The Wicker Man: A Novel

by Robin Hardy

  ‘And on that feather there was a bed

  And on that bed there lay a girl

  And on that girl there was a man

  And from that man there came a seed …’

  Howie heard these words with a growing sense of shock and surprise. It was not how he remembered the song at all. But folk songs were often earthy and he knew many old ones such as this had been bowdlerized in Victorian times.

  He could see the back of a woman schoolteacher inside the classroom. She sang the verse in time with her male colleague outside, who now led the boys in interweaving their ribbons around the maypole. The sergeant listened closely as the song went on:

  ‘And from that seed there came a baby

  And from that baby there grew a boy

  And then that boy planted an acorn

  And from that acorn grew a tree

  And the tree growed in the Summerisle wood

  In the Summerisle wood, in the Summerisle wood

  And the tree growed in the Summerisle wood …’

  The boys were now singing the chorus as they wove themselves closer and closer to the maypole. The schoolmistress had stopped singing and was calling for quiet from her pupils. Howie, who had, sensibly enough, decided that the next most logical place to gain information about a missing thirteen-year-old girl was among her schoolmates, prepared to interrupt the class. Walking from the window to the outside door to the classroom he could hear the schoolmistress saying, ‘Now that’s quite enough, girls! It’s time to pay attention to me!’

  Silence ensued as Howie appeared, still unseen, at the doorway, to notice their attention all centred on a handsome woman of about thirty-five, with blonde, swept-back hair, dressed more elegantly than the other women he had seen on the island. She looked as if she had bought her clothes in Edinburgh or some other fashionable place.

  ‘Daisy,’ she said, addressing a dark, plump girl who appeared to be eating something surreptitiously. ‘Will you tell us, please, what the maypole represents?’

  Daisy sat there, not embarrassed, but just looking blank. Around her grew a chorus of ‘Please, Miss Rose …’ ‘I know,’ et cetera, as some of the other girls held their hands up, and otherwise jumped up and down, in order to attract attention to themselves.

  ‘Really, Daisy!’ said Miss Rose. ‘I’ve told you often enough. Anyone?’

  ‘Phallic Symbol!’ chorused the children. ‘The Phallic Symbol!’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Miss Rose. ‘It is the image of the penis that we venerate as symbolizing the generative force in nature.’

  Howie’s sense of shock at the schoolmistress’s words was, at first blush (and he did), rooted in embarrassment. He had never heard the penis impersonally discussed by a woman in what, she must believe, not having yet noticed him, to be entirely female company. He’d heard a whore on the dockside accuse poor McTaggart of having ‘a prick no bigger than a thimble’, and a great deal more in that vein from women of that ilk. He thought it healthy and normal for people to speak of things straight out and not use hypocritical euphemisms. He despised the prissiness that called a woman’s lavatory a ‘little girl’s room’. And yet to venerate the penis? Howie suddenly remembered the famous prosecution by the Attorney-General of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as an obscene book. The prosecution had made much of the phrase in which Lady Chatterley was said to ‘worship’ the gamekeeper’s balls. The defence had triumphed partly because an Anglican bishop, giving evidence on their behalf, had answered the prosecution’s question, ‘Can you imagine a decent woman worshipping a man’s balls?’ with the reply ‘Yes, indeed.’ And yet Howie knew the bishop had meant his answer in the context of what ‘a wonderful thing’ (as a creation of God) ‘is a man’. In that context, of course, his balls, custodians of new life, were indeed wonderful. But something told Howie that when the schoolmistress said venerate the penis she meant it in the sense that he, Howie, venerated the Host when it was brought out of its seclusion in the sanctuary of the church. The implication quite simply angered him. Here, in his view, was a quirkish, obscene notion being taught to these young people in school. No wonder the adults behaved as they did, copulating in public. No wonder they sang and danced and acted as if God’s precious gift of sex was a commonplace game to be acted out with familiarity, without love, as Howie understood and valued it. This banal and evil teaching, as he saw it, this farce of making a tree almost sacred, infuriated Neil Howie.

  He threw the hall door of the classroom violently open and stood in the doorway, glaring at Miss Rose.

  ‘Miss,’ said Sergeant Howie coolly, but politely. ‘May I have a word with you, please?’

  Miss Rose and the children looked at him in great surprise but the teacher hurried to join him by the doorway.

  ‘Miss,’ said Howie at once, ‘you can be very sure I shall report this nonsense that I’ve just heard here today to the proper authorities! Everywhere I go on this island I find degeneracy–brawling in the bars, indecency in public places, corruption of the young, and now I know where it all stems from–the filth taught here in this schoolroom!’

  He was aware of how pompous he must sound, even as he spoke, but he didn’t care. The phrases might be clichés, but they gave vent to his feelings quickly and succinctly, and he was glad he had so expressed himself.

  ‘I was unaware that the police had any authority on matters of education,’ said Miss Rose.

  She had the softest of lilting accents but her mode of speech was pedantic, superior, and ironic. She was the sort of woman who made Howie feel uncomfortable for she had a sexuality that came from a mocking, mysterious expression, from a body that moved with feline assurance and grace.

  ‘Maybe not,’ acknowledged Howie. ‘But we work closely with those who do. And as I say, this will not go unreported.’

  ‘Is that why you came here today? To snoop?’ said Miss Rose, lowering her voice, hoping he would follow her example, for the girls were plainly listening.

  ‘No, it was not, miss,’ said Howie. ‘And let me make it plain. I do not snoop. I investigate.’

  ‘May one know,’ asked Miss Rose, ‘without too much self-important mystery-making, that is, what it is you have come here to investigate?’

  ‘I’ve come to find a missing girl,’ said Howie, lowering his voice now, ‘a girl whom everyone says never existed.’

  ‘How quixotic of you,’ teased Miss Rose.

  ‘Quixotic?’ asked Howie, annoyed at her attitude.

  ‘From Don Quixote–an enthusiastic visionary, a pursuer of lofty but impracticable ideals,’ said Miss Rose, the schoolteacher.

  ‘Also a man of honour, I believe,’ added Howie, glad to have acquitted himself against this waspish female. Mary would have been proud of him.

  ‘Which did not prevent him from continually making a fool of himself,’ capped Miss Rose, triumphantly.

  ‘We shall see about that!’ said Howie, determined to end this colloquy and get down to business. With which he strode into the classroom and addressed the class:

  ‘Girls, I want your attention, please,’ he said, suddenly gentle as well as authoritative. ‘I am a police officer.’ He started smiling as they giggled at this obvious statement. ‘As you can see! I am here to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. This is her photograph, which I will ask you to pass round the classroom while I am writing her name on the blackboard.’

  He produced the photograph of Rowan Morrison, which he handed to the nearest girl. After two or three seconds, she shook her head and passed it to the next girl. While it was going from desk to desk around the room, Howie turned to the blackboard and prepared to write, when he saw what was already written there and read it in mild disbelief.

  The Cock-Knee Stone preserves the pith of the milk.

  The Snail Stone preserves the eyes from the darkness.

  The Toad Stone preserves the newly born from the weird woman.

  The Hag Stone preserves people from nightmare.

  Impatiently, h
e rubbed this off and wrote in bold lettering the name: ROWAN MORRISON. AGE 12–13.

  ‘That’s her name,’ said Howie, facing the class. ‘Rowan Morrison. Do any of you recognize the name or the photograph?’

  There was complete silence. The photograph was passed back to the first girl who handed it up to Howie. Still staring at the class, he put it away.

  ‘You have your answer,’ said Miss Rose, impatient now for him to leave. ‘If she existed, we would know of her.’

  Howie continued to stare at the class. His eye had been attracted to the one empty desk in the room. He crossed to it.

  ‘Whose desk is this?’ Howie asked Miss Rose over his shoulder.

  ‘No one’s,’ she answered.

  He opened the desk. Inside it was quite empty except that in the middle there was a nail driven into the wood. Attached to the nail by a thread was a black beetle. The thread, about four inches long, was already wound several times around the nail. Daisy, sitting next to the empty desk, leaned over and explained to Howie.

  ‘The little old beetle goes round and round,’ she said. ‘Always the same way you see, until at the end he’s tied right up tight to the nail–poor old thing.’

  ‘Poor old thing?’ said Howie furiously. ‘Then why in God’s name do you do it, girl?’

  He slammed the desk shut and walked back up to the dais, addressing Miss Rose once again.

  ‘I’d like to see the school register, please.’

  ‘Do you have Lord Summerisle’s authority?’ asked Miss Rose querulously.

  ‘You seem to forget, this is a police matter,’ said Howie coldly.

  ‘I’m afraid you will still need a search warrant, or permission from Lord Summerisle.’ Miss Rose had a hint of desperation in her voice.

  Howie ignored her, and threw open the top of the teacher’s desk. Inside was the school register, which he lifted out. Now it was Miss Rose’s turn to be outraged.

  ‘Just you put that right back … and now, if you please,’ she said, her voice cracking with anger.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ said Howie calmly. ‘You’ll just have to bear with me.’

  The book was about half-filled. That is, it appeared to record the attendance at the school for the last several years. He naturally turned to the present term’s record and found it headed ‘Beltane Spring Term’. Running his finger down the names: Lily, Heather, May, Marigold, Pansy, Daisy, Holly, he came to the name he had been searching for … Rowan. Sure enough, Rowan Morrison. Moreover, her address was c/o Mrs May Morrison, as described in the anonymous letter.

  The sergeant quickly counted the names on the list and glaring at the girls, counted them too. There was, as he had expected, one girl missing in the class, which accounted for the empty desk. Now, thought Howie, his adrenaline surging with righteous anger, we can start to wrap up this case. He addressed the now scared-looking pupils with such an intensity of quiet fury that they seemed to wilt like the blooms, for which most were named, under his ire.

  ‘You’re despicable little liars!’ he said. ‘Rowan Morrison is a schoolmate of yours. Isn’t she? She attends this class. That’s her desk. Isn’t it?’

  The class remained silent, trying to avoid his raking gaze.

  ‘I think you ought to know …’ interrupted Miss Rose anxiously. But Howie cut her short.

  ‘And you’re the biggest liar of them all!’ he told her. ‘I warn you, if you tell me one more lie, I’ll have you “inside” for obstruction. And that’s a promise, miss. Now, for the last time, where is this girl?’

  Miss Rose tugged now at his sleeve.

  ‘I will have to speak to you outside,’ she said.

  ‘All right!’ agreed Howie, hoping that in private she could tell him what apparently couldn’t be said before the girls. Although having heard part of their May Day lesson, he couldn’t imagine what that might be.

  ‘Children,’ said Miss Rose, ‘get on with your reading for the next few minutes–The Rites and Rituals of May Day, Chapter Five. I won’t be long.’

  Preceding Miss Rose out of the schoolroom, Howie could see that the boys were finishing tying the coloured ribbons neatly to the maypole. The band had gone from the churchyard wall. Miss Rose, looking flushed and anxious, hurried out to join him.

  ‘Well?’ Howie asked her curtly.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Miss Rose. ‘No one was lying to you. I told you plainly that if Rowan Morrison existed we would know of her.’

  ‘You mean that she doesn’t exist–that she is dead?’ Howie hated the contorted way the woman spoke.

  ‘You would say so,’ said Miss Rose.

  ‘No, hocus, miss, if you please,’ insisted Howie. ‘Either she’s dead or she isn’t.’

  Miss Rose hesitated.

  ‘We never use the word,’ she said at last, mouthing the word dead, not saying it out loud. ‘You see, we believe that after the human life is over, the soul lives on–in air, in the trees, in animals, in fire, in water–so that Rowan Morrison, for example, has simply rejoined the life force in another form.’

  The boys came running to their classroom, whooping and shouting and followed by their schoolmaster.

  ‘Do you honestly mean to say you teach the children this stuff?’ Howie asked incredulously, raising his voice above the boys’ din.

  ‘Of course. I told you. It is what we believe,’ said Miss Rose.

  ‘And you teach them nothing of Jesus Christ?’ asked Howie.

  ‘Only as a comparative religion,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid they find reincarnation far easier to picture than resurrection. Those rotting bodies have always been such a stumbling block to the childish imagination …’

  ‘Oh, aye!’ said Howie, borrowing some of her irony. ‘And where, may I ask, is Rowan Morrison’s rotting body?’

  ‘Why, where you would expect it to be. In the earth,’ said she.

  ‘In the churchyard?’ Howie hated these prissy prevarications.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she agreed.

  ‘Hell’s bells, miss!’ cried Howie, on the verge of saying something worse. ‘In plain speaking?’

  ‘I mean precisely what I say,’ said Miss Rose, at her most pedantic. ‘That building attached to the ground in which the body lies is no longer used for public Christian worship, so whether that still makes it a church, or the ground a churchyard, is debatable. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I must get back to my girls. Good morning, Officer.’

  A baffled Howie watched Miss Rose march back to the school building and disappear inside it. The sergeant walked past the now deserted maypole and stood at the lych-gate of the church, looking at the graveyard. He could see the fresh grave on which the crying girl had sat. The church itself was the usual plain flintstone building to be found on the islands, though somewhat larger and considerably more run-down. Some of the older gravestones had Celtic crosses cut into them.

  Howie opened the gate and walked into the graveyard, looking carefully at the graves.

  Many carried elaborate symbols and epitaphs, a couple of which he stopped to read. So strange were some of these that his mind flew to ‘freemasonry’. Howie disliked cults, and while he had, of course, studied comparative religion, freemasonry was, to him, a cult. Something outlandish to do with trowels and aprons and the pyramids. Perhaps it flourished here?

  One grave had the following inscription under the name and dates of life and death, which were mostly concealed by ivy: ‘Deliver me from the wildly roaming, supernatural woman who took my head, mine ear, and my life’s career from me.’ Another grave carried the epitaph: ‘Here lieth Beech Buchanan, protected by the ejaculation of serpents.’ Other, more recent graves were planted in pairs with a wooden hoop joining them. Roses and other climbers had been planted on each grave and grew intertwined on the hoop. Thus he noticed that Hawthorn Campbell and Clematis Campbell lay side by side. The hawthorn shrub was embraced by the flowering clematis upon the hoop.

  Walking around that side of the church he
had not previously visited, he noticed that there was a tree upon almost every grave. All had headstones, save one that had a budding sapling growing from it but which otherwise looked comparatively recent. Hanging from one of the tiny branches of the sapling was a stringy piece of material that reminded Howie of dried offal.

  He was about to examine this more closely when he experienced suddenly that prickly sensation that comes from being aware, on the outer fringes of one’s consciousness, that one is being watched. He looked hurriedly around. The perfectly still figure of an old man stood in the shadow of a yew tree, which seemed to have been clipped to resemble a giant phallus. He carried a pair of shears and stared unblinkingly at Howie.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Howie with uncertain cordiality.

  ‘Morning, Sergeant,’ said the old man courteously with a touch of formality. ‘I’m Loam, the gravedigger here!’

  ‘What tree is that?’ asked Howie, pointing to the sapling.

  Slowly the gardener detached himself from the shadow of the yew tree and approached the small grave.

  ‘It’s a rowan,’ said Old Loam.

  ‘Who lies there?’ asked Howie, knowing the answer.

  ‘Rowan Morrison,’ said Old Loam, not unexpectedly.

  ‘How long has she been dea—’ Howie caught himself in time. ‘… there?’

  ‘Seven or eight months,’ said Old Loam. ‘They’re a mite late with the headstone.’

  Howie bent down and examined the stringy bit of offal-like material.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Howie. ‘It looks like … skin.’

  ‘Why, so it is!’ said Old Loam, apparently surprised at the question.

  ‘But what is it?’ insisted Howie.

  ‘Why it’s the poor wee lassie’s navel string, of course. Where else should it be, but hung on her own little tree?’ asked Loam kindly, but as if he were addressing a halfwit. The two men looked at each other, the older man solicitous, the younger man baffled and in a mounting state of anger.

  ‘Who’s your parish priest or minister?’ Howie asked sharply.