As if conscious of Faulkner's doubt, the Rector half-turned in his direction and whispered, "We are like women who have a longing to eat coals and lime and filth. We are fed with honour and ease and wealth, yet the gospel waxeth loathsome and unpleasant in our taste, so how can we feed others with what we cannot fancy ourselves?"
Faulkner leaned forward until the large ear with its whorl of red hair was almost touching his mouth and said, slowly and distinctly, "They burnt the parson of this parish. They burnt him on the green. It was a long time ago. His name was Daneman-John Daneman."
"Blessed John Daneman?"
"I don't know about that. But I think you ought to know."
Mr. Deenman said, "My strength hath been my ruin and my fall my stay. I was in danger, like a chased bird. Yet who would wish to remain in a misshapen or ruined nesting hole?"
"I think you should go."
"Where should the frighted child hide his head, but in the bosom of his loving father?"
Faulkner got to his feet. His head throbbed and there was an ache in his eyes which made the late afternoon sun unbearable. He half-dragged the Rector to the varnished board containing the list of the incumbents and jabbed at a name about halfway down, 'John Daneman-suffered '1544'
"And it wasn't Bloody Mary," said Faulkner. "It was the village. They did it off their own bat, on the green. That green!" And he pointed through the open door at the endlessly swinging children and the bus crawling to a stop and women with prams and three old men waiting for death on the Jubilee seat. He saw the slight greying of the Rector's swarthy face, and was satisfied. "So I think you ought to go," he repeated.
"I think I should, too," said Mr. Deenman. "That is, if
I'm to tidy up in the garden and get changed for this evening. Please do thank Lady Sophie for her invitiation-it really is most kind."
Faulkner walked back to the Rectory in order to pick up the landrover. Neither of them spoke. Mr. Deenman was strolling in a concentrated sort of way, eyes on the ground, arms folded and when people said "Good afternoon'' Faulkner was obliged to reply for both of them. The air made him feel better every minute.
As the year wore away, Mr. Deenman came less and less to the Hall. It was not so much a question of his refusing invitations as something implicit in his manner which forbade Sophie to offer them. She was rather pleased about this. It meant that the Rector's way of life was a deliberately chosen independent thing and not in need of her carefully concealed props. Faulkner, on the other hand, felt oddly affronted by such independence. But both of them like the rest of the village, got used to the unkempt Rectory and to the sight of the massive figure bent over a book in an un-' curtained room or futilely slaving away in the garden. Doors and gates were never shut, and a naked bulb was often seen burning throughout the night. The services were taken with a mixture of stillness and commotion. The congregation seemed to have adapted itself to the passionate tirades which occasionally broke into an otherwise conventional sermon, though for Faulkner it was like waiting for a bomb to go off, disappointing when it did not, terrifying when it did.
Once or twice he had sounded the local opinion regarding the Rectory. Decently, of course-the Hall had always been a place where the gossip stopped. To his astonishment, he discovered a good deal of admiration for the grubby clergyman. "He's a funny old bugger all right, but he'll give anybody a hand," was the verdict at the pub. This was praise.
But one Saturday in September, Faulkner took the letters to the post and fancied he saw a very different reaction. It was a hot day but summer was ebbing nonetheless. The baked elms, their green fronds fading into ultramarine shadows, had no illusions about it and rustled with dissolution. The harvest had been snatched up by mechanical grabbers before anyone had realised there had been a harvest and from the high land surrounding the village, already stripped down for the plough, there came a warm and mocking wind which spelt no good. Or so Faulkner believed. He wasn't well; there was no longer the faintest doubt about it. It was not what his doctor said but what he himself knew. Because there was no pain or discomfort, the unusual thing which was happening to him-he had never before had actual, unmistakable illness, the state which alters life or ends it-was novel-almost luxurious. It was the feeling of pure sorrow which he found so acceptable, an acknowledgment of his own personal grief for something within himself which he could not name. He and Sophie had had a holiday in Crete, had a great summer, in fact. But it was the intensification of the rather ordinary views within walking distance of the Hall which had fascinated him ever since they had returned. A group of trees, a pasture, the home woods which he must have seen countless times now burst against his vision in a climax of beauty. At such moments he was praying, though he never knew it.
It was while he was taking one of these last-of-summer walks that he passed by the field where the village football team was playing a visiting side, and that he saw amongst the gaggle of spectators the awkward figure of the Rector. The match ended just as Faulkner was approaching and players and spectators swirled around the tall clergyman, who smiled and nodded. To Faulkner's surprise (to his satisfaction, he was inwardly bound to confess) these nods and smiles were returned by hostile glances or at the best indifference. It gave Faulkner a curious thrill to see the hurt on Mr. Deenman's face when this happened. An overpowering emotion caught at him, the kind of blood-triumph which used to sweep him across the hunting-field in his youth leaped in him with a forcefulness he had long forgotten. What he remembered was Mr. Deenman's remark -"I was in danger, like a chased bird"-and he saw a great squawking crow, winged and unable to soar, tumbling desperately over the furrows and himself in pursuit of it. "Get him, sir!… Get him, sir!" the villagers were howling. The footballers and their girls began to drift homewards, Mr. Deenman with them. Faulkner could hear the distinctive voice but not the words. Now and then there was laughter, and at the gate, raised arms. Waves? "I must get back too," thought Faulkner. Sophie had arranged for the whole house-party to go to the Boulez concert at Cheltenham.
They were still having tea in the garden when he returned.
"These constitutionals of his, they really do wonders for him," said Sophie. "Just look at him!-he looks fit to kill!"
The days which followed were extraordinarily full. The activities which Faulkner and Sophie had put off on account of their long holiday-five weeks-and the harvest crowded one upon the other. This busyness did not make life run fast, as it is supposed to do, but expanded it. London meetings, a Northumberland shoot, an unusual amount of time at his club and the like, took him for a while out of the direct village orbit. Mrs. Blanch's descriptions of what had been going on in his absence left him only politely interested. The truth was that when he was away from home he no longer felt or glimpsed the end approaching. On the other hand, nothing that he did outside the village gave him the extreme, almost ecstatic happiness which he now drew from this familiar place. It had to be gradually, deliciously enjoyed: every hour with it was like a bite of the cherry and the time would come when he had devoured it all and he would no longer exist. This remained inconceivable.
"Let's go away again after Christmas, Sophie."
"Marvellous! Where?"
The way she agreed to his every whim bothered him. She might have wrangled as she usually did; it would make things more normal. She never had possessed subtlety, only a big dull good heart. She had bored the passion out of their marriage.
"I don't know yet. Somewhere warm."
After tea he walked to the post office and was kept waiting while a huddle of boys bought fireworks and Guy Fawkes masks. A few large leaves had trodden into the shop and the sweet smell of decay from the lanes and gardens infiltrated the cluttered room.
"Days drawin' in, sir-Colonel," said the postmaster.
"They must," replied Faulkner. He had not meant to sound either gnomic or vague but at that moment he had witnessed something very strange. The boys who had bought the masks had just got them on when the Rector passed. Wagg
ling their heads and laughing, they were flattered by his elaborate fright, eyes rounded, mouth horrified. But Faulkner, hidden behind racks of grocery, was able to see a spasm of true terror take hold of Mr. Deenman and shake him as if he was in the maw of a fiend. His own heart thudding with excitement, he greeted the Rector and accompanied him on the way home. He took the path which led to the waste at the back of the green and it was as he thought. A huge pile of faggots, straw, cardboard boxes, old tyres and other rubbish stood waiting for the Fifth.
"I-I don't think I had better come this way, if you don't mind," said Mr. Deenman.
"Then you know this way?"
"No-Yes, of course I know it."
"Of course you do."
Faulkner heard the fear and could smell the disgusting evidence of it.
"It's all pretty barbarous, don't you think?" said the Rector.
"I don't know…" considered Faulkner. "Old customs and all that. Fire cleanses, you know."
"Well it certainly will in this instance," said the Rector, pointing at the heap of rubbish.
Joking, thought Faulkner. Nervous reaction. He was about to destroy Mr. Deenman's confidence with a further threat when he felt his arm taken and himself led rapidly away from the bonfire. A voice inside him shrieked with loathing at the contact but the words-if words they were- vanished in the harsh talk. And what a freak the man was! Scuffed boots, old army trousers, stink and hair everywhere! Christ! they would have known what to do with him in the regiment in the old days!
Some children arrived, their arms filled with sticks. "Remember! Remember!" they cried.
"We cannot forget, can we, Rector? Ever."
Mr. Deenman made one of his strange lunging movements, head swivelling forward on powerful neck, trunk twisted to the side but legs somehow immobilised. It was the trapped gesture which Faulkner found so exciting. When it came to the point the Rector was not the kind of quarry which ever got away. In such a fix, it was natural that he should roar. The words erupted over Faulkner but, expected as they were, their force rocked him.
"You do what you do, not for our Saviour, but for sport.
You are like Leviathan in the sea without a hook in his nostrils, a Behemoth without a bridle. I know thy ways. I see thy pain-lusting arm. Smoke always goes before fire, to declare that fire is in kindling, and a sickness before the tempest to tell that the storm is in breeding. You mouth Christ while you play the hobgoblin. You parade virtue while you lurk under a hollow vault. You sent me out of this dear world as a cinder in His dear Name. It was your pleasure- your pleasure only. My flame was by the hour, yours shall be by the eternal clock. I am ash but you are anathema!"
Suddenly, the Rector's voice changed, his body regained its normal gaunt height and he asked, "How long?"
"Three days-Thursday."
"Just after All Souls?"
"I suppose it is; I hadn't thought about it."
"You poor creature," said the Rector gently.
"I?" Faulkner was genuinely astonished.
Mr. Deenman just smiled. "We part here, don't we?"
"He's taking it pretty well," Faulkner thought, watching the confident figure stride away into the dusk.
The fifth was a full day for both of them. Sophie's day for the Bench and his for the County Council. Then they both had to be together in Tewkesbury for a meeting about forestry, as well as do some shopping. Sophie insisted on doing the driving, saying that she liked it, though Faulkner knew that this was one more of her none too subtle ploys to make him ease-up. It was ridiculous really. He felt so strong, at least in that sense. The weather was perfection. A spell of sunshine was coming to a close and the hint of a drastic change-gales, even early snow showers had been mentioned in the television bulletins-made the last lavishly summery hours precious.
Sophie, when they had collected everything, had some tea and delivered a boot-full of iris roots to her cousins in King-ham, trailed home, as she described it. Faulkner, normally a bad passenger, sat docilely beside her, watching the yellow-glaring trees, the small massive stone nouses and the ancient white road. He imagined his ancestors, nearly five hundred years of them according to the local historians, using this same path whenever they journeyed west. Not that he was often given to such ideas. Of course it was something-even in 1970-to a Faulkner, but family in this sense had never meant much to him. Partly because he was rather a dud at history, he supposed. "You'll have to ask my wife," he said when people enquired about the great-something-grandfather who had fought with Monmouth or written 'The Testament of Huntsmen'. Once, when his father had been alive, some Catholic priests had arrived to collect information about the Faulkner who had signed the warrant sending Father Daneman to the stake. They were so embarrassed that it amused his father. When the old man had said, "Other days, other ways," they looked a bit offended, as though time had nothing to do with it. All the same, Faulkner continued to wish that he had not been born in this kind of estate-prison, that he had been free, as most men are, to go and do what he liked where he liked. No arms, no armour. Nothing of that kind left over to anchor him.
A pale rocket tongued its way up the sky and feebly burst.
"Oh, look!" cried Sophie. "I'd quite forgotten. How pretty."
"They should have waited until it was dark."
"Do you remember our firework parties, darling? When was the last-when Rodger was young, I suppose."
"Rodger's twenty-first."
"Of course. What ages ago! We're getting on-do you realise that?"
He did not reply. She chattered on, driving slowly but well, pointing at obvious things, missing things which really interested him, being Sophie. A top-drawer Earth Mother.
More sporadic fireworks went off, mostly a long way away, odd flashes and sparks neutered by the westering sun. 'Pretty'! They filled him with sorrow. It was about six-thirty when they reached home.
Half an hour later, while Sophie was in the bath and Mrs. Blanch was laying the table, he heard the first shouts. He hurried from the house at once, taking the path through the kitchen garden which came out near to the piece of rough ground where they had built the bonfire. Other people were scurrying in the same direction. He could hear their quick tread, their urgent voices, even at times their breathing. Above this confused, thick but modulated sound rose the howls of imprisoned dogs also other massively fretful noises which he took to be panic in the factory farms.
A homing bomber, a cross of lights, passed to the American airfield, adding its throb to the uproar. A group of men ran from the pub and the main road was ablaze with cars and motor-cycles. Isolated bangs gave the turmoil a curious stateliness, like minute guns announcing some great solemnity.
Faulkner could see the unlit bonfire now, tall as a house and immensely ritualistic. The crowd already gathered round it was restless but at the same time restrained. Children twittered in the darkness like disturbed birds. A bull, scenting danger, began a regular bellowing in some unseen field; the row created a brief mirth, then a crude acceptance. Faulkner pushed his way to the bonfire and touched it with his foot. He was near to worship, to love maybe, something overwhelmingly exultant, like a coming to life.
He looked at his watch. Seven-twenty. Then at two young men standing slightly apart.
"Right. Let's go and get him."
The taller of the young men stared at Faulkner and then at his friend.
"We can't start without the Rector, can we?"
Faulkner's playful words produced a cautious grin.
"He'll come when he's ready, I expect, Colonel," answered Mamby, the thresher's son. He continued to look at Faulkner uneasily, his fingers playing with a medallion which hung from his neck.
"He'll come when we tell him to. Come on."
Followed by the couple, Faulkner saw the gleamingly curious eyes of the crowd and felt the heavy expectancy.
"Not long now, eh!" he called out to a group of women, some with small children in their arms. The women replied with shrill, hooting laughs.
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As usual, the naked light burned in the uncurtained Rectory window and, in spite of the sudden drop in the temperature, the front door stood half open. Faulkner walked boldly up to the window and saw Mr. Deenman. He was praying. He knelt on the priedieu with his hands clasped in the most extraordinary manner, on the top of his bowed head, the fingers making a tense arch above the wild grey hair. He was wearing his cassock and was very still. Mamby and his companion were clearly shocked and after the first glance into the room backed away.
"We'll give him another couple of minutes," said Faulkner. "Do the right thing, what!'
The boys scarcely heard him. They had retreated to the overgrown lawn and did not know what to do. Faulkner remained at the window, taking in every detail of the scene, the neat bed, the teapot and cups on the scrubbed table, the letters waiting to be posted, the open book-Teilhard de Something-he couldn't quite see. Also The Times open at the Court page and a sleeping cat. Mr. Deenman himself was motionless. Faulkner looked once more at his watch then strode into the house.
"Daneman-we're ready."
His hand grasped the cassock and shook it. Mr. Deenman rocked slightly then toppled crazily from the priedieu. The young men heard the confusion and rushed forward. They saw the body of the Rector sprawling on the floor, the eyes fixed in terror and a great bare white leg exposed by his disordered robe. And at the same moment there was a boom! as the bonfire was ignited and a long, wailing roar of relief.
Richard Davis (ed) - [Year's Best Horror Stories 02] Page 11