by Beech, Mark
Concealed by brambles, on the edge of Ellie Crinan’s garden, was a statue, about three feet tall, of a swarthy central figure, encircled by the arms of its female acolytes. Plant dyes had been worked into the stone to accentuate the darkness of the god. The structure of its legs was fluid and amorphous, giving the illusion that it rose out of water, that shimmered, white and silvery around its thighs, revealing a prominent phallus. But its most striking features, formed of black opals, embedded in the rock, were its eyes. They surveyed its kingdom of fallen stone, tangled roots and briars, with a proud bitterness and defiance.
Those townspeople that trespassed into the secret places, were tripped by stones and roots. Branches and thorns snagged at their clothing and the path became twisted and confused, before flinging them, dazed and wounded, back at their starting point. And at night the households shunned the old silent places, learning to ignore the occasional shadows they glimpsed, for their presence was fleeting. Aware of something they did not understand, they drew their curtains, relieved that their dreams were undisturbed and their property unmolested.
But in Lugley’s Copse, Ellie Crinan slept fitfully, troubled with an unaccustomed and absurd obsession. The improvements and redecoration of the house were advancing well for she worked hard and tirelessly. And she had discovered the wine cellar, untouched since the previous owner’s death, a year ago. Fastened on the walls, were antique flagons and containers, covered, like the floor, in dust and cobwebs. But one single hook was empty. The imprint of old footsteps approached it, through the detritus. And little splashes of wine stained the stone, as if unsteady hands had fumbled, as the bottles were opened. The image returned each night, troubling her, like a dripping tap. By daylight, her compulsion seemed trivial and foolish. But its mystery and asymmetry disturbed her dreams, where she wandered through the rooms of her house, hunting for the missing object, worrying that she had neglected a task, vital to her plans. As she opened each door, the windows were flung open, their curtains flapping. Moonlight flooded in; a poisonous chalk glow, which corrupted and soiled her new fabrics and furniture. One night, her lover found her sleepwalking, opening and checking her cupboards and larder, before staring, moon-faced and trembling, into the trees of the wilderness.
Loogy’s Cave was accessible to the public by tiers of railed wooden steps that rose gently with the contours of the hill. The town’s historians maintained that the name derived from a medieval hermit and ascetic—Thomas Lugley, the Devout, who sought solace and contemplation, in its depths. A pamphlet had been published, verifying his life, complete with pious verses and homilies, supposedly written during his solitude. A site in the parish churchyard had been designated as his resting place, which alluded to townspeople climbing the hill, with frugal offerings of bread and cheese, to consult with the monk, on spiritual and domestic troubles. The cave’s chalk interior bore the faint outlines of murals that were alleged to have first appeared in the sixteenth century. Their colours drained, they had been rubbed and scoured by a zealous Victorian clergyman, who judged them to be obscene desecrations.
But digging, on the borders of his land, Mr Coates had unearthed a fragment of a bowl, dating from the Roman occupation, with bold abstract scratches embellished, as a frieze. When held to the sun, they took the shape of dancers, that seemed to move ecstatically, as dappled light from the trees, played on its surface. That evening, he had followed the path to the cave, to examine the remains of the erased murals. He saw the same figures, lithe and swirling, gouged into the chalk. By moonlight, the hidden colours and minerals, glowed and shone anew. As he studied the patterns, he had the feeling that he was being observed from the depths of the cave. Overcoming the sense of anxiety and the desire to flee for the safety of his study, the moment passed. But he was sure that something unseen and powerful, had examined and judged him as benign, before allowing him to depart safely.
The story of Thomas Lugley and his association with her own house name appealed to Ellie Crinan and she mentioned the allusion to Mr Coates.
“I doubt the existence of that obsequious monk,” he said. ‘The tale, with its morality and sentimental doggerel seems grafted on to something older and darker. The church has been eager and efficient in claiming that cave as its own. ‘Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath.’ And our county and its surrounding towns are said to have been the last pagan enclaves to fall, for thick forest and marshland held up the progress of the evangelists. Some of the place names like ‘Pokesdown’, ‘Puck Pits’, ‘Pug’s Hole’ and our own ‘Polkhurst’ suggest the late survival of belief in a dark spirit of the woods.”
Seeing her face crease with irritation, he had said no more. But he remembered, as a child, his grandfather warning him against trying to crawl through the undergrowth to reach the pool. The old man told him, that as an adolescent, he had once plunged and swam there. Reflected in the spray, as he emerged from his dive, he had seen the face of a young woman, garlanded with river weed and the wild dog roses. Briefly, she had embraced and caressed him but his eyes had misted and the image dissolved. And he sensed that another figure, jealous and malevolent, watched him from the bank, as he clambered to safety. He felt that only his youth and gaucheness had saved him from attack.
Always there was a melancholy that clouded his grandfather. He shambled through life, marriage and fatherhood, as if reality was a dumb show, a theatre of shadows and futility. He had glimpsed something magical from which he was forever denied. In the depths of his despair, he would quote from Swinburne.
‘White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame, Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.’
When terminal illness finally gripped him, he wandered delirious at night, to the borders of his land. He was found the next morning, scratched and bleeding, as if he had tried to break through the thorn bushes. And by his hands and feet, were strewn huge white roses, just out of reach of his outstretched fingers.
In Mr Coates’ study, was a painting, dating from the late sixteenth century, which captured the savage beauty of the landscape, viewed from the cave. A lone figure walked on a bright summer’s day, full of flowers, into the wilderness, on a narrow precarious path. He wore the nondescript clothes of a peasant or farm labourer and the scene may have been contemporary with the artist or a depiction of past centuries, stretching back to pre-Christian times. He seemed dwarfed and cowed by the power and sentience of trees, rocks and river. The path led through a green watery tract that shimmered in the heat—a mire to ensnare and flounder him. And in the distance, was a dark woodland, hostile and primeval. The tracks of bears and wolves hinted at shapes and eyes, lurking in the deepest coverts, waiting to spring and pounce. The scene conveyed the malign glory of the natural world, where humans ventured at their peril. The fate of the solitary traveller depended on the whims and moods of wood and stone, claw and tooth, and earth and water. He looked back over his shoulder, his mouth gaping, in fear and wonder. And he carried a dripping flagon of purple liquid, surrounded in a garland of flowers. Scrawled in thin black paint, by the anonymous artist, was the title: ‘Pilgrim Bringing Gifts to the Temple of Lugus’.
The artist would not have recognised the same view from the hill. The copses had been felled, the streams, marshes and sacred springs, drained and covered, and the downs had been tamed. Electricity pylons stretched to the horizon, where a ribbon of motorway burned in a petrol haze of bottlenecks and traffic jams. But the land was fertile and swathes of polytunnels mushroomed across the valley, growing forced strawberries, peppers and watery tomatoes. Several fields, where ancient orchards had been grubbed up, were devoted to serried rows of clipped identical vines, adjacent to huge metal vats, which produced sparkling wine. The main river was gated and hemmed in, bullied and barged aside by concrete; its hidden places a dumping ground for armchairs, supermarket trolleys and obsolete computers.
One solitary farm, devoted to livestock, remaine
d. But it was a showpiece, a sham theatre of rural nostalgia, where tethered neutered beasts were docilely paraded for parties of bored school-children and tourists. Its beribboned odourless goats, Billy and Bessy, were stroked and patted, as they sniffed the shampoos and deodorants on the fur of the hybrid dogs of the visitors; the labradoodles, dachsadors, puggles and peek-a-poms. A vintage carriage, pulled by plumed shire horses, which clattered down the quieter lanes, was available for hire. And there was an arrangement with the town’s principal hotel, for guests to rent costumes, dressed as Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, surveying their lands and estates.
But beneath the affluence and prosperity of the town, was an undercurrent of violence and destruction, which exceeded the petty vandalism and minor delinquency of its neighbours. One night, prior to harvest, huge swathes of the vineyard were attacked; the young vines ripped from the ground and the earth stained purple with the torn fruit. On midsummer eve, a solid metal security gate was wrenched free, stripped apart like matchwood, and its broken shards flung through the windows of the exclusive estate, setting off a cacophony of alarms and sirens. During all of these outbursts of rage, timid householders peeped from behind their curtains and saw the shapes of young women, who climbed walls, trees and fences, with the strength and athleticism of leopards.
By a copse, on the edge of town, was a spring, occasionally used by agricultural workers, until Victorian times, which bubbled silver and turquoise. Those that drank from its waters, tasted the flowers and scents of the old forest and the soft blue heather of the hills at dusk. They dreamed of the wild wood and things they dared not speak of to each other, in the morning. The spring lingered, forgotten and unvalued, until the site was concreted to install a temporary workman’s hut and mobile lavatory. That night, residents were woken by a sound like an exploding shell as planks, aluminium and plastic were flung apart. They saw the silhouettes of girls, tearing and ripping, and heard screams, wild and despairing; a savage ululation of animals that had lost their young. “It seemed the forest screamed,” one woman commented to the local newspaper.
After each incident, suspects were questioned and police visited the local comprehensive school—a prestigious establishment, which attracted motivated and academic children from surrounding towns, to warn and threaten its bemused pupils. Anxious to secure a culprit, a scapegoat was found—a lumpen ungainly girl, unpopular with her peers—and wrongly convicted of criminal damage. But during her community service, a gradual change was noted in her appearance and manner. After six months, she acquired a feral grace and beauty, made more alluring by her aloofness and disdain for the townspeople. Shunning the clumsy advances of men and youths, she withdrew into herself and ventured alone at night, far beyond the street lights, into the last remaining wild places of wood and river.
But there was a subtler and deeper malaise that flared occasionally in the heart of the town; a foreboding and sense of imminent danger, that seemed to seep from the hill and infect everyone. The old remembered the air-raid sirens, when they peered into the skies and heard the drone of approaching bombers. But this was worse for the feeling of dread and anxiety were intangible. Tomato pickers in the polytunnels saw visions in the rainbow colours of the plastic that made them feel paltry and diminished. They paused at their work, unable to continue, for the sense of loss and longing. Young mothers, collecting their children from school, looked up in the direction of the cave on the hill, and imagined strange images forming in the chalk; things that fascinated, aroused and disturbed them. Their homes seemed empty and bereft, their children, insipid and commonplace, and they quarrelled and found fault with their stolid uncomprehending husbands.
Doctors were aware of the phenomenon. Vainly, they analysed the symptoms and conditions when despair and incipient madness would fester and erupt, nicknaming the condition ‘Polky’, as something local and endemic to the town. Their tranquillisers and stimulants were ineffective whilst the astute noted historical allusions to the malady. In 1613, “a distemper of melancholy” afflicted the masons and carpenters, installing the bells at the parish church. And some residents of the old quarter knew the story of a house guest, in the latter years of Queen Anne’s reign. Drinking heavily into the small hours, he had seen a shape pass through the trees and blundered after it, cursing and screaming. When he staggered back, his noise and clamour had ceased for his tongue was mute and his arms flapped at his sides, palsied and shrunken. His speech and dexterity never returned as he vainly tried to communicate, in grunts and squeaks, what he had encountered by the water.
Only in the older houses, where the back gardens blended into the wilderness of the concealed path and where the shadows were hidden behind drawn curtains, was there an uneasy calm and acceptance.
But on a July night, of steamy clinging heat, Ellie Crinan sat alone, with her French windows wide open, viewing the moonlit scene. The perfume from clumps of mignonette and the distant rose bushes around the pool, was heavy and intense, drowning even her citrus and vanilla air fresheners and the factory smells of the newly-installed carpets and upholstery. She had strolled awhile on the lawn and noticed, with amusement, the closed blinds and curtains, in the neighbouring houses. By daylight, she had observed to a friend, how wild and abandoned to nature, their gardens seemed, with the absence of barbecues, furniture, children’s toys and trampolines. And she imagined her own view transformed by a conservatory, lights in the trees and alfresco parties, late into the night, with hot food, laughter and clinking glasses. On the borders of her land, her predecessors had planted a clump of cherry, peach and apricot trees, now ripe with fruit. These merged into the trees and bushes of adjacent houses, to create an orchard, providing a seasonal harvest from early summer until late autumn. Its location, so distant from the houses and straddling the wasteland, seemed odd and unnatural.
As she focused on its dark ribbon of foliage, she saw figures moving, oblivious to the nearby thorns. Some were climbing high into the top branches, with the grace and balance of acrobats. She had heard the stories of the delinquent girls who terrorised the town. Being young and fearless, she fetched a torch and strode towards the trespassers. They retreated into the undergrowth and she followed boldly, shining the beam into the thickets. Her feet squelched on fallen fruit and her limbs were whipped and scratched by flailing brambles and twigs. As she advanced, the torchlight zigzagged and briefly, she saw eyes, hostile and defiant. And from the darkness, she heard hissing, as if from a nest of cornered and dangerous animals. She stumbled slightly and caught her leg on a hard sharp object. Touching the gash and inspecting her hand, she found she had cut herself badly and hurried inside, angry at her failure to catch the intruders.
The next morning, remembering the obstruction that had injured her, she retraced her steps to locate and remove it. On the borders of her land, she discovered the statue of the dark god and his entourage. On the thighs and phallus of the central creature, she noticed with disgust, a dried trickle of her own blood. She felt angry and defiled. And the acolytes, which worshipped the obscenity, recalled the girls, who had stolen fruit from her trees. Their arms draped around the figure and their eyes, fixed on its thigh, seemed to mock and taunt her wound.
The statue reminded her of the grotesque carvings and fetishes of primitive peoples; interesting museum pieces for the curious and erudite, but out of place and monstrous, in a suburban English landscape. Its brazen sexuality appalled her and she loathed it, with a puritan disgust. And hanging from a nearby branch, was a leather flagon, its seams and stitching unravelled, to reveal the dark stains and dregs of wine. She knew instinctively that this was the missing object from the wine cellar that had triggered her obsessive nightmares.
She heaved the statue onto the stone steps of her garden path and located a heavy long-handled mallet, from the shed. Her sessions in the health club had made her strong and fit and she wielded the hammer with power and dexterity. The dark god and his acolytes crumbled under her blows. But when she smashed the two strang
e black stones that were its eyes, light caught the scattered fragments, in a rainbow haze. Briefly, she saw the hill above the town transformed. The mushroom settlements and tumours of polythene and glass were gone. Forest, river and heath stretched back, unbroken to the horizon. And with the last strike of the hammer, came an echo of laughter, harsh and cynical at its own destruction; the ghost sigh of a tree, as it slumps and slews malignantly under the axe, crushing the woodsman, who has turned aside, unaware of the danger.
The sensation disturbed her and she stared back into the wilderness, hating the gloom and her memory of the twilight equivocation of the fruit trees as they blended into the wood. She resented their sprawling fecundity, the butterfly-haunted richness of their ripeness and drop, and the untidy flurry of blackbirds and thrushes, pecking and squabbling in the debris of rotting peaches. The huge black cherries were high and inaccessible and she noticed that, in the past, many had fallen and rooted, adding to the tangle of vegetation, which provided cover for thieves and trespassers. She resolved to clear them all and construct a fence or wall, to deter intruders. The leather flagon, she tore from the branch and destroyed.
Early, on the morning when the diggers and earth shifters began their work, there was a bitter altercation with Mr Coates, who pleaded with her to halt the destruction.
“It’s folly enough to provoke the anger of those girls, or whatever they are. But there’s someone else there. I sensed his presence once in the cave, at dusk, watching me, like a wounded animal.”