by Alan Warner
2
It was really a blindingly simple idea and I wondered why no one had thought of such a thing before. Maybe (I half considered) I had been sent to this place in order to arrive at the stunning conception I had now arrived at. Maybe I was predestined to meet the schoolmaster . . . At that time you see I had no idea of the intricacies that would enmesh me. Anyway my idea was this. Why didn’t I raise the wood at the corner (that is, raise a shed there) and see what would happen? There was no reason why I couldn’t do it if I wanted to. I had plenty of money. There were one or two unemployed people who would build the shed for me. I had no fears that permission would be refused me as I was quite popular and not thought of as an outsider. I reviewed my idea from all angles and there seemed nothing against it. It would give me an interest during the winter months and it would return me to a psychological or at least philosophical theme. I may say that as I have mentioned already I had no feeling for ghosts, spirits, stars, etc., at that time, and thought them easily explicable manifestations of the fallible human psyche.
Anyway, not to be too tedious about the business, I decided to build a wooden shed at the Corner. I had no doubt that this was the location mentioned since I gathered that the place had been so-called from time immemorial. I got hold of a middle-aged fellow called Buckie who was a builder but unemployed at the time. As he had a large family which consisted mostly of teenage girls who shrieked and screamed and presumably ate a lot, like seagulls, he was very glad to help me. The hut was to be fairly spacious. Buckie reported every morning in his blue overalls with his rule in his pocket and began to work on the fine new yellow wood. I often used to watch him but as he didn’t say much at any time I ended by leaving him alone. He didn’t even ask me why I wanted the shed built. Perhaps he thought I wanted a place where I could be absolutely quiet or perhaps he thought I intended to get some stuff which I would store there eventually.
In any case one fine day I went to the Corner and found that the shed had been built. As green is my favourite colour I decided to paint it green and this I did myself. For the rest it was a fairly spacious shed with two windows and one door. It was fairly warm inside but not too warm and there was plenty of room. The windows were quite large and looked out on to the road which travelled past the hut towards the town eight miles away. After the hut was finished I would go and sit there. I took a chair and table and I would read and so some writing. Otherwise I didn’t use it much.
At nights I would lie awake and wonder why I had been so stupid as to build it. There it pointlessly stood for no reason that I or anyone else could offer. I had no clue as to what I was going to do with it. I couldn’t offer it to anyone else, not even as a place for staying in, for no one would have made their home there as there was a tradition that there were ghosts at the Corner and the villagers were very superstitious. Thus the days passed and I waited. I had built the hut and the next move was up to the prophet, if there was to be any next move. Sometimes I felt like a girl waiting to be visited by a lover and impatient that he wasn’t coming. If he had any sincerity or love why didn’t he prove by his presence that his words were true?
Naturally some of the villagers asked me why I had built the hut and I told them some vague story about wanting a quiet place to study in. They seemed quite satisfied with this explanation as though I mixed with them, they didn’t make any pretence of understanding me.
Then on a lovely spring evening the first move was made. There was a knock at the door and standing there was a young boy from the village whose name was John Macleod. He was a tall rather clumsy-looking fellow with a reddish face and large hands and he worked as a painter in the town coming home at nights on the bus. I was in a good mood at the time for some reason and I stood there at the window looking out towards the glittering sea across the walls and ditches and houses and fields.
The boy took a long time to come to the point (indeed if he had had a cap he would have been twisting it in his hands) but the gist of his request was that perhaps out of the goodness of my heart I might lend the young people of the village the hut for their weekend dances. Normally they conducted their dances in the open air at the Corner but of course this meant that there could be no dances on a rainy night. There was really no problem since my hut was large enough to accommodate all the young people who were likely to turn up (about sixteen at the most). I thought about it very briefly and then agreed, especially as the boy assured me that the hut would be left spick and span after they had finished with it, that there would be no damage at all as the village youth were well-behaved, that he would return the key to me after they had cleaned out the hut if it was necessary to do so. I myself knew that the villagers were law-abiding and would not harm the hut, so I agreed readily. And he went away quite excessively happy. I dismissed the whole thing from my mind, glad that at last a use had been found for my hut. Funnily enough, though, I had a vague feeling at the back of my mind that I had made some connection however tenuous with the prophet hovering somewhere in the offing. It was an odd unaccountable feeling and I soon got rid of it.
Nothing happened for four or five weeks. During the successive Saturdays the dances in the hut went on, the key was handed back to me and the place was left tidy as promised. Unfortunately, though I didn’t know it, the air around me was rapidly darkening with omens. As everyone knows islanders are not notable for speaking out, and no rumour at first reached me till quite suddenly out of the blue the Rev. Norman Black made his explosive attack in the pulpit on a particular Sunday. As I wasn’t in church I didn’t hear his exact words but I was given accounts of it. The Rev. Norman Black is a small fiery man with a ginger moustache who holds the local people in an iron grip. They go out and gather his peats for him, they give him presents of meat and milk, and in return he exercises dominion over them. They are in fact very frightened of him indeed. I cannot help admiring him in a way since his consciousness of his own rightness is so complete and utter. He bows the knee to no one and he flashes about in his small red car like a demon from the pit spitting sulphur and flame, and when he feels it is necessary he has no deference to the high and no mercy on the low. As far as I could gather the drift of his sermon, shorn of theological and ecclesiastical language, was as follows. The shed or hut was infested by young people intent on fornication: this was in fact the reason why the hut had been built in the first place. As long as the dancing took place in the open then one could see what was going on but when walls had been erected then privacy suitable for dalliance and immorality had been created. Also why was the hut painted green? This was very ominous indeed. Furthermore why had this hut been built by an Englishman who never attended church? Was it because he was bent on undermining the morality of the village? What other explanation could there be? Considered from that angle my enterprise did indeed look suspicious and cunning especially as I had no real explanation for the hut, and even if I were to offer one no one would believe me now. As for my true reason, who would believe that?
At first I was inclined to laugh at the whole thing but in fact there apparently had been some drinking. Some ‘dalliance’ had, in fact, taken place though it was, I am sure, quite innocent. Nevertheless people began to sidle past me. They began to wonder. Was I some thin end of the wedge? Had my previous civil behaviour been a mask? Cold shoulders were turned to me. My visitors dwindled. Anger grew. After all I had been extended hospitality and I was repaying it with lasciviousness cunningly disguised as philanthropy. I felt around me a rather chill wind. Neighbours began to slant off when I approached.
Steadily as the Rev. Norman Black blew on the flames and lashed his theological whip the village divided itself into two camps, that of the adults and that of the young. One night there was an attempt to set the place on fire. After that a guard was mounted over the hut for some time each night. Parents warned their children not to go to the dances and the young rebelled. I found myself at the centre of the cross fire. Messages were scrawled on my door in the middle of the night. The
young expected me to stand up for them and I still gave them the key. Even the schoolmaster was divided in his mind and ceased to visit me. I was alone. My visits to the local shop became adventures into enemy country. The shop was often out of articles that I needed. My letters arrived late.
One day a group of youngsters came to the door and told me that some adults were intending to march on the green hut and burn it down.
Let me say at this point that I was faced with a particularly interesting scientific problem. I wished naturally to be merely an observer in the experiment I was conducting and for this reason I couldn’t interfere on either side. However, I walked along with the youngsters towards the hut. When we arrived the adults had not yet reached it, and we waited outside the hut in a group. There was a number of boys and girls and many of them were very angry. They felt that they were defending not only a hut but a principle. They felt that the time had come when they must stand up for themselves against the rigid ideology which was demanding the destruction of their hut. My hut had in fact become a symbol.
We waited therefore and saw in complete silence the adults approaching. There was a large number of them and they carried axes and spades. They stopped when they saw us and the two groups faced each other in the fine sunshine. They were led, as one could see very quickly, by the fiery minister. This was indeed a clash or crash of wills that the prophet had foreseen. The minister came forward and said, ‘Are you going to allow us to pull down peacefully this habitation of the devil?’
One of the boys who was home from university and whose name was John Maclean said, ‘No, we’re not. You have no right to pull the hut down. It doesn’t belong to you.’ He was studying, as I remember, to be a lawyer. I said nothing but remained an interested spectator. What was I expecting? That there would be an intervention from heaven?
The minister said no more but walked steadily forward with an axe in his hand. Now this posed another interesting problem. No one had ever laid hands on a minister before, certainly not in a country village. If anyone did, would there indeed be an intervention from heaven? The minister, small and energetic, advanced towards the hut. The group of youngsters interposed themselves. He pushed among them while one or two of the girls, their nerve breaking, rushed to the other side to join their fathers, who were waiting grimly to see the result of the minister’s lone attack. I think they too were wondering what the youths would do. In his tight black cloth the minister moved steadily forward, axe in hand.
The youths were watching and wondering what I should do but I did nothing. How could I? After all I was a scientist engaged in an experiment. Some of them were clearly speculating on what would happen to them when their parents, many of them large and undeniably fierce, got them home again. In the sunshine the minister advanced. One could see from the expression on his face that for him this hut really was an abomination created by the devil, that its destruction had been ordered by the Most High, that he, the servant of God attired in his sober black, was going to accomplish that destruction. Interestingly enough I saw that among the adults was Buckie the builder placidly awaiting the destruction of the work of his own hands. Did I however glimpse for one moment a twitch of doubt on his face, a fear that he perhaps too was present at a personal surrender? I knew all the invaders, every single one of them, placid, hard-working men, good neighbours, heavy moral men, all bent on destroying my green hut which was at the same time both Catholic and demonic and perhaps life-enhancing. It was odd that such a construction should have caused such violent passions. But I had not met a man like this minister before. When he had finally arrived next to the youths he said in a slightly shrill voice (perhaps even he was nervous?), ‘I have come here to lay this abomination to the ground. Shall any of you dare touch the servant of the Lord?’ Quivering he raised his head, his moustache bristling. There was a long silence. It was clearly a moment permeated with significance. Were the young going to establish their independence once and for all? Or were they going to surrender? The village would never be the same again after this confrontation, no matter what happened.
The men waited. The minister pushed. And he slipped on the ground. I am not sure how it happened – maybe he slipped on a stone, or maybe he had done it with the unconscious deliberation and immense labyrinthine cunning that the service of the Lord had taught him. Anyway as if this had been what they waiting for, the men pushed forward in a perfect fury (would these sons of theirs defy their elders as represented by the minister?), impatiently pushed their sons and daughters aside and with axes held high hacked away at the hut. Thus in Old Testament days must men such as this have hacked to pieces the wooden gods of their enemies, coloured and magical and savage. Thus they splintered and broke my hut. Before they were finished the youngsters had left, giving me a last look of contempt. I was the fallen champion, the uncommitted one. I who had apparently been on the side of youth against the rigid structures of religion, had surrendered. When the men had accomplished their destruction, their penetration of the bastion of immorality, they too turned away from me as if in embarrassment that I had witnessed such an orgy, almost sexual in its force and rhythm. Without speaking to me they left.
After they had all gone, leaving an axe or two behind, I stood there beside my ruined hut, the shell which had been ripped open and torn. Not even the Bacchanalians had been so fierce and ruthless. Thinking hard, I poked among the fragments. Above me the sky was blue and enigmatic. No prophecy emerged from its perfect surface. I remembered the words, ‘When the wood is raised at the Corner wills will crash.’ Or rather ‘will clash’. Suddenly in a moment of perfect illumination such as must have been granted to the prophets I realised that the words could also be ‘walls will crash’. But even before I had assimilated that meaning another one so huge and comic and ironic had blossomed around me that I was literally staggered by the enormous terror of its implications and sat down with my head in my hands. For I now knew that I could not stay in the village. My time there had come to an end. I was ready to start afresh. My retreat had ended. I must return to the larger world and continue with my work. But then the final revelation had come, as I shivered suddenly in the suddenly hostile day. I thought of my discussion on predestination with the schoolmaster. I thought of his casual remarks about the prophet. I thought of how I had been led to this particular village to learn about the prophecy and this prophet. I thought of the hundred years the man had been dead. I thought of the last meaning of all which had just come to me and I laughed out loud at the marvellous joke that had been perpetrated on me, rational psychologist from an alien land. There the words stood afresh in front of my mind’s eye as if written in monstrous letters, luminous and hilarious, in the sunny day of clear blue. It was as if the heavens themselves cracked, just like my hut, as if the vase, elegant and beautiful, had shown a crack running right down its side, as if I could see the joking face, the body doubled over in laughter. For the words that came to me at that moment, the last reading of all, were these: ‘WHEN THE WOOD IS RAISED AT THE CORNER WELLS WILL CRASH.’
Do You Believe in Ghosts?
‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Daial to Iain. ‘I believe in ghosts.’
It was Hallowe’en night and they were sitting in Daial’s house – which was a thatched one – eating apples and cracking nuts which they had got earlier that evening from the people of the village. It was frosty outside and the night was very calm.
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ said Iain, munching an apple. ‘You’ve never seen a ghost, have you?’
‘No,’ said Daial fiercely, ‘but I know people who have. My father saw a ghost at the Corner. It was a woman in a white dress.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Iain. ‘It was more likely a piece of paper.’ And he laughed out loud. ‘It was more likely a newspaper. It was the local newspaper.’
‘I tell you he did,’ said Daial. ‘And another thing. They say that if you look between the ears of a horse you will see a ghost. I was told that by my granny
.’
‘Horses’ ears,’ said Iain laughing, munching his juicy apple. ‘Horses’ ears.’
Outside it was very very still, the night was, as it were, entranced under the stars.
‘Come on then,’ said Daial urgently, as if he had been angered by Iain’s dismissive comments. ‘We can go and see now. It’s eleven o’clock and if there are any ghosts you might see them now. I dare you.’
‘All right,’ said Iain, throwing the remains of the apple into the fire. ‘Come on then.’
And the two of them left the house, shutting the door carefully and noiselessly behind them and entering the calm night with its millions of stars. They could feel their shoes creaking among the frost, and there were little panes of ice on the small pools of water on the road. Daial looked very determined, his chin thrust out as if his honour had been attacked. Iain liked Daial fairly well though Daial hardly read any books and was only interested in fishing and football. Now and again as he walked along he looked up at the sky with its vast city of stars and felt almost dizzy because of its immensity.
‘That’s the Plough there,’ said Iain, ‘do you see it? Up there.’
‘Who told you that?’ said Daial.