Off with His Head Read online

  She smiled gratefully at him now and his hand tightened for a moment round hers.

  ‘What a lucky chap you are, Guiser,’ said Dr Otterley: ‘with a granddaughter to put a bit of warmth into your Decembers. Wish I could say as much for myself. Are you staying for Christmas, Miss Camilla?’

  ‘For the Winter Solstice anyway,’ she said. ‘I want to see the swords come out.’

  ‘Aha! So you know all about that.’

  ‘Mummy told me.’

  ‘I’ll be bound she did. I didn’t imagine you people nowadays had much time for ritual dancing. Too “folksy”—is that the word?—or “artsy-craftsy” or “chi-chi”. No?’

  ‘Ah no! Not the genuine article like this one,’ Camilla protested. ‘And I’m sort of specially interested because I’m working at a drama school.’

  ‘Are you now?’

  Dr Otterly glanced at the Andersens but they were involved in a close discussion with Simon Begg. ‘And what does the Guiser say to that?’ he asked and winked at Camilla.

  ‘He’s livid.’

  ‘Ha! And what do you propose to do about it? Defy him?’

  Camilla said: ‘Do you know, I honestly didn’t think anybody was left who thought like he does about the theatre. He quite pitched into me. Rather frightening when you come to think of it.’

  ‘Frightening? Ah!’ Dr Otterly said quickly. ‘You don’t really mean that. That’s contemporary slang, I dare say. What did you say to the Guiser?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t quite like,’ Camilla confided, ‘to point out that after all he plays the lead in a pagan ritual that is probably chock full of improprieties if he only knew it.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Dr Otterly drily, ‘I shouldn’t tell him that if I were you. As a matter of fact, he’s a silly old fellow to do it at all at his time of life. Working himself into a fizz and taxing his ticker up to the danger-mark. I’ve told him so but I might as well speak to the cat. Now, what do you hope to do, child? What rôles do you dream of playing? Um?’

  ‘Oh, Shakespeare if I could. If only I could.’

  ‘I wonder. In ten years’ time? Not the giantesses, I fancy. Not the Lady M. nor yet The Serpent of Old Nile. But a Viola, now, or—what do you say to a Cordelia?’

  ‘Cordelia?’ Camilla echoed doubtfully. She didn’t think all that much of Cordelia.

  Dr Otterly contemplated her with evident amusement and adopted an air of cosy conspiracy.

  ‘Shall I tell you something? Something that to me at least is immensely exciting? I believe I have made a really significant discovery: really significant about—you’d never guess—about Lear. There now!’ cried Dr Otterly with the infatuated glee of a White Knight. ‘What do you say to that?’

  ‘A discovery?’

  ‘About King Lear. And I have been led to it, I may tell you, through playing the fiddle once a year for thirty years at the Winter Solstice on Sword Wednesday for our Dance of the Five Sons.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘As honest as the day. And do you want to know what my discovery is?’

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  ‘In a nutshell, this; here, my girl, in our Five Sons is nothing more nor less than a variant of the Basic Theme: Frazer’s theme: The King of the Wood, The Green Man, The Fool, The Old Man Persecuted by his Young: the theme, by gum, that reached its full stupendous blossoming in Lear. Do you know the play?’ Dr Otterly demanded.

  ‘Pretty well, I think.’

  ‘Good. Turn it over in your mind when you’ve seen the Five Sons, and if I’m right you’d better treat that old grandpapa of yours with respect, because on Sword Wednesday, child, he’ll be playing what I take to be the original version of King Lear. There now!’

  Dr Otterly smiled, gave Camilla a little pat and made a general announcement.

  ‘If you fellows want to practise,’ he shouted, ‘you’ll have to do it now. I can’t give you more than half an hour. Mary Yeoville’s in labour.’

  ‘Where’s Mr Ralph?’ Dan asked.

  ‘He rang up to say he might be late. Doesn’t matter, really. The Betty’s a freelance after all. Everyone else is here. My fiddle’s in the car.’

  ‘Come on, then, chaps,’ said old William. ‘Into the barn.’ He had turned away and taken up a sacking bundle when he evidently remembered his granddaughter.

  ‘If you bean’t too proud,’ he said, glowering at her, ‘you can come and have a tell up to Copse Forge tomorrow.’

  ‘I’d love to. Thank you, Grandfather. Good luck to the rehearsal.’

  ‘What sort of outlandish word’s that? We’re going to practise.’

  ‘Same thing. May I watch?’

  ‘You can not. ’Tis men’s work, and no female shall have part nor passel in it.’

  ‘Just too bad,’ said Begg, ‘isn’t it, Miss Campion? I think we ought to jolly well make an exception in this case.’

  ‘No. No!’ Camilla cried, ‘I was only being facetious. It’s all right, Grandfather. Sorry. I wouldn’t dream of butting in.’

  ‘Doan’t go nourishing and ’citing thik old besom, neither.’

  ‘No, no, I promise. Goodnight, everybody.’

  ‘Goodnight, Cordelia,’ said Dr Otterly.

  The door swung to behind the men. Camilla said goodnight to the Plowmans and climbed up to her room. Tom Plowman went out to the kitchen.

  Trixie, left alone, moved round into the bar-parlour to tidy it up. She saw the envelope that Camilla in the excitement of opening her letter had let fall.

  Trixie picked it up and, in doing so, caught sight of the superscription. For a moment she stood very still, looking at it. The tip of her tongue appearing between her teeth as if she thought to herself: ‘This is tricky.’ Then she gave a rich chuckle, crumpled the envelope and pitched it into the fire. She heard the door of the Public Bar open and returned there to find Ralph Stayne staring unhappily at her.

  ‘Trixie—’

  ‘I reckin,’ Trixie said, ‘you’m thinking you’ve got yourself into a terrible old pickle.’

  ‘Look—Trixie—’

  ‘Be off,’ she said.

  ‘All right. I’m sorry.’

  He turned away and was arrested by her voice, mocking him.

  ‘I will say, however, that if she takes you, she’ll get a proper man.’

  III

  In the disused barn behind the pub, Dr Otterly’s fiddle gave out a tune as old as the English calendar. Deceptively simple, it bounced and twiddled, insistent in its reiterated demand that whoever heard it should feel in some measure the impulse to jump.

  Here, five men jumped: cleverly, with concentration and variety. For one dance they had bells clamped to their thick legs and, as they capered and tramped, the bells jerked positively with an overtone of irrelevant tinkling. For another, they were linked, as befitted the sons of a blacksmith, by steel: by a ring made of five swords. They pranced and leapt over their swords. They wove and unwove a concentric pattern. Their boots banged down to the fiddle’s rhythm and with each down-thump a cloud of dust was bumped up from the floor. The men’s faces were blank with concentration: Dan’s, Andy’s, Nat’s, Chris’s and Ernie’s. On the perimeter of the figure and moving round it danced the Old Guiser, William Andersen. On his head was a rabbit-skin cap. He carried the classic stick-and-bladder. He didn’t dance with the vigour of his sons but with dedication. He made curious, untheatrical gestures that seemed to have some kind of significance. He also chided his sons and sometimes called them to a halt in order to do so.

  Independent of the Guiser but also moving as an eccentric satellite to the dance was ‘Crack’, the Hobby Horse, with Wing-Commander Begg inside him. ‘Crack’ had been hammered out at Copse Forge, how many centuries ago none of the dancers could tell. His iron head, more bird-like than equine, was daubed with paint after the fashion of a witch-doctor’s mask. It appeared through a great, flat, drumlike body: a circular frame that was covered to the ground with canvas and had a tiny horsehair tail stuck through it. ‘Crack
’ snapped his iron jaws and executed a solo dance of some intricacy.

  Presently Ralph Stayne came in, shaking the snow off his hat and coat. He stood watching for a minute or two and then went to a corner of the barn where he found, and put on, a battered crinoline-like skirt. It was enormously wide and reached to the floor.

  Now, in the character of the man-woman, and wearing a face of thunder, Ralph, too, began to skip and march about the Dance of the Five Sons. They had formed the Knot or Glass—an emblem made by the interlacing of their swords. Dan and Andy displayed it, the Guiser approached, seemed to look in it at his reflection and then dashed it to the ground. The dance was repeated and the knot reformed. The Guiser mimed, with clumsy and rudimentary gestures, an appeal to the clemency of the Sons. He appeared to write and show his will, promising this to one and that to another. They seemed to be mollified. A third time they danced and formed their knot. Now, mimed old William, there is no escape. He put his head in the knot. The swords were disengaged with a clash. He dropped his rabbit cap and fell to the ground.

  Dr Otterly lowered his fiddle.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I must be off. Quite enough anyway for you, Guiser. If I knew my duty I wouldn’t let you do it at all. Look at you, you old fool, puffing like your own bellows. There’s no need, what’s more, for you to extend yourself like that. Yours is not strictly a dancing role. Now, don’t go on after I’ve left. Sit down and play for the others if you like. Here’s the fiddle. But no more dancing, understand? ’Night, boys.’

  He shrugged himself into his coat and went out. They heard him drive away.

  Ernie practised ‘whiffling’. He executed great leaps, slashing with his sword at imaginary enemies and making a little boy’s spaceman noise between his teeth. The Hobby Horse performed an extraordinary and rather alarming antic which turned out merely to be the preparatory manœuvre of Simon Begg divesting himself of his trappings.

  ‘Damned if I put this bloody harness on again tonight,’ he said. ‘It cuts my shoulders and it stinks.’

  ‘So does the Betty,’ said Ralph. ‘They must have been great sweaters, our predecessors. However: toujours l’art, I suppose.’

  ‘Anything against having them washed, Guiser?’ asked Begg.

  ‘You can’t wash Old ’Oss,’ the Guiser pointed out. ‘Polish iron and leather and hot up your pail of pitch. Dip Crack’s skirt into it last thing as is what is proper and right. Nothin’ like hot pitch to smell.’

  ‘True,’ Ralph said: ‘you have the advantage of me, Begg. I can’t turn the Betty into a tar-baby, worse luck.’

  Begg said: ‘I’d almost forgotten the hot pitch. Queer sort of caper when you come to think of it. Chasing the lovely ladies and dabbing hot tar on ’em. Funny thing is, they don’t run away as fast as all that, either.’

  ‘Padstow ’Oss,’ observed Chris, ‘or so I’ve ’eard tell, catches ’em up and overlays ’em like a candle-snuff.’

  ‘’Eathen licentiousness,’ rejoined his father, ‘and no gear for us chaps, so doan’t you think of trying it on, Simmy-Dick.’

  ‘Guiser,’ Ralph said, ‘you’re superb. Isn’t the whole thing heathen?’

  ‘No, it bean’t then. It’s right and proper when it’s done proper and proper done by us it’s going to be.’

  ‘All the same,’ Simon Begg said, ‘I wouldn’t mind twenty seconds under the old tar barrel with that very snappy little job you introduced to us tonight, Guiser.’

  Ernie guffawed and was instantly slapped down by his father. ‘You hold your noise. No way to conduct yourself when the maid’s your niece. You should be all fiery hot in ’er defence.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Ralph said quietly.

  Begg looked curiously at him. ‘Sorry, old man,’ he said. ‘No offence. Only a passing thought and all that. Let’s change the subject: when are you going to let us have that smithy, Guiser?’

  ‘Never. And you might as well make up your mind to it. Never.’

  ‘Obstinate old dog, isn’t he?’ Begg said at large.

  Dan, Chris and the twins glanced uncomfortably at their father.

  Dan said: ‘Us chaps are favourably disposed as we’ve mentioned, Simmy-Dick, but, the Dad won’t listen to us, no more than to you.’

  ‘Look, Dad,’ Chris said earnestly, ‘it’d be in the family still. We know there’s a main road going through in the near future. We know a service station’d be a little gold mine yur on the cross-roads. We know the company’d be behind us. I’ve seen the letters that’s been wrote. We can still have the smithy. Simmy-Dick can run the servicing side on his own to begin with. Ernie can help. Look, it’s cast-iron—certain sure.’ He turned to Ralph. ‘Isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

  Before Ralph could answer Ernie paused in his whiffling and suddenly roared out, ‘I’d let you ’ave it, Wing-Commander, sir. So I would too.’

  The Guiser opened his mouth in anger but, before he could speak, Dan said: ‘We here to practise or not? Come on, chaps. One more dash at the last figure. Strike up for us, Dad.’

  The five brothers moved out into the middle of the floor. The Guiser, muttering to himself, laid the fiddle across his knees and scraped a preliminary call-in.

  In a moment they were at it again. Down thumped their boots striking at the floor and up bounced the clouds of dust.

  And outside in the snow, tied up with scarves, her hand-woven cloak enveloping her, head and all, Mrs Bünz peered through a little cobwebby window, ecstatically noting the steps and taking down the tunes.

  CHAPTER 3

  Preparation

  All through the following week snow and frost kept up their antiphonal ceremony. The two Mardians were mentioned in the press and on the air as being the coldest spots in England.

  Up at the castle, Dame Alice gave some hot-tempered orders to what remained nowadays of her staff: a cook, a house-parlourmaid, a cleaning woman, a truculent gardener and his boy. All of them except the boy were extremely old. Preparations were to be put in hand for the first Wednesday evening following the 21st December. A sort of hot cider punch must be brewed in the boiler-house. Cakes of a traditional kind must be baked. The snow must be cleared away in the courtyard and stakes planted to which torches would subsequently be tied. A bonfire must be built. Her servants made a show of listening to Dame Alice and then set about these preparations in their own fashion. Miss Mardian sighed and may have thought all the disturbance a bit of a bore but took it, as did everybody else in the village, as a complete matter of course. ‘Sword Wednesday,’ as the date of the Five Sons was sometimes called, made very little more stir than Harvest Festival in the two Mardians.

  Mrs Bünz and Camilla Campion stayed on at the Green Man. Camilla was seen to speak in a friendly fashion to Mrs Bünz, towards whom Trixie also maintained an agreeable manner. The landlord, an easy man, was understood to be glad enough of her custom, and to be charging her a pretty tidy sum for it. It was learned that her car had broken down and the roads were too bad for it to be towed to Simon Begg’s garage, an establishment that advertised itself as ‘Simmy-Dick’s Service Station.’ It was situated at Yowford, a mile beyond East Mardian, and was believed to be doing not too well. It was common knowledge that Simon Begg wanted to convert Copse Forge into a garage and that the Guiser wouldn’t hear of it.

  Evening practices continued in the barn. In the bedrooms of the pub the thumping boots, jingling bells and tripping insistences of the fiddle could be clearly heard. Mrs Bünz had developed a strong vein of cunning. She would linger in the bar-parlour, sip her cider and write her voluminous diary. The thumps and the scraps of fiddling would tantalize her almost beyond endurance. She would wait for at least ten minutes and then stifle a yawn, excuse herself and ostensibly go upstairs to bed. She had, however, discovered a back stairs by which, a few minutes later, she would secretly descend, a perfect mountain of handweaving, and let herself out by a side door into a yard. From here a terribly slippery brick path led directly to the near end of the barn which the land
lord used as a store-room.

  Mrs Bünz’s spying window was partly sheltered by overhanging thatch. She had managed to clean it a little. Here, shuddering with cold and excitement, she stood, night after night, making voluminous notes with frozen fingers.

  From this exercise she derived only modified rapture. Peering through the glass which was continually misted over by her breath, she looked through the store-room and its inner doorway into the barn proper. Her view of the dancing was thus maddeningly limited. The Andersen brothers would appear in flashes. Now they would be out of her range, now momentarily within it. Sometimes the Guiser, or Dr Otterly or the Hobby Horse would stand in the doorway and obstruct her view. It was extremely frustrating.

  She gradually discovered that there was more than one dance. There was a Morris, for which the men wore bells that jangled most provocatively, and there was also sword-dancing, which was part of a mime or play. And there was one passage of this dance-play which was always to be seen. This was when the Guiser in his rôle of Fool or Old Man, put his head in the knot of swords. The Five Sons were grouped about him, the Betty and the Hobby Horse were close behind. At this juncture, it was clear that the Old Man spoke. There was some fragment of dialogue, miraculously presenved, perhaps, from heaven knew what ancient source. Mrs Bünz saw his lips move, always at the same point and always, she was certain, to the same effect. Really, she would have given anything in her power to hear what he said.

  She learnt quite a lot about the dance-play. She found that, after the Guiser had acted out his mock-decapitation, the Sons danced again and the Betty and Hobby Horse improvised. Sometimes the Hobby Horse would come prancing and shuffling into the storeroom quite close to her. It was strange to see the iron beak-like mouth snap and bite the air on the other side of the window. Sometimes the Betty would come in, and the great barrel-like dress would brush up clouds of dust from the store-room floor. But always the Sons danced again and, at a fixed point, the Guiser rose up as if resurrected. It was on this ‘Act’, evidently, that the whole thing ended.