Chapter 36 Twinned
‘Read this!’ Con said, pushing the yellowed paper along the table in front of Wolf. Wolf frowned, screwing his eyes up.
‘Can’t you read it out to me I’ve got a fucker of a headache.’ Wolf had been drinking most of the afternoon, and had ended up half dozing on one of the beer tables outside of the pub; his shaven head was a vicious shade of pink, the wolf skin, now by his side on the bench, had afforded some protection, but the late afternoon had proved too hot to wear it and Wolf had been too drunk to care.
‘Where the fook’s Ananda?’ he asked, scratching his stubbled cheeks. Con shrugged and sipped his beer while a fly lazily danced about Wolf’s half empty lager.
‘Go on, sorry mate. I shouldn’t have dropped off I feel like cack now. What is it?’
‘It’s one of Tolkien’s letters, the ones Shen had’ said Con, who felt odd reading aloud in this public place.
‘My dear Edith…’ he began…
My Dear Edith,
My apologies for the delay in writing; indeed, I have yet to send your first letter and so it seems you shall receive these two together….
‘Right,’ Con continued, deciding to paraphrase instead of reading the letter verbatim, ‘he’s saying they were delayed as Jack, that’s C S Lewis, was unwell – but they’ve got a lift to Glastonbury off a woman named Penry-Evans and her husband – and that they’ll be heading there in the morning as the woman’s staying at the Manor now… right…here we are, listen to this…’
Wolf was listening, albeit with his face hanging over his arm which was laid flat on the table, his eyes half open, but aware.
‘What has struck me as important is that this place, unbeknown to me before now, is the obvious original location of the myth of Merlin…’
Wolf’s puffy eyes opened a fraction more at the mention of the enchanter.
‘…Merlin was responsible for both the building of Stonehenge and for uttering prophecies on finding the fighting dragons beneath the hill of Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia – but I am now of the opinion that both tales refer to neither of these locations but Avebury – my proof? None really save my usual linguistic follies – but Dinas Emrys and Amesbury, the location of Stonehenge, both mean ‘city or fort of Emrys’ Emrys being an old name for Merlin. Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth says that Stonehenge was built near Mons Ambrius, but there is no such hill at Stonehenge, which is set upon a level plain, and so it seems probable, given that the names Amesbury and Avebury are the same, both stemming from an early form of Emrys, that Mons Ambrius is Silbury. If it is not Silbury it may be the similar hill near Marlborough because Marlborough is the hill of Merlin – Merlin’s barrow. Surely Marlborough is Mons Ambrius, the hill of Emrys: Geoffrey of Monmouth may have known the tale referred to a stone circle in Wessex, and chose the wrong one. The Merlin myth is based here, Edith. Initially I thought that this is why at Dinas Emrys he sees the vision of the fighting dragons, for as Stukeley pointed out Avebury resembles, to some extent, a giant serpent. But I’m not swayed by this; more indicative of the myth being set here is the font – with its two wyverns between a central figure. The font is early, probably contemporary with Geoffrey of Monmouth, and suggests the legend was known and associated with this place.
In the Merlin story the fighting dragons represent the Saxons and the Welsh – the legend seems to tell of a conflict, but I do not have the knowledge to understand what this particular part means. I am racking my brains to think if I can find anything more about this Emrys. Mr Penry-Evans has said that welsh myth records that Dinas Emrys was the site where Emrys was buried so perhaps in the original myth Merlin was sacrificed – and where might he be? Under the stones, no doubt, as a foundation sacrifice…’
‘Hmm. Go on’
‘That letter ends there, it wasn’t finished. The rest is in notes. Don’t you see what he’s saying?’ Con beamed, excitedly.
‘Useful. Fuck this isn’t helping my head, Con. Just give it to me in layman’s terms, I can’t work anything out at the moment.’
‘Okay – I’ll put it in terms a Yorkshireman will understand: the myth of Merlin, well, part of it – it’s based on this place.’
‘Yeah, I got that. That’s cool.’ If he really thought it was cool he didn’t show it; he yawned and belched.
‘Remember yesterday in West Kennet? When Ananda was talking about foundation sacrifices and shit – you know, the giant Ymir whose sacrifice forms the world?’
Wolf nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘Hang on.’ Con said. He disappeared inside and re-emerged with a pint for himself and a coke and a packet of crisps for Wolf, who immediately set about stuffing his face and rehydrating.
‘You’re a fookin’ legend, man. Go on… I was listening…’
‘’Right… we mentioned that Old Man may have been some kind of Ymir, enacting the creation, yeah? Well the Merlin legend is all about foundation sacrifices, killing the youth so the stones will stay in place – it’s basically a folkloric retelling of the creation… from Ymir’s flesh the earth was made, whatever the line is… well, from Merlin’s flesh the stones, the henge, is made – in the form of the cosmos. And it’s set here – this is Merlin’s circle… listen…’
Con was excitedly flicking through the pages of notes, searching, while Wolf rolled a cigarette for himself and Con.
Con took the cigarette, and with it hanging from his mouth began to read from Tolkien’s hurried notes:
‘The wyverns: separated, like Marduk and Tiamat – The Mesopotamian god Marduk separates the serpentine primal gods, Apsu and Tiamat, and from them creates the world; sets Tiamat, salt-water, above as the Milky Way; Apsu, below as fresh water; the figure on the font with the crozier? Creation equals flood; Eärendil as the star presaging the flood; how did I stumble on this? What if the flood was in the heavens?”
‘Woah, woah…what?’ Wolf asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.
‘Umm…what bit?’
‘Murdoch or whatever.’
‘Marduk – it’s the Mesopotamian creation story, Marduk splits the two primal gods apart, and forms the world from them – they’re these monstrous kind of dragons, but he separates them, and they become the sky above and the abyss below. They’re like the earth and sky separated by the sun at the moment of sunrise from primeval night. Tolkien equated them with the dragons on the font in the Church.’
Wolf still looked bemused. ‘And that last bit – the star and flood?’
‘Eärendil – he’s one of Tolkien’s heroes in The Silmarillion;’ Con said, speaking not from the notes but from his own memory of reading the tales as a teenager; ‘he is seen as a sign in the heavens as hope for men after the flood destroys Numenor and Beleriand –.’
‘Forget all the Middle Earth shit for a minute…‘ Wolf said; ‘…go back to the Merlin stuff.’
‘Well,’ Con said, thumbing the notes again; ‘
”The Flood presaged by the appearance of the star – just as Petrie noted in Egypt, where Sirius presages the flooding of the Nile; might the rising of a star act as a precursor for a flood here at Avebury – but then how? How might one mark a flood in stone? How might Merlin have recorded this?”
‘then, bear with me…the writing gets even worse here - ah, here we go:
“Merlin: Emrys: What if Patriarch Petrie was right? I saw it clearly tonight at the Manor; despite his pomposity he is, at least, a font of knowledge. Marduk and Tiamat are linked to Nut. Obvious now I think about it; and the symbolism matches perfectly!!!”’
‘Nut?’ Wolf asked.
Con nodded, and tried to find the passage he’d seen earlier, that had shocked him awake.
‘The Egyptian sky Goddess Nut – here we go:
“Geb and Nut, divided at the start of time, like Apsu and Tiamat, one (Geb) falls to (become) the earth, the other, Nut, the sky…might Emrys fit this pattern – falling (becoming) stone and earth…?”
this bit’s a bit hard to read, as the handwriting goes a bit shit, but listen:
“The earth, foundation, and, like Geb and Nut a twin… like Ymir, Merlin - Emrys is a twin. Ymir’s-bury. But where, then, is his twin? Is she in the sky?”
‘Fuck me, Wolf – Merlin was a twin! Like me and Mel!’
Wolf looked at Con as if he was stupid.
‘Yep, I know. Like Ymir. I thought you’d have known that.’ Wolf said matter of factly, and with a slight smile that showed he was enjoying the fact he knew more than Con.
Ymir, Twin – yes, he’d come across that in his PhD studies… all these twins in Indo-European myths, representing the creation of duality from unity, or so he’d read, one being creates the dualistic world of opposites… but these were all male – all stemming from a proto-form ‘*Yemo’, from which the word Gemini originated, as well as Ymir. But Emrys? He’d never seen Merlin touted as one of their kind. Was it just a linguistic link or was there more to it? And why did Tolkien suggest his twin was female? Because Tiamat and Nut were female? Surely he knew that the northern Twins were male? What was Con missing? He suddenly wished so hard he could just ring Mel and ask her. She would have known; Celtic was her thing. Con had never really read the books she carried around, relying on her readings and recitations of poetry. Had Graves mention Merlin was a twin? If he had Con didn’t remember; if Mel had read it, she would have mentioned it, wouldn’t she? If not in Graves, then where? And why was it suddenly vitally important that he should know?
‘Where’s it written?’ he asked Wolf.
Wolf chuckled, picking up his phone, and signalled Con to be quiet; after a few moments he began to speak to the person on the other end; ‘Hey… yeah…. well, no, actually – feel like a pig’s shat in my head. You in the van? Yeah, can you get me an ibuprofen from the glove box? No – actually, sod it, I’m going to come back and kip – see ya….
‘I’m sorry Con,’ he said, putting down the phone, ‘I can’t concentrate, I’m going to have a snooze.’
‘What about Merlin and the twin thing?’ Con asked again.
‘Ask me later, Professor…patience is a virtue, you know.’ Wolf said, waving him off. Con started to speak again but held his tongue, despite his mind burning with unasked questions.
He thought of Old Man in his glass prison, just a short walk away from where they sat – a man who yesterday they had argued may have been enacting the myth of Ymir, Twin, a creative sacrifice, and here was Tolkien arguing that Merlin may have been playing the same role. Merlin and his twin…but who was she, if indeed she was a she? He had a sudden memory of his conversation with Mel all those years before - the whole 60s goddess movement – Graves, Gimbutas, the works – it’s all based on a phoney premise – there’s no evidence for some Great Goddess. It’s feminist propaganda… and her response that her eradication had been the result of male-dominated societies; his own work had begun to suggest she had been correct; these ancient sites had seemingly been aligned on a sky identified in the past as a celestial goddess, and now Tolkien was suggesting something similar… where is his twin, is she in the sky? That was the question; and what’s more, where was she in myth? Had we in the west only been given half the story of our past, he wondered? Like being told of Adam but not Eve…
Wolf downed his coke and stood.
‘Where are you parked?’ Con asked.
‘Oh, down outside Shen’s. You coming down?’
Con nodded and finished his pint. ‘Will Hayden be there?’ he asked.
‘How the fuck should I know? I think he was working today, probably won’t be back.’ Despite his apparent bad mood Wolf managed a grin.
‘Why don’t you just tell her you like her?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. I feel bad.’ Con answered.
‘Bad? Because of Hayden? Look, mate – he’s a charmer, but underneath he’s a bit ordinary really – I don’t think they’re well suited; she needs more, I think.’
‘You think I can give her more?’ Con asked.
‘Honestly? Not at the moment.’
Con felt as if he had been stung.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re still dealing with all that shit. You can’t really look after yourself, mate - how you gonna look after her? At least Hayden’s managing that. He can support her; she just needs someone with a bit more imagination; you have that but you have no fire in your belly.’
As Wolf said these words Con felt a flash of anger. I do have fire, it’s just been a glowing coal hidden by cinders, he thought.
‘Look, I can see you’re fuming but you’re just locked inside. Get angry – let it out or it’s gonna chew you up and destroy you. Get some balls – I don’t know, get pissed, do some mushrooms, get in a fight – go and try to fuck someone – just not Shen; you’re not ready for her.’
Con’s heart was drumming and he felt as if he were blinkered, looking down through a tunnel.
‘I can’t – I’m stuck, I just keep thinking the same things over and over – I can’t escape from my thoughts… how can I do that? It’s more complicated than you know! You don’t see it all. I think I fucking love her but it’s ruined’ he blurted out.
‘Then tell me what I don’t know.’
‘I can’t - I’ve not told anyone; it just keeps going round in my head; I just can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘Just don’t think – act! And don’t ask yourself how as that’s just fucking thinking again!’
They had reached the edge of Church Street and Hayden’s bike was parked outside Church Cottage.
‘For fuck’s sake why can’t he just fuck off?’ Con spat and turned on his heels.
‘Where are you going now?’ asked Wolf.
‘Back to my van’ he shouted over his shoulder.
‘Ok – whatever you need to do – come along to the pub tonight, though – it’s my last night here. I’ll tell you about Merlin…maybe.’
Con raised a hand in acknowledgement, his middle finger extended.
He had only walked a few metres on when he almost walked into Hayden, who was exiting the post office with a loaf of bread and some milk.
The two men looked at each other and halted; Con would have walked by with a nod but he felt somehow he should stop. Hayden didn’t look overly enthused by the encounter either.
‘What’s up?’ Hayden said, removing one of his earphones. ‘I heard the chairman didn’t hand back the bones.’
Con shook his head, smiling at Hayden’s understatement.
‘No. Wolf said his bit but I don’t think there’s much more that can be done really.’ He shifted around awkwardly.
‘Anyway…’ Hayden said, motioning to leave, and starting to put his earphones back in ‘can’t keep She Who Must Be Obeyed waiting… probably catch you in the pub later, mate.’ And he raised his hand in a half-wave and set off towards Church Cottage. Con turned and watched him go.
Fuuuuuck! Con felt he wanted to scream – and it wasn’t all to do with Hayden and Shen; it was the whole Merlin thing that Tolkien’s letter had sparked in his brain. Twin? Why a twin?! And who was the other – the lost twin? He felt a horrible sense of becoming hemmed in, of the world twisting and becoming smaller, of disparate themes becoming enmeshed and tangled, closing him in… a tightening net or web of ideas and coincidences, connections and images – bordering on magical thinking, a feeling it was all linked – him, Shen, Mel, Tolkien, Merlin, the Old Man in the museum… the stones themselves somehow linked to the stars and a flood – the flood of the milky river in the heavens presaged by the rising of the stars; a sister, a lost sister, the forgotten twin – but not by me, he thought. And he picked up speed and began to run through the circle towards the Avenue, the circle and its many tourists becoming a blur, the fire in his head a burning madness he could not outrun, a converging point of echoes from before and after, from outside and inside time, spiralling inwards towards, towards, towards…what?
‘Read this!’ Con said, pushing the yellowed paper along the table in front of Wolf. Wolf frowned, screwing his eyes up.
‘Can’t you read it out to me I’ve got a fucker of a headache.’ Wolf had been drinking most of the afternoon, and had ended up half dozing on one of the beer tables outside of the pub; his shaven head was a vicious shade of pink, the wolf skin, now by his side on the bench, had afforded some protection, but the late afternoon had proved too hot to wear it and Wolf had been too drunk to care.
‘Where the fook’s Ananda?’ he asked, scratching his stubbled cheeks. Con shrugged and sipped his beer while a fly lazily danced about Wolf’s half empty lager.
‘Go on, sorry mate. I shouldn’t have dropped off I feel like cack now. What is it?’
‘It’s one of Tolkien’s letters, the ones Shen had’ said Con, who felt odd reading aloud in this public place.
‘My dear Edith…’ he began…
My Dear Edith,
My apologies for the delay in writing; indeed, I have yet to send your first letter and so it seems you shall receive these two together….
‘Right,’ Con continued, deciding to paraphrase instead of reading the letter verbatim, ‘he’s saying they were delayed as Jack, that’s C S Lewis, was unwell – but they’ve got a lift to Glastonbury off a woman named Penry-Evans and her husband – and that they’ll be heading there in the morning as the woman’s staying at the Manor now… right…here we are, listen to this…’
Wolf was listening, albeit with his face hanging over his arm which was laid flat on the table, his eyes half open, but aware.
‘What has struck me as important is that this place, unbeknown to me before now, is the obvious original location of the myth of Merlin…’
Wolf’s puffy eyes opened a fraction more at the mention of the enchanter.
‘…Merlin was responsible for both the building of Stonehenge and for uttering prophecies on finding the fighting dragons beneath the hill of Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia – but I am now of the opinion that both tales refer to neither of these locations but Avebury – my proof? None really save my usual linguistic follies – but Dinas Emrys and Amesbury, the location of Stonehenge, both mean ‘city or fort of Emrys’ Emrys being an old name for Merlin. Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth says that Stonehenge was built near Mons Ambrius, but there is no such hill at Stonehenge, which is set upon a level plain, and so it seems probable, given that the names Amesbury and Avebury are the same, both stemming from an early form of Emrys, that Mons Ambrius is Silbury. If it is not Silbury it may be the similar hill near Marlborough because Marlborough is the hill of Merlin – Merlin’s barrow. Surely Marlborough is Mons Ambrius, the hill of Emrys: Geoffrey of Monmouth may have known the tale referred to a stone circle in Wessex, and chose the wrong one. The Merlin myth is based here, Edith. Initially I thought that this is why at Dinas Emrys he sees the vision of the fighting dragons, for as Stukeley pointed out Avebury resembles, to some extent, a giant serpent. But I’m not swayed by this; more indicative of the myth being set here is the font – with its two wyverns between a central figure. The font is early, probably contemporary with Geoffrey of Monmouth, and suggests the legend was known and associated with this place.
In the Merlin story the fighting dragons represent the Saxons and the Welsh – the legend seems to tell of a conflict, but I do not have the knowledge to understand what this particular part means. I am racking my brains to think if I can find anything more about this Emrys. Mr Penry-Evans has said that welsh myth records that Dinas Emrys was the site where Emrys was buried so perhaps in the original myth Merlin was sacrificed – and where might he be? Under the stones, no doubt, as a foundation sacrifice…’
‘Hmm. Go on’
‘That letter ends there, it wasn’t finished. The rest is in notes. Don’t you see what he’s saying?’ Con beamed, excitedly.
‘Useful. Fuck this isn’t helping my head, Con. Just give it to me in layman’s terms, I can’t work anything out at the moment.’
‘Okay – I’ll put it in terms a Yorkshireman will understand: the myth of Merlin, well, part of it – it’s based on this place.’
‘Yeah, I got that. That’s cool.’ If he really thought it was cool he didn’t show it; he yawned and belched.
‘Remember yesterday in West Kennet? When Ananda was talking about foundation sacrifices and shit – you know, the giant Ymir whose sacrifice forms the world?’
Wolf nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘Hang on.’ Con said. He disappeared inside and re-emerged with a pint for himself and a coke and a packet of crisps for Wolf, who immediately set about stuffing his face and rehydrating.
‘You’re a fookin’ legend, man. Go on… I was listening…’
‘’Right… we mentioned that Old Man may have been some kind of Ymir, enacting the creation, yeah? Well the Merlin legend is all about foundation sacrifices, killing the youth so the stones will stay in place – it’s basically a folkloric retelling of the creation… from Ymir’s flesh the earth was made, whatever the line is… well, from Merlin’s flesh the stones, the henge, is made – in the form of the cosmos. And it’s set here – this is Merlin’s circle… listen…’
Con was excitedly flicking through the pages of notes, searching, while Wolf rolled a cigarette for himself and Con.
Con took the cigarette, and with it hanging from his mouth began to read from Tolkien’s hurried notes:
‘The wyverns: separated, like Marduk and Tiamat – The Mesopotamian god Marduk separates the serpentine primal gods, Apsu and Tiamat, and from them creates the world; sets Tiamat, salt-water, above as the Milky Way; Apsu, below as fresh water; the figure on the font with the crozier? Creation equals flood; Eärendil as the star presaging the flood; how did I stumble on this? What if the flood was in the heavens?”
‘Woah, woah…what?’ Wolf asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.
‘Umm…what bit?’
‘Murdoch or whatever.’
‘Marduk – it’s the Mesopotamian creation story, Marduk splits the two primal gods apart, and forms the world from them – they’re these monstrous kind of dragons, but he separates them, and they become the sky above and the abyss below. They’re like the earth and sky separated by the sun at the moment of sunrise from primeval night. Tolkien equated them with the dragons on the font in the Church.’
Wolf still looked bemused. ‘And that last bit – the star and flood?’
‘Eärendil – he’s one of Tolkien’s heroes in The Silmarillion;’ Con said, speaking not from the notes but from his own memory of reading the tales as a teenager; ‘he is seen as a sign in the heavens as hope for men after the flood destroys Numenor and Beleriand –.’
‘Forget all the Middle Earth shit for a minute…‘ Wolf said; ‘…go back to the Merlin stuff.’
‘Well,’ Con said, thumbing the notes again; ‘
”The Flood presaged by the appearance of the star – just as Petrie noted in Egypt, where Sirius presages the flooding of the Nile; might the rising of a star act as a precursor for a flood here at Avebury – but then how? How might one mark a flood in stone? How might Merlin have recorded this?”
‘then, bear with me…the writing gets even worse here - ah, here we go:
“Merlin: Emrys: What if Patriarch Petrie was right? I saw it clearly tonight at the Manor; despite his pomposity he is, at least, a font of knowledge. Marduk and Tiamat are linked to Nut. Obvious now I think about it; and the symbolism matches perfectly!!!”’
‘Nut?’ Wolf asked.
Con nodded, and tried to find the passage he’d seen earlier, that had shocked him awake.
‘The Egyptian sky Goddess Nut – here we go:
“Geb and Nut, divided at the start of time, like Apsu and Tiamat, one (Geb) falls to (become) the earth, the other, Nut, the sky…might Emrys fit this pattern – falling (becoming) stone and earth…?”
this bit’s a bit hard to read, as the handwriting goes a bit shit, but listen:
“The earth, foundation, and, like Geb and Nut a twin… like Ymir, Merlin - Emrys is a twin. Ymir’s-bury. But where, then, is his twin? Is she in the sky?”
‘Fuck me, Wolf – Merlin was a twin! Like me and Mel!’
Wolf looked at Con as if he was stupid.
‘Yep, I know. Like Ymir. I thought you’d have known that.’ Wolf said matter of factly, and with a slight smile that showed he was enjoying the fact he knew more than Con.
Ymir, Twin – yes, he’d come across that in his PhD studies… all these twins in Indo-European myths, representing the creation of duality from unity, or so he’d read, one being creates the dualistic world of opposites… but these were all male – all stemming from a proto-form ‘*Yemo’, from which the word Gemini originated, as well as Ymir. But Emrys? He’d never seen Merlin touted as one of their kind. Was it just a linguistic link or was there more to it? And why did Tolkien suggest his twin was female? Because Tiamat and Nut were female? Surely he knew that the northern Twins were male? What was Con missing? He suddenly wished so hard he could just ring Mel and ask her. She would have known; Celtic was her thing. Con had never really read the books she carried around, relying on her readings and recitations of poetry. Had Graves mention Merlin was a twin? If he had Con didn’t remember; if Mel had read it, she would have mentioned it, wouldn’t she? If not in Graves, then where? And why was it suddenly vitally important that he should know?
‘Where’s it written?’ he asked Wolf.
Wolf chuckled, picking up his phone, and signalled Con to be quiet; after a few moments he began to speak to the person on the other end; ‘Hey… yeah…. well, no, actually – feel like a pig’s shat in my head. You in the van? Yeah, can you get me an ibuprofen from the glove box? No – actually, sod it, I’m going to come back and kip – see ya….
‘I’m sorry Con,’ he said, putting down the phone, ‘I can’t concentrate, I’m going to have a snooze.’
‘What about Merlin and the twin thing?’ Con asked again.
‘Ask me later, Professor…patience is a virtue, you know.’ Wolf said, waving him off. Con started to speak again but held his tongue, despite his mind burning with unasked questions.
He thought of Old Man in his glass prison, just a short walk away from where they sat – a man who yesterday they had argued may have been enacting the myth of Ymir, Twin, a creative sacrifice, and here was Tolkien arguing that Merlin may have been playing the same role. Merlin and his twin…but who was she, if indeed she was a she? He had a sudden memory of his conversation with Mel all those years before - the whole 60s goddess movement – Graves, Gimbutas, the works – it’s all based on a phoney premise – there’s no evidence for some Great Goddess. It’s feminist propaganda… and her response that her eradication had been the result of male-dominated societies; his own work had begun to suggest she had been correct; these ancient sites had seemingly been aligned on a sky identified in the past as a celestial goddess, and now Tolkien was suggesting something similar… where is his twin, is she in the sky? That was the question; and what’s more, where was she in myth? Had we in the west only been given half the story of our past, he wondered? Like being told of Adam but not Eve…
Wolf downed his coke and stood.
‘Where are you parked?’ Con asked.
‘Oh, down outside Shen’s. You coming down?’
Con nodded and finished his pint. ‘Will Hayden be there?’ he asked.
‘How the fuck should I know? I think he was working today, probably won’t be back.’ Despite his apparent bad mood Wolf managed a grin.
‘Why don’t you just tell her you like her?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. I feel bad.’ Con answered.
‘Bad? Because of Hayden? Look, mate – he’s a charmer, but underneath he’s a bit ordinary really – I don’t think they’re well suited; she needs more, I think.’
‘You think I can give her more?’ Con asked.
‘Honestly? Not at the moment.’
Con felt as if he had been stung.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re still dealing with all that shit. You can’t really look after yourself, mate - how you gonna look after her? At least Hayden’s managing that. He can support her; she just needs someone with a bit more imagination; you have that but you have no fire in your belly.’
As Wolf said these words Con felt a flash of anger. I do have fire, it’s just been a glowing coal hidden by cinders, he thought.
‘Look, I can see you’re fuming but you’re just locked inside. Get angry – let it out or it’s gonna chew you up and destroy you. Get some balls – I don’t know, get pissed, do some mushrooms, get in a fight – go and try to fuck someone – just not Shen; you’re not ready for her.’
Con’s heart was drumming and he felt as if he were blinkered, looking down through a tunnel.
‘I can’t – I’m stuck, I just keep thinking the same things over and over – I can’t escape from my thoughts… how can I do that? It’s more complicated than you know! You don’t see it all. I think I fucking love her but it’s ruined’ he blurted out.
‘Then tell me what I don’t know.’
‘I can’t - I’ve not told anyone; it just keeps going round in my head; I just can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘Just don’t think – act! And don’t ask yourself how as that’s just fucking thinking again!’
They had reached the edge of Church Street and Hayden’s bike was parked outside Church Cottage.
‘For fuck’s sake why can’t he just fuck off?’ Con spat and turned on his heels.
‘Where are you going now?’ asked Wolf.
‘Back to my van’ he shouted over his shoulder.
‘Ok – whatever you need to do – come along to the pub tonight, though – it’s my last night here. I’ll tell you about Merlin…maybe.’
Con raised a hand in acknowledgement, his middle finger extended.
He had only walked a few metres on when he almost walked into Hayden, who was exiting the post office with a loaf of bread and some milk.
The two men looked at each other and halted; Con would have walked by with a nod but he felt somehow he should stop. Hayden didn’t look overly enthused by the encounter either.
‘What’s up?’ Hayden said, removing one of his earphones. ‘I heard the chairman didn’t hand back the bones.’
Con shook his head, smiling at Hayden’s understatement.
‘No. Wolf said his bit but I don’t think there’s much more that can be done really.’ He shifted around awkwardly.
‘Anyway…’ Hayden said, motioning to leave, and starting to put his earphones back in ‘can’t keep She Who Must Be Obeyed waiting… probably catch you in the pub later, mate.’ And he raised his hand in a half-wave and set off towards Church Cottage. Con turned and watched him go.
Fuuuuuck! Con felt he wanted to scream – and it wasn’t all to do with Hayden and Shen; it was the whole Merlin thing that Tolkien’s letter had sparked in his brain. Twin? Why a twin?! And who was the other – the lost twin? He felt a horrible sense of becoming hemmed in, of the world twisting and becoming smaller, of disparate themes becoming enmeshed and tangled, closing him in… a tightening net or web of ideas and coincidences, connections and images – bordering on magical thinking, a feeling it was all linked – him, Shen, Mel, Tolkien, Merlin, the Old Man in the museum… the stones themselves somehow linked to the stars and a flood – the flood of the milky river in the heavens presaged by the rising of the stars; a sister, a lost sister, the forgotten twin – but not by me, he thought. And he picked up speed and began to run through the circle towards the Avenue, the circle and its many tourists becoming a blur, the fire in his head a burning madness he could not outrun, a converging point of echoes from before and after, from outside and inside time, spiralling inwards towards, towards, towards…what?