The Wicker Tree Read online

  'That is just the most terrible story,' said Beth. 'I guess they weren't real Christian, those ancestors of yours.'

  'Could they have been, like, Roman Catholic?' asked Steve.

  'They could very easily have been. But they were protestant Christians just like you. Some things they read in the Bible told them that it was the right thing to do. You've met Jack, Steve. In my seventeenth century ancestors' day they might have thought him possessed of a devil. A burning offence.'

  Steve was impressed by this thought. 'Yeah,' he said thoughtfully. 'Like in The Exorcist?'

  At this point, Lachlan was called away to be consulted by Delia on the food.

  'You do realise that was a test?' asked Beth excitedly, as soon as Lachlan had gone.

  'Yeah?' Steve didn't quite see how. 'Those cats hadn't done anybody any harm.'

  'And the witches could have been denounced by anyone. Old Miss Padewski, our biology teacher, remember her?'

  'Sure. The homeliest lady I ever saw. Hey, get real Beth. She wasn't a witch?'

  'Course she wasn't. Just a lonely old lady who lived by herself with her cat and spent her days teaching us to dissect animals. Every now and then she'd grab some kid who was, like, tormenting her by the ear – and twist. People said she was a witch. Someone said she cast spells around about Halloween and made this really obnoxious kid sick. His parents went to the cops. Of course nothing came of it.'

  'So?' Steve felt he had lost the plot somewhere.

  'None of that is Christian, Steve. Not up-to-date American Christian. Lachlan wanted to see if he could sow some doubt in us. Because, years ago, these people here were ignorant and, like, superstitious. We're completely different from that. We know that the Bible we've read is the Good Book. No way could we get dumb stuff like that about witches from it, right?'

  'Or cats,' agreed Steve. 'Although there is a bit about swine. They had devils in them, didn't they?'

  An exasperated Beth eventually got Steve back on track. The songs she was going to sing. What she wanted him to do, and when. A list of answers to questions they might get asked. She was to do the preaching and introduce each new phase of their 'preach-in,' as she called it. They were timing it all to take roughly forty-five minutes and both Lachlan and Delia had agreed that was just fine. Then they went into the Grand Saloon and started to rehearse with the musicians.

  At the end of April, relatively high up in the Northern Hemisphere, where Scotland finds itself, the evenings are already lengthening a good deal, summer solstice but six weeks away. The good people of Tressock, crowding into the Grand Saloon, sniffing the already cooking suckling pigs outside, knew that they had a long summer evening ahead of them and anticipated it with relish.

  First, as advertised by word of mouth to every household, was to be a 'preach-in' with religious songs to be sung by Beth Boothby, the well-known young American singer who would, with her partner Steve, a genuine cowboy from Texas, talk about the virtues of the old religion. Afterwards, there was to be the election of the Queen of the May and the Tressock Laddie. This would be followed by the traditional feast and dancing till midnight. A gentle reminder from the castle: smoking tobacco was strictly prohibited. High quality hash would be served, as on all previous May Days, in Lady Morrison's special recipe brownies.

  Standing about or seated in rows upon benches, once belonging to the church, the crowd chattered away, circulating, greeting old friends and feeling thoroughly prepared to relax and be entertained. Buses had been driving up the Willies Walk and depositing people from the Nuada Nuclear Power Station so that all the familiar faces from the bar at the inn were there. In a way what seemed curious to Beth, peeking at the audience through a gap in the curtains behind the dais, was how much this crowd resembled her idea of pilgrims. Currently their pilgrimage was about celebrating May Day. She had looked it up on the internet. Pilgrims made a journey to reverence or worship something or someone dear to their religious belief. Everyone had been quite frank with Beth. Their May Day celebrations were not just holidays but holy days. For them, May Day had nothing to do with the workers of the world uniting, which sounded to Beth vaguely Christian – until, to her slightly shocked surprise, the net went on to say it was Communist or Socialist. The people of Tressock she'd met were rather shy about speaking of it. But Beth gathered it was really a celebration of spring. The world born again, Bella, the chattiest of Mary Hillier's girls, had said. Mary Hillier had added smilingly that this was probably clearer to people living in their climate than it would be in Texas.

  Meanwhile the rising excitement in the crowd was palpable. The band had collected their instruments and set themselves up, ready to play. Beth felt she had got to know a couple of them already at rehearsal, something she always tried to do. There was Podge, the drummer, a very cute guy, a tad portly, but with a pixie's face and a roguish eye, and on bass guitar there was Laurie, a beanpole topped with a reddyed mohawk. He'd called her Baithe and talked in an accent so thick she'd had to guess when to say yes or no. People wore a lot more jewellery here than back in Texas, much of it silver. The band, all locals seemingly, were real quick at catching on to what she wanted. Quite like professional musicians. She found it real surprising since Tressock was what, back home, they'd call hicksville, not that Beth would ever dream of saying that out loud. Although the castle, what little she'd seen of it so far, was awesome, straight out of a Disney cartoon. Beth closed the curtain. The gig was about to begin. Lachlan and Delia passed her, giving encouraging smiles, on their way to the stage. Steve, who had seemed real nervous, sweating a lot and wondering whether to wear his hat, was now at her side.

  'We gotta talk, Beth,' he said. 'After this.'

  'Sure Steve, I feel like we've been cut off from each other. But after this May Day thing it'll be OK. We can have some quality time together. Go see some sights.'

  'That's not quite…' began Steve.

  'Ssh!' interrupted Beth. 'Lachlan is going to speak.'

  Murdoch, the only person present who, by virtue of his Trade Union experience, had some capacity to analyse Lachlan's undoubted success as the leader of this small community, enjoyed this annual event because it usually showed the Laird at the top of his form. His Tressock audience was greeting his arrival on the dais with prolonged applause. In spite of his wealth and his hereditary standing there was a sense of community that clung to this lowland tribe and he sometimes seemed to lead them by divine right. For better or worse, he had proved himself a strong and imaginative leader. Behind his back they might some of them imitate his anglicised accent or joke about his colossal self confidence. But these jokes were sympathetic. They knew that he had risked much for them and been clever enough to see that when the coal mines were closing all over western Europe and soon to close near Tressock, alternative energy was the answer. National prestige demanded more than just oil, now that coal was to go. Scottish oil was important but it was finite. One foreseeable day it would run out. Nuclear could never do that.

  Other Scottish grandees like him had preserved great estates. Lachlan certainly preserved his. But he was far more entrepreneurial than most of them. Taking his tenants and employees and neighbours all into his confidence, he had created an industry that some people believed doomed and which he ran on a co-operative basis. His employees were nominally his partners. He fought with the Edinburgh and London bureaucracies when they opposed him and he usually won. He mocked the ecologists who opposed nuclear, defending it as if it was part of his religion, which, as Murdoch well knew, in a sense it was. If he had been born an American he might have run something like Tammany Hall in New York, a great political patronage empire. But his ambition was both smaller and larger. He was content to have the small following that crowded this room and whose attention he held effortlessly for every word he said. He had needed to prove he could lead them wherever his imagination drove him… for their sake as much as his. Like a Roman emperor of old, he gave them bread and he gave them circuses too.

  Othe
rs saw Lachlan slightly differently. They welcomed that he used their ancient traditions to suggest a renewed vigour in their lives. For him the music and mythology of Scotland's past were an inspiration for her future, at least in the microcosm of the country where his leadership held sway. He reminded Beth of Kenny at her Cowboys for Christ church. He often spoke like an evangelist.

  'Ladies and Gentlemen,' began Lachlan, prosaically enough, 'this evening I have great pleasure in introducing two guests from America, Beth Boothby and Steve Thomson…'

  This was Beth and Steve's cue to walk out onto the stage, where they took two seats next to Delia. For almost a minute there was silence as the audience stared at and registered the persons of Steve and Beth. Then there was thunderous applause. Beth stood, and then Steve, rather hesitantly, got up, and they both acknowledged the applause, in her case with a cheery wave, in his case by doffing his hat and waving it. They then sat. But neither could entirely disguise their surprise. After all, they had so far neither preached nor sung.

  'Beth and Steve have come here specially to tell you about their God,' continued Lachlan. 'He was a God we knew very well in the past. We still have his church, although every Sunday, the day when once our ancestors all worshipped the Sun, that church is empty, abandoned, except by our dear ravens. I have had the honour and pleasure to make music with Beth. For me the great heritage for which we all have to be forever grateful to the Christians is a musical one. And one of the great rewards for being here this evening is that you will hear her beautiful voice. I have promised them both that you will give what they have to say a good hearing.'

  Lachlan then turned to his guests and, like a host on a talk show, beckoned for them to rise and come forward.

  'I give you Beth Boothby and Steve Thomson!'

  For Donald Dee, the pianist, this was the cue to start playing 'Power in the Blood', with the rest of the band taking up the tune after the first few bars. As Beth bounded forward, her whole body in performance mode, she filled the saloon and stunned the amazed audience with her enormous, glorious sound:

  'Would you be free from the burden of sin?

  There's power in the blood, power in the blood;

  Would you o'er evil a victory win?

  There's wonderful power in the blood.'

  They had rehearsed Steve coming in with the chorus at this point even though he really couldn't sing, but he managed to say the words quite tunefully in a rich baritone:

  'There is power, power, wonder working power In the blood of the Lamb;

  There is power, power, wonder working power In the precious blood of the Lamb.'

  The audience were thrilled, as well they might be, at the unique sound they were hearing. Their excitement was infectious and soon they had all risen, at Steve's signal, to join with him in the chorus.

  Within a couple of minutes, Beth had her audience, including Lachlan, roaring the song with her, and had even Delia joining in rather self-consciously. When Beth had finished and acknowledged their applause, she motioned everyone to sit and, using a device she had seen Judy Garland use in her great old movie, A Star is Born, she sat on the edge of the dais, one leg tucked under herself, denoting her total comfort with herself, her message, and, above all, her audience.

  'We have come a long way, folks, to remind you about Jesus,' she said. 'I just know you've already heard of him. Like you've heard of Braveheart or Mr Bell, the great Scottish gentleman who invented the telephone. It's just that many of you have forgotten that Jesus was braver than Rob Roy, he gave his life for all of us, not just the people of his time, but the people of all time. You may have forgotten that he was a great innovator and inventor. He was the greatest of all because he invented a new kind of love. What kind of love was that friends? Can any of you remember?'

  A few people close to Beth in the front row had leant forward to touch her dress or the shoe on the foot that was not tucked beneath her. All were watching her intently in complete silence. Delia, who had now placed herself in the front row, was the first to try and answer.

  'It is love of everyone but yourself,' she said. 'Really hard wouldn't you say, Beth?'

  'Delia that is a good answer, and such a good, good question… I see Steve would like to answer you… Steve?'

  Steve had been hanging back self effacingly, watching the audience, trying to figure out what was so unusual about them. He had, after all, never before in his life faced an audience. Perhaps they were all more like this than he ever imagined.

  Now he suddenly stepped forward to Beth's side. This caused, he noticed, a further, disconcerting stir in the audience; a murmuring, sibilant sound, like the low buzz of an excited swarm of bees.

  'No ma'am,' he said, looking straight at Delia. 'If you can love other people like Jesus loves us, you don't need to love yourself, you're like some great big…' Steve searched desperately for the right word. He knew what it was, but it just wouldn't come to him. But Lachlan finished his sentence for him.

  '…Like a beacon,' he said.

  'Right!' intervened Beth, the experienced showperson taking control once more. 'Friends, I'd like to ask Steve to pass amongst you. He'll be handing out some thoughts about Jesus,' she waved some pamphlets in the air, 'which we hope you'll read real closely. And there's a few pretty hymns for us all to sing together. Please friends – the words are important. If you try and believe what you are singing you will open your hearts to Jesus.'

  Laden with pamphlets, Steve had now stepped down from the dais and tried to proceed with the distribution of them, but to his further surprise many wanted to shake his hand and nearly all looked into his face in an especially cordial way.

  'And while Steve's doing that I'm gonna sing you another song – one that comes right from my heart.'

  Beth spent a moment speaking to Donald Dee at the piano and to the other musicians. Then she picked up a guitar and faced the audience. The vast majority watched her expectantly, except where Steve was making his progress. There, the dozen or so people closest to him seemed in a turmoil of excitement. From the stage, it looked somewhat like a whirlpool moving through a calmer body of water. Beth's enormous voice was once more filling the Grand Saloon but this time she was belting it out, stamping her feet and playing and rocking her guitar like a metronome.

  'Would you be free from your burden of sin?

  There's power in the blood, power in the blood

  Would you o'er evil a victory win?

  There's power in the blood of the lamb.'

  As Steve passed through the crowd, Mary Hillier, Bella, Deirdre, Danny, Carl and Peter, the innkeeper, everyone in a little town denuded of people, except Lolly, Jack and, of course, Orlando, was there to take his pamphlets. They seemed to try for a few instants to share the space through which he moved and, if possible, to touch him. In a way that really impressed and bewildered Steve, his very presence seemed precious to them.

  But was he as astounded as another Scot might have been? No, these people, for all their white skins and similar looks to the Caucasian majority inhabiting Texas, were profoundly foreign. Had they all wanted to rub noses or ritually kiss him he would have been surprised, yes, but astounded – no. Neither Terry nor any of the Redeemers' other mentors had made the mistake of suggesting that these folks were normal, like Americans. If they had been they would probably have found their own way back to Jesus, and not needed the Redeemers to come help them. But Steve, smiling and laughing and accepting their curious adulation with the 'aw shucks' charm that was natural to him, nevertheless felt a little uneasy.

  While the sound of the 'Power in the Blood' hymn floated out of the open windows of the Grand Saloon and could probably have been heard half a mile away, out on the terrace, where the little pigs revolved and sizzled on their state-of-the-art electronic spits, Jack could be seen loitering.

  He had picked up one of the carving knives from the serving table nearby, when Lolly arrived looking flushed and slightly dishevelled. She seemed surprised to see Jack.
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  'Hullo Jack, what are you doing?' she asked, although his intention to cut himself a nice morsel of pork and crackling seemed plain enough.

  'Hungry, Lolly,' he said in that monosyllabic way he spoke when verse had somehow deserted him.

  'Not murder most foul,' he added, brandishing the knife and giving an eerie high pitched laugh. Lolly laughed in unison. She and Jack were often allies. But one thing did worry her and that was the black, flapping, strutting presence of Nevermore nearby.

  'Go on, cut yourself a piece,' she said. 'You're as entitled as anyone else. But for heaven's sake don't feed Nevermore or we'll have the whole flock down here.'

  Jack had cut himself a modest sliver of pork and was chewing on it, the fat running down his chin. He shooed Nevermore away with a threatening slice of the knife in the air.

  Lolly peeped through one of the windows at the crowd inside. 'There's someone I want to see, Jack,' she said, 'but I don't want him to see me wanting to see him, if you catch my drift.'

  'You're in love with a wonderful guy?' hazarded Jack.

  'No I'm not!' said Lolly. 'Yes you are!' 'No I'm not!' 'Yes you are! Yes you are! Yes you are!' Jack was laughing.Lolly scowled at Jack, but it was a thoughtful scowl. Then she gave him a kiss on his cheek and disappeared in the direction of the Willies Walk and Tressock town. Jack gathered up Nevermore and made for home murmuring to himself in a pleased voice:

  'Say I'm weary, say I'm sad

  Say that health and wealth have missed me

  Say I'm growing old, but add

  Lolly kissed me…'

  The Elections

  INSIDE THE GRAND Saloon Lachlan was addressing the crowd.

  'The day after tomorrow we will be crowning our Queen of the May. Can anyone here imagine a more perfect Queen than Beth, with the gift of that incomparable voice?'