I really didn’t want to stop at all. The frills were just too – frilly! I wanted to get beyond them and into a place where frills were not. Or, where frills were not so – frilly. I shook my head. My thoughts were tangled, as if the frills had extended across my mind, as if frills were psychic knotweed, some tangling agent, that confused thought –
I tried again. Thoughts cannot be bound in knotweed. Metaphors cannot be literal. Frills cannot – engulf your mind –
Clearly!
I became aware that Anthony had put a hand on my arm, guiding me – the frills beneath. ‘Are you cold?’ he said.
‘Not the cold,’ I managed to say back to him, but now the park was surging towards me, each shadowy tendril, each patch of darkness. Yorke moved away, I heard him shivering – but the sound was immense, as if it was echoing across the park. I thought I saw people moving between the trees, their long black robes rustling on the frozen ground. I thought I saw Hypatia, being dragged away! But that was just the tea again. My mind was undone! I was mired in uncertainty and then I heard this shivering sound behind me, so I broke into a run. Wherever I was, it seemed best to keep away from such a sound. With that firmly in mind, I began to hurry. Anthony approved of haste, so he started walking even faster.
‘Tell me more about the henge,’ I said. I was trying to return to the tranquil glades of murderous history. At least that was all established fact. Something to cling onto, surely?
‘Ah well,’ said Anthony. ‘So, the poor murdered Danes were tossed into the henge. By then, you know, the Christian church had taken hold and so these henges were just used for rubbish. The zero – the circle – was at the edge of Oxford, at the time. You can imagine it – pretty ghoulish – the carts moving along, piled with the ragged dead and then these grey-faced workers who had the doleful task of throwing bodies into the pit. That’s all the henge was to them – by then – just an open grave – there were no traces, no earthworks visible. It went round in this great circle, but that didn’t mean anything in the Dark Ages. They’d wiped out the past, jettisoned it entirely.’
‘So they weren’t curious? They didn’t try to – work out – what the hell it was?’
‘No, they just filled it in – with rubbish, with unholy corpses, the bodies of their enemies. No one knew about it, until last year. And that was a complete accident! They were digging the foundations of a new student block, and suddenly, they hit a skull. Just one at first. But one is bad enough! The whole thing was shut down, no more mechanical diggers, they all had to resort to chopsticks, little picks, you know. Full-on archaeology. The contractors were weeping tears of blood. But they found another skull, then another. Then five more, then a load of skeletal limbs. Imagine! The surprise. Horror, even. They kept counting up tragic skeletal remains. Then they realised, these bodies had their heads smashed in, they had been pummelled and beaten and spiked with swords; they had died amidst great violence and suffering. They were burnt. They had discovered the scene of an ancient crime.’
Yorke was moving more and more quickly, so I began to jog, to keep pace with him. My feet pounding on the frilly frosted grass, trampling the tendrils, and I thought of the rhythmic sound of our footsteps as they echoed below – far below! Anthony was continuing, as if we were on a pleasant stroll, and he was gently illuminating the stuff around us. He said: ‘The positive aspect of all this historical slaughter was that they discovered the grave was strangely shaped. It seemed to be part of a circular formation. It went on, and on. They started digging it up and before they knew it they had found the henge. Such chance! No one knew, before that, that the park was an ancient Druidical site.’
*
Around us, mist-blank space, the shadow glade. Cold air filled my lungs and we walked for a while in silence, puffing out smoke.
Then –
‘This sacred circle, running round the park,’ said Anthony. ‘It’s quite neat. If you think about it. And the circle in general. The rivers, making a circle round the city – two rivers, combining to circumnavigate the city, so it’s almost an island. So the henge is a circle within a circle.’
‘No matter it was nothing,’ I said. ‘But then, I’d wondered if he just meant the future. The zero. If we’ve done that one already.’
‘No, I think it’s the earthwork,’ said Anthony. ‘The great zero. Eternal life.’
‘The still point?’
*
The circle. The zero. Everything and nothing. And I was befogged by tea and prevailing atmospheric mist. As we crossed into the centre of the park – the centre of the henge – each movement brought more and more shadowy frills towards me, and it was impossible to tell, at times – where the mist ended, and the cold park began. I could hear a background hum, which seemed to be getting louder as we walked. Anthony was hastening along, hands in his pockets, habitual attitude of existential pallor. I wondered what he even expected to find here. And why the frills were massing towards me! Meanwhile the hum was outside, or inside, my head. I couldn’t tell!
‘Is the Field Guide in the henge?’ I said. ‘Is that it? No matter? In the nothing?’
‘It’s not in the henge,’ said Anthony. ‘The henge is the neolithic channel that circumnavigates the park, the spiritual ha-ha, if you like. It circumnavigates the park and runs past Solete’s former house and through Solete’s former college. The centre of the park is the centre of the henge and therefore the site of maximum spiritual power. But of course he didn’t put the book in the henge. That would be absurd!’
‘But then, why are we doing this?’
‘If we just wait then something might occur to us. A revelation.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Fantastic idea, thanks so much.’
*
Anthony walked faster and faster. There was something relentless about his pace. Of course, the cold, his general hypothesis that coats were evil, or whatever his theory of the coat. It wasn’t quite the time for sartorial philosophy. I understood. I didn’t understand at all. Anything. Even coats were becoming strange and controversial. I carried on, and on, and I felt something like – resistance? My own?
Or, the mist was becoming turgid? We were approaching the centre of the old earthworks, the place of maximum power. If you believed that sort of thing, which I didn’t. And I assumed, neither did Anthony. But we were desperate. Everything else was increasingly intangible. Trees rustled as we walked, and clouds moved slowly above the towers of the city. Electricity hummed, or some other force I couldn’t begin to understand. The moon slid through the mist, staining it silver. Another shadow leered towards me – I recoiled! But it was nothing, of course. Another frill, a tendril, and then I moved into another region of shadow, I stepped into it, felt the cold air grip me. Reality came in and out as if I was receiving it on an ancient radio. Crackling on the wires. Intermissions of static.
*
Now Anthony faded into the mist and became engulfed. I panicked, hurried to catch up with him.
‘Don’t go so far ahead,’ I said.
‘Why?’ He sounded confused. ‘We’re nearly there.’
‘Where?’
‘The epicentre.’
‘How can you tell?’
We both stopped.
‘Oak ash and hawthorn,’ said Anthony. ‘In druidical times these were the sacred trees which indicated the epicentre.’
We looked around. There were no trees. No druids. Nothing but grass and frills and tendrils.
‘So, times have moved on,’ I said.
I was surprised to find Anthony lying on the cold ground, spread-eagled, all the frills flattened beneath him.
‘What are you doing?’ I said. The question was insufficient. A pallid man, a pallid sky, a drowsy park where shadows surged, and something hummed, and everything was tinged with the residual effects of tea . . .
‘Listening,’ he said, his voice muffled.
‘To what?’
He lay there for a long while, as I stood, outraged. Expectant, the
n thinking, but what the hell am I expecting?
‘Wait.’
*
So Yorke was lost, I thought. As he lay there, frills biting at his ankles, with a more general suggestion that he was in total existential disarray, I thought – he’s lost, and he didn’t even drink the tea! It was hopeless trying to reason with him. So, I lay down beside him on the cold earth. My body was instantly cold, the frost crackled beneath me. I began to shiver, and then I heard a yet more sonorous hum, which seemed to come from – underground. The earth was febrile and surprisingly loud. Meanwhile, we listened.
I listened to the hum and Yorke listened to whatever he was listening to as well. I was aware even as we listened that another sound was rising and even competing with the guttural hum. It was the wind, shaking the trees, so they began to bounce and reverberate, like strings on a lyre. Steadily, this eerie chorus rose above the hum.
*
My face was rigid with cold. Anthony stood, shaking his head. ‘It was nothing. There is nothing. Bloody hell!’
‘I heard something, I thought.’ I stood, aware that I was intensely cold.
‘No matter it was nothing,’ said Anthony. ‘I meant that.
Maybe it means: nothing is not necessarily a bad thing. So, it doesn’t matter if it was nothing. Don’t worry. You know, embrace the zero. The great O. Don’t try to fill it.’
‘But it’s full anyway,’ I said. ‘Your freaky Danes and then the shadows. All the frills. And besides, it’s humming!’
Meanwhile the wind was making the trees bow and buck, so their song became louder and louder, as the branches danced and the shadows seemed to dance as well.
‘Are you OK?’ said Anthony.
‘Yes, but you should have seen it. The chrysanthemum was so enormous it encompassed – the universe.’
‘Which chrysanthemum?’
‘The really really big one. The one in the middle of time and space.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘No, it was psychotropic tea. At the Priddy man’s place. A tea cult. I didn’t realise.’
Into a rising storm, we walked. The roar and shout of the wind, tendril forms of the trees, jostling. We were blown out of the park by accelerating gusts of wind and then we were buffeted along the street, shadows jumping in the street lights, branches slapping the walls and occasional bangs as the wind blew something over. A mighty storm. We hurried, our heads bowed. Down one street, a wind tunnel, and then onto Nightingale Lane. Above us, a parapet of gargoyles, casting lurid shadows. Two petrified women, sleeping, side by side and always in their stupor. Above, the silver-mist, the smothered moon. Anthony was walking so fast, I tried to tell him to slow down, but he kept walking onwards, and seemed not to hear me. Onwards, and then the blackness swallowed him.
There followed an unnerving moment, when I could only see frills and surging shadows. Everything else was fading at the edges – I had to focus! I broke into a run – shivering, stumbling. My mind was amazed and now my body seemed to have lost all sense of reasonable parameters as well. I kept saying mind mind mind and then I said body body body and then I began to laugh at such ridiculous words! What did they even mean? I was bowing over, laughing towards the frilly ground, but then I realised the frills had followed me from the park, and besides I heard something humming beside me, or around me, the hum greater and more sonorous than before, and all the birds crying in the trees, and all the frills beneath me and yet rising – surging – and I thought I might faint.
*
Then I saw Solete, but I was so floored by recent events that this failed even to surprise me.
He was walking slowly towards the river. He looked as I had last seen him – tall, stooped, wearing an immaculate suit. An atmosphere of reassuring calm.
‘It’s been very difficult, since you died,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. He was very far away. I had to raise my voice slightly. He was receding, even as I spoke to him.
‘Now I’ve lost Anthony.’
‘That’s alright,’ he said. ‘He’ll be fine.’
‘And what about you?’
I was trying to call him back but now I saw there was nothing but the shadow of Nightingale Tower, the old black river moving beneath, as the trees danced to these fervent songs and bells tolled above. Darkly the river meandered, dreamlike. The moon was mist-smothered and the stars were barely there at all. I kept looking around, I got scared by a cat jumping from a tree, I panted out nervous breaths, my breath swallowed by the wind and I felt as if I was fading too, everything was fading, I ran, I stalled –
*
No one on the street. Cars slurring past, but that hardly helped. I turned the corner, heart banging, I ran and the night gulped, and I reached my door, thinking, oh someone, save me, but from what?
I was inside, breathing deeply – I slammed the door.
*
All that night I had crazy dreams. The storm hammered on the windows, and the street was livid with sound and fury, the trees hissing and shuddering. And I dreamed that there was something dragging me out – into the swart night –
Sliding blackness – sliding upwards –
Then – in my dream – I was flung abruptly into space.
It was like the chrysanthemum vision again except this time I was not in the heart of the cosmos, my dream-flight was more local, and I remained above the old city. The clouds were surging around me, there was a low hum. In my dream the storm had died down and the sky was clear – it was beautiful up there, far above those streets – I’d trodden them so many times, but now they were like patterns of dark and light, the people forming clusters, shifting again and again –
I was paddling through the ether, moving somehow forwards – and beyond – the shadow city all below me, the chimneys puffing out their smoke, the shadows and the people moving from one dark place and into one more pool of light. Now I was moving towards a small house on an island –
Mesopotamia –
I saw the familiar place, old stone, edged around with blackness, Solete’s house. He was nowhere to be seen, but in front of me was Robert Grosseteste. I was about to say something to him – but what? But then I realised, Grosseteste was watching someone else, someone I could now see, when I squinted into the gloom. Grosseteste was monochrome, the light was fading all around him, but the man he watched was standing within a cloud of frills, tendril shapes, and yet, within that cloud were shining forms, like fireflies glittering. And this man even seemed to conjure frills – to make them move – as I watched – as Grosseteste watched. And we watched him move his fingers through the air and now the frills formed into shapes – as if he was writing – words in the air –
They were in no language I could understand – but I knew that I had to remember the shapes – in my dream I was absolutely sure that I must retain them precisely –
So I was staring and staring and trying to commit these shapes to memory –
So many frills. Beautiful, snakelike forms. I didn’t understand. And as for him! He wasn’t making any progress either. He was staring at the shapes, this strange conjurer of frills, and all the firefly lights were glittering around him –
Then the man looked up, as if he was about to speak to Robert Grosseteste and I assumed of course that Grosseteste would speak back to him but instead – Grosseteste began to turn – in my direction –
He was about to look towards me – I was about to say something to him –
Something like –
The wind tousling the reed banks, and ripples spreading on the dark water –
*
I woke into the harsh glare of the morning.
The city raised its chant, an ordinary hum of traffic and the grind of buses and people murmuring to each other but it sounded at times like
Burnished flower! Arise!
I shook my head. After the mild tribulations of the night, I felt it was important to keep a grip on things. Things must be gripped and kept e
xactly where they should be and where they usually are. I was to become a stalwart of reality. I would go and find the book, which was, after all, merely a book, and then I would return to ordinary life. The café. The museum. Work. The parameters of the Real and True.
It had gone a little too far. Poisoned tea and the accidental revelations of the night.
I blamed Yorke for much of it. Then I blamed myself.
*
I was out on the street again, and it was morning. So I walked. The sun had burnt away the mist, torched it with purgatorial fire. I thought, and so I am released from the spell! Then I realised this was all part of an irrational and anti-realist worldview. I had to stop all of this. There was, evidently and plainly, no spell. There had been a hiatus, when my logical mind had been drawn into the random enterprises of hippies and flower-worshippers and even perhaps Cassavetes was a druid. But this had nothing to do with anything. The weather was, as ever, as always.
The weather always changes.
I had to remember. Rocks and stones do not have feelings. I was crossing the river. The blue sky was reflected in the sun-fired water. People were squinting in the sun. They still had their phones at their faces, but now they said, it was much better. Finally, a reprieve from the mist. Can’t complain, can you? And they didn’t complain, they kept walking, onwards, always – over the river and into the city, where they dispersed.
I turned into Nightingale Hall. The Porter nodded towards me again.
‘Someone expecting you?’ he said.
He waved me through.
*
Yorke was sitting in his room, hunched over. The curtains were drawn, the floor was covered with little balls of scrunched up paper. It seemed the man suffered from low self-esteem. There were far too many books for his shelves, and he had stacked the remainder in piles around the room. Meanwhile he was at his desk, wearing another battered suit. When I entered, he rose to his feet.
A Field Guide to Reality Page 11