cowboy song, but, as you are a Scot, here goes:
‘ “Find six lusty clansmen to carry me kirkward,
And six sonsie lassies to greet on my pall,
And on my black coffin strew handfuls of heather
To deaden the sound of the sods as they fall.” ’
‘I wish there could have been six of us,’ said McMaster, ‘but she is only a lightweight, so perhaps we can manage.’
‘There
Anthony said to McMaster, ‘Is everything ready?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I cut and sharpened the stake of holly this morning and there is a box. It will be lighter to carry than the coffin. Besides, we mustn’t risk damaging that. The other funeral is to be tomorrow and everything must be in order, because you are a churchwarden.’
Then we were back in the hearse. I had no idea where we were going. Anthony and Hardie had carried out a long narrow box with a fitted lid and I knew it had come from the room which had been a chapel. The box was put on to the back seat of Anthony’s car. William Underedge squatted on the floor to keep the box from sliding off the seat and Hardie and I took the lead in the hearse with Coberley and the gardener sitting on the empty coffin.
It was when we got to Cirencester, with its unmistakable church porch, that I began to have some idea of what our destination was to be. As we headed for Cheltenham, Hardie said, ‘Belas Knap is what we want. You’ll have to guide me. In fact, you’d better drive.’
‘Pull up,’ said William Underedge, who suddenly appeared beside me. ‘I want to change places. For one thing I’m stiff and cramped and for another I expect I know the route better than you do in the dark.’ So they changed over and for the last few miles of the drive William and I were in charge of all that remained of Gloria Mundy, for she was in the coffin again.
Our progress was slower once we were on the byroads, but the journey was finished at last. We waited for Anthony to pull in behind us and then he and McMaster lifted, not the coffin, after all, but the long box, out of Anthony’s car and we began the steep climb up the shoulder of Cleeve Cloud. The moon had risen and the cold night was clear.
Anthony and Hardie carried the box, occasionally relieved by William and myself. Coberley and the gardener followed behind with spade and pickaxe. We slipped and stumbled. I thought of the cowpats and hoped I would not measure my length among them. Hardie swore now and then, but Anthony and William plodded on. I thought of some caving I had done in Derbyshire, and of how I was once lost in the Sahara. I have explored caverns in the Carpathians and I have visited the Callanish stones at midnight on Midsummer Eve, but I have never made so extraordinary a journey as on the long and difficult ascent of Cleeve Cloud in my dream. For every step we took upwards we seemed to slip back two.
The moon, bereft nowadays of all its mystery, gazed blandly down on us and then suddenly above us loomed the great mass of Belas Knap. As we reached the skyline, the wind, from which we had been sheltered on our side of the hill, struck us with its full force and we had to hold on to the box to prevent it from blowing away, for I knew that, even with Gloria inside it again, it weighed no more than a piece of paper.
We were now standing in front of the false portal with its two upright blocks of stone, with their lintel top. The massive boulder which appeared to be the door only served to conceal the fact that an entrance did not exist on this, the highest and widest part of the mound. The openings were all in the sides. (Here my dream played no tricks.)
The wind dropped and the bearers laid the box down. Hardie removed the lid. The body was covered by a folded sheet. Hardie took this out, spread it on the ground and then he and Anthony took up the frail corpse and laid it carefully on to the sheet. In the moonlight the meagre features looked grey and disquietingly old. The red hair seemed to have lost its colour, but the black locks lay like soot against the grey face. Clumsily, and yet with tenderness, Hardie, who was still on his knees, bent forward and stroked the hair back a little. Then he stood up and said, ‘Well, this is it.’ He took from his pocket a short piece of sharpened stick. William shone his torch on it and I saw that it had been freshly cut from a living plant and was bleeding.
‘You’ll want a piece of stone,’ said Anthony, ‘to bash it in.’
‘No. I’ve brought a mallet. Make a quicker and better job,’ said William. I now noticed that he had a hessian bag slung over his shoulder. ‘There ought to be crossroads,’ he muttered.
‘You or me?’ asked Hardie of Anthony.
‘You,’ said Anthony. He knelt and carefully pulled up the ridged sweater and uncovered the pitiful little breasts. Hardie knelt on the other side of the body, placed the sharpened end of the short stake over the heart and struck the holly branch one sharp blow. There was silence. The two men remained where they were. Then Anthony said, ‘Goodbye, Gloria. Don’t come back, there’s a good girl.’ McMaster pulled down the sweater, but I saw that it had turned into the Kilpeck warrior’s byrnie of leather and chain mail.
‘We ought to put her in with the others, you know,’ said Anthony.
I took the torch and made my way round the side of the limestone-built, turf-covered burial place and entered the first of the chambers. It was a short passage rounded out at the end. It was bitterly cold in there and I imagined it still had the smell of death on it from the corpses which had lain in it four thousand years before. When I got back to the others, Gloria was back in her box and the others were sitting on the lid. They rose, we formed up like bearers, three on either side of the box, and bore it towards the passage I had entered.
‘This is number thirty-seven,’ said William Underedge. ‘Make her welcome. She is very cold.’
I struggled out of my dream and found that all my bed-coverings were on the floor and also that a sashcord had parted and the window was wide open.
I went to visit Aunt Eglantine on my way back to my flat next day. ‘I want you to buy me a doll,’ she said. I laughed and told her that a Teddy bear would be more companionable and more cuddly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I fancy a doll. A rag doll would be best, but I doubt whether they make such things nowadays.’
‘I saw something I think might be what you mean,’ I told her, ‘but it was in the shop called Trends and ruinously expensive, I expect.’
