Chapter 27: The Red Lion
The interior of the Red Lion had grown dark now that the day had become unexpectedly overcast, the breeze that had blown away the mist having brought with it rain from the west. It was shortly after four, but already the gas-lamps had been lit. Lewis sat frowning beneath the window, nursing a brandy, and Barfield sat in silence beside him while Tolkien was at the bar ordering another pair of half-pints for the two well men of the party.
Tolkien returned to the table, glasses in hand.
‘Dynastic race! Why must it all be about race?!’ Tolkien was muttering.
Barfield sipped his drink.
‘Race, per se, is not an issue. It’s the idea that certain races possess superiority.’ He said.
Tolkien nodded and lit his pipe.
‘It’s that same naivety I’ve been fighting against for years – the idea that the myths and literature of the Classical world are superior to those of the old pagan North… imagine what has been lost to us because of this!’
He glared down at his drink.
‘I’m thinking of our native bards silenced in their halls – first by their Norman lords who didn’t want to hear the hero tales of a people they had conquered… and then poets such as Chaucer deciding to tell of Troilus and Cressida rather than of Wade’s boat… and Shakespeare! What traditions was he heir to, yet spends his time on whimsical comedies and history plays, and does not tell us why Child Roland to the Dark tower came…and that’s why I…’
‘Why what, Ronald?’
Tolkien chuckled.
‘It’s a hard admission, Owen… you see in my naïve youth I imagined that perhaps I, that I could piece together the fragments we had – that I could rebuild what had been lost; that I could make a mythology for England!’ he laughed again, but as he did so he looked deep into Barfield’s eyes.
‘But you see,’ he continued ‘I never felt like I was imagining… I always felt like I was uncovering something true, not historically true as such, not necessarily – but something valid on another level.’
Barfield smiled. ‘Which is why…’
‘Yes,’ Tolkien continued, ‘which is why the legends of this place, that tie in so well with my own, have made me wonder about the source of my stories. What exactly am I uncovering? I feel like Keiller, digging up stones and trying my best to restore them to their proper place…’
‘You are, Ronald, an archaeologist of legends!’ he raised his pint.
‘Ha! A bungler, a treasure hunter, perhaps!’
Lewis. who had remained quiet through this exchange, was swilling his brandy around the glass in a cupped hand to warm it.
‘No, it’s no use. I shall have to retire.’ He announced; ‘This has done little to help my throat and only made me more sleepy! I am off to Church Cottage to rest. I’m glad we decided to stay to watch the stone lifting tomorrow – I simply am in no fit state to walk any further today.’ And he rose, put on his hat and left the pub.
‘Poor Jack.’ Owen said simply once the other figure had gone.
‘Shall we?’ Tolkien said, pointing at a newly vacated pair of seats away from the window in front of the open fire.
‘Indeed!’
Their second half-pints had become a third when a windswept and wet George Mac Govan-Crow entered the bar and seeing the two men asked if he could join them.
‘That’s my jobs done for the day; I was only part way through trimming the hedge at the Manor but his lordship let me go early.’
‘Very generous of him’ said Owen, looking at the bedraggled figure.
‘Perhaps not generous. It has nothing to do with the rain – more to do with wanting me out of the way.’
Tolkien raised his eyebrows. ‘Why so?’
George drank deep and laughed.
‘He has guests.’
‘Aah,’ said Barfield. ‘Sir Petrie?’
George shook his head.
‘No – Sir Petrie is not staying at the Manor – he’s staying here. Mr Keiller’s guests are the London friends…’
‘The friends you originally mistook us for?’
‘The same.’ The two men shared a look and smiled.
Tolkien had the feeling he was missing out on some private joke.
‘Let me explain,’ said George, casting a discreet look about him to make sure he couldn’t be overheard.
‘The London friends come down every so often for what I might describe as some ‘entertainment’! They are usually followed by, how shall I put it, a woman of a certain profession… who then leaves discreetly the following morning.’
Tolkien sat open eyed in shock. Mac Govan-Crow had, he was sure, no reason to fabricate such a story.
‘No wonder you looked so amused on meeting us yesterday!’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ laughed George, ‘but initially I did wonder, even though you didn’t quite seem the usual type.’
‘I should hope not! Is there a type?!’
‘Yes. Rich and rude, mainly.’
‘Regrettably we are not the former, but I am glad not the latter.’ Barfield said.
‘They tend to arrive in motorcars, not by foot, and expect me to run around like a lackey or to take their coats and gloves, or clean the mud off their vehicles. And expect me to automatically know who they are and to use their proper titles…’
‘The Dynastic race!’ laughed Tolkien.
‘So Petrie has been excluded?’ he continued.
George shook his head.
‘He chose not to stay at the Manor; he makes no bones about seeing Mr Keiller as some rich young upstart; and Mr Keiller is all too effusive about his honoured guest. I think he knows.’
‘Yes, I got the impression earlier that Petrie wasn’t overly enamoured – at Keiller or his reconstructions.’
George nodded.
‘It’s the same with the locals – though opinion is divided. To some he’s a godsend; buying up their cold, damp houses and building them new ones outside the village; others don’t want to be moved – but they will be – when they’re given the right price… It’s caused some resentment. Some on church lane, whose houses fall outside the circle are rather embittered that others are being paid handsomely to move, while they have to stay. And of course, publicity is bringing people like yourselves to the village; the pub and guest houses are doing a roaring trade!’
The barman arrived and stoked the fire, casting a few more logs upon it.
‘And what do you think of Keiller’s reconstructions?’ Tolkien asked.
Mac Govan-Crow sipped his beer and then packed his pipe before answering; he took a pinch of tobacco and cast it on the fire, muttering under his breath.
‘A few years ago, before all of this, when the ditch was overgrown and littered, and the stones lay buried or cast aside… the place felt sad; neglected. I come from a tradition where the earth is sacred, and certain places put aside for that sanctity to be remembered. I believe this was once such a place, and to see the place gone to seed was not good for the soul. I’ve been to London and seen the rows upon rows of dirty houses; places that were once green and beautiful are now growing dirty; I think it no bad thing that this place should be kept, or rather, returned to how it was.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Tolkien, raising a glass. ‘Though I did not enjoy watching trees being cut down atop the circle banks.’
George nodded.
‘True. He could have cleared out the mess that man had made and let nature remain where she had set her house. There was a yew tree in the Manor grounds that Mr Keiller told me to remove, but I did not. He said it was dead, but I told him that this was not the case, that this is how yews grew – and that it was hundreds of years old.’
‘And how did he take that?’
‘I told him if he wished it cut down he should ask another man to do it. He seemed annoyed for a while but then amused. Io Saturnalia was his response, which he had to tell me was an old Roman festival in which the servants became the masters.’
‘Ah, so a learned man, despite appearances?’ Barfield said.
‘A very well read man, and educated. If he was not the son of rich parents he would no doubt have been a scholar; but money can spoil a man – and loosen his morals if one needs not work and can afford to play –.’
‘A scholar of what?’ Tolkien asked.
‘He has an interest in old religions.’ George said. ‘Old cults.’
Tolkien looked surprised.
‘I may have to review my opinion of the man…on some levels.’ He said, and flashed a quick smile. ‘And does Keiller realise he gives so much away to you?’
George laughed.
‘Oh, I think Mr Keiller knows I am not as dumb as I make out. I learn more from those around him than from Mr Keiller himself. There’s an advantage in being thought dumb. I am the eyes and the ears of the village at the manor, and Mr Keiller knows this – and he plays on it as much as I do. I’m the go-between. But to his guests I’m invisible; “The Indian”, and they speak to me slowly thinking I can’t understand.’
He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
‘Where is Dr Lewis?’ he asked.
‘Not well. He has a cold and has retired.’
‘As should we shortly, if you would like to eat with us again this evening?’
‘That would be marvellous.’ Said Barfield.
Mac Govan-Crow took out his pocket watch and put it away with a smile.
‘I’m being confused by the low weather. It seems later than it is. I think we have time for another drink before we need head back. Same again gentlemen?’
Anyone passing the Red Lion that spring evening would have been entertained by what they would have seen and heard through its leaded windows; for emboldened by the brown ale a usually shy and easily flustered professor of Anglo-Saxon would have been seen standing beside the fire, a ring of clapping workmen around him, pipe in his mouth, his foot stamping in rhythm as he shouted out the words of a poem he’d written a number of years before, a poem himself and Lewis had been discussing that very morning.
There is an Inn, a marry old Inn, beneath an old grey hill
And there they brew a beer so brown
the man in the moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill…
And with a whoop he leaped, and slipped into a laughing heap on the floor, where he was helped to his feet, smiling with embarrassment, by George Mac Govan.
…
Lewis was jolted awake from where he had been dozing in a chair by the fire by the sudden opening of the door and the intrusion of three laughing men.
‘Hey! Come derry-dol, merry-dol, Professor! How fares your throat and head in this inclement weather?’ Tolkien grinned, sweeping his hat from his head in a bow.
‘Good God man, are you drunk?’ Lewis croaked. ‘Have you been in the Lion all this time?’
Shona looked in from the kitchen and laughed. ‘Be sure not to disturb the patient!’ she mock-scolded. ‘And I suppose you’ll all be wanting your supper?’ she said.
‘Yellow cream, honeycomb, white bread and butter!’ Tolkien said.
She laughed.
‘Then shall I discard the beef stew?’
Tolkien laughed and sat down beside Lewis, sobering slightly on seeing Jack’s red cheeks shining brow..
‘You look unwell, Jack.’
‘Hmm. I was okay until West Kennet; the walk must have been too much, though I can’t see why!’
‘Aah, the curse of the barrow-Wight – who knows what spirit you disturbed. Poor ill CSL, pale and cold he’ll make you!’
Lewis sniffed and glowered at Tolkien under clammy brows.
‘It’s no joking matter; I’m as fit as a fiddle all through term time, and I get a break and this happens! I can’t even enjoy a smoke, though I’ve tried!’
‘Then we must cast the spirit out!’ Tolkien smiled, his eyes twinkling.
‘Go out, shut the door, and never come back after!
Take away your gleaming eyes, take your hollow laughter!
Go back to grassy mound, on your stony pillow
Lay down your bony head, like Old man willow
Like young Goldberry, and badger folk in burrow
Go back to buried gold and forgotten sorrow!’
Lewis smiled despite himself. He cleared his throat.
‘Well let’s see if your spells work, Tollers; Perhaps I will have a small amount of stew Mrs Mac Govan-Crow, too. Build up my strength.’
‘Good man. Starve a cold - feed a fever’ She said, disappearing into the kitchen. ‘I shall need to feed the child first; why don’t you tell them a story, George, while you wait?’
‘Yes!’ said Tolkien, rising from his seat; ‘sit here and tell us a Blackfoot story!’
‘Yes,’ said McGovan. ‘But it is a very serious tale and so I need a respectful silence.’
Immediately Tolkien’s expression changed, though his eyes continued to glint.
‘It is a tale of Old man whom we call Na’api, and the bear.’ George said.
He stood and took down the flute and began to play a brief air, then replaced it on the wall and sprinkled tobacco into the fire.
‘Old man was walking through the forest when he spied bear digging amongst roots…’ George stopped and looked at Tolkien, disapprovingly.
‘You look like you might be laughing, friend.’ He said.
Tolkien shook his head. ‘No, no; carry on.’
‘Okay. And Old Man called out to the bear – “Oi, no-tail! You dirty-arsed bear!”’
Tolkien’s eyes opened wide and he hid a smile, badly. Then he laughed loudly. George returned his laughter and continued.
‘And the bear chased Old Man round and round a tree until a deep circular path had been worn away, and a buffalo horn, long buried, exposed, which Old Man put on his forehead, turned around and started chasing the now-frightened bear. In his shock the bear turned and defecated all over Old Man.’ George grinned. ‘That was a favourite tale of mine when I was, oh, five or six years old! My father would tell me to keep a straight face, but I never could!’
Tolkien was chuckling. ‘I love these type of tales; very grounded – not overly lofty like Greek and Roman myths! But in its own way, don’t you think, it has some serious meaning behind it…’
All eyes were on him.
‘The tree – that’s the world tree, the centre of the cosmos, the pole… and the bear, forever circling it as do the stars of Ursa Major… pursued by Bootes…’
‘Oh Tollers! Does your brain never stop!?’ cried Lewis, putting his head dramatically into his hands.
The interior of the Red Lion had grown dark now that the day had become unexpectedly overcast, the breeze that had blown away the mist having brought with it rain from the west. It was shortly after four, but already the gas-lamps had been lit. Lewis sat frowning beneath the window, nursing a brandy, and Barfield sat in silence beside him while Tolkien was at the bar ordering another pair of half-pints for the two well men of the party.
Tolkien returned to the table, glasses in hand.
‘Dynastic race! Why must it all be about race?!’ Tolkien was muttering.
Barfield sipped his drink.
‘Race, per se, is not an issue. It’s the idea that certain races possess superiority.’ He said.
Tolkien nodded and lit his pipe.
‘It’s that same naivety I’ve been fighting against for years – the idea that the myths and literature of the Classical world are superior to those of the old pagan North… imagine what has been lost to us because of this!’
He glared down at his drink.
‘I’m thinking of our native bards silenced in their halls – first by their Norman lords who didn’t want to hear the hero tales of a people they had conquered… and then poets such as Chaucer deciding to tell of Troilus and Cressida rather than of Wade’s boat… and Shakespeare! What traditions was he heir to, yet spends his time on whimsical comedies and history plays, and does not tell us why Child Roland to the Dark tower came…and that’s why I…’
‘Why what, Ronald?’
Tolkien chuckled.
‘It’s a hard admission, Owen… you see in my naïve youth I imagined that perhaps I, that I could piece together the fragments we had – that I could rebuild what had been lost; that I could make a mythology for England!’ he laughed again, but as he did so he looked deep into Barfield’s eyes.
‘But you see,’ he continued ‘I never felt like I was imagining… I always felt like I was uncovering something true, not historically true as such, not necessarily – but something valid on another level.’
Barfield smiled. ‘Which is why…’
‘Yes,’ Tolkien continued, ‘which is why the legends of this place, that tie in so well with my own, have made me wonder about the source of my stories. What exactly am I uncovering? I feel like Keiller, digging up stones and trying my best to restore them to their proper place…’
‘You are, Ronald, an archaeologist of legends!’ he raised his pint.
‘Ha! A bungler, a treasure hunter, perhaps!’
Lewis. who had remained quiet through this exchange, was swilling his brandy around the glass in a cupped hand to warm it.
‘No, it’s no use. I shall have to retire.’ He announced; ‘This has done little to help my throat and only made me more sleepy! I am off to Church Cottage to rest. I’m glad we decided to stay to watch the stone lifting tomorrow – I simply am in no fit state to walk any further today.’ And he rose, put on his hat and left the pub.
‘Poor Jack.’ Owen said simply once the other figure had gone.
‘Shall we?’ Tolkien said, pointing at a newly vacated pair of seats away from the window in front of the open fire.
‘Indeed!’
Their second half-pints had become a third when a windswept and wet George Mac Govan-Crow entered the bar and seeing the two men asked if he could join them.
‘That’s my jobs done for the day; I was only part way through trimming the hedge at the Manor but his lordship let me go early.’
‘Very generous of him’ said Owen, looking at the bedraggled figure.
‘Perhaps not generous. It has nothing to do with the rain – more to do with wanting me out of the way.’
Tolkien raised his eyebrows. ‘Why so?’
George drank deep and laughed.
‘He has guests.’
‘Aah,’ said Barfield. ‘Sir Petrie?’
George shook his head.
‘No – Sir Petrie is not staying at the Manor – he’s staying here. Mr Keiller’s guests are the London friends…’
‘The friends you originally mistook us for?’
‘The same.’ The two men shared a look and smiled.
Tolkien had the feeling he was missing out on some private joke.
‘Let me explain,’ said George, casting a discreet look about him to make sure he couldn’t be overheard.
‘The London friends come down every so often for what I might describe as some ‘entertainment’! They are usually followed by, how shall I put it, a woman of a certain profession… who then leaves discreetly the following morning.’
Tolkien sat open eyed in shock. Mac Govan-Crow had, he was sure, no reason to fabricate such a story.
‘No wonder you looked so amused on meeting us yesterday!’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ laughed George, ‘but initially I did wonder, even though you didn’t quite seem the usual type.’
‘I should hope not! Is there a type?!’
‘Yes. Rich and rude, mainly.’
‘Regrettably we are not the former, but I am glad not the latter.’ Barfield said.
‘They tend to arrive in motorcars, not by foot, and expect me to run around like a lackey or to take their coats and gloves, or clean the mud off their vehicles. And expect me to automatically know who they are and to use their proper titles…’
‘The Dynastic race!’ laughed Tolkien.
‘So Petrie has been excluded?’ he continued.
George shook his head.
‘He chose not to stay at the Manor; he makes no bones about seeing Mr Keiller as some rich young upstart; and Mr Keiller is all too effusive about his honoured guest. I think he knows.’
‘Yes, I got the impression earlier that Petrie wasn’t overly enamoured – at Keiller or his reconstructions.’
George nodded.
‘It’s the same with the locals – though opinion is divided. To some he’s a godsend; buying up their cold, damp houses and building them new ones outside the village; others don’t want to be moved – but they will be – when they’re given the right price… It’s caused some resentment. Some on church lane, whose houses fall outside the circle are rather embittered that others are being paid handsomely to move, while they have to stay. And of course, publicity is bringing people like yourselves to the village; the pub and guest houses are doing a roaring trade!’
The barman arrived and stoked the fire, casting a few more logs upon it.
‘And what do you think of Keiller’s reconstructions?’ Tolkien asked.
Mac Govan-Crow sipped his beer and then packed his pipe before answering; he took a pinch of tobacco and cast it on the fire, muttering under his breath.
‘A few years ago, before all of this, when the ditch was overgrown and littered, and the stones lay buried or cast aside… the place felt sad; neglected. I come from a tradition where the earth is sacred, and certain places put aside for that sanctity to be remembered. I believe this was once such a place, and to see the place gone to seed was not good for the soul. I’ve been to London and seen the rows upon rows of dirty houses; places that were once green and beautiful are now growing dirty; I think it no bad thing that this place should be kept, or rather, returned to how it was.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Tolkien, raising a glass. ‘Though I did not enjoy watching trees being cut down atop the circle banks.’
George nodded.
‘True. He could have cleared out the mess that man had made and let nature remain where she had set her house. There was a yew tree in the Manor grounds that Mr Keiller told me to remove, but I did not. He said it was dead, but I told him that this was not the case, that this is how yews grew – and that it was hundreds of years old.’
‘And how did he take that?’
‘I told him if he wished it cut down he should ask another man to do it. He seemed annoyed for a while but then amused. Io Saturnalia was his response, which he had to tell me was an old Roman festival in which the servants became the masters.’
‘Ah, so a learned man, despite appearances?’ Barfield said.
‘A very well read man, and educated. If he was not the son of rich parents he would no doubt have been a scholar; but money can spoil a man – and loosen his morals if one needs not work and can afford to play –.’
‘A scholar of what?’ Tolkien asked.
‘He has an interest in old religions.’ George said. ‘Old cults.’
Tolkien looked surprised.
‘I may have to review my opinion of the man…on some levels.’ He said, and flashed a quick smile. ‘And does Keiller realise he gives so much away to you?’
George laughed.
‘Oh, I think Mr Keiller knows I am not as dumb as I make out. I learn more from those around him than from Mr Keiller himself. There’s an advantage in being thought dumb. I am the eyes and the ears of the village at the manor, and Mr Keiller knows this – and he plays on it as much as I do. I’m the go-between. But to his guests I’m invisible; “The Indian”, and they speak to me slowly thinking I can’t understand.’
He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
‘Where is Dr Lewis?’ he asked.
‘Not well. He has a cold and has retired.’
‘As should we shortly, if you would like to eat with us again this evening?’
‘That would be marvellous.’ Said Barfield.
Mac Govan-Crow took out his pocket watch and put it away with a smile.
‘I’m being confused by the low weather. It seems later than it is. I think we have time for another drink before we need head back. Same again gentlemen?’
Anyone passing the Red Lion that spring evening would have been entertained by what they would have seen and heard through its leaded windows; for emboldened by the brown ale a usually shy and easily flustered professor of Anglo-Saxon would have been seen standing beside the fire, a ring of clapping workmen around him, pipe in his mouth, his foot stamping in rhythm as he shouted out the words of a poem he’d written a number of years before, a poem himself and Lewis had been discussing that very morning.
There is an Inn, a marry old Inn, beneath an old grey hill
And there they brew a beer so brown
the man in the moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill…
And with a whoop he leaped, and slipped into a laughing heap on the floor, where he was helped to his feet, smiling with embarrassment, by George Mac Govan.
…
Lewis was jolted awake from where he had been dozing in a chair by the fire by the sudden opening of the door and the intrusion of three laughing men.
‘Hey! Come derry-dol, merry-dol, Professor! How fares your throat and head in this inclement weather?’ Tolkien grinned, sweeping his hat from his head in a bow.
‘Good God man, are you drunk?’ Lewis croaked. ‘Have you been in the Lion all this time?’
Shona looked in from the kitchen and laughed. ‘Be sure not to disturb the patient!’ she mock-scolded. ‘And I suppose you’ll all be wanting your supper?’ she said.
‘Yellow cream, honeycomb, white bread and butter!’ Tolkien said.
She laughed.
‘Then shall I discard the beef stew?’
Tolkien laughed and sat down beside Lewis, sobering slightly on seeing Jack’s red cheeks shining brow..
‘You look unwell, Jack.’
‘Hmm. I was okay until West Kennet; the walk must have been too much, though I can’t see why!’
‘Aah, the curse of the barrow-Wight – who knows what spirit you disturbed. Poor ill CSL, pale and cold he’ll make you!’
Lewis sniffed and glowered at Tolkien under clammy brows.
‘It’s no joking matter; I’m as fit as a fiddle all through term time, and I get a break and this happens! I can’t even enjoy a smoke, though I’ve tried!’
‘Then we must cast the spirit out!’ Tolkien smiled, his eyes twinkling.
‘Go out, shut the door, and never come back after!
Take away your gleaming eyes, take your hollow laughter!
Go back to grassy mound, on your stony pillow
Lay down your bony head, like Old man willow
Like young Goldberry, and badger folk in burrow
Go back to buried gold and forgotten sorrow!’
Lewis smiled despite himself. He cleared his throat.
‘Well let’s see if your spells work, Tollers; Perhaps I will have a small amount of stew Mrs Mac Govan-Crow, too. Build up my strength.’
‘Good man. Starve a cold - feed a fever’ She said, disappearing into the kitchen. ‘I shall need to feed the child first; why don’t you tell them a story, George, while you wait?’
‘Yes!’ said Tolkien, rising from his seat; ‘sit here and tell us a Blackfoot story!’
‘Yes,’ said McGovan. ‘But it is a very serious tale and so I need a respectful silence.’
Immediately Tolkien’s expression changed, though his eyes continued to glint.
‘It is a tale of Old man whom we call Na’api, and the bear.’ George said.
He stood and took down the flute and began to play a brief air, then replaced it on the wall and sprinkled tobacco into the fire.
‘Old man was walking through the forest when he spied bear digging amongst roots…’ George stopped and looked at Tolkien, disapprovingly.
‘You look like you might be laughing, friend.’ He said.
Tolkien shook his head. ‘No, no; carry on.’
‘Okay. And Old Man called out to the bear – “Oi, no-tail! You dirty-arsed bear!”’
Tolkien’s eyes opened wide and he hid a smile, badly. Then he laughed loudly. George returned his laughter and continued.
‘And the bear chased Old Man round and round a tree until a deep circular path had been worn away, and a buffalo horn, long buried, exposed, which Old Man put on his forehead, turned around and started chasing the now-frightened bear. In his shock the bear turned and defecated all over Old Man.’ George grinned. ‘That was a favourite tale of mine when I was, oh, five or six years old! My father would tell me to keep a straight face, but I never could!’
Tolkien was chuckling. ‘I love these type of tales; very grounded – not overly lofty like Greek and Roman myths! But in its own way, don’t you think, it has some serious meaning behind it…’
All eyes were on him.
‘The tree – that’s the world tree, the centre of the cosmos, the pole… and the bear, forever circling it as do the stars of Ursa Major… pursued by Bootes…’
‘Oh Tollers! Does your brain never stop!?’ cried Lewis, putting his head dramatically into his hands.