On M. R. James:
"An Evening's Entertainment" —

a pretense by rbadac

   

August 1st is M.R. James' birthday, though we hardly need an excuse around here to bring him up. After all this time we're still wondering exactly what is meant by the phrase "rawhead & bloody bones," though we've had the benefit of an additional three generations or so since James asked the question in "An Evening's Entertainment," wherein he also gives us a possible scenario of such a tale's dissemination.

Tales told in dialogue, like this one, are tricky at best, but James was also famous for mimicry among his friends, & often amused them with his renditions of rural characters. This shows in his other stories as well, one or another horrible event often being commented on by the gardener or the charwoman or some other local or hired hand, in tones meant both to amuse & to provide adumbrations of dread in commonplace observation.

In "An Evening's Entertainment" Grandmother tells the Squire's children, Charles & Fanny, a story to explain why they shouldn't go blackberrying in a particular lane near their house. The children are all ears of course, & Grandmother gives them a whopper that could have come right out of E.F. Benson. But blackberries come from the store now, & who tells stories round the hearth these days? We've got television, more's the pity. The exchange described in James' tale would hardly fare in a modern setting. Or would it? Let's take a look in one such modern home, & pretend that Grandmother, Charles, & Fanny are still about in some form, though their precise parameters may be a bit different...

CHARLES: Grandma, Daddy didn't pay the cable bill again, & now it's cut off. I'm gonna miss my Pokemon special.

GRANDMA: Sssshhhh, dear, don't wake your daddy. Look, he's so exhausted from his second job at the convenience store he forgot to take off his bulletproof vest.

FANNY: I wanna watch Disney! Where's the VCR?

GRANDMA: Oh Fanny, Daddy had to pawn it. You know how he gets when he's been drinking spot remover.

CHARLES: This sucks. What are we supposed to do?

FANNY: I hate Daddy!

GRANDMA: Please don't make so much noise, children. How about if I tell you a scary story?

FANNY: It couldn't be any scarier than living here.

CHARLES: Give me a break, Grandma. I've seen stuff that would make you keel over with a coronary. I go to public school.

GRANDMA: Don't be so sure, Mr Smarty Pants. I could tell you the story about Mike McGregor who used to live here before we did. He used to lure little children just like you two into the house, then cut them almost in half to get at their guts, & when he got finished with them he would throw their little bodies over the telephone wires where they would hang like pairs of old shoes until they rotted or the birds made nests of them.

CHARLES: Grandma, you are so full of crap.

DADDY (mumbling): Wha... no, please don't shoot, all I've got is what's in the cash drawer... huh? Oh, hi, kids.

FANNY: Daddy, you're a doo doo head.

GRANDMA: Never mind them, John, just go back to sleep. Now where was I? Oh yes. Now here's a story you'll like. It's about a Mr Davis who used to stay in the cottage that stood at the end of the lane that runs by the Collinses. He was a strange one, he was. Never went out much, & never associated with anyone else in the neighborhood. But he had to eat of course, so he was seen going to the market on occasion. One day he came back from the market with a young man he had met, whom no one around here had ever seen before. Well, the next thing you know, that young man had moved in with Mr Davis, & from then on those two could be seen together constantly, taking walks & such in the evenings in the woods back of here, & out on the downs, & up on the hillside there where the old figure is cut in the turf.

CHARLES: Were they gay?

GRANDMA: Um, I don't know. Maybe. Now it seems my father (your great- grandfather) had cause to speak to this Mr Davis once, & he asked him why he & his young friend liked to go up on the downs so much at night. That young man piped up & allowed that he & Mr Davis were bloody great pagans who were for ripping open the barrows & releasing a horde of evil barbarian spirits upon the world, & some more in that vein, until Mr Davis fetched him upside the head with a big rock & knocked him cold as a flounder. "Don't pay him no mind, sir," he says to my father, "He's just young & incredibly stupid," he says, & I don't know as my old Dad didn't half agree with him on the subject, for he says he thought no more about it at the time. So that's where matters stood, until one morning a woodsman gone to work early thought he saw something like a white shape in the trees beyond where he was. After some consideration he finally went there & found Mr Davis' young man hanging by his neck from the biggest oak in the clearing. He was dressed in a kind of white gown like a surplice, & lying near him was an axe, all sticky & covered with blood & gore & shreds of raw meat, & dangling purple strands of organs, & bits of yellow-looking stuff that might have been fatty tissue, & little pieces of bone sticking up out of it all.

FANNY: Eeeeeuuuuwwwwww.

CHARLES: Cool!

GRANDMA: Yes, it was. Anyway, they fetched some more men to help cut him down, & put his body across a horse to bring it back (the horse didn't like that at all), & they went looking for Mr Davis, for who else was likely to know what it was all about? They found him, all right; when they got to his cottage the horse reared up & kicked the man leading him into the middle of next week, dumped the young man's body onto the ground, & ran like the gelders were after it. There was nothing to do but bring the young man's body into the cottage then, & that's what they did, but when they got inside there was already a body on the table before them. It was Mr Davis', & he was in a fair old mess. He looked as if Red Indians had been trying to make a dugout canoe out of him. Why, Mr White, who was what you might call the hard sort, went out in the garden & tossed his breakfast in the geraniums.

After everyone had calmed down a bit, they made up a couple of black boxes in a hurry to put those two in, & they carried them outside of town to the crossroads & pitched 'em in a pit they had dug for that purpose. Some of the men tried to spit in the grave before they covered it up, but their spit wouldn't come all the way out of their mouths, & finally they were led away, all chagrined, & looking like they had the distemper. Later on, my father was passing the lane where he saw a few people standing around looking very distressed. When he asked them what the matter was, they pointed at spots on the road where the blood had sloshed out of Mr Davis & fallen to the ground, & now was covered by nasty black flies. He sent for the sexton with a shovel & a hand-barrow full of dirt to cover them up, but when the sexton threw the first shovelful on, the flies rose up in a solid black cloud & hovered there in the air, & the same at the other places he did. The sexton turned to my father & said, "It's Beelze — " & the flies all surrounded him like he was a marzipan dropped in the dust, til he looked less like a man & more like a dark shrubbery clipped in the shape of one, & they picked him up & carried him off, screaming, much to my father's relief, who never did take to him anyway.

Well, that was the last straw. Father threw his cigar in the thatch roof of the cottage & it went up straightaway in a huge blaze, & everybody made toast. After that, no one ever went round there again, except to steal bricks from the chimney & sell them to the tourists. Once your grandfather & me wandered up there accidentally when we was courting, & I got bit by some awful insect & my arm swelled up the size of my leg & turned all black, & your grandfather tried to get me to join the circus.

FANNY: Did you?

GRANDMA: Don't be impertinent. Your grandfather tried to get me to do a lot of things. Now run off to bed, the both of you.


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