by Laurie Lee
When he said that, I wondered what had happened to the war. Was he in those rags because he was such a bad soldier? Had he lost the war in the wood?
When he didn’t come any more, I knew he had. The girls said some policemen had taken him away in a cart. And Mother sighed and was sad over the poor man.
In weather that was new to me, and cold, and loud with bullying winds, my Mother disappeared to visit my father. This was a long way off, out of sight, and I don’t remember her going. But suddenly there were only the girls in the house, tumbling about with brooms and dishcloths, arguing, quarrelling, and putting us to bed at random. House and food had a new smell, and meals appeared like dismal conjuring tricks, cold, raw, or black with too much fire. Marjorie was breathless and everywhere; she was fourteen, with all the family in her care. My socks slipped down, and stayed down. I went unwashed for long periods of time. Black leaves swept into the house and piled up in the comers; it rained, and the floors sweated, and washing filled all the lines in the kitchen and dripped sadly on one and all.
But we ate; and the girls moved about in a giggling flurry, exhausted at their losing game. As the days went by, such a tide of muddles mounted in the house that I didn’t know which room was which. I lived free, grubbing outside in the mud till I was black as a badger. And my nose ran free, as unchecked as my feet. I sailed my boots down the drain, I cut up sheets for puttees, and marched like a soldier through the swamps of leaves. Sensing my chance, I wandered far, eating all manner of raw objects, coloured berries, twigs, and grubs, sick every day, but with a sickness of which I was proud.
All this time the sisters went through the house, darting upstairs and down, beset on all sides by the rain coming in, boys growing filthier, sheets scorching, saucepans burning, and kettles boiling over. The doll’s-house became a mad house, and the girls frail birds flying in a wind of chaos. Doth giggled helplessly, Phyl wept among the vegetables, and Marjorie would say, when the day was over, ‘I’d lie down and die, if there was a place to lie down in.’
I was not at all surprised when I heard of the end of the world. Everything pointed to it. The sky was low and whirling with black clouds; the wood roared night and day, stirring great seas of sound. One night we sat round the kitchen table, cracking walnuts with the best brass candlestick, when Marjorie came in from the town. She was shining with rain and loaded with bread and buns. She was also very white.
‘The war’s over,’ she said. ‘It’s ended.’
‘Never,’ said Dorothy.
‘They told me at the Stores,’ said Marjorie. ‘And they were giving away prunes.’ She gave us a bagful, and we ate them raw.
The girls got tea and talked about it. And I was sure it was the end of the world. All my life was the war, and the war was the world. Now the war was over. So the end of-the world was come. It made no other sense to me.
‘Let’s go out and see what’s happening,’ said Doth.
‘You know we can’t leave the kids,’ Marge said.
So we went too. It was dark, and the gleaming roofs of the village echoed with the buzz of singing. We went hand in hand through the rain, up the bank and down the street. A bonfire crackled in one of the gardens, and a woman jumped up and down in the light of it, red as a devil, a jug in her hand, uttering cries that were not singing. All down the other gardens there were other bonfires too. And a man came up and kissed the girls and hopped in the road and twisted on one toe. Then he fell down in the mud and lay there, working his legs like a frog and croaking a loud song.
I wanted to stop. I had never seen a man like this, in such a wild good humour. But we hurried on. We got to the pub and stared through the windows. The bar seemed on fire with its many lamps. Rose-coloured men, through the rain-wet windows, seemed to bulge and break into flame. They breathed out smoke, drank fire from golden jars, and I heard their great din with awe. Now anything might happen. And it did. A man rose up and crushed a glass like a nut between his hands, then held them out laughing for all to see his wounds. But the blood was lost in the general light of blood. Two other men came waltzing out of the door, locked in each other’s arms. Fighting and cursing, they fell over the wall and rolled down the bank in the dark.
There was a screaming woman we could not see. ‘Jimmy! Jimmy! ’ she wailed. ‘ Oh, Jimmy! Thee s’ll kill ’im! I’ll fetch the vicar, I will! Oh, Jimmy!’
‘Just ’ark at ’em,’ said Dorothy, shocked and delighted.
‘The kids ought to be in bed,’ said Marjorie.
‘Stop a minute longer. Only a minute. It wouldn’t do no ’arm.’
Then the schoolhouse chimney caught on fire. A fountain of sparks shot high into the night, writhing and sweeping on the wind, falling and dancing along the road. The chimney hissed like a firework, great rockets of flame came gushing forth, emptying the tiny house, so that I expected to see chairs and tables, knives and forks, radiant and burning, follow. The moss-tiles smouldered with sulphurous soot, yellow jets of smoke belched from cracks in the chimney. We stood in the rain and watched it entranced, as if the sight had been saved for this day. As if the house had been saved, together with the year’s bad litter, to be sent up in flames and rejoicing.
How everyone bellowed and scuffled and sang, drunkwith their beer and the sight of the fire. But what would happen now that the war was over? What would happen to my uncles who lived in it? - those huge remote men who appeared suddenly at our house, reeking of leather and horses. What would happen to our father, who was khakied like every other man, yet special, not like other men? His picture hung over the piano, trim, haughty, with a badged cap and a spiked moustache. I confused him with the Kaiser. Would he die now the war was over?
As we gazed at the flaming schoolhouse chimney, and smelt the burning throughout the valley, I knew something momentous was occurring. At any moment I looked for a spectacular end to my already long life. Oh, the end of the war and the world! There was rain in my shoes, and Mother had disappeared. I never expected to see another day.
FIRST NAMES
Peace was here; but I could tell no difference. Our Mother returned from far away with excited tales of its madness, of how strangers had stopped and kissed each other in the streets and climbed statues shouting its name. But what was peace anyway? Food tasted the same, pump water was as cold, the house neither fell nor grew larger. Winter came in with a dark, hungry sadness, and the village filled up with unknown men who stood around in their braces and khaki pants, smoking short pipes, scratching their arms, and gazing in silence at the gardens.
I could not believe in this peace at all. It brought no angels or explanations; it had not altered the nature of my days and nights, nor gilded the mud in the yard. So I soon forgot it and went back to my burrowing among the mysteries of indoors and out. The garden still offered its comers of weed, blackened cabbages, its stones and flower-stalks. And the house its areas of hot and cold, dark holes and talking boards, its districts of terror and blessed sanctuary; together with an infinite range of objects and ornaments that folded, fastened, creaked and sighed, opened and shut, tinkled and sang, pinched, scratched, cut, burned, spun, toppled, or fell to pieces. There was also a pepper-smelling cupboard, a ringing cellar, and a humming piano, dry bunches of spiders, colliding brothers, and the eternal comfort of the women.
I was still young enough then to be sleeping with my Mother, which to me seemed life’s whole purpose. We slept together in the first-floor bedroom on a flock-filled mattress in a bed of brass rods and curtains. Alone, at that time, of all the family, I was her chosen dream companion, chosen from all for her extra love; my right, so it seemed to me.
So in the ample night and the thickness of her hair I consumed my fattened sleep, drowsed and nuzzling to her warmth of flesh, blessed by her bed and safety. From the width of the house and the separation of the day, we two then lay joined alone. That darkness to me was like the fruit of sloes, heavy and ripe to the touch. It was a darkness of bliss and simple languor, when all edges
seemed rounded, apt and fitting; and the presence for whom one had moaned and hungered was found not to have fled after all.
My Mother, freed from her noisy day, would sleep like a happy child, humped in her nightdress, breathing innocently and making soft drinking sounds in the pillow. In her flights of dream she held me close, like a parachute to her back; or rolled and enclosed me with her great tired body so that I was snug as a mouse in a hayrick.
They were deep and jealous, those wordless nights, as we curled and muttered together, like a secret I held through the waking day which set me above all others. It was for me alone that the night came down, for me the prince of her darkness, when only I would know the huge helplessness of her sleep, her dead face, and her blind bare arms. At dawn, when she rose and stumbled back to the kitchen, even then I was not wholly deserted, but rolled into the valley her sleep had left, lay deep in its smell of lavender, deep on my face to sleep again in the nest she had made my own.
The sharing of her bed at that three-year-old time I expected to last for ever. I had never known, or could not recall, any night spent away from her. But I was growing fast; I was no longer the baby; brother Tony lay in wait in his cot. When I heard the first whispers of moving me to the boys’ room, I simply couldn’t believe it. Surely my Mother would never agree? How could she face night without me?
My sisters began by soothing and flattering; they said, ‘You’re a grown big man.’ ‘You’ll be sleeping with Harold and Jack,’ they said. ‘ Now what d’you think of that? ’ Whatwas I supposed to think? - to me it seemed outrageous. I affected a brainstorm and won a few extra nights, my last nights in that downy bed. Then the girls changed their tune: …. ‘It’ll only be for a bit. You can come back to Mum later on.’ I didn’t quite believe them, but Mother was silent, so I gave up the struggle and went.
I was never recalled to my Mother’s bed again. It was my first betrayal, my first dose of ageing hardness, my first lesson in the gentle, merciless rejection of women. Nothing more was said, and I accepted it. I grew a little tougher, a little colder, and turned my attention more towards the outside world, which by now was emerging visibly through the mist….
The yard and the village manifested themselves at first through magic and fear. Projections of their spirits and of my hallucinations sketched in the first blanks with demons. The thumping of heart-beats which I heard in my head was no longer the unique ticking of a private clock but the marching of monsters coming in from outside. They were creatures of the ‘world’ and they were coming for me, advancing up the valley with their heads stuck in bread-| baskets, grunting to the thump of my blood. I suppose theywere a result of early headaches, but I spent anxious days awaiting them. Indefatigable marchers though they were, they never got nearer than the edge of the village.
This was a daylight uneasiness which I shared with no one; but night, of course, held various others about which I was far more complaining - dying candles, doors closed on darkness, faces seen upside down, night holes in the ground where imagination seethed and sent one shrieking one’s chattering head off. There were the Old Men too, who lived in the walls, in floors, and down the lavatory; who watched and judged us and were pitilessly spiteful, and were obviously gods gone mouldy. These Old Men never failed to control us boys, and our sisters conjured them shamelessly, andindeed in a house where no father ruled they were the perfect surrogates.
But there was one real old pagan of flesh and blood who ruled us all for a while. His visits to the village were rare yet deliberate; and when he appeared it was something both sovereign and evil that walked among us, though It was the women who were most clearly affected.
The first time I actually saw him myself had a salt-taste I still remember. It was a frost-bright, moon-cold night of winter, and we were sitting in the kitchen as usual. The fire boiled softly, the candles quivered, the girls were drowsily gossiping. I had fallen half-asleep across the table, when Marjorie suddenly said, ‘Sssh!…’
She had heard something of course, somebody was always hearing something, so I woke up and listened vaguely. The others were in attitudes of painful attention; they would listen at the drop of a feather. I heard nothing at first. An owl cried in the yew trees and was answered from another wood. Then Dorothy said ‘Hark!’ and Mother said ‘Hush!’ and the alarm had us all in its grip.
Like a stages herd of hinds and young our heads all went up together. We heard it then, faraway down the lane, still faint and unmistakable - the drag of metal on frosty ground and an intermittent rattle of chains.
The girls exchanged looks of awful knowledge, their bright eyes large with doom. ‘It’s him!’ they whispered in shaky voices. ‘He’s broke out again! It’s him! ’
It was him all right. Mother bolted the door and blew out the lamps and candles. Then we huddled together in the fire-flushed darkness to await his ominous coming.
The drag of the chains grew louder and nearer, rattling along the night, sliding towards us up the distant lane to his remorseless, moonlit tread. The girls squirmed in their chairs and began giggling horribly; they appeared to have gone off their heads.
‘Hush’ warned our Mother. ‘Keep quiet. Don’t move.’ Her face was screwed in alarm.
The girls hung their heads and waited, shivering. The chains rattled nearer and nearer. Up the lane, round the corner, along the top of the bank - then with a drumming of feet, he was here… . Frantic, the girls could hold out no longer, they leapt up with curious cries, stumbled their way across the firelight kitchen, and clawed the dark curtains back____
Proud in the night the beast passed by, head crowned by royal horns, his milky eyes split by strokes of moonlight, his great frame shaggy with hair. He moved with stiff and stilted strides, swinging his silvered beard, and from the tangled strength of his thighs and shoulders trailed the heavy chains he’d broken.
‘Jones’s goat!- ’ our Dorothy whispered; two words that were almost worship. For this was not just a straying animal but a beast of ancient dream, the moonlight-walker of the village roads, half captive, half rutting king. He was huge and hairy as a Shetland horse and all men were afraid of him; Squire Jones in fact kept him chained to a spike driven five feet into the ground. Yet when nights were bright with moon or summer neither spike nor chains could hold him. Then he snorted and reared, tore his chains from the ground, and came trailing his lust through the village.
I had heard of him often; now I saw him at last, striding jerkily down the street. Old as a god, wearing his chains like a robe, he exuded a sharp whiff of salt, and every few steps he sniffed at the air as though seeking some friend or victim. But he walked alone; he encountered no one, he passed through an empty village. Daughters and wives peeped from darkened bedrooms, men waited in the shadows with axes. Meanwhile, reeking with power and white in the moon, he went his awesome way.. ..
‘Did you ever see a goat so big?’ asked Dorothy with a sigh. ‘They knocks you down and tramples you. I heard he knocked down Miss Cohen.’
‘Just think of meeting him coming home alone….’
‘Whatever would you do? ’
‘I’d have a fit. What would you do, Phyl? ’
Phyl didn’t answer: she had run away, and was having hysterics in the pantry.
Jones’s terrorist goat seemed to me a natural phenomenon of that time, part of a village which cast up beasts and spirits as casually as human beings. All seemed part of the same community, though their properties varied widely - some were benevolent, some strictly to be avoided; there were those that appeared at different shapes of the moon, or at daylight or midnight hours, that could warn or bless or drive one mad according to their different natures. There was the Death Bird, the Coach, Miss Barraclough’s Goose, Hangman’s House, and the Two-Headed Sheep.
There is little remarkable about a two-headed sheep, except that this one was old and talked English. It lived alone among the Catswood Larches, and was only visible during flashes of lightning. It could sing harmoniously in a
double voice and cross-question itself for hours; many travellers had heard it when passing that wood, but few, naturally enough, had seen it. Should a thunderstorm ever have confronted you with it, and had you had the presence of mind to inquire, it would have told you the date and nature of your death - at least so people said. But no one quite relished the powers of this beast. And when the sheep-lightning flickered over the Catswood trees it was thought best to keep away from the place.
The Bulls Cross Coach was another ill omen, and a regular midnight visitor. Bulls Cross was a saddle of heathland set high at the end of the valley, once a crossing of stage-roads and cattle-tracks which joined Berkeley to Birdlip, and Bisley to Gloucester-Market. Relics of the old stage-roads still imprinted the grass as well as the memories of the older villagers. And up here, any midnight, but particularly New Year’s Eve, one could see a silver-grey coach drawn by flaring horses thundering out of control, could hear the pistol crack of snapping harness, the screams of the passengers, the splintering of wood, and the coachman’s desperate cries. The vision recalled some ancient disaster, and was rehearsed every night, at midnight.
Those who hadn’t seen it boasted they had, but those who had seen it, never. For the sight laid a curse upon talkative witnesses, a curse we all believed in - you went white in the night, and your teeth fell out, and later you died by trampling. So news of the phantom usually came second-hand. ‘They sin that coach agen last night, ’Arry Lazbury sin it, they says. He was cornin’ from Painswick a-pushin’ ’is bike. ’E dropped it, an’ run ’ome crazy.’ We committed poor Harry to his horrible end, while the Coach ran again through our minds, gliding white on its rocking wheels, as regular as the Post.