Wednesday 25 December 2013

Trying to get back to Devizes


Cro's comment on yesterday's post reminded me of a famous old drunk in Bath called Mr Willoughby.

I first met him around 35 years ago when he stopped me in the street to tell me that he had missed the last bus to Devizes, and so urgently needed to take a taxi there. It was about 10.30 at night.

It so happened that I knew when the last bus to Devizes was - about 11.00 I seem to remember - and it also happened that he was only 100 yards from the correct stop, and I told him this.

He insisted that I was wrong, and said that even if I were right, he could never make it to the bus-stop in time to catch it. I pointed over his shoulder to the stop, and said that even he could walk 100 yards in half an hour, but he kept asking for the taxi fare, which was something like £20.

I began to smell a rat, but gave him the benefit of the doubt along with about £2.50 which was the bus fare. He took it with bad grace and walked away mumbling.

About two days later, I ran into him again in a different part of town. He was - apparently - still trying to get back to Devizes. I gave him a bit more money, this time less than the bus fare.

Over the next few months, I often heard him shout "I'M TRYING TO GET BACK TO DEVIZES!" at various people, including me. He did not have a very good memory for faces. The last time I gave him a few pence (my contributions to his bus-fare became smaller and smaller), I asked him to take a long, hard look at my face, because the next time he saw it, there would be no money forthcoming from underneath it.

He stared up at me with rheumy, bloodshot eyes above a bulbous, lurid nose and beneath a filthy pork-pie hat which was about 4 sizes too small for him. This hat was his trademark and I never saw him without it, or the horribly stained tie which he wore on an equally sordid shirt of indeterminate colour.

It was an awful experience to have him staring silently at me on the street for just about as long as he thought it would take to convince me that he was taking it all in and would never make the same mistake again.

A day later he came toward me on the pavement, and said, "I'M TRYING TO GET BACK TO DEVIZES!", and I walked on by without a word in return.

Over the coming years, I began to learn all there was to know about Mr Willoughby, which was not much. I never found out his first name, for instance. He frequented the only pub in Bath which would allow him through the doors, but blotted his copybook one day by allowing a turd to fall from one of his trouser legs and onto the floor of the establishment. He stood defensively over the offending lump of shit, furiously denying that it had anything to do with him, even though there was nobody else with 15 feet of it when it hit the ground.

Before this unfortunate incident, he had just bought a pint of cider when a couple of firemen came running into the pub to tell him that his house was burning down. "Right you are," said Mr Willoughby, "I'll be right there as soon as I've finished this pint."

There was another time when he came up to me and said, "I'M TRYING TO GET BACK TO DEVIZES!", and I said, "No you're not - you live in the old Eye Hospital, just up Lansdown Hill."

He paused for a second or two, trying to think of a strategy or alibi which would get him the bus fare. I could almost hear what was left of his brain cells creaking under the strain.

He eventually looked up from the pavement and said, "Ah - I used to live there, but now I live in Devizes!"

The ocean of cider he had drunk over the years finally got him, and following a bout of illness in hospital, he died sober for the first time in years, about 10 of them ago.

After he had been buried, they discovered that he had a small fortune sitting untouched in a bank account, and a son who popped up at the last minute to claim it.

I would like to say that I miss him, but this would not be strictly true. I wonder if he ever made it to Devizes?






16 comments:

  1. Right you are, and I hope he did.

    Happy Christmas Tom
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    1. Happy Christmas to you too, Sarah. I hope it's not too hot where you are.

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  2. When I was in Devizes this year - by boat, not by taxi - I thought the town lovely, but it could not be overlooked that approximately about 87% of the inhabitants were older than 70. So one place or another... wouldn't have made such a difference to Mr. Willoughby (did he take his name from Austen?)

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    1. Did you see the little back street in Devizes which has remained unchanged since about 1350? Like something from Harry Potter.

      I doubt if Mr Willoughby had ever read Jane bloody Austen, which makes two of us in Bath.

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    2. I saw that charming street - and a lot more, and I really liked it.
      I thought you gave your Mr. Willoughby an 'alias' to protect him - and then: Willoughby was a scoundrel too, as your 'hero'.

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  3. Yesterday's storm knocked the Devizes Christmas tree for six.

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    1. Did it? Our Christmas lights outside have not worked since the storm, either.

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  4. There was a nice little pub next to the canal, it sold Wadworths Triple X or similar anyway three pints put me to sleep.
    I used to believe that drunks & tramps could tell that I was a soft touch.... am so glad that it happens to others and not just me.

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    1. The drayhorse (yes, they still use one) for Wadsworth does not have far to go for that pub. Lend us a tenner.

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    2. Tenner attached with previous comment. Don't tell me it fell off!

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  5. Brighton had a 2p man. He was always asking for just 2p for a cup of tea. As the request was very reasonable, people would always give him more. I think he did very well.

    Isn't 'Devises' such a beautiful name for a town!

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    1. Sounds like the £5 train-fare man, except it didn't work on you. There is a village near here called 'Thingly'. I suppose they had trouble naming it.

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  6. Your description of the old fellow, paragraph 8, was mouth watering and I plan to steel it for a scene in my novel...if that's alright with you of course.

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    1. If that's what makes your mouth water, you can have it, Donna.

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  7. That made me homesick for Bath and brought back a few memories! Going to pick up language students from the station late evenings, and that fella dancing in the road oblivious to traffic. Julian House people would end up in the station, sometimes begging for the price of a drink...
    In Weston village where we lived and of course also had hostels opposite the hospital there was many a tale...like the old man who came into Somerfield (now sadly gone) helped himself to about three bottles of whiskey then sauntered through the checkout without paying. Everyone was grinning, and the young store manager chased after him exasperated and returned with the bottle - no police involved...
    And then there was the lady I picked up in the car on a snowy isolated lane from Devizes. Roundway Hospital she had wandered from, (it its day it was called the lunatic asylum) but that is another story..

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    1. Hello Thelma. Roundway still exists, I think. The day-release patients come to our pub sometimes, or that's what I suspect.
      That shoplifting technique sometimes works.

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