The Cuckfield Bypass

Cuckfield is a strip settlement, few B-road capillaries sprout from the village’s major transitory artery. I should mention the former council estate – which is not on the road – as the exception, It’s small and peripheral though; I only know one person who lives there.

In the village’s secondary school pupils fulfill one of their key stages by doing The Cuckfield Project. For geography they learn what a strip settlement is, for history they learn that Cuckfield was once larger than the neighbouring Hayawards Heath, but that Cuckfield’s insistence that the railway station be located in Haywards Heath explains the current reversal of this situation.
Students also look round the graveyard, I can’t remember what for. Beyond the graveyard is the bypass, a black band tucked along the bottom of the hill on which the village sits.

Occasionally we marvel that all the traffic now conducted by the bypass once made its way down the high street. To cope with its former duties the road that runs through the high street is much too large for the frail fabric of the village. Motorway scale signs come to the height of the second story windows; the fat, recently painted white lines contrast with yellowing window displays, and are nearly as wide as the cramped brick pavements beside them; a brutal perfection of geometry in the black plane of macadam makes the buildings appear to wilt.

The high street is a precarious space. As you will know if you did the Cuckfield Project, tax used only to be levied on the land area that a house occupied. To gain more room without paying more tax the second story was frequently made larger than the first. Thus the flooding river of tarmac that pours down the high street appears to be washing away the foundations of the village and causing the top-heavy houses teeter towards each other across the road.

Going into the stultified shops you will discover that nothing is really for sale: purchases may be possible, but the stock is only for sale as much as you could flag it down a passing car and make an offer.

The pub, on the other hand, does transact business. There are people in there, but I don’t know them. They are not my neighbours. At least, I don’t think they can be my neighbours, because my neighbours would not choose to eat the kind of food that is widely consumed inside. I’m supported in this view by a conversation I once had with the man next door, who explained to me disparagingly that the food in the pub came from the freezer. Neither can the people be from outside the village, because it is illegal to drink and drive, and driving is only sensible means by which the village is accessible. The people may be from the ex-council estate, and that would explain why I don’t know them. I have, however, a suspicion that the people from the ex-council estate have their own entertainments.

When the bypass was proposed I went to the village hall to hear about the merits of its construction. All village halls look the same. The same corrugated iron, wooden floors pock marked by heels, serving hatches and dust and smell. I was particularly taken by wall mounted mechanisms for opening windows in the roof, postulating to myself that the knowledge for operating the system is probably now buried in the graveyard.

There is also a stage. We could, I suppose, have some of the villagers contrive a fictional narrative on the raised platform whilst others watched them. To my knowledge this has never happened - but then I'm probably not the best person to speak to about these matters.
After my first visit I felt compelled to go back to the hall - mainly the unused window opening mechanisms drew me, but I also wanted to explore the wings of the stage. Returning at night I shook the fire exit until the set of bolts behind the door jarred out of the frame and allowed me to enter. Of course, I had to be careful that I wasn’t seen, but that did not press upon me - It did not seem a likely eventuality.

The four housings on the walls are linked by mechanical cables to the four skylights. Each housing has a square socket designed to receive a handle, but the handle itself was absent. My intention was to find the handle and reawaken these mechanisms, which could tell had not been used since the last coat of paint was applied to them.

The village hall has pleasingly many rooms, just enough that one could not ascertain the layout with a few moments of exploration. The stage was the inner temple; a place of scrutiny, even when no one was watching. Behind the main hall are male and female toilets, both of which I investigated. To the side of the was a small kitchen, with a device for generating the only hot running water in the building. Above and behind the backstage area was my favourite space, an attic room which has to be accessed with a ladder.

I found the handle for the windows inside an electrical cupboard which was itself behind a musty curtain in the tiny entrance hall - an L shaped metal bar, with one end ground to an appropriate square spline. Using it I opened the windows, causing a squealing noise that would have woken the dead, were there any present. Hinged at the top, the windows gave the impression of hopelessly out of scale insect wings, failing to lift us from the ground.
A cold wind penetrated the hall, causing a variety of prohibitive and informative laminated signs to detach from notice boards and slither to the floor.

In my attic space I found the breaker for the stage lighting. As I threw the brittle switch I carefully modulated the force on the frangible bakerlite actuator so as not to shatter it against the reaction of its springs. Then, using the ancient, sparking rheostats in the wings I bought the combined washes of three colours of floodlighting to their most powerful, illuminating the stage as brightly as possible.

I stood centre stage and sensed the contrasting warmth of the lights and chill of the wind. In the absence of anything else to do I lit up a cigarette and placed my weight on one leg, in what I felt to be a stance of repose, smelling dust burning from old electrical equipment, pondering the most appropriate place for the butt of the cigarette. I also pondered exhuming some bodies from the graveyard and installing them on the stage – then I dismissed the idea because of the practicalities.

From my top pocket I produce the silhouette of a pine tree rendered in scented cardboard, complete with the loop of string used to attach it to the rear-view mirror. Using some of the blutack I stood the tree upright in the middle of the stage. Like the undersized insect-wing skylights, the diminutive tree appears comically ineffectual, as well as tragically isolated.

Later, sitting at the bar in the pub I ostentatiously place the handle for cranking the windows in front of me, in a manner which I hope will invite questions. No one speaks to me. I wonder how long the lights will continue to burn before someone finds them.