The Chalk Giants (12 page)

‘Subscribers’ dialled trunk calls are recorded at the exchange on the same meters used for local calls,’ he carolled. ‘These meters are extremely reliable,
and are regularly tested.’
He flung down the pamphlet, grabbed another. His eyes swam; fierce shooting pains stabbed suddenly through his head. ‘How to take care of Your New House,’ he shouted. ‘Taps and Ball Valves, Gulleys and Gutters. Paths and Settlement Cracks ...’ Pru and Sal shrieked back; but Monkey’s voice boomed triumphantly, overriding them. ‘What is Shrinkage?’ he cried cunningly. ‘Is an Imperfection a Defect?’

Truck heeled, struck a stone and righted. Monkey leafed at the jizzing papers. ‘These are your Service Authorities,’ he intoned. ‘Rating Authority, Water Supply Authority, Gas Board, Electricity Board!’ He snatched up another paper from his hoard. T never wanted to be a Star,’ he bellowed. Then, turning two pages at once, ‘Separates that Add Up in your Wardrobe ...’

Truck slowed at last, in the sun and shadow of a dappled wood where a grassy road ran between grassy banks.

Monkey wasn’t feeling too good any more. He gulped and blinked, fighting the rise of a sudden swelling pain. ‘Goodbye,’ he said sadly,’ to the Bikini Girl of Nineteen-Seventy-Five. Next year will be Cover Up Year ...’ The pain centred itself into an acute epiglottal knot; and Monkey burped. The burp was red and bright, and ran across his chin. He groaned, and brought up his wind again. The second belch was worse than the first. He splashed the wetness with his hands, and started to shriek.

The attention of Pru and Sal was riveted. They stooped, staring and mumbling. Their hands, iron-hard and hooked, scrabbled concernedly; and the cheeks of Monkey fell wholly from his face, lay on the pillows as bright as flower petals!

A mask, whether it be of blood or another substance, is a form that depersonalizes. Now, new triggers operated within the curious brains of Pru and Sal. The red thing that writhed and mewed was no longer Monkey, but a stranger that had taken Monkey’s place. They seized it at once, shrieking with rage, and hurled it to the ground. Still it cried and wailed, its fear-smell triggering in turn desire to kill. Pru and Sal stamped and leaped, keening, their unused grass-dry bosoms joggling beneath their shifts. In time the sounds stopped, and what was on the path lay still. They gripped then the handles of the empty Truck and fled, backs humping, knees jerking regular as pistons. When they had gone, the lane was quiet.

The day was warm, and still. Flies buzzed, steady and soothing, through the afternoon. Toward dusk a wild creature found, in the path, something to its liking. For a time it chewed and mumbled warily; then leaf shadows, moved by a rising wind, startled it away. It retired to its hole, under the roots of an elderly, spreading oak; there it cleaned its fur, washed its nose and paws, and died.

Clouds piled in the sky, amber-grey in the fading light. Overhead, the leaves of trees glowed pale against the thunderous masses of vapour. The first rainspots fell, heavy and solitary, banging down through the yielding leaves; and the storm broke, with a crashing peal. In time it passed, grumbling, to the east. It left behind it, in the cleansed lane, a great new smell of earth and wet green leaves.

Stan is deeply troubled. He knows now the land is empty; all the rolling miles of it stretching out beyond the little bay. He’s seen for himself; and she has gone for ever.

Somehow it’s as if it was all his fault. Maybe if he’d never driven down, never thought. .. what he thought, none of it would have happened. Not the bombs, not anything. If only he’d known, if only he’d realised in time. He’d have given everything away, the gun and the Champ, the lot; just sat and been glad to be what he was and that she was happy, though not with him. He feels he would like to cry; only his eyes are so gummy, they’ve nearly glued themselves shut.

He gets them working by rubbing with his fingers. The room is just the same, he sees a packing crate with plastic cups and saucers standing on it and the camping stove and his stuff scattered about. The light is bluish and dull; it’s either dusk or dawn. But seeing is really too much effort; after a while his eyes close themselves again.

But listen! Is it possible? In the darkness behind the lids, there are new sounds. Many sounds. The gloom brightens; and he is amazed. In that minute -- it couldn’t have been more -whole forests have sprung up; and there are men again. Real men, and women too. Villages stand protected by stockades; there are fields of barley and wheat, he sees animals grazing, carts jolting along dusty white tracks. He thinks of all he has missed; he can’t afford such inattention, such ingratitude, again. He’s sorry now the thought of doing away with himself ever entered his mind.

His viewpoint alters. He sees a hill, one special hill. On it lies the tiny figure of a girl..

It seems he swoops closer. He sees the bushes that clothe the slope, the very blades of grass; then he catches his breath. He can’t believe; but neither can he mistake her. It’s happened, after a weariness of time; his prayer has been answered. . There is a God; and he’s wise, and just!

I

If you had lain as Mata lay, stretched out on the wiry grass, and pressed your ear to the ground, you would have heard, a long way off, the measured thud and tramp of many feet. If you had raised your head, as she now raised hers, you would have caught, gusting on the sharp, uncertain breeze of early spring, the heart-pounding thump and roll of drums. Since dawn, the Great Procession had been winding its slow way from the sea; now, it was almost here.

She sat up quickly, pushing the tangled black hair from her eyes; a dark-eyed, brown-skinned girl of maybe thirteen summers. Her one garment, of soft doeskin, left her legs and arms bare; her waist was circled by a leather thong, on which it pleased her to carry a little dagger in a painted wooden sheath. Round her neck she wore an amulet of glinting black and red stones; for Mata was the daughter of a chief.

The valley above which she lay opened its green length to the distant sea. Behind her, crowning the nearer height, was a village of thatched mud huts, surrounded by a palisade of sharply pointed timbers. In front, rearing sharp-etched against the sky, was the Sacred Mound to which the Procession must come. Here the Giants had lived, in times beyond the memory of men; and here they had once reared a mighty Hall. The top of the Mound was circled still by nubs and fingers of stone, half buried by the bushes and rank grasses that had seeded themselves over the years; but now none but the village priests dared venture to the crest. The Giants had been all-powerful; their ghosts too were terrible, and much to be feared. Once, as a tiny child, Mata had ventured to climb the steep side of the Mound toward where Cha’Acta the Chief Priest tethered his fortune in goats; but the seething of the wind in the long yellow grass, the bushes that seemed to catch at her with twiggy fingers, the spikes and masses of high grey stone half-glimpsed beyond the summit, had sent her scuttling in terror. She had kept her own counsel, which was maybe just as well; and since that day had never ventured near the forbidden crest.

The sound of drumming came sudden and loud. The head of the Procession was nearing the great chalk cleft; any moment now it would be in sight. Mata frowned back at the village, pulling her lip with her teeth. The other children, placed under her care, had been left to fend for themselves in the smoke and ashes of the family hut; chief’s daughter or not, she would certainly be beaten if she was discovered here.

Nearby a tousled stand of bramble and old gorse offered concealment. She wriggled to it, lay couched in its yielding dampness; felt her eyes drawn back, unwillingly, to the Sacred Mound.

At its highest point, sharp and clear in the noon light, stretched the long hogsback of the God House; reed-thatched, its walls blank and staring white, its one low doorway watching like a distant dark eye. Round it, the fingers of old stone clustered thickly. Above it, set atop the gable ends, reared fantastic shapes of rushwork; the Field Spirits, set to guard the house of the Lord from harm. Mata shivered, half with apprehension, half with some less readily identifiable emotion, and turned her gaze back across the grass.

Her heart leaped painfully, settled to a steady pounding. In that moment of time the Procession had come into sight, debouching from the pass between the hills. She saw the yellow antennae and waving whips of the Corn Ghosts, most feared of all spirits; behind them the bright, rich robes of the exorcizing priests, Cha’Acta among them in his green, fantastic mask. Behind again came Cymbal men and drummers, Hornmen capering in their motley; and after them the great mass of the people, chanting and stamping, looking like a brown-black, many-legged snake. She bestowed on them no more than a passing glance; her whole attention was concentrated on the head of the column.

She wriggled forward once more, forgetful of discovery. She could see Choele distinctly now. How slender she looked, how white her body shone against the grass! How stiffly she walked! Her hair, long and flowing, golden as Mata’s was dark, had been wreathed with chaplets of leaves and early flowers; she held her head high, eyes blank and unseeing, lost already in contemplation of the Lord. Her arms were crossed stiffly, in front of her breasts; and from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet she alone was bare. Quite, quite bare.

The whole Procession was closer now. The Corn Ghosts ran, skirmishing to either side, leaping fantastically, lashing with their whips at the bushes and old dead grass; the animal dancers pranced, white antlers gleaming in the sunlight. Mata edged back in sudden panic to the shelter of the bushes, saw between the stems how Choele, deaf and unseeing, still unerringly led the throng. Her figure, strutting and pale, vanished between the bushes and low trees that fringed the base of the Sacred Mound. The people tumbled after, exuberantly; the drums pounded ever more loudly; then suddenly a hush, chilling and complete, fell across the grass. Mata, screwing her eyes, saw the tiny figure of her friend pause on the causeway that led to the Mound. For a moment it seemed Choele turned, looking back and down; then she stepped resolutely on, vanished from sight behind the first of the rearing stones.

Already people were breaking away, streaming back gabbling up the hill. Mata rose unwillingly. Her father would be hungry; like the rest of the village, he had been fasting since dawn. She remembered the neglected bowls of broth, steaming on their trivets over the hut fire, and quickened her pace. At the stockade gates she paused. Below her, folk toiled up the slope; others still stood in a ragged black crescent, staring up at the Mound. The priests in their robes clustered the causeway, tiny and jewel-bright. From this height the God House with its long humped grey-green roof showed clear; Mata, shielding her eyes with her hand, saw a tiny figure pause before the doorway of the shrine. A moment it waited; then slipped inside, silent and quick as a moth, and was lost to sight. A heartbeat later she heard the rolling cry go up from all the people.

Once again, the God Bride had entered the presence of her Lord.

Mata ran for her hut, legs pounding, not feeling the hardness of the packed earth street beneath her feet. The fire was low; she blew and panted, feeding the embers with dried grass and bunches of sticks, and for the moment heat and exertion drove from her the thought of what she had seen.

The drums began again, late in the night. Great fires burned in the square before the Council Lodge; youths and men, fiercely masked and painted, ran, torches in hand, in and out the shadows of the huts; girls swayed in the shuffling, sleep-inducing rhythm of a dance. On the stockade walls and watch-towers more torches burned, their light orange and flickering. Old men and crones hobbled between the huts, fetching and carrying, broaching cask after cask of the dark corn beer. The other children were sleeping already, despite the din; only Mata lay wide-eyed and watchful, staring through the open doorway of the hut, seeing and not seeing the leaping grotesque shadows rise and fall.

Every year, since the hills themselves were young and the Giants walked the land, her folk had celebrated in this fashion the return of spring. They waited, fearfully, for the hooting winter winds to cease to blow, for the snow to melt, for the earth to show in patches and wet brown skeins beneath the withered grass. Little by little, as the year progressed, the sun gained in strength; little by little vigour flooded back into trees and fields, buds split showing tiny, vivid-green mouths. Till finally - and only Cha’Acta and his helpers could say exactly when - the long fight was over, the Corn Lord, greatest of the Gods, reborn in manhood and loveliness. Then the hill folk gave thanks to the Being who was both grain and sunlight, who had come to live among them one more season. A Bride was chosen for him, to live with him in the God House as long as he desired; and the Great Procession formed, milling round the God Tents on the distant shore.

Choele had been a season older than Mata, and her special friend. Her limbs were straight and fine as peeled rods of willow, her hair a light cloud yellow as the sun. To the younger girl she had confided her certainty, over half a year before, that she would be the next spring’s chosen Bride.

Mata had shrugged, tossing her own dark mane. It was not good to speak lightly of any God; but especially the great Corn Lord, whose eyes see the movements of beetles and mice, whose ears catch the whisper of every stem of grass. But Choele had persisted. ‘See, Mata; come and sit with me in the shade, and I will show you how I know.’

Mata stared away sullenly for a while, setting her mouth and frowning; but finally curiosity overcame her. She wriggled beside the other girl, lay sleepily smelling the sweet smell of long grass in the sun. The goats they had been set to watch browsed steadily, shaking their heads, staring with their yellow eyes, bumping and clonking their clumsy wooden bells.

Mata said, ‘It is not wise to say such things, Choele, even to me. Perhaps the God will hear, and punish you.’