The Strong Man Read online

‘Oh, no, sir, no,’ he said. ‘I’m most awfully sorry if—Come on, Michael.’

  ‘I’m told lots of actors like a few moments to think themselves into their part before going on,’ Mr Mylchraine said as a Parting shot.

  He thrust out his small white hand to me again. I shook it. The twinkle was still in his eyes.

  John almost pushed me through the other door of the robing room in his anxiety to go when asked, and consequently I found myself propelled with unwanted abruptness along a short broad passageway and into the Rota chamber, thus missing the few moments for reflection I would have liked between these last five somewhat disconcerting minutes and arriving at the much-heralded esbat. On the one hand, there was a good deal of adjustment I felt I might want to make in my picture of the ruler of Oceana after meeting him in such unexpectedly informal circumstances. And on the other hand, I confess I had developed towards the coming events of the evening more than a touch of curiosity, a feeling sharpened if anything by Mr Mylchraine’s recent ambiguous remarks about what I might expect to see.

  So, once in the chamber, I stepped aside from John’s forward rush and stood firmly where I was to look about me.

  The Rota chamber is not large, but it is in a quiet way impressive. It is circular in shape with a high domed ceiling and tall walls broken all round by long narrow windows filled with small panes of soft, greyish, old-fashioned glass—though now on this rain-threatening evening most of the light was coming from the enormous chandelier that hung from the middle of the fine plasterwork ceiling.

  The central floor of the chamber was designed to be bare, a circle of radiating bands of alternate white and dark grey stone. This floor is surrounded by a parapet of dark panelling, its top sloping to form a narrow desk running all the way round the first row of delegates’ seats. The parapet is broken only three times, twice where passages lead to the robing room and to the main entrance, once for the slightly raised president’s chair and the clerks’ table in front of it. Behind the first row of seats there is another, giving a place to each of the sixty delegates. And behind the two banked circles of green-leather seats there runs a wide circular walk where the servants of the house and such visitors as want to hear the debates can move about.

  Altogether it makes a simple and impressive effect. Or it had done so up till now.

  3

  Now the simple dignified chamber had the air of something that has been raped.

  Crudely nailed between the high windows on the back walls there were roughly daubed pictures. They had been painted in garish colours on tall sheets of wood and had been surrounded by long swathes of black bunting. They depicted mostly satanic-ally horned creatures prancing up to each other in grotesquely sexual poses, like the obscene drawings done by adolescents everywhere. There was nothing really offensive in them, for all their boastful salacity: they offended solely because of the brutality that had been used on the old building in order to display them.

  Something of the same arrogant insensitiveness came off from the central circular floor, bare and quietly patterned when I had seen it before years ago. Now it was covered with a jumble of trestle-tables burdened down with large copper pans steaming with curious-looking dark round little puddings and dozens of spigoted casks underneath which stood tall copper jugs.

  The whole was lit by torches. They had been placed in crude lengths of black-painted drainpipe and were made of some aromatic wood on to which strong-smelling waxes of various sorts must have been added because they burnt with spurts of irregular flame, purple and greenish, and gave off heavy coils of thick greasy smoke which curled upwards and left their traces on the plasterwork of the dome above.

  And the people who had arrived—the room was perhaps one third full—simply added to the impression of thoughtless crudity. They were, to begin with, all a little drunk. They were mostly flushed in the face, as far as I could see in the mixed uncertain light, and they were all too ready to burst into peals of shrill laughter. And then they plainly gloried in adding their share of damage to the quiet old building. As I watched, I saw one young man jump from the broad rear gallery down on to the higher circle of delegates’ places. His heel caught in the back of one of the seats and ripped away a long strip of the green leather, leaving an ugly whitish gash.

  John felt a need to apologize. But not for this Particular incident.

  ‘It may sound as if they’re rather excited,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not everybody realizes this has a serious side.’

  ‘Yes, they don’t exactly look as if they’re in church,’ I replied.

  But this was just the cue John needed. He turned round at once and launched into a lecture.

  ‘Now, that’s where you make your great mistake, old boy,’ he said. ‘Just because this is a religious festival, you expect it to be simply another version of the old, drear, meaningless routines of the established churches. But those people over there are much nearer the truth of things than you are, however noisy and idiotic they seem. Because this is a celebration of the living urge in the human psyche. It is an occasion of joy, of unbridled delight.’

  And staidly he led the way to a pair of the green leather seats in the upper row of delegates’ places.

  ‘We’ll do quite nicely here, I think,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to be too conspicuous. But on the other hand we want to be able to see.’

  ‘And what exactly shall we see?’ I asked him. ‘With your hints on the one hand and Mr Mylchraine’s attitude on the other, I don’t know what to expect.’

  ‘We shall see what we shall see, shall we?’ John answered, in an extremely unsuccessful attempt at waggishness. ‘If I simply described what is likely to take place, it might seem all a little juvenile perhaps. But I think all the same you won’t feel that by the end of the evening.’

  And, as if to take what steps he could to make sure his words came true, he signalled sharply to a man in a long green apron passing in front of us down by the panelled parapet. The man leant up towards us and handed John across the empty row of seats one of the tall copper jugs that I had seen under the torch-lit casks. From the pocket of his apron he then produced two small drinking horns, and these too he handed up. I looked at them in mock remonstrance.

  ‘Here,’ John said, filling one from the jug and handing it to me. ‘This is an occasion when it’s the done thing to drink in church.’

  He laughed.

  I took the little horn and sniffed at the contents with caution.

  ‘Only whiskey,’ John said. ‘Did you think it’d be goat’s blood or something?’

  My habitual misgivings in face of the unknown must have shown themselves too plainly on my face. They certainly had the effect of switching John into a state of high good humour.

  He filled his own drinking horn with a great air of bravado, holding the tall copper jug up above his head and sending a long stream of whiskey pouring accurately downwards. Then he lifted the horn high.

  ‘To the deeper instincts,’ he toasted. ‘We’ll teach you a thing or two about yourself before you leave the island.’

  He drained his horn in one. I felt obliged in return to do more than sip at mine. It did have whiskey in it. And a long swallow of neat Irish is something I’m not exactly used to. I felt the blood pound up to my face in seconds.

  John laughed again.

  ‘If you ever do leave the island, that is,’ he said.

  A quick, irrational fear shot through me. Mr Mylchraine had seemed pleasant and human enough. But there had been that bland assumption of the privileges of power. . . .

  ‘What do you mean? What do you mean by that?’ I almost shouted at John.

  He leant back in his wide green-leather seat and laughed till the tears actually came into his eyes.

  ‘But nothing, Michael, nothing,’ he spluttered. ‘It’s just that it’s nice to have you back, nice to have the remnants of the family together again. And I hope perhaps you’ll decide to stay on. I hope you’ll find the way things are here now more
to your liking than they were in the old days.’

  He leant forward and clapped me on the knee. I looked at him bleakly.

  ‘It’d be nice,’ I said. ‘Only of course I’ve got a job to go back to.’

  Even at the risk of making myself look a fool by playing the sobersides I felt a need to make my position crystal clear. I was not going to have anything to do with Mr Mylchraine’s Oceana, whatever it was really like.

  And, as I had expected, John roared with laughter once again.

  ‘Don’t worry, old boy,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry so much. I assure you, if you stay here for the rest of your days it’ll be entirely of your own free will. Relax.’

  Things were certainly going his way now.

  I sat there beside him, transferring my wretched drinking horn from one hand to the other because until it was empty it could not be put down and I was determined not to have more to drink than I wanted. I wished profoundly that I have never pretended to John that I had any interests in new-found religion.

  Increasingly quickly now the Rota chamber was filling up with Parties of newcomers, most of them already as drunk and excited as the earlier arrivals, and none of them personifying exactly the wisdom of the people. Serving-men in their long green aprons hurried about with the tall copper jugs. Fresh wax was put on the smoky aromatic torches. The noise began to pound thumpingly on my ear-drums.

  Then somewhere out of sight someone started beating a drum in a single repeated monotonous rhythm. Soon people began to tap the beat with their hands and feet. Before long a shrill pipe of some sort added a repetitive rising and falling tune. On the central floor one or two couples began to dance.

  They danced no more intimately than in many a London nightclub and with much the same sort of shuffled steps you see there. But their close embraces, combined with the repetitive music and the smell and the smoke of the crude flary torches, did begin to generate a certain atmosphere.

  Although it did no more to me than to give me a feeling of irritation, on almost all the other people in the half-lit building—now decidedly warm and smelly—the whole was having exactly the effect one would have expected. The number of dancers grew quickly, soon spilling over from the crowded central floor up to the broader and darker spaces of the surrounding gallery. People were beginning, too, to throw off their clothes and the sound of their laughter grew less boisterous, more intimate.

  ‘The power of the dance, the ancient forgotten power of the dance,’ John said in my ear.

  He seemed to be definitely affected himself. His voice had thickened with excitement and he was leaning forward eagerly, peering into the smoke-filled gloom. I began to wonder what I should do if he too started taking off his clothes and beckoning the nearest girl to join us as I had seen other men do.

  ‘Not really a forgotten power,’ I said sharply. ‘Jazz dance sessions have been like this for fifty years.’

  The remark did seem to sober John up a little. He glanced round almost furtively, as if acquaintances from medical school days in Dublin might somehow be present.

  ‘I dare say jazz dancers do get excited,’ he hissed at me. ‘But what you don’t realize is that here we have excitement with a purpose. These people aren’t just going to dance and then go home to bed. This is just a beginning.’

  ‘And at the end,’ I asked, ‘are they really going to do anything very much different from what a lot of dance-hall couples do?’

  But John did not rise to this.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he answered. ‘I’m quite happy to let events speak for themselves.’

  He picked up the tall jug and filled my drinking horn and his own once more. I touched mine to my lips—and began looking round to see if there was anywhere I could conveniently dispose of it.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can’t guarantee to stay all night, you know. I had an early start on the steamer this morning.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t have all that long before there’s a decided change in the atmosphere,’ John replied.

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘It won’t be long now till the Master comes,’ he said.

  ‘The Master?’ I replied, determined not to let John get away with any home-brewed mystification.

  ‘Mr Mylchraine has the title of Master at an esbat,’ John answered with all the solemn conviction of some heraldry expert warming to his subject.

  I looked at him straight in the eyes.

  ‘And the Master makes a great ceremonial entrance about now?’ I asked.

  ‘When the time is ripe,’ John replied. ‘But you shouldn’t have to wait long. And when the Master’s present you’ll notice a very different feeling, even here in Lesneven. And one day we must see if we can’t get you invited out to the Kernel. Things can be done in the seclusion out there which people over here are still not ready for.’

  Unable to find anywhere to put the wretched horn in my hand, I took another cautious sip of the whiskey in it and waited. The hidden drum still beat on remorselessly. The shrill pipe kept up the same repeated tune. Almost everyone was dancing now. One or two of the girls I saw were already bare to the waist. I decided I would not pay them the least attention.

  Everywhere drinking horns were being brandished high. The torches were constantly being fed with more wax and their dark-coloured flames were spurting higher and higher, giving off a headier, murkier smoke.

  And then, quite suddenly and without any warning, the beating drum and the scrawny pipe ceased to play. Abruptly and right in the middle of their little repetitive tune. And at the same instant the big central chandelier was completely extinguished.

  The dancing dropped swiftly to nothingness. The murmurous laughter and the giggly screaming died. I saw that everyone had turned towards the passageway from the robing room. I sat watching that black square in the sulphurous gloom of the torchlight as intently as any of them.

  We did not have long to wait.

  A bright yellowy light grew up swiftly in the blackness and from out of the entrance there came prancing twelve goat-masked creatures in couples, male and female, bodies wholly naked and gleaming with some dark thickly-plastered grease. Each held at full stretch above their head a flaming torch of tow, brighter and less wax-impregnated than the others. And in their free outside hands they all flourished long snaking carter’s whips, flailing and cracking.

  The whole business of their timed entry was certainly sharply dramatic.

  I enjoyed it as much as if I had been in the theatre. On the main body of the dancers, however, the effect was much more intense. Excited as they were by drink, the repetitive music and close bodily contact, they greeted the bounding entrance of the goat-creatures with one long joyous sobbing howl of delight. Even John, who had done little more than I had to stir his passions, caught in his breath and lunged to his feet.

  And then Mr Mylchraine came in.

  He was not naked. He had made hardly a concession to the atmosphere that had been created for his arrival. All he had done was to envelop himself in a black cloak falling right to the ground and to put on his bald head a round black cap fitting closely to the shape of the skull.

  Under this his big oval face looked even more waxen white than it had in the robing room. His large heavy body under the thickly-draped folds of the cloak moved with a slow stateliness.

  He was looking slightly downwards in an abstracted thoughtful way and seemed to be paying no attention whatsoever to the scene which, I realized now, he had had carefully set for himself. In cold silence he swept his way over to the vacant tall-backed president’s chair. In front of it he stood for several seconds—it seemed, even to me, longer than it must have been—looking broodingly downwards. Then he turned and seated himself.

  Still there was complete silence. No one moved as much as a muscle. There was no whispering, no stifled giggles.

  Then from under the enveloping black cloak a pallid hand appeared, extraordinarily more pallid in this gloom than in the prosaic light of the robing room, a
nd made a commanding permissive gesture. At once the drum began to throb again, faster now I thought, and the shrill pipe started a new, more jagged tune. Voices all round burst out suddenly into excited sound. The tall copper jugs gleamed again as they were lifted high and tilted for pouring.

  ‘Well?’ John asked softly in my ear.

  ‘He certainly knows how to assume a presence, your Master of the Esbat,’ I replied.

  I looked down at the heavy brooding figure in the tall-backed chair.

  He did indeed seem a different person, I reflected, from the human, if alarmingly self-confident, man I had met in the robing room. He had talked flippantly there about the part he had to act in the coming ceremony, and it was true that he had done nothing since he had come in here that an actor of authority could not have done as well. Only the actor would have been appearing in a theatre, and this was not a theatre. This was part of life. That was quite plain. It came back at you from every single one of the people on the circular floor in front of Mr Mylchraine, in the double ring seats round him, in the encircling gallery behind. They each and every one were, not spectators of Mr Mylchraine’s performance, but people linked to him by bonds that were part of reality.

  Crowded, noisy and animated though the whole round room was, everybody in it was paying heed to the black-cloaked un-moving figure in the dominating president’s seat. The dancing couples danced side by side so as to face him. When people drank they lifted their drinking horns to him. Every word spoken loudly was said as if he might hear it. Every shrill laugh was ready to be stilled in an instant for him.

  That brooding figure was real enough. And yet so had been the man who had joked at John’s expense as he had sat in the little brown armchair that only just fitted his big body in the robing room.

  The drum beat on. The scratchy pipe played and played its new sharp tune. The dancers whirled more furiously. The twelve goat-figures stood at the edge of the floor looking glint-eyed at the scene in front of them as if they were waiting for their moment.

  And then one of the half-naked girl dancers ran suddenly forward, stopped in front of Mr Mylchraine’s chair, ripped away the skirt, which was all she wore, flung herself first backwards with arching torso and then forwards to kneel prostrate on the ground.