The Wicker Tree Read online

  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.

  The Wicker Tree

  A novel by

  ROBIN HARDY

  Luath 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

  Preface

  Beth's Awakening

  Tressock Castle

  Delia and Lachlan

  The Peace March

  The Arm of the Law

  Concert at the Cathedral

  Orlando's Revelation

  At the Grand Hotel

  The Mission

  Lolly Day

  Walking Wounded

  Introducing Sulis

  The Inquiry Develops

  The Road to Tressock

  Tressock

  The Men at the Inn

  At Mary Hillier's House

  The Devil Makes a Call

  The Rehearsal

  At the Sacred Pool

  Nuada Keeps its Secret

  Lolly is Questioned

  Goldie

  The Preach-In

  The Elections

  Beth Goes to the Ball

  Orlando Takes Up the Challenge

  Steve and Lachlan

  God and Magog

  The Eleventh Hour

  The Hunt

  Beame and Beth

  The Hunt Continues

  Beame and Daisy

  The Queens' Eyes

  The Optician's Shop

  Waiting for Beame

  Beth in the Queens' Room

  May Day's Eve

  The End Game

  Nine Months Later

  Post Script

  Author's Note

  For Vicky

  Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

  Søren Kierkegaard, Life

  Preface

  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's Awakening

  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 Kenn
y 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 Vanity 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.

  When she was at home in the simple colonial house she had always regarded as her mother's, now hers by virtue of inheritance, and in which no trace of her father remained, she liked to look forward to what she would make of it when she and Steve were married, when they had kids. That was a dream that always distracted her, but looking at her watch she realised she must concentrate. She'd read that Scotland could be cold, real cold, with snow and ice. She'd packed her skiing underwear and now she added several sweaters. Parts of Scotland, she was advised, were also plagued with midges, kind of miniature mosquitoes you could hardly see. She had already packed some insect spray. The news that the Scots' favourite food was sheep's stomach alarmed her and she checked that she had put the Imodium in her toilet kit.

  Beth took a long last look at her living room, at all the familiar things she and her mom had collected. The very special collection of Tiffany glass on the illuminated shelves. The photographs of herself and Steve together when she had been elected Homecoming Queen. Her Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for 'Trailer Trash Love', her favourite song and the one for which her mother had written most of the lyrics. The gold and platinum album plaques had all gone to the palace in Dallas with her father. She didn't miss them.

  Confident that she had forgotten nothing, especially her brand new passport, she gave a fond farewell hug to Vashti, her housekeeper, and carried her own suitcases across the porch. Beth detested flashing her money around and despised what her father had done with his. But a few luxuries she did allow herself. True to her career as a recording artist, she liked to travel by limo, and one was now and almost always sitting outside her house, like a beached white whale, waiting for her to do some shopping or to visit Steve at the Dragon X Ranch or to go to the Cowboys for Christ church at Osceola, off Route 171.

  Benny, Vashti's husband, who drove the limo, was, according to his wife, 'the laziest nigger in Texas.' It always slightly shocked Beth to hear Vashti use that word. Beth regarded PCness as next to Godliness. But his wife's accusation just made Benny chuckle. Officially, he worked for a limo company with the grand name of Buckingham Livery and Hire, but when Beth was at home she liked to have him always available. Steve pointed out that it would be much cheaper to buy the limo and hire Benny to drive it.

  'That would mean I had a chauffeur,' protested Beth. 'That's not me at all. This way, I just hire the limo when I need it.'

  Steve seldom argued with Beth. Their friendship was based on being very comfortable in each other's company. It always had been. As kids they held hands a lot, not caring who laughed at them. Steve still lived with his pa, a widower and a working cowboy, a rarity now in Texas, who had originally been a hand on the LBJ Ranch when President Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, were in retirement. Steve had somehow never been too dazzled by Beth's career. But he was proud of her voice and was one of the very few people around her who understood her view that it was her voice and not her career that was the more important.

  Benny drove the limo at about forty-five miles an hour. He considered any speed in excess of that inconsistent with a Cadillac's dignity. Beth watched out the left-hand window as they started to approach Osceola down Route 171. The Church of Christ's Second Coming, recently renamed Cowboys for Christ (and part of a growing brotherhood of such churches) was located just two miles short of the little town. Now what she saw on either side of the highway was flat open country, just shrubs and occasional clumps of pine trees. Beth was looking to see if a rider leaving a long trail of dust from a track that ran parallel to 171 could be Steve.

  She knew it should be, because when she phoned him, just before leaving home, he said that if Benny was driving at his usual speed, he'd beat them to the church on Old Johnson, his pa's favourite quarter horse. Sure enough, as rider and horse got closer to the road, she could see that it
was indeed Steve, his hat laid back on his shoulders, his tousled blond hair all over his face so that he had to hold his head well back to see.

  Now the church was coming into view, just off the road, nestling in a clearing of a small pine wood. It was built on the classic log cabin principle, only the logs looked Wal-Mart shiny and new. There was a corral close by where some cowboys were just finishing a morning of showing off their ropin' skills. Further on was a car park with several hundred vehicles, everything from old, rusty pick-ups through heavily chrome-plated Humvees and SUVs to fancy European automobiles and even occasional Fords and Chevies. Steve had joined the road now and was riding beside the Cadillac, shouting down at Beth through her open window.

  'Looks like we're the last to get here. What are you singin'?'

  'The Magnificat.'

  'Yeah? Do I know that?'

  'Maybe not, Steve. But I think you'll like it.'

  'What happened to Amazing Grace?'

  'This is my new deal, honey.'

  'OK. So do the band know this piece?'

  'Not doing it with the band. Holly Dempster – she'll play piano for me. Like I said, this is my new deal. I am just going to use my voice.'

  'Can the folks stomp and holler?'

  'Don't think they'll be inclined, Steve.'

  'Well you go for it, girl. Pa came on ahead. He's got my bag and my passport and my ticket. This trip of ours got him all worked up. If he could come too, he'd be there in a New York minute.'

  Steve clapped his heels into Old Johnson's flanks and the horse took off towards the church, leaving the long white Cadillac alone to make the majestic arrival for which it had been designed.

  Benny would not have dreamed of letting Beth walk from the car park, which she would much have preferred to do, so he drove straight up to the church's main door, reserved usually for funerals and weddings. Beth sighed as she saw the outside broadcast truck of a local TV station, its lines already hung up to the church, its auxiliary generator humming. The video guy was wandering around looking, Beth always thought, like some weird mutant of the human race that had great black cameras growing out of its necks and shoulders.