FIRESIDE TALES OF CHRISTMAS
By
Philip Atkinson
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
Peace … whatever your persuasion.
Fireside Tales of Christmas
Copyright © 2012 by Philip Atkinson
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Grandfather’s Gift
My grandfather was the best storyteller in the whole world. My earliest memories are of him as he sat by my bed and conjured demons and heroes from the dark corners of the room in the bardic tradition that gave no quarter to the cautions of psychiatrists. None of his giants were rehabilitated, nor his ogres reformed - and the little pigs were eaten for sure.
As I grew up, so the tales kept pace, and unlike most children, I was never weaned from his fictive supply. He was always willing to illustrate a point with a parable, or embroider dull mores to make them palatable. I decided that the spell under which I was held was effected by a glint in his eye; I never knew where the gospel ended and the rose fodder began.
Of all the tales he told, two left deeper impressions than the rest: in my infancy I had wept at the cruelty which allowed the crippled boy to see into Faerie as the Pied Piper led away the children, and then closed him out. In my later years I heard the following story, which has plagued me for decades and with which I finally came to terms only three days ago.
The Green Man is an inn of great antiquity and stands at a crossroads in the North of England. It was purpose built at that spot to serve as post house for the rehorsing of the Doncaster Mail that thundered up and down the coach road, as well as to service the traffic that filled the transom-turnpike that ran between the dales and the market town of Darlington. Time has left the inn isolated in vain vigil for its old friends; the dalesmen abandoned the hills to the sheep and the mail sleeks by rail across the South Durham plain thirty miles to the east. The Green Man waits at that place like a jilted bride: looking for the return of something for which the rational have long since abandoned hope.
One night, in the infrangible winter of 1963, a traveller was obliged to break his journey across the Pennine Hills and take shelter at the inn. The landlord, a man of enormous girth and evidently his own best customer, was amicable and shouted orders for ale at someone who never did show up, while waving his arms in the direction of the fireplace where others warmed themselves. The traveller nodded politely and sat in an armchair that was so soft that its embrace quite startled him.
“Gosh almighty!” laughed the publican, “We nearly lost you afore you’d had chance to sample my beer!” He placed a tray on the low table by the chair and asked for one-and-sixpence. The traveller produced a ten-bob note and asked that the other topers be replenished. When the order came the company thanked and wished good health on the newcomer and with the chasm of unfamiliarity thus bridged, the gentlemen engaged in conversation of apt and timely nature. By and by the bar emptied of all but the traveller and a one-legged man who occupied the chimney-corner. He was gnarled, weather-worn; nut brown as the ale he drank and, as he sat in the flickering firelight, the shadowed dance of his features caught the attention of the other man, who asked, “Would you like another beer?” The man held up his glass to show it was still quite full, the crystalline ale sparkled with the glow of burnished copper in the glass.
“I lost my leg,” he pointed out blankly. “Last month, in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m buggered without it,” He glanced at the traveller as though he were looking for something. “You staying the night then?”
“I imagine so. The snow’s falling so hard that the roads are blocked.”
“So you’ll be here tomorrow?”
“Yes. In the morning anyway. Are you staying?”
“Yes. I’m obliged. I’m buggered.” The man took a lengthy pull at the ale and gasped quietly. Suddenly he leaned forward and motioned the traveller to do the same. When their heads were within a hand’s breath of each other he spoke in a guarded whisper: “I live in the woods. Normally, I mean. I have done for twenty years. I’m seventy. Before that I lived in the city but finally I’d had enough and I moved into the woods on my own. Now I’m crippled and can hardly walk. I must leave the woods.” His eyes were fearful and his words trembled as they faltered on his lips. The traveller, oddly, was spellbound.
“You can help me,” he continued. “Not long after I first went to the woods I began to imagine that I could hear someone playing pipes - not bagpipes, more like Andean pipes, or a recorder, sort of simple and thin - and it quite shook me at first ‘cos I thought I was alone in my little kingdom. I saw this as a trespass on my privacy. I looked and I looked, but never found anybody. The music didn’t come too often. It was like - how should I say? By the time I realized it was there it had stopped. I was never certain that I hadn’t just imagined it. I read that there were ancient cultures who believed that the sounds of nature were indistinguishable from voice; that the sighing of the breeze through leaves was music no different to the beat of a drum or the wail of mating cats. Before long I came to know that belief firsthand, and the plaintive notes of the pipe were no more disturbing or unnatural than the laughter of the stream or the gossip of the starlings.” The woodsman paused to drink, and the traveller took one of the small logs from a scuttle in the hearth and pushed it into the middle of the fire where it crackled, flared and washed the men in warm yellow that softened their outlines and lightened their consortion.
“One day,” continued the woodsman, “I was out in search of rushlights and necessarily had to go to the marshy land at the centre of the wood, fully ten miles from its edge. I saw there the tracks of an unfamiliar animal: cloven and quite large. It may have been a deer, except that the prints were cut deep in the mud at strange angles.” The man stared into the eyes of the traveller, looking for something; a sign perhaps that there was truth to this story and that it would soon register in his expression.
“The marks were odd, that’s all. I never paid them much heed. I cut the rushes and left. but within a week I found out what made those marks and when I did I almost returned to the city and had myself committed.
“The summer was in the forest and I was busy making corn-dollies to sell in the market come harvest time. Solstice was close and the pipes had been so sweet and gentle that they could not be discerned from the drone of the bees or the sawing of the crickets. The woods were warm and vibrant, and a humming arose from them and stroked the passing clouds. It was my custom to sit in front of my cabin and work in the sunshine, so that I might look out over the glade that stretched from my door to the brambles guarding the rabbit-runs and bird nests. I noticed that the pipes had ceased - there is no sound more obvious in the woods than silence - and an ominous dread came over me. When I looked up I saw at the edge of the trees a goat. It was much the biggest goat I’d ever seen. A Jacob’s goat, with four horns and eyes I dared not examine closely, and,” his own eyes widened and in doing so prompted the traveller’s to do likewise, “ ... it stood on its hind legs!”
The woodsman looked into the fire and seemed to wrestle with some deep thought which suggested to him that even now he could hardly believe his own judgement. He went on: “I put down the wheat stalks and followed that goat, though I only ever saw it at a distance, and when I did it was standing upright and motionless. I was compelled to keep going and I moved deeper into the woods, despite myself. Presently I came to a clearing in the middle of which a rowan tree had been uprooted: in a storm perhaps. It lay on its side with dying branches reaching out - and underneath, throughout the octopus-rootlets, Old Man’s beard crawled forth like sin to twist and strangle and tentacle...” his voice hushed, “There too, trapped in the fibrous bonds, was the diminutive form of one of the Old Ones.
“Perhaps hard to believe, I know. But my own eyes gave me the testimony and they’ve never deceived me before or since. What I saw was there,” The woodsman drank again and looked at the inn’s windows, which were jewelled with frost and crescented with snow in each pane. “You will be unable to travel tomorrow, my friend.” He drank again and paused to allow the digestion of what had been said, then again continued: “The wood-elf - if that’s what this was, I cannot say it resembled the pretty little creatures one sees flitting through the pages of children’s books; it was more an animated Victorian toy, ornate and not quite real, like an anthromorphosized hare, minus the ears. If you saw it, my friend, you would not have any difficulty in accepting a suggestion that it was an early offshoot of humankind - when we were still tiny mammals this line developed on a spur, and the so-called magical, mystical, sixth-sense, so rare in our species is a major part of their psyche - anyway, the wood-elf was caught and I had been led there to help it. It was not difficult, the rowan has some kind of power which had overcome the little thing, some kind of narcotic, perhaps. I lifted it out. It weighed ten or fifteen pounds and was a simple enough task. For a moment I watched it panting on the ground where I laid it. It was obviously fearful; eyes wide and white, flickering nervously from me to the ground, back and forth.
“I was at once aware of the goat again, and when I looked over to where he stood I saw what I can only describe as miraculous: a hole, a gateway, a tear in the scenery had opened up and revealed a soft-hued landscape of rolling hills carpeted with massive oaks and spreading beech trees, but before I could gather my wits it closed up, with the goat and the wood-elf on the inside, and me on the outside, blinking like an owl in sunlight. I felt cheated somehow, like an injustice had been perpetrated and no one could be faulted.”
There followed a long pause, so that the traveller was released from the spell and became aware of the noises in the room again: the singing logs, the lash of the snowflakes against the windows and the laughter of the innkeeper in another room. He went to the bar and refilled the glasses himself, leaving coins on the counter-top. When he sat carefully back into the armchair he smiled and said, “You had me going there! Now, you said I could help you. Do you need a ride somewhere? Tomorrow?”
“I need you to take me to that place in the woods,” the woodsman said.
“But why?” “So I may go there, and be whole again. With Arthur and Merlin and the children of Hamlin. I believe, you see. I believe that the gate will open for me; tomorrow: at solstice.” A clock on the wall marked time with rhythmic resonance
“Will you take me?” There was desperation in the old man’s face, though not in his voice or resolve. It was more a demand than a request. The traveller, whether succumbing to the late hour or the ale, or the application of the woodsman, agreed to help, then went to seek a bed.
When he got up the next morning, a carnival of cooking smells met him on the stairs and lured him into the kitchen where the woodsman was the only other guest.
“Good morning.”
“We can go after you eat.”
“Look. I’ve been thinking...”
“You promised.” The woodsman was confident. He reached for the farmhouse loaf and sawed a doorstep from the heel which he toasted and ate. The men washed down the breakfast with steaming coffee then, without ceremony, wrapt themselves against the inclemency of the day and stepped out into the vast, white world. The traveller helped whenever an obstacle impeded their progress, but soon realized that he was on this quest more for moral support than for physical aid; the woodsman was adept at using his crutches, and before long was shuffling along at a cracking pace. The snow began to fall again and the visibility faded. The traveller was obliged to call out; the reply became fainter as they moved on - an hour, two hours, two-and-a-half - now the traveller was only able to follow the older man by his odd track: sometimes he resorted to rolling over the drifts, and sometimes, where the wind had whipped the iron earth bare, he hopped. There were no more answers to the shouts; only wind, low-toned across the treetops, with a piping harmony between the trunks.
At the point of exhaustion the traveller stopped. There in the woods the prints came to an abrupt end; as if the woodsman had taken wing and ascended without spoor. Other marks were at this place, cloven indentations of deer, or goat perhaps. Nor did these marks appear to lead to, or from, anywhere. The traveller supposed the old man had carried this animal with him somehow, or else admit confounding. Yet for the life of him he could not explain away the mode of disappearance. How the woodsman had contrived to remove himself from this place quite eluded rationalization - but gone he was.
The traveller left that place, which had become crisply silent, and retraced his steps to the Green Man where carollers had gathered in the stableyard. His spirits were lightened by the ambiance of the inn and soon the chill of the woods was driven out by the honesty of the draught ale and the rousing rendition of In Dulce Jubilo. He kept the events of the morning to himself and when the road opened the next day, he left and never returned.
My grandfather refused categorically to answer any questions about the tale, but I suspected that some of the more vivid details could not have been painted by anyone but the traveller, and I concluded that they were one and the same. Two years ago, despite the prayers and the snake-oil, my worst fears concerning the old man’s worsening forgetfulness were confirmed: he had Alzheimer’s disease. Slowly at first - he would lose punch lines - then more and more rapidly his absent-minded ways grew beyond a joke and he became a liability to himself. I took him to hospital where he was confined to a geriatric ward and treated like an infant. He was unable to feed himself. He was snotty-nosed and diapered. And, finally, he did not know me. So I decided that this year I would be able at last to give him something as precious as that story he had told me long, long ago.
Under the pretext of having him home for the holidays I bundled him up on winter solstice and drove him to the Green Man. It is called something else now, and though the inside has been gutted and modernised in brass and plastic Tudor, the ale is still good. I bought pints. Grandfather wet himself before he was a gill into it and I spread my duffle-coat over his lap. I looked at that old man, betrayed by fate. I searched for words. As they choked past the lump in my throat they hurt more than I can say. I pressed my face to his and, as the tears spilled down our cheeks, he gave to me yet another present, that which I envied most. I whispered, with an elegance I knew could only be his gift:
“Underneath, or inside, or somewhere, there is an element harder to express than to see; it evokes images of love-in-the-mist, tears in the dark, anguish and the pain of uncertainty. Yet how much more difficult it is to capture that simple feeling of happiness that you bring. The world without it is expressed in the lines of myriad tragedies, but I am unable to look upon the face, the face of simple joy and say thank-you. Thank you nonetheless. For the delightful interaction that we share; the understanding; the moments of demented laughter; the endless patience; the endless passion; the giggle through clenched teeth when I screw up; perseverance when I give up, so that the thin, needling voice of despair is thwarted and shamed by the singing of your song. It is that song, that laughter, that lust for life which breathes felicity into this unworthy man.”