By Andrea Williams
scrumpy
The ‘Green Man’ is the epitome of the classical,
traditional English country pub. You will have seen it in any of a dozen
films. White rendered walls, red tiled roof, some roses around the door, lawn
to the road sprinkled with weathered benches. You know it so well already I
hardly have to describe the Dickensian interior either. When I moved in to the
village I was delighted to find it there. I was even more delighted to find
that it was as good a pub as it looked, with a landlady who was friendly, always
prepared to stop and pass on the gossip. The locals and regulars who gathered
nightly in the cosy, comfortable panelled bar ensured that everyone knew
everything about everybody, and inside a month I was one of that everyone.
One of their number was an extremely talented wood
carver, Daffyd Thomas by name, his work was displayed in the main entrance
hall. Carvings of Green men were all over the pub, but the hallway linking
stairs, dining room and lounge bar has a lighted glass display cabinet with
carvings for sale, small studies of hands, a pair of matching feet that morphed
into roots. The central piece was the head and upper torso of a green man,
complete with foliage breaking out all over it, not stylised, but carved in
lifelike detail. It was a sort of threequarter depth, flat at the back, hung
against the panelling, cut vertically half way through the ears. Truly a
stunning work, named for the pub, or the pub named for it; either way its
quality was appreciated, as its price tag, on a small stand beside it was
£15,500. Not something I could ever afford.
On the shelf below was a study of a hand, slightly
conventional, in that it was outstretched upwards, the forearm forming the
base. You’ve seen pottery versions as ringstands. The thing about this was the
detail that the carver had incorporated - all the little lines around the
knuckles. The fingernails, the cuticles, all lifelike, though polished. What
lifted it to the status of ‘Art’ and the £5,000 price tag, was the incorporation
of a diamond studded ring on its ring finger. It was somehow embedded around
the finger, and was being displayed on a slowly moving turntable to show that it
was a continuous gold ring. Beautiful, artistic, and a puzzle piece all in
one. At a more prosaic level, I know how to cast metal rings in place into
wood, and it’s something that’s common enough on the handles of certain makes of
bit braces. Very fiddly and time consuming, especially so if you then had to
carve the housing for the diamond. I thought it underpriced given the work
involved and I would have bought it solely to appreciate the effort made in its
creation.
The back bar, or public bar, as it said over the
door, was entered from the lawned area via its own ancient Tudor headed doorway
and matching nail studded oak door. Even the latch was oak. It operated with a
length of binder twine, and casual visitors who asked were told that the binder
twine dated back to t’he third reaper binder machine in the county’ coming to
the village in 1897, and the oiled twine that came with it on a huge reel was
still in use whenever a new twine was needed, though they were down to the last
five yards or so.
It made a good story, often good for a pint for
whoever told it. I admired the veracity of it being the ‘third’ machine, a nice
detail that genuine tall tale tellers appreciate.
I thought I was included into the elite company of
local barroom regulars that knew everything about everyone after a few months,
but I wasn’t - quite. It was well over a year later, coming up to midsummer,
that I was invited to join a small group of regulars who were in the tiny oak
panelled room off the bar we called the snug. It was Roy Brown who came to find
me in the bar and escorted me in there. It was crowded, and when I looked
around there were a dozen others sitting and standing around. No, there were
eleven others, six women, five men, all known to me except for one young lady.
I say young, but she was in her late twenties, good looking in a modest way,
dressed conventionally for the country, which is to say that she had wellies,
and a look-alike for a Barbour jacket over a used but trendy jumper and worn
jeans. She introduced herself as Rebecca, and said she was ‘thrilled to be
allowed to join in.’ Daffyd Thomas was standing in the far corner, a very worn
and grubby looking duffel jacket showing its age concealed his other clothes,
and his black beard, long grey hair, and piercing black eyes looked over the
company from his great height, for he was over six feet tall, and lean with it.
He broke the silence that had descended when we entered.
“We are twelve.” he pronounced. I didn’t like to say
that there were thirteen of us, and he went on. “Midsummer is almost here, and
we must honour the year as we have always done. We twelve will do midsummer
honour. And now we join hands in the oath.” at this point Roy pushed a card
into my hand, and someone did the same to Rebecca. It had on it the words of an
oath to keep secret what was to come, and to keep the ancient ways. I was in!
A secret circle of Gaia worshippers, or animism believers, or something - and I
had been included. Whoopee!
The party broke up immediately after, and my attempt
to ask a question was silenced, and I was told ‘You will be called.’ and that
was that. Next evening, I waylaid Roy, and didn’t stop until I had more of the
story. Daffyd was some sort of priest/druid /haman who presided over ten
novices and two noviciates each year at a ceremony held on top of Stone Hill on
midsummers eve.
“You’re kidding?” I said, “and do we all dance round
that big stone naked with flaming torches?”
“No, no torches. Wait and see.” was all he answered,
and he clammed up, and eventually became a bit threatening unless I shut up. So
I did.
With only two days left Daffyd called to talk to me,
and explained that it was a bit of a harmless jape amongst the villagers, and
‘we’ usually found a gullible tourist or newcomer to join in whilst he
choreographed some marching around the ancient stone at the top of Stone Hill,
and then a big reveal when the dupe, and everyone else, would throw off the
white robes and be left there naked, and everyone enjoyed a bit of naturism
followed by a booze up. All good clean fun, as they say in rural areas, and
good for tourism. Never any shortage of volunteers these days. He left a white
robe, which he assured me was a ritual item handed down for many years, but I
thought was more like a cheap white towelling bathrobe with the “Made in China’
label cut off.
Two days later we met up, at 3:30 a.m.; twelve of us
plus Daffyd, appearing by ones and twos from the young trees that surround the
bare top of Stone Hill. We’d walked up from the car park at the base of the
hill clad only in our white robes, and it was a bit parky in the morning
draughts, midsummer be blowed. I wasn’t impressed with the ancient stone. It
was only about a metre tall, with not much about it that suggested it was green,
or put there, or made by man, or anything. There was some graffiti in the form
of names and dates scratched here and there, and a lump of white calcite or
dolomite or some other mite that looked out at the eastern horizon, but that was
it. Stonehenge has tons more presence, no wonder the crowds go
there.
About four o’clock the eastern sky could be seen
getting lighter, and Daffyd called us to attention, as it were, and began on a
long speech - about Gaia and the earth mother, and the turn of the year, and the
Green Man who looked after the circle of life of all things, and how we honoured
the turn of the year and its passing toward the long darkness when the sun shone
elsewhere, and we would dance and sing and chant to give him comfort and
companionship in his lonely struggle to keep the earth turning in its cycles
within cycles of birth and death and light and dark…
Eventually he stopped. I think his cycle of
breathing needed attending to. It was getting steadily lighter, and he had us
gather in a circle on the east side of the stone, with himself at the other side
of it. Despite the chill, magic or not, it was a grand place to be at the very
height of summer, next to a lump of rock they called the ‘summerstone’ watching
the sun come up.
As dawn approached we stood in our circle before the
summerstone, with Daffyd Thomas at the far side. Everyone began a chant, and
then, slowly at first, a rhythmic swaying from the shoulders, then from the
hips. The chant was hypnotising, embracing, ancient. It didn’t have words, and
yet, as I picked up the sounds from my neighbours and repeated them it seemed
that they were words. Old words, words in a language from beyond
recorded time. The Eastern sky was becoming lighter, the sun god who oversaw us
was returning at full strength once more. Daffyd shouted something, and
everyone threw off the white robes, all but me and Rebecca. We looked at each
other, and I shrugged, and threw off mine, and she felt the peer pressure to do
the same. She was the youngest female there, and I have to say that on any
standard, she was the best looking. If only I could have said the same about
me. I could only claim to have a better physique than the other men around me.
I shouldn’t have looked around. A dozen middle to old aged people standing
naked, chanting and swaying on a hilltop at dawn. No one had anywhere that was
taut. Everyone has wobbly bits, some more than others. They all
wobbled. Some had spare supplies of calories in rolls that overhung
other parts of them, some of them had bits that were in the grip of gravity. It
was a grotesque spectacle, fascinating perhaps, but not pleasant.
The chant grew louder, hypnotic in its intensity as
the light grew. Somehow it entered your head, then your being, then you
were the chant, and the surroundings faded. The first ray from
the horizon flashed across the land and touched the summerstone. Daffyd struck
it with his staff, shouting something like ‘We welcome you and offer
ourselves.” and everyone stood stock still, rooted to the spot.
Literally rooted, that is, my feet wouldn’t move, all
the other’s feet I could see had turned green, then brown, leaves sprouting.
The outstretched hands became twigs, branches, leaves sprouting from people’s
arms, their hair turning into wood, and then, horror atop horrors, writhing
branches and tendrils appeared from their open mouths, curving around and over
their heads. I felt my own body change, felt my tongue spring into a life of
its own and sprout, pushing out of my mouth and the green shoots of the new
circle of life curving around my head. My toes were growing down into the soil,
my arms becoming bushy. I felt the air in my leaves, the sensation of a
thousand tiny parts of me turning to the light, giving me sustenance, eating the
air. The sunlight was spreading down the summerstone, and as I felt the last
remnant of my fleshy body giving way to its new wooden self the light reached
the base of the stone, touched the white, reflected back - and the leaves
retreated. It was the most amazing sensation. I felt life flowing back into
me. I could do anything, I could run a marathon. I could climb Everest, no, I
could RUN up Everest. My head was clear, I could compute the boundary effect of
a black hole, make a fortune on the stock market.
Then I was myself. It was silent, the chant had
ended, the very birds had stopped their chorus, we were no longer a circle of
new trees and new life, just a set of assorted sad, overweight, sagging,
sticklike, blubbery, naked people who said nothing to each other. Mostly we
didn’t meet each others eyes. I searched myself for that wonderful vitality of
a moment ago. It had left me. I was one of the sad naked people, still not
beautiful, sagging in places. I looked for Rebecca. She was still there, now
the only remaining tree. I shouted her name, ran, still naked, across the
space, and touched her, her leaves, her cheek, her flowing foliage., the
upreaching hand, still with a wedding band on its ring finger. Daffyd crossed
to me,
“She is the most beautiful of us, so the gods keep
her. Her soul will endure. If you too want to keep her, then come back with a
saw.”
About the author
When not writing Andrea makes furniture, repairs dry stone walls, and enjoy s
Northumbria.
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