Beltane Read online

  Chapter 3. Baring

  I want you to imagine the most picture- postcard like English country village you can. Think of narrow streets lined by beautiful thatched cottages made from honey-colored stone, their gardens overflowing with flowers. A British pub nestles on the village green next to a duck- pond, whilst behind it a pathway leads to a Saxon church, its stained glass windows refracting the beams of sunlight which manage to find their way through the tall Atlantic cedars and dark yews which surround it. Add in a small sleepy Victorian-era railway station with about two trains a day, a post office, and a few shops for the tourists. Place it within a glorious deciduous forest landscape, then let ponies, donkeys, cattle and sheep wander freely along the roads and you’re probably thinking of the village of Baring.

  When I first saw it from through the windshield of our hire car as we arrived in early August I thought it was the most wonderful place I had ever seen in my life. Though what the people did for entertainment I had no idea, the nearest town was over five miles away.

  Rose Cottage, our new home, was a slightly rundown, pretty house near the end of the village in a road known as the Quomp. It was close to a tiny gas station which appeared to have been taken over by a herd of horses. Rebekah said it looked as though they were waiting to fill up with gas.

  The cottage had a small dark living room, which was made up for by the huge kitchen, dominated by a long oak table, and an ancient dust-covered Aga cooker. Rebekah took one look at it and announced she’d buy us a microwave at the first opportunity.

  Upstairs there were three bedrooms, the front one which Rebekah shot-gunned right away had an en-suite shower room, though the tiles were cracked and a bit grimy.

  There was a tiny box room which smelt slightly of mold, a family bathroom which looked as if it had been fitted shortly before Noah set sail in the Ark, and then the room at the back, covered in hideous 1970’s striped wallpaper, which became mine by default. Not that I was complaining, the view out over the back garden was beautiful, once I managed to get the window unstuck.

  The garden although overgrown was filled with the scent of roses, explaining where the cottage got its name, and the tall beech trees which framed the boundary of the property made the whole place seem tranquil, secluded and slightly mysterious.

  I threw my bags onto the iron bedstead, causing a cloud of feathers to pop out of the eiderdown, hurried downstairs, pushed my way through the back door, and out onto the lawn. Listening to the buzz of bees and the chatter of a particularly noisy blackbird I shouldered aside an overgrown laurel bush, and made my way along the uneven paving stones which made up the shaded pathway leading to the end of the garden.

  It was dark and much cooler under the boughs of the beeches, and I slowed as I approached the rickety wooden fence with its peeling once white paint, now a dull grey, which enclosed the garden. Looking out into the woods the sunlight fell in pools of dappled light and shade. The ground was a mass of twisted roots, fallen branches, and leafy mulch. It was so green for a moment it looked to me as if the trees were under water, as if I was in a deep, deep Ocean or a lake.

  Even though it was a hot day, the heat did not seem to penetrate far into these woods, and in my thin cotton dress I gave an involuntary shiver. Yet at the same time the forest didn’t frighten me. On the contrary it seemed to invite me in. Everything seemed incredibly familiar to me. Almost as if I’d been here before.

  Before I knew it I’d vaulted over the fence, tearing a hole in my favorite summer frock in the process, and was stepping over fallen branches, getting mud on my sandals, and pushing my way through brambles, small bushes and piles of twigs moving further and further into the trees. The pale yellow leaves of wild primroses caught my eye. Kneeling down I began to gather handfuls, and to thread them into a chain.

  A cracking sound made me stop in my tracks. I wasn’t alone. I looked around, but it was impossible to see anything other than the forest itself. The birdsong I‘d heard earlier had vanished now, the woods were completely silent. There was a sense of anticipation. It felt as if the whole forest was holding its breath waiting for something to happen. I held my breath too, my heart beating slightly faster now. I hesitated and then shifted my weight trying not to make a sound as I moved.

  Slowly I began to retrace my steps towards the house when a loud thud just to one side of me made me swing around, and draw in a shocked gasp of breath.

  Only feet from where I was standing a large pony had appeared from behind one of the trees. It had the most perfect white coat, and deep brown almost black eyes which instantly rooted me to the spot. The pony pawed the ground with one hoof, and snorted, shaking its head from side to side impatiently. I watched it, mouth open, transfixed, and was about to reach out towards it to try to touch it when my stepmother’s voice calling from the garden broke the spell.

  I glanced over my shoulder in the direction her voice had come from, and when I looked back the pony was gone. I stood for a moment, gazing vacantly at the place where it had been, almost unable to believe I had really seen it, when Rebekah’s voice echoed through the trees again, and I turned and walked reluctantly back towards our new home, painfully aware that someone was going to have to stitch the tear in my dress.

  I woke early, the curtains on the windows were just thin muslin and the sun pouring into the room ruled out the lie-in I’d had planned. Even with my headzappers my nights are almost never completely trouble free and I often wake up tired.

  What I mean is I tend to get a lot of nightmares, and some of them are fairly extreme. I can wake up in the morning and feel like I’ve just done a dozen rounds in a boxing ring followed by running a marathon.

  My headzappers are OK. They mostly solve things for me during the day, though if you read the packet and look at the side effects you’d probably never dare to put one in your mouth. The downside for me is they can make me feel fuzzy- headed and I occasionally get tremors in my hands.

  The tremors can sometimes be a sign that I'm going to have an 'episode' so I need to pay attention to them if I can. I've known them to shake like I’m a hundred and three years old. I remember laughing at a stupid movie I saw with my dad years ago. There was this cowardly gunslinger who everybody wanted to take part in a fast draw against the bad guy, the gunslinger was arguing that he wasn’t up to the job and said he would prove it.

  He lifted his hand and held it out in front of himself. The other guy in the scene looked at the hand, which wasn’t trembling at all, and said “it’s steady as a rock!” The gunslinger agreed and then lifted his other hand which was twitching and shaking all over the place, “yes,” he said, “but this is the hand I shoot with!”

  I dragged myself out of bed, staggered across the hallway into the bathroom and swallowed my headzappers with a mouthful of water from the tap. Rebekah was already in the kitchen struggling with the toaster as I appeared around the door wearing my trusty Star Wars nightshirt.

  “Ah! TT, thank goodness. Can you make this thing pop up?”

  A thin stream of smoke was rising from the chromium toaster which looked like an antique. I grabbed the plastic handle and shoved it upwards ejecting a burnt slice of toast onto the work surface.

  “Oh well, can’t be helped” Rebekah muttered, picking up the blackened toast with two fingers as if it might bite her rather than vice versa, and dropping it into the trash.

  “I don’t really have time to eat it anyway. I have to head out to an induction session for my new job this morning. Can you find something to do to amuse yourself without me?”

  I took another slice of bread from the bread bin and smearing it with butter and jam popped it straight into my mouth.

  “No problemo,” I replied, chewing at the same time. “I want to take a look around the village anyhow.”

  As soon as I’d finished breakfast I wrestled my way into a pair of jeans and a strappy top and set out to explore my new domain. Before I could get more than a few paces d
own the road I heard the sound of a woman’s voice shouting something.

  I swiveled around to see a middle-aged woman in a Barbour jacket bearing down on me waving frantically. The reason for her distress quickly became apparent when I spotted a Spaniel puppy skittering in my direction dragging its lead behind it.

  The sound of a car approaching rapidly behind me, prompted me to scoop the puppy up into my arms narrowly saving it from being mangled beneath the wheels of a large black 4x4 which whooshed past in a cloud of dust. The woman, red faced, and panting with exertion managed to splutter her thanks.

  “I could never have forgiven myself if anything happened to my little Caesar!”

  In between having my face licked by an enthusiastic and unapologetic Caesar, his tail whipping back and forward like windshield wipers on fast wash, I told her I was glad to help.

  “You must be the new tenant at Rose Cottage,” the woman announced, thrusting out a rather large and sweaty hand for me to shake which I only managed to do by juggling the puppy in the other one, “Audrey Brakes, Willow Farm. Welcome to Baring.”

  I tried to pass Caesar back to her, but he nuzzled closer trying to bury himself in my cleavage.

  “Caesar likes you. He’s usually an excellent judge of character. Do you ride?”

  I nodded, digging the squirming creature out of my armpit, “as a matter of fact I do.”

  Dad had paid for me to take lessons at the Jamaica Bay Academy after I’d nagged him for nearly two years. Audrey beamed at me as I managed to press the frantically wriggling puppy into her hand.

  “Splendid. If you’ve nothing better to do over the summer you can earn a few pounds exercising horses for me, my dashed arthritis won’t let me do much at the moment.” Caesar began trying to nip at the join of flesh between her fingers and thumb.

  “You don’t own a pony with an all-white coat do you?” I asked, “I saw one in the forest yesterday.”

  Audrey’s smile evaporated. “Good Lord no! We don’t have forest ponies; they’re all owned by the commoners. Our stables are for hunters.”

  I muttered an apology, secretly wondering at the idea of calling anyone a commoner in the twenty-first century. Mind you this was England after all, land of the Royal family and the aristocracy. No revolutions or guillotines for the Brits.

  It was only after Audrey and Caesar had continued on their way and I went into the village Post Office that I found out what she’d really meant.

  The balding rather pompous man who worked behind the Post Office counter, suggested I buy a short pamphlet called The New Forest Story which explained the forest’s most important traditions.

  “You should know all about the place if you plan to live here,” he told me, squinting through his bifocals in a disapproving fashion. I’d foolishly mentioned I wasn’t a tourist, just a new neighbor.

  An ice cream seemed a fair reward for my dog rescuing ability, so I sat down on a bench in the sunshine overlooking the duck pond to enjoy it. Flipping open the first page of the pamphlet I soon found myself engrossed.

  According to the author a commoner was the name given to a person who owned a plot of land in the New Forest with rights of common attached to it. The rights were awarded by Kings and Queens over centuries. I discovered commoners have the right to graze their animals in the forest and the animals that the tourists see running free aren’t really wild at all, they all belong to someone. I wondered again who owned the white pony which had so miraculously appeared in front of me the previous day.

  As I skimmed through the pamphlet I noticed that my bench had become completely surrounded by a family of ducks. From the sound of their quacking and squawking they were probably after my sugar cone. Even so the number that had decided to beg from me seemed a little excessive, so shooing them away I made a swift break for the churchyard. Mercifully duck-free the land surrounding the church was made up of a higgledy-piggledy mixture of new rather solid looking granite headstones, and older ivy-covered tombs capped with carved angels and cherubs.

  The thing I regretted most about being away from New York was that I couldn’t visit dad and mom’s grave anymore. They were buried together in Cypress Hills cemetery. I liked Rebekah for letting that happen, she was kind of hopeless sometimes in spite of her high-powered job, but she knew how to do certain things the right way.

  I began to wander between the rows of graves enjoying the sense of continuity I always get in a churchyard. Nothing lasts forever; yet the world still carries on. I’ve always found graves interesting, not in any ghoulish way, just because of the epitaphs, the inscriptions, carved on them.

  My favorite is from Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona. I visited it on a road trip with dad when I was thirteen and we both thought it was pretty much the perfect memorial.

  Here lies Lester Moore

  Four slugs from a .44

  No Les No More.

  I spent an hour or so just meandering; reading the names and the short verses on the graves, and looking at the wilting flowers which their loved ones had left for them. Eventually I found myself on the far side of the graveyard near the boundary fence. On the other side of the railings I caught a glimpse of a chunk of black marble peeking out from behind the long grass. From where I was standing I couldn’t make out exactly what it was, though it looked as if it might be another grave.

  Wondering what a grave would be doing outside the churchyard I made my way back to the main gate and skirting the church crossed around to the other side. It took me a moment or two to get my bearings, the grass was much longer than I’d expected, and the stone was further around the church than I’d thought.

  Finally, when I’d almost given up I found myself on top of it. I’d been right, it was definitely a gravestone, faded and chipped, its inscription obscured by tall grasses. Pushing them aside revealed a strange carving of a circle with a five pointed star inside it. Beneath the star was a name ‘Sibyl Osgood died September 27th 1899’ followed by a puzzling inscription.

  ‘Do what thou wilt.’

  Something else caught my eye under the knotted grasses, and working my fingers in between the tangled stalks I pulled out a freshly-cut lily. As I straightened up clutching the flower which smelled slightly over sweet as if on the point of corruption, I found myself face to face with an elderly man with a straggly beard and bulging eyes. He pointed his finger at me accusingly.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  I opened my mouth to explain that I wasn’t trying to steal flowers from the grave, only to bite back the words when he spat on the ground at my feet and hissed at me.

  “We don’t want your kind here. So you take your filthy flowers and be off with you, back to whatever sewer it is you crawled out from!”

  Too surprised and shocked to reply I stood gawping open- mouthed as he turned his back and stomped off towards the graveyard. It was only later when I found myself back in the front of the church that it occurred to me what the man had been wearing. The black top and the white collar were unmistakable; there was no question about it. He was the parish priest.

  Shaken by my strange encounter I crossed the village green towards the pub. The Handmaid’s Arms was obviously an old coaching inn. Remembering a couple of Jane Austen movies I’d seen in my early teens I felt sure that the large gates in the middle of the building had once provided the way into a central courtyard for horse-drawn carriages. I could just imagine Elizabeth Bennett hopping out before retiring to her room to write her journal.

  The painted sign, hanging above the wisteria-covered main entrance seemed rather unusual to me even allowing for my lack of experience with English pubs. The name would have led me to expect an image of a serving girl in a mop-cap or something equally Olde Worlde, instead the picture showed a terrifying looking monster.

  Its head would have resembled that of a goat, if its snout hadn’t looked just like a pig’s. This freaky mash-up was plonked on top of what appeared to
be the body of a woman. The whole grotesque thing was covered in a long black cloak with a hood, and stood holding a scroll in one hand and what looked like a brass toasting fork in the other.

  The background was a star-filled sky in midnight blue with a huge yellow full moon. The whole effect was certainly arresting, even if I couldn’t for a minute imagine that it would actually encourage anybody to stop for a drink or a bite to eat; though from the look of the crowds of day-trippers filling the tables outside and spilling onto the green itself it didn’t appear to be much of a deterrent.

  On the other side of the green, just next to The Handmaid’s Arms, was a stone cross surrounded by wooden benches. The poppy wreathes and the lists of names chiseled into it in long lines revealed it to be a War memorial of some kind.

  A girl sat perched on the arm of one of the benches. Her long black skirt worn with lace-up work boots and fishnets coupled with a beaten-up leather jacket seemed defiantly urban Goth in such a rural setting. She drew in smoke lazily from the remains of a thin roll-up cigarette and then flicked it casually away from her onto the grass.

  Silver bangles jingled on her wrist as she pushed back a lock of jet-black dyed hair which had fallen across her face revealing a sulky expression, bright scarlet lipstick, and too much mascara. She dismissed me with a glance, and looked back towards whoever it was she was sharing the seat with.

  When I first set eyes on Jem Masterson I had no idea how closely our destinies would be entwined. What did I think of him at the time? Well obviously I thought he was handsome. What else could I think? He had movie-star looks with that curly dark-blonde hair and those pale blue eyes.

  However slumped on the bench next to Goth-girl with a mean looking scowl on his face and digging a hole in the wood with a penknife he also looked like every girl’s worst nightmare. And, as I now know, that’s exactly what he was. He is. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll explain all about that later on in its rightful place… those darned sisters and their threads.

  When Goth-girl threw an empty soda can at one of the ducks I began to get the feeling that there might just be a touch of decay in the heart of this little piece of paradise Rebekah and I had brought ourselves to.

  On my way back around the circuit of roads that surrounded the central part of the village I spied a narrow lane flanked by a pretty stream. Following the flow upwards I enjoyed the play of light on the water as it trickled over the uneven pebbles lining the bed.

  Crossing a narrow footbridge I found myself in a cobbled courtyard shaded by a plum tree. A peeling wooden notice board which had seen better days introduced the Paper Mill a second-hand bookshop crammed into one of the smallest buildings I’d ever seen. It looked as though it was designed for gnomes rather than humans.The owner enhanced this impression since he was less than five feet tall, and his wrinkly walnut-colored face was concealed behind a remarkably bushy beard.

  Books teetered on top of each other in great piles which made removing a volume a daunting prospect. Browsing the shelves, and trying not to bang my head on the oak beams which wandered across the ceiling as if they hadn’t quite made up their minds where they wanted to get to, I was drawn to a well-stocked section on myths, legends, and fairy tales which I quickly realized contained some rare editions.

  Burying my nose in a copy of Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market I was quickly lost in the poem. The story’s all about a young girl called Laura, who gives in to temptation and tastes forbidden magical fruits offered to her by the goblins, giving them a lock of her hair in exchange. The gnome shopkeeper’s voice broke my concentration. He was speaking in a broad accent that sounded as if he was doing an impression of a pirate.

  “Ere, do ee wanna pum then? They’m fresh from the tree. Tha’ll ave to put the book down if ee do, can’t get no joose on er.”

  I hadn’t got a clue what he was saying, it was only when I saw that he was holding a ripe plum in his gnarled fingers that the penny dropped.

  Suddenly realizing that I was famished and dismissing Christina Rosetti’s warning from my head - 'their offers should not charm us, their evil gifts would harm us’ - I placed the book back on the shelf and gratefully accepted the plum.

  The fruit was deliciously sweet and I had to take care not to let the juice drip onto the pile of books at my feet.

  “Do you always feed your customers?” I asked, through a mouthful of fruity pulp.

  “Only the purty ones m’dear,” he answered, offering me a rather sticky hand to shake.

  “Eli Pitton.”

  “Thea Hartsong. I love your shop. You have a wonderful collection.” Eli, who I decided to think of in future as the Nice Gnome or NG for short, smiled and looked around at the packed shelves. Nodding towards the section I’d been looking through he said something incomprehensible.

  “You’m keen on furrys and that then?”

  I tried to concentrate. What could he mean? It was no good I had to ask.

  “Furrys?”

  “You know, furry tails.”

  I stared at him completely nonplussed. He spoke very slowly emphasizing each word as if he was talking to a small child.

  “Legends an that!”

  I got it at last. Furry tails - fairy tales! Wiping the juice from my chin with the back of my hand, I gave him the usual spiel I give people whenever anybody asks about my interest in myths.

  “My dad was a Professor of Anthropology at NYU. He got me into all that stuff.”

  The NG nodded sagely. “Is that roight? Well then if you’m fond of all that sort a thing ee should look in on the Black Cat next door.”

  The Black Cat turned out to be another tiny shop hidden away on the other side of the courtyard from the Paper Mill. I hadn’t even noticed it when I crossed the bridge, partly because it was obscured by the plum tree, but also because there were no lights in the windows and it had no sign to show its function other than a small line drawing of a cat lying on its side as if asleep.

  The windows were dusty and the thick glass slightly distorted the view of the inside though I did manage to make out the outlines of an array of dream-catchers, and to see crystal pendants dangling above a counter which was covered with all of the items you’d expect to find in a new-age store.

  There were bottles of esoteric looking potions, packs of tarot cards, sticks of incense, and a couple of quite lurid looking statues in the window display. You know the sort of thing, a semi-clothed girl sitting on the back of a dragon or wrestling with a giant serpent.

  One of my girlfriends in New York took me to a shop called Mystical Presence in Brooklyn once. It was much the same sort of thing, though the shop in Brooklyn was a bit of a let-down because it looked just like a Wal-mart for the occult.

  I was hoping for a place with a bit more atmosphere. The Black Cat certainly looked more like the sort of shop you’d design if you were going to show an occult store in the movies. Even so I was still slightly disappointed that NG should imagine something quite so lame would appeal to me.

  I liked the supernatural in its rightful place, between the pages of a good book. Books were the best way to escape from reality; this was just a pale imitation.

  The sun was starting to dip behind the trees as I skirted the edge of the cricket pitch and started back towards the Quomp. When I entered the cottage Rebekah was in the kitchen surrounded by bags of food shopping unwrapping a new microwave.

  “Oh dear,” she sighed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  Rebekah held up a wire which emerged from the back of the microwave.

  “There’s no plug attached!”

  A short car ride into the town of Ringburg gave me my first chance to taste real English fish and chips.

  “Traditionally you should eat them out of newspaper” Rebekah told me, as she drenched the battered cod fillet she’d bought with vinegar and salt.

  “Only they don’t serve them that way anymore, something to do with Health and Safety
I think.”

  We ate our meal with our fingers sitting on a wall next to a piece of open heath on the edge of the town, grease dripping onto our chins.

  “So how was your first day in the New Forest, do you think you’re going to like it?” Rebekah asked through a mouthful of batter.

  I was just about to reply when a donkey poked its head over my shoulder, and stuck its hairy face into my bag of chips making us both collapse into fits of laughter.