Off With His Head

‘The document to which I have referred concerns itself with the Mardian Stone. And with the Dance of the Five Sons.’

‘Does it, indeed?’

‘It suggests, Mr Stayne, that unknown to research, to experts, to folk dancers and to the societies, the so-called Mardian Mawris (the richest immeasurably of all English ritual dance-plays) was being performed annually at the Mardian Stone during the Winter Solstice up to as recently as fifteen years ago.’

‘Oh,’ said Ralph.

‘And not only that,’ Mrs Bünz whispered excitedly, advancing her face to within twelve inches of his, ‘there seems to be no reason why it should not have survived to this very year, this Winter Solstice, Mr Stayne – this very week. Now, do you answer me? Do you tell me if this is so?’

Ralph said: ‘I honestly think it would be better if you forgot all about it. Honestly.’

‘But you don’t deny?’

He hesitated, began to speak and checked himself.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I certainly don’t deny that a very short, very simple and not, I’m sure, at all important sort of dance-play is kept up once a year in Mardian. It is. We just happen to have gone on doing it.’

‘Ach, blessed Saint Use and Wont.’

‘Er – yes. But we have been rather careful not to sort of let it be known because everyone agrees it’d be too ghastly if the artsy-craftsy boys – I’m sure,’ Ralph said, turning scarlet, ‘I don’t mean to be offensive but you know what can happen. Ye olde goings-on all over the village. Charabancs even. My family have all felt awfully strongly about it and so does the Old Guiser.’

Mrs Bünz pressed her gloved hands to her lips. ‘Did you, did you say “Old Guiser”?’

‘Sorry. It’s a sort of nickname. He’s William Andersen, really. The local smith. A perfectly marvellous old boy,’ Ralph said and inexplicably again turned scarlet. ‘They’ve been at the Copse Smithy for centuries, the Andersens,’ he added. ‘As long as we’ve been at Mardian if it comes to that. He feels jolly strongly about it.’

‘The Old Man? The Guiser?’ Mrs Bünz murmured. ‘And he’s a smith? And his forefathers perhaps made the hobby horse?’

Ralph was uncomfortable.

‘Well –’ he said and stopped.

‘Ach! Then there is a hobby!’

‘Look, Mrs Burns, I – I do ask you as a great favour not to talk about this to anyone, or – or write about it. And for the love of Mike not to bring people here. I don’t mind telling you I’m in pretty bad odour with my aunt and old William and, really, if they thought – look, I think I can hear Dulcie coming. Look, may I really beg you –’

‘Do not trouble yourself. I am very discreet,’ said Mrs Bünz with a reassuring leer. ‘Tell me, there is a pub in the district, of course? You see I use the word pub. Not inn or tavern. I am not,’ said Mrs Bünz, drawing her hand-woven cloak about her, ‘what you describe as artsy-craftsy.’

‘There’s a pub about a mile away. Up the lane to Yowford. The Green Man.’

‘The Green Man. A-a-ach! Excellent.’

‘You’re not going to stay there!’ Ralph ejaculated involuntarily.

‘You will agree that I cannot immediately drive to Bapple-under-Baccomb. It is 300 miles away: I shall not even start. I shall put up at the pub.’

Ralph, stammering a good deal, said: ‘It sounds the most awful cheek, I know, but I suppose you wouldn’t be terribly kind and – if you are going there – take a note from me to someone who’s staying there. I – I – my car’s broken down and I’m on foot.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘It’s most frightfully sweet of you.’

‘Or I can drive you.’

‘Thank you most terribly but if you’d just take the note. I’ve got it on me. I was going to post it.’ Still blushing he took an envelope from his breast-pocket and gave it to her. She stowed it away in a business-like manner.

‘And in return,’ she said, ‘you shall tell me one more thing. What do you do in the Dance of the Five Sons? For you are a performer. I feel it.’

‘I’m the Betty,’ he muttered.

‘A-a-a-ch! The fertility symbol, or in modern parlance –’ She tapped the pocket where she had stowed the letter. ‘The love interest. Isn’t it?’

Ralph continued to look exquisitely uncomfortable. ‘Here comes Dulcie,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind I really think it would be better –’

‘If I made away with myself. I agree. I thank you, Mr Stayne. Good evening.’

Ralph saw her to the door, drove off the geese, advised her to pay no attention to the bulls as only one of them ever cut up rough, and watched her churn away through the snow. When he turned back to the house Miss Mardian was waiting for him.

‘You’re to go up,’ she said. ‘What have you been doing? She’s furious.’

II

Mrs Bünz negotiated the gateway without further molestation from livestock and drove through what was left of the village. In all, it consisted only of a double row of nondescript cottages, a tiny shop, a church of little architectural distinction and a Victorian parsonage: Ralph Stayne’s home, no doubt. Even in its fancy dress of snow it was not a picturesque village. It would, Mrs Bünz reflected, need a lot of pepping-up before it attracted the kind of people Ralph Stayne had talked about. She was glad of this because in her own way, she too was a purist.

At the far end of the village itself and a little removed from it she came upon a signpost for East Mardian and Yowford and a lane leading off in that direction.

But where, she asked herself distractedly, was the smithy? She was seething with the zeal of the explorer and with an itching curiosity that Ralph’s unwilling information had exacerbated rather than assuaged. She pulled up and looked about her. No sign of a smithy. She was certain she had not passed one on her way in. Though her interest was academic rather than romantic, she fastened on smithies with the fervour of a runaway bride. But no. All was twilight and desolation. A mixed group of evergreen and deciduous trees, the signpost, the hills and a great blankness of snow. Well, she would inquire at the pub. She was about to move on when she saw simultaneously a column of smoke rise above the trees and a short man, followed by a dismal dog, come round the lane from behind them.

She leaned out and in a cloud of her own breath shouted: ‘Good evening. Can you be so good as to direct me to the Corpse?’

The man stared at her. After a long pause he said: ‘Ar?’ The dog sat down and whimpered.

Mrs Bünz suddenly realized she was dead-tired. She thought: ‘This frustrating day! So! I must now embroil myself with the village natural.’ She repeated her question. ‘Vere,’ she said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, ‘is der corpse?’

‘Oo’s corpse?’

‘Mr William Andersen’s?’

‘Ee’s not a corpse. Not likely. Ee’s my dad.’ Weary though she was she noted the rich local dialect. Aloud, she said: ‘You misunderstand me. I asked you where is the smithy. His smithy. My pronunciation was at fault.’

‘Copse Smithy be my dad’s smithy.’

‘Precisely. Where is it?’

‘My dad don’t rightly fancy wummen.’

‘Is that where the smoke is coming from?’

‘Ar.’