IMAGINE the scene. It’s York station in late 1914. The war is a couple of months old. Soldiers are leaving for the front or returning for leave, and through all the hubbub of the emotional farewells and joyous reunions walks university student Edmund Bullick. He is in his own emotional turmoil as he and his younger brother have been called home to County Durham because their father has died mysteriously out on the moors with the hunt.
Let solicitor Simon Catterall draw the scene for you in a passage from his new novel, The Raven and the Pipe...
“The station was absolutely heaving. There were so many people milling about we couldn't even see the track. It was like the streets near Roker Park on Boxing Day, only instead of an ocean of red and white, we were in a sea of khaki with hundreds of soldiers swarming around like ants, climbing in and out of the carriages, hanging onto the walls, some running alongside the trains as they swept in and out while others wandered about aimlessly or gathered in large mounds next to their packs.
"There must have been battalions from all over the country, hordes and hordes of Scots and Irish Guards while up on the overhead walkway a detachment of Welsh Fusiliers was giving an impromptu choral recital.
"On the cold grey platforms, the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters and the sweethearts swayed and wept against a backdrop of magazine sellers, porters and trolleys, a Salvation Army soup kitchen and, at the far end of the "station, a solitary porter desperately trying to clear a path through the mayhem for a small horse and trap.
The Raven and The Pipe by SA Catterall costs £2.99 from YPS Publishing
"Above everything there was the ear-splitting discord of noise; the squealing and screeching of locomotives, the heavy sigh of steam, the slamming of doors and whistles of guards constantly mingling with the shouts of the paperboys, the calls and songs from the car key multitude and the soft cries of women.
"Every nook and cranny, every delve and covert in and around those sooty brick walls was the roost of mankind in rapture or distress, and while I had expected the war to have impacted the rail network, I was totally unprepared for the Tower of Babel that greeted us at York station that morning…”
In the book, Simon weaves “a study of love, greed, death, religion, addictions to alcohol and gambling against a background of corruption in the legal profession” and against a backdrop of local history. For instance, at the station, Edmund falls into conversation with a member of the Durham Light Infantry who turns out to be Alix Liddle.
Is that just a made-up name, or could that be the same Alix Liddle of the DLI who, within a few weeks of the imaginary encounter, would become one of the first British soldiers to be killed on home soil in 200 years, and the first Darlingtonian to die in the war, when four German warships bombarded Hartlepool on December 16, 1914?
“I did a lot of research, and there’s more than a grain of truth behind names and places throughout the book,” said Simon, who is a director of Darlington Farmers’ Auction Mart.
Author of The Raven and The Pipe Simon Catterall Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT
They come from both local history and also local courtrooms. “I have been a partner at Jacksons Law Firm in Stockton for 35 years, and the people I’ve met form the basis for some of the characters – the judges, the barristers and the witnesses.
“You meet some real villains in my line of work and I couldn’t leave them all out.
“Lord Justice Horridge in the book was a real person, and the caustic one-liners and various spats between the advocates are authentic, as are the conditions in Durham prison at the beginning of the 20th Century.
“I’ve attended hundreds of trials in my time so I have just picked out the best bits.”
From the age of ten, Simon has kept a diary. “I have always wanted to be a writer,” he says. “I am always taking statements from other people or giving instructions to counsel, so I wanted to do some writing of my own.
“I started by making use of the long hours hanging around Crown Court waiting for jury verdicts.”
The first fruits of his labours, Hob Hole, were published in 2016 and quickly sold out. Then he put lockdown to good use to complete the sequel, The Raven and the Pipe. However, he has published both novels, all 500-plus pages of them, under one cover for just £2.99.
His text is full of beautifully observed details, as the excerpt from York station hopefully shows, and the plot rattles along at an absorbing pace. As well as getting wrapped up in the twists and the turns of the characters’ lives, there’s the fun of trying to unravel the people and places.
For instance, Edmund’s father was a horse trainer at Craven castle, which is largely based on Witton Castle, near Hamsterley, above which there is mysterious area of fell called Monksmoor which, it is said that even to this day is haunted by the ghost of a monk. Could that have been implicated in the death of Edmund’s father or was there a more down-to-earth explanation?
- Simon Catterall is signing copies of his book, The Raven and The Pipe, at the National Beef Association’s Beef Expo 2022 at Darlington auction mart on May 28. Otherwise, the book is available for £2.99 through the publisher’s website, yps-publishing.co.uk
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