Sandlands Page 16

  Sitting next to Wilf was another of the Ship’s habitués, a man whom Dorothy had never seen without his misshapen corduroy cap. George something, was it, or Jim? ‘Like one o’ thun fairy toadstools.’

  ‘Whether it grew’ – Ivy bestowed an indulgent smile on the two satirists – ‘or whether it was swept here by prehistoric glacial action, the theory of its ritual adoption and use seems equally tenable.’

  Dorothy sought the eye of the Rural Dean, but found his gaze fixed determinedly on the far wall. The rector was simply looking shell-shocked, but you could hardly blame the poor girl, as she’d probably not had a proper night’s sleep since November. Behind the trestle with the tea urn, Sheila Mott was shuffling the cups and saucers with an agitated air.

  ‘Oh, yes, we can be sure that pagan observance in this part of the country continued to thrive for many years alongside Christianity. For many centuries, indeed. We need look no further than the Suffolk witch trials of the 1640s as a case in point.’

  ‘But surely—’ In her perturbation, Dorothy had omitted to raise her hand. She gave an apologetic cough. ‘Um, excuse me, but I thought the witch hunts were just an excess of Puritan fervour? An excuse for people to denounce their neighbours.’ Heresy as nothing more than intolerance and suspicion – or at very worst, the customs of Rome. Surely not actual idolatry? Here in the village?

  ‘Who knows? It is very possible that what Matthew Hopkins and his co-inquisitors understood in Christian terms as communion with the devil may in reality have been worship of the pagan nature gods.’

  ‘But—’ This time Dorothy’s objection faltered beneath the unswerving blaze of Ivy’s regard.

  ‘Of one thing we can be absolutely certain, which is that, in spite of Christian incursion, paganism in Suffolk survived – and still survives today. Its practice has never truly gone away.’

  Into the pregnant silence which greeted this asseveration, from one side of the hall where a group of teenaged girls were gathered whom Dorothy didn’t recognise, there fell like heavy stones three unmistakable words – ‘Burn the witch!’ – which triggered a ripple of gleeful mirth.

  Dorothy had never been more relieved to hear the clunk of the tea urn switch, and Sheila Mott strode up on to the stage. ‘Thank you so much, Miss Paskall,’ she proclaimed above the hubbub, ‘for your fascinating and most thought-provoking talk...’

  * * *

  Holy Week was always the high point of the church calendar at St Peter’s, just as in every other parish church up and down the country. As usual, it began with the Palm Sunday procession which, in all previous years that Dorothy could recall, had involved the children marching up the aisle and back bearing small palm crosses (hand-made in Africa and sold in aid of development charities) and singing various modern hymns of the type favoured by primary school teachers and featuring the word ‘Hosanna’. On one occasion the event had been moved to the churchyard, due to the inclusion in a bid for biblical verisimilitude of Susie Wakeling’s donkey. This year, however, Ivy had more ambitious plans.

  ‘The donkey would be wonderful,’ she told the PCC, ‘if it’s available again. But, with your approval, I’d like to take the procession out beyond our walls. I would like us to symbolise more graphically the entry into Jerusalem. The people brought branches, Matthew’s gospel tells us, and accompanied our Lord towards the gates of the city. The procession should therefore take place outside the citadel, so to speak, and we should be walking up a hill. I had in mind to use Silly Hill.’

  ‘Silly Hill?’ the Air Vice-Marshal repeated, in tones rimed with scepticism. ‘Like for that hoopla at Epiphany?’

  ‘There is a green hill...’ trilled Sheila rather ill-advisedly, ending in a splutter and adding, ‘er, not too far away.’

  Ivy threw her a smile of sympathy and gratitude. ‘Why not? And I thought that this year we might save the money’ – she turned her eyes on Martin Cowling – ‘and use pussy willow instead of palms.’

  ‘Pussy...?’ The Air Vice-Marshal’s voice now sounded strangely compressed; inside his button-down collar his neck bulged.

  ‘Oh, yes. Matthew, you see, only specifies “branches”, but not what kind; in some traditions, the people waved olive boughs. But neither palm nor olive trees were readily to hand in medieval northern Europe, so pussy willow was widely used. Palm Sunday was even known as Willow Sunday in parts of England.’

  ‘Well, there’s certainly plenty of it around the hedges at the moment,’ said Sheila, settling the question. ‘And the kids will have great fun going out to look for it. The little ones can never resist those furry catkins.’

  The Sunday morning was bathed in April sunshine, and you couldn’t deny it was nice to be out of the pews and walking up the hill behind the chattering children with their willow boughs – even if the combination of warmth and gradient left Dorothy slightly puffed.

  As she paused to catch her breath, Ivy moved up and stopped alongside her. ‘Lovely view from here,’ she said, with a sweep of her arm towards the church tower and the chequerboard of green stretching out beyond.

  ‘Holy Hill,’ said Dorothy, who was finding herself infected with the spirit of the occasion. ‘Where better to begin our Holy Week?’

  But Ivy, it appeared, now had a different hypothesis. ‘On some old maps of the parish it is shown not as Silly Hill but Funny Hill.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. And I gather that “funny” might be a corruption of “cunning” – the “cunning folk”, you know, were the pagan healers, practitioners of natural magic. So it may in fact be the cunning hill, a place of spiritual healing.’ She drew in a lusty lungful of air. ‘It certainly feels therapeutic on a day like this, don’t you think?’

  She had a further theory to impart, as well, about the willow branches. ‘The willow was a tree that was sacred to the pagans. They knew it as the tree of water, tide and moon, of dreaming, of intuition and the current of deep emotions. Symbolically, it signifies the spring and the stirring of new life. Its Old English name, “saille” or “sally”, you know, means a bursting out – a sallying forth.’ And with that she sallied on up the path.

  The fine weather held throughout the week but, even so, the exposed summit of the hill – be it Christian or pagan, holy or healing – was a maverick choice of venue for the Maundy Thursday vigil. This was a practice which a few among the St Peter’s congregation had observed in the past, but safely inside the church, in their own pews, and only until 10 or 11 pm before peeling off home for toast and cocoa. Ivy would have no truck with such half-hearted measures.

  ‘Stay here and keep watch with me!’ she cried. ‘That is Jesus’s invitation to us: to watch and pray, and meditate upon the events that await tomorrow, on Good Friday. The disciples slept – the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. Let us not fail Him as they did. Let us stay awake, and not abandon or forsake him, even until cock crow.’

  And Silly Hill, it seemed, was to be their Garden of Gethsemane. ‘Won’t it get very cold, after nightfall, up there on the hill?’ Dorothy had put the question tentatively, thinking of her rheumatism. (And wasn’t the garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives, rather than the top?)

  ‘Don’t you suppose the disciples were also cold?’ was Ivy’s counter to this. But Suffolk even in a clement April was scarcely Palestine.

  In the end, there were only five of them: Ivy, Dorothy and Sheila, a sister of Sheila’s who had come to stay for Easter and said she’d keep them company and the surprise last minute addition of Kimberley Jackaman, with baby Jasper strapped to her chest.

  ‘I never get much sleep anyway, so I might as well be awake up here with all of you and get some good praying done, as at home in bed listening for his majesty’s next scream.’ Though in the event the baby was no trouble at all, and slumbered away peacefully in his cocooning blanket, lulled, perhaps, by the motion of being carried up the hill – unless, that is, he had frozen to death, poor mite.

  It was Ivy’s idea to hold hands wher
e they sat in their little circle. Dorothy had brought the low three-legged stool she used in the garden at home when doing her edges – ‘My days of sitting cross-legged on the ground are behind me, I’m afraid; I fear you’d never get me up again’ – which made it slightly awkward to reach down and grasp Kimberley’s hand to one side and Sheila’s sister’s to the other. But the contact felt companionable, and the warmth was certainly welcome.

  ‘The early Christians often joined hands when they prayed together,’ Ivy told them. ‘It’s a sign of inclusion, of fellowship – but the circle also has other meanings, both in Christian and pre-Christian syntactics. To pagans, the natural cycle of death and rebirth; for Christians, the circle of death and redemption from death, the crucifixion and the resurrection.’

  Dorothy cast an enquiring look at Kimberley, but the rector said nothing, only nodded thoughtfully.

  It was only at around two in the morning, after baby Jasper finally woke up and Kimberley decided to go back to the rectory and feed him in the warm, that Ivy suggested the humming. A gentle, low vibration of the abdominal muscles, she said; an earthy sound, of hidden caves, of buried tree roots channelling the sap of life, the resonance of the womb and the longing deep inside us for creation and renewal. Obediently, although feeling a little self-conscious, they hummed. Ommmm.

  ‘Feel it!’ Ivy urged them. ‘Nurture the spark and feel the flame – feel the cleansing fire!’

  Dorothy didn’t know about rising sap or healing flames, but the humming certainly took her mind off the chilly numbness of her buttocks on the wooden stool.

  Good Friday’s services passed without incident, and the Saturday, of course, provided the usual hiatus in proceedings, a chance to regather one’s forces for the joyful festivities of Easter Day. Kimberley had generously agreed to come along and celebrate the Holy Communion at eleven o’clock, which meant the cancellation of the usual Family Mattins at ten – so Dorothy, who was due to serve as sideswoman, was enjoying the rare indulgence of a Sunday lie-in. She had just been downstairs to make herself a cup of tea, had taken it back to bed and was sitting propped up on her pillows, watching dreamily where the sunlight patterned the bedroom wall through the lace of the net curtains, when the telephone rang. Sighing, she reached for her slippers again.

  ‘Dorothy? I’m sorry to bother you so early in the morning.’ The was something tight about Sheila’s voice which halted Dorothy’s protest that half past eight on a Sunday was certainly not early for her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she found herself asking, instead. ‘Is it your sister?’ A stab in the dark. ‘Is she unwell?’

  ‘My sister? No, no.’ Sheila sounded distracted, impatient. ‘No, it’s Ivy. I’ve had a call. We need to get down to Stone Farm.’ There was no need, but she nevertheless added, ‘Straight away.’

  The Blaxhall Stone was located in the yard at Stone Farm, close to the perimeter wall, in which spot it had presumably lain, either growing or not growing, since it was cast down there by the ploughman of legend. Greyish, low-lying and flat-topped, it measured maybe eight or nine feet long by four feet wide and must have weighed at least a couple of tons. Its surface was lined and pockmarked by centuries of weathering, and dark moss clung in one or two of the deeper hollows, especially on the side most sheltered from the wind. Dorothy had come to see it many times as a girl but she’d had no cause to do so recently, its novelty having faded with the years. For a moment she was recaptured by the astonishment of its sheer bulk, and of its incongruity in this place. No wonder it had spawned stories, or that the ancients thought it a marvel and invested it with mythic powers. But it was only for a moment. Because on top of the stone was something more marvellous still. The stiffly upright figure, with arms outstretched above her head, of Ivy Paskall.

  Strangely, even then, it was her hair that Dorothy noticed first. Unfettered from its usual restraining pins, it fell long and loose about her shoulders, but with knots and tuffets here and there which stuck out at awkward angles, and matted, as though she had been running her fingers through it or had slept on it uncombed and wet. Intertwined with the strands of greying hair were the stems and leaves of various plants: Dorothy recognised cow parsley, vetch and columbine, and trailing strands of stinging nettle. It was the nettles in fact which finally drew her attention downwards, because she was thinking how they’d surely be bringing up welts on the naked skin of Ivy’s back and arms. Naked – just like the rest of her. For Ivy was wearing not a stitch.

  ‘Come, oh, great goddess Eostre,’ came her chanted words, drifting across the raked gravel of the farmyard. ‘Come, bright goddess of the radiant dawn, bringer of upsurgent light. Come, fill me with your tongues of fire, your sweet renewing fire. Come now and reveal yourself, oh, Eostre – come to your handmaiden on this, your glorious resurrection day.’

  * * *

  Parochial Church Council of St Peter’s, Blaxhall

  Minutes of a meeting held in the village hall on Tuesday 12th April 2016 at 7.30 pm

  Item 1: Approval of extraordinary expenditure

  The PCC unanimously approved payment of a non-recurrent fee of £50 to the diocesan officer for deliverance and exorcism, for services rendered.

  Item 2: Revised arrangements for the remaining period of interregnum...

  Except that strictly speaking, as Dorothy reminded herself again, it wasn’t an interregnum; it was only maternity leave.

  Stone the Crows

  ‘Stone the crows,’ my brother Johnnie used to say, although it was actually the last thing he would have done. Mother may have been half his size but she’d have tanned his hide. Rabbits, certainly, he brought home for the pot, bagged not with stones but lead shot from Father’s old shotgun; pigeons, too, plucked, topped, tailed and gutted by the half dozen for a pie. But never crows.

  It was from Sarah’s boy Will, more than fifty years later, that I found out they were rooks, not crows. ‘A rook by itself is a crow, Grandad,’ he said, ‘but a crow with other crows is a rook.’ It’s the way to tell them apart, apparently, though Mother never knew and we called them all crows, growing up. They roosted in the stand of horse chestnuts on the edge of Willett’s farm, down near the level crossing. Still do. And Mother always reckoned that they brought good luck – or, if good luck was a stretch too far, that at least they warded off the bad. A sort of talisman, I suppose, like the ravens at the Tower of London, keeping England safe. I don’t think we believed her, even back then. But that’s why Johnnie was never to shoot them, even later when the war came and shop-bought food was short.

  At the base we had plenty, mind you, even though it was grey and swimming in grease, so it could have been pork or beef or leg of ruddy Labrador. ‘Snake and kidney’, some wags used to call it, and chalk out the ‘n’ in ‘mince’; real toads, they’d claim, in the toad-in-the-hole. Those boys in the mess tent couldn’t cook. Most had been office clerks before the war, or schoolboys whose mothers packed their bread and dripping. Townies, a lot of them, who’d never seen a cow and wouldn’t know her topside from her teats.

  It was at the base that Johnnie picked up that crazy talk of his. Stone the crows, he’d say, and jumping Jehoshaphat, and everything’d be tickety-boo one week and whiz-bang-a-bang the next. Mother wouldn’t have him using profanities, though, not in her hearing. There were boys down at Martlesham Heath from all over: Jocks and Irish lads and even Aussies, though no Yanks yet, of course – that was later. Slang was passed around like dirty pictures, and I think he picked it up at the movies as well. Johnnie loved the movies. They used to put them on in one of the hangars every Friday night, if we weren’t scrambled. Errol Flynn was Johnnie’s favourite, and he could do him to a tee. After a few beers he’d do Katharine Hepburn, too, and even Shirley Temple.

  He started at the base before me, but only by a matter of months, although he was six years older. They soon needed every man they could get, and I was flying before I was nineteen. Boys of eighteen, nineteen, seemed older back then; we felt ourselves
worldly-wise. A year was a ruddy long time in the war.

  Pilot Officers John and Philip Root. I still have the photograph, taken by a ginger corporal called Tug who had a camera – a decent bloke even if he was a pen pusher, a desk wallah: in the chairborne division, as we used to say. The two of us are pictured squinting into the sun in front of Johnnie’s Spit. We’re standing by one blade of the prop and behind us is a section of the wing and the riveted underbelly of the fuselage. Johnnie’s battle blues are all untucked, his cap tipped behind one ear at a rakish angle; the Wingco would have had his guts for garters. Someone, I can’t remember who, has printed our names and ranks along the bottom in spidery white capitals. It was Mother who put the photo in its frame, black lacquer with the moulding picked out in faded gilt, and it stood in pride of place on top of Father’s bureau, beside the kitchen range.

  I used to listen to the crows – that is to say, the rooks – squabbling and shouting up above me when I went to look for conkers. You couldn’t see the birds through the canopy, not at conker time when the leaves were still on the trees: edged with fiery yellow but not yet fallen. But you could hear them all right. Mostly it’s a lot of quarrelsome caa caa caa, but they also make a shorter, harsher ‘tshk’ sound, a bit like a creaking spring. They seemed an unlikely sort of good luck charm to me, with their noisy flopping and flapping in the branches. They’re ungainly birds on the ground, too. I remember watching them with Will last week, feeding among the stubble on Willett’s big wheat field. Such awkward-looking creatures they are, with their bald faces and outsized beaks, that splay-footed walk they have and often with their feathers all awry. And, underneath, those comical, baggy black pantaloons.

  It’s the droopy drawers, according to Will, that’s another sure sign they’re rooks. His own adage, that a crow with others must be a rook, is only a very rough guide, he says. Crows will flock together to feed, and in family groups in spring. But it’s only the rooks that form a proper colony like the one in Willett’s horse chestnuts. In winter when the trees are bare, that’s when you see them best, those great untidy thatches of sticks they build for nests, which look too big for the spindly upper branches that support them, and the birds gathered to roost, cut-out shapes against the sky. Still and silent in a December dusk, they do acquire some sort of dignity. Upright, hooded, they make me think then of brothers in some contemplative order, or watchmen standing guard. Or maybe of a crowd of mourners, hunched and frock-coated, gathered at a rainy graveside.