The Underground Man (19 page)

This afternoon I went on another walkabout, setting out along the East wing and then venturing off down other corridors. By some deft little twisting and turning I came across an unfamiliar flight of stairs and, following them, found a tiny storeroom which I had not come across before. It was no more than ten foot by twenty, in what used to be the servants' quarters, and with nothing in it but a stack of chests and boxes and a collapsed bedstead. The contents of the boxes were mostly broken or in poor condition. In one was an ancient rug, stored in peppercorns; in another, a hammock and several pairs of flattened shoes. There was an ivory chess set with two pieces missing, a dented sports cup and a Chinaman's hat.

I cannot honestly say I know what I am after on these little expeditions of mine, but have convinced myself that in some
forgotten corner of the house there sits an item which will make sense of my recent spiritual hurly-burly.

Whatever form this enigmatic object might take, I can safely say it was not unearthed today, though I did come across a rather curious wooden microscope, wrapped in linen, and three boxes of glass slides. No idea who they belonged to. I do not recall acquiring them myself. All the same, I brought the whole lot back to my bedroom, feeling quite pleased with my little find.

Sat myself down at my table and took the slides from their neat little tins but as I removed the tissue paper found that most were cracked or shattered and only one set was intact. The box was marked  

Each slide was individually labelled, indicating the part of the bee it contained … ‘third leg', ‘mandible', ‘hind wing' and so forth.

I held one of the slides up and, even without the microscope, could make out the tiny fragment of the long-dead bee. Each slide was, in fact, two identical glass wafers with the bee-part sandwiched in between, held in what looked to me like a flattened drop of the bee's own amber honey.

I gave the microscope a quick dusting-down and moved the table over to the window where there was a little more light.

The scope itself is no more than ten inches tall and turned from a beautiful dark wood – walnut, perhaps – squat but curvaceous, like a tiny stair banister, and fitted at one end with three crooked brass legs. Each leg is welded onto a thick
brass ring which, when turned, effectively raises or lowers the height of the microscope, thereby allowing the operator to bring the object into focus.

I placed a sheet of paper on the table top, selected a slide and slipped it under the lens. The microscope was cold against the bag of flesh beneath my eye – a sensation which stirred in me memories of my old telescope. But with this instrument I looked not up, up, up at the distant stars, but down, very deeply down, and found myself suddenly in the troubling company of gargantuan insect limbs.

A single wing was veined like a leaf – more a construction of glass and steel than a part of a once-living thing.

The ‘first leg' became bristly and muscular under the microscope … gnarled with all manner of knots and joints. A massive spring for his alighting, for flicking the fellow up in the air …

In this manner I examined each tiny component of the dismembered honey bee. Scrutinized him; made him whole again, limb by furry limb. When he was restored he was a frightening creature. He sat hugely in my mind and seemed much angered as he licked his scalpel wounds.

There is something about him I do not care for. He is not the friendly type. After peering at him down the scope for five or ten minutes I had to jog around the room to shake him from my head.

When I eventually returned the slides to their little box I added it and the microscope to my slowly-growing shrine. At present it consists of:

It must have been quite early in the morning, for I was only out at the Pykes, which is the gatehouse just this side of Clumber near the top of my round. I had dropped them off a letter and was climbing back on my bicycle when I saw him at the entrance to the tunnel, standing and watching and not saying a word. His not talking made me a bit uncomfortable, so I said, ‘Morning,' to him to try and bring him round. He nodded at me then he slowly come over. He come right over and started inspecting my bike. Asking all sorts of questions, like if the saddle was especially comfortable and what sort of speed the thing could make.

I remember him looking up at me, excited all of a sudden, and asking what I reckoned to a cycle down the tunnel. Said we could take it in turns or I could sit on the saddle and he could do the pedalling. Well, I didn't want to get myself in trouble, but I said no, because I never did like tunnels, nor any dark place come to that, so there was no way he was going to get me down there without a fuss. Besides, I had my whole round in front of me and I didn't have the time to be loaning out my bike.

Well, of course, he wasn't altogether happy with my answer. He went very quiet again. Then he asked if he could just sit on the thing for a minute, to see what it felt like. To be honest, I was still a mite suspicious. Thought he might try and pedal off with it. But I thought who am I to stop a Duke from sitting on my bike? So I let him have a go.

He sat there with his hands on the handlebars and nodded to himself and said it seemed very good indeed. Said he had always fancied being a postman and looked rather enviously over at my sack. He seemed to get a little melancholy, which, I have to say, rather baffled me. I should have thought a man with his money could be just about whatever he chose to be.

Anyway, I told him I really should be getting on my way again and he eventually climbed off the bike and handed it back. He said goodbye and turned and went on his way. He didn't hang about, by any means. Last time I saw him he was disappearing down his tunnel. That was the only time I came across him. He did seem a bit of a rum old chap.

He is all root and branch and foliage, with bright red berry-eyes. He creaks and crackles as he creeps along and frightens the birds away. He has stalked the Wilderness as long as I can remember, sneaking from tree to tree the whole year round, waiting for a small boy to wander close enough to be dragged back into the undergrowth.

A man of scratches and of tangled bramble, he is, all in a nasty knot. But when he wishes, the Berry Man can scatter himself into a hundred disparate parts and a prying eye would see nothing but the same leaves and twigs as lie on any woodland floor. But once the prying eye has passed on the Berry Man draws himself back in. The scraps of bark slowly shift along the ground and are reintroduced to each other; the chill wind shuffles him into shape. The vines wind around him and bind him up until he stands broad and tall again.

Sometimes he wears the antlers of a broken branch, sometimes he wears a thorny crown. Some days he is a skinny man, made up of nothing but bark-stripped twigs. Other days he has an ivy belly, packed with wriggling worms. One day he has mossy eyebrows, the next a hornet's nest hat. Ever changing, always insecty, made from whatever comes to hand.

But you'll not hear a whisper out of him. The Berry Man has no tongue in his head. When he is angry he just takes to
spinning. Spins so fast he pulls the whole wood in. He spins until the whole world is nothing but a whirling dervish of rattling leaves.

All my life the Berry Man has occupied the Wilderness. He is as much a part of the place as the trees. Mother and Father believed in him with a passion. They introduced me to him when I was very small. I remember them saying how if I strayed into his territory he would take me off and whip me with the switches of his arms. A year or two later I believe I suggested that perhaps the Berry Man was only make-believe after all, but they both looked at me most gravely and slowly shook their heads.

A child is expert at frightening himself, his mind primed to imagine the most terrible things, and I cannot now say for certain how much of my Berry Man was inherited from my parents and how much I conceived myself. Certainly I have retained a particularly vivid picture of a little boy (who looks very much like me) running through the Wilderness. The boy has no flesh left on his body for he has been caught and thrashed by the flailing arms of the Berry Man. Right through my childhood this picture served as a warning to keep well clear of that wood.

I was so convinced of the awful creature's existence that once or twice I thought I saw him, squatting among the bushes at the edge of the wood, watching me as I hurried by. All these years later, I still find myself walking half a mile out of my way to avoid that dreadful place. I do not really expect to be confronted by some leafy creature, yet always find some dim excuse to take a different route. The ghouls which haunt our childhood are not easily shaken off.

I was out on my constitutional this morning, with a young terrier who had repeatedly misbehaved. So much so that I had lost all my patience and put him on a leash. I must have been cold or damp and heading home in something of a hurry, for I had chosen to return by way of the Wilderness.

We were thirty yards or so from the old wood and I was keeping my mind busy with as many trifling thoughts as I could think up, when I became convinced that a pair of eyes were trained on me. Felt their gaze wash up and down my spine. I turned and scanned the woods from one end to the other. Most of the trees were leafless and they were all a winter-grey and I had just about assured myself that I was mistaken when I caught sight of a face, peering grimly from a bush. I leapt back and almost tripped over the dog, which started him barking and jumping all around.

The face in the bushes looked left and right. The leaves around him twitched. Then all at once, with a swish, the branches parted and he came racing out of the woods. He was nothing but a blur of thrashing limbs and I would have run myself had I not been all tied up with the blasted dog. The Berry Man scythed through the high grass towards me. His steps made a terrible whipping sound. After all these years, I thought, the Berry Man has grown tired of waiting and broken cover to come and snatch me away.

I was frantically trying to untangle myself when I saw how the Berry Man was, in fact, not headed for me at all but was running down the hill towards the lake. I saw also how there was something troublesome in his gait; some hindrance, as if one leg was shorter than the other. And in that instant, when I realized that this was not the Berry Man but some fleeing, limping lad, I found all my courage restored to me; found I had a sudden abundance of it.

‘Ho!' I shouted after him. ‘Ho, there!'

But he continued limping hastily away from me and in a
minute he was hobbling onto the bridge across the lake with me and the barking dog quite a way behind. Now, I am not overly fond of running and would most likely have given up the chase if I had not that moment spotted one of my keepers coming along the track on the far side of the lake. He was a big fellow and very familiar but his name had momentarily slipped my mind, so I called out,

‘Ho, there! Keeper! Stop the boy!'

And in a thrice he had dropped his shoulder bag and was barging his way through the iron gates and came running onto the bridge at such a pitch that the hobbling boy found himself trapped between the two of us. I slowed my pace a little and pulled on the leash to try and quieten the dog. And now the boy was all in a fluster, glancing first towards the keeper, who continued to bore down on him on one side, and then right back at me. And for a moment I thought he recognized just how old and bandy I was and how easily he might knock me down and I felt all my courage drain away again and I wished I had let him go. The lad was turning one way, then the other, and working himself up into a right old state. Then, to my horror, I saw how he had started scrambling up the low wall which runs along the length of the bridge.

‘No, boy!' I shouted at him, but he was like a rabbit, and carried on clambering for all he was worth. He dragged his lame leg up onto the wall beside him, stood and hurled himself at the lake. But the keeper had come along behind him, made a lunge and grabbed him by his arm.

By the time I caught them up the keeper had dragged the boy down from the wall and dumped him on the ground, where he now thrashed his arms and legs about and made an awful grunting sound.

‘Calm down, boy. Calm yourself!' I shouted, but it did not the slightest good.

The dog was still barking and baring his teeth and the poor boy had his hands up in front of his face as if the keeper and I were all set to give him the stick. The whole scene was so chaotic that I was obliged to give the dog a smack to shut him up, and it was another minute after he had swallowed his bark before the lad finally drew his terrible sobbing to a close. When he drew his fingers down from his face I saw that there was indeed something wrong with him. His head seemed to have too much jawbone about it, if that makes any sense. It was as if his eyes and nose and mouth had been put together not quite right.

‘Nobody is going to hurt you,' I told him, but he stared nervously down at the keeper's grip on him. When it was released the boy's moans just about abated and the three of us were able to lean, panting, against the wall of the bridge while the dog looked stupidly on and, not knowing how best to deal with the situation, I suggested the boy come up to the house.

It was a maid who recognized him as one of the Linklater sons. They apparently live out near Cuckney village, so I sent a footman to their cottage, post-haste. While we were waiting on him I had Mrs Pledger make us a pot of tea and a few rounds of cinnamon toast and asked Clement if he would join us, as the man's very presence can soothe the most agitated scene. So the whole gang of us trooped into the downstairs study and sat around in silence while the poor lad drank his tea. He was very thirsty and supped it up most lustily and I was sure his fumbling grip would crack the china cup, or that his huge jaw would take a bite out of it. He looked to me no more than twelve years old but his hands and forearms were as thick as a thatcher's. One of his shoulders was a little hunched-up so that he appeared not to be able to turn his head as easily as he might have liked. And the sole on his left shoe, I noticed, was built up an extra inch or two,
so that the whole leg tended to hang rather sorrily from his hip.

If there were no more tears then there were no words either. He must have sat there without a whisper for getting on half an hour, taking self-conscious sips from his cup of tea until I thought it must be freezing-cold. The rest of us made some attempt at conversation while snatching occasional glances at him across the room, until at last I got word that my footman had returned with another of the Linklater boys.

I dismissed Clement and the keeper and once they were out of the way asked our guest to be shown in. As he entered the room I kept an eye on his younger brother, to see how he would react, and though he remained seated and stared most fixedly at the dregs in the bottom of his cup, I could see that he had clearly registered his brother and, I thought, begun to tremble a little. The lad who came in had only a year or two on his brother – was no more than fifteen years old himself. The same mousy coloured hair sprang from his head. He even had a few whiskers on his chin. I suppose I was expecting some sort of introduction, but he simply nodded in my direction and marched straight past me towards his kin, taking his hand from his jacket pocket as he did so, and moving with such determination and velocity I wondered what humiliating punishment I was about to be a witness to. By now the lame brother had got up from his chair and stood with his big head hanging down and his cup and saucer still clutched in his hand. He was panting now and I thought his shoulders had begun to shake up and down again. Yet when the older boy reached him he simply took his cup and saucer, set them down on a table, put his arms around his brother's shoulders and pulled him to him in a loving embrace.

Straight away the young thatcher started sobbing like a
baby, while his brother gently stroked his head and I must say that as I stood there observing them it was all I could do to stop myself joining in.

‘I must apologize for my brother,' said the older boy. ‘He must have wandered onto your estate.'

I nodded my head then shook it once or twice and waved my hands vaguely in the air.

‘You see, he likes to look around, sir. Always has done. His curiosity sometimes gets the better of him.'

I told him not to mention it and that no harm had been done, and that I only hoped we had not frightened the boy too much with all our carrying-on. To try and put us at our ease I introduced myself. The older brother told me his name was Duncan and, easing his damp-eyed brother off his shoulder, added, ‘And this is Doctor.'

‘Doctor … Ah.' I tried digesting the information, but I simply couldn't keep it down. ‘He is a doctor, you say?'

‘He is the seventh son of a seventh son, you see, sir, so that is his given name. It is an old tradition. Sevens being lucky. It makes him special, you see.'

All this was announced most matter-of-factly, as if it were common knowledge, but I felt sure I detected also a note of pride in his being the bearer of such exotic news.

The whole idea was, of course, quite fantastic. I was obliged to ask Duncan how his brother's special qualities manifested themselves and was informed (in a most ingenuous tone) how he was frequently consulted by local people, as an oracle or prophet might have been in ancient times. I found all this rather hard to imagine as I had yet to hear the boy utter a single word and when he referred again to Doctor's ‘rare faculties' I felt compelled to ask for an example of them.

‘Well, for instance, if you give him the date and the month and the year you were born he can tell you which day of the
week it was.' He then added, ‘It doesn't matter how many years ago it was.'

I allowed the implication of this last comment to sink in a little and was about to furnish young Doctor with the required information and generally try him out when he sort of shuddered, took a gulp of air and spluttered out,

‘Wednesday,' then was silent again.

Incredible! I stared at one brother, then the other. I had
indeed
been born on a Wednesday. I remember my mother saying so. I was trying to work out how on earth he might have guessed it, when he added in a whisper,

‘March 12th, 1828.'

I was absolutely dumbstruck. His brother turned and saw from my expression that the young prophet was right on the mark again.

‘Now then …' he said to himself. ‘He's never done that before.'

I ordered more toast from Mrs Pledger and the pair of them stayed on for a good half hour, Duncan proving to be very good company but Doctor, unfortunately, having nothing more to say. At some point in the conversation I discovered that Duncan is, in fact, the younger of the two.

‘It's a common mistake,' he told me. ‘He is very boyish-looking, is he not?'

We were all gathered at the front door and the two of them were just about on their way when Doctor hesitated and ground to a halt halfway down the steps. He stared anxiously at his boots for a few seconds and grimaced and shifted from foot to foot. Duncan went over, put an arm round his shoulder and asked him what was wrong. Doctor chewed on his cheek a little before finally surrendering a solitary, mangled word.

‘Underwood,' he muttered in my direction.

I begged the young fellow's pardon.

‘Underwood,' he said again.

Well, neither Duncan nor myself had heard of any such fellow and after we had stood around in silence for a minute were obliged to leave it at that. But as they set off down the driveway Doctor turned briefly back to me and with his good arm pointed towards the Wilderness, where I had first mistaken him for The Berry Man.