What's in a name

by Alan Crook

I enjoy the name Phoebe! I know that is a poor choice of phrase. I know that  normally a person would admit to liking a name or even stretch a point and give way to saying they loved a name, but I am sticking with the phrase "I enjoy the name Phoebe." Every Phoebe that I have ever known is full of fun and bounce, there always follows a slightly and deliciously dotty person when the name Phoebe is announced.

When the songwriters write about other girls names its usually with violins and gentle words. Maria in West side story would have to be completely rewritten from the music upward if her name had been Phoebe. The pubs in Ireland would be a different place if a song had been written about Phoebe and not Ramona.

A song on a Phoebe would need a trumpet for the laughter and a clarinet for the bubbles. The words would come from a comic strip and would be painted on the page with a smile. The more I reflect on the Phoebe's of this world the more I stick to my opening that "I enjoy the name Phoebe".

The first Phoebe I ever knew was far from the delicate maid that the name inspires. This Phoebe was a man, or more accurately a walking mountain. I was the tender age of five and he was seventy five. I was a skinny white thing with ginger hair he was just under seven feet tall and a black man from Fiji. He came to preach in our tiny chapel in Blackburn. He was so big that he filled the room on his own. He did however, bring a precious gift with him that has lived with me ever since those days. He brought laughter. Laughter to a congregation that was still reeling from the second world war, and had been measuring time in teardrops up till then. With his bounce and ten foot wide smile he set the pace for all Phoebes from there on.

My parents put him up during his stay. He chose to sleep on the floor in our lounge despite the fact that we had two spare bedrooms. The truth is he wouldn't fit in a bed and had become used to sleeping that way. My brother and I found it fascinating to have his company and we were relentless in our attentions to his huge base voice and his gentleness. My most vivid picture of him is one of his great big hands as he taught me to tie my shoelaces. When he left he didn't just leave a hole he left a void in our lives and for a while the laughter followed him down the street.

My dad worked very hard to restore the common sense and joy into our lives but it was some days before the penny finely dropped and we picked up on some the remarks that Phoebe had made. Even now when I look back he brings a smile. I even smile when I look at the tatty black and white photograph that my father took during Phoebe's stay. He had to stand so far back that it is hard to see my brother's or my features and yet Phoebe's head is just touching the ceiling.

There followed a dearth of  Phoebes in my life, but the laughter he brought had spread as far as the next Phoebe in the line. This time she was a she. A very old she. My mother had met her at church and felt it would do me some good to share her company once in a while. I was press ganged into visiting her and even accompanied to the top of the dark and overgrown lane in which she lived. My mother was well and truly up to my craftiness and watched me all the way down the lane.

By the time I reached her house Phoebe was actually waiting at the door so there was little chance in my ducking out at the last minute.

The real reason for my reluctance in meeting her wasn't the fact that she was old and that I was young and impatient to get on with life. The real reason lay in the fact that I thought she was a witch. I had watched her on many occasions in the past and although I didn't even know her name I did at least know she was a witch. I was eleven years old and when your eleven years old you know all about witches and how to spot them. Phoebe fitted the perfect profile of a witch.

She walked bent double with a walking stick held on an outstretched arm in front of her. She wore an old raincoat come rain or shine and never saw fit to do it up at the front. The corners at the bottom of the coat were worn out from dragging on the path as she walked along. Usually on the walking stick there was an old shopping bag waving with the rhythm of her movement. The bag very rarely had much in it. This was in part because she was too frail to carry a load and judging by her size she hardly ate anything any way.

She always wore a flat cap, again come rain or shine. The cap was a substitute for her lack of hair. Her skin was wrinkled and brown through years of work, and I never actually saw her face partially because I was afraid that she would turn me into a girl for looking directly into her eyes, and partially because she was so bent that she couldn't look upward. As she walked she was accompanied by a dog that was even slower than she was. The dog was I was to learn later was an old English Bull Terrier. To me it was just the sort of ugly dog that walks with witches.

Now at the grand old age of eleven I was being forced to visit her down a dark lane and through a weed ridden garden.

My arrival had not gone un-noticed by any of the three guardians, my mother,  the witch or the dog. The dog walked down the path at a more lively pace than I had seen in the past and it was wagging its tale, not baring it's teeth has I had expected. The old lady still wore her hat and coat but from her side ways turned head I could see she was smiling. She raised her stick and waved me into the house but to my horror she spoke like a witch with a shaky and tremulous voice.

I raised to my full courage and stumbled through the door. Stumbled is by far the most accurate word in this case. The house smelt absolutely terrible. Living in my mother's cosseted cleanliness had not braced me for this. The chair she asked me to sit on was severely old and sank in the middle. The dog had all but welded itself to my side. I had barely touched the seat when the final horror revealed itself. She had a parrot. The parrot landed on my shoulder.

That was it. I was up like a deer and ran from the house like a shot leaving my school cap behind. I made up all sorts of stories that I thought my mother would like to hear when I got home but she had me foiled. Mother simply asked me what was the old lady's name. I didn't know, I couldn't account for my missing cap, I couldn't answer any of the questions that followed. Even my mother, my trusting caring mother, my mother who would believe all that I told her mother, knew that I had not done a proper job.

She was cross. No, she was horrified. Horrified that I had told her a lie. My father was told. He was cross, he was horrified that not only had I told a lie or several lies but I had fled my post at the time of need.

There was nothing for it, I had to go back. I couldn't make up for my lies but I could fight for my self respect.

This time my mother left me to my own devices in terms of going back. There was no patrol riding shot gun with me, there was no witch waiting at the door defying me to make a bolt for freedom. There was just me and testosterone. I felt pathetic as I knocked on the door. I had left it for three weeks in order to pluck up the courage, but my heart still raced as I heard the shuffling behind the door.

The smile was the same. The dog was the same. The parrot sat on her back as she walked to the living room. The over  riding change now was that it was very cold in the house. Three weeks before it had been Autumn. Now Winter crashed over her threshold and she had no strength to fight back.

To my added shame I still had my own mercenary interests in mind when I asked her name. More to the point we had barely sat down when I barked the question out. I should have been concerned about her state but I was a boy, a loud boy full of health and vigour. She was not the all powerful witch; she was just a feeble specimen and I wasn't about to be caught out twice.

She didn't answer me directly instead she turned to her parrot.

"tell him my name" she said to the bird and then whispered into its ear. She kept on repeating the phrase and the whispering until I was getting a bit cross and very impatient. This went on for three minutes until I began to think the old lady was going bonkers.

After an excruciating repetition going on for now five minutes the bird at last responded. In a voice as clear as a bell it said "Phoebe." It kept on saying "Phoebe" there was no stopping it now. The bird flew around the room saying "Phoebe", it sat on the dogs head and said "Phoebe". Eventually it settled on my leg and said yet again "Phoebe". I was captivated.

I was blind to the smell. I was blind to the chaos. I was blind to the cold. I was blind to the witch. She was a "Phoebe" she was a smiling "Phoebe" and had even more history than the preacher that had lived in my mind from my childhood.

She was the first adult that I called by her Christian name. Up to now there had only been Mr. this or Mrs that or uncle so and so or captain or reverend but never a Christian name. now there was a Phoebe she insisted that I called her Phoebe. There were so few people in her life that she just wanted to hear her name from another human being.

This was a privilege. Even my mother referred to her as Mrs. Hays. I was a personal friend I was promoted to the ranks of human being and allowed to call another human being by her given name. It was like being in love without all the sloppy bits. I was still a very callous lad concerned only for my own well being but on that first occasion I at least had crossed a barrier.

I went home with a smile as wide as the preachers but it was soon wiped off when my mother asked if Mrs. Hays' house was warm. I was chastised for not being conscious of her welfare. I was despatched with a shilling for the gas meter and a bowl of stew big enough for two. My stomach had to give second place to my nose and I had to sit with her whilst we ate our meal together and I had warmed the place up.

I carried on calling in on her, usually dragging something in a bag from my mother. I was impervious to the condition of her home. Everything was super ceded by the privilege of calling her Phoebe. I was such a twit I seemed to use her name in every sentence. The parrot picked up on the name and flew from dog to curtain to me to any surface it could land on and repeated her name. I am sure the dog would have joined in but it was satisfied to just sit on my feet when ever I called and sank into the armchair.

Far from becoming impatient with my clumsiness Phoebe seemed to light up. Her smile spread. She even put on a little weight. We talked as friends together. I was amazed that she knew about the Beano and The Dandy comics. She also knew about trains. Her husband had been a railway engineer. She was amazed that I knew about bees and their welfare. She was amazed that I was only eleven, I was after all very tall for my age, and very much my fathers son.

We talked as friends. It was if we had found a way to cross the several generations that separated us. She taught me about butterflies and showed me that it wasn't just a girly thing to know about their names and there habits. She taught me how to cook pancakes, which was just as well since they formed the major part of her diet. She taught me how to knit and I (or rather we) went on to win a prize for a tank top that I produced in secret.

I found myself offering to clean up a little one day. She absolutely refused, not because she was blind to the mess, but she just wanted to share every minute without any pretence at covering up the way things were. On reflection I realize that she knew her time was limited and she didn't want to waste it on pettiness in any form. One of her constant phrases was life's too short to peel a mushroom, but I was many years before I knew what she meant.

I thought life would go on for ever like this especially since we had strayed through winter and were sitting in the spring sunshine in just the blink of an eye.

The end came like a clandestine brute. It wore a thick armour and was impervious to my tears of sadness. I was walking down the lane. That dark lane that had become light, I was rehearsing the days events adding a little colour to the tales in  preparation for our pancake tea.

Wallace her neighbour was waiting for me. He held up his hand and produced a shilling saying that Mrs. Hays would like me to get some sweets from the shop for us both. Me, foolish me, gullible me, didn't think further than my fancies. I wandered to the shop with a spring in my step.

When I returned I saw a black horse drawn van just being closed up. Wallace broke the truth to me in as gentle a fashion as his clumsy ways would allow. It didn't matter what words he chose I refused to accept it. At her funeral I still refused to accept the situation. My mother told me. My father told me. My friends told me but no one could get me to believe them. The fact that the dog came to live with us and the parrot lived with Wallace didn't prove the truth to me.

I lived in a childish surreal world talking to her as I had done and crying at the same time. After two weeks my parents were worried; but my mourning was broken by the parrot. It was not happy with Wallace and had broken free. Her escape was big news in the local paper. They followed her progress with questions as to what should be done. After the issue was resolved by a suggestion that she should be shot I set off in earnest to find her.

I still have no idea why I was calling out Phoebe's name. Just a chance inspiration struck me that this may be the only phrase she understood. I wandered through the woods calling that name although I never actually knew the birds name. I was at one end of the woods when at the other end a bird scaring process had begun. As light as a feather the bird landed on my shoulder and stayed there. It is hard to tell fear in a bird but I certainly felt that bird's fear. I walked from the woods and left the hubbub behind. The bird was digging it's claws into my shoulder but I knew it needed a friend as much as I did. We went home and the public at large never did know what happened to the parrot. It lived for a further forty years and not one day was it ever in a cage. I called her Phoebe.

On the way home with the bird on my shoulder I realised that what I had done had saved another creature's life. I also realised that my initial assessment of Phoebe hadn't been wrong she was a witch and she had changed me from a boy to a young man. She had steered me through avoiding painful issues and promoting goodness. I learnt in later years that both her husband and her son were killed in separate battles on the same day during the first world war.

The next Phoebe was just as light and as pleasant as the other two. She was my first girlfriend. In fact she was my girlfriend because she was called Phoebe. How she managed to stay light was a complete mystery to me. Her dad was a total crack pot.

By this time I was fourteen at a time and era when fourteen year old lads were definitely banned from having a girlfriend. Perhaps it was because I was banned from such activity that I pursued it. Either way I found myself on my newfound girlfriend's door step and welcomed by her radically enlightened parents. I was there to have tea with them and I had done my best to prepare accordingly.

Prepare that is in the dress sense. I had absolutely no idea of why I had to have a girl friend or what to talk about or how to proceed in any way. Its just that I had a bee in my bonnet and an almost automatic response to the name of Phoebe.

I stood on her door step in my best school trousers, my best school shirt and my brother's suede boots. The boots were a last attempt at appearing anything other than a school boy. The fact that they were two sizes too big was only a minor issue I had to have something that made a difference. Everything that I owned up to this point had been ravaged in the process of growing up. I stood on more than one threshold on this particular occasion. One led to her home the other led to life itself and in a way they were both the same entrance.

I knew things were about to be dramatically different. It came as no secret, especially as Phoebe was standing on the doorstep dressed in a Japanese Kimono. I wondered why she had no boyfriends queuing at her door since she was very attractive. Now I knew. As it happened her father was going through his Japanese period, which was a little strange to say the least since they lived in a council house in deepest Worthing.

Her mother and father likewise were wearing a kimono, unusual enough in itself but her mother must have weighed fifteen stone and stood six feet tall and her dad was likewise very big. It called on a great deal of imagination to transport myself to the shores of Japan and I wasn't about up for the journey. To make a strange situation even stranger they both spoke with a broad Yorkshire accent. I was able to understand them since I spoke fluent Lancastrian having been born in the wilds of the province. It was near enough as far as I was concerned but her father made a point of the fact that I was a lesser being for having being born on the wet side of the Pennines.

It made for a strange conversation discussing the merits of being a Yorkshire man with a chap dressed ready for a part in the Madam Butterfly. My father held an honorary position in their household since he was a Cricket umpire an honour that opened many doors for me in later years. His being a Lancastrian was overlooked on this occasion but it was plain that I had a lot of ground to catch up.

After what I can only assume was a grilling, Phoebe and I were left alone and I sat tongue tied as only a lad in a new situation can. The ice was broken by her dog. Up to now it had lived in her sleeve just like they do in Japan her father told me. I didn't like to point out to this font of all wisdom that it was a Chinese custom, or that the dog in question was usually a Pekinese and not a Yorkshire terrier.

Since for the major part of my interrogation Phoebe had been sitting dumbfounded the dog had followed suit. Now with a table full of biscuits and the overbearing presence departed, the dog chose to show it's colours. It is only fair to point out at this stage that the furniture was like everything else, Japanese. That meant I being a long gangling lad spent most of my time squatting with my legs crunched to the proportions table barely twelve inches from the ground.

The dog began to make a bee line for the biscuits but it fell in love with my boots on its way. It was love at first smell. It was passion that knew no bounds and very little by way of modesty either. The dog decided that it wanted to have babies with my brother's boots and little would detract it.

Growling and passion flooded and the dog became romantically attached to my boot. In the end I felt the only way to get him off was to shake the boot. I flicked it at the end of my extended leg. Off came the boot with dog still attached and it flew through the air.

My whole life passed me as I watched for what seemed like ten minutes as dog and boot sailed the void and landed in their other Japanese treasure, a fish tank in the corner, again just barely off the floor.

Phoebe screamed and dragged the dog to her bosom. Her mother came in and hollered some foul words that were definitely not Japanese. Her father invented one or two terms that called doubt as to my parentage and I was tossed out of the house holding a very soggy boot and a very red face.

By the time I had reached home my father had been told of all the goings on in their lounge. I heard the words "In here!" on my return. My father summoned me to his study not so much by words as by the fact that his door was opened and the words were uttered.

I stood with the boot dripping water down my trouser leg on to the parquet floor. My head suitably downcast and awaiting my fate. In fairness my father had been through the mill as far as I was concerned, so this latest romp was hardly a surprise. I was no stranger to this routine either. I knew that the only way was to be honest and tell the whole story. I managed to tell the whole story with my face to the floor and I was unaware of my fathers situation.

When no bombshell dropped I plucked up the courage to raise my gaze from the floor. My father was sitting with his shoulders heaving up and down and tears pouring from his face into his glasses and from there to the polished leather of the desk. His only reaction was to wave me from the room, he was incapable of speech.

Two years later I started work in my fathers factory only to find that Phoebes father worked there as well. In the canteen on my first day he caught me and went on to apologise for his reaction and explained that he had completely misread events. The other men on the table were curious and after some squeamishness I told them the gory details. To say there wasn't a dry eye in the house is a slight understatement. My father came in at the end of the tale with several of the managers. They were curious has to how a skinny lad had managed to reduce the work hardened men to the state that they were in. The tale was relayed to them and the result was the same. I was part of the work force from that moment on, I didn't need a proving period.

My next Phoebe was the result of an accidental visit to a Methodist Chapel Whilst on holiday.

Phoebe Swift was a testament to what charm can achieve. By rights she could have had a chip the size of England on her shoulder but she was infectiously happy. She was the daughter of a lady of the night. She spent the first eighteen years of her life being drafted from one care home to another. She was short, plump, and had the fashion sense of a twelve year old but when she played the organ the audience moved and swayed in whatever direction she chose.

She married at the age of eighteen to a Methodist minister ten years older than herself. They've lived like silly teenagers from the day they walked down the isle together, and they're still acting like a pair of teenagers at the age of sixty eight and seventy eight each. They have a son who is actually the combination of both senses of humour and if anything is nuttier than the two of them.

They all struggled through life like the rest of humanity until one day their son hit the big time. Not only did he have their sense of humour he could play the organ with even more skill than his mother. He formed a rock band and shot to the top. His bank balance became top heavy and he thought he would do something for his parents that was above and beyond the call of sanity. He bought the church an organ.

This was not just any organ. The church organ that was already installed was perfectly fine but it wasn't the organ that he wanted to see in there. He was playing at the last meeting of a theatre before it was to be closed for the final time. In the lower reaches of the place was an organ that had last seen the light of day during the days of silent movies. It had four keyboards and an awful lot of stops and pedals. It was huge.

The chapel wasn't huge but as far as their son was concerned this was a minor detail. He had the whole thing restored, re-painted, re-gilded, re-polished and re-upholstered. The only snag being it took up a third of the chapel once it was in place. The day I met Phoebe was on the day that it was commissioned for the first time.

I was on holiday with my wife when we attended what we thought would be a quite service in a small chapel. Inside the door we were greeted by a congregation that was cramped into one small corner, a pulpit, a text on the wall and a massive organ. The congregation must have had the same quirk as their minister. Their was not a frown amongst them. This despite the fact that we were virtually sitting on each others lap.

When the service started it was like a pop festival. The organ was so loud. Despite the noise she played so fantastically that my wife and I didn't flee the building. The only trouble was the Phoebe's shape didn't fit the organ. She was so enthusiastic that her short arms wouldn't reach the top and when she stretched this far her huge bosoms played a few extra notes on the lower keys.

On no less than three occasions we had to stop singing because Phoebe had hysterics of laughter when this occurred. By the time the service was over the whole congregation was bathed in perspiration and wearing an impossible smile. There should have been a photo call of that moment as we poured from the building after the service.

I discovered that her favourite music was Jazz and from that moment to this we were friends. My wife and I were dragged back to their cottage, fed and watered then plied with a jazz session on the organ as her son played, whilst she was on the double base, and her husband was on the drums.

Phoebe still carries the flag for all Phoebes. She is highly contagious and I have yet to meet the person who can leave her company without a smile.

Yes I can honestly say I enjoy the name Phoebe.