The Treasure Seekers
This second verse novel from Cathy Faulkner (Digging for Victory) takes place immediately after World War 1.
The setting is the fictional village of Aldwick, close to the Yorkshire coast where ‘the church was a target -/exposed, defenceless/and too near the coast./Too easily bombed/like Whitby and Hull/when the Zeppelins flew over.’ Stained-glass windows consisting of four panels, depicting the boy David who defeated Goliath, were removed from the church to preserve them during the war. Now the villagers want ‘our David’ returned, believing his presence offers protection, sorely needed now that the ‘Spanish lady’ – a wildly infectious flu virus – has come to call.
The story unfolds through the thoughts of Martha and Stanley, from different social backgrounds. Martha is a vicar’s daughter, grieving over the loss of her grandfather who owned Highbridge Hall, and resentful about how his home was ruined by fire for which she believes local villagers, particularly Stanley’s mother, are to blame. Stanley’s dialect speech is effectively represented (coming from Yorkshire myself, I could ‘hear’ its tune). He sees Martha at first as ‘A gormless/mardy lass/too big for her boots.’ The pair eventually join forces to locate the panels and restore them to their rightful place.
Social conditions are strongly evoked. Stanley cannot afford to pay for a doctor to attend his sick mother. Fortunes have changed for all social classes – Martha’s father finds ways ‘to preserve the past/for the sake of the future’ that his own father might not have expected. As Martha says: ‘The past is never entirely in the past – /part of it stays with us always.’
In case you were wondering, there’s a nod to E. Nesbit’s similarly titled classic in the naming of a briefly mentioned character as Oswald, the name of Nesbit’s narrator.
