Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 (3 page)

 
          
“You
say you played American football,” said Gates.

 
          
“I
was a center. That's not a particularly glorious position.”

 
          
“Is
that anywhere near as violent a game as rugby? I played footer in public
school, but I only boxed for my university.”

 
          
“From
what I've seen of English football,” said Thunstone, “I’d hazard a guess that
if you got into the American game in the gear you wear here, you’d be lucky to
live two minutes.” He changed the subject. “But you said that you’re writing a
history of Claines.” “That is correct. It’s a small place, but its history is a
long one.” As Gates told it, it was a long history. Nobody could be sure how
old Claines might be as a community. All that records could be made to show was
that some sort of settlement had existed there since Roman times, and
occasional digs and probings—it was hard for scholars to get permission to dig,
it seemed—revealed that people had lived there in pre-Roman times, yes, even
back to the Stone Age.
Flint
points had been turned up there, the sort of things that country people
called elf arrows and even saw as weapons of supernatural force. And in
medieval days, armed bands of rival lords had skirmished back and forth there.

 
          
But
Claines, though so old, had never grown large. That, said Gates, was because it
had never truly had room to grow. It stood on a sort of hummock of turfy
ground, bounded in by marsh and fen. An example of that bounding was the turbid
stream over which Thunstone had come in the bus, which bore the uninviting name
of Congdon Mire. There might be three hundred residents or so, most of them
employed in nearby Gerrinsford in factories and offices. There were a few sheep
keepers and market gardeners. They lived in Claines, it seemed, because they
had no wish or will to live anywhere else.

 
          
'That
big slope of ground they call Sweepside,” said Thunstone. “With the figure they
call Old Thunder. I’d expect it to be a promising place for archaeological
exploration.”

           
“Perhaps so/* said Gates, “but it
belongs to Mr. Gram Ensley, who owns Chimney Pots. Who also owns and lets out
most of the houses in Claines. Mr. Ensley is fairly stubborn about allowing
investigation on his land. One group of antiquarians got stubborn, too, and he
got a court injunction against their coming. And he declined to talk to two
different enterprises who wanted to build factories on Sweepside. He won't even
rent land on Sweepside to people who would like to have market gardens there.
He has flocks of sheep, and they graze there, and that’s all.”

 
          
“What
about the residents here?”

 
          
“A
decent lot they are, for the most part,” Gates summed up. “Claines might have
been absorbed into Gerrinsford long ago except for the intervening swampiness,
but it has stayed a backwater, and it has its individuality. People work hard,
in Gerrinsford places or on what land they have, and they’re glad to be
decently quiet at home after dinner. Oh, the young men and women may get on the
bus and see a film in town, or otherwise amuse themselves there, but their
fathers and mothers are content to sit and watch the telly if they can afford
one. Some have the telly without truly being able to afford it. And this little
church of ours is a factor,” Gates went on, brightening. “Always good
attendance at services, and we have programs and festivals from time to time.
And a group of church ladies is active, visiting the sick, helping unfortunate
poor families.”

 
          
Gates
paused, frowning. Thunstone waited for him to continue. He continued:

 
          
“If I could turn a certain element from what must be considered
ancient paganism—ancient sorcery.”
He gestured with a broad hand. “Up
there on Sweepside, this very day, they’re hard at it cleaning the chalky lines
of their superstitious Old Thunder figure.”

 
          
“And
this Mr. Ensley won’t let scholars explore there.”

 
          
“Not
he. He’s posted Sweepside. Nobody can go there without his permission.
Though he allows the work on Old Thunder.”

 
          
“What
sort of man is he?”

 
          
“Courteous
enough, I must admit. He doesn’t attend church often, but from time to time he
makes a contribution.
A substantial contribution.
Otherwise, he keeps to himself most of the time. He might talk to you. Like me,
he's interested in Claines, and well he might be. He owns so much of it, both
sides of
Trail Street
."

           
“Why is it called
Trail Street
?" was Thunstone’s next question.

 
          
“Because
there must have been a trail there before there was a street, I should think.
An old Roman road was traced along it by some survey or other. And a Roman road
was apt to have followed a road of people older than Romans."

 
          
“That’s
an interesting thought," commented Thunstone. He wrote busily, and again
Gates narrowed his eyes to watch.

 
          
“See
here, Mr. Thunstone," said Gates after a moment. “I’m going to ask you a
cheeky question, and you can answer it or not just as you wish. Are you here in
some sort of oEcial capacity?"

 
          
Thunstone
laughed easily as he wrote. “Not in the least. I came to
England
to do some private research into
England
’s remote past. I’ve been to
Stonehenge
, Avebury, and so on. I’ve spent time in the
libraries at
Oxford
and
Cambridge
, and at the
British
Museum
in
London
. You said you’d seen some things I’ve
written in folklore journals, so perhaps you know what I’m looking for. When I
heard a mention of Claines, I came here more or less on impulse. I’m
particularly interested in what you call the Dream Rock out there. You feel
that it’s pagan."

 
          
“It
was pagan, right enough," said Gates, shaking his head. “What chiefly
disturbs me is the annual turning and what attends it.
Midnight
, and people hallooing and
doing a sort of dance, right next to the church.
It’s like a witches’ Sabbath."

 
          
Thunstone
had seen witches’ Sabbaths in his time, but forbore to say so. “And you’d like
to stop it," he prompted.

 
          
“I
would indeed. The night of the annual turning is this coming Sunday, July
4—your own special holiday in
America
. And it’s also the third Sunday after
Trinity. At morning prayer that day, I propose to deliver a strong sermon
against paganism and sorcery." His heavy hand touched a stack of scribbled
papers on the desk. “I invite you to come to church and hear it."

 
          
“I’ll
be glad to do that." Thunstone rose and tucked his notebook into his
pocket. “And perhaps we can talk further about Claines— about ancient paganism,
too—when you have time."

           
“It would be a pleasure, sir.”

 
          
Gates
rose and saw him out.

 
          
Thunstone
walked back toward the center of the little business district. He savored the
pleasant mildness of the bright afternoon. The first day of July here was more
like the middle of May at home in
America
.
England
was so far north, he reminded himself;
without the warm
Gulf
Stream
to cuddle
it,
England
might be subarctic.
England
had been subarctic, not too many thousands
of years ago.

 
          
He
paused to stand and gaze up the street and down. This was England, he
reflected, this little community called a hamlet by Hawes and Gates because it
was not large enough to be called a village; Claines, this strew of houses
along a main thoroughfare called Trail Street—Trail, as though it ran through a
wilderness.

 
          
For
England
was like this. Like this everywhere, the
small as well as the great. Great
London
was an English marvel. Samuel Johnson had
said to Boswell that when a man was tired of
London
he was tired of life. Johnson had been
right, as usually he had been right about things. But
London
, for all its Englishness, was also
international. It could be all things to foreigners as to Englishmen. Thunstone
had heard a friend say bitterly that
London
was no longer a white man's town, one who
in saying that had sounded like the diehard, death-or- glory voice of the
Empire that now was no more. Without agreeing, Thunstone saw what his friend
had meant about throngs of swarthy people speaking in strange tongues. Away
here in Claines, with nothing to bring strangers, there were no strangers
except for himself. There were only the English.

 
          
All
the more English because the houses were mostly small, matter- of-fact, here
and there even shabby. Because along Trail Street were only a few modest shops,
the Moonraven pub where buses stopped, the post office, Ludlam's store, the
fish-and-chips cubicle, the garage with the surly-looking man with the beard.
Upon Claines the antiquity of
England
somehow rested, like the hem of a strangely
figured mantle wrought long ago.

 
          
Trail
Street, so named, Gates had felt, because it must have been a trail before it
ever was a street. Along it, perhaps, pilgrims had trotted their horses
eastward toward
London
and the Tabard Inn where they would join Geoffrey Chaucer and the
Knight and the sweet Prioress and the Miller and the buxom Wife of Bath for the
pilgrimage to
Canterbury
. Before those had been cross-gartered, wheat-bearded
Saxons,
not yet whipped in battle by the
Normans
and by them willy- nilly refined, taught
new words, new laws. Before the Saxons, Roman legionaries with shining helmets
and shields and javelins, on their invading
march
in
or their abandoning way out. And yet before them, before even the Celts, those
dimly defined first Britons, those chip- pers of stone, those who must have cut
down to the chalk on Sweep- side to outline the figure of whatever god or hero
or monster it was that today the people of Claines called Old Thunder.

 
          
This
was
England
because
England
had been
England
so long, could not be wholly smothered out by modern matters.
England
was immemorial, and immemorially alive and
mighty. Thunstone’s
America
was mighty, too. He loved
America
.
America
was ancient. But you couldn’t know ancient
America
, could only vaguely imagine
America
before those four brief centuries of the
overlay of civilization which now was
America
.

 
          
That overlay, and the heritage of what had been
America
before it.
You ate corn, you smoked tobacco, you
paddled a canoe,
you
lounged in a hammock. Yes, and if
you plowed a field you sometimes turned up stone arrowheads, beautifully
chipped into graceful points. Just as here in
England
, sometimes the share turned up a stone
point, amazingly like the ones in
America
. In such things as those,
America
and
England
had a facet of agreement, the stone
implements of vanished tribes. Lost things found again, making you turn your
face to look back upon unknown beginnings.