LITMIR.BIZ

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gave out a tune as old as the English calendar. Deceptively simple, it bounced and twiddled, insistent in its reiterated demand that whoever heard it should feel in some measure the impulse to jump.

      Here, five men jumped: cleverly, with concentration and variety. For one dance they had bells clamped to their thick legs and, as they capered and tramped, the bells jerked positively with an overtone of irrelevant tinkling. For another, they were linked, as befitted the sons of a blacksmith, by steel: by a ring made of five swords. They pranced and leapt over their swords. They wove and unwove a concentric pattern. Their boots banged down to the fiddle’s rhythm and with each down-thump a cloud of dust was bumped up from the floor. The men’s faces were blank with concentration: Dan’s, Andy’s, Nat’s, Chris’s and Ernie’s. On the perimeter of the figure and moving round it danced the Old Guiser, William Andersen. On his head was a rabbit-skin cap. He carried the classic stick-and-bladder. He didn’t dance with the vigour of his sons but with dedication. He made curious, untheatrical gestures that seemed to have some kind of significance. He also chided his sons and sometimes called them to a halt in order to do so.

      Independent of the Guiser but also moving as an eccentric satellite to the dance was ‘Crack’, the Hobby Horse, with Wing-Commander Begg inside him. ‘Crack’ had been hammered out at Copse Forge, how many centuries ago none of the dancers could tell. His iron head, more bird-like than equine, was daubed with paint after the fashion of a witch-doctor’s mask. It appeared through a great, flat, drumlike body: a circular frame that was covered to the ground with canvas and had a tiny horsehair tail stuck through it. ‘Crack’ snapped his iron jaws and executed a solo dance of some intricacy.

      Presently Ralph Stayne came in, shaking the snow off his hat and coat. He stood watching for a minute or two and then went to a corner of the barn where he found, and put on, a battered crinoline-like skirt. It was enormously wide and reached to the floor.

      Now, in the character of the man-woman, and wearing a face of thunder, Ralph, too, began to skip and march about the Dance of the Five Sons. They had formed the Knot or Glass – an emblem made by the interlacing of their swords. Dan and Andy displayed it, the Guiser approached, seemed to look in it at his reflection and then dashed it to the ground. The dance was repeated and the knot reformed. The Guiser mimed, with clumsy and rudimentary gestures, an appeal to the clemency of the Sons. He appeared to write and show his will, promising this to one and that to another. They seemed to be mollified. A third time they danced and formed their knot. Now, mimed old William, there is no escape. He put his head in the knot. The swords were disengaged with a clash. He dropped his rabbit cap and fell to the ground.

      Dr Otterly lowered his fiddle.

      ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I must be off. Quite enough anyway for you, Guiser. If I knew my duty I wouldn’t let you do it at all. Look at you, you old fool, puffing like your own bellows. There’s no need, what’s more, for you to extend yourself like that. Yours is not strictly a dancing role. Now, don’t go on after I’ve left. Sit down and play for the others if you like. Here’s the fiddle. But no more dancing, understand? ’Night, boys.’

      He shrugged himself into his coat and went out. They heard him drive away.

      Ernie practised ‘whiffling’. He executed great leaps, slashing with his sword at imaginary enemies and making a little boy’s spaceman noise between his teeth. The Hobby Horse performed an extraordinary and rather alarming antic which turned out merely to be the preparatory manœuvre of Simon Begg divesting himself of his trappings.

      ‘Damned if I put this bloody harness on again tonight,’ he said. ‘It cuts my shoulders and it stinks.’

      ‘So does the Betty,’ said Ralph. ‘They must have been great sweaters, our predecessors. However: toujours l’art, I suppose.’

      ‘Anything against having them washed, Guiser?’ asked Begg.

      ‘You can’t wash Old ’Oss,’ the Guiser pointed out. ‘Polish iron and leather and hot up your pail of pitch. Dip Crack’s skirt into it last thing as is what is proper and right. Nothin’ like hot pitch to smell.’

      ‘True,’ Ralph said: ‘you have the advantage of me, Begg. I can’t turn the Betty into a tar-baby, worse luck.’

      Begg said: ‘I’d almost forgotten the hot pitch. Queer sort of caper when you come to think of it. Chasing the lovely ladies and dabbing hot tar on ’em. Funny thing is, they don’t run away as fast as all that, either.’

      ‘Padstow ’Oss,’ observed Chris, ‘or so I’ve ’eard tell, catches ’em up and overlays ’em like a candle-snuff.’

      ‘’Eathen licentiousness,’ rejoined his father, ‘and no gear for us chaps, so doan’t you think of trying it on, Simmy-Dick.’

      ‘Guiser,’ Ralph said, ‘you’re superb. Isn’t the whole thing heathen?’

      ‘No, it bean’t then. It’s right and proper when it’s done proper and proper done by us it’s going to be.’

      ‘All the same,’ Simon Begg said, ‘I wouldn’t mind twenty seconds under the old tar barrel with that very snappy little job you introduced to us tonight, Guiser.’

      Ernie guffawed and was instantly slapped down by his father. ‘You hold your noise. No way to conduct yourself when the maid’s your niece. You should be all fiery hot in ’er defence.’

      ‘Yes, indeed,’ Ralph said quietly.

      Begg looked curiously at him. ‘Sorry, old man,’ he said. ‘No offence. Only a passing thought and all that. Let’s change the subject: when are you going to let us have that smithy, Guiser?’

      ‘Never. And you might as well make up your mind to it. Never.’

      ‘Obstinate old dog, isn’t he?’ Begg said at large.

      Dan, Chris and the twins glanced uncomfortably at their father.

      Dan said: ‘Us chaps are favourably disposed as we’ve mentioned, Simmy-Dick, but, the Dad won’t listen to us, no more than to you.’

      ‘Look, Dad,’ Chris said earnestly, ‘it’d be in the family still. We know there’s a main road going through in the near future. We know a service station’d be a little gold mine yur on the cross-roads. We know the company’d be behind us. I’ve seen the letters that’s been wrote. We can still have the smithy. Simmy-Dick can run the servicing side on his own to begin with. Ernie can help. Look, it’s cast-iron – certain sure.’ He turned to Ralph. ‘Isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

      Before Ralph could answer Ernie paused in his whiffling and suddenly roared out, ‘I’d let you ’ave it, Wing-Commander, sir. So I would too.’

      The Guiser opened his mouth in anger but, before he could speak, Dan said: ‘We here to practise or not? Come on, chaps. One more dash at the last figure. Strike up for us, Dad.’

      The five brothers moved out into the middle of the floor. The Guiser, muttering to himself, laid the fiddle across his knees and scraped a preliminary call-in.

      In a moment they were at it again. Down thumped their boots striking at the floor and up bounced the clouds of dust.

      And outside in the snow, tied up with scarves, her hand-woven cloak enveloping her, head and all, Mrs Bünz peered through a little cobwebby window, ecstatically noting the steps and taking down the tunes.

       CHAPTER 3

       Preparation

      All through the following week snow and frost kept up their antiphonal ceremony. The two Mardians were mentioned in the press and on the air as being the coldest spots in England.

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