Fiction: The Village Triumvirate


waiting room and awaited being summoned by the Doctor (if you could not attend, then he would visit you). The wait, usually, was brief - indeed, sometimes you could walk right in. An immaculately dressed, upright fellow, the Doctor was exactly what he looked - an ex-army medical man who came to the Parish straight from the forces during the late 1940s and administered to medical needs for a quarter century or so. A brisk, direct sort of chap, patients rarely lingered long in his consulting room. A searching look from across the room - at times, even just a cursory one - was often sufficient for him to make a diagnosis, prescribe a bottle of “jollop” to facilitate cure, and send you on your way; and it was usually successful. A man used to dealing with reluctant troops, he viewed applications for “sick notes” with suspicion; in fact it was probably not a good idea to actually attend the surgery as he seemed to work on the theory that if one was able to walk then one was able to work. Despite this, though, he was essentially a kindly, thoughtful man who always had time for those who really needed it - including the ones who just needed advice or to talk. The peninsula was the poorer when he retired in the early 1970s.


This was an era when villages not only had their own Police Officer - always a man - who lived in the Parish. He usually, like theVicar and Doctor, stayed around for a very long time. This was certainly true of the gent who enforced the law in these Tamar and Tavyside villages during the forties and fifties - in fact, for a few years in the thirties as well.


period of this long stint took him through the war years, of course, when he had to deal with such nefarious activities as the occasional slaughter of an animal (usually a pig) of which the Ministry of Food were not made aware - something which he would deal with in his own way - whilst keeping local order in a world at


The early


war, in a Parish blacked out and peopled by such diverse elements as the Home Guard, American troops stationed nearby and, towards the end of the conflict, German prisoners of war billeted on local farms. After the war he continued to administer the law in his own laid-back style. A tight knit, relatively unchanging community, he knew the potential “ne’er-do-wells” and malcontents and was able usually to sort out matters without recourse to the courts. His beat, generally, was a short one, leaving the Police Station (basically his house) in the middle of the village, going some 50 yards to the pub and stationing himself close to the entrance where he would content himself by issuing the occasional challenge to those passing by of, possibly, uncertain character. In terms of adherence to the law, the phrase being, generally, “Aye, aye, - what’s the game then?” He did, very occasionally, venture beyond the village itself, usually in summer, at sheep-dipping time, when this annual pursuit - mandatory in law - was supposed to be witnessed by a Police Officer. Thus a far-flung farm would be graced by his presence for a few hours, most of which would be


spent in the farmhouse kitchen, rather than in the vicinity of the dipping pit. From such observations it must seem a remarkably casual, indeed “slap happy” way of keeping law and order; however, it had one major virtue - it worked.


No police officer is stationed on the peninsula nowadays - even though the population is greater. They do have their vicar, though, a popular man who has been there many years - but probably of lower profile than the flamboyant character of 60 years back. As to the medical needs, the solitary doctor has become a clinic - now managed from Tavistock - with a quota of GPs, nurses, health visitors and so on; so if one becomes unwell, one will be well looked after; but, inevitably, it will be far different from those distant days of the “triumvirate”, for in two of the services - law and medicine - the service, inevitably, will be infinitely more impersonal. Reality, mind you, suggests there will be positives as well as negatives. Community spirit remains strong. However, nostalgia - a mischievous state of mind - still suggests that “fings ain’t (quite) what they used to be”. ■


“Looking Towards The Tamar - more tales of Devonshire Life” By Ted Sherrell


Paperback edition NOW OUT priced £8.95


Available in local Bookshops and at the Tavistock Times Gazette Office, Brook Street, Tavistock.


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