confirmed.

No less than a dozen cars were parked on the lay by in front of the grave yard gate, thirty people at least, laughing and talking, drinking coffee from flasks in the back of their Cortina estates and trudging to and fro in ceaseless procession up the gravel path to the church. We cursed them and their kind and I felt ashamed and embarrassed to be a part of this.

A loud American voice demanded to know where the Nun’s Walk was. The candle-lit porch of the church was filled with people and a couple of amateur authorities from Ipswich Psychic Research Group had set up a tape recorder with a microphone inside the church on the font, and they held court to dozens of people who hovered around the fringes of the candle light; numerous kids and teenagers, most of whom gave the impression that they were here just for fun (the mobile burger van man had said a lot of people visit “mostly just for a giggle”). I think a lot of them had come up from Sudbury especially for the anniversary.

In the darkness of the graveyard, amid the sculpted yew trees and tombstones, handfuls of people wandered around, gazing through the church windows or lying in the grass under the trees, giving the impression that they were quietly waiting for something to happen. There was an air of conviction about them, as though they were certain that they were about to see or hear something unexplained.

Lee and I took on the role of sceptics, and investigated one noise the frightened crowds were attributing to ghosts and deciding it was cows. Various people claimed to have heard things, or seen lights moving inside the church or among the bushes behind it and they clustered round the windows, peering inside. Round the back of the church, Lee and I shone our torches inside, which caused the people round at the front and on the porch to overreact with loud cries of “what was that?” etc. How gullible and subject to group suggestion most people are! It was both amusing and annoying watching them all reacting with alarm and dread to every tiny noise & rustle in the grass.

One lady was head and shoulders above the rest in the foolishness stakes, a self-proclaimed “medium” who chided Lee and I for shining our torches through the church windows because “You’ll make the lights go away.” Later, as the amateur psychic researchers replayed the recordings they’d made, she solemnly declared every rumble and scrape of noise to be ghostly voices or spectral organ music. One bystander said she could hear voices on the tape, and as the tape was replayed the medium enthusiastically said that yes, she could hear them too, and patted one of the psychic researchers heartily on the back saying “Well done! Well done! We have got some good results.”

We could only watch with amused contempt. The tape did capture one convincing noise, a loud clunk which echoed and sounded to have come almost certainly from somewhere inside the church. It was quite chilling to listen to.

More cars arrived, and things began to get out of control. A neighbour called the police and the young PC told us all to move on saying there never have been any ghosts at Borley, so Lee and I left and walked down the road about 200 yards to a cornfield where we’ve spread out our blankets and are going to try to sleep (and where I’m writing this by penlight).

The sky is clear and the stars glitter overhead in icy glory. Out here, far from the polluting effects of sodium street lighting, the Milky Way is clearly visible as a softly glowing band running from horizon to horizon. It’s odd to think what I’m seeing is the light of a billion suns, light from a galaxy so vast it can’t be comprehended in its entirety. Occasionally a meteor flares briefly as it streaks across the sky and then is gone in the blink of an eye.

The eternal crackle of the Universe, a vast emptiness above our heads silent, cold and utterly still apart from the noiseless pinprick of a satellite gliding its lonely path among the stars.