Flash fiction: Rhodri Hactonby’s maps

They hanged the man and flogged the woman

who stole the goose from off the common
But let the bigger thief go loose
who stole the common from the goose.
(Anonymous, 17th century)

“Who is presenting today?”

“Rhodri Hactonby. He’s in his final year.”

“Ah, you mean Lord Hactonby.” Dr Coster chuckled. “I wonder what the connection is with Hactonby. It’s in Lincolnshire, isn’t it? Perhaps his father owns it.”

“Perhaps he does,” said Dean. “It’s a courtesy title. Rhodri is the second son of the Duke of Guntersford. As a matter of fact he was at Eton with me, though two years behind. He did rather well there. A useful batsman. And he made it into Pop – that was after my time, but I hear he had a rather splendid waistcoat made.”

“I’m afraid I know little of such matters,” said Dr Coster. “I’m just a humble Wykehamist.”

“Actually I can’t say I liked Hactonby much even then.”

“Oh,” said Coster. “By the way, I take it you circulated his presentation to the group?”

“I did.” Dean was a postgraduate and assisted Dr Coster with the Historiography course. He was likeable, if quiet; lately he had been quieter. Dr Coster noticed that he was staring into the middle distance, where a slim figure in jeans and a T-shirt was walking ahead of them towards the School of History.

“Ah. Miss Jade Smith,” he said. “Our token pleb.”

“I like her,” said Dean.

Coster looked at him. “She’s a little hard to like sometimes,” he said. Dean made no reply.

They seated themselves in the lecture room, Coster on the dais from which he would chair the seminar. Dean sat with the 15 or 16 students, next to Jade; the chair beside her had remained vacant until they came in. She was a slight figure, five foot nothing with a gaunt face and a full mouth. her eyes were dark and her skin scarred by acne.

Hactonby was presenting. He was tall with a floppy mane of blond hair; his face was pale and rather fleshy. He moved himself across the room with restless energy, waving his hands about and pointing now and then at the screen. His first slide read:  

UNCOVERING PROGRESS

THE MAPS OF GUNTERSFORD PARVA 

His next slide showed a patchwork quilt of a village, with long fingers of land divided into narrow ribbons.

“This is the parish around 1350, at the time of the Black Death,” he said. “This map is obviously not contemporaneous. It was put together by the late Professor Blanchflower from parish records and from the archaeological project that he conducted in this and a number of Midland parishes in the 1970s. It is splendid work and I commend it to you. We may observe” – he waved his hand at the image – “the land was farmed on the strip system; a peasant subsistence economy. But two hundred years later” – he clicked the remote control – “things are very different. This is the parish after an Act of Enclosure. The strip system is gone and we see larger, more efficient units, given to sheep production…. In the wake of the Black Death, a labour shortage had caused the peasants to pressure landowners for improved conditions. Their response was to enclose the land and institute less labour-intensive, more productive agriculture.”

Dean thought he heard Jade whisper something. It sounded like “Stole the common from the goose”. He glanced at her. As he did so she raised her hand.

“Yes, Jade?” said Hactonby. He looked a little put out.

“Where did the people go?” she asked.

“The people?”

“The ones who wanted better conditions.”

“Well, I imagine they went to the growing towns of Elizabethan England,” said Hactonby. He frowned. “Rural-urban migration must have eased the pressure on the countryside.”

“I wonder if it did,” said Jade. Her accent was from the West Midlands, and jarred a little in the room. “You may have read A.L. Rowse. In his The England of Elizabeth he notes that in rural parishes in the 16th century, there was a surplus of births over deaths. In urban ones there was a surplus of deaths over births. So migrating doesn’t seem to have worked out very well for them, does it?”

“Well,” said Hactonby. “One must look at the bigger picture. A country must progress.” He clicked to the next slide. “Here we see the parish in 1800, as sketched out by the Rector of Guntersford Parva, Elias Winterbottom.” He turned to the room. “A most estimable gentleman who did much for the poor of the parish. His journals are in my family’s archives.” He indicated the map. “As you will see, there is now a mill and some housing.” He clicked again. “The year 1920. The same approximate area though it is now part of the urban Borough of Guntersford. The mill buildings have been replaced by the factory complex of Grimly and Straight, boilermakers and later transmission manufacturers…” He turned to Jade. “I understand my family leased the land to the firm, and invested in its plant. One fancies that the descendants of those peasants then found productive work forging the pistons and spars for Spitfires and Hurricanes.”

“Jolly good for them,” said Jade.

Hactonby displayed the next slide. “And here is the parish in the year of our Lord 2024. I have cheated; this is from Google Maps.” The room tittered. “The manufacturing plant complex is long gone. The buildings you see now are, as far as I can establish, a call centre and an Amazon fulfilment centre.” He steepled his hands in a gesture that Dean thought theatrical, and continued:

“In maps we see the progress of a country. A subsistence economy that produces little surplus value. When it ceases to be economic, it is replaced by a form of agriculture that does. Its labour requirements are less but people will continue to breed, so a labour surplus allows us to proceed to a manufacturing economy and, when that too ceases to pay, to a services one. The evolution is, for now, complete. And the maps show it all.”

“No they don’t,” said Jade. “They show f**k all. What happened to the peasants when they left the land? What happened to the workers when the mill closed? Did the factory take them? Or were they made to bugger off?”

“Jade,” said Dr Coster, “these are fair questions but please be civil.”

“About what? About what this little shit’s family did to the likes of mine for 700 years?”

There was a mixed reaction in the room. Some groaned. Some laughed. Dr Coster sat with his mouth slightly open. Dean’s face showed a sort of pain.

“I say,” said Hactonby, ”would you like to discuss this over dinner?” He grinned.

There were snorts of laughter. Coster smiled. Jade stood and blundered to the door. It slammed behind her and she caught ironic cheers as she walked away.

“That is enough,” said Dr Coster. “Please, that is quite enough.”

Dean went to the door too. As he opened it he turned back towards Hactonby. “Rhodri,” he said, “you are a f**king peasant. You always were.”

There had been a hint of rain as they had entered, and now it had begun in earnest. Jade did not seem to notice but hurried towards the street, bent a little from the waist. Dean ran to catch up with her, calling out. He saw the rain spots joining on her T-shirt; her hair was wet.

“Jade.”

“What.”

He trotted up to her. “I don’t suppose he meant any harm,” he panted.

“Oh, he f**king did.” She glared at him. “You don’t get it, do you? We’re so different, me and him, you and me. It’s a different country for you, isn’t it? Even maps don’t say the same things for you.” She closed and opened her eyes and he realised she was crying. ”I hate it here,” she said. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I hate you all. I wish I’d never come.”

She turned and moved away, head bowed.

“Jade!” he called.

“F**k off,” she choked.

“Jade! Stop!” She turned around.

“I love you!” he yelled.

“You what?”

 A Deliveroo driver turned and looked at them, then hurried on.

“I love you,” he repeated. They stood and looked at each other, their clothes soaked, her hair matted against her face by the rain. Then they walked slowly back towards each other.

No Old Etonians or Oxbridge students were harmed during the writing of this piece.

More flash fiction:

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.