The van, which was labeled Modway Television, chugged up a long, steep hill, slipped thankfully into top gear, and ran down through fringes of beechwood bordering a small star-shaped valley which lay sunk in the top of the downs. Presently the trees ended and sunny curves of cowslip-studded grass began; ahead, clustered elms half revealed a few grey stone roofs.
“This ought to be it,” Andrew said, looking at his map. “There’s a village green; that’d be the best place to leave the van. I’ll take the mike and you bring the camera, Tod, and we’ll wander.”
“What shall I do?” asked Bill, the van driver.
“Find the pub and get their recipe for cowslip wine. It’s a speciality of the place.”
“That’ll suit me fine.”
Among the elms grouped in pairs through the village there were also lime trees, and the scent of lime blossom plus cowslip meadow was almost overpowering. The village drowsed in it; a solitary dog barked, a cuckoo called, nobody was about in the street or on the green.
“Quiet sort of place,” Bill said, mopping his forehead. He parked the van on the grass verge and walked off towards the inn, the Fan-tailed Pheasant, pausing incredulously to stare at the sign. It depicted a pheasant with a most improbable tail, two feathers curved like a pair of washing-tongs.
Andrew picked up his microphone and looked about for material. A rhythmic thudding drew his eyes in the direction of a low wall. Beyond it lay a paddock shaded by walnut trees where a girl in shirt and jeans was schooling a pony. When the two men approached a wicket gate in the wall and stood by it, the rider trotted towards them inquiringly.
“Very photogenic,” murmured Tod as his camera whirred. The girl was black-haired and her grey eyes seemed to reflect all the light from the sky; she was rather pale and had a long, graceful neck.
“Can I do something for you gentlemen?” she asked, dismounting from her pony.
“Excuse our troubling you—is this Midsummer Village?” Andrew asked.
“Certainly. Where else could it be?”
“You live here?”
“All my life, of course.”
“Do you know that the village is up for sale, that the Trust which owns it is obliged to raise money by selling off this parcel of land?”
“Of course. Everybody in the village knows.”
“And that the highest bid has come from Carrock, the millionaire, who has announced his intention, if he gets it, of turning it into a garden city?”
“Yes?” Her luminous eyes turned each of her responses to a question.
“Are you at all perturbed about this?” Andrew asked, slightly impatient at her lack of reaction.
“Perturbed.” She turned the word over in her mind. “If I were at all perturbed,” she said at last, “it would be for the man—Carrock. He is trying to buy a dream. He is bound to be disappointed.”
Her pony tossed its head and snorted. She dropped the reins on its neck and let it go free.
“Of course you are familiar with the legend of Midsummer Village—that it is so beautiful it exists for only three days each year?”
“You were lucky in picking your day to come here, weren’t you?” she said, and smiled slightly. He heard a little grunt of satisfaction, or anguish, from Tod with the camera.
“There must be some tale in the village to account for this belief,” Andrew said. “Can you tell us?”
She leaned against the wall twirling a walnut leaf.
“Certainly. It originated in the eighteenth century when Morpurgo, the Poet Laureate, came to live here. He had been a fine poet, but by the time he became Laureate he was an old man. He slept all the year round and woke only for three days in the summer to compose an ode for the queen’s birthday and earn his tun of wine. He had been crossed in love—in his youth he wanted to marry a beautiful girl called Laura who was so devoted to her twin brother that she had sworn she would never take a husband. Some say Morpurgo slept all year to forget his unappeasable grief. He was struck by lightning one summer day in his garden and died in his sleep.”
“Did he never marry?”
“Oh yes, he married,” the girl said rather scornfully. “He married a woman called Edith, a farmer’s daughter thirty years younger than himself. As she had a smattering of witchcraft—nearly everyone knew a bit about it in those days—the tale goes that she put a spell on the whole place, that it should come alive only for three days every summer while Morpurgo was awake, writing his poem.”
“Sleeping Beauty stuff,” Tod muttered.
“And that is the legend of Midsummer Village?”
“That’s the legend,” the girl said, twirling her leaf. Then she threw it aside and clucked to the pony, which came to her willingly.
“Well, thank you very much,” Andrew said, and they left her to her schooling, though both men looked back at her several times.
“Now who?” said Tod.
“Here’s an old boy; looks like the squire.”
An elderly man, upright, tall, and grey-headed, was approaching them.
“Might I trouble you for a few moments, sir?” Andrew inquired.
“By all means,” said the man, though he gazed with a certain dislike at the camera and microphone.
“It’s about this sale of Midsummer Village—have you any views on the matter, sir?”
“Naturally I have views,” the elderly man said disdainfully, “though I doubt if they are of interest to the community at large. If this person, Carrock, who has the impertinent intention of buying our home, should care to pay us the common courtesy of a visit before completing his purchase, I shall be delighted to give him my views.”
“Of course you are familiar with the legend of Midsummer Village?”
“Of course I am,” the man said more graciously. “I shall relate it to you. It concerns a beautiful girl, the daughter of a farmer here in the valley. Both her parents died when she was in her teens, and she ran the farm single-handed.”
“When did all this take place, excuse me, sir?”
“In the reign of Henry VIII. The girl, Edith, her name was, made a success of the farm. Her neighbours said the ghost of her father drifted beside her constantly, advising and instructing. No doubt he felt it was the least he could do, as he had made her promise not to marry.”
“Why?”
“He came of a very old family, descended from the Danes, and he couldn’t bear that the last of the line should change her name. He held her to her promise, though she was in love with a young man in the village. You can’t argue with a ghost. She stayed single. She was famous for her butter and eggs, and her fine pigs and her cowslip wine. In any case it is doubtful if the man would have married her—he was considerably above her in birth and had a twin sister to whom he was very devoted.”
“What became of the farmer’s daughter?”
“In the end, oddly enough, a man came to live in the village who bore the same name as her father—and so, though she didn’t love this man, she married him.”
“Was he a poet?”
“I am hardly qualified to pronounce on that,” the elderly man said fastidiously. “On her deathbed, after many years of married life—she was struck by lightning one summer day and died shortly after—it is said that Edith cried out: ‘I have been alive only on three days in my life: the day I met him, the day he kissed me, and the day I lost him.’ She was not referring to her husband. Since then, according to legend, the village exists for three days only in every year.”
He looked round complacently at the lichened roofs and the towering elms. Grey cloud had begun to cover the sky, but on the village the sunlight still lay like concentrated gold.
“That’s a most interesting tale, thank you, sir,” Andrew said. The elderly man inclined his head slightly as they moved off with their equipment, and then he took a notebook from his pocket and strolled away, writing in it.
“Now who?” said Tod.
A woman was coming towards them. She carried a large basket of cowslips, and their colour was reflected in her massive coil of yellow hair.
She smiled at them in a friendly way and asked if she could help them, in a voice soothing and agreeable as the warmth from a baker’s oven.
“We wondered if you’d care to give us your views on the sale of Midsummer Village?” Andrew said.
“Well, yon Carrock’s on a fool’s errand, isn’t he?” she said, and laughed.
“Are you familiar with the legend of the village?”
“Of course,” she said. “We’re all brought up on it. My father used to tell it to me when I was a little thing. There was this young chap, Samuel Cutaway, oh, way back in the time of Henry the Seventh, he was to have been a monk but they dissolved the monasteries. Samuel fell in love with a farmer’s daughter, but she hadn’t any time for him. On account of this he went voyaging off with some of those early explorers and came back at the end of seven years with a pocket full of gold and a foreign bird. He became parish priest of the village here. He was a philosopher, he used to write essays. When he first heard the bird, in Africa it was, or maybe Australia, the song of it so bewitched him that he said while a man was listening to it he could explain the whole riddle of the universe. He brought the bird back with him. Some say it was a lyre bird, others a hoopoe.”
“So did he explain the riddle of the universe?”
“He never got the chance,” she said laughing. “The bird wouldn’t sing in this cold climate, or only for the three hottest days every summer. Samuel took to drink, a gallon of cowslip wine every day in memory of the farmer’s daughter who’d slighted him. And with every glass he drank he declared he would have been the greatest mind of his age if only the bird could be made to sing all the year round. So they say the village only exists now on the three days in summer when the bird would sing and he was listening to it and finding his answer to the riddle of the universe. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I must leave you now, I have to meet a friend.”
“Thank you for your story,” Andrew called after her as she hurried away.
“Here’s the vicar,” Tod muttered in his ear. “He’s sure to be full of opinions.” The vicar was a spare-looking man with a thin mouth, who gazed at them in faint disapproval while Andrew explained the reason for their presence.
“Have you any views on the sale of Midsummer Village, sir?”
“I? Views? Certainly. The Trust have no right to sell, Carrock has no right to buy. You should not sell times, or lives, or seasons.”
“And the legend of the village—you know it, sir?”
“Naturally. It concerns a brother and sister who lived here in the reign of Charles the First.”
“Twins?”
“Yes, twins. You know the tale?” the vicar said sharply.
But Andrew merely looked attentive, and so the vicar told his story. “This pair, Laura and Esmond Fitzroy, were so devoted to one another that they swore never to marry. But Esmond had a scientific bent and became more and more engrossed in studies until at last he retired to live in a tower—you may see it over there—” The vicar gestured towards a crumbling grey ruin among the beech woods. “His was a mind far in advance of his age. He achieved early discoveries in the uses of electricity, could make copper wires glow by magic, according to contemporary reports, and had a metal mast affixed to the roof of his tower, down which he received mysterious messages from celestial regions. The sister became jealous because he neglected her for his research—she was not intelligent, poor thing, merely had a talent for taming animals—so she put it about that he was in league with the devil. The villagers besieged him in his tower. He kept them at bay for three days—during which time he said he was receiving messages from on high telling him how to preserve the village for ever—and before they managed to drag him out there was a violent storm, and the tower was hit by lightning. Esmond, was killed and everybody said it was a judgment.”
“What became of the sister? You said her name was Laura?”
“Oh, she married.” The vicar dismissed her with brief contempt. “The legend goes that, out of revenge for his sister’s betrayal, Esmond caused the village to disappear, and return for three days only each summer.”
“That is extremely interesting, and thank you, sir,” Andrew said.
“Glad to be of service.” The vicar gave Andrew his card which was inscribed The Rev. S. E. Cutaway.
They left him and went along to drink cowslip wine at the Fan-Tailed Pheasant, where Bill was already enwreathed in more than a breathalyser’s bouquet.
Coming out half an hour later they saw the fair-haired woman whom they had already met strolling towards them deep in conversation with a man in postman’s uniform. She waved to them and, when they were within speaking distance, called:
“I forgot to tell you that he married.”
“Who did? The philosopher with the singing bird?”
“Yes. He married, late in life, a girl who became so annoyed with his excuse of not being able to write unless the bird was singing that she swore she’d train it to sing all the time. She did, too. She had a way with animals.”
“I suppose she also had a twin brother who died?”
“That’s right, love. Well, I must be getting along to make my hubby’s dinner. Good-bye Esmond, dear,” said the fair-haired woman. She smiled at the postman and they kissed; she walked swiftly through a pair of large iron gates leading to a house among trees.
“And do you believe that this village exists on three days only each summer?” Andrew asked.
The postman, who was young and black-haired, grinned at him mockingly.
“I’d have an easy job if that was so, wouldn’t I?” he said.
“But what do you think?”
“I’m not paid to think. I finished with thinking a long time ago.”
With a casual flip of his hand, the postman walked off towards a small combined village store and sub-post-office.
“Well? What did my brother have to say?”
Andrew turned at the voice and saw the girl they had interviewed first.
“Have they told you some good stories?” she asked teasingly. “Shall you have to come back, do you think?”
“I—I’d like to,” Andrew began uncertainly.
“Next time you come I’ll show you my house, and my pets. But you have to pick your day, remember! Now I must hurry—there’s going to be a storm.”
“She’s right,” Tod said when she left them. “We’d best load up quick.”
Andrew turned to look at the girl, who was entering a gate halfway along the village street. She waved her hand.
“Careful with the driving Bill,” Tod said. “You’re on the wrong side.”
“Someone’s greased the steering,” Bill grumbled. “Listen: Don’t they half have some songbirds in this village! What’s that—a nightingale?”
“They sing louder when there’s a storm on the way.”
The van wove precariously along the village.
They were about half a mile beyond the last house, entering the beech woods, when lightning struck the bonnet.
When Andrew next opened his eyes, he was in a hospital bed, with a drip-feed attached to his arm.
“Are the others all right?” he asked, as soon as he was able to speak.
“Shock and concussion, that’s all. You were all three lucky, considering the state of the van. Now, here’s your father to see you, Mr Carrock—but he mustn’t stay more than a few moments.”
His father looked, as usual, prosperous, portly, and puzzled.
“Can’t think why you have to gad about the country doing this ridiculous TV job,” he grumbled. “If only you’d settle down and help me with the business, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen. What’s the matter with you—can’t I give you everything you could possibly want?”
“Not quite,” Andrew said, and smiled at his father weakly. “Listen, Father—about that village you want to buy—can’t I persuade you to change your mind?”
“Why?”
“It isn’t the sort of place that ought to be bought.”
“Matter of fact,” said his father, “I don’t need any persuading. Went to take a look at it—nothing there but a dip in the downs, some fields, and a lot of sheep. No houses. Not even ruins! Godforsaken spot. Forgotten all about it till you brought it up. Now, make haste and get better, my boy.”
He gave his son an awkward, affectionate pat and hurried out.
Andrew lay thinking about a pair of luminous grey eyes.
“I wonder which story was the true one?” he mused. “I must ask Tod what he thinks.”
But Tod and Bill had no theories to offer. Shock and concussion had taken away their memory of all events before the crash, and both of them persisted in declaring that they had never discovered the village at all.