The Blue Field by John Moore

Author:John Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1971-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

The Patriarch

On that misty autumn evening ten years ago William was already beginning to hobble with the arthritis which was soon to cripple him; I doubt whether he ever managed to visit the Gormleys’ camp again. Perhaps they guessed that it was the last time, for they guessed so many things; and they waited upon him with special courtesies and even with a kind of awe, as if he were a prophet soon to be translated who had come among his people to take his farewell. When the meal was over there fell a long silence, and then one of the children piped up in a timid voice:

‘Father Hart! Father Hart!’ – for thus they addressed him, almost as if he were a priest – ‘Father Hart, tell us a tale!’

‘What tale do you want tonight?’ said William, by which I learned that he was in the habit of telling them tales.

Another child said timidly:

‘Tell us, please, how you came to our camp at midnight and cut the tents down!’

‘Tell us, tell us!’ cried all the other children. There is magic here, I thought: a legend is being born. Five centuries hence the gypsies will tell the fabulous tale round their fires. William then will be a giant twelve cubits tall.

‘Tell us how you pushed over the caravan and burned it with fire!’

‘Listen, then, my children,’ said William. ‘In those days I was more powerful than I am today. I simply leaned upon the caravan and it toppled over . . .’

I shut my eyes and listened in a sort of ecstasy, for it is not often that a man may be present at the very fountain-head of a fable where the crystal-clear source bubbles out of the ancient rock. Thus it begins, I thought: this is the eternal spring of stories which never fails, whence flowed the tale of Angoulaffre who leaned against the Tower of Pisa and made it crooked; of Roland who slew him; of Samson; of Ajax and Achilles; of Polyphemus and of Odysseus who laid him low; perhaps – who knows? – of Odin and great Jove.

‘And who came against you, Father Hart, when you had pushed over the caravan?’

‘Some dozen only. But leading them was your grandfather, little one, who was then in his prime, and he’d plucked a tent-pole out of the wreckage which he whirled round his head as if it were no bigger than a walking-stick . . .’

‘But you knocked him down, Father Hart?’

‘One blow; and then came three men together . . .’

So it went on until at last William had reached the door of the yellow caravan and was smashing it down. But there the story ended; for though I saw a young girl with a brown elf’s face, eager and beautiful in the flickering firelight, part her lips to ask a question, and I guessed what the question was going to be, an old woman at that moment stretched out her hand and laid it on the

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