The Wish House and Other Stories

  ‘I’ve seen that,’ said Pyecroft quickly. ‘It was so.’

  ‘But if he was all charcoal-like?’ said Pritchard, shuddering.

  ‘You know how writing shows up white on a burned letter? Well, it was like that, you see. We buried ’em in the teak and I kept…But he was a friend of you two gentlemen, you see.’

  Mr Hooper brought his hand away from his waistcoat-pocket – empty.

  Pritchard covered his face with his hands for a moment, like a child shutting out an ugliness.

  ‘And to think of her at Hauraki!’ he murmured – ‘with ’er ’air-ribbon on my beer. “Ada,” she said to her niece…Oh my Gawd!’…

  On a summer afternoon, when the honeysuckle blooms,

  And all Nature seems at rest,

  Underneath the bower, ‘mid the perfume of the flower,

  Sat a maiden with the one she loves the best —‘

  sang the picnic-party waiting for their train at Glengariff.

  ‘Well, I don’t know how you feel about it,’ said Pyecroft, ‘but ‘avin’

  seen ‘is face for five consecutive nights on end, I’m inclined to finish

  what’s left of the beer an’ thank Gawd he’s dead!’

  THE BEE BOY’S SONG

  Bees! Bees! Hark to your bees!

  ‘Hide from your neighbours as much as you please.

  But all that has happened, to us you must tell.

  Or else we will give you no honey to sell!’

  A maiden in her glory,

  Upon her wedding-day,

  Must tell her Bees the story,

  Or else they’ll fly away.

  Fly away – die away –

  Dwindle down and leave you!

  But if you don’t deceive your Bees,

  Your Bees will not deceive you.

  Marriage, birth or buryin’,

  News across the seas,

  All you’re sad or merry in,

  You must tell the Bees.

  Tell ’em coming in an’ out,

  Where the Fanners fan,

  ‘Cause the Bees are justabout

  As curious as a man!

  Don’t you wait where trees are,

  When the lightnings play;

  Nor don’t you hate where Bees are,

  Or else they’ll pine away.

  Pine away – dwine away –

  Anything to leave you!

  But if you never grieve your Bees,

  Your Bees’ll never grieve you.

  ‘Dymchurch Flit’

  JUST at dusk, a soft September rain began to fall on the hop-pickers. The mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators out of the gardens; bins were put away, and tally-books made up. The young couples strolled home, two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind them laughing. Dan and Una, who had been picking after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the oast-house, where old Hobden, with Blue-eyed Bess, his lurcher dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops.

  They settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn cot in front of the fires, and, when Hobden drew up the shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned roundel. Slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal, packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly where they would do most good; slowly he reached behind him till Dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and then stood for a moment, black against the glare. As he closed the shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before the day’s end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. The children liked all these things because they knew them so well.

  The Bee Boy, Hobden’s son, who is not quite right in his head, though he can do anything with bees, slipped in like a shadow. They only guessed it when Bess’s stump-tail wagged against them.

  A big voice began singing outside in the drizzle:

  ‘Old Mother Laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead, She heard the hops were doing well, and then popped up her head.’

  ‘There can’t be two people made to holler like that!’ cried old Hobden, wheeling round.

  ‘For, says she, “The boys I’ve picked with when I was young and fair,

  They’re bound to be at hoppin’, and I’m —”’

  A man showed at the doorway.

  ‘Well, well! They do say hoppin’ll draw the very deadest, and now I belieft ’em. You, Tom? Tom Shoesmith!’ Hobden lowered his lanthorn.

  ‘You’re a hem of a time makin’ your mind to it, Ralph!’ The stranger strode in – three full inches taller than Hobden, a grey-whiskered, brown-faced giant with clear blue eyes. They shook hands, and the children could hear the hard palms rasp together.

  ‘You ain’t lost none o’ your grip,’ said Hobden. ‘Was it thirty or forty year back you broke my head at Peasmarsh Fair?’

  ‘Only thirty an’ no odds ‘tween us regardin’ heads, neither. You had it back at me with a hop-pole. How did we get home that night? Swimmin’?’

  ‘Same way the pheasant come into Gubbs’s pocket – by a little luck an’ a deal o’ conjurin’.’ Old Hobden laughed in his deep chest.

  ‘I see you’ve not forgotten your way about the woods. D’ye do any o’ this still?’ The stranger pretended to look along a gun.

  Hobden answered with a quick movement of the hand as though he were pegging down a rabbit-wire.

  ‘No. That’s all that’s left me now. Age she must as Age she can. an’ what’s your news since all these years?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve bin to Plymouth, I’ve bin to Dover-

  I’ve bin ramblin’, boys, the wide world over,’

  the man answered cheerily. ‘I reckon I know as much of Old England as most.’ He turned towards the children and winked boldly.

  ‘I lay they told you a sight o’ lies, then. I’ve been into England fur as Wiltsheer once. I was cheated proper over a pair of hedging-gloves,’ said Hobden.

  ‘There’s fancy-talkin’ everywhere. You’ve cleaved to your own parts pretty middlin’ close, Ralph.’

  ‘Can’t shift an old tree ‘thout it dyin’,’ Hobden chuckled. ‘An’ I be no more anxious to die than you look to be to help me with my hops tonight.’

  The great man leaned against the brickwork of the roundel, and swung his arms abroad. ‘Hire me!’ was all he said, and they stumped upstairs laughing.

  The children heard their shovels rasp on the cloth where the yellow hops lie drying above the fires, and all the oast-house filled with the sweet, sleepy smell as they were turned.

  ‘Who is it?’ Una whispered to the Bee Boy.

  ‘Dunno, no more’n you – if you dunno,’ said he, and smiled.

  The voices on the drying-floor talked and chuckled together, and the heavy footsteps moved back and forth. Presently a hop-pocket dropped through the press-hole overhead, and stiffened and flattened as they shovelled it full. ‘Clank!’ went the press, and rammed the loose stuff into tight cake.

  ‘Gently!’ they heard Hobden cry. ‘You’ll bust her crop if you lay on so. You be as careless as Gleason’s bull, Tom. Come an’ sit by the fires. She’ll do now.’

  They came down, and as Hobden opened the shutter to see if the potatoes were done Tom Shoesmith said to the children, ‘Put a plenty salt on ’em. That’ll show you the sort o’ man I be.’ Again he winked, and again the Bee Boy laughed and Una stared at Dan.

  ‘I know what sort o’ man you be,’ old Hobden grunted, groping for the potatoes round the fire.

  ‘Do ye?’ Tom went on behind his back. ‘Some of us can’t abide Horseshoes, or Church Bells, or Running Water; an’, talkin’ o’ runnin’ water’ – he turned to Hobden, who was backing out of the roundel – ‘d’you mind the great floods at Robertsbridge, when the miller’s man was drowned in the street?’

  ‘Middlin’ well.’ Old Hobden let himself down on the coals by the fire door. ‘I was courtin’ my woman on the Marsh that year. Carter to Mus’ Plum I was, gettin’ ten shillin’s
week. Mine was a Marsh woman.’

  ‘Won’erful odd-gates place – Romney Marsh,’ said Tom Shoesmith. ‘I’ve heard say the world’s divided like into Europe, Ashy, Afriky, Ameriky, Australy, an’ Romney Marsh.’

  ‘The Marsh folk think so,’ said Hobden. I had a hem o’ trouble to get my woman to leave it.’

  ‘Where did she come out of? I’ve forgot, Ralph.’

  ‘Dymchurch under the Wall,’ Hobden answered, a potato in his hand.

  ‘Then she’d be a Pett – or a Whitgift, would she?’

  ‘Whitgift.’ Hobden broke open the potato and ate it with the curious neatness of men who make most of their meals in the blowy open. ‘She growed to be quite reasonable-like after livin’ in the Weald awhile, but our first twenty year or two she was odd-fashioned, no bounds. And she was a won’erful hand with bees.’ He cut away a little piece of potato and threw it out to the door.

  ‘Ah! I’ve heard say the Whitgifts could see further through a millstone than most,’ said Shoesmith. ‘Did she, now?’

  ‘She was honest-innocent of any nigromancin’,’ said Hobden. ‘Only she’d read signs and sinnifications out o’ birds flyin’, stars fallin’, bees hivin’, and such. an’ she’d lie awake – listenin’ for calls, she said.’

  ‘That don’t prove naught,’ said Tom. ‘All Marsh folk has been smugglers since time everlastin’. ‘Twould be in her blood to listen out o’ nights.’

  ‘Nature-ally,’ old Hobden replied, smiling. ‘I mind when there was smugglin’ a sight nearer us than the Marsh be. But that wasn’t my woman’s trouble. ’twas a passel o’ no-sense talk,’ he dropped his voice, ‘about Pharisees.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve heard Marsh men belieft in ’em.’ Tom looked straight at the wide-eyed children beside Bess.

  ‘Pharisees,’ cried Una. ‘Fairies? Oh, I see!’

  ‘People o’ the Hills,’ said the Bee Boy, throwing half of his potato towards the door.

  ‘There you be!’ said Hobden, pointing at him. ‘My boy, he has her eyes and her out-gate senses. That’s what she called ’em!’

  ‘And what did you think of it all?’

  ‘Urn – urn,’ Hobden rumbled. ‘A man that uses fields an’ shaws after dark as much as I’ve done, he don’t go out of his road excep’ for keepers.’

  ‘But settin’ that aside?’ said Tom, coaxingly. ‘I saw ye throw the Good Piece out-at-doors just now. Do ye believe or – do ye?’

  ‘There was a great black eye to that tater,’ said Hobden, indignantly.

  ‘My liddle eye didn’t see un, then. It looked as if you meant it for – for Any One that might need it. But settin’ that aside. D’ye believe or – do ye?’

  ‘I ain’t sayin’ nothin’, because I’ve heard naught, an’ I’ve seen naught. But if you was to say there was more things after dark in the shaws than men, or fur, or feather, or fin, I dunno as I’d go far about to call you a liar. Now turnagain, Tom. What’s your say?’

  ‘I’m like you. I say nothin’. But I’ll tell you a tale, an’ you can fit it as how you please.’

  ‘Passel o’ no-sense stuff,’ growled Hobden, but he filled his pipe.

  ‘The Marsh men they call it Dymchurch Flit,’ Tom went on slowly. ‘Hap you have heard it?’

  ‘My woman she’ve told it me scores o’ times. Dunno as I didn’t end by belieftin’ it – sometimes.’

  Hobden crossed over as he spoke, and sucked with his pipe at the yellow lanthorn flame. Tom rested one great elbow on one great knee, where he sat among the coal.

  ‘Have you ever bin in the Marsh?’ he said to Dan.

  ‘Only as far as Rye, once,’ Dan answered.

  ‘Ah, that’s but the edge. Back behind of her there’s steeples settin’ beside churches, an’ wise women settin’ beside their doors, an’ the sea settin’ above the land, an’ ducks herdin’ wild in the diks’ (he meant ditches). ‘The Marsh is justabout riddled with diks an’ sluices, an’ tide-gates an’ water-lets. You can hear ’em bubblin’ an’ grummelin’ when the tide works in ’em, an’ then you hear the sea rangin’ left and right-handed all up along the Wall. You’ve seen how flat she is – the Marsh? You’d think nothin’ easier than to walk eend-on acrost her? Ah, but the diks an’ the water-lets, they twists the roads about as ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles. So ye get all turned round in broad daylight.’

  ‘That’s because they’ve dreened the waters into the diks,’ said Hobden. ‘When I courted my woman the rushes was green – Eh me! the rushes was green – an’ the Bailiff o’ the Marshes, he rode up and down as free as the fog.’

  ‘Who was he?’ said Dan.

  ‘Why, the Marsh fever an’ ague. He’ve clapped me on the shoulder once or twice till I shook proper. But now the dreenin’ off of the waters have done away with the fevers; so they make a joke, like, that the Bailiff o’ the Marshes broke his neck in a dik. A won’erful place for bees an’ ducks ’tis too.’

  ‘An’ old,’ Tom went on. ‘Flesh an’ Blood have been there since Time Everlastin’ Beyond. Well, now, speakin’ among themselves, the Marshmen say that from Time Everlastin’ Beyond, the Pharisees favoured the Marsh above the rest of Old England. I lay the Marshmen ought to know. They’ve been out after dark, father an’ son, smugglin’ some one thing or t’other, since ever wool grew to sheep’s backs. They say there was always a middlin’ few Pharisees to be seen on the Marsh. Impident as rabbits, they was. They’d dance on the nakid roads in the nakid daytime; they’d flash their liddle green lights along the diks, comin’ an’ goin’, like honest smugglers. Yes, an’ times they’d lock the church doors against the parson an’ clerk of Sundays.’

  ‘That ’ud be smugglers layin’ in the lace or the brandy till they could run it out o’ the Marsh. I’ve told my woman so,’ said Hobden.

  ‘I’ll lay she didn’t belieft it, then – not if she was a Whitgift. A won’erful choice place for Pharisees, the Marsh, by all accounts, till Queen Bess’s father he come in with his Reformatories.’

  ‘Would that be a Act o’ Parliament like?’ Hobden asked.

  ‘Sure-ly. Can’t do nothing in Old England without Act, Warrant, an’ Summons. He got his Act allowed him, an’, they say, Queen Bess’s father he used the parish churches something shameful. Justabout tore the gizzards out of I dunnamany. Some folk in England they held with ‘en; but some they saw it different, an’ it eended in ’em takin’ sides an’ burnin’ each other no bounds, accordin’ which side was top, time bein’. That tarrified the Pharisees: for Good-will among Flesh an’ Blood is meat an’ drink to ’em, an’ ill-will is poison.’

  ‘Same as bees,’ said the Bee Boy. ‘Bees won’t stay by a house where there’s hating.’

  ‘True,’ said Tom. ‘This Reformations tarrified the Pharisees same as the reaper goin’ round a last stand o’ wheat tarrifies rabbits. They packed into the Marsh from all parts, and they says, “Fair or foul, we must flit out o’ this, for Merry England’s done with, an’ we’re reckoned among the Images.’”

  ‘Did they all see it that way?’ said Hobden.

  ‘All but one that was called Robin – if you’ve heard of him. What are you laughing at?’ Tom turned to Dan. ‘The Pharisees’s trouble didn’t tech Robin, because he’d cleaved middlin’ close to people like. No more he never meant to go out of Old England – not he; so he was sent messagin’ for help among Flesh an’ Blood. But Flesh an’ Blood must always think of their own concerns, an’ Robin couldn’t get through at ’em, ye see. They thought it was tide-echoes off the Marsh.’

  ‘What did you – what did the fai – Pharisees want?’ Una asked.

  ‘A boat, to be sure. Their liddle wings could no more cross Channel than so many tired butterflies. A boat an’ a crew they desired to sail ’em over to France, where yet awhile folks hadn’t tore down the Images. They couldn’t abide cruel Canterbury Bells ringin’ to Bulverhithe for more pore men an’ women to be burnded, nor the King’s proud messenger ridin’ through the land givin’ orders to tear
down the Images. They couldn’t abide it no shape. Nor yet they couldn’t get their boat an’ crew to flit by without Leave an’ Good-will from Flesh an’ Blood; an’ Flesh an’ Blood came an’ went about its own business the while the Marsh was swarvin’ up, and swarvin’ up with Pharisees from all England over, striving all means to get through at Flesh an’ Blood to tell ’em their sore need…I don’t know as you’ve ever heard say Pharisees are like chickens?’

  ‘My woman used to say that too,’ said Hobden, folding his brown arms.

  ‘They be. You run too many chickens together, an’ the ground sickens like, an’ you get a squat, an’ your chickens die. ‘Same way, you crowd Pharisees, all in one place – they don’t die, but Flesh an’ Blood walkin’ among ’em is apt to sick up an’ pine off. They don’t mean it, an’ Flesh an’ Blood don’t know it, but that’s the truth – as I’ve heard. The Pharisees through bein’ all stenched up an’ frighted, an’ tryin’ to come through with their supplications, they nature-ally changed the thin airs and humours in Flesh an’ Blood. It lay on the Marsh like thunder. Men saw their churches ablaze with the wildfire in the windows after dark; they saw their cattle scatterin’ and no man scarin’; their sheep flockin’ and no man drivin’; their horses latherin’ an’ no man leadin’; they saw the liddle low green lights more than ever in the dik-sides; they heard the liddle feet patterin’ more than ever round the houses; an’ night an’ day, day an’ night, ’twas all as though they were bein’ creeped up on, and hinted at by Some One or other that couldn’t rightly shape their trouble. Oh, I lay they sweated! Man an’ maid, woman an’ child, their Nature done ’em no service all the weeks while the Marsh was swarvin’ up with Pharisees. But they was Flesh an’ Blood, an’ Marshmen before all. They reckoned the signs sinnified trouble for the Marsh. Or that the sea ’ud rear up against Dymchurch Wall an’ they’d be drownded like Old Winchelsea; or that the Plague was comin’. So they looked for the meanin’ in the sea or in the clouds – far an’ high up. They never thought to look near an’ knee-high, where they could see naught.