Clacton Collaboration (3)

The threnody hung in the still, early morning air like the earlier dawn mist.  It crept, wraith-like, out of the dark, green forest to glisten on the clearing, seeming to react with the mournful cry of the lapwings as they wheeled and plunged like photo negatives in a breeze; the calls of the terns and oyster-catchers on the distant shore a sharp counterpoint.

The violin was clear and sharp but the vocals were growled, rough with age and abuse, their meaning both at once clear and indistinct.  This was no celebration of life, but a pained acceptance of loss, of death, a howling at the moon, a railing against injustice.

I found him standing next to the main chimneystack, the only thing that the fire had not destroyed.  Even now, despite the winds, despite the rain, the smell of smoke pervaded everything.  From that point forever more I always associated the smell of burnt wood with death.

He had his back to me and I watched as both hands caressed the instrument to make it cry, to lend itself to his loss.

Beyond him, where the fence once stood, were two mounds of freshly dug soil; one for Sarah and a smaller one for Louisa.  Around him lay the bloody, rotting corpses of his dogs and cattle, left where they perished.

I looked back at him, his shoulders flexing under the plaid shirt.

“Bill,” I said.  “Bill.”

He didn’t stop.  He continued to push his lament into the world like a difficult birth, but he did turn around.

His trousers were of some fur or hide, possibly moleskin or deer.  His feet were encased in elk-skin boots.  His long, grey hair and beard were matted.  He was crying.

He was wearing their war-paint.

Well, not theirs, I suppose.  Somehow he’d found the makings and painted his face the way they did.  As I stepped closer I could see that on top of the colours the black streaks had been crafted using burnt wood.  Apt, I suppose, that he would use the ruins of his home to prepare himself for the war of revenge.

I had to talk him out of it; he would never survive.  But I guess that if I were him, I wouldn’t want to survive..

“Bill,” I said again, “Come on, give up on this.  Come home with me.  My Jenny’s got a stew bubbling on the fire and a bed made up ready for you.”  I held out a hand, but his fingers were still doing their slow dance of death up and down the instrument.  A single tear trickled down his cheek and he once more turned his back on me and faced the resting-place of the two he had loved most in all the world.

There would be no talking to him until the lament was finished.  I walked across to a fallen tree and sat down, taking some tobacco from the tin in my pocket, and started to chew it.

It was hard to believe that Sarah and Louisa were no more.  The daughter had been the image of her mother, both of them with heart-shaped faces, green eyes and so full of life.  Little Louisa was never still; she never walked if she could run, dance or skip, and the words tumbled from her mouth in the same fashion.  Whenever I came up from the valley to visit the family the house was always full of music and laughter.  The contrast of the laughter with the sad lament that now spun its horror through the woods was nearly unbearable.

I wish I could move time on and to make it later, years or decades later.  But I can’t.  I sat and chewed as I listened to that unearthly sound and reflected on what he had lost and on what I still had.

I looked without seeing.  Listened without hearing.  Desperately needing the lament to end and desperate to persuade him to come home with me.

Without me thinking, my finger and thumb found the soggy mass of chewing tobacco that was clogged in the gap in my back teeth.  I prised it away and threw the offending mush in the scrub.  I don’t know how long I’d been chewing or sitting there.  But when I looked to the west the sun was below the mountain tops and the day closing fast.  I turned to face Bill.

He was standing looking at me.  He raised his arm and, with a dismissive yank, he broke his instrument and threw it to the ground.  While the action shocked me it was obviously cathartic for him.  His face lifted to the heavens; his mouth opened and he screamed for all he was worth.  Words that I’d not heard for years came tumbling out.  Words and incantations that had been outlawed these 20 long years.  Words that were only spoken softly among friends.  Words that we never spoke aloud.  Yet here he was, screaming them for all to hear.  I couldn’t turn away.  But I wanted to.  The penalty for using the language was imprisonment and 50 lashes for a man.  For a woman, it was death.  You could lose everything if you were seen to be encouraging it.  I had too much to lose.  Yet, I’d known Bill all my life.  I looked at the graves of his wife and daughter and knew that I couldn’t leave.

He turned again, away from me, away from his ruined house and the graves of his wife and daughter. He started walking slowly towards the mountains to a place we all feared to go. The light was fading fast. I could only hear the odd sound or two as the creatures of the day were preparing to take their rest, and those of the night preparing to stalk their prey. Bill had transformed himself into a beast of darkness. There would be no mercy.

In the stillness, I felt myself on the edge between the two worlds. Should I follow Bill or take the route back through the forest to the safety of the village. I decided on the latter, telling myself that perhaps I could get some of the villagers to go with me to rescue Bill before he became lost to us forever.  

I found my kinsmen gathered together in the village. Some women were swaying and murmuring the lament for the dead, echoing the melancholy air played on the violin earlier. Others were saying prayers to ward off the evil spirits. The men stood in grim silence, their forms silhouetted by the light of the lanterns hanging from the doorways of the surrounding dwellings. All became silent as they saw me approach. They were waiting for me to speak.

“He has buried his family and gone to the mountains to take his revenge!” I shouted. “I didn’t know what to do.”

I did not mention the incantations. There was an atmosphere of disappointment at my failure to deal with my friend’s grief. But then Ric the Elder stepped forward. Deep, dark, bronzed, a blood-relation of Bill.

”There is nothing we can do tonight,” he said. “Let us meet again at first light and decide what to do. Bill may change his mind and turn back to us of his own accord tomorrow.”

I was surprised at his decision.

The villagers slowly and quietly walked back to their homes leaving me alone in the gloom. I felt the night closing in around me. I felt Bill’s desolation and utter aloneness envelop me. We had lost our music-maker to the sinister side. The song of the birds would not be able to compensate for our loss.

I eventually went home and slept fitfully, determined to stay awake to hear the first single note of birdsong that would show it was always darkest just before dawn.

My Jenny snored beside me, her snores so little characteristic of her open daytime face and delightful trill.  In between my moments of sleep, I thought I heard Bill’s threnody again, pining like a theremin.  This was no dream, because I never dreamed.
         
But then I was full awake.  Jenny stood by the window.  It was now fully dawn, its beginnings having passed me by.

“He’s come back,” she piped.

I poked a plug of tobacco into my mouth from the bedside table and approached the window to stand behind Jenny.  I could see that Ric the Elder was framed by his own window twenty yards opposite our window.  And there between Ric’s face and Jenny’s was bushy-legged Bill’s shadow, flanked by what I saw as two shining angels, one tall one short.  I call them angels, but they may have been many things. It was like a mummer’s show, and its sweet music penetrated the window as if the dawn itself was golden sound.

As the two angels faded like burnt negatives, I saw that Bill’s shadow carried a new instrument, having earlier broken his old one.  A harp in the shape of a bird. 

“His soul is its own threnody,” whispered Jenny, hardly knowing what she meant and to whom she spoke.

I put my hands on Jenny’s shoulders and kissed her neck.

We both wondered whether this was the end of Bill’s presence among us?  Had Bill already wreaked his revenge and, if so, how and on whom? And would the words needed to answer these questions result in 50 lashes for whomsoever used them? I was almost joking with myself, to clear my mind of too much mourning.

That was indeed the last time I saw any sign of Bill.  I did in fact walk that day to where his house once stood and it was even bleaker than the day before .... because of the silence that was filled with my imaginings of the threnody.  The blackened mess formed a scar on the landscape.  I realised then that it was better to have an imaginary threnody than nothing at all.  To be mourned by someone – in whatever way the mourner managed it – meant you were loved and cherished once.  And I trusted Bill could feel the mourning himself, wherever he now was.

I thought of hermits.  There was a rumour that one lived in the mountains at which I was now staring.  People had glimpsed a wizened old man on the slopes now and again.  Ric said it was probably a trick of the light. If this hermit did exist, no-one would mourn him when he died.  No one would even care or know about it.  That was the saddest thought of all.  I shivered and took a look at the graves.  I walked away, hoping that such an awful event would never happen to me.  I know it was a selfish thought but everyone has those.  I did also hope that Bill was still alive.

A few months later, Ric knocked at my door.

“I found this in the forest,” he said.  The bags under his eyes showed the many sleepless nights he had been having.  He held out what looked like a harp.  It was very dirty and the strings were torn.  I thought of Bill but I didn’t say a thing as it was as if Ric could read my mind.  We stood in silence for a while, mourning in symmetry.  All you could hear was the sound of teeth chewing on tobacco.  Jenny broke the silence:

“Apparently someone saw a man looking like Bill on the mountainside last week.”

I looked down at the instrument, expecting it to play of its own volition.  Vaguely violin-shaped  ... a broken heart.