What Dreams May Come
Manly Wade Wellman
By Manly Wade Wellman
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
THE HANGING STONES
THE LOST AND THE LURKING
AFTER DARK
THE OLD GODS WAKEN
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
1983
All of the characters in this book
are fictitious and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wellman, Manly Wade, 1905—
What dreams may come.
I. Title.
PS3545.E52858W48 1983 813'.54
ISBN: 0-385-18253-8
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 82-40399
Copyright © 1983 by Manly Wade Wellman
First Edition
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
For
FRANCES
who loves every square foot of English ground
Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is com—
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease, And so was England bom!
She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin s Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare!
Rudyard Kipling
Contents
Foreword
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
Foreword
Manifestly there is an England and, as Englishmen earnestly assure us, there always will be. And in London, in Herbrand Street, there is actually a public house called the Friend at Hand, much praised and prized by its numerous clientele. It may be further worthwhile to point out that various books herein noticed, by Richard Leakey, Alexander Marshack, Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, John Pfeiffer, Gene Stuart, and Ruth St. Leger-Gordon, also are real and readable and may be found in the larger libraries.
But no such community as Claines exists in England, or, so far as I can ascertain, anywhere else in the known world. And the names, physical aspects, behaviors, and motivations of men and women represented as present in the houses and streets of Claines are wholly imaginary, though it is earnestly to be hoped that they seem convincing.
Manly Wade Wellman Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1983
From realms of viewless spirits tears the veil. And half reveals the unutterable tale . . .
Matthew Gregory Lewis, Tales of Tenor
CHAPTER 1
The motor bus from London, silver-gray with maroon trim, purred westward across the broad concrete bridge. Below crept a wide, murky stream. The summer afternoon sunlight was golden. The bus slowed as it ran between two sprawls of houses. At the right stood a compact little church of drab stone, crowned with a steeple. Beyond that, low store buildings to the right, dwellings of various sizes to the left. On the far side of the leftward scatter of homes climbed a steep slope, grassy and tufted with scrubby bushes. Flung upon it was a vast white figure like a squat, misshapen man, made by digging the turf from the chalk beneath.
The bus rolled into a paved parking lot in front of a squat brick structure that bore a great square signboard labeled the moonraven. Under the name was pictured a round disc of pale yellow, upon which soared the lean black silhouette of a flying bird, like a shallow V. The bus stopped next to two small cars.
“Here's Claines, sir," said the driver, and John Thunstone rose from the front seat at the left.
He looked tall and massive in the aisle as he put big hands to the rack overhead and hoisted down a big suitcase and a smaller one. He wore a finely fitted dark jacket and striped trousers. On his well- combed dark head slanted a tweed hat. A raincoat draped itself on his cliff like shoulder. Under one arm he tucked a walking stick of blotched brown wood with a silver band several inches below the curved handle. His serious face was square, with a streak of closely trimmed mustache. His nose had a dint where once it had been broken.
“Thank you," he said, tramping to the door and out.
“And thank you, sir,” said the driver, levering the door shut again.
Thunstone glanced at the watch on his wrist. It was a quarter to three. Then he stood and gazed up the slope beyond the hamlet there to the south, at the grotesque white figure silhouetted upon it. After a moment, he carried his suitcases to the door of the Moonraven, shouldered it open and entered upon a floor of wide planks, and crossed to the bar at the back. Sitting on a stool, he told a plump woman behind the bar, “A half of bitter, please.”
“Ahf of bitter, right you are, sir.”
She filled a glass mug at a tap. Thunstone put a pound note on the bar and sipped at his drink. “I hope to stay in Claines for a few days,” he said to the woman.
As he spoke, he looked around the barroom. It was neatly paneled in buff-colored wood, with rafters streaking the ceiling overhead. To one side was set a sort of counter with shelves, on which were dishes and pans. Tables stood here and there. Under the windows at the front were ranged trestles with benches. Half a dozen customers communed with their drinks. Thunstone liked the look of the place.
“Perhaps you’re here on business, sir,” ventured the woman at the bar.
“Well, more or less to visit, to look at things,” said Thunstone. “Such as that figure up on the hill beyond your town.”
“I take it you’re American, sir. But here’s my husband, he can tell you more about that there picture up in the chalk, what they call Old Thunder.”
A customer had fetched his mug to the bar, and she went away to refill it. A man in a tawny jacket had strolled to where Thunstone sat. This was a middle-sized, middle-aged man, with a round, good- humored face.
“So you’re interested in our little place here, sir?” he greeted Thunstone. “We like it, though it’s small even for a village. More like what you’d call a hamlet. Elwain Hawes is my name. I’m landlord of the Moonraven, Mr.—”
“Thunstone.” They shook hands. “I’m more or less of an antiquarian; I look into historic and prehistoric curiosities. I came here on impulse because I heard in London about Claines and your figure on the hill. Mrs. Hawes said it's called Old Thunder. What is it, anyway?”
“Ah, what indeed? You may well ask, Mr. Thunstone. All that can be truly said is, it’s been there from before what can be remembered. It was made up there, I daresay, by the old heathen folk long centuries back; maybe they worshipped it after their manner. And each year this time, the people clear away the turf to show it clear in outline. Parson—our curate, Mr. Gates up at the church, St. Jude’s— he’s tried in his time to study it out. He just might answer your questions.”
“I plan to make a stay here for a few days,” Thunstone said again. “Do you have accommodations here?”
“Regret to say, Mr. Thunstone, we’re not fitted up for lodgings. What we get in here is just the local folk and daytime travelers. But right across Trail Street from us here, Mrs. Fothergill can give you bed and breakfast. I’ve been told she does well by those who come to her. And here at the Moonraven, we do people a lunch—buffet style—” He nodded toward the counter. “Oo, cold ham, cold beef, sausage
s, Scotch eggs, salads. A goodish crowd most noons, lorry and van drivers like to stop, and local residents. Likewise at dinnertime, what we call an ordinary for those as are disposed to take it. A cut off the joint and veg and so on. Plain, I’m afraid, but we think well cooked.”
“Plain and well cooked,” said Thunstone after him, and smiled. “That sounds all right to me, Mr. Hawes.”
He finished the last of his bitter, picked up his change, and rose.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll do as you suggest, go over to Mrs. Fothergill’s and see if I can get a room there. And I’d like to come back here for more talk later.”
“Thank you, sir. It’ll be a fair pleasure.”
Thunstone took his cane, powerfully hoisted his suitcases, and walked out. He crossed the parking lot and stopped at the edge of the paved street. Three or four cars trundled past, then a dark red truck- and-trailer combination. A tall, spare young policeman rode a bicycle along. Thunstone gazed across to a two-story house, sturdily clap- boarded and painted white. Flowers grew along the foundations. To one side rose a tree, so festooned with ivy that it was unidentifiable as to species. A huge rectangle of a sign rose against a pillar of the porch. Even at that distance, he could read the big letters plainly:
BED & BREAKFAST
MRS. ALMA FOTHERGILL, PROP.
He waited for a moment when the traffic thinned out both ways, and carried his luggage across. He mounted broad stone steps to the front door. It had a pane of stained glass and a placard, come in.
Thunstone came in, to a narrow, shadowed hallway with a staircase mounting upward at the left side. From the rear of the house, someone appeared. “Yes, sir?” said a low, vibrating voice.
“I was told I might get lodging here,” said Thunstone.
“Yes, of course.” It was an upstanding woman with a lofty swirl of shiny fair hair. She wore a figured blue frock, not fitted to her but softly draped to accent a full, rich figure. She smiled. Her teeth were white, her wide lips were painted red, her round face pinkly made up. She was in her forties as Thunstone guessed, and making the deliberate most of herself.
He set down his suitcases and took off his hat. Fine streaks of gray showed in his carefully parted black hair.
“Of course,” she made a rather singing two words of it. “We can provide you with bed and breakfast.” She seemed to be consciously affecting an educated accent. “For how long will you stay?” she asked.
“I can't exactly say, but I think for several days. I've just arrived in Claines. What are your charges?”
She told him the charges, and Thunstone said they were reasonable. “This way if you please,” she said, and led him into the hall.
She moved up the stairs lightly for so big a woman. She winnowed as she ascended. The hall above was lighted by a window at the front.
“My name is Mrs. Fothergill,” she told him. “Mrs. Alma Fother- gill. Here—” and she opened a darkly varnished door. “Might this suit you?”
The room was perhaps twelve feet square, papered with a scramble of roses. Next to its single window at the side of the house stood a bed with a massive wooden headboard and a spread with the pale, puffy look of oatmeal porridge. Above the bed hung a hooded electric light. There was an armchair, a small desk with a straight chair, a bureau and mirror, a stand that held a glass carafe of water and a glass. Thunstone studied a framed oil painting of two cows knee-deep in a tree-fringed pond.
“Do you like that picture, Mr.—”
“Thunstone,” he supplied.
“Yes, Mr. Thunstone, that was painted by a cousin of mine. Dear Osbert. And is the room satisfactory?”
“Yes, indeed.” Thunstone set his suitcases at the foot of the bed, draped his raincoat upon them, and tossed his hat on top. “I expect to be comfortable here.”
She smiled with her china-white teeth. “There's a bath at the far end of the hall—hot and cold water and a shower. As of just now, you're our only guest, though I get people going through—a good lot of backpackers hiking here and there, for instance. Such nice people. Now, if you'll come down and sign the register.”
He left his hat but brought his cane. Downstairs, she led him into a front parlor with plants slung in pots at the windows and china dogs and ducks on the mantel of the fireplace. A rolltop desk was there, with a yellow pencil upon it. Against the wall stood a sideboard with an array of bottles. Thunstone sat down and wrote his name and his New York address, then the address of his hotel on Southampton Row in London. Mrs. Fothergill looked over his shoulder.
“An American gentleman,” she said, in tones of approval. “Now and then I have Americans here, and they're an interesting, attractive lot. You know,” and she rolled her blue eyes a trifle, “I don't truly need to operate here for B-and-B. I've a good lot laid by at interest— my dear husband's insurance, and Dad and Mum left me something, too. But I like the company I get. I like best the ones from foreign parts, such as you. Like to talk with them. Meet new people, hear of new customs, and so on.”
He finished his writing. “Captain John Smith said something like that once.”
“Captain John Smith? Oh, he was in America, I believe.”
“Yes. Now, let me pay for tonight and tomorrow night for the present, and I'll see how much longer my stay will last/’
He took a billfold from the inside of his pocket and gave her some notes.
“Thank you/’ She opened a drawer in the desk, put the money in a metal box inside, and locked the drawer. Then she gestured toward an arched doorway at the rear of the parlor.
“That's the breakfast room in there. We serve breakfast at eight o’clock in the morning, unless you would want it later.”
“Eight o’clock will suit me, Mrs. Fothergill,” Thunstone assured her. “I don’t want you to make yourself too busy on my account.” “But it’s never hard to do things when you have a system.” Again her smile. “I do well here, though I say it myself. I bring a man to work in the yard, do repairs now and then, and I’ve a girl back in the kitchen. She’s not really a servant; she’s a young friend who lives with me here and helps me. I’m grateful for that help. And speaking of help,” she went on, with even more of a smile, “if I may ask, is there any help we might give you in whatever you plan to do here?”
She had sat herself down to ask that. Apparently she liked to talk to him. She had crossed one knee over the other, showing plump calves in fawn-colored stockings. Her feet were small, and wore high-heeled blue sandals strapped at the slim ankles. Thunstone looked back at her, and decided that the bright yellow of her hair had skillful treatment from a hairdresser. It reminded him of orange marmalade. He wondered if there was a hairdresser in as small a community as Claines. Perhaps she went regularly to a beauty shop in the neighboring factory and market town of Gerrinsford, through which the bus had brought him here. That would be a journey of seven or eight miles every few weeks.
“I’m glad to talk about why I came,” Thunstone said easily. “I’m a student of antiquities and customs, and I was in London to look into some publications at the library of the British Museum. I have some English friends who spoke about Claines. About a fallen pillar of stone, and that figure, cut out to the chalk on the hill above us here.” “Oh, ah,” she said, nodding. “Sweepside, we call that rise of ground. It belongs to Mr. Ensley at Chimney Pots. Old Thunder, yes; though I don't know how that name came to be given. It seems to always have been called that. I should say that I was brought up in Claines, here in this very house. But then I grew up and went to London." She stirred, as though to preen herself. “I was on the stage, you see.”
"I see,” said Thunstone, who did not feel great surprise to hear that she had been on the stage.
“And then I married in London. But my husband died—he was a photographer, an art photographer. And when my dear father and mother died, too, four years ago, I returned here.” Her blue eyes studied him. “But enough about me. You’re an antiquarian, you said.”
�
�In a modest way, yes, I am.”
“That sounds so interesting. And Mrs. Thunstone, has she come to England with you?”
“There’s no Mrs. Thunstone.”
At that she brightened and smiled again. She seemed ready to giggle, but did not.
“May I sit here for a minute or so and make some notes?” he asked.
“Why yes, of course. But excuse me for an instant.”
She rose and winnowed out.
Thunstone fished a loose-leaf notebook from the side pocket of his jacket and uncapped a ballpoint pen. At the top of a page he wrote the date, Thursday; July 1, and below that wrote the things he had heard from Hawes at the Moonraven and Mrs. Fothergill. Some words he underscored. As he finished writing, Mrs. Fothergill returned. She bore a silver tray, and on it a silver teapot and cups and a plate of small cakes.
“It’s four o’clock, or nearly,” she said, “and I like an early tea if there’s time. I thought you might care to join me, Mr. Thunstone.”
“You’re very kind,” he said, rising to take the tray and put it on a small side table. “And maybe you’ll let me ask some more questions.”
“If I can answer any of them.” She poured the tea. “Cream?” she asked him. “Sugar?”
“No, thank you.”
She handed him a cup and a small plate with a frosted currant cake and a paper napkin decorated with cupids. He sipped. “This is very good,” he praised the tea.
“And good of you to say so. I don't think that many Americans appreciate tea.”
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