Soliloquy for Pan

by Beech, Mark

When I went to bed just after midnight I took a very large mug of water up with me. I had been given a camp-bed and a sleeping bag in a low-ceilinged room that had a sagging floor and just a couple of pieces of heavy Victorian furniture. There were mouldy hunting prints on walls that hadn’t been decorated since before the Second World War, and it was cold; perishing cold. In the morning I dressed hurriedly and decided I couldn’t possibly have a wash in the icy bathroom with its uninvitingly stained, claw-legged bath. I went straight down to the kitchen, and as Penny was not around, I ineffectually tried to get something other than a low-level heat out of the Raeburn stove. I assumed that Penny was still upstairs asleep, and so I looked in the ill-stocked cupboards and found a box of biscuits that looked like it might have to do for breakfast.

  My plan was to give Penny another half an hour, then I would go and quietly knock on her door. I was coming to realise the futility of driving up to North Yorkshire to see her, and had decided to leave. As I was sitting there, looking at my watch, I was surprised to hear a metal latch snap up. A second later the back door vibrated nosily as it was pushed open.

  In came Penny. She looked wild; her hair was wet and all over the place, and she appeared to be wearing an ancient waterproof coat over only a thin dress. When she took off her Wellington boots she was barefoot.

  “Up early,” I said.

  “Always.”

  “Can’t miss out on a glorious day like this,” I joked.

  “I’ve been busy,” she said, serious, although she was soon smiling again. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove. She opened a couple of vents in the Raeburn, and looked inside.

  “Have you been playing with this?” she asked.

  “I tried adding some fuel.”

  “It had enough already. But you haven’t quite killed it. It may take some time for the water to boil.”

  She went upstairs and I heard her going into the bathroom. Looking around, I wondered how anyone could live in such a damp, cold, draughty house. I remembered Terrence saying he had paid three million for the place, but, as Penny had explained, that was for the land and shooting rights, rather than for the old farmhouse that went with it.

  I meant to tell Penny that I was leaving, but I couldn’t make myself say anything when she eventually came back down.

  “Did you want breakfast?” she asked. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have got something in.”

  “Where are your nearest shops?”

  “Kettlewell,” she said, absently motioning in the direction of the small village a few miles away. “Or Leyburn,” she added, as though she didn’t really know, or care.

  “Where do you go to get provisions?”

  “Terrence brings them up when he visits; stocks up the larder.” She pointed to a door in the corner he hadn’t investigated. “I mainly live off tinned fruit... stuff from the freezer... biscuits... I drink a lot of tea.”

  “And wine.”

  “And wine, but at least it’s good wine...”

  “But what do you do with yourself?”

  “You asked me that yesterday.”

  “And you didn’t answer.”

  She sat down opposite me at the large kitchen table. I stared at her freckles, once so unnoticeable that she could hide them under the lightest of makeup. Now they were quite prominent. I had always liked them, even if she didn’t.

  “I go for walks,” she said.

  “Over the moors?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Aren’t you lonely?”

  “I have friends,” she said. “And then there are sheep, the local farmer, the occasional rambler... I often go down into the dale, where there are trees. There haven’t been many in the dale for centuries, but they’re growing back. You can almost go all the way down to Middleham now without leaving the cover of the trees. That’s why the deer sometimes come all the way up here, although there’s less cover, and little for them to eat. The deer are my friends.”

  After a cup of tea I grudgingly agreed to go out for a walk with her. Penny was enthusiastic about the bleak surroundings, although I found them quite hateful. I enjoyed her company, but it was cold, wet and uninspiring outside. We could see no more than a few metres in front of us, and around the house there was simply brown, close-cropped sodden turf, interspersed with what looked like reeds, or some other rough, thick grass. There were occasional sheep, ghostly and bedraggled, that stared at us stupidly from out of the mist, or cloud. Everything smelt of wet earth and sheep. The walk did become a little more interesting when we finally came across what she called The Wood, although it wasn’t like the woods I had known growing up in Surrey. It was made up of regular, close-planted conifers, and the pattern of the dark trees was only disrupted by the gills that cut through the side of the fell, exposing rock covered with moss and lichen.

  After we had walked for some distance through the almost-black wood, some other vegetation appeared; brambles and ferns, under proper broadleaved trees. It was difficult to walk, despite the path we appeared to be taking, for the rocks and stones underfoot were at odd angles, threatening to trip us up. I was tired and wanted to go back, but Penny was striding ahead with some purpose. I was about to complain at the distance we had travelled when she turned to me, her smile wide and her eyes excited.

  “I want to show you something,” she said, and came back a few paces to take my hand. Without stopping to consider my reaction she dragged me forward and after a dozen or so metres the ground levelled out before us and there was a roughly circular clearing in the trees, with sodden, brown, dying bracken that reached to our waists. There was an odd smell, not quite of sheep, but of something more feral, and it seemed a little warmer, no doubt because the sun did appear to be shining weakly. From the middle of the bracken rose a large flat white rock, spotted with yellow lichen.

  “This is a special place,” she said.

  “In what way?”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  “It’s, well... different,” I said, grasping for her meaning.

  She walked up to the stone and took off her wellingtons. Once she had climbed on to the stone she stood barefoot, stretching, straining every part of her body so as to reach up as high as she could.

  “This is a very special place,” she said, now holding her arms wide, almost in ecstasy. “All of my friends are here.”

  It was at that moment that I realised just how unwell Penny had become. How could I have not understood this before? Living alone in a semi-ruined house in the middle of nowhere, eating little, drinking too much, not dressing properly... When I tried getting her down from the stone she cried, and then resolutely refused to talk to me all the way back to the house. Once inside, she started to explain to me what the stone meant, what she did there and who she met. It was all nonsense, and I couldn’t get her to admit that she had a problem. And as there was no reasoning with the woman, I left, driving back down to Kettlewell where I finally had mobile phone coverage. I called Central Office and they found Terrence’s number. He was in Cheltenham, and when I told him about Penny he said that he was already worried about her. He promised that he would come up to see her immediately, and get her what help he could.

  I went back down to London and tried not to think too much about Penny. But no matter how deeply I immersed myself in work, she insisted on haunting my dreams. Usually I recalled little on waking, apart from the atmosphere in the clearing in the trees. There was something about it that both appalled and excited me. Sometimes Penny was the source of these feelings; she would often be standing on that stone, her arms stretched out towards me, and I felt aroused at the same time as I felt a deep, burning, humiliating shame. I couldn’t help thinking that there was always something else there in the clearing; something I ought to have been able to see when I had visited Penny.

  Once awake, I would try and dismiss the tattered remnants of the dreams, knowing that I could never hope to understand their meaning. Slowly they lost some of their intensity and
their ability to disturb me, but just over a year later I was back up North, for the Bradford by-election. It was fast turning into a nightmare for the Party. My job was to calm nerves, get the candidate back on track, and, of course, try and solicit donations. I was doing what I did best, and it was easy; potential donors were appalled by our mishandling of the issues in constituency and they were scared the Party would lose the election. They wanted to do something to help, and with my promises that the campaign could be turned around, they opened up their chequebooks. But, although I was busy all day and late into most evenings, my dreams of Penny and that clearing in the trees insisted on returning every night with a renewed intensity. After a while I found that she was often on my mind during the day as well, distracting me from my work. I put it down to proximity; Coverdale was only just over an hour’s drive away. On my last night in Bradford I finally decided to phone Terrence to ask how Penny was, but Central Office were unable to locate a number for him that he would answer. His own office was closed, of course.

  The only way of discovering what had happened was to go back to the house on the moors, and rather than drive to London on Sunday morning, I turned my car in the direction of Skipton, drove along Wharfedale to Kettlewell, and then up the perilous, narrow and winding road to Coverdale. This time there were no views as I drove; the rain blurred the distance, and I had to concentrate on the road because of the many deep puddles The last part of the drive was as bad as I remembered from before, but the track over the moors to the house was worse. Twice I grounded my BMW where the wheels were forced into deeper ruts than there had been last year. I could see the house before me, against the moorland, the dun stone a similar colour to the brown background, and the windows looking black and without any glass. It now looked even more abandoned and ruinous than the previous year, and there appeared to be slates missing at one end of the roof. When I came closer, though, it was not perhaps as bad as it had first appeared, and I could see that around the side of the house a Land Rover was parked. Penny hadn’t been able to drive when I had known her, so I assumed it was Terrence’s.

  I knocked at the front door, but nobody answered. Around the back, the kitchen door was open, so I let myself in, calling out for Penny and Terrence. The place was much the same as it had been on my last visit, although it looked untidier inside, and dirtier. It also smelled, although I couldn’t say what the specific cause could be. It looked as though squatters had been living there. On the work surfaces in the kitchen there were hundreds of empty wine bottles.

  I assumed that Penny and Terrence had to be out walking over the moors, so I went upstairs to look out of the windows there, hoping to see them. The bathroom faced north, but there was nobody visible. There were not even any sheep; just mile after mile of monotonous moorland. I went into the room I had stayed in before, and which faced south, noticing that it was curiously unchanged since I had slept in it; the sleeping bag was still on the camp bed, and the mug I had once used was beside it. There was a large black stain all down the wall, though, where the rain had found its way inside.

  As there was nobody around, I peered through the door into Penny’s bedroom, and it was distressing to see it in such a sordid, even squalid state, with rubbish, more wine bottles and the dirty bedding all over the floor. I went back downstairs wondering what on earth had happened, fearing the worst. On a whim I checked the cellar, and could see that there were only a few remnants of the once fine collection of wine.

  Trying to decide what to do, I walked around the outside of the house, wondering if Penny and Terrence even lived there any longer. The Land Rover was quite a new model, top of the range, but something about it suggested that it had been parked, unmoving, for several months.

  And then I saw the path in the grass leading to the plantation of trees that Penny had insisted on calling a Wood. It was easy to follow the well-worn track down to the conifers and through the unwelcoming and forbidding trees. My mood did not lift when I finally came to the broadleaved trees, where fern, bracken and bramble hid rocks that were wet and uneven, and I stumbled several times. It seemed to take forever before I was upon the clearing. That was where I found Penny and Terrence.

  I probably didn’t see them for more than a second before I turned to run away. I panicked, and tripped on one of the hidden rocks. Surprise, shock, shame even, may have affected my recall of what I had seen in that second, the detail that I have had trouble forgetting, try as I might. I insist that it was not because I am a prude, or was offended by the sight of the two of them on that rock like a stone table, or bed. It was not that I was jealous at the way that their thin white bodies seemed to fit so perfectly together. Rather, it was who or what else was with them that horrified me, looming over them, enjoying the spectacle.

  I was back on my feet and stumbling away, but Terrence and Penny were soon either side of me, trying to help me, asking questions. I shrugged them off; all I wanted to do was leave. And so they ran alongside me; Penny was dancing as she did so, oblivious to the stones and brambles. Of all things, she was singing.... And Terrence was laughing and joking as though drunk, as though he found the whole episode uproariously funny. I remember their skin being mottled with cold, or dirt, I didn’t know which, and looking almost like the surface of the cold hard stone they had been laying on. It was an odd illusion, but I certainly couldn’t look; I couldn’t stare at their nakedness so as to satisfy my curiosity. I kept my eyes on the ground before me so as to be sure of my footing. I was obviously confused, delirious even, because I was sure that the person who had been watching Penny and Terrence was also with the three of us, behind us all the time. It was a man, I was certain. I cannot recall what he was wearing, but it might have been animal skins of some sort. In my memory, the man following us was enormously tall and very dark. He was crashing through the trees behind us, behaving like some terrible old stinking drunk.

  When they reached the house, Penny and Terrence tried to calm me, to persuade me to stay. Although I knew I should not be in control of a car, I insisted on driving off, back over the moor, and down that treacherous road to Kettlewell. I drove straight through the village and all the way to Skipton at a terrible speed. In the market square there, I abandoned my car and stumbled into a hotel where the staff thought I had been beaten up, or had been in some terrible accident. When the paramedics arrived they had to sedate me before binding various wounds to my head. The police had been called as well, and insisted on breathalysing me before I was taken to the General Hospital, where I was stitched up and kept in overnight for observation.

  The immediate consequences were, for me, awkward and unpleasant. The police tried to prosecute me for drunk-driving. The breathalyser test had been negative, but they had taken a blood sample at the hospital which showed me to be three times over the limit. It was nonsense, of course. I hadn’t touched a drop since the day before, and, anyway, the blood sample had not been taken in accordance with proper, legal procedures. The police may have found my car illegally parked and unlocked in the middle of the market square, but could not prove when I had driven it. They wanted to make a point of prosecuting the Party Treasurer, but my legal team made them look foolish.

  But of more long-lasting concern was what I had experienced up there, on the moors, at the very head of Coverdale. Had I really seen Penny and Terrence on that stone, in the cold and the rain? What a bizarre group we must have made as we returned to the house; me delirious, and the two of them naked, impervious to the freezing conditions, all the while laughing and skipping and dancing. And who was the dark, hairy old man, who stunk to the high heavens and is, in my memory, twelve foot tall? I remember the man as providing some bass refrain to the music that Penny and Terrence sang and danced to. I refuse to go back and investigate, and will not ask anybody else to go up there on my behalf.

  The Maze at Huntsmere

  Reggie Oliver

  I knew Seymour Charteris before he became a heterosexual. That was in the late seventies when we were bo
th aspiring young actors. We went to the same parties in Fulham and Chelsea, and met at auditions where frequently we would be contending for the same role. More often than not he would be chosen over me, despite the fact that he was a lot less good looking than I was and, in my view at least, no better as an actor. On the other hand—I freely admit it—he had a talent for ingratiation which I have never mastered.

  All that was a long time ago, and I am not jealous of his success. I am not; let me make that clear. I might even be able to tolerate the sleek veneer of respectability with which he and society have slathered his now rather corpulent person, if it weren’t for Lady Susan. There I will admit to a certain degree of rancour, but for very understandable reasons.

  Back in the seventies we all knew he was gay. He never admitted to it of course, but he cultivated a certain camp flamboyance of manner, complete with a flow of second-hand witticisms and an unabashed enthusiasm for the works of Judy Garland. His party piece was a version of Noel Coward’s ‘Nina’, costumed as Carmen Miranda with a head-dress mainly composed of bananas. When he went to Broadway in a revival of Dear Octopus, he was more often to be found at the YMCA than the Chelsea where he was supposed to be staying. I rest my case. And yet, somewhere in the early eighties, he appears to have undergone a one hundred and eighty degree shift in sexual orientation of which the ostensible cause was Lady Susan Chieveley (pronounced, by the way, “Chivly”).

  As it happens, I was also, during that period, extremely interested in Sue Chieveley. I was, at the time, a younger son. My elder brother, as is the custom in our family, had just inherited the entire Huntsmere estate and most of the income that went with it. I was condemned to eke out my existence from an extremely meagre trust fund and my erratic and exiguous earnings as an actor. Then at someone’s house in Norfolk I met Sue.

  As I’m sure you know, she is the daughter of the Marquess of Martlesham, hence the courtesy title. The Chieveleys of Martle-sham are a family which, unlike my own, have managed to hang onto a fair amount of their inherited wealth. This was achieved mainly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through a systematic policy of marrying into what Wilde called “the purple of commerce”, chiefly the daughters of American steel barons.