Hearing secret harmonies (20 page)

‘I’ll warrant you’ve heard tell stories of The Fingers, Mr Jenkins?’

‘You’ve told me quite a few yourself, Mr Gauntlett – the Stones going down to the brook to drink. That’s what we want to make sure they’re still able to do. Not be forced to burrow under a lot of quarry waste, before they can quench their thirst. I should think the Stones would revenge themselves on the quarry if anything of the sort is allowed to happen.’

‘Aye, I shouldn’t wonder. I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Smash up the culvert, when the cock crows at midnight.’

‘Ah.’

I hoped for a new legend from Mr Gauntlett. He seemed in the mood. They always came out unexpectedly. That was part of Mr Gauntlett’s technique as a story-teller. He cleared his throat.

‘I’ve heard tales o’ The Fingers since I was a nipper. All the same, it comes like a surprise when young folks believe such things, now they’re glued to the television all day long.’

Mr Gauntlett watched television a good deal himself. At least he seemed always familiar with every programme.

‘I’m pleased to hear young people do still believe in such stories.’

‘Ah, so am I, Mr Jenkins, so am I. That’s true. It’s a surprise all the same.’

I thought perhaps Mr Gauntlett needed a little encouragement.

‘I was asked by a young man – the one who told you where to find Daisy – if the Stones bled when a knife was thrust in them at Hallowe’en, or some such season of the year.

‘I’ve heard tell the elder trees round about The Fingers do bleed, and other strange tales. I can promise you one thing, Mr Jenkins, in Ernie Dunch’s grandfather’s day, old Seth Dunch, a cow calved in the dusk o’ the evening up there one spring. Old Seth Dunch wouldn’t venture into The Fingers thicket after dark, nor send a man up there neither – for no one o’ the men for that matter would ha’ gone – until it were plain daylight the following morning. Grandson’s the same as grandfather, so t’appears.’

‘If Ernie Dunch is afraid of The Fingers, he ought to take more trouble about seeing they’re preserved in decent surroundings.’

Mr Gauntlett laughed again. He did not comment on the conservational aspect. Instead, he returned to young Mr Dunch’s health.

‘Ernie’s not himself today. He’s staying indoors. Going to do his accounts, he says.’

‘Accounts make a bad day for all of us. You’ve just been seeing him, Mr Gauntlett, have you?’

I could not make out what Mr Gauntlett was driving at.

‘Looked in on the farm, as I said I would, on the way up. I thought Ernie ought to come to the meeting, seeing we were going through his own fields, but he wouldn’t stir.’

‘Just wanted to tot up his accounts?’

‘Said he wasn’t going out today.’

‘Has he got flu?’

‘Ernie’s poorly. That’s plain. Never seen a young fellow in such a taking.’

Mr Gauntlett found Ernie Dunch’s reason for not turning up excessively funny, then, pulling himself together, resumed his more usual style of ironical gravity.

‘Seems Ernie went out after dark last night to shoot rabbits from the Land Rover.’

Rabbit-shooting from a Land Rover at night was a recognized sport. The car was driven slowly over the grass, headlights full on, the rabbits, mesmerized by the glare of the lamps, scuttling across the broad shaft of light. The driver would then pull up, take his gun, and pick them off in this field of fire.

‘Did he have an accident? Tractors are always turning over, but I’d have thought a Land Rover ought to be all right for any reasonable sort of field.’

‘No, not an accident, Mr Jenkins. I’ll tell you what Ernie said, just as he said it. He passed through several o’ these fields, till he got just about, I’d judge, where we are now, or a bit further. He was coming up to the start o’ the meadow where The Fingers lie, so Ernie said, in sight o’ the elder copse – and what do you think Ernie saw there, Mr Jenkins?’

‘The Devil himself.’

‘Not far short o’ that, according to Ernie.’

Again Mr Gauntlett found difficulty in keeping back his laughter.

‘What happened?’

‘Ernie hadn’t had no luck with the rabbits so far. There didn’t seem none o’ them about. Then, as soon as he drove into the big meadow, he noticed a nasty light round The Fingers. It seemed to come in flashes like summer lightning.’

‘Nasty?’

‘That’s what Ernie called it.’

‘Probably was summer lightning. We’ve had quite a bit of that. Or his own headlights reflected on something.’

‘He said he was sure it wasn’t the car’s lamps, or the moonlight. Unearthly, he said. It didn’t seem a natural light.’

‘When did he see the Devil?’

‘Four o’ them there were.’

‘Four devils? What form did they take?’

‘Dancing in and out o’ the elder trees, and between the Stones, it looked like, turning shoulder to shoulder t’ords each other, taking hold o’arms, shaking their heads from side to side.’

‘How did he know they were devils?’

‘They had horns.’

‘He probably saw some horned sheep. There are a flock of them round about here.’

‘It was horns like deer. High ones.’

‘How were they dressed?’

‘They weren’t dressed, ‘cording to Ernie.’

‘They were naked?’

‘Ernie swears they were naked as the day they were born – if they were human, and were born.’

‘Men or women?’

‘Ernie couldn’t properly see.’

‘Can’t he tell?’

Mr Gauntlett gave up any attempt to restrain the heartiness of his laughter. When that stopped he agreed that Ernie Dunch’s sophistication might well fall short of being able to distinguish between the sexes.

‘Appearing and disappearing they were, Ernie said, and there might ha’ been more than four, though he didn’t stop long to look. He figured there might ha’ been two male, and two female, at least, but sometimes it seemed more, sometimes less, one of ’em a real awful one, but, such was the state he was in hisself, he was uncertain o’ the numbers. Even in his own home, when he was telling the tale – Mrs Dunch and me nigh him – Ernie began to shake. He said he didn’t go any nearer to The Fingers, once he saw what he saw, just swivelled the Land Rover round as quick as might be, and made for the farm. He said to me ’twas a wonder he didn’t turn the Land Rover the wrong way up on the run back, banging through the tussocks o’ grass and furrows o’ ploughland. His forewheel did catch in one rut, but he managed to right the wheel again. Mrs Dunch says he was more dead than alive, when he got back. She says she never saw him like that before. Ernie swears he don’t know how he did it.’

‘He thought they were supernatural beings?’

‘I don’t know what Ernie thought – that the Devil had come to take him away.’

‘They must have been some jokers.’

‘You tell Ernie Dunch they were jokers, Mr Jenkins.’

‘If they’d been the genuine ghosts of The Fingers there’d only have been two of them.’

‘Ernie may have seen double. He wasn’t at all positive about the numbers. All he was positive about was that he wouldn’t go up there again that night for a thousand pounds.’

‘This happened last night as ever is?’

‘St John’s Eve.’

Mr Gauntlett, always an artist in effects, mentioned the date quite quietly.

‘So it was.’

‘Mrs Dunch reminded Ernie o’ that herself.’

‘What did Mrs Dunch think?’

‘Told Ernie it was the last time she’d let him out after dark with the Land Rover. She said she’d never spent such a night. Every time the young owls hooted, Ernie would give a great jump in the bed.’

‘What do you think yourself, Mr Gauntlett?’

Mr Gauntlett shook his head. He was not going to commit himself, however much prepared to laugh at Ernie Dunch about such a matter.

‘Ernie looked done up. That’s true enough. Not at all hisself.’

‘Would you be prepared to visit The Devil’s Fingers, Mr Gauntlett, say at midnight on Hallowe’en?’

Mr Gauntlett looked sly.

‘Don’t know about Hallowe’en, when it might be chilly, but I wouldn’t say I’d not been on that same down on a summer night as a lad – nor all that far from The Fingers – and never took no harm from it.’

Mr Gauntlett smiled in reminiscence.

‘You must have struck a quiet night, Mr Gauntlett.’

‘Well, it were pretty quiet some o’ the time. Some o’ the time it were very quiet.’

Mr Gauntlett did not enlarge on the memory. It sounded a pleasant enough one. At that moment Mr Tudor appeared beside us. I don’t think Mr Gauntlett had more to say, either about Ernie Dunch’s experiences at The Devil’s Fingers, or his own in the same neighbourhood. He now transferred his attention to Mr Tudor. Mr Tudor either wanted to ask Mr Gauntlett’s advice, as a local sage of some standing, or the two of them had been hatching a plot, before the meeting, which now required to be carried a stage further. They moved off together towards the easterly fork of the ridge. I pushed on alone.

This final field, plough when Isobel and I had visited the place several years before, was now rough pasture. In their individual efforts to obtain an overall picture of what would be the effect on the landscape of the various proposals, the assembled company had become increasingly spread out. Several were studying maps, making notes as they tried to estimate the position of proposed new constructions and plantations represented by the markers with their different coloured flags. Mrs Salter, pruning-hook under one arm, writing in a little book, was furthest in advance. Now, she fell back with the rest to gain perspective. I found myself alone in that part of the field. Over to the east, the direction where Mr Gauntlett and Mr Tudor had disappeared together, lay the workings of the quarry scheduled by its owners for expansion. High chutes, sloping steeply down from small cabins that looked like the turrets of watch towers, rose out of an untidy jumble of corrugated iron sheds and lofty mounds of crushed limestone. The sun, still shining between dark clouds that had blown up, caught the reflection on the windscreens of rows of parked cars and trucks. To the west, over by Ernie Dunch’s farm, still more clouds were drifting up, in confirmation of knowledgeable forecasts that the day would end in rain.

The scene in the fields round about resembled a TEWT – Tactical Exercise Without Troops – such as were held in the army, groups of figures poring over maps, writing in notebooks, gazing out over the countryside. My own guilty feelings, on such occasions, came back to me, those sudden awarenesses at military exercises of the kind that, instead of properly concentrating on tactical features, I was musing on pictorial or historical aspects of the landscape; what the place had seen in the past; how certain painters would deal with its physical features. That was just what was happening now. Instead of trying to comprehend in a practical manner the quarrymen’s proposals, I was concentrating on The Devil’s Fingers themselves.

The elder thicket was flowering, blossom like hoar frost, a faint sprinkling of brownish red, powdered over the green and white ivy-strangled tree-trunks, gnarled and twisted, as in an Arthur Rackham goblin-haunted illustration. In winter, the Stones would have been visible from this point. Now they were hidden by the ragged untidy elders. The trees might well have been cleared away, leaving The Fingers on the skyline. Possibly the quasi-magical repute attributed to elderberries – the mysterious bleedings of which Mr Gauntlett spoke – had something to do with their preservation.

I was mistaken in supposing Mrs Salter the foremost of our party, that none of the others had pressed so far as the elder thicket. That was what I had decided to do myself, a small luxury, before bending the mind to practical problems. Somebody else from the morning’s expedition must have had the same idea; got well ahead at the start, then moved on at high speed across the big field. Now he was slowly returning towards the rest of us. I did not know him by sight. The dark suit probably meant an official. Most of the other representatives of local authorities had moved off to the right and left by now, or withdrawn again some way to the rear. As this figure emerged from the elder trees, advanced down the hill, I felt pretty sure he had not been among those collected earlier at the stile. He must be a stray visitor, a tourist, even professional archaeologist, who had hoped to avoid sightseers by picking a comparatively early hour to visit the monument. Usually there was no one to be seen for miles, except possibly a farmer herding cows or driving a tractor. This man could not have chosen a worse morning for having the place to himself.

He did seem a little taken aback by the crowd of people fanned out across the landscape, the markers on the higher ground, their coloured flags looking like little pockets of resistance in a battle. He paused, contemplated the scene, then continued to walk swiftly, almost painfully, down the slope. There was something dazed, stunned, about his demeanour. The dark suit, bald head, spectacles, looked for some reason fantastically out of place in these surroundings, notwithstanding the fact that others present were bespectacled, bald, dark-suited.

‘Russell?’

‘Hi, Nicholas.’

Gwinnett was far less astonished than myself. In fact he did not seem surprised at all. He was carrying under his arm what looked like a large black notebook, equipment that had at first assimilated him with other note-takers in the fields round about.