The Green Man of Eshwood Hall

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‘She says, “I tell you another thing: I cannot abide this milk you’ve got here.” I says, “Woman, it comes straight from the cow!” She says, “Aye, and that’d be bad enough in this day and age, but what makes it worse, you carry the stuff in old wine bottles!” I says, “Well, what’s wrong with that?” And do you know what she said? She reckons it taints the milk.’

Miss Claiborne harrumphed at this, but it was an essentially rhythmic response that didn’t necessarily indicate that its maker was listening.

‘Well, to cut a long story short, in the end I refused. I just flat-out refused to put bread on the list when there’s plenty of it, and of a superior quality, available in the kitchen. If she wants a sliced loaf so badly she can go and buy it herself with her own money. What do you make of it? Have you ever heard the like?’

Miss Claiborne chewed meditatively on her last mouthful of bread. Real bread. The bread of the real, as she knew it. Replete, she surveyed the room and the situation objectively. ‘I think,’ she said, as though she had just made her mind up about something, though in fact she’d decided long before, ‘I think that I shan’t go to church today after all.’

*

Izzy was just dawdling along, savouring her freedom, following a rough sort of path that led into the woods. The River Esh was somewhere near: the air was heady with the sparkle of running water. Maybe the path would lead to the river, or maybe it was a way through the woods, she didn’t mind. Spring was finally getting started, and the alders were just coming into bud. Funny trees, alders: even in bud they looked half-dead, all scurfy and mossy. She had used to think (maybe she still thought) that alders were boys and birches were girls, but how did she know that? Had someone told her? She didn’t remember. And of course, she knew trees weren’t really boys and girls. When she was little she’d thought that all cats were girls and all dogs were boys, and had once argued the point forcefully with a boy at school called Melvin Fisher who was always picking on her. She hated Melvin Fisher, but when she’d asked Mam and Dad about it afterwards Dad had said Melvin was right, and Mam had called her soft, and said she didn’t have the brains she was born with. Izzy hated Melvin Fisher even more after that. But that was ages ago when she still went to school. She missed going to school. It was queer, but she thought she even missed Melvin Fisher in a way.

The path she’d been following had led her deep into the woods and – Izzy’s stomach gave a turn when she saw this – had now disappeared from under her. When she looked back the way she’d come, there was nothing like a path to be seen. How long had she been wandering among the trees? To be lost in the woods is to be lost in time, she thought, and wondered if she’d just thought it or if she’d heard it somewhere before. It was true anyway, because the time of trees was so much slower than the time of people; a moment in the real world might be a month in the forest. It was silent now as well, windless – and where had the sound of the river gone? She spun round looking for a landmark, and that’s when she first saw it, a small building, half-hidden, but waiting to be found, waiting for her swimming gaze to settle on it.

As she drew closer Izzy could see it was a chapel of some kind, though evidently long since abandoned. The trees grew so close to its outer walls, their trunks rising up like pillars, that it looked, she thought, like a church inside a church. What would a body do in such a place, she wondered; whisper the prayer inside the prayer? Worship the god inside the god? She was standing before it now, and wanted very much to get inside, but soon found the front door wouldn’t budge. Stepping back and craning her neck, she could see that the little bell-turret had three arched openings, and considered climbing up to see if she’d fit through (‘If you can get your head and one arm through a gap, then you’ll fit through it’, Dad had told her once, and she’d stored the words away dutifully with other useful information), but then, at the back of the Chapel, she found another, smaller door, and it opened easily.

The roof was adorned with foliate heads – queer, ugly faces with branches sprouting from their mouths and noses, and sometimes from their ears and eyes as well – and also with carved angels holding shields.

Inside, the floor was littered with leaves and pigeon droppings, and the air had been so long undisturbed that it seemed to have thickened and grown ponderous. There were seven rows of pews, a bone-dry font made of stone and yet apparently stained with rust, and, instead of a pulpit, a vast oak armchair carved with flowers and foliage. The roof was adorned with foliate heads – queer, ugly faces with branches sprouting from their mouths and noses, and sometimes from their ears and eyes as well – and also with carved angels holding shields. It looked to Izzy as though the angels and the foliate heads were ranged against one another like chess pieces. In the centre of the Chapel was a granite tomb – Izzy supposed it to be marble – inscribed with the name of Lord Somebody and a chain of Roman numerals. The sides of the tomb had canopied niches, in which stood the figures of young girls also holding shields, each dressed in kirtle, tunic and mantle. Between the stained-glass windows, a series of tombstones were let into the wall, and decorated with floral shields, swords, staffs and chalices. Above the door was an especially ornate foliate head with leafy branches coming from his mouth – oak leaves, Izzy saw, and among them acorns, though the cups were all empty – so that was the last thing you’d see as you left; and the first thing that you’d have seen when you entered that way was the crucifix on the opposite wall. Beneath the crucifix was carved the legend: In your devotion you bring all that you came here to seek. The crucifix and the huge foliate head seemed between them to generate a field of force; the air all but crackled.

Izzy knew what she was going to do. She was going to sit in the huge oak chair. Just for a moment. No one need know. Her footsteps crunched on the dry leaves and twigs as she crossed the floor. The Chapel was watching her, she could feel it. Izzy kept her eyes fixed on the chair – the throne – as though it were a living thing apt to take fright and gallop away before she reached it. Up close, it was if anything even more impressive, its elaborations soaked in the time and labour it must have taken to carve them, so that each detail seemed a power, a value demanding to be acknowledged. The whole thing had been polished, or waxed, and it had the dull shine of a rose hip. When she ran a finger along the throne’s filigreed arm, she felt a thrill as though she’d touched a sleeping cat. There was something wrong here, but what was it? And suddenly – she almost laughed – she realised: it was such a little thing, but utterly mysterious: there wasn’t a speck of dust on the throne, and yet everything else in the Chapel bore a layer of the stuff. Izzy bent closer. It was pristine, as though the workman had only just laid aside his chisel. Had someone been here, lately? It hardly seemed possible. It wasn’t possible: they would have left a trail in the dust and debris on the floor. Izzy took a deep breath, turned, and sat down on the throne.

It was like putting on new knowledge. It was like a tree, struck by lightning, throwing off its bark. It was like in a dream when you realise you can fly, and so easily you can’t believe you didn’t have the knack before. It was like freedom from fear, absolute and terrible. It was like conveyance, like being portered through a strange landscape at incredible speed, being still and without agency or any especial feeling about the matter, but speeding along nonetheless, ever closer to the destination that awaited you. It was like looking through a powerful telescope and seeing a ship sink in the distant ocean, knowing there’s nothing to be done about it. It was like being somehow simultaneously on the ship as well. It was like holding a lamp that held a genie, and also like being the genie inside; and it was like opening the lamp. And she could hear the distant applause of buds popping open on the branches of the beech trees in the wood. And she could hear the rent of the shell of a starling’s egg as it hatched, and the first cry of the baby bird as it reared its blind, bristly head in a ragged nest built in the knothole of a pollard elm. And she could hear the gasp of the otter before it slipped beneath the surface of the trackless waters of the Esh. And she could smell on the west wind the last, half-smothered drift of woodsmoke from a charcoal-burner’s grid-iron. And she could hear carried on the same breeze the whirr of the flywheel of the thresher in a barn. And she could smell the sweet, rotting marmalade odour of the beer-stained floor in the cellar of the Garland in Eshwood village. And she could taste the bitter succulence in the stems of the dandelions as they swayed in the sun. And now she was moving up and down and along her own veins with her own teeming blood.

She was lying on the floor with skinned knees. Had she thrown herself from the chair, or had it bucked and cast her off? Light-headed, she turned, half-crawling away to see if it had moved . . . No, there it was, where it had always been, all innocence, dumb as a water-butt. A chair. Izzy picked herself up and backed away. The light seemed different, as though she’d closed her eyes for a short nap and woken up in another part of the day altogether. She should be home already – there was washing to be done, that should be under way, and, she remembered, she didn’t even know exactly where she was . . .

The everyday world was already bearing down on her, but she took a last look around the Chapel before she left. It was the best place she had ever been. Izzy knew then and there that she’d come back often and that she’d never tell anyone about it.

*

After all of her worry at getting lost in the woods, Izzy found her way back to the Hall quickly and easily – more quickly, in fact, than had seemed possible – and was home before the rest of the family had returned from church, so no one needed to know that she’d been out. She got straight on with a load of washing, lugging the laundry basket down the corridor to the poss tub the servants shared. Holding the dolly-stick with both hands, she pounded at the churning mass of long johns and nappies until an ache developed in her chest. It was nobody’s fault, though. It was nothing – she’d just winded herself. But then she caught herself wondering: who decided if it was nothing? Was this what had happened to Mam? What if she’d got a pain in her chest after pounding clothes in a poss tub, and the doctor had seen her and said she had to take it easy for the rest of her life? What would happen if a doctor were to see Izzy? The questions kept churning. Izzy pounded at them. Back in the parlour, Izzy shovelled some more coal onto the range, and heard the familiar sound of the Hawk rumbling up to the Hall, the crunch of gravel rhyming with the scoop in the coal. She set up the clothes horse and a couple of chairs before it, and had just started to hang out the laundry when the room became full of life once again: soon, Annie was seated at the table swinging her feet and drawing a picture of a horse jumping over a church, and Gerry was in her chair nursing the Bairn and flipping through an old copy of Good Housekeeping.

Izzy couldn’t tell what sort of mood Mam was in. Annie was behaving herself, but that could mean that Mam had shouted at her earlier – or Annie could have been behaving herself all morning, and therefore Mam might be in a good mood . . . Izzy found that she was standing on her tiptoes. She peeked over Mam’s shoulder at the title of the article, and read: ‘What Women Should Know About Hormones’. She decided to ask a question.

‘Mam, what’s hormones?’

‘According to this article I’m trying to read, you’ll find out soon enough.’

This didn’t help, as Izzy couldn’t tell if Gerry was joking, or what was funny about it, so she tried again: ‘Mam, can I ask you something?’

Gerry grunted a reply that didn’t seem to indicate either yes or no. The Bairn was proving to be twisty – she’d given up on nursing him and was buttoning her blouse.

‘I wanted to ask you – you never talk much about when you were younger, or when you were little, or before you had me

– Dad talks about it, sometimes, but you don’t, or at least not so much . . . and I wonder what things were like, and – well, I wanted to ask you something about your heart—’

‘Why are you only just hanging them out?’ Gerry asked suddenly. ‘They should be dry by now. What have you been doing all this time?’

From The Green Man of Eshwood Hall by Jacob Kerr. Used with permission of the publisher, Serpent’s Tail. Copyright 2022 by Jacob Kerr.

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