The Woodcutter and his Family

by Frank McGuinness

  My cricket-loving young friend was exceptionally adept in all the arts of necromancy, so this combination of expertise made him a more than irresistible intrigue for the older man. I do not, naturally, know, nor, if I did, would I reveal, should there be any truth in the rumour that one of these gentlemen made a salacious move on the other, only to be rebuffed in no uncertain manner. It is said by many, but not myself, that the root of bad feeling between me and the French cook dates from this, since the young Irishman is reputed to have audibly asserted if he were now or ever in the future inclined to caressing another cock I would be the object of his wandering hands, and not the Gallic groin of my rival.

  Rival he must be called, despite the narrow scope of his subject, because there is no denying the brilliance, and, may I say so, even if such a description might lighten his widely admired sombreness, the sheer buoyancy of his prose – my wife also swears by his poached eggs paprika, as she informed him, a touch too loudly, on the only occasion they met. She was rewarded for the compliment with a look on the face of the great man she described as a slapped arse. I pity the poor woman has to warm his sheets in the winter, she remarked. He is not married, I informed her, but his housekeeper is devoted. She’s welcome to him, she observed – Jesus, for a man so steeped in the pleasures to be savoured from the fruits of the earth and the sea, isn’t it an awful pity he can’t bring himself to be pleasant and speak civilly to your neighbour sitting politely at the table near you? Was he never taught manners maketh the man? And they cost nothing, though I say it myself. Still, you have to admire a mind that tells you to smear a touch of tarragon mustard on your strawberries. From where did he come up with that?

  She still declined to let Proust know her esteem, and so he passed all too quickly, or not quickly enough, out of our circle. To his dying day, I hear he spoke slightingly against us – too Irish to be civilised or some such rot.

  Mind you, he could be right. Are we that lacking in finesse? In savoir vivre? Well, you might say I should come up with an answer there, for if any man stands accused of pushing the boat out into the wild ocean of wine, women and song, might it be my good self and the sewers of books with which I did pollute the minds of the young, the old, those in between, devout schoolgirls divesting themselves of black woollen stockings, reciting the ins and outs, the why and wherefores of my dirty old books, fit only to be repeated by giggling boys, hiding the pages they were reading in hands they had covered with cream of their own churning, swearing to good God and his mother in heaven they would never, ever tell their female relations, from oldest to youngest, how they might scandalise these gentle womenfolk by admitting they had read my words, written on paper best used in a lavatory for a purpose I was only too keen to celebrate?

  And now, look where such dirty talk has landed me. Do you see how I dumped my dose scribbling this filth, and this is how I fare in the end – a living corpse stretched on a single bed, not so much deserted or disowned by his nearest and dearest as reduced in my stupor to realising that all of them, wife, son, daughter, each in their unique way, is as insane as the other, and in their rare moments of clarity, the same trio see me as the source of their madness. Who have I to blame? Well, if I pushed my luck, I could point the finger at Marcel, say my head was turned completely by his queer attentions, but nobody would buy that, especially myself. I could look closer home. Name my own mother and father. But I’m stopped in my reveries of days long gone by what happens next.

  It is my son, Archie, and he’s shaking me. If I could hear, he would be screeching into my deaf ears to open my blind eyes. To see himself and his mother. They beg me not to leave them, for they do not know what will become of them, should I no longer be alive to let my reputation as a writer save them from the forces of darkness overrunning all of Europe. If I could see, I would bear witness to his mother, calmly removing his hands from my fragile body before he shakes apart my bones and sockets, tendons and sinews, their eccentric form bearing next to no correspondence to the normal configurations of the human skeleton, transforming me into – say what? A hyena or a zebra, an exotic creature of the wilds, now trapped inside my sorry skin, longing to be freed by him, my boy, trying in his most useless way to stop me dying?

  It will not work and he knows it, but does it stop him trying to save me? If I could talk, I would be able to advise the young blighter there is no hope for us in this earth we are destined to wander, seeking salvation that always lies beyond us, though we may have feasted and dined ourselves silly on the dreams and nightmares of mankind. What long annals they could fill, and here I swear by all that is ignoble and incriminating I’ll tell my favourite.

  I was in a city, somewhat like Dublin, in a building, a rather grand edifice, resembling a castle. You might imagine I would find myself uncomfortable in this spacious domain. The reverse is true. I walked from room to room in that splendid mansion, and nothing, nowhere seemed unfamiliar. I did notice a clock, a particular clock, on a bare mantelpiece that must have been dazzling white in its day but now showed signs that time was staining it. On the face of the clock there was a winged horse, Pegasus, I’m sure, and if I remember correctly, his legs were the minute and second hands, both of which had stopped, or is it just in dreams everything stops or conforms to a motion of its own making?

  The next I knew the horse beckoned me inside the glass, but I resisted, shaking my head, whereupon without the least ado, he beat his wings and stood before me in this singular location, neighing loudly, stamping his hoofs until I would mount his back and surrender to the whip of his will, taking me where he chanced to fly. The ceilings of this castle, covered with all the constellations in heaven, they opened to allow us safe passage upward, and so it was that I became a cavalry man among the stars, perched, terrified, on the back of this most snarling steed, growing even more fearful, though he came only from dreams, as I well knew, but could not shake sleep from me.

  Why had I been given access to this crazed passage between heaven and earth? Was it to see my city as no human creature ever had before? And what use should I make of this precious knowledge steeping into my mind’s eye? What was sprawled beneath me? Some wonderful fabric never before cut from a bolt of silk that had lapped all the colours Marco Polo brought from Cathay? What was painted on it? The streets and their alleys, the green avenues and gardens, the lanes and squares, the tenements and towers, the sea fed by rivers, the chapels and pagodas, the gutter of its gossip all waiting to be sipped by me like mother’s ruin, most divine delirium.

  How long were we hovering in that air which smelt – I now recall – so strangely of peaches, peeling themselves of flesh, perfumed, desirable, every blind bit of it. Let me have a bite – let me have two – let me devour the lot, stones and all, no bother – I can crack whatever’s put in front of me, and if it chokes, it won’t be for lack of trying to swallow all in one gulp, as a hungry man should do, shouldn’t he?

  Was I always starving, would you say? Did I have a thirst like the Sahara desert? That is what I feel this dying day – a want of river the Liffey could not satisfy. A hole in my belly bigger than the Gresham Hotel. I promised you, my darling, we’d stay a night there, do you remember? Looking up at the lit windows, who could not imagine flopping down on a soft feather bed beneath us, our hands removing skirt and trousers, shaking bedspreads and feeling pillows, the taste of the best champagne tripping us into each other’s arms, smelling the two of us of all the lavender ever grown on the island of Ireland, and never, ever letting each other go for love nor money, for richer, for poorer, for health or sickness. No, no talk of ailments. No brooding on what’s broken and can’t be mended, this night we’re in the Gresham, or as near it as we’ll ever be, clap hands and watch it all appear, the trays laden with the best of turkeys and ham, goose, buttered cabbage, cream to beat the band. Your wish is their command in this grand hotel.

  But will they let a country bumpkin in, you ask, not knowing in their opinion her arse from her elbow? Would you bother entering,
my darling, if they said yes? Who was it brought home to you that you were not fit to skivvy there, let alone stay? What a shower of snobs, and what were they but bloody servants, washing dirt off the spuds? Beggars on horseback, surely, and you were ever less than a beggar in that establishment, you declare, vowing never to step over its threshold, their cruelty towards you breaking your heart for one great reason. Will I tell what? As a girl, you dared to hope when you got married, the breakfast would be there in the Gresham. A beautiful frock, and soft shoes, and a veil whose train stretched the whole length of Ireland from east to west, to your house in Galway, across the Bog of Allen, not a single mark of dirt touching it, and you as pure, as beautiful as your bridal gown, wrapping it around every nook and cranny, every brick of the hotel where you invited everybody – yes, everybody – you’d ever met in your whole life to be your most welcome guest on this most happy of days.

  Day you always wanted. And which I barely gave you. Should I do so now, on the night I’m dying? What is it I could ask you?

  Will you marry me?

  Why should you? What have I to offer? Too late for the ring, too late to shell out for whatever the band of gold sets a man back. So what else instead?

  For your hand would you take a story? Will you settle for that?

  If so, here’s mine –

  Chapter Five

  The Woodcutter and His Family

  How long ago was it there lived a man, a woodcutter, near a forest not that far distant from hereabouts? If I had a clock on the mantelpiece or a calendar facing the clock, I could tell you exactly, but since neither such contraption now exists, being smashed with the mirror that brought us all bad luck, a fine silver mirror that you’d swear was so haughty in its silence – it could buy and sell you as well as answer back that it was fairest of them all – there is little way of pinpointing when he graced these parts. We were ruled then by ogres, but they had long before fallen into a deep, deep slumber from which there seems to be no awakening, since they are still sleeping to their heart’s content in some corner of the country that nobody can now locate, and why should any do so? We are all inclined to let them dream on. Let us forget them in their terror and cruelty.

  But it’s true he is still remembered, the woodcutter. One vague rumour persists he worked as a hangman for some despot or other in China, but that can be ignored. You can be certain he’d never set foot upon a boat in his life, so how could he have reached Asia? On foot? By bike? Driving a van or lorry? No, he put his trust always and ever in Shank’s mare, swearing it the only safe way a body could get about. And in his travels he did cover a fair distance, that is why many do recall him quite clearly, some describing a fine figure of a man, nearly six foot tall but with bad eyes that squinted. Others swear he was stooped, badly stooped, almost a hunchback. I am myself certain about this disfigurement, though no one else goes that far. But almost to a man and woman, they agree with me he had a beautiful singing voice, the sweetest, lightest tenor, with which he entertained all and sundry while he was working, serenading them with ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’:

  Under the greenwood tree

  Who loves to lie with me

  And turn his merry note

  Unto the sweet bird’s throat,

  Come hither, come hither, come hither:

  Here shall he see

  No enemy

  But winter and rough weather.

  Who doth ambition shun

  And loves to lie in the sun,

  Seeking the food he eats

  And pleased with what he gets,

  Come hither, come hither, come hither:

  Here shall he see

  No enemy

  But winter and rough weather.

  Others maintain this is malarkey – he was an Irishman through and through, the woodcutter. Would he be caught dead carousing with this song, a blast from England, the old enemy’s past? But he had no quarrel with the English, many maintain – in fact if you listened carefully to his voice, could you not detect a decided touch of London buried in his brogue, as if the same boy had spent a fair few days settled there, doing what, nobody had discerned, and if they had, they weren’t telling? So there you have it. People argue over what he did and who he was. Men claim that this good fellow, ancient as he was – old as the hills when I first knew him, my father claims – this shadow of a shadow, he could still toil for days at a time, running into weeks, without much rest for the luxury of sleep and sustenance. Women, large and small, insisted he was, contrary to the opinion of their male folk, a rather handsome and vigorous chap, if a little withdrawn and disinclined to mix, with a healthy head of red hair. Others contradicted that, countering it was jet black, and one nervous lady dared to venture that his hair was blue as the sky. She had watched him once washing it in a river, and hadn’t the water itself turned cobalt after he’d dipped his head in, giving his curls a shade of azure when they were clean and dripping wet, staining his face as if it bore the marks of a farmer’s sheep. When she dared to ask him why it was such an unusual colour – could it be hereditary? – he looked at her as if there was nothing irregular in the whole business and kept his mouth shut, not giving her the pleasure of an answer. She knew better than to interrogate further.

  Such is the way we can see each other, none of us agreeing, but all the ladies declared that it was not the scale of his labours that they marvelled at, but rather the precision, indeed the beauty of his carving, when he had a mind to do it. This exquisite decoration on every item of his work depicting the strangest combinations of creatures you could ever imagine, telling stories of women, men and gods, all creating chaos and confusion, holding each other down in positions impossible to repeat – this is what should be given pride of place in all discussion centred on him, and let all bitter word cease.

  Try telling that to the children, though. They were frightened of his fierce eyes. He always seemed to scowl at them for no reason under the sun, and at times when they looked at his cross face, his redness seemed to burn them. A few of the rougher ones bravely spun the story that he barked at them. Indeed, there was serious word in some schools he might bite you with his black teeth, sinking them into the white calf beneath your trouser leg and crippling you for ages, if you ventured too near the smelly, sweaty woodcutter and him slaving away, sending bits of rough bark in all directions.

  One lad wet himself with fear, just listening to tales about the woodcutter in the playground, and everybody saw the big stain. They smelt it too. The poor boy became a laughing stock, and would have earned a nickname of Pissabed for years to come, had his granny not died suddenly and so common sympathy saved him from shame, but the night before his wedding years later didn’t some fine wag leave outside his door a bunch of dandelions just to let him rest assured not everyone forgot how he’d lost control of his bladder and gave them all a laugh, best of luck to him and his blushing bride. Whoever did this, to their credit still and all, they also must have been one of many who were constantly fetching the woodcutter sweet tea and fancy bread a neighbour asked them to deliver, but that gift of grub was no guarantee they would be spared his rough greeting to clear out of his sight or he’d chop them into kindling. Well, that’s a threat one very nervous fellow swore he’d heard, but none could confirm it.

  No, nobody else would back that up, but everyone knew it was far safer when the woodcutter kept his counsel, or if he only said that too little sugar had been stirred into his cup, or he’d point out how few raisins found their way into his buttered slice of treacle scone, yellow and brown in his browner hand, smelling of wind and weather no scrubbing could eradicate, or wash away entirely. Yet he was a cleanly man, who could dispute that? Immaculate on a Sabbath day, he was, when he attended neither church nor chapel. But it was best, if you were attending on him, that he’d simply point to where on the ground they should put his food and drink, leaving him to grunt any thanks he felt should be offered.

  No one ever saw him chewing a bite in his mouth. He had a
horror clearly of that being witnessed, it was suggested. Why? Had he some way of swallowing – some way of digesting, even of cutting his meat that he wanted none to know about? That it was his business and only his, maybe summoning spirits from the earth to protect him from poisoning? Had he been scalded with his mother’s milk, the woodcutter? Did that give him some kind of fear of food, a fear no royal taster, had he the money to pay such a lackey, would remove? Did he take no relish in what was put before him on the table, feel no surge of want for what was lying on his neighbour’s and not his own plate, never stretch his fork out and grab a tasty morsel before anyone else got their claws on it? What was bred in the bone that taught him greed was the least effective of all human vices? Some knowledge that once you satisfied yourself, all that could happen next was to want more? Sate yourself again? Did he know all these things? No one could tell.

  He did, however, cough up for what was put before him. Watch him carefully, and it was never quite as easy as you and I might find it, doling out when we need to pay the piper. There was a way he had, and only he had, of handling money. It was not as if he were cheating, far be it from me to accuse him of that. That is not now, nor would it ever be, my intention, but it’s fair to say there was a slyness to the whole paraphernalia of settling the bills. What do I mean by that? Well, he didn’t so much put his hand in his pockets to extract the monies owed but seemed to breathe coins out of the air, silver, copper, as if he was conjuring them, bright and newly minted, you might say, untouched till now. So he handed over what was owed, asking and expecting no questions, the biggest of which was for us, of course, had he anyone belonging to him?