Pitton's End: The Independence of Sunk Island and the well meaning deception of Wives

Some fellows just have that knack of making you feel that, even if you are a bit of a duffer, you are at the centre of their confidence; your opinions worthwhile and all in all nothing could be more splendid for them but to spend an afternoon in your company.  I once met such when I was working at the Foreign Office.

I should explain.  Was a time when most FO wallahs of a certain rank took the Summer off to trudge grouse moors or take in the Tests.  Young chaps were drafted in to keep up the paper work and so it was that between leaving school and going up to Oxford I found myself overseeing the move from Crown Colony to Sovereign State of Sunk Island.  It was a time when, after careful consideration, many coves were feeling that, all in all, rule from the Motherland might have brought them the benefits of cricket and slightly odd meal times but that was no longer enough.  

The good people of Sunk Island had declared they wished to ‘go it alone.’  This was a little confusing as the place was not an island, but firmly attached to Yorkshire by roads connected to the A1033.  Moreover it was pointed out that most of the bally place had been reclaimed from the sea in the Middle Ages and so never had a separate existence.  The Burgomaster, a fellow of more than above guile, pointed out that if this didn’t quite account as an ‘Overseas Dependency’  then it surely meant it was an ‘Underseas’ one and could we dispatch a minor duke with a hat, a flag and the brass band of any Yeomanry Regiment we cared to name to watch a display of native dancing and hand over Government House. 

It all looked tricky and HM Government faced the prospect of ship-borne raiding parties terrorising the Scarborough Festival or launching themselves across the Humber bringing disruption to the nations supply of Cod coming out of Grimsby.  Enter Ellerby – then a Junior Under-Secretary.  Ruffled feathers were smoothed; strongly held points of view were blunted and within days the whole thing was brought to an end.  The natives agree to end some of their less  wholesome customs, a free trade agreement was reached, as no one would probably notice, Sunk Island has been its own nation state since then.

I recall the events now because, in the way that Ellerby was a man who shone as the bright pinnacle of any social gathering which coalesced and flourished around him; Pitton didn’t.  To say Pitton didn’t like company goes so far from the nature of the man as to suggest the Battle of Hastings was a bit of a tiff.  I once met his nanny who vouched-safe his first action when able to clutch a small wooden hammer in his pudgy toddler’s hand, was to build a barricade to secure his separation from his baby sister and ensure his solitude in his part of the nursery.

How Pitton ever married Daphne Hulcot, let alone anyone, remains a mystery that even the brightest of intellects has ever fathomed.  It may be said that opposites attract however Daphne was such a creature who delighted in company that she would have probably gone so far along the scale of sociability that she would have gone right round and met Pitton coming the other way.  While he could deaden an assembly by his mere existence, people came alive in the presence of her company and she, likewise.

 

Pitton would come up to town, when business required it, but special measures were required to keep him from having to associate with his fellow man and vice versa.  The Club Steward would prepare a snug in the Library – somewhere amid the copies of ‘Lives of the Dull and Incorrect Saints’ and ‘Discussions on the differences between Doubles and Semidoubles during the Pontificate of Pius V’  He was never bothered.

 

Pitton’s country seat was one of those Georgian places so unprepossessing that not even Pevsner could be drawn to say something unpleasant about it.  Generally it was held to show that there was a limit to how many manor houses should be saved for a grateful nation.  The fellow attracted servants of a kindred spirit.  If he ever spoke to his Butler history does not recall.  It has been suggested that orders were conveyed through the differing amounts or brands of pipe tobacco used or the exact arrangement of crockery on his tea tray.

If ever a fellow could keep the encroachments of the current century away Pitton was your man.  The threat that the local narrow road may be widened to allow a few more passing places was cunningly defeated when he built a shrine to Princess Margaret of Connaught, a grand sprig of the Queen Victoria, and claimed the public would not stand for it being moved so common place traffic could be allowed to race the back lanes.  I believe he has bribed an antiquarian to swear on the religious text of his choice that all his lands are the site of the famed Battle of Brunanburh in case any one thinks of developing it.

Alas Death Duties and a solid belief in an ability to judge the speed of horseflesh has played merry hell with the finances of many of our more venerable families.  The moment came when Ellerby had to bow to cruel fate open the place to the curious public.  It must be said he fought a valiant rearguard action.  It had to be explained with tact, diplomacy and, in some cases, through the medium of mime, why the paying public and the paying was the key thing, would not be happy just to gaze through the gates at the end of the drive and return to their suburban homestead contented.  The porch was yielded; then the hall and even the servants quarters.  A gift shop was found space – albeit under the stairs – and even then it was only allowed to sell multi-volumed histories of his family or bone China tea services.  Even a tea room was eventually allowed to set up and that, is where perhaps, the rot set in. 

Daphne had grown used to not having country house weekends but the fact her husband was now prepared to allow strangers within the grounds gave her the start of a plan.  It was thus on one Friday afternoon a coach load of trippers were seen disgorging from the car park and making their way towards the visitors entrance.  What was not spotted was a certain amount of luggage being smuggled by the individually picked ladies whose usual employment  was to see that no one got too close to the furniture and who would, without any kind of encouragement, launch into a lecture on the duller aspects of Wedgewood gathering dust.  These stalwart stewards were Daphne’s conspirators.  Thus it was that her guests were welcomed in.

At first all went well. Daphne’s ‘set’ were, by their nature, night owls while Pitton was a lark.  The café was pressed into serving up meals.  By the time her chums were ready for breakfast they could mingle in with the  seekers after heritage.  It could not last.  Only so many times could a chap find a stranger wandering around his home ‘after hours’ and be persuaded they Dutch tourists who had got lost or were very bad time keepers.  It is for that reason, and that alone that Pitton Hall is the only stately pile in this land which has those signs  ‘Private – no admittance to the public’ on certain doors also had appended to them ‘and that includes my wife’s blasted friends’.