Confident that his audience of sceptics
had been cowed by both his words and the eerie chill and the crackling flames
he returned to his role of the showman the jester, the one man who thought mad
can tell the truth in this blighted world. He leaped up onto the bar ands
clapped his hands twice in a sharp staccato rhythm and began to weave his spell
of otherworldly stories.
He slowly began to weave his tale as
the audience watched spellbound by old magics, “I was in Ireland and walking
across land long since empty lands filled with loss and pain and on this land I
found a cross, a memorial from long past and so at midnight I returned and
stood as I expected was a girl of twenty six summers dressed in skirt and
blouse draped in a soldiers jacket to keep out the chill, she greeted me and we
talked, she told a tale of her life and her death, she told it in song to me
just as I am telling now. She was young when the war started, twas nineteen
fourteen and the air was thick with patriotism and hope a war that would end
all wars a war that would be fought against the hun and be over by Christmas, she
had grown up the daughter of the publican and over the years caught the eye of
a local boy, a young man a bookie who sold dreams and hope in a small dreary
town, that brief moment on raceday where if the winds blew right copper could
turn to gold. She turned to me and sang, sang of hope and love. My voice is not
hers though the words are but the voice is something I can share.
The air grew thick with tenseness as
the music started the music a mournful violin that though different from the
original seemed to fit.
I'm a girl that's just come over,
Over from the country where they do
things big;
And among the boys I've got a jolly
sweetheart,
Since I got a sweetheart I don't care a
fig.
For the boy I love is up in the
gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me;
There he is, can't you see him waiving
off his handkerchief,
As merry as the robin that sings in the
tree?
For the boy I love is up in the
gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me;
There he is, can't you see him waiving
off his handkerchief,
As merry as the robin that sings in the
tree?
He is not tall, but yet he's manly,
And I always see him in the same old
place;
Curly head is bobbing, don't you see
him nodding?
There he is! don't you see his smiling
face?
For the boy I love is up in the
gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me;
There he is, can't you see him waiving
off his handkerchief,
As merry as the robin that sings in the
tree?
For the boy I love is up in the
gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me;
There he is, can't you see him waiving
off his handkerchief,
As merry as the robin that sings in the
tree?
“They fell in ,love and courted and were engaged to be married,
that awkward period of unrequited affection and longing sighs, blushing smiles
and nervous titters, waved neckerchiefs and notes turning to an engagement that
filled the town with joy and laughter and the nervous energy of wedding bells
approaching, but then as spring grew distant and the world turned, hope turned
to fear as the men marched off to war, before he marched with his boyhood pals
towards distant shores they wed out in the glades they had played in as
children, just these two lovers promising before god that when he returned that
they would truly be bound by priest and sacrament.
He took a sip of wine and looked at his bride to be talking more
to her than the spellbound audience, pouring the pain into his tale and his
fears, fears that if his words were not
enough that he was damming her to a life alone unable to fill the aching
burning regret and loss, the hole he would leave, maybe twas the worst of the
curse, that his failure dams his mate to a life alone tortured with visions of
what could have been, the one kiss they share the only love she will have if he
is not enough to please the demons.
“he went to war marched off with boyhood friends, the scene could
be anything from when they were young, broomsticks on shoulder playing at
soldier now come true, pellet guns and shotguns now lee Enfield’s and webleys, he
wrote letters home and she wept and prayed spending days in church on her knees
begging for his safe return so she can spend her nights on her back or knees in
pleasure not fear and prayer. The war wasn’t over by Christmas no, twas weeks
longer then months then year after bloody year of dogeared letter and tale of
shellscrape and machinegun nest till that fateful day, there was a knock and a
letter, born by the local chaplain a old man of seventy, too old to fight left
behind by the regiment to bring comfort and aid to the familys left behind. Rather
than delivering it to home he took the notice to her, it was he that heard her
wail of pain and loss as she knew what it was as he walked up the pathway,. That
hateful black banded paper an arrow through her heart.”
He sinked to his knees in horror weeping at the scene his heart
torn open as he recounted her pain, “the scream of pain the roaring howl of
dying love and hope, a noise that was depressingly common in the village, the
women flocked to her to support her as she lay wrapped in the boys dress
uniform jacket, his casket laid down in the pub she worked for the wake, her
night spent weeping over his cold form. He was buried and she was catatonic” he
looked at his wife to be and held her closely, the women watching seeing this
young man as human now, they saw and felt the guilt at the price he was to pay
hitting them like a hammer blow as they realised that in their fear of the
curse that they had forgotten that he was a boy just like theirs, he had been a
babe in cloth, a child but he had known since birth that he may not be granted
chance to grow old.
The guilt striking them as if a hammer blow to the chest as he murmured
into his partners ear, that if he failed this night that this song was a
begging plea for to live on to find a life after him. The sorrow of his cousin
long dead something to be left in story alone.
I am stretched on your grave
And will lie there forever
If your hands were in mine
I'd be sure we'd not sever
My apple tree my brightness
It's time we were together
For I smell of the earth
And am worn by the weather
When my family thinks
That I'm safe in my bed
From night until morning
I am stretched at your head
Calling out to the air
With tears hot and wild
My grief for the boy
That I loved as a child
Do you remember
The night we were lost
In the shade of the blackthorn
And the chill of the frost
you swore before our god
we’d be married this was not just this
night
As you left here for france
called me your pillar of light
The priests and the friars
Approach me in dread
Because I still love you
My love and you're dead
I still would be your shelter
Through rain and through storm
And with you in your cold grave
I cannot sleep warm
So I'm stretched on your grave
And will lie there forever
If you hands were in mine
I'd be sure we'd not sever
My apple tree my brightness
It's time we were together
For I smell of the earth
And am worn by the weather
He finished his song and quietly began to sob into
the girls chest, for his cousin for the boy who died alone drowning in the mud
under the weight of the dead, for the girl he left behind dying of heartbreak
and finally for the first time for himself and his love as the weight of his
path hit him. She knew in that moment that though he was the figure of
legend that he needed her to be strong to love him, to be the only one in this
blighted place to fight for him. She took him, guided him upstairs and kissed
him frantically, hard rough and passionate, the two lovers taking the moment in
the fear that it would be their first and last.
Shedding clothes and scratching caressing nipping
licking, moaning and biting. Moving to the bed moaning the rocking of the
headboard shaking the rafters and those present remembering years gone by, the
songs of this young woman reminding them 0f the price and the fear their
thundering climax muffled by the roar of the fire and the pealing thunder in
the sky, as they slaked their thirst for each other together, spurred on by the
curse’s need for a fresh victim, conceiving his child as he himself was
conceived, in the fear that this was the last and whipped up by the fear, his
terror and his uncertainty the same aphrodisiac that the march to war gave.
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