THE LADY ON THE TABLE

The old lady lay on top of the kitchen table. Beneath her was the old rag rug that had been in front of the fireplace and she was wrapped in an eiderdown. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. She could hear the sounds made by water as it lapped gently against pieces of furniture. Some dull light from the setting sun illuminated the room and when she turned her head she could see the door leading to the garden moving slightly as the water beneath and around its lower sides pressed against the latch making the door rock on its well-worn hinges. Then the light from the sun reduced quite quickly and she could hear the sudden impact of more rain upon the window.

She was very cold in spite of her covering.

She allowed her mind to drift.

She was Bohemian. Not a Bohemian. Bohemian. That’s what she was and very proud of it too. How did that word come to be so inappropriately applied to people who were so completely different from her in every respect? Wild people. People who dressed extravagantly and danced all night. Students in Paris . That opera; enjoyable as it was it was not respectful of people like her, people like her Mother and Father and people like her Grandmother and Grandfather all of whom were born in Bohemia. Bohemians. They all lived quiet, industrious lives in their small town in the western part of Czechoslovakia. Until the war came and upset it all.

As a small child she saw a lot of her grandparents. Grandpa was a famous figure in their community, known throughout for his considerable carpentry and woodcarving skills that made his ornately decorated wooden fire-surrounds, cabinets, desks, sideboards, chairs and tables highly prized for miles around. Yes, there were other carpenters and furniture makers but only one Grandpa!

His speciality was making objects that were used as bridal presents and gifts to mark special occasions. Orders had to be placed months, even years ahead, but everyone knew it was worth the wait and there were few of the town’s wealthier families that did not have at least one of Grandpa’s creations. The house where she was born and brought up until the outcome of the war contained the most amazing furniture and objects that had been given by him to mark important events in the lives of her parents – particularly their wedding – anniversaries and birthdays. Grandpa might give her a little box with a hinged lid for her birthday. Or a picture carved in relief so cleverly executed that buildings seemed to stand right out of the frame and roads went off into the distance getting narrower and narrower until they disappeared over a hill.

She loved all her presents and it broke her heart when in the desperate rush to escape the invaders she and Mama were bundled into a train with only as much as they could easily carry. She was allowed to keep one small box in which she kept her little treasures. If she turned her head just a little she could see that box on a shelf to the right of the fireplace. It was all she had left of that happy time in her childhood.

Papa stayed behind and so did her grandparents. They watched the pillaging and destruction and experienced the harshness of a brutal occupation. Papa died. Her grandparents, now very old and worn down, survived into the first year of the peace and when Grandpa died Grandma, who had resisted all attempts to persuade her to join them here, wrote to them and told them of Papa’s brave death at the hands of the enemy. She wrote too of how Grandpa, overwhelmed with grief at the death of his son, worked non-stop for several days and nights to make Papa a coffin. The coffin was the finest piece of work the old man had ever produced.

The lid of the coffin was not flat, she had said. It was made in what he used to call ‘diamond style’ that he used for the gentry. The centre was higher than the sides and there were four triangular areas, rather like the facets of a diamond, where Grandpa had carved the story of Papas’s life and death. At the head of the lid, on a shallow isosceles triangle, there was Papa’s full name that included his five Christian names and the dates of his birth and death. The tall, thin triangle that came to meet it from the base of the lid showed a man, Papa, standing against the wall of the church in which he had been baptised and married facing a group of soldiers with rifles raised to their shoulders in the act of execution. The sides showed scenes from the town and nearby countryside with, on one side, Grandpa and Grandma and their son in various stages of his early life the other being devoted to his marriage to Mama and her own birth.

Soon after this letter she and Mama learned that Grandma had died. And then Mama, her constant companion in this land where they had taken refuge, also died and she was left alone in the small cottage.

The old lady sighed quietly and pulled the eiderdown closer. The light from the sun had gone completely and a rising moon began to illuminate the room. It revealed that the water level had become much higher as the rain had continued. She shivered.

There were strange noises at the door, a tentative scraping combined with a determined kind of pushing rather as a dog might show its wish to come in to its home. The door moved in response to the pressure and to the movement of the water itself. Small ripples could be seen on the water’s surface. The noises and movements of the door became stronger and, suddenly, it moved up and freed its catch so that it opened and the moonlight streamed through the open doorway.

The first she saw of the dark mass that loomed into her sight was the shape of an isosceles triangle that was wider than it was high, picked it out by the moonlight. The object stayed, framed by the doorway, gently moving with the water that supported it, the triangle of reflected light moving from side to side as though deciding where to go.

She felt an overwhelming sense of resolution and finality at the sight of what had entered the room and took up its place beside her. She knew the words and dates that would be carved into the top isosceles triangle. Her hand stretched out and her fingers read the pictures carved into the sides. There was, she knew, Papa and Mama pushing her up and up on the garden swing and her sitting in the local school classroom – and with her hair in plaits. Yes! That is how she wore her hair in those days! And on the far side there was without doubt a train and there within a carriage they sat, her and Mama, side by side on their way to a new and much sadder life. And Grandpa, Grandma and Papa waving them goodbye. Such a sad, sad scene.
She knew what the final picture would be. There was no need to reach out to feel for it. It amounted to an instruction.

The coffin lid slowly opened. Within it was lined with a shiny soft material and a padded headrest. With a sigh of satisfaction and sense of utter peace she rolled from the table into the welcoming interior. She relaxed her body and crossed her hands over her breast and closed her eyes. The lid slowly lowered itself.

Her lifeless body slipped from the table into the water and disappeared beneath the surface with hardly a ripple.

THE STRANGE TALE OF A GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOY

I performed this story on the evening of Sunday 2 March '08 in the Cloisters of my old School (founded 1556). The Cloisters are at ground level and are paved with large slabs of stone; one side used to be open to the elements. On this evening this long dark space, that looks out upon a churchyard, was illuminated only by candles with the audience sitting at tables. I stood in a dark doorway and I wore a long black coat and a wide brimmed black hat. Around my neck there was wound a white scarf that had within it a string of small white bulbs powered by batteries; in my pocket there was a switch. When I started my face could be seen only by candlelight.

Good evening.
I’m very pleased to see you here.
Can you all see me clearly?
That’s good. That’s a blessing.
Can you hear me?
People don’t always hear me.

I thought I’d just pop in to see you all and say Hello. And tell you a story. It’s no trouble. I didn’t have far to come and the story … well, it’s just a story.

I was at school here, you know. A long time ago. My feet used to tread these well-worn flagstones as I rushed here and there, shirt tail flying, books spilling out of my satchel. Tempus was always fugiting, as we lads used to say. Latin was very big in those days. Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Dative, Ablative. You see, I can still do it. There was a joke the Latin master showed us. He wrote on the board:

Caesar adsum jam forte
Brutus aderat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Brutus sic in at!

Now the letter 'j' could be used instead of 'i' when writing Latin and was pronounced as a sort of 'yuh' sound. The joke only works if the 'j' is used. The verse has no meaning. The joke only emerges when you say it in English. Do you see? Caesar had some jam for tea. Brutus had a rat. Caesar was sick in an omnibus. Brutus was sick in a hat. Very droll. Oh, we laughed several times at that.

In the winter these cloisters used to be very cold. There was no glass where now there is glass. See! Imagine it without glass on a cold, windy day. Brrr!
But in the Summer it was delightful.

Are you familiar with the walnut trees outside? There’s a couple just behind you and there’s another over there at the front of the school – but you can’t see it from here. They have been here for such a long time. In amongst the gravestones. I loved those trees in the Summer. In the cloisters, running around, you were always aware of those beautiful trees and sometimes, when there was a breeze, you could hear them.

Sometimes in the Summer I would take a book, a good interesting book, perhaps an adventure book, and I’d sit at the base of that one. I’d go round to the church side so I couldn’t be seen from the school. School life did seem to consist largely of places where one couldn’t go and things one couldn’t do. I’d sit under the canopy of bright, shiny, leaves of such a green! I’d lean back against the tree trunk and with half-closed eyes I’d drift off to Treasure Island or some such place. Then the church clock would bring me back to this world. Tempus was fugiting again.

At the beginning of the Michaelmas Term when we returned to school the walnut trees were waiting and bearing gifts. The green walnuts hung up there, as shiny as the leaves. They had no intention of dropping until they were good and ready and that was when their green jackets had started to moulder and crack open - and that was much later in the term. When the time was ripe the nuts would fall onto the grass. Sometimes they would hit a gravestone and break but most commonly they would be lying there in the morning, on the grass, scattered among the gravestones just waiting to be picked up by an eager schoolboy.

And yet, strangely, they weren’t picked up by anyone but me. I would stuff my satchel with them and put them on my bedroom window sill to dry and then I would have midnight feasts with bread and cheese and my walnuts. If my gleaning had been successful I might have enough of my secret hoard to last me to Christmas. And yet, strangely, they weren’t picked up by anyone but me.

I left my school and went off to find a living for myself. In those days young men were expected to give the colonies a whirl. Countries where young men, young English men, could find a position in tea, or coffee, or coir, or that blanket term, ‘import and export’. Any country where other men, usually of colour, would accept very little for doing a great deal of hard work so that young English men could behave as though the accumulation of wealth was their divine right. I chose India and did fairly well but India took its revenge and ruined my health. A dying man I returned home and occupied the house recently vacated by my parents who had had the good sense to die before they could see the wreck that their son had become. I spent the last few months of my life very near to this my old school and this graveyard and these beloved walnut trees.

I would walk, or rather hobble, with my ivory inlaid ebony walking stick to help me, along that path beside these cloisters. Sadly I could not take up my favoured spot beside the walnut tree. Well, I could have done this but I should never have been able to rise again. I would rest on various benches placed by kind people beside the paths of the churchyard and occasionally take a little nap in the porch of this lovely church.

And then I died you know. People do.*

It was then another life began for me. With my corporeal remains tucked away sub terra so that they might return to the dust from whence they came I was, in a strange way, reborn. I was admittedly … insubstantial. But I was visible. When I started to address you this evening I asked you if you could see me clearly and you all said ‘Yes’, didn’t you?

The word that is flitting in and out of your minds … the word that you cannot quite allow to form itself in those minds of yours … is Ghost. Wooo oo wooo!

I prefer the word Shade. It is the word we used when I was … alive. I find it more dignified. But if you are more comfortable with Ghost then so be it.

The remarkable thing is that having achieved this Spirit status I found that I was not alone in myself. Now that’s mysterious, isn’t it? … Not alone in myself.

Returning to the matter of the walnuts and the walnut trees. I was only ever aware of their trunks, their boughs, their leaves and … their fruit … those crisp crunchy nuts that when cracked open reveal their strange kernels that look for all the world like miniature human brains.

I never gave a moment’s thought to what was beneath the trees. Think of those probing roots working their way through the soil seeking moisture and sustenance to nourish everything above. Think of those graves. Think of coffins. Think of their contents. Think of the slow absorption of everything that had constituted those human beings. Year by year finding its way into the trees and into their fruit.

Those crisp crunchy nuts that I, and only I, feasted on season by season.

My dear Mother, when encouraging me to eat good food, used to say ‘You are what you eat’.

How true. How very true.

So I am more than what you see. I am the composite of many. Today you see the man whose story has been told but I am also a builder who died in 1789 and could barely string two words together. I am also a child of twelve who died of cholera in 1830. I’m a nice spinster lady who did good works. I’m a loving husband and wife who died within a few weeks of each other. Men, women, children whose bodies were laid to rest within reach of those determined roots. Forty or fifty of ‘em. Just over there, beyond the glass, beneath the grass.

I am indeed a man of many parts, am I not?

What is my name? Well, I cannot offer you the name that appears on my headstone over my grave just over there because I am - we are - so much more than that. Let me borrow from the Gospel according to St Mark: ‘my name is Legion for we are many’ – although we are definitely not evil spirits and the Gadarene swine will not be needed, thank you very much.

You may see us in any one of our forms around this church. Usually after dark when we are most comfortable. But you will be more likely to see me. I am more gregarious. Try not to be afraid. I promise that none of us will try to frighten you. We just like this place and we like the trees – for they are part of us, are they not?

One final word. Please, I beg you, do not raise with your charming vicar the matter of exorcism. That would be Oh, so very cruel. If driven out, where would we go? Where would we go?



* At this point in the narrative I switched on the lights hidden in my scarf so that my face was softly lit from below. I think the effect was eery but I'm not sure