by Andy Jarvis
Sometimes I run. I don’t intend to, it’s just that sometimes when I’m getting a bit stuck for words in my book, I go out for long walks to clear my mind. I walk out of the village following footpaths, sometimes crossing the old bridge, or along the riverbank, but usually following a local guidebook. Sometimes I look out across fields or through a copse of trees and I see a figure in the distance. It’s usually some old fellow out walking his dog, or angler on his way back to the village. Sometimes I see something crouch or creep along the ground animal-like or jump over a wall. Then I run. I try to get closer as quickly as possible without being spotted. Sometimes it just turns out to be someone out taking a walk and stopping to pick berries or climbing a wall because they’ve lost the footpath or seen a wild apple tree they want to pick across a field. Sometimes they’re just gone before I reach them.
Sometimes I just run. I run footpaths, jump walls, streams and tree roots – anywhere I feel like. I let my soul decide. Sometimes I just want to feel my heart pound and the veins in my head, arms and legs throb to the point of bursting. I want to feel life surging through every fibre in my body, and when I’m exhausted I drop to the ground feeling the soil between my fingers, gasping and inhaling the heightened smell of grass, leaves and roots…the Good Earth.
In the end I couldn’t do it. I thought about it long and hard, even checking out the property prices, but in the end I couldn’t just ditch my best mate. We’re a team after all, like minded to the last. I thought about breaking free of all the things that were holding me down, the old places, the bad streets we grew up in. I mean hell, the situation isn’t getting any better either. Everything I said to Baz about getting away from crime, drugs and violence and the inner city landscape, I meant it. And maybe I will one day. But for now, at least, I’ve decided that me and Baz are going to have to face McBright and the mean streets together.
He followed me down here one weekend after a particularly bad week of McBright being in his face. He cornered me by surprise in the Bell as I sat quietly reading.
“Hey, bud, how’s it going?” he said, standing over me with a couple of pints.
“Baz! What are you doing here?”
“I guess I was getting a little worried, what with you making all the trips down here, and a little bored with nobody to help me prop up the bar on a Saturday night. Just checking up, seeing that you’re okay.”
We had a few quiet pints and a few laughs with the local lads and Baz booked himself a room for the night, both of us having a perfect, dreamless night’s sleep.
In the morning we walked out to the old bridge with a picnic. It was a warm June day. Baz had brought some fishing tackle down with him, which he set down upon the riverbank along with the food. We stood on the grassy slope for a while trying to spot the fish and deciding which would be the best place to cast our lines, then we both fell silent taking the air and watching the slow dark swirl of the water below.
“So…are you still thinking of coming to live down here, bud?” Baz asked softly, and if I’m not mistaken, sadly.
“Well, I suppose. What if I did?”
“I’d miss you, that’s for definite.” Baz fell silent as he watched the water. “You know, mate,” he said, “we used to have a saying between us, remember? In for a penny, in for a pound, I think it went.”
“Sure we did. That’s us. That’s what we’re about, right?”
More silence. Another minute passed. It could have been longer.
Baz was smiling. Not just any smile. The wry smile. The one where he’s desperately trying not to smile. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, bud?” he said.
I was. I was thinking what Baz was thinking. But not for long. “Last one in is a big poofter!” I cried, ripping off my shirt.
“And they get the pints in tonight!” cried Baz, running, stumbling, laughing and undressing his way to the water’s edge.
They say there is a certain light in Candlewell like no other. But when the sun rises Candlewell is much like any other small town out in the English countryside. Folk yawn and stretch their way back to life. Woodpigeons coo away in some loft or barn, a milkman shares an anecdote with a passing vicar, and a young boy helps his dad or uncle paint a fence, happily unaware of an outside world devouring itself. But in Candlewell there is a Light. I suppose you could call it a light of knowledge of world poverty left by an old war-horse preacher that once pricked the conscience of his people. Yeah, okay it’s a cliché, I know…but hell, that’s how the people here still talk about him. And at least that dumbass cliché keeps the donations coming in. So let them have their cliché. Reverend John Cannon’s legacy is a light still remembered in the hearts and minds of the people of Candlewell. And the world is a better place for it.
I never mentioned to Baz about Charlie Wainwright’s phone call. He’d only freak out again. He still maintains that we did something very special that day; that without us some incredible evil would have been unleashed upon the earth. I don’t buy it. The idea that some ordinary mortal – a tradesman no less – could come into the world and save the human race? Ridiculous.
No, I just keep thinking about some poor creature trapped through no fault of its own in the cold murky depths of an English waterway, seizing its one chance to escape – to do what we all have to at some time in our lives.
To go home.
Author’s Notes
Ankou
There are many tales involving Ankou, who is seen as the personification of death in Celtic and Breton mythology. He is said to wear shadow as a black robe and a large black hat which conceals his face. Versions have it that the Ankou is the first dead person of the year, charged with collecting the souls of other deceased before he can go to the afterlife. Some tales say he is said to drive a large, black coach pulled by four black horses; accompanied by two ghostly figures on foot.
There is no tale in mythology that claims he can disguise himself as a serpent or any other animal or that he tempts the living into sin in order to collect souls for the underworld. This part of the story is created by the author.
The Great Father (earth spirit)
Often depicted or described as ‘the horned god,’ the ‘Father’ is mentioned in all Celtic religions. Not to be confused with Satan, the horned god was considered to be the lord of the seasons, harvest, the land of the dead, the sky, animals, mountains, lust and the powers of destruction and regeneration.
Eels
The part of the story with the eel is based on an actual incident. Driving through the countryside to work on the late shift one very rainy evening in autumn, I came to a dip in the road where floodwater had gathered from a swollen stream. Slowing down to navigate the shallow pool, my headlights caught a strange snake-like creature slithering its way across the road. Believing it to be someone’s escaped pet exotic snake – a python or boa, perhaps – I was quite shocked and too nervous to stop and investigate. I arrived at work, still shaken and by chance the first person I mentioned the encounter to happened to be an angler who explained that it was only an eel and he had seen this phenomena once before in his life. I hadn’t started writing ‘Isabel’s Light’ by then, but I retained the memory of the incident, determined to weave it into a future tale.
The common eel, Anguilla anguilla, as found in British waters, rarely grows beyond one metre in length, although the angler I spoke to claimed to have caught much longer ones. The young eels (elvers) travel up British rivers from February to May. Some stay for many years, before returning to the river and the long journey back to the spawning grounds of the Sargasso Sea. The migration happens in autumn, usually between August and October.
About the author:
Andy Jarvis grew up in western Canada. He now lives in the UK, in the north of England.
He began writing in 2002, gaining an Open College diploma in Advanced Creative Writing. He has written several short stories and poetry, yet to be published. Isabel’s Light is his first novel.
Also by Andy Jarvis:
Solway Tide (2014)
The Ray Hunters (to be available later in 2017)