Strandloper

by Alan Garner

  “Then your name is Buckley!”

  “Ay. William.”

  “Well, Buckley,” said the man, “we are now a school, as you may observe; and at our handwriting and reading practice.”

  “Can I watch?” said William.

  “The vicar is coming to hear our progress,” said the man. “But you may stay until he arrives.”

  The man rapped the blackboard with his stick.

  “Now! Together for the gentleman. Q.”

  “Q. Quietly bear your little daily annoyances.”

  Tap.

  “U. Undervalue not your present advantages.”

  Tap. The redwhite featherfoot men are near. Everybody hush. No one look. No one see.

  William heard a horse in the lane. Outside, the dog growled. Shurrup, Gyp. The growling stopped.

  A man dismounted, the door opened, and Edward Stanley came into the room. The children stood.

  “Good morning, children,” said Edward.

  “Good morning, Mr Stanley, sir,” the chorus replied.

  “Good morning, Mr Woodhead.”

  “Good morning, Mr Edward,” said the schoolmaster. “Be seated, children. We have a visitor, Mr Edward, who is this moment leaving. One Buckley.”

  “Buckley?” Edward looked around. “Will? Will!”

  Edward grasped William by the shoulders, without permission, but William saw that he did not know, and let himself be held.

  “Ay, Yedart.”

  “You have returned!”

  “Seemingly.”

  “From the Antipodes?”

  “Well, it was a fair old walk, wherever it was. But it’s no more nor I said.”

  “You shall sup at the vicarage,” said Edward. “And we shall talk of Anthropophagi, and of the oceans, and of the men who hold their heads between their shoulders!”

  “Shall we?” said William. “Ay, we could.” He laughed. “I could sing you me little song for me supper. I could that. And maybe it’d be you as’d do the hand practice. In your little pocket book. What?”

  “Forgive me, Mr Woodhead,” said Edward. “You must excuse us. My friend and I have much to discuss.”

  “By all means, Mr Edward,” said the schoolmaster.

  Edward and William left the school. They stood by Edward’s horse.

  “Is it you, in truth, Will?”

  “Well, I don’t know what bugger else,” said William. “Now then. So you’ve getten them at the writing at last.”

  “I have. I have.”

  “But isn’t it a bit of a way,” said William, “from as how I seem to recollect: ‘The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar’s laurel crown.’? And ‘Ancient abuses are not by their antiquity converted into virtues.’?”

  “Tyranny holds fast, Will.”

  “Same as griffin.”

  “At least I have tried.”

  “Yay,” said William. “But ‘It’s an ill brid bedeets its own nest.’”

  The two men went together up the road, Edward leading his horse.

  “How is it that you have come back home?”

  “King’s Pardon,” said William.

  “And how did you spend your time in New Holland?”

  “Oh, walking, mostly.”

  “But were there not savages?”

  “There were savages, ay; you could say that.”

  “And are they not cannibal?”

  “Now just what do you mean by yon?”

  “Do they not devour people?”

  “Bits,” said William. “When it matters. And what have you been at, Yedart?”

  “Minding my flock.”

  “Right place for ’em.”

  “And I have studied birds, and have written a book concerning their ways, which has been well received.”

  “Me, too,” said William. “But ‘Better fed nor taught!’”

  “Will,” said Edward, “I owe you an apology for which there is no forgiveness.”

  “And what’s that?” said William.

  “The sin of my father against you. And my sin for allowing it.”

  “Give over,” said William. “He were an old nowt, and you a mardy. It couldn’t be helped. Besides, it was his step in the Dance. And yours.”

  “What dance?” said Edward.

  “Oh, leave off,” said William. “It’d take too long. Just say as it’s water down a ditch.”

  They came to the vicarage.

  “I’ll not stop,” said William. “Not now. But I’ve fetched summat for thee, Yedart.”

  He reached into the skin bag that he was carrying and took out what was in it.

  “You’re to have this, Yedart, and you’re to keep it safe, think on. Don’t you lose it. You can shove it on the wall, or do what you like, but see as you look after it.”

  Edward held it in his hands.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s what we use for chucking spears,” said William. “You set the end of your spear on this peg, and hold it at the handle. Then you flirt it over and forrard, and doesn’t it give some thrutch! It does that!”

  “An extraordinary and ingenious mechanical device indeed,” said Edward. “And could you use it?”

  “I could and all.”

  “When you were accompanying the savages,” said Edward, “what was your appellation, your name?”

  He felt for his pocket book. William looked at it.

  “That’s for thee to ask and me to know,” said William. “They’re very particular about names, are savages.”

  “Do their names have any significance?”

  “I’ll say so!”

  “Can you tell me what yours signified?”

  “Yon’s a bit of a poser. You see, I’ve getten a new un. It says what I do.”

  “And what is it that you do?” said Edward. His pencil was in one hand, the pocket book in the other, the spearthrower under his arm.

  “Well: I’m sort of like a governor, making folks shape,” said William; “crossing back and to; there’s always summat wants fettling; and same as Grandfather says: ‘As good be an addled egg as an idle brid.’ So I’m never still, me.”

  “You could be describing an esturine plover,” said Edward: “a most busy creature. Its common name is strandloper, in the southern hemisphere. Aegialitis tricollaris.”

  “That’s the twang. Non omnis moriar. Yay,” said William. “Strandloper. She’ll do.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Edward. He fumbled and turned the piece of wood in his hand. “To have arrived at this could not have been the act of empiricism. It implies a capacity for abstract thought found among superior beings alone. But what is the purpose of its colouring?”

  “Ah. That’s what you’re to look after it for,” said William. “Yon’s not just any old stick. It’s special. It’s used by what we call featherfoot men.”

  “Featherfoot?”

  “They’re a bit like parish constable, but with more to ’em. You see, if anyone kills a feller with spells, or some such, the featherfoots go after him with this; and that’s him done for, clean as nip.”

  “They kill others, in belief of magic?” said Edward.

  “Sarn it, youth,” said William. “A feller’s dead, anyroad. Now then. You take a pendulum on a clock. If it swings too far, it has to be put right, else we’d not know where we were, should us? Same with everything. Same with folks, beasts, moon, sun and stars. They’ve all got to be reckoned. Now what’s yon as catches pendulum, and sends it back?”

  “The escapement?”

  “That’s your man,” said William. “Escapement. It stops clock to make it right, doesn’t it? Stop. Start. Back and to for evermore. You’d not have time without you’d escapement. Well, that’s what featherfoots are for. So you look after yon. It’s the escapement.”

  “Why do you require this of me?” said Edward.

  “All along of because,” said William.

  “Because of what?” said Edward.

  “Because, though you’re
a lean dog for a hard road, Yedart,” said William, “and one to make a sick man sorrow and a dead man woe, you’ve a velvet true heart. And you’re Brid and Babby flesh, same as me.”

  “Oh, my friend,” said Edward, ‘I fear that your wanderings in such a clime, and your exposure to the savages, have undermined your intellect.”

  “You know what’s up with you lot,” said William. “You’ve getten one dream less and one skin more.”

  He walked on, and did not look back.

  31

  HE FOLLOWED THE turnpike through Sitherton, past Redesmere and over Monks’ Heath, by Radnor Wood, and took the path up the long ridge back by White Barn to the top, where it flattened out at Mount Ship and Castle Rock. He sat on the brim of the rock and looked down the four hundred feet to the fields and the house below.

  He was thirsty. A lizard crawled from under a stone to bask, and he grabbed it, knocked its head, and opened its skin with his teeth. The meat was sweet, and the juices cooled him. He walked along the ridge until he could climb down among the trees and into Holy Well Slack by Glaze Hill to the house. He sat at the hedge cop of the garden and waited for the waters to rise.

  There was a low room at the end of the house, and in it he heard a rattle, and sound like clapsticks, but it was no dance that he knew.

  Esther came out of the back door of the house and went into the garden to a stone slab. He watched her, but did not speak.

  She was wearing a straw hat with a wide brim, and from it hung a black veil. She had on a dark dress, with a high neck, and the veil tucked into the neck. The wrists and bodice were tight. She had on a white pinafore, and strung drawers were tucked into her boots. Her hands were gloved, and she carried a pail of water. She saw him.

  “‘Oh, can you wash a soldier’s shirt?’”sang William.

  “‘And can you wash it clean?’” she answered.

  “‘Oh, can you wash a soldier’s shirt –’”

  “‘And hang it on the green?’ Now then, Will.”

  “Now then, Het.”

  “That’s a rum way of sitting. You’ll do yourself a mischief, I shouldn’t wonder. Where have you been this journey?”

  “Oh, ‘up atop of down yonder, miles-endy-way, tha knows, at Bog of Mirollies where cats kittlen magpies.’”

  She laughed.

  “And what are you at?” he said.

  “Just taking a skep of honey.”

  “You’re never going to drown them bees!”

  “Yay, but I am. How else?”

  “You munner kill them. They’ve getten spirit same as thee.”

  He stood up and went to her. The dog lay on the cop. “Hold still,” William said to Esther, and he started to dance the Bee. Esther dropped the pail and ran to the door. He danced Thuroongarong.

  “Will?”

  He danced.

  “Is that what they learn you?”

  He danced. And stopped. He lifted the skep from the stone and turned it. Esther slammed the door shut, and then opened it a crack.

  “Will! You’re daft! They’ll have you!”

  William began to sing. And the bees left the skep and settled on him, over him, his clothes and face and skin, until no part of him could be seen but the burs of their hair and wings. And he sang.

  When the skep was empty he took out a comb of honey. He looked at it. The comb was a Dreaming, but flat at the tip where it had been fixed to the skep. There was no silence for a greater Dream. Yet the net of the comb was the Six Points of Time, the Joining of the Song.

  He took out all the combs and laid them on the slab. The bees left him and flew back to the skep. He put it down, and picked up the combs. Esther opened the door.

  “Well, they do learn you summat,” she said.

  “Ay. They do,” said William.

  “Come thi ways within air of the fire, and get some warmship.”

  She led him into the house. He had to stoop beneath the beams. “Sit thee down. Tek thi bacca. Stick thi nose up chimney.”

  He put the combs on the slopstone she had covered with white linen and sat on the floor by the hearth.

  “You’re looking well.”

  “Ay.”

  “Shall you have a wet of tea?”

  “No.”

  “Some buttermilk?”

  “No.”

  “What, then? Yon’s a nasty cough.”

  “Ay. Seems as I can’t shift it since I come home.”

  “Then it’s honey and allegar for you, my lad,” said Esther, and she poured honey from a jar into a pan, added vinegar and warmed it on the fire, stirring the mixture. She tipped it into a mug and gave it to William.

  “Get that down thee,” she said.

  “Ay!” William laughed. “That’s about it! Honey and allegar. That reckons it up. It does. The whole beggaring cheese!” But he drank.

  He went to the dresser. The shelves were laden with blue and white plates, their edges gilded, except for the one in the middle, the small one he had seen before.

  He picked it up and looked at it closely.

  “China. Eh, dear. Well, well.”

  He put it down.

  “And all this effort? Have you grown a flavour for ’em, or what?”

  “It was Yedart. At wedding.”

  “Yedart. Ay. He would. And gold and all. I did always say as he were a chap very fluent in giving.”

  William lifted the veil net and rolled it from her face.

  “I’m back, Het.”

  “Ay.”

  “Same as I said.”

  “You did.”

  “What’s that racket?”

  The clapping sound could be heard from the other end of the house.

  “William,” said Esther. “He’s at weaving silk: a little master. He works two markets. Stockport and Macclesfield. He weaves all hours.”

  “Is he mine?”

  “He favours Yedart.”

  “But you called him Will?”

  “I did.”

  “Ay.”

  “Leave him be, now.”

  “Yay.”

  He sat down again.

  “What must we do, Het?”

  “Do?”

  “I’m back. Same as I said. I said I’d come. I told you. But you’ve not waited.”

  “Wait? Thirty odd year? You were transported, youth.”

  “But I said.”

  “Yay, and what was I to do? And Joseph’s a good un. He took me and William, and never a word against him. ‘No pobs without salt: no burying without laughing’, Will.”

  “There’s more nor pobs.”

  “It’s all in your head, Will.”

  He sat for a long time, staring at the fire, silent.

  “But I told you. Did you not hear?”

  “I heard.”

  He stared again, for a longer time.

  “What must I do, Het? I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, you can’t just sit there, gondering. Shape yourself. You could go for a bricksetter.”

  “Eight month in chains I lay for thee.”

  “No.”

  “Me own water I supped for thee.”

  “Give over!”

  “Eggy Mo I cut. For thee.”

  She gripped his wrist.

  “And Eggy Mo I drank. For thee.”

  He was lost again in the fire.

  “The Clashing Rock I dared. For thee.”

  “Eh?”

  “The Hard Dark I walked. For thee. Bone of the Cloud I rode. For thee.”

  “Will, you make no sense.”

  “And could you not bide and wait for me?”

  “But I never asked you. I never. It was you.”

  Silence again. Then he stood, and looked down at her.

  “Was it? For nowt? Nowt then; and nowt now? All nowt?”

  “Not nowt.”

  “Nowt. Me. Nowt. Back here. For this. Nowt. Nowt. Bugger Bunjil.”

  He slumped over the table, and Esther saw that there was no strength le
ft to him, and that he was crying.

  “Buck up, love,” she said. “‘As long lives a merry man as a sorry.’”

  “But where’s me Dreaming?”

  “Who’s dreaming?”

  “You’d best have this,” he said, and he reached into his bag and took out the lifeless wallung and put it on the table. “I’m done. It’s finished.”

  “The swaddledidaff!” said Esther. “You kept it!”

  “Take it. You found it. It’s yours. ‘Tha conner hurt a brokken glass.’”

  “No, Will,” she said. “Our swaddledidaff. From me to thee.”

  She pushed it towards him, moved it into the sun. It caught the light and filled the room with colour.

  “‘Pussy washing Dishes,’” said Esther to the patterns moving on the walls.

  He watched, and felt a warmth and a memory return, and life in his face.

  Thundal?

  “Het.”

  Wallung.

  “Het.”

  He lifted the crystal.

  “Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin.”

  Thundal.

  Oh, Het.

  She smiled. “You daft ha ’porth.”

  He put the thundal in his medicine bag. He unrolled the veil and covered her face and tucked the veil around her neck.

  “I must be doing.”

  She went with him to the door.

  “Be good, Will Buckley,” said Esther.

  “Be good, and then.”

  He strode away across the garden. The clap of the loom he now knew, and he danced for the man inside, whoever he was.

  The dog whined, but stayed on the cop and did not follow.

  Be good, Gyp.

  He climbed Glaze Hill, shouted to the sky:

  “Kiminary keemo,

  Kiminary keemo,

  Kiminary, kiltikary, kiminary keemo!

  String stram pammadilly, lamma pamma rat tag.

  Ring dong bomminanny keemo!”

  Before he left, he walked Esther’s Dreaming. He walked the Holy Well, by Saddlebole and Stormy Point to Golden Stone and Seven Firs and Thieves’ Hole, he walked the Beacon.

  Then down from the ridge he walked for Buckley. He walked Fernhill and Sodger’s Hump. At Whisterfield he passed his Uncle Jim’s and looked in through the window of the room where he was born. He walked Windy Harbour, Withington, Welltrough, over the Tunstead and down to Gleads Moss and Trap Street, Clonter Brook, and up to Mutlow. He walked, and sat beneath the trees on Mutlow. He heard the songs of Neeyangarra in the wind among the stones.