The Wicker Tree
ROBIN HARDY – screenwriter, producer, director, playwright and novelist – has had a career on both sides of the Atlantic. His film,
The Wicker Man
, is considered a classic of its genre. His fiction includes
The Education of Don Juan
, a Book of the Month selection in the USA;
The Wicker Man
(with Anthony Shaffer); and
Don Juan's New World
. In 1988 he had a critical success in London's West End with
Winnie
, a play, with music, about Winston Churchill. His work for television has been worldwide:
The Ramayana
(with Ravi Shankar) in India;
Paradise Lost
(with Sir Ralph Richardson) in England; and
The Frozen Moment
(with Sessue Hayakawa) in Japan, among many others. For a number of years he was a leading producer/director of television commercials in the USA and Europe. He is married and has eight children.
A novel by
ROBIN HARDY
Press Limited
EDINBURGH
www.luath.co.uk
Extracts from 'I Tempted him with Apples' by Keith Easdale reproduced by kind permission of Keith Easdale and JDC Productions.
First published as
Cowboys for Christ
2006
This edition 2011
eBook 2012
ISBN (Print): 978-1906817-61-9
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-909912-36-6
The author's right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
© Robin Hardy 2006, 2011
Table of Contents
Orlando Takes Up the Challenge
For Vicky
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard,
Life
NO ONE CAN SAY that a comedy, however 'black', need be devoid of meaning.
The Wicker Tree
is a work of fiction and yet all of it is based on present reality or well documented fact about our Celtic ancestors in Scotland and in all of the British Isles. Much of their religion is still with us in the days of the week and the months of the year and, most particularly, in Christianity itself, especially Easter and Christmas.
While working on the film of
The Wicker Tree
, I was aware of how strong this ancient inheritance remains in Scotland today. I had recently seen the amazing Beltane festival in Edinburgh, where, on Calton Hill high above the beautiful city, a group of young people reinvent the ancient Celtic celebration which comes with each May Day. What can we know of it thousands of years ago before the Romans came? What matters to these young solicitors' clerks, students, artists and actors is that its inspiration is the same today as then. The sap rising in the blossoming trees, rising in their own bodies, inspiring them to make music and dance, to celebrate the renewing elements of nature: fire, water, air – the very earth itself.
Along with seventeen thousand other people I watched this joyous pagan masque unfold, while, below, the lights of the city started to twinkle and the spires and the domes of the great churches stood in bleak silhouette, as if besieged by fireflies. I had to have a version of this is my film and the perfect place for it is on the hill leading up to The Wicker Tree. For there the tree stands in for all the lovers in nature, for every evolutionary mating of every sentient thing. This is the climax of the film although not quite its ending.
In the transition from book to film we have kept the yearly drama of riding after the Laddie, a reality to this day in the little border towns where almost everyone seems to have a horse. All sorts of myth laundering cannot disguise how the most handsome young man, the cleverest and the bravest, elected by all as their Laddie each year, could never have been hunted over heather and heath simply to sit down at the climax of the chase for a cosy picnic of cup cakes, canned beer and tea.
The final reality, underlining the whole story, is the sinister presence of the Nuada nuclear power station, its threat implicit in the whole plot. While the book, of necessity, explains more of the apparent danger to our village of Tressock, we are re-publishing this story in the immediate wake of the ghastly nuclear disasters that have befallen Japan.
Some will see in this book or film a choice between two beliefs, the Christian and the Pagan. But in the end it is simply raising questions the answers to which are unknowable.
While we were making the film inspired by this story, the wicker tree left the forest and appeared amongst us, an icon, it seemed to us, every bit as potent as The Wicker Man that preceded it. Whereas The Wicker Man is an icon of death, The Wicker Tree heralds new life. The song says it all:
Wicker is woman and she is a tree.
With soft tendrils, tender and free.
Oh, wicker is man and hard wood is he.
Strong are the arms of the wicker tree.
They'll meet in the forest and passionate be.
For the fire that consumes them Consumes all of we.
It licks and devours. So must we be.
Insatiable tree
Part he, part she,
Oh Wicker Tree – Wicker Tree – Wicker Tree.
The Wicker Tree song by Robin Hardy and Keith Easdale © Tressock Films Ltd.
Robin Hardy, 2011
BETH AWOKE THAT morning from a deep dream of peace and tranquillity, feeling blessed. In the dream, she had been singing in an empty auditorium. There was no band, no orchestra, no audience, no fans and, the biggest blessing of all, there was no microphone. Just her voice as she always heard it when no one was jigging around with it, playing it back with echo, with reverb, with the high notes tweaked, just her voice as it sounded in some inner ear of her own where nothing electronic ever penetrated.
This was a very special morning. It was, in a way, her first day of independence from 'the business' that had been her life since she was fourteen, a declaration of independence that had her father saying over and over, 'We made you fifty million dollars in seven years. All you had to do was go out and sing with that voice the good Lord gave you. Now you say this is not a career you "want to pursue." Are you crazy? What about a little gratitude? You're only twenty for Christ's sake. Haven't you heard about honouring your father and mother?'
Beth's answer, she knew it maddened him, was always pretty much the same.
'Fifteen per cent of my earnings would have been enough to keep you in booze and high-priced hookers for the rest of your life. But you've taken fifty per cent. Mom's dead and I've honoured you all I have to. Brother Kenny at the church told me so. And I won't have you taking Jesus' name in vain in this house. It's my house now. Get back to that palace in Dallas of yours. From now on I am doing my thing, my way. OK, Daddy?'
She knew he needed a drink real bad after she'd done telling him that again and he knew she didn't have a drop of alcohol in the house. So he hightailed it back down to Dallas. To his fancy chateau, on the corner of North Versailles Road and Stuart Avenue, where the bar had been copied from the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. She knew that he just couldn't figure how anyone in her right mind could turn down a twenty-gig tour paying all that loot.
But she knew, too, that he had really started to give up on her the previous fall. He'd been in rehab after her mother's death and Beth had refused to let him into the recording studio in Nashville. When he saw her at the launch bash for her new album she thought he might have one of those apoplectic fits. She'd let her hair go natural, sort of blondish but really very light brown. She'd given up on cosmetics altogether. All the specially created paints, creams and unguents her expensive consultants had prescribed to transform her pretty, slightly plump face into the lean and hungry blonde look favoured by Britney, Christina and the others – all had been thrown away.
It was for her wonderful to be seen as what she actually was at age twenty – but you would never have guessed it if you had seen the embalmed pop star that went by her name these last five teenage years.
Yes, it was a glorious day. Beth showered and dressed quickly, trying to think in an organised way about what she needed for her journey. But her excitement about her coming mission constantly distracted her. She had so much to look forward to in the next year. A chance to give some service to the Lord. To meet with some real needy people who were being literally starved of His word, His grace. Europe was like another world. Everybody she knew who'd been there said so. Whole countries there had pretty much turned away from the Lord. He who had given her that greatest of gifts – her wonderful voice – needed her.
She had started packing several days previously, trying to narrow down what would fit into two suitcases and a back pack. That was the most the Redeemers had told her she could take. She was an experienced traveller, as pop stars went, in that she normally packed just about all the clothes and shoes she possessed, knowing that the roadies would be handling all her luggage from one stop to another. That way she had access to any little thing she could possibly require just as if she was at home in Texas. As the star of the tour she naturally always had the largest suite at whatever five-star hotel existed in the town where the gig was being held. By arrangement with her publicity handler, she coped with the fan problem by living on room service, only going down to the lobby of the hotel to do a signing just before the gig. Sometimes it was arranged for her to go to a museum or a local beauty spot, but mostly she was hermetically sealed from the places through which she passed.
So, if you had asked Beth whether she was well travelled she would certainly have answered that for a little ole Texas gal from Walnut Springs she had done pretty well. Nine major tours of America that included virtually every important state and she had somehow fitted in two vacations, one in Hawaii and one in Puerto Rico. But the vacations had been working holidays, doing picture features for V
anity Fair
and
Rolling Stone
respectively, staying in hotels indistinguishable from all the other Marriotts, Hiltons, Sheratons and Four Seasons that blurred together in her memory. She had even done gigs in Toronto and Montreal, Canada where many of the folks spoke French (although not to her).
Now she was becoming a missionary for a year. The Redeemers had given her a choice between several African countries and Europe, where Scotland was their target for the second year running. She had chosen Scotland largely because Steve had wanted to go there. That was the other great thing about this mission. She was getting to go with Steve. She was going to do work she just knew she was going to love. Telling people about Jesus. Explaining how wonderful it was to be born again. Sharing her joy in her faith. And doing it with the man she had loved ever since she was thirteen and they had both been eighth graders at Lyndon B. Johnson High School in Sasquahetta, Texas.