by Adam Thorpe
‘Doesn’t it depend on what you sacrifice?’
‘Hitler’s jolly fond of that word, isn’t he?’ I added, feeling we were sparring with him. ‘He wants to sacrifice everybody but himself. I suppose that’s pretty potent.’
Uncle Edward ignored me. Sometimes whole days had passed in my boyhood when he would avoid addressing a single word to me, using Mrs Stump or Susan as a medium. He had to be left to think. Did you know this? I felt like a ghost. I was annoyed at myself now for feeling hurt again.
‘The Romans made do with a pig or a ram or an ox. Their predecessors understood the gods and gave them a young virgin. Or many young virgins, all at once.’
My face was aflame, I’m sorry to say. I sighed, knowing what was about to be said. He only ever said about three things, Mother, endlessly embroidered on.
‘And we whites have persuaded the African that throwing a young virgin to the crocodiles is less efficacious than using the nearest old goat –’
I chuckled behind my blush. There was one old goat I would dearly love to sacrifice.
‘Hugh will tell you all about that.’
‘No I won’t.’
‘His father is one of those whites. The poor African gods have to put up with goat meat, these days. The blood of poultry. No more young virgins or succulent albinos for the gods. Oh no. It’s all goat’s meat and agricultural officers and democratic elections, these days. That’ll put Africa on the right path, won’t it, Hugh? But I have my doubts, Rachael, I have my doubts, with all those hungry gods about.’
I said nothing, of course. Rachael left my fingers gripping the napkin on my knees. She rested her chin on her fingers and flashed the kind of smile I’d seen in Fitzrovia, when Gray was describing his red ribbons of cloth as the flaming torch that would save the universe. It was a smile of patience in the face of fools, but it only encouraged them. It only pleased them. She said that sacrifice was completely irrational, like the loon in Camden Station shredding sweetpapers into his top hat. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s an illusion. So if it came to choosing between a young virgin, a goat, and a communion wafer, she would definitely choose the wafer.
She was eloquent and intelligent: Nuncle’s showy twaddle was bringing out the best in her. Rachael was well used to his sort of provocative bore.
The bore was unstoppable.
‘That doesn’t take into account the mind-matter principle. Energy flows uninterrupted between mind and matter, between hoof and flower and hair and hands and the great caverns within us, between the stars and your thoughts, between your thoughts and the growing tree. Where is the edge, the limit? Where do our minds stop? At the bone of our skulls? At the rainbow-coloured aura around us? At the furthest stretch of our helpless hands? Surely not! Surely not!’
He was thumping the table with the flat of his hand. I looked at Rachael. She was magnificent, staring him out, completely undeterred. The wine from Nuncle’s cellar was old and strong: I had never seen such good wine, here. I tried to stand up, to break the spell of the table, but my knees tangled with the tablecloth and I fell back abruptly in my chair. Perhaps the wine was drugged. Rachael did not turn her head to look at me, but kept her gaze fixed on Nuncle’s face. Magnificent! Nuncle leaned forward until the candle was only an inch from his big nose. He passed a finger slowly through the flame.
‘Tomorrow is Beltane. Sacred to the old Celtic god, Belenos. The first day of summer, as Imbolc is the first day of spring. On Beltane a small griddle cake was cooked and broken up. Then it was shared out like a child sharing his currant bun. There was a fire lit upon the temenos. If your portion of cake was burnt, you were thrown into the flames.’
‘Charming!’
‘Later, in less vigorous times, the victim had only to jump through the flames –’
‘That’s progress!’
‘– three times, in devotion to the threefold mother goddess of the giving earth. D’you see?’
His finger passed through the flame three times, slowly. His eyes had never left Rachael’s face, though he’d ignored her interruptions. She must be so uncomfortable, I thought. But she is used to it.
‘What do we do these days’?’ he went on. ‘Warble songs from the top of an old tower, with the odd dance around a maypole. Summer must be born in fire, don’t you think?’
‘I do hope this summer won’t be,’ said Rachael.
‘Then we’d better be feeding Belenos jolly smartly. Or there’ll be fire from the heavens, raining down on our ungrateful, neglectful heads, out of the stars we no longer read.’
‘Don’t worry, Rachael, I’ll be back on duty by then.’
She didn’t seem to hear my joke.
‘Out of the stars? Do you think they’ll be attacking at night? What a horrible thought – while we’re all asleep.’
‘Night bombers are not at all likely to be a threat,’ I assured her. ‘Germans like the sun, they like to see England stretched out beneath them under a clear sky. We’ll drive them higher and higher, until they’re out of our range at 15,000 feet. They can’t get correct aim from that height.’
‘The Teuton likes to see flames blaze out of the darkness,’ Nuncle said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. ‘Ragnarok, the triumph of frost and fire, that’s what sleeps in them. The end of the gods, even of one-eyed Wotan, father of them all. The wolf swallowing the moon, the serpent blowing poison over the world, heaven burnt to cinders, all that. Night, winter, the birth of the Reich from the ashes. Except that the horribly vulgar little idea of the Reich won’t be born from the ashes, of course. The tiny green shoots will be trees, my dear.’
He glanced at Rachael with a glistening roll of his eyeballs.
‘Trees. And a handful of people among them.’
‘You, for instance?’
He smiled. I was numb with boredom, knowing all this twaddle off by heart, all this guff about the wildwood being a chip off the great block of forest that would rise again after some apocalypse or other – spread out from Ilythia and engulf the country! I could feel in my head the heavy roll of the searchlight as we angled it, hear its ratchets squeak, the soundless blast of its beam. Closing my eyes, I was up on Mam Tor again. If only I had engaged something hostile. If only I’d had something to impress her with.
Oh God, Mother. Nuncle did go on, didn’t he? In his growly bass. I can’t imagine he was ever a piping boy, running about the garden with you. Now he was going on about the obscenity of electrical illumination, how it has banished our species from a primal pleasure: darkness, and the flicker of flame upon darkness. ‘Have you noticed how trees come alive in firelight? Grow even bigger? One of the gains of this ridiculous war has been the black nights. Do you know our little local story?’
His eyes twinkled again as they looked at Rachael. She shook her head, of course. He told her about his friend Herbert Bradman, who under cover of the black night, had pissed into the ditch under the crab-apple hedge on his way here. ‘There was a sort of furious groan. Herbert shone his torch into the ditch: two well-known young lovers, Jimmy Oadam and Annie Hobbs, lie there spluttering and half-naked. “Next time you choose to tup in the ditch,” Herbert remarks, “make sure you tell me first.” “Us weren’t tupilatin’,” comes Jimmy’s reply, “us were jus tekkin’ cover.”’
I laughed with them, to cover the fire on my face. We shared some more black-out stories. For a while it was quite pleasant.
‘Anyway, I think the German is very practical,’ Rachael said, finally. ‘They’re not going to drop their bombs at night, with all the problems that entails, just because they want their crews to participate in some sort of huge fire festival.’
‘It’s inevitable,’ Nuncle replied. ‘The Teuton’s soul will not recoil from it, as other nations might. Before the year is out, the wondrous terror of the night blaze will be upon us: none of us has ever dreamt of the like.’
‘Not even you, Mr Arnold?’
I think she was tipsy, Mother. The twaddle continued. I was desperate t
o walk with Rachael in the garden, but the twaddle was holding her attention. It even continued into the hall. Eventually Nuncle kissed her hand and said goodnight, at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I have seldom enjoyed a conversation so much as ours this evening, my dear girl. If you were the young virgin our ancient ancestors had chosen one May morning, long ago, to lay in the earth alive, there would have been no more winters to appease, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Uncle!’
Rachael looked startled: Uncle Edward merely tilted his head with a shy smile and disappeared up the stairs. I snorted my impatience and suggested to Rachael we walked out in the garden. We took a shawl and scarf off the hook in the hallway and left by the French doors. We had linked elbows, walking on the lawn like old-fashioned lovers. I apologised for the evening. She asked me what I was apologising for. Her weight, which was being taken by me so much that I had to watch my step, removed itself a little. One could tell the angle of the searchlight’s drum, without looking, from the pull on the wheel at the end of the long pivoting arm: Rachael was angling away from me. The shrubs loomed in the moonlight rather menacingly, and a tawny owl hooted from the wildwood. I wished I hadn’t drunk so much: the old vintage was invading my stomach, loosening my bowels. The lawn felt spongy.
‘My uncle talks twaddle,’ I said, firmly. ‘It sounds impressive, that’s why people like it –’
‘The Fitzrovia crowd, for instance.’
‘Yes, the less perceptive among them.’
‘Not necessarily, unless you think Mr Coomaraswamy imperceptive.’
‘All right, the Indian intellectual finds something familiar, but I know my uncle –’
‘You’re too close. I mean, you’re too emotionally bound up with him to look on his work with detachment. He’s saying some very important things.’
‘Have you actually read anything?’
‘No, but Tambi’s shown me bits, and my father –’
‘Read it, the whole lot. By the end you’ll not only be screamingly bored, but convinced of his fraudulence. My mother talked more sense than her brother, and she was just a nurse, with no pretensions whatsoever.’
‘She kept her place, did she?’
I stopped, letting her arm go. She was smiling. I’m afraid I felt angry – an absolutely terrific surge of anger on your behalf. It came from nowhere.
‘That’s not fair,’ I said, between gritted teeth. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘And what’s more, she didn’t. You know she didn’t.’
‘I don’t know, Hugh!’
My anger went. My lips still felt white, but the anger went, just as quickly as it had come. Tu whit whit went the tawny owl, moving swiftly now. Rachael was looking towards the wood, towards the sound – perhaps slightly afraid of the moonlit garden, the humps of trees and the ogreish shrubs, all whispering in the night breeze. She held her shawl closed at the throat. Her lips shone like blue glass. I could either shut up, or continue. ‘Well, yes, you do know. She didn’t keep her place at all. She ran away. That’s not keeping your place, is it?’
‘I didn’t know she ran away. I thought she just sort of vanished.’
She clicked her fingers and gave a little giggly snort. I wanted to giggle, too. To laugh and roar and roll on the ground. It was like wanting to be sick.
We were crossing the lawn towards the beechwood. My heart started pounding because I reckoned that It could happen now, even if it wasn’t quite May morning. Then she suddenly veered towards the tangle of the wildwood. Her step quickened as she talked. ‘Do you feel angry sometimes, that she ran away like that? Or even if she didn’t run away, even if she just – I mean, do you feel very cross but you can’t tell her off? Because I do. I feel so angry with my mother for dying when I was so young. I can’t remember her, not a thing. I feel ever so cross but not at God, no. At her! Poor thing! She couldn’t help getting a chill, could she, in some draughty railway station or other, waiting for my father? And I’m not even angry at him for being late, or the train, or whatever caused the delay! And what do you think of that, Hugh?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never felt it.’
This was a white lie, Mother. I’m sure I had felt anger, but couldn’t precisely recall it. We stared into the wildwood. I was thinking more about It than about you, I’m afraid. I put my arm around her shoulders, but she slipped away.
‘I’m talking!’
‘I know you’re talking –’
‘She left you, didn’t she? She dropped you off here like a piece of baggage and went back to Africa.’
I stood, frozen with a sort of horror.
‘Who told you?’
‘Mrs Stump. In the kitchen.’
(Mother, Mrs Stump must be forgiven. She was a simple soul. Anyway, I don’t think she ever put it like that. Tell A you find B a little trying and A will tell C that you find B absolutely impossible – and so on.)
‘Oh, she did, did she?’
‘Yes. In so many words –’
‘Damn Mrs Stump. Ever heard of sacrifice? My mother wasn’t exactly working in luxurious conditions. To most people, life out there, in the bush, is a pretty good definition of hell.’
‘Anywhere can be hell,’ she retorted. ‘There was once a man who arrived in Bristol and thought it was hell – suddenly, just like that. And as the carriage took him towards the town centre, he imagined all the people were pointing and saying: Look at that poor soul, he’s bound for the deepest circle.’
I laughed, despite myself. Sometimes I had thought Ulverton was hell – or school was, or the whole of England.
‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘as for sacrifice, I’ve always had a soft spot for Cain. He only sacrificed vegetables. It’s all very well burning the fat of the lamb, but what about the lamb?’
Now I stopped laughing. You can see why, Mother. I looked across at her. She was in profile. Unutterably lovely in the moonlight, which made her dark hair so very black and silver at the same time.
‘I admire my mother’, I said, ‘and cherish her memory. That’s all.’
‘You admire her, but admiring something doesn’t tell you much. I admire Hitler’s capacity to fool a whole nation that he’s not utterly doolally.’
Was she very drunk, or just a neurotic? Amazingly, this passed through my head at the very moment I wanted to take her in my arms for ever and ever. At the very moment I decided I would like to marry her. She was beating you over the head, Mother, tearing you into horribly bloody strips – yet I had never desired her so much!
I stepped towards her. She stared at me defiantly. All I could say was, in a high voice – how unfortunate a comparison! Then I caught a glimpse of Nuncle’s shadow in his window, cast huge and wavery by a bedside candle. Perhaps he was watching us.
‘But I don’t find it very surprising, Rachael.’
‘What?’
I stared at a straggly oak in the wildwood, ivy gleaming in the moonlight all the way to the topmost branches.
‘What do you mean, Hugh?’
Then I looked back at Nuncle’s window. The shadow had gone.
‘I don’t find it very surprising that frauds can dazzle to that extent. There’s such a thing as – as hypnotic influence. And the ability to drag out into the bright light what otherwise intelligent people have hanging about in their darkest, deepest caverns.’
Rachael snorted.
‘I hope you’re not comparing your uncle to Hitler, and me to the German masses, just because I found the harmless things your uncle had to say rather intriguing. If you don’t mind me pointing out, that is a jolly unfortunate comparison, too, given my blood.’
‘You were the one who brought up Hitler –’
‘Of course I wasn’t for a moment comparing your mother to that horrible monster. Whoever do you think I am? I’m sure your mother was admirable, like mine. Even though yours was a nurse in darkest Africa and mine was a singer in tatty music halls. Is it true what th
ey say, by the way?’
She giggled, crooked her arm through mine, and moved towards the house out of the trees’ stretched shadows. The moonlight glared on the white tassels on the front of her dress. If I were to pull them, would the dress open? Or were they just decorative? She was angled towards me, now. I could kiss her, and then I could start to pull them. I could slip my hands right inside.
‘Is it true, Hugh?’ she asked again, squeezing my arm against her ribs. Love and desire floundered deliciously in my throat; I was quite breathless, as if I’d been running a long way.
‘Is what true, my darling?’
‘That he only has one – you know . . .’
‘My dear love, his lack of an essential miniature sandbag explains this whole ghastly show. But I refuse to donate the essential article just to stop the war.’
I stared at her glaring white tassels, then started to pull at them with both hands. I’d forgotten to do the kissing first.
‘What are you doing, Hugh? You’ll break them!’
They were purely decorative. One came away in my hand. She was quite annoyed. I offered to mend it. The lawn spread glaring around us, our shadows so utterly black and long and lively. We were caught right in the middle, like a pilot in a beam. The wavery shape, again, in the window. I hurried her off the lawn as if it was some ancient arena full of ghosts, full of tainted dangerous air. We kissed briefly on the landing. ‘Until dawn,’ I whispered, holding her tassel as if it was some sort of love token. She frowned and plucked it from my hand, then disappeared into your old room.
With all my love,
Hugh
Still obliged to stay here in England. Not long! Pottery classes. I can make nothing but lumps. They think I’m processing my pain (whatever that means), but I say they’re just lumps. Pain better today, anyway.
Dear Mother,
I hardly slept, and had confusing dreams. Splashed my face from the bowl and jug in my room, and staggered with a headache to Rachael’s door as the first birds erupted, dawn pretending to be windows. Night is like a mist, at that hour, which every move of the head clears a little, then lets fall, then clears, then lets fall, then clears, then lets fall – and so on. Until it’s suddenly light. Who’s to say, then, one hasn’t created that light oneself?