Gog

by Andrew Sinclair

  He fails. Across the green-dark fringe of Grovely Wood, two hundred yards ahead at the hedge’s end, four hen pheasants run across the path through the field, jerky and camouflaged in dun spots like soldiers on patrol. On the sudden, Gog finds his body stooped and crouched, his fingers hooked as if round invisible handles in front of him, his shoulders pulling round a heavy barrel of thin air along the moving line, his teeth chattering like a machine-gun. The pheasants run out of sight into the flanking cornfield. The spasm passes from Gog, leaving him collapsed and quivering on the ground. Across the screens on the back of his closed eyelids, lines of brown men start their jumpy run and the stutter of his nerves brings them kicking down, hands to their belly like himself. The pictures cut behind his lids to another scene, where he stands in a bivouac by a hurricane lamp, swigging a whisky and soda, bragging with the quietness that is the supreme insolence, “Bagged a whole Eyetie patrol in between forty winks . . .”

  A passing shaft of sun makes Gog blink and return to his feet and trudge heavily onwards into the wood. Midges like little worries buzz in his lashes and his ears, as he treads the soggy trail between birch and beech and ash. The two muddy ruts through the wood lead him onto a cross-road of tarmac, where the old Roman way used to bisect the forest regardless of ups and downs and trees and meadows, as straight as a parting through shaggy hair. Gog continues on the ancient Saxon way through the woods that follows the contours; for the flat-footed Saxons would rather march five miles round than one mile straight up and down, preferring the ridgeway to the rule, the level to the line. Just beyond the Roman way, Gog crosses the northern part of the ancient Grim’s Ditch, now clogged with leaf mould and bracken and brier. Did Giant Grim really stop here on his way from Lincoln to gouge out this ditch against the Trojan invaders soon to defeat him and Gogmagog at Totnes?

  On the far side of the wood, in the last clearing before the slow drop down to the Wylye Valley, Gog comes on a shepherd’s caravan of corrugated iron on metal wheels. As he approaches the iron steps leading up to the open door of the caravan, he can see that it is boxed with planks inside. He has only time to notice with surprise a great brass bedstead filling up most of the floor-space of the caravan, when an extraordinary figure stops him short in his stride. A dropsical naked female Bacchus comes spinning and weaving down the steps and slowly twirls across the clearing. Flowers are plaited into all her available nooks and crannies. Between her toes, helleborine opens its white flowers with lascivious yellow tongues; knotted in her pubic hair is a posy of sneezewort and black horehound and bastard balm; from her hairy armpits grow the parasite broom-rape and ramping fumitory and tufted vetch; her fingers are pink-red with dumpy centaury and dodder and bindweed; her lips smoke the stems of policeman’s helmet and bouncing bett; in her eyelashes, scarlet pimpernels, in her eyebrows, forget-me-nots; dog’s mercury entwined with cuckoo-pint make a green garland full of poison-seed round her crown; from each ear sprouts a hoary plantain, from each nostril curls a rough hawkbit, and from her navel springs one perfect sowthistle. It is Merry, getting back to nature.

  Following her from the caravan comes a gamekeeper, wearing gumboots and scarlet shirt and close red moleskin trousers. He sits down on the iron steps, stuffs his brier pipe with shag tobacco, looks at Merry expressing herself all over the woody glade, and spits.

  “Look at ’er,” the keeper says bitterly to Gog. “Lady Chastity ’erself from the ’All! Visitin’! Canna keep ’er clothes on, neither! This is Lady Jane, ’er says, pointin’ to where ’er shouldna. Here I shits, ’er says, bendin’ down an’ showin’ me where. An’ here I pisses, ’er says, bendin’ up an’ showin’ me where. As if I didna know! I’d ha’ bust by now if I didna know. Lay tha hand on ’em both, ’er says, an’ like me for it. Well, I keeps me hands in me pockets, an’ I dunna like ’er for it. We all ha’ what ’er has, but we keep it private. Then ’er tells me to take me trousers off. All right, Your Ladyship, I says, but if thee wasna Your Ladyship, I’d keep ’em on. Then when I’ve got me trousers off, ’er takes me balls in her hand an’ says, ’Ullo, Sir John Thomas, ’ow about gettin’ up for Lady Jane? Has thee ever heard such bloody cock? So I says, Keep tha hands to tha own parts, I mun do me job. Then ’er makes me wear these close red trousers, so tight I’ll split me arse if I bend in ’em. Once the men walk with legs close bright scarlet, ’er says, an’ buttocks nice an’ showin’ scarlet under a little white jacket; then the women ’ud begin to be women. I’m not wearin’ no white jacket, I says, not even for Your Ladyship. Go an’ dance the tango in the nude if tha pleases, but I willna wear no honeysuckle on me balls nor no white bumfreezer to do me work. An’ if women ’ud begin to be women an’ dance round naked with daisies in their cunts once men wear red trousers an’ white bum-freezers, I’m bloody well goin’ to bed in a macintosh, just to keep ’em off. But ’Er Ladyship willna listen. Off with ’er jodhpurs, stick enough flowers in ’er mount of Venus for a village fête, then ’er’s ready to step on top of me poor little game chicks. O dear, O dear, it were very simple bein’ Sir Clifford Chastity’s keeper before Lady Chastity began readin’ books on ’ow she should take an interest below stairs.”

  Gog prefers to leave Merry to the pursuit of her nature by the rules of liberty prescribed for the intellectual savages of the thirties. So he pats the gamekeeper on the back. “I’d take over from you, my friend,” he says. “But she’s my mother. Don’t worry, she’ll be after another Sir John next week-end.” And he wanders out of the wood on the way the map marks as leading to Stonehenge.

  In the field beyond the trees, Gog sees how the gamekeeper does his job of rearing the chicks for the slaughter. Through the wooden bars of little cages, anxious white hens poke out their red combs, looking for their bastard offspring, changeling pheasant chicks, all speckled and strutting as they run in and out between the bars into the grass. An iron pot stands over some blackened stones; from it comes a strong smell of mixed meat and grain. So these are the fowl raised for the ceremonial massacre of the twelfth of August, the yearly Verdun and Dresden of the game birds, when Otto and his friends come out with their shotguns to train themselves and younger men like Gog for the killing of anything that moves. Yet nature is as cruel, if not as deliberate. As Gog watches, there is a bolt from heaven, a scrabble on the grass, and the sparrow-hawk is away with a chick between its claws, while the gamekeeper is sidetracked from his sentry-duty as Merry leads him a dance in Grovely Wood.

  Gog strolls down the hill to the red-tiled roofs of Great Wishford and crosses the river Wylye at the stone bridge. Beneath him, the trout lie facing upstream, no more substantial than shadows. Their tails move lazily just enough to keep themselves still against the current, waiting for the river to drift its food into their open mouths. And in the large meadows beyond the village, all other living things seem as lazy. The swallows merely lounge on the breeze with an occasional flip of their wings to adjust their position to a more comfortable one on their mats of air. A rabbit does not even bother to move off at Gog’s approach, but crouches down, obvious and oblivious, until he has gone. And as for the chase that should add some vigour to this summer’s drowse at doze of day, why, the hare and the pursuing hound are set immovably in iron over one farmhouse on the peak where the weathercock should be, and they turn only with the breeze, never closer to each other, never further away on their still hunt.

  For mile after mile, Gog meets not a soul. The country tracks of England are empty, the people are forgetting how to walk, the rights-of-way are disappearing under the plough. He is a man alone in a deserted countryside. Yet he knows that sometimes he does not see a passer-by, because he is lost in a reverie or in the monotony of the trudge. And he knows that the people of the southland shrink back from the stranger, who may well carry the plague or a knife. Why should the traveller be welcome now, when he can bring no news as quickly or as well as the radio and the newspapers? The wires and the metal type that have made the countryfolk the eavesdroppers of the gossip of the c
ity, have pushed the traveller from the hearth. For he can tell nothing so novel and curious now, that it will outweigh the natural fear of his unknown coming.

  A hall called Druid’s Lodge marks the way from the south towards Stonehenge. Yet Gog can hardly believe that the great remembered stones really exist over the rise; for all he can see ahead are the chimneys of incinerators sticking like black needles from the cloth of the earth and trailing threads of smoke, while the familiar oblongs of Nissen huts squat smaller than dung-beetles on the slopes of Salisbury Plain. Gog looks at the map and finds that the name of the army camp beyond Stonehenge is Larkhill. Larkhill? when the artillery is singing a staccato barrage of broken caws and the mortar bombs are booming like distant bitterns and the familiar noises of war make Gog tremble so that he longs to confuse them with the unfamiliar noises of nature, and he cannot. Yet it is evening now, and the actual birds begin to shrill in the stubble and the copses, and the soldiers manning the far guns cease fire and pack up in time for dinner, and the mad hares begin bounding about everywhere, rarely stopping to listen while poised on their hind legs, their ears pricked high and their short forepaws hanging down like another set of ears. And the evening is buttery on the golden bowls of the fields, as the southland beguiles with its soft bright ways. So it is in peace that Gog walks up the little slope in the track and finds himself looking two miles ahead to the grey giants of Stonehenge.

  XXVII

  A grove has put up its ragged palisades to shut off the huts of Larkhill Camp, as the stone giants walk down from the north to meet Gog walking up from the south, the stone giants alongside the wooden giants from the tall copses at their flanks and alongside the giants of the night that walk in the long shadows of the sunny evening. “Caugherigan,” Gog finds himself murmuring, “and Tregeagle from Dozmare Pool, Little Grim from Lincoln, Bolster of Portreath, Trecrobben of the ten fingers, Termagol, Palug on his mighty cat, Annwfn’s Chief, Tyrnoc and Pen Palach, Manawydan of the dark net and Pryderi that leaves no shadow, so black is he.” So Gog calls the roll of honour of his twelve giant companions of stone and wood and night that come marching on to meet him from the woods about Stonehenge in the summer’s close of day. They have come to help Gog fight the new Trojans of the new metal, steel and aluminium and tungsten, who tear up the old places of Wessex on their manoeuvres and testing-grounds beyond the fringing woods round Salisbury Plain.

  The old trail from the south dips again as Gog walks forwards, and he loses sight of the stone giants. All he can hear is the gathering noise of a convoy of lorries passing along the main road before him, a din that grows from a rumble to a roaring. Up another rise and the stone giants have walked nearer in their broken circle. They face outwards, ready to meet attack from all directions, especially from the back, for this is the wily southland. As Gog crosses the main road and approaches Stonehenge, he sees that the new Trojans have hemmed in the giants by roll on roll of barbed wire. The great stones are making their last stand, back to back in their doomed ring, fronting the thousand thousand wire points of their enemies. They can no longer advance nor retreat. They wait over the many centuries for the final attack from the war camps on the plain, the ultimate assault of the metal things from Larkhill, propelled by the mechanics who have ringed them with iron barbs.

  The low evening light chips out mill-stone faces from the standing monoliths, flat-cheeked, snub-nosed, mongoloid. Where the lintel stones still bridge the gap between two of the standing stones, they seem to be the pelvis joining the stubby thighs of some Ozymandias. From outside the besieging rolls of barbed wire, the stone giants appear broken into limbs and torsos, some leaning in rest and some dead from their fight over the millenia with the encroaching forces of metal that ring them closer and closer in fanged manacles.

  As Gog stands outside Stonehenge, wishing for a pair of clippers to cut his way through the outer wire, he sees that his wish has spawned the deed. A burrow has already been opened, the iron barbs bent backwards so that a man can easily crawl within the sacred enclosure on hands and knees over the grass. And so Gog crawls into the henge. As he rises to his feet, he sees a priest clad in a white robe standing within the inmost circle of the stones, invoking the aid of the red sun that is blinking on the rim of the west. Gog approaches softly to see that the priest is tall and hunchbacked and speaks in the fierce voice of Evans the Latin.

  “Ogmios, god of the mouths of the Celts, come down in your lion-skin and touch Evans your servant, indeed. Touch him with your club, that he may speak with tongues of fire. Teach him to drag the limeys behind him in chains, as you drag all men. Give him strength to put the accursed city of Cockaigne to the torch, that the sweet stink of English flesh can roast in your nostrils. Look you, Ogmios, I go against London. There’s no time now for forgetting the champion of the druids. I go against the false Cockaigne, the city of Gog and Magog. And burn it, I will, down to the twin hills on either side of Walbrook, where Gog and Magog sit, ruling Cockaigne and all the lands of the Celts. Ogmios, bach, be you a coal on my tongue, a spear in my breath. I go to tell the wicked parliament of London to let the Celtic peoples free. If they say nay, then burn, burn, burn! Ogmios, aid me. Who else calls to you? Ogmios, hear me. The last of the true Celts, the last of the true druids, calls your holy name. Ogmios! And, look you, it’d be a bloody shame to let down another taffy.”

  As Evans swings round towards the approaching Gog, he reveals that he is carrying an inverted broadsword; round the hilt are twined a twig of oak and a sprig of mistletoe. The front of his white robes is covered with golden signs for the sun and the moon, the scales of justice and the pyramids. When he sees the intruder, he looses a fiendish Celtic yell and runs at Gog, holding the broadsword above his head ready to slice Gog in two. Luckily he trips over a sunken bluestone just before he can amputate Gog’s split self into twins, and he comes clattering down at Gog’s feet. Gog picks Evans up and dusts off his embroidered sheet, but he keeps the broadsword warily in his own hand.

  “It’s no good trying to split me asunder,” he says to Evans. “However expert you are, I doubt whether you could separate the true Celt in me from the lying limey. Not with a broadsword, at least. Maybe with a pair of tweezers.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Griffin bach,” Evans says. “I get that feared in this accursed land, I think everybody is an enemy. And enemy they are, if they won’t let the Celtic peoples go.”

  “I used to think everyone was an enemy in England,” Gog says, “but I’m not so sure now. Don’t you think the limeys may be merely misguided?”

  “The limeys are so steeped in error,” Evans says, “that the only way you’ll get their heads straight is by cutting them off their necks. A bloody folk and they must be dealt with bloodily. But, mark you, I’m a man of peace like all true druids. I’ll give them a last chance, indeed. If the new parliament of the Labour Party sticks to what it says – though what else does a limey eat but his own words? – if the socialists do what they pledge, then they’ll give freedom to all the British Empire. And that means Wales and Cornwall and Scotland, too. Conquered peoples, we are. And if the free Celts choose to form together and make me their archdruid and ruler, why then, it’s only right, look you. So Ogmios, let me change the wicked ways of the limeys at their Westminster, accursed in history. Or I’ll burn the whole bloody lot.”

  “I didn’t know you were a druid priest,” Gog says. “There’s an awful lot I don’t know.”

  “Hush,” Evans whispers, looking fearfully among the stone giants at his back. “Don’t shout. Limey spies are everywhere, mark you. Stones have ears.” He pulls Gog’s own left ear close to his mouth and fills it full of words and the fierce froth of his passion. “There are always druids and I am one of their leaders. We don’t declare ourselves, mark you. Why should we, in the land of our enemies? We’ve been the fifth column of the truth in two thousand years of occupation, since the bloody Romans came. We are always there when we are needed, indeed, though you may not find us even when you ask
. We may seem to have disappeared over many centuries, but we were always there. For the truth is always there. From the druids, all religions come. Pity it is, they wither. But the druids are always there, waiting until another religion is needed, in its own due time. Christ was a druid, for what is the old druid name for the saviour to come but Yesu or All Heal? And Buddha, and Mahomet. Wherever a new religion arises, know you that the druids were there first. That legend that Joseph of Arimathea came to Glastonbury, of course, it’s true. Why wouldn’t he, when the source of holy things is here?”

  The ring of giant stones backs Evans’s words like some loyal guard, the ranks of the faithful stones that endure as long as the words of truth and long after the flesh has turned to dust.

  “We have records, Griffin bach, that hold all wisdom, but we only reveal them in due time. We have always known of the powers of the centre of the body, look you, and now the scientific fools talk to us of endocrine glands. Nothing is new, indeed. All is rediscovered, because all is known before – by the druids.