Read The Stranger House Online
Authors: Reginald Hill
He didn’t smile as he said it but spoke with an earnest sincerity which made her recall Mrs Appledore’s warning that he was a snag short of a barbie.
“I hope you have recovered from your accident in the church,” he said.
“Yes, I’m good,” she said, thinking, cracked he may be, but he doesn’t miss much!
His eyes had strayed down to the open book on the table.
“You are interested in antiquities?” he said.
“In a way,” she said, “I was reading about the Wolf-Head Cross.”
“Ah yes. The Wolf-Head. Our claim to historical significance. But if you want to find out something of the true nature of Illthwaite, you should read about our other Wolf-Head Cross. Try the chapter on Myth and Legend. But never forget you are in a part of the world where they hold an annual competition for telling lies.”
He moved away to what seemed to be his accustomed seat almost out of sight behind the angle of the fireplace.
Her curiosity pricked, she riffled through the pages till she came to a section headed
Folklore, Myth, Legend
which she began reading at her usual breakneck speed.
After an introduction in which the three topics were defined and carefully differentiated, the writer conceded:
Yet so frequently do these areas overlap and merge, with invented and historical figures becoming confused, and events which properly belong to the timeless world of the fairies receiving the imprimatur of particular dates and locations, that it is almost as dangerous to dismiss any story as wild fancy as it would be to accept all that is related round the crackling fire of the Stranger House on a winter’s night as gospel truth. What more likely than that a pious farmer riding home after a night of wassail and ghost stories should mistake a swirl of
snowflakes round the churchyard for the restless spirit of some recently deceased villager? When it comes to sharing real and personal concerns with strangers, Cumbrians are a close and secret people, but in launching flights of fancy dressed as fact they have few equals, as those who had the pleasure of meeting the late Mr Ritson of Wasdale Head can well testify.
As described
supra
, in the designs on our great Viking cross can be found a fascinating use of ancient fables to underline and illustrate the awful and sacred truths of Christianity. Had Dr Johnson paused on his journey to the Caledonian wildernesses to view our Wolf-Head Cross, he might have modified his strictures on
Lycidas.
Yet the great doctor was right in asserting that truth and myth may be combined in a manner both impious and dangerous. So in the story of that other cross, which some in their superstitious folly also called “Wolf-Head,” we find fact and fiction close tangled in a knot it would take the mind of Aristotle or the sword of Alexander to dismantle.
Here is that story as it is still recounted in the parish, with slight variation and embellishment, according to the nature of the narrator and the perceived susceptibility of the auditor. Be advised, it is not a tale for the faint-hearted…
Then her view of the book was interrupted by a large plate and Mrs Appledore’s voice said, “There we go, dear. Tuck in.”
Sam smiled her thanks at the woman, then lowered her eyes to the plate and felt the full force of the Reverend’s warning. Here was something else definitely
not for the faint-hearted. Reminding her of the Wolf-Head Cross carving of Jormungand, the fabled Midgard serpent coiled around the world, on her plate a single monstrous sausage, uninterrupted by twist or crimp, curled around a mountain of chips topped by a fried
egg.
There had to be enough cholesterol here to give a god or a hero a heart attack. She took a long pull at her beer while she contemplated how to get to grips with it.
Another pint glass was set before her. She looked up to see the old Viking again.
“Thanks, but I’ve got plenty.”
“Perhaps. But I think you’ll need a lot more to wash that down,” he said, “As we say round here, best way is to pick an end and press on till tha meets tha own behind.”
This seemed an impossible journey but she was very hungry and after the first visual shock, she found it smelled quite delicious, so she sawed half an inch off the sausage’s tail and put it into her mouth. Fifteen minutes later she was wiping up the last of the
egg
yolk with the last of the chips. She’d even essayed the merest fork-point of flavouring from a jar of the mordant mustard and found it not displeasing.
She was also nearly at the bottom of her third pint. It really was good beer. It was also beer she hadn’t paid for and by the strict rules of the society she’d grown up in, girls who didn’t stand their round were signifying their willingness to make some other form of payment. She looked towards the shady corner but there was no sign of Mr Melton. Winander was still there between the duplicated grave-diggers.
She emptied her glass, stood up and went to the bar.
“Ready for pudding?” said Mrs Appledore.
Shuddering to think how big her puddings might be,
Sam said, “No. I’m a bit knackered after all that driving so I think I’ll hit the hay. Mr Melton’s gone, has he?”
“Only to the Gents. Why?”
“I just wanted to buy him a drink, that’s all. And Mr Winander too. Put one in the till for them both, will you? And stick it on my bill.”
“Of course, dear,” said the landlady approvingly, “Us girls need to stand our corner these days.”
“We surely do. Talking of which, don’t us girls come out to drink round here?”
“Sometimes, but tonight they’ll be sitting with Lorna—that’s the mam of young Billy Knipp that we buried today. The men leave ‘em to it. Sorry if it bothered you, dear.”
“Men don’t bother me, Mrs Appledore,” said Sam.
“That’s all right then,” said the landlady, “I never asked you, did you find anything out at the church? About your family, I mean?”
Was this a good moment to ask about the inscription? No, Sam decided. But it might be a good moment to give everyone here the chance to volunteer information.
She said, “No, nothing. Look, as a final fling, would it be all right if I spoke to this lot in the bar, asked them if anyone recalled a family called Flood in these parts?”
Mrs Appledore glanced assessingly at the assembled drinkers then said, “Why not? It’ll make a change from the price of sheep.”
She reached up and rang the bell dangling over the end of the bar.
“Listen in, you lot. Let’s have a bit of order. This young lady from Australia who’s staying with us tonight, she’d like to ask a question about her family. Miss Flood …”
Suddenly, looking at all those expectant faces, this didn’t seem such a good idea, but if you’re stupid enough to go surfing on a shark, you don’t let go.
“Hi. Sorry to disturb your drinking, but my name’s Sam Flood and it could be that my grandmother who was also called Sam, that’s Samantha, Flood came from Illthwaite. It would be back in the spring of 1960 she left. I just wondered if any of you who were around back then could recall anyone of that name round here.”
There. Cue for deluge of information. Long pause.
Then a voice, upstage, left, “Weren’t there a Larry Flood up Egremont way, used to win the gurning at the Crab Fair wi’out needing to pull a face?” Secondvoice, ustage right. “Nay, tha’s thinkin’ of Harry Hood.”
Chorus, “Aye, Harry Hood. That were Harry Hood.”
Why was she thinking of this in terms of theatre? Sam asked herself.
Because that’s how it felt. Like a performance.
“If any of you do recall owt, let me know to pass it on,” declared Mrs Appledore.
The hubbub resumed as she turned to Sam and said, “Sorry, dear.”
“No problem,” said Sam, “What’s gurning?”
“It’s making ugly faces through a horse’s collar. There’s a competition for it at the Egremont Crab Fair. Thought everyone knew that.”
“I must have forgotten,” said Sam, “A prize for being ugly? Is that where they give prizes for telling lies too?”
“No,” said the landlady indignantly, “That’s not Egremont. That’s at Santon Bridge. Thought everyone knew that too.”
“My memory!’ said Sam, “I’m off to bed now.”
“Hope you sleep well. Don’t worry about laying over. The way these boards creak, I’ll hear you when you’re up.”
“Great. By the way, Mrs Appledore, I don’t think I’ll be wanting anything cooked in the morning. Way I feel now, a fox’s breakfast will do me fine.”
“A fox’s breakfast? And that ‘ud be … ?”
“A piss and a good look round. Thought everyone knew that.”
Be polite to the Poms. But don’t let the buggers get on top of you.
Pa’s last words at the airport.
We’re keeping our end up so far, Pa, she thought as she headed out of the door.
Mr Melton, presumably just returned from the Gents, was in the hallway.
“Goodnight,” she said, “Thanks for the beer. I’ve left you one in the till.”
“No need,” he said, “But kind. I understand you are seeking for some local connection with your family.”
“That’s right. I thought my gran might be from these parts, but I’m beginning to think I might have got it wrong.”
He said, “And when did she leave England?”
“March 1960. She was still a kid.”
“A kid? In 1960?” He looked at her doubtfully.
He might be dotty but he could still do arithmetic, she thought approvingly.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, “She got pregnant not long after she arrived in Oz. My dad was born in September 1961.”
“I see,” he said, “Interesting. But I’m keeping you from your bed, and this isn’t the place to talk. If you care to drop in on me tomorrow, Miss Flood, perhaps I can assist you with your enquiries.”
For some reason the phrase seemed to amuse him and he repeated it.
“Yes, assist you with your enquiries. I have … connections. I live at Candle Cottage, beyond the church. I’m at home most of the time. Goodnight to you now.”
He went back into the bar.
Funny folk! thought Sam as she climbed the stairs. Two invites in a night. Maybe that was the automatic next step if you survived being pushed off a ladder! Anything was possible in a place where Death had his own door, the sausages were six feet long, and they held competitions for telling lies and making faces through a horse’s collar …
She pushed open her bedroom door and all thought of funny folk fled from her mind.
Someone had been poking around her things. This wasn’t feeling but fact. Her eidetic memory didn’t only work with the printed page. A postcard home she’d been scribbling was a couple of inches to the left of where she’d set it down on the dressing table, one of the drawers which had protruded slightly was now completely flush, and her rucksack leaned against the wall at an altered angle. And it wasn’t just Mrs Appledore tidying up. The intruder had clearly been inside the rucksack as well as out.
She thought of going downstairs to make a fuss. But there was nothing missing, and anyone in the bar could have come up, or someone who just came into the pub.
She brushed her teeth, got undressed, pulled on the old Melbourne University T-shirt she slept in, and climbed on to the high old-fashioned bed. Usually she launched herself into sleep on a sea of maths. She’d started age seven with an old edition of a book called
Pillow Problems
which Gramma Ada had picked up in a second-hand shop. In it the guy who wrote the
Alice
books laid out a variety of calculations he occupied his mind with when he couldn’t sleep. By the time she was twelve she’d moved beyond Carroll’s problems, but the principle remained. Nowadays she usually played with things like Goldbach’s Conjecture which required her to hold huge numbers in her head.
Tonight, however, she turned to the measured nineteenth-century prose of Peter K. Swinebank in search of a soporific.
She found the page she’d reached in the bar and reread the last line:
Be advised, it is not a tale for the faint-hearted.
Sam paused and consulted her heart. No sign of faint-ness there, though a little lower down there was an awareness that sometime in the not too distant future her consumption of all that excellent beer was going to require another trip to the bathroom.
“OK, Rev. Peter K. Swinebank,” she said, “I’m ready for you. Do your worst!”
And turned the page.
Some time towards the end of the sixteenth century, a waif boy was taken into the care of the Gowders of Foulgate Farm whose descendants still live and work in the valley.
The boy’s age is variously reported as from twelve to sixteen and his origins have been just as widely speculated. Some suggested he was the bastard child of one of the local gentry, kept locked away from public gaze for shame these many years till finally he escaped. Equally popular was the notion that he was a child abducted by the fairies in infancy and returned when puberty rendered him of no further interest to the little people. Some even asserted that he was Robin Goodfellow himself. Such theories at least have the merit of facing up to the supernatural elements of the legend without equivocation.
To my mind the most likely explanation (supported by references to his swarthy colouring and lack of English) is that this youth was in fact a scion of that strange nomadic group misnamed Egyptians who had become increasingly prevalent in Britain during the past hundred years. Perhaps he had been ejected from his tribe because of some fraction of their strange and
pagan law. Being young, he was likely to be much more fluent in the Romany tongue than in the English vernacular.
Where all versions agree is that, by taking him in, the Gowders displayed an unwonted degree of Christian charity. Though since somewhat declined, in those days the Gowders of Foulgate were by local standards a well-to-do and powerful family. They were not however famed for their generosity of spirit and their position in the parish seems to have been achieved as much by force of will and arms as agricultural skill.
At the time of our story, the head of the family was Thomas Gowder, a man of about thirty, whose young wife, Jenny, after three years of marriage had yet to provide him with an heir. Also living at Foulgate was Andrew, Thomas’s brother, three years his junior, with his wife and two infant sons.
It is maliciously suggested by some that, in taking the waif boy in, the Gowders were inspired less by charity than the prospect of acquiring an unpaid farmhand. Whatever the truth, they paid dearly for it. After some months of living at Foulgate and being nursed back to health, the youth repaid this kindness one night by assaulting Jenny. On being interrupted by her husband, he wrestled the man to the ground and slit his throat from ear to ear, almost severing the head from the neck. Brother Andrew, hearing the sound of the struggle, called to ask what was amiss, upon which the murderous gypsy seized whatever of value he could lay his hands on and fled.
Drew Gowder roused the village, procured help for his sister-in-law, then got together a posse of villagers to go in pursuit of the fugitive.
It was that time of year when spring though close on the calendar seems an age away on the ground. The night was black, the weather foul, good conditions for an outlaw to make his escape. But the pursuers knew their valley stone by stone while the fugitive was a stranger, driven by guilt and panic. His blundering trail up the fellside above Foulgate was easy to follow and within a very short time they cornered him attempting to hide in Mecklin Shaw, a small oak wood on the edge of Mecklin Moss.
Trapped, he offered no resistance and they would have bound him and taken him back to the village, but Drew Gowder was so inflamed with grief and rage that he demanded summary justice. A blasted oak stood close by, most of it decayed and fallen away, but what remained was the solid bole, its jagged upper edge in silhouette taking the form of a beast’s gaping maw, with the stumps of two branches giving the loose impression of a cross. Pointing to this, Gowder declared that when God provided the means, he was not inclined to reject His bounty. When they understood his meaning, it is to be hoped that some of the others demurred. But Gowder was a strong man, and a deeply wronged man, and it should be remembered that, while the framework of our Common Law was well established, yet in such remote communities as this, the tradition of self-sufficient and local justice was very strong, as indeed it remains to this very day.
So they seized the fugitive murderer and bound him to the blasted tree. At the same time, Gowder had taken himself to a nearby charcoal-burner’s hovel and there gathered several scraps of fire-hardened wood which he rapidly shaped into small stakes a few inches long.
Then, using the haft of his dagger as a hammer, he drove these stakes through the young man’s hands and feet before cutting away the binding ropes, thus leaving him hanging from the tree by those wooden nails alone.
Satisfied with his handiwork, he now led his companions out of the wood and they made their way back to the village, leaving the murderer to die.
That appetite for the macabre still existent in our own day and catered for by the new literature of sensation and the
Police Gazette
was at its ravening height in an age when our greatest poet could soil his pen with the foulness of
Titus Andronicus,
and to this we owe the illustrative woodcut of the event reproduced overleaf, which was attached to a broadside ballad allegedly composed by one of the posse.
(Readers of tender stomach are advised not to raise the veiling tissue.)