Keckwick and the Land of Sea and Fret
Keckwick and the Land
of Sea and Fret
(An extract from 'Sound Haunting: The Making of Central Films' The Woman in Black')
Robert Muller writes in his introduction to The Television Dramatist (1973) that “The great days of the television play are past. But then Great Days always lie in the past. The golden age is never present.” (1) Muller goes on to contextualise this statement, which is relevant to its period, further discussing the issue that one off plays are never repeated and destined then (in perhaps one of the earliest mentions of such practice) to be wiped in order to allow recordings of future productions to take place. His purpose of bringing together a collection of television plays is to produce something that stands as testament to the play that may never be seen again.
Fast-forward some fifty years later, and we now live in an age where we can access surviving television by digital and physical formats that wouldn’t have been dreamt of back in the early seventies and with their elements restored to the point that productions often look better than they did when they were originally broadcast. What I found striking about Muller’s statement was how relevant it remained for there are still television productions locked away and mostly forgotten and, until very recently, this applied to a particular television film that I had experienced a long time ago and held dear ever since.
Relatively mute in Susan Hill’s original novel where Keckwick is used simply as a device to further instil the unfriendly, weary tone of which Arthur has already encountered during his short stay in the village but Nigel Kneale breathes life into him, affording depth and hints of a meaningful past, with dialogue that can drive narrative and yet be minimal and laced with regional dialect, a skill that Kneale displayed through-out his five decades as a writer. Keckwick’s voice is no exception and what actor William Simons delivers is understated brilliance.
Most famous for his role as PC Alf Ventress in the much loved and phenomenally successful ITV series Heartbeat, Simons was born in 1940 in Swansea and had a successful career as a child actor appearing in several film and television serials. However, by his teenage years he had developed severe acne causing a degree of facial disfigurement that led him to turn to stage management and radio work for a few years before returning to television making the first of many appearances in Coronation Street beginning in 1968, Rumpole of the Bailey (1987), The Ruth Rendall Mysteries (1989) and also becoming typecast as a police officer with roles in Juliet Bravo, Emmerdale Farm, The Bill and The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries. Simons once said of his accidental typecasting, “I have played policemen many times in my career. I think I’ll be buried in blue!”
Both a relatively small part as well as a break away from his typical role, Simons embraces the character of Keckwick giving him a dour and blunt quality but one that is not without some pathos. Much like the landscape of a good, ghost story, which is often barren and archaic as well as being left alone and quite out of time, this appears to be very much the same for Keckwick, a man of the land and he merges with it just as much as the ghosts that haunt it. In this adaptation there is a habit of discreet reveals. At the funeral of Mrs Drablow, we first encounter the woman in black standing at the back of the church and later shifting into view in the churchyard. Then there is Samuel Toovey, appearing motionless from the dispersing cloak of a crowd following an accident in the market square. But with Keckwick, he is just there, waiting, sat upon his pony and trap outside the Gifford Arms. One gets the impression that he will always wait.
Simons gives the sense of a man quite at ease with the land and its dreadful secrets where many others are not. He is a man who will visit Mrs. Drablow “twice a week regular” whereas other locals will barely acknowledge Eel Marsh House and the Drablow family. This characterisation appears to have been deliberately honed down by Kneale because there is an exchange of dialogue from the first draft of the screenplay that is omitted from later drafts and gives the impression that Keckwick is not comfortable about the place.
34. EXT. KECKWICK’S
TRAP–DAY
Arthur is staring about,
impressed by the sheer, bare openness of it.
ARTHUR: It’s beautiful.
KECKWICK: You might say so. Or not.
ARTHUR: I do.
KECKWICK: You must like
lonesomeness. This is the lonesomenest place God ever made. If he made it... (5)
Maybe this exchange was too
audacious when, at this point, we have only had subtle hints at any ominous
foreboding. I think most likely, it
contradicted Keckwick’s otherwise passive attitude and therefore was excised
from further drafts. Keckwick took time
for Alice Drablow where others did not.
Maybe because she paid him well, as she herself reveals from beyond the
grave via the Edison Phonograph, but Keckwick is clearly affected by her death
and mourns her. It is as if she gave in
purpose and instead all that he has now is to wait for the next person who
might need him whilst, seemingly, being unaffected by superstition and tragedy
that it otherwise connected with the place.
He has heart and soul and
the need to share his remembrances of the otherwise forgotten and shunned Mrs
Drablow. Arthur dismisses him in what
may be Arthur’s only misstep in his otherwise impeccable good nature.
39. INT.
EEL MARSH HOUSE. MRS DRABLOW’S
ROOM. DAY.
Heavy Victorian furniture
and decorations. Thick curtains. Glass-fronted cases of old books, dull
oil-paintings. On the table are more books,
one or two of them are open at a particular page as if just abandoned by their
reader. And piles of papers.
A huge armchair with
loose covers sags with the imprint of a constant occupant.
KECKWICK: This was her chair. It was me that found her. When she died. I found her dead. Last week that was. Just sitting there. I thought she’d say, Good morning, Mr
Keckwick. But she didn’t.
Arthur turns a bundle of
papers over. Receipts, notebooks, all
sorts. He glances up at the shaded lamp above.
ARTHUR: Is that really electric light?
KECKWICK: Come, I’ll show you. (6)
Driven by duty of work and
his evident, playful curiosity of electric light, Arthur has dismissed Keckwick’s evidently needed rumination. Yet, Keckwick
does not even expect to be heard and simply proceeds to show Arthur the
generator. It is clear this is a man who
has been affected by tragedy and is brow-beaten into minimal expectations of
life. Arthur is young and there is no
sense that he has been beaten into any acceptance in life or affected by
tragedy. His inability to hear Keckwick
is not intentional. And if Keckwick is
in anyway trying to warn Arthur then it is clear he doesn’t know how to.
Showing Arthur, the electricity generator, Keckwick appears to break from character and shows his attitude towards the idea of technology. “He must’ve been keen on new-fangled things”, in reference to Mr. Drablow’s outhouse installation. Suggesting that Keckwick doesn’t invite change into his world and rather would keep advancements at bay. The rise and fall of the tide are reassurance and affirmation of time and routine. No need for new-fangled things.
In life, we are dismissive of things we fear can change us, that we do not understand and that threaten to change our way of life, perhaps even displacing us from routine and occupation. And there is scientific theory that even the most fearful, dreadful superstitious beliefs have their basis in a safe, well mind. “Individuals accept superstitious beliefs when they lose their sense of control over events and outcomes, or when conditions are dubious. Superstitions make individuals perceive their surrounding worlds as meaningful, predictable and controllable.” (7)
Keckwick needs purpose and meaning in his life but when he looks at the marshes outside, he knows it’s only a matter of time before something... and he quickly disperses leaving Arthur be until his return. This is the only visual clue we have that he might be uncomfortable, in some way, to spending any more time here than he needs to.
Keckwick punctuates a watershed moment in the journey of Arthur which is inescapable, his fate now set, and what’s more, Keckwick took him there. Samuel Toovey will later try to rationalise Arthur’s experiences during a chat by the fireplace but the next few minutes, as Arthur explores the forgotten, half sunken graveyard, clearly signifies something of the uncanny and malevolent directed solely towards him that will have far-reaching consequences. The tide has already come for Arthur and there is no turning back.
Toovey, is very much more a guardian figure, warm, straight-forward and quite matter of fact. He also seems to adopt rationale as a positive, dominant force in is life as if it might expel the nightmares. And he is looking out for this young man who is at the start of his life and career. Toovey has the benefit of foresight to do so and to try to be protector for Arthur. Not dis-similar to Keckwick, he appears to have accepted life for what it is and will make do although displays levels of a rather belligerent manner at one point, over dinner, “there’s no point at all, except to go on and on. Doing it becomes its own reason, you see? But in the end, there’s no point at all.”
Is it that the small, insular world of sea and fret that insulates those affected by their homestead into a condition of endurance and forbearance? Smaller communities are often as strong as they are insular, but one doesn’t get the impression that the town of Crythin Gifford has any community spirit. The woman in black has devastated them all in some way and there is no great show of unison rather people trying to find their own way through threat and tragedy.
Arthur is shown care by both Toovey and Keckwick but remains an outsider to both of them (he will never be in on the secret by their doing) and whilst Toovey remains grounded, more secure and steadfast in his attempts to educate, to challenge and to go on and on, Keckwick will merely function and manoeuvre the land he knows like the back of his hand, remain where he is and where he always will be. He is a shadow through the fret. A fret that continues to seep into a town that just acknowledges it’s there and that shuts its windows tightly to keep it out.
© Robert Taylor 2020
This article was originally published by Horrified Magazine, December 2020.
Sources:
(1)
The Television Dramatist, Robert Muller, Paul Elek Ltd, 1973, p.7
(2) Commercial Television, A guide to the constitution
and working of the new service, The Times, 19 August 1955
(3) William Simons Obituary, The Guardian, 27 June
2019, The Telegraph, 27 June 2019
(4) The Woman in Black, Susan Hill, Hamish Hamilton
Ltd, 1983, p.76
(5, 6) The Woman in Black, Nigel Kneale, First Draft
Screenplay, November 1988
(7) International Journal of Psychology and
Behavioural Sciences, Superstitions: A Culturally Transmitted Human Behaviour,
Fatik Baran Mendal, 2018
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