The Green Man

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘All right, let’s do it. Whenever you like. I’ll do whatever you like.’

  I was so excited that it was all over quite soon, but I have never known a woman who did not set a high value on male excitement, and in that short space I was able to produce a compelling pot-pourri of everything that had happened between us before. That is denigrating it a good deal, actually. I cannot imagine ever quite forgetting what it was like, while I can remember anything. And if what set it off was a little impure, in at least two senses, then let it be impure. Alternatively, fuck you. Anybody who feels like saying that a particular sexual act of any ordinary sort, possibly of any sort at all, ought not to have been enjoyable is a monster, large or little.

  On the drive back to the corner, Diana was subdued. I wondered whether this was a prelude to her making a bid for a new kind of interestingness by telling me she had changed her mind about the orgy project, but I could not wonder very hard or for long at a time because I was thinking how best to put another proposal to her, one just as tricky in its way. Finally I said,

  ‘Diana, there’s something else I want to ask you.’

  ‘What, you and me and David Palmer?’

  ‘No, quite different. I think I’ve found out about a place where there may be some buried treasure. Would you give me a hand looking for it?’

  ‘Maurice, how frightfully exciting. What sort of treasure? How did you find out about it?’

  ‘I came across some old papers to do with the house, just saying where the stuff had been put, nothing about what it consisted of. Of course, there may be nothing in it.’

  ‘I see. Where is it?’

  ‘Apparently, uh, it’s in that little graveyard just up the road from the Green Man.’

  ‘In a grave? In someone’s coffin?’

  ‘That’s what the papers said, yes.’

  ‘You’re proposing to dig up a grave and open someone’s coffin?’ She was getting the idea fast.

  ‘Yes. It’s a very old grave and so on. There won’t be anything in it but bones. And this treasure.’

  ‘Maurice Allington, have you gone totally and completely out of your mind?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘You can’t be serious. Digging up a grave.’

  ‘I assure you I am serious. I want that treasure. As I say, there may be nothing there at all, or something quite worthless, but you never know. I asked you to help because I must have somebody to hold the torch and lend a hand generally, and you’re the only person I can ask who won’t be shocked out of their mind.’

  That went down very satisfactorily, but she still had a piece of finessing to do. ‘It’s not true, though, is it, about lending a hand? You want company. You’re afraid to do it on your own.’

  I nodded with pretended ruefulness. The last bit was not true either: if there was going to be anything out of the ordinary to see in that graveyard, I just wanted somebody else on hand to see it too. But I had not lied when I said that Diana was the only one I could ask. That was something substantial in her favour.

  ‘Has it got to be at night?’

  ‘Well, yes, I think so, don’t you? with people passing by on the road all day long, and sterling chaps doing things to the soil. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour or so.’

  ‘There’s no curse or anything on it, is there?’

  ‘Oh, good God, no, nothing like that. The fellow was just after a safe place to stow a few things.’

  ‘Oh, very well, then. I’ll come along. It might be quite fun.’

  ‘Out of the ordinary, anyway. What about tonight? No point in hanging about. Can you get away?’

  ‘Of course I can. I do as I please.’

  We had reached the corner. I arranged to pick her up at half-past midnight at a spot nearer her house. On the way back home, I stopped at the graveyard and looked Underhill’s grave over with some care. I could foresee no special difficulty later: there was nothing in the way of a stone to lift, and the soil, when I prodded it, seemed to be as light as elsewhere in the area. Whatever the place might feel like in the dark, at five o’clock on a summer afternoon it was solidly un-eerie, giving no impression of age or decay, merely of rankness and dilapidation, heavily overgrown for the most part (though not in Underhill’s corner), and littered with more ice-cream wrappers and beer-cans than fragments of headstone.

  I drove to the Green Man, went upstairs and started on a quick drink before bathing and changing. I sat in a nondescript but comfortable armchair beside the fireplace, facing the window in the front wall. This had its curtains drawn, but there was plenty of light from the other Window to my left, where the French girl stood. Amy’s gramophone was playing some farrago of crashes, bumps and yells from her room down the passage. As I listened, or endured hearing it, the noise stopped abruptly. Sipping my Scotch, I waited half-consciously for another record to go on. How quiet it was by contrast; totally quiet, in fact. And that was not just odd, it was impossible. No inn is silent for more than a couple of seconds at a time, except for four or five hours between the last departure to bed and the stirrings of the first servant. I went to the door and opened it; there was no sound whatever. When I turned back to the room, I found that it looked different in some way, different, at any rate, from how it had looked when I entered it five minutes before. It was darker. But how could that be? Sunlight was streaming in as brightly as ever from the side window. Ah: it was the other window that was darker. There was no light at all showing between the curtains and at their edges. That was impossible, too. Feeling for the moment nothing but a great curiosity, I hurried over to those curtains and threw them apart.

  Outside, it was night, absolutely dark it seemed at first, as if I had opened my eyes thousands of fathoms under water, at the sea bed. Then I saw it was not really as dark as all that: there was a three-quarter moon low in the sky, and no cloud to speak of. The horizon and the distance were the same as any night, except that a plantation of conifers just below the sky-line was missing. In the middle distance, small fields under cultivation replaced the areas of grassland I had always seen before. And in the foreground, immediately below me, the hedge lining the road had gone, and the telegraph-poles—of course—had gone, and the road itself had dwindled to a rough track. Although nothing moved, it was a living scene, not the equivalent of a still photograph.

  I turned back to the dining-room, which was quite unchanged. My five sculptured people looked into space as ever, but for the first time I thought I found something slightly malignant in their impassivity. I crossed to the side window, and looked out on the familiar daytime landscape. As I watched, a light-blue sports car, a TR5 by the look of it, emerged from the direction of the village and moved, accelerating sharply but in complete silence, up the road towards the house. It did not—of course—come into view at the front window.

  I stood and thought. There was an obvious case for rushing along to Amy and bringing her here, in the hope of proving to myself and everybody else that I was not seeing things, or rather that what I saw was really there, or at least that I was not insane. But I could not subject that child to the terror of either seeing what I saw, or finding that she and I were seeing differently. And, if I did go down the passage to her room, I was far from sure that I would find her there, or anything there that I knew.

  At this point of irresolution, I heard voices below me, male and female, and then an outside door shutting at the front of the house, but it was not the sound of my front door. The woman I had twice seen on the landing came into view carrying a small lantern and set off towards the village—I caught the merest glimpse of her face, but her general outline and her gait left me in no doubt. Very faintly, the man’s voice was again audible from the floor beneath, this time with a different intonation, one of a peculiar monotony, one I could identify, or, if I tried, name a close parallel to. Yes, a parson, a priest, intoning a part of the service that is best got over quickly.

  The woman was almost out of my view; I could
just see the swaying light of her lantern. Then I picked up a movement on the other side, from the direction of, among other things, what at this stage I need only call the wood. A tall and immensely broad figure came stumping awkwardly along the track, massive legs, apparently of not quite the same length, pounding away with the implacable vigour of machinery, long arms pumping in an imperfectly synchronized rhythm. If it had been human, it would have weighed twenty-five stone at least, but it was not human: it was made up of lumps of timber, some with thickly ribbed bark, some with a thin glistening skin, of bundles of twigs and of ropes and compressed masses of green and dead and rotting leaves. As it drew nearer, laboriously quickening its pace, I saw that its left thigh, the one nearer to me, was encrusted with a plate-like fungus, fragments of which fell off at every stride, and I heard the creaking and rustling of its progress. When it was exactly level with me, it turned its lumpish, knobbled head towards the house, and I shut my eyes, having no more desire to see its face now than when it had appeared to me before, in my hypnagogic vision of two nights ago. At the same moment, a cry of alarm or loathing came from beneath my feet; I knew that Underhill was at that very moment (whenever it was) watching from the window of the dining-room, which was now (my now) closed and empty.

  When I opened my eyes again, the creature was beginning to move out of sight at a grotesque, lurching trot. I waited, wondering what I would do if this show simply went on and on, leaving me poised somewhere between Underhill’s time and mine. If I could manage to get myself into the view I could still see by way of the side window, perhaps its sound would come back and I should be all right. But how was I to get there? I had listened, not looked, when I opened the door a moment earlier, but I had no doubt at all now that this room was the only part of the house that had not reverted to what it had been nearly three centuries previously. Through the side window and down the wall seemed the only possible route. I was beginning to be worried by the thought that that version of reality might turn out to be a visual hallucination, but then I heard screaming, not near by, perhaps two hundred yards away, but very clear in the utter silence, and very loud, and accompanied by another sound, also loud, a wailing or an unsteady hooting, like something quite often heard but inappropriate in the context, like a high wind, through trees. I put my fingers in my ears and went on staring at the now deserted nocturnal landscape in front of me. How long could I stand its going on being there?

  Then, slightly to left of centre, and almost dazzlingly bright, and instantaneously, a light or flame sprang up, a yellowish green in colour. After a few moments another switched itself on, apparently in the sky and of tremendous size, like a sun, only jigsaw in shape and of a deep blue. There was a longer pause before two more such flared into being almost together, a second yellowish-green one near the first and another, larger blue one on the opposite side of the sky. The former of these, shaped like a fat, slightly jagged pillar, had a thin dark vertical bar running up nearly through the middle of it. I recognized this, at first without being able to name it, then saw that it was part of a telegraph-pole. Further lights appeared at short, irregular intervals, like splotches of molten metal thrown on to a dark photographic plate. Three of them coalesced to give me a view of some yards of sun-lit metalled road. I took my fingers out of my ears. More rapidly than any physical approach would have made possible, the noise of a car grew in volume outside. I heard men’s voices and the sound of a front door being opened and shut—my front door. When there were only a few isolated patches of darkness remaining, the door into the room opened behind me..

  I turned sharply. Victor galloped up, threw himself at my feet and fell on to his side. Behind him was Amy. I hurried to her and put my arms round her.

  ‘What’s happening, Daddy?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s all right. I was just feeling a bit sad.’

  ‘Oh. Didn’t you hear the screaming?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The screaming. Somebody in the street, it sounded like. A long way off, but sounding sort of as if it was near. Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Trying to look and sound calm was such a severe effort that I could hardly speak. ‘But … weren’t you playing your…?’

  ‘I was between records and it was all quiet.’

  ‘It wasn’t dark outside, was it?’

  ‘Dark? No. How could it be?’

  ‘What sort of person was it who screamed, do you think?’

  ‘You said you heard them.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, picking up my whisky and draining it, ’but I want to hear what you thought.’

  ‘Oh. Well … it was a lady. She sounded very frightened.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it was that, darling. More like just one of the village girls having a lark.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like that to me.’

  ‘Did you hear any other sort of noise?’

  ‘No. Ooh yes. A sort of … calling-out howling noise, or like someone singing without any words, just going on and on. And going up and down all the time. You heard it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Just people fooling about.’

  Amy said nothing for a moment, then, ‘Would you like to come and watch Pick of the Hits with me? It comes on at five forty.’

  ‘I don’t think I will, thank you, Ame.’

  ‘You said you enjoyed it last time.’

  ‘Did I? Yes, but I’m going to be busy tonight. I’ll have to change and get downstairs as quick as I can.’

  ‘Okay, Dad.’

  ‘I’ll look in later.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She went off quite pacifically. For once, I should have preferred an outbreak of temper. Amy was not reconciled, only preoccupied, and not in any comfortable way: she knew I had not told her the truth. But how could I say that there was no need to worry about what she had heard, because it had happened in 1680-something?

  Despite this, and despite feeling fairly thoroughly shaken up by what I had witnessed and how, I was much relieved. Few people are tough enough to rest solely on an inner conviction that, in the face of what might be impressive evidence to the contrary, they are not going mad. In celebration, as much as anything else, I drank two brimming tumblers of Scotch and water in two minutes and with no effort. Then I went to have my bath.

  Lying torpidly back in the hot water, I felt almost all right. It was certainly true that heart and back had kept themselves to themselves since first thing that morning. Jack Maybury would have had something to say about that, though I could hardly tell him what had formed a substantial part of the day’s distractions from egotistical brooding. I felt sober, or rather, since feeling completely sober had been disagreeable to me for some years, fairly sober. Very nearly completely all right. The green man. The Green Man. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of English pubs and inns bear the name, in reference, I remembered reading somewhere, either to a Jack-in-the-green, a character in traditional May Day revels, or merely to a game-keeper, who would formerly have worn some kind of green suit. Was it possible that my own house, which had been so called from its beginnings in the late fourteenth century, was a different case, that Underhill’s supernatural employee had existed even then? If true, to christen the place after such a creature was an odd way of inviting custom. But an interesting speculation.

  I grew more torpid. Staring in an unfocused way towards the junction of wall and ceiling, I saw a small scarlet and green object moving slowly from right to left. First lazily, then as alertly as I could, I tried to decide what it was. A fly of some sort, or a moth. But surely there were none of either coloured like that, not in England. And the thing was not travelling with a fly’s quick darting motion, such that wings and legs disappear into a round or roundish dark blob, nor in the un-steady, fluttering style of a moth. The wings of what I saw— two of them—were beating the air in an easily perceptible slow rhythm, and, not so easy to make out, its legs—two of them— were tucked up underneath the body, and there was a neck, and a head. It was a bird. A bi
rd the size of a fly, or small moth.

  I splashed to my feet and looked more closely. The thing was still a bird: I could see the sheen on its plumage and, by straining my eyes, the separate claws of its feet, and I could just hear a tiny beating of wings. I put my hand out to grab it, and it disappeared for a moment, then came into view again, flying out of the back of my hand. I picked up my towel, rolled it into a ball and screamed into it with my eyes shut for perhaps two minutes. When I opened them again, the bird had gone. I whimpered and sobbed into the towel for another two or three minutes, then dried myself with it as quickly as possible, counting in my head, and ran to the bedroom. If I could get dressed before I had reached four hundred and fifty thousand, I would not see the bird again, or not for some time. I kept my eyes shut whenever I could, and got my evening bow tied without once having to open them, but had to look at myself in the glass to do my hair, and caught sight of a small fly circling silently round my head. Although I was absolutely certain it was only a fly, I found I could not stop myself falling on to the bed and screaming and sobbing into my pillow for a time, still counting. I gave myself an extension of a hundred thousand for that period, which was fair, because I had not allowed for it when I set my original figure, and it could not have gone on for less than a minute and a half. I had my dinner-jacket on and was out of the door at the count of four hundred and twenty-seven thousand, so that there was a chance I would not see the bird again for a time.

  I had no trouble getting to the landing with one eye shut and the other mostly shut. Here I ran into Magdalena, and sent her off to find Nick, or, failing him, David. Then I went back into the dining-room, mainly by feel, sat down, avoiding the chair that faced the front window, and, kept both eyes shut. After less than a minute, I heard hurrying footsteps and opened my eyes again; I stopped counting, which I had gone on doing with no particular purpose in mind. By now I was breathing normally.