The Sending

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘It wasn’t necessary,’ he said. ‘We knew each other or our shadows.’

  I let that go. What he meant is a little plainer now. However, I immediately suspected that art was an excuse and that his call had something in common with von Pluwig’s, though what he wanted from me was unlikely to be as simple as persuading Arminius to stop trailing his off-hind, or as inexplicable as holding a brick at the point of balance.

  We put the stallion up in the old cattle shed, clean and with a floor of stone flags, and I brought Paddy into the conversation by saying that when he rode over occasionally to see me we did the same, He used to insist that the loose box, long unused but in fair condition, was inhospitable—an adjective hard to justify but typical of Paddy’s insight.

  Over lunch, Molay fascinated me on the subject of the relationship between horse and man, and I thought he might be approaching the object of his visit. But then he led me on to talk about myself and my years in India, of which he already knew something from Paddy. I told him how I had spent all my leaves with a hunting tribe whose shaman had accepted me as a blood brother, and how I came to respect his beliefs and many of his practices.

  ‘What did he teach you?’

  ‘Nothing. He didn’t teach. He explained, or tried to. And I found that my conception of the unity of life was the same as his. But I haven’t any of Mr Gadsden’s gifts and it’s long odds against my being able to help you—if that is what you have come for.’

  ‘Ah well, there is always Meg,’ he said.

  I apologised for Meg’s absence on business, saying that I had left her at the vet’s while I was abroad for some days. She had escaped but would come back.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because I know she is alive and well.’

  It’s hard to describe how I know; easier to describe how I would feel if she were dead. A blank. A wall. And grief rebounding from it.

  ‘I saw her as Paddy Gadsden’s familiar spirit,’ Molay said. ‘Now she is yours, I suppose.’

  ‘If you like to call our closeness that. But she meant more to Paddy than to me.’

  ‘In what way more?’

  I answered that of course I had realised that Meg was a traditional familiar, and that I had been curious enough to read all that the witch trials could tell me. But still I could not understand, beyond dubious theories of my own, what the use of the familiar was, and I was puzzled by the open, fearless confessions of witches that they controlled imps and willed them to do whatever was wanted.

  ‘They must have really believed it,’ Molay said.

  ‘Apparently. Another illusion like flying on a broomstick.’

  ‘Not quite the same. Drugs could create a fantasy of flying, just as in what now is called a trip. No, not illusion, Mr Hollaston, but a way of seeing—of seeing the object in terms of the object and the object in terms of its relation to you.’

  I could follow his meaning, and I mentioned Meg’s dancing and my impression that something accompanied her in the dance.

  ‘Exactly. But you could not see that something.’

  ‘In what shape?’

  ‘Whatever shape suited your desires. Imp or angel or that other Meg which throws no shadow.’

  ‘Then it is illusion.’

  ‘The shape you choose is illusion. The Presence is not. Take the divine Athene, the personification of a new society of justice, wisdom, beauty and civic pride! Did she exist? The question is absurd. She existed in that form because in that form she was needed.’

  I accept, and always have, his example of the truth behind the myth. To see what he would say, I told him that while I was recently abroad I had camped for the night on a wild and sullen hill, and felt its Presence strongly but given it no form.

  ‘Were you afraid to give it form?’

  ‘Neither wished nor feared. In what form should it have appeared to me?’

  ‘Whatever you liked. Without you it has no form.’

  ‘But does exist?’

  ‘Since it is subject to the law of cause and effect it must in some sense exist. Mr Hollaston, Meg seems to be leading us away from the point. Would you show me again the picture you named the Holy Well?’

  I carried the brandy into the studio and asked Ginny to serve us coffee there. She looked at my guest without her usual geniality, playing the stern housekeeper. I take it she had—forgivably—been listening at the door. She would not have made much of the conversation beyond resenting it as bearing upon an aspect of me which she distrusted. Myself, I still could not guess what Julian Molay expected from his visit. When he was speaking he had a trick of turning his head slightly away, keeping his eyes on me. His hawk nose and the keen, oblique glance reminded me of the brass eagle on the lectern of a parish church, though in his case the wings of revelation were folded.

  When I set up the Holy Well he was silent for a while, seeming to look through it, not at it. That, in a way, was how I had meant it to be judged.

  ‘I see now why it is so precious to you. The Presence is there, but without form,’ he said. ‘Have you been so inspired before or since?’

  ‘Perhaps in the jungle, and perhaps in this portrait of Meg.’

  I took down the Holy Well and set up Meg. I did not expect that he would see more than the environment to which she belonged.

  ‘You have painted the Meg without a shadow,’ was his comment.

  ‘She was not well. I painted it as if entranced—a direct importuning of her Purpose to heal her.’

  ‘As of course it did. Mr Hollaston, I have never realised that the concentration of the master craftsman was a prayer.’

  ‘Nor did I, till then.’

  ‘What was the matter with Meg?’

  ‘A sending, if you know what that is. From Meg it took away her joy. To others it caused terror and madness and death.’

  ‘I take it that the terror was your own. How did you cure that?’

  At last I guessed the object of his visit. It was to find out my source of power, if any, and to confront me. My Pyreneean magic had indeed been taken seriously by Odolaga, who perhaps had appealed in despair to this magnificent curiosity of a man. Undoubtedly he knew something of what had been going on, but I was angry with his pretentious transcendentalism and nearly told him to mind his own business. As it was, I set up my Columns of the Sun, saying that it would be hard for him to understand it.

  ‘So that was your prayer and again it was invincible,’ he acknowledged, ignoring my discourtesy. ‘Didn’t you know that you had won?’

  ‘Afterwards, yes.’

  ‘Then why more?’

  I did not see what he meant by more. He then left me in no doubt.

  ‘Cruelty. Slaughter without mercy. How could you abuse the divinity of man by revenge on so many happy innocents?’

  ‘Not revenge. A warning.’

  ‘If you discovered so much, why did you not kill Leyalá?’

  ‘Because he trusted me, damn you!’

  ‘I cannot understand you, Mr Hollaston. So much love and so much evil!’

  I told him to go back to his friend Odolaga and remind him that I could protect my loved ones as well as myself. He asked for no explanation, leaping straight to the point by, I think, no more than quick human sympathy.

  ‘Was someone you love also affected by Leyalá?’

  ‘No! No one could be less vulnerable.’

  ‘Then isn’t what you believed impossible?’

  I answered that I didn’t know any longer what was possible, and by what other means Odolaga could attack.

  ‘One more question, if you will forgive a guest. When you had painted the Columns of the Sun and the unity was over and the spirit had returned to the dust, did you not feel empty, without faith in anything but…’

  ‘My lunch, yes.’

  ‘But let us s
uppose that she loves you as you love her! If that were so, your black night of the soul would have affected her. Invulnerable to the sending, yes. But not to the shaman in you.’

  I have never wanted to suspect even the possibility and told him so, adding that if a mood of mine could affect her, hers should affect me.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he replied. ‘Your mind was closed. To use a term of simpler energy, you put her back on the air. Why are you celibate, Mr Hollaston?’

  ‘How do you know I am?’

  ‘Because your power is so great, though you know so little.’

  He got up and thanked me for my hospitality as if there had been no tension between us. We walked out to the cattle shed talking of pleasant routes to the west, and of Paddy. There was no sign that Molay knew anything of the puzzling circumstances of Paddy’s death and I did not mention them. When he had saddled and led out his stallion I asked him if he were shipping his new beauty to Alexandretta.

  ‘No. Only to France where I have another home,’ he said.

  He raised his cap and was off, leaving me numbed and uneasy, as if I were one of my innocent—but only partly innocent—ancestors waiting in the dock for the verdict of the jury.

  I am out of my depth. My understanding of the hunting shaman is helpful, but has become inadequate, just as observation of the ape is helpful to the sociologist but inadequate. The lines of descent, which have become extinct or hybridised into superstition, crackpot faiths and fortunetelling, have been reduced to one; and the one appears to have advanced down the millennia far beyond the cults of tiger brothers.

  It may be that Paddy’s motive in sending Molay to me was not only to introduce a buyer to a friend but to propose me as a future Robin. The job—what a word!—is unacceptable if still open. In the glimpses I have had, admittedly affected by Odolaga, there is too much black and none of the ecstasy. Yet I remember so vividly Odolaga playing with his shepherd-goat on that flowered alp in the stillness of the evening. Before my coming, great joy was there.

  August 31

  Meg is back, and it is left to me to make what I can of her return. I never dreamed that Julian Molay was responsible for her disappearance. It’s a sign that this pair of Men in Black can deprive me of Meg whenever they like, and also that they are, for the moment, above taking such a tit-for-tat revenge. I must expect it in some other form.

  Bill Freeman came in with her this morning. His story was that a fine old fellow, beautifully mounted, had stopped and said good evening to him when he was digging up his potatoes in the front garden, and asked if he knew to whom a tame polecat belonged. And there was Meg in front of him on the saddle, clinging to the pommel with her forefeet and happy as a hunt terrier. Bill exclaimed that she was my missing Meg and asked where the gentleman had found her. The answer was vague: that he had picked her up far down the green lane and had been riding along until he came to a likely person. When he saw Bill, he knew at once that he was the likely person.

  Bill was cautious. He said that he thought highly of Miss Meg—on condition that she kept herself to herself.

  To his amazement the gentleman, who had never been seen around these parts before, said:

  ‘You’re a healer yourself, if I’m not wrong.’

  ‘I am that,’ Bill answered, ‘but I use the gift our Lord ’as given me and I don’t deal in the likes of Miss Meg.’

  The gentleman had replied that blessed are the pure in heart and that Meg was no different from himself.

  ‘And then ’e rides off,’ Bill went on, ‘and when Meg sees ’im go she sits up with ’er little paws dangling like she was praying—’ (Myself I call that the prelude to the dance, but praying will do.) ‘—and she comes in and after supper climbs on to the missus’ shoulder, and the missus starts feedin’ ’er with bits of bacon and she stays there till we goes to bed, when we puts ’er in a basket before the kitchen fire.’

  What kindliness to a very suspect fugitive! I was glad to hear that Meg had not lost her manners. In the ordinary way she hates bacon.

  ‘What did the cats make of her?’ I asked.

  ‘Wouldn’t ’ave nought to do with her nor she with them. There’s one thing I always say about cats. None of ’em ain’t got no religion.’

  ‘And dogs?’

  ‘They bows down before us sinners, Mr Alfgif, like the ‘eathen before wood and stone.’

  I’ll pass over my meeting with Meg. She expressed our unity better than I could, diving into my pocket where she stayed trembling with pleasure. I don’t know how Molay spotted a fellow shaman—tiger brother too had no trouble—but I do see one reason why he chose Bill Freeman to return Meg. He was sure that Bill would repeat everything he said, and that I should sense a gentleness which I might have missed.

  I took advantage of this new intimacy with Bill Freeman to find out more about my great-great-grandfather who taught the art of exterminating warts to Bill’s grandmother.

  ‘What did she think of him?’

  ‘Wanted to teach ’er more than that, ’e did. But she wouldn’t ’ave nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Did he ever have a pet like Meg?’

  ‘’E was never without ’is dogs alongside ’im, Mr Alfgif, or so they say.’

  ‘I didn’t mean dogs and horses.’

  ‘Well, if you means what I thinks you means, that was why my grandmother wouldn’t ’ave no more to do with ’im.’

  ‘Had it got a forked tail and all that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, if it did, she didn’t tell me. All she said was that it were a little chap no ’igher than a newborn calf. And when she tells Mr Hollaston that she’s seen in the dairy what she didn’t ought to ’ave, ’e says: “’E ain’t there, not in a manner of speaking, but you can see ’im any time you wants to. And you know I wouldn’t do nothing wrong, Betsy.” “That you wouldn’t,” she tells ’im, “for a kinder gentleman there never was, sir. But little people aren’t for the likes of me whether they ain’t really there or not,” she says. “Well then, Betsy my love,” ’e says, “I ’ad ’opes of you but we’ll say no more about it. And don’t you forget what I learned you and you pass it on!”’

  ‘So he never said what it was?’

  ‘Now blowed if you ’aven’t put summat into my mind, Mr Alfgif, because ’e did tell ’er what it wasn’t. “It ain’t a child nor a calf,” ’e says, “and it ain’t a stream or a tree or a flower,” ’e says. “It’s the whole blessed valley, and because we loves it, it loves us, and you wouldn’t like to be in love and not be seen no’ow,” ’e says.’

  Bill Freeman, with his earnest Christian faith and that small pagan practice which faintly disturbs the vicar, is indeed pure in heart, as Molay perceived. I remember asking him what would happen if he tried to kill anything larger than a wart by thinking, and he replied that it would be straight evil. So it would be. Yet I have allowed those two Men in Black to believe that was just the sin I committed. My education never stops. Here is great-great-grandfather repeating to me down a century and a half exactly what Molay said: that where there is a Presence you can see it in any shape you like.

  I wonder if Molay’s theory of the cause of Rita’s lethargy could possibly be right. Looking back through the pages of this notebook I see that after I had painted Columns of the Sun and destroyed Odolaga’s sending, I did fall into a black night, without faith in any purpose or Purpose. This meant that all my receptors were out of action. However, the shaman’s transmitter—I am compelled by now to grant myself some such power—could still be effective. And what was it transmitting? Apathy, nihilism, self-contempt and resentment that my ancient home should be turned into a playground for obsolete religion. Very well! But nobody should have been one penny the worse.

  Yet suppose that Rita’s receptors were wide open to me, as Molay suggested. Leave love out of it, which I dare not believe. Our intimate friendship, her interest and he
lp in the terror that haunted me, her discovery of the probable reason for Odolaga’s assault—all those created so close a bond that my moods and thoughts could affect her. That is common enough in a close marriage. The unspoken depression of one affects the other and neither realises it.

  It was natural enough that I should put the blame on Odolaga, though I could never understand quite how his quick visit to the Pirrones gave the opportunity, nor how he could be certain merely from Concha’s chatter of a pastoral flirtation, that Rita was more precious to me than myself. And indeed I was too angry and impatient to accept that Rita is as safe from curses as any missionary or politician. The deliberate attack of a witch-doctor would not be received by her at all.

  Then how about her recovery during my absence? Well, even that falls into place. It had nothing to do with a poor, slaughtered goat and owls and night and Aquelarre. It was due to my own recovery—pride, cunning and cruelty filling up the void of my mind, together with a primitive relish in carrying a tiger brother deception, which he himself would have condemned, from India to the Pyrenees.

  September 2

  That call which Meg answered, burrowing her way to freedom, was a general summons. George’s patients all received it and tried to get out, but only Meg could. It must have been transmitted directly at fairly close quarters and is no different in kind from my experiment with bullocks. I have had my punishment, or a part of it. Molay has evened the score, but if he hoped to destroy all communion between me and my familiar he has failed.

  He hardly entered my thoughts during this afternoon, which began so happily. Rita and I were pushing our way between branches on the far side of the valley. She claimed to have found some evidence that on the rising ground above the water, now so densely covered by trees, there was once a Saxon settlement. Since I knew every foot of the woodland I was sure there was no sign of trench or mound, but jumped at the chance to be together. I did not take Meg, for Rita faintly resents her. I wouldn’t call it jealousy—more annoyance because Meg distracts my attention.