The Green Man

‘What the devil is the matter with you, Mr Allington? Have you gone out of your mind? I’ve had just about all I can take…’

While he continued to expostulate, I turned my back on him and saw the disturbance, still accelerating, pass over the place where he had been and out of sight behind a holly-bush. Perhaps, once launched, it was powerless to change direction; perhaps that direction had been a matter of coincidence; perhaps it had no hostile properties; but I was very glad I had acted as I did. I hurried to a position from which I could track its course. By now it had almost reached the edge of the wood.

‘Come here, quick,’ I called.

‘I’ll do no such thing.’

Once out in the open, the phenomenon spread, became diffused, was soon a minute trembling of grass over an area the size of a tennis-court, and then was nothing. I felt the tension ebb away from my muscles, and walked back to the rector, who was still holding on to the oak tree.

‘Sorry about that. But didn’t you see it?’

‘See it? I saw nothing.’

‘Never mind. Anyway, we can pack up now.’

‘But I haven’t finished the service yet.’

‘No doubt, but it’s taken effect already.’

‘What? How do you know?’

I realized that, under the peevishness inseparable from his expressing any emotion, the Rev. Tom was frightened of me, but I could think of no explanation that would not frighten him more, and reasoned anyway that a spot of fear, from whatever source, could not fail to do him good. So I mumbled something about intuition, got him on the move and endured, first his continued protests, then his huffy silence, while we went back the way we had come. Outside the rectory, he said in a conciliatory tone,

‘You’ll give me a bit of notice about the party, won’t you?’

‘Party? Party? Have you gone out of your mind?’ was what I longed to say, ramming it home with Grand-Guignol-style bafflement, and had started on an ape-man frown before relenting, or deciding it would be more fun to have him wake up to the deception by degrees. Anyway, I said I would do as he asked, thanked him for his trouble and drove home.

In the car-park, I saw Nick’s Morris with its boot-cover lifted, and a moment later he appeared carrying two suitcases and closely followed by Lucy.

‘We’re off, Dad. Got to pick up Jo and get her to bed.’

‘Sure. Well … thank you for coming. For your support.’

Nick glanced at his wife and said, ‘Joyce told us. We’re both very sorry. But I never thought she was right for you.’

‘It’s more that I wasn’t right for her.’

‘Well, anyhow … Come up and see us as soon as you can. Get shot of this place for a bit. Give old David a taste of responsibility.’

‘Thanks. I’ll try.’

‘Don’t just try,’ said Lucy. ‘Do it. You know you can. We’d love to see you. The spare room’s really nice now, and Jo sleeps right through till eight most mornings.’

I kissed her for the first time since their wedding, and that had not been a real kiss. Nick and I kissed and the two of them got into the car. Before he drove off, he rolled down his window to say, out of her hearing,

‘I was going to ask you about that ghost business of yours. Is it still, you know …?‘

‘All taken care of. All over. I’ll tell you the full story some day.’

‘Not some day. The next time we meet. So long, Dad—I’ll ring you tonight. Oh: Amy was asking where you were. Said she had something to say to you. And you listen, whatever it is. And you say something to her. Please, Dad.’

I found Amy sitting up in bed, while the TV screen showed a pair of unengaging candlesticks and an octogenarian voice said, ‘They’re very beautiful, aren’t they? I should say late eighteenth century, not English, of course…’

‘Turn it off, Dad, please.’

I turned it off and settled down on the edge of the bed.

‘How are you feeling, Ame?’

‘Fine, thank you. Joyce is going away, isn’t she?’

‘How do you know?’

‘She told me. She came in to see if I wanted anything and we had a chat, and I asked her if we were going to Eastbourne for the week-end before I go back to school like we did last year, and she said you and I might be, but she wouldn’t be with us then. Then she told me. She was upset, but she wasn’t crying or anything.’

‘How extraordinary. Just telling you like that.’

‘Not really. You know how she tells you things without thinking what you’re going to think about them.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘You don’t seem to have much luck with your wives, do you, Dad? Perhaps you don’t give them enough treats. Anyway, I started thinking about what we ought to do. Now I’m thirteen now. I shan’t want to get married until I’m about twenty-one. That’s eight years, at least that, because I might not find the right man straight away. And I can help you all that time. I’m quite good at cooking already, and if you don’t mind me being in the kitchen when we’re not busy I can learn a lot more just by watching. And I can take telephone messages and things like that, and when I’m older I’ll be able to do other things, like seeing to the accounts. I’ll be very useful.’

‘That’s sweet of you, darling,’ I said, and made to embrace her, but she drew back and glared at me.

‘No it isn’t I’m not saying it just to make you feel better. That’s what you do. I’ve been thinking about it very seriously, and making plans. To start with, I think you ought to sell this place, because of Gramps dying and Joyce going away and the man last night. We ought to go somewhere where I can go to a good school and live at home. Cambridge or Eastbourne or somewhere like that would be the sort of place. Don’t you think that’s what we ought to do?’

‘Yes. You’re right we’ve got to get away. Of course, it depends on what hotels and inns and so on are on the market, where we go, I mean.’

‘It’ll all be up to you, that part of it. Then when we think we’ve found a place, we can go and look at schools.’

‘I’ll start making inquiries tomorrow.’

‘If you’ve got time.’

‘No, I’ll have time.’

She reached out to me, and I kissed her and held her. Soon afterwards I left, after having my offer to turn the TV set on rejected: she said she wanted to go on thinking. It was time to go and shower and change for the evening. As I started on this, I reflected that things had sorted themselves out after a fashion. Or some things had. I was feeling tense again, and my heart was beating heavily, moving towards the point where it would begin to flutter and stumble. Also, as had been happening increasingly of late, I noticed how clumsy I was getting, knocking my shoulder against the bathroom door-jamb, barking my knuckles on the shower-taps when I reached for them, slamming the soap down in the holder with unwilled violence, as if I were drunk, which I certainly was not, or as if my powers of co-ordination were progressively deteriorating. That thought wearied me unendurably, and so did the thought that tomorrow was another week, and I must telephone the insurance company about the Volkswagen, and see the solicitor about my father’s will, and fetch the meat, and bank the takings, and make new arrangements about fruit and vegetables, and prepare for another week after that. And Joyce, and selling the house, and looking for another, and finding somebody to go to bed with.

Much sooner than I could have expected (I had not really had any such expectation), I found I had begun to understand the meaning of the young man’s prophecy that I would come to appreciate death and what it had to offer. Death was my only means of getting away for good from this body and all its pseudo-symptoms of disease and fear, from the constant awareness of this body, from this person, with his ruthlessness and sentimentality and ineffective, insincere, impracticable notions of behaving better, from attending to my own thoughts and from counting in thousands to smother them and from my face in the glass. He had said I would never be free of him as long as the world lasted, and I believed him, but when I died I would be free of Maurice Allington for longer than