parapsychology. He’s like one of these wealthy farmers who pulls out ancient hedges to develop this huge, private enclosure.’
‘Sounds almost scary. Megalomania.’
‘It’s OK,’ Adrian said. ‘It helps if you know how you’re being used.’
The wind is blowing Roger Falconer’s hair into his eyes as the camera tracks him to the summit of the small hill, not much more than a bulge in the middle of a green field.
Falconer turns to camera.
‘This Bronze Age round barrow is known, for no satisfactory reason, as Jed Balkin’s Mump. Whoever Jed Balkin was, the farmer who has to plough this field rather wishes he’d stuck his Mump somewhere else. But why did those prehistoric surveyors choose to put it here? Well. If we look to the west …’
The camera, following his pointing finger, goes into a zoom.
‘… we can see the tower of St Anne’s Church. Which, as we noted earlier, appears to have been built on another prehistoric burial mound. And if we look east …’
Falconer, back in the picture, spins round, the same arm outstretched like a signpost.
‘… we can see a small wood. Now …’
Close up on professional smile.
‘If I were some species of spring-heeled sprite … and I were to take a mighty leap in a dead straight line …’
Falconer braces himself.
‘… into the very centre of that wood …’
The screen fills with sky; Falconer’s voice-over.
‘… where do you think …’
A racing blur of greenery.
‘… I would land?’
The picture jolting and then settling on Falconer standing in the centre of a circle of small, stubby stones, enclosed by trees.
‘This is the Ninestones Circle — although, as you can see, there are only seven left. It’s a key feature of what even I have to admit is one of the more credible of thousands of alleged “ley lines” connecting ancient sites all over Britain. Our New Age friends would claim that this invisible line marks a flow of terrestrial energy across the landscape. The life-force of the Earth. If they’re right, I should be getting a stiff shot of the stuff through my system at this very moment.’
Falconer bending down to place his hands over a stone no more than two feet tall, smiling the kind of smile that says precisely what he thinks of this New Age garbage.
Close up.
‘To the New Agers, Stone Age and Bronze Age person was a wise and civilized soul, very much into peace and love and celestial harmony. He or she would probably have sat where I’m sitting now, meditating and being at one with nature.’
Falconer stands up.
‘Sheer nonsense, of course. The New Agers have reinvented the Stone Agers in their own image. In reality, words like “peace” and “love” would have meant nothing to these people. The key word for them would have been … “survival”.’
Falconer stalking through the woods, now, like an explorer.
‘Stone Age man — and perhaps Stone Age woman, too — moved through the landscape like a guerrilla. In tune with the Earth? Well, of course he was. He recognized that the Earth was his provider, that a relationship was crucial to his continued existence. But let’s not beat about the bush. This was a relationship cemented …’
Tight into Falconer’s savage grin.
‘… with blood.’
A rustling in the undergrowth; the camera pans across the flight of a frightened rabbit into a bush. Falconer’s voice-over.
‘If anything sharpened the senses of Neolithic people, raised their perceptions, gave them an instinctive feel for the environment, it was … the hunt.’
Shots of familiar cave paintings showing lumpen, bovine creatures getting speared.
‘Hunting … killing … was a natural, pivotal aspect of a Neolithic lifestyle which would, one suspects, thoroughly disgust our New Age friends.’
Full-length shot of Falconer holding a twelve-bore shotgun.
‘Blood sports — hunting, shooting — are anathema to many supporters of the Green movement. But green and red are opposites which, throughout history, have been linked together. And there’s little doubt that the original Green Man was a hunter, a stalker, who understood that the true, undiluted life-force was a flow … a gush … of lifeblood.’
Falconer emerging from the wood into the field where Jed Balkin’s Mump swells like a boil.
‘It’s surely naive to deny the extent to which the religous beliefs and rituals of our remote ancestors were linked to violent death.’
Sound of hunting horn and shots of traditional hunt, red-coated men and women and yelping hounds.
‘The ritual aspects of the hunt, as practised by some of Britain’s oldest families, are inescapable. This is still the most dynamic example of a flow of real energy through the landscape.’
Cut to group of huntsmen. ‘Oh yes.’ An old guy with huge sidewhiskers. ‘There’s no doubt about it. The chase absolutely takes one over. I never feel more alive. Indeed, at the height of the chase, one feels … immortal. Godlike, I suppose. All I know is that when I can’t hunt, it’ll be time — ha ha — to put me in the ground.’
The old huntsman clambering onto his horse. Falconer’s voice-over.
‘So which is closest to the earth. This man? Or this woman?’
Cut to shot of flaxen-haired beauty in a cloak and headband sitting in Lotus position at the foot of a standing stone.
Cut back to Falconer, his back to a church wall, the tower rearing behind his head.
‘There’s now a body of opinion which maintains that, psychologically and sociologically, we took a wrong turning when we abandoned the spear and the bow for the plough. When we ceased to be hunter- gatherers and became farmers. Out of agriculture came urban life, a cauldron of constantly recycled energy. Out of urban life was born stress, frustration, crime, domestic violence. What we like to call civilization. Was this the Fall of Man? It’s an issue we’ll be debating in the studio in next week’s edition of Diggers. Join us then.’
Credits roll. A University of the Earth production for Channel Four.
Silence.
Cindy switched off the set.
‘Well.’ Marcus sat up. ‘No wonder he was guest of honour at the bloody Hunt Ball.’
‘Interesting, isn’t it, my loves?’
‘Notice he said “the original Green Man”. Not a million miles from the real Green Man.’
‘Some of the phrases are almost the same,’ Maiden said. ‘That about red and green. Of course, the Green Man may simply have seen that programme. Television puts ideas into people’s heads. This guy sees that programme, a week later he thinks it’s his own concept.’
Cindy slid the videotape into its sleeve. ‘The programme was transmitted, as far as I can make out, last July.
