Mistletoe

Christopher and Mary were looking for a place to have a picnic, not for a house, when they drove down the overgrown lane. It was that most perfect time of early summer when the trees have their full clothing of leaves but when their green is still tinged with lightness, before the colour darkens into the sober viridian of maturity. And it was one of those most perfect days, warm and scented, that generally seem to exist only in people’s memories of their childhood… They left the car at a point where the lane conveniently widened, and continued on foot. There was perfect peace: far above them a lark was singing, in the distance a dog barked, and close at hand bees buzzed in the hedge that bordered the lane. They turned the corner and came on the house suddenly. Had they first seen it in winter, with the bare boughs of the overgrown trees moaning and the rain dripping through the dilapidated roof on to the bedroom floors, or the damp rising merciless and chill through the stone flags of the kitchen floor, then perhaps they would not have fallen in love with the house instantly. “We must,” said Christopher, and “Yes,” said Mary… And so the house was bought.

Mistle House it was called locally, they discovered, although its official name was the Dower House. The agent had long considered it to be a white elephant unlikely to sell. It was too small to be converted easily into what the latest jargon called a country house hotel, and far too large for most people to consider it as a family house. It was in any case too far gone in decay for anyone with any sense to want to have anything to do with it, and had been empty and unloved for close on 25 years, owned by the faceless and all but anonymous heirs of the heirs of its last resident. But Christopher and Mary either had little sense or were too incurably romantic to allow sense any say in the matter. They determined to make the house weatherproof – to repair the roof and so on – and then move in and restore it slowly. There was a walled kitchen garden, though now overrun with thistles and brambles, and beyond it an apple orchard full of old gnarled trees. Mary had fantasies of a warm kitchen, with home-made bread baking in the oven to be spread with home-made blackberry and apple jam for tea, and Christopher dreamed of making their own cider. They had as yet no children, but both felt that as soon as the house was a little more comfortable it would be an excellent time for starting a family.

The house was glad to be bought and to have new life breathed into it. Builders and plumbers and electricians swarmed over it, giving a marked shock to its system, but by the following spring they were gone and Christopher and Mary moved in with their big black and white cat Hodge. The house felt more familiar with the chamber music that Christopher played than with the builders’ insistent transistor radio. By day the sun shone – for that year there was an exceptionally mild spring – and at night the moonlight bathed the apple trees and the old timbers of the house creaked as they settled in the unfamiliar warmth of central heating and waited to see what would happen next.

Necessarily Christopher and Mary were devoting most of their attention to the house, although they had called in a tree surgeon to deal with the oldest and largest trees and had borrowed a local farmer’s pigs to root and grub and clear the kitchen garden. They had also had the waist-high grass in the apple orchard scythed; their visions of jam and cider and apple tart were somewhat dashed when the tree surgeon took time off from his work on an ancient elm to tell them that the apple trees were too old to bear much fruit and should really be replaced. Nevertheless, they decided to leave them for the time being and were rewarded by such a profusion of apple blossom that they began to hope again. The pig farmer had whistled when he delivered his pigs to the garden. “You’re disturbing the ghosts good and proper then, aren’t you?” was all he said. Mary, who was a bit defensive at that point, having heard much criticism and frightening tales from family and friends and knowing that the bank manager had expressed himself quite strongly on the need for caution, took this as further evidence that no one really approved of their endeavour. In fact the farmer, who was a man of few words, meant it literally, for it was widely believed locally that the house was haunted.

Hodge saw ghosts perhaps. At any rate this was what Christopher and Mary said jokingly when he would suddenly wake from his sleep with a jolt and arch his back and bristle like a bottle-brush, staring defiantly at nothing and growling quietly. It would not have occurred to either of them to have believed in ghosts or haunted houses. Just as well, perhaps, for Mary was alone in the house for long periods of time while Christopher was out at work; an old house is never quite silent, but constantly emits soft sighs or faint whispering groans, so that if Mary had been of a nervous disposition she might have felt uncomfortable on her own. As it was, she was busy painting walls and stripping ugly varnish off the wooden floors – and at night both she and Christopher slept soundly.

Several times from the window she had seen a child or children in the orchard beyond the kitchen garden, but each time when she went outside they were gone. She told Christopher, who agreed that adult trespassers would be another matter but that the local children had probably been accustomed to playing in the orchard during all the years that Mistle House had been empty and were not doing any harm, so that it would be mean-spirited to chase them away. Mary wished, though, that they would not disappear when she approached. And she hoped that they would not pick the small crop of apples that in spite of the tree man’s scepticism were gradually ripening on the trees throughout the summer. Usually the children came in the afternoon and were gone before dark, but one night when Christopher was working late Mary looked out of the window as she pulled the curtains and saw a small figure sitting on a branch of one of the apple trees in the light of the full moon, with Hodge sitting on another branch watching. Mary slipped out quietly. “What are you doing?” she called as she moved into the orchard, and then, afraid that this sounded too aggressive, “Please don’t pick our apples!” The child was a boy, aged about ten, with a freckled face that looked bleached and greenish under the moonlight and surprisingly ragged clothes. “I’m not picking your apples, ma’am,” he said, “I’m planting moon seed. Moonlight is the best time for planting moon seed”. And he jumped down from the tree. “Don’t go,” Mary called, “what’s your name? Come inside and have some tea…“, but, “I’ve got to go now, ma’am,” said the boy and slipped off into the shadows. Hodge growled faintly. Mary felt somehow puzzled by the encounter, but if asked she would have been quite clear that the boy was a flesh and blood child and not a ghost.

The whole concept of ghosts is indeed rather odd, isn’t it? For why should the dead walk? Or is it only those who have died violently that walk? Any house that is more than a hundred years old will have seen its fair share of unhappiness as well as happiness, and probably some untimely deaths: why then should we think that this will be somehow impregnated in the fabric of the house in the form of a haunting? Mistle House was no exception. It had seen old age and loneliness, a grandmother grieving over the deaths of all her five grandchildren in the space of a month when diphtheria raged over the countryside, a widower with tears running silently down his face as he watched his wife laid in her coffin with her dead infant in her arms, a woman standing at the window tearless twisting and crumpling the telegram saying “killed in action”… It had also seen family quarrels, hurt feelings, love, unlove, cruelty, tenderness, happy family meals and Christmas parties with kissing under the mistletoe and a great fire roaring in the fireplace. So perhaps we could say that it was no more haunted and no less haunted than any other old house.

To get back to Christopher and Mary. The weeks passed. Summer turned into autumn. The ground floor of the house was finished. The kitchen, which both had agreed was a priority, was now a warm and welcoming space. The stone flags of the floor were sealed and covered with rugs, the kitchen table found in an outhouse had been scrubbed and sanded, there was a pink geranium in a brass pot in front of the window and Hodge had a new blue and white cushion in his basket in the warmest corner by the stove. Mary baked bread regularly.

By Christmas Mary had got to know by sight most of the children who lived locally, but she never saw the moonlit boy again. She and Christopher decided to give a Christmas party as a house-warming for all their friends. She baked and cooked and gathered holly from the woods. She had just decided that they ought to have a kissing bough of mistletoe over the door when Christopher came in carrying a large bunch of it. “It’s a funny thing”, he said, “I found this growing on one of the apple trees – I’d never noticed it till now”. They looked at each other. “Moon seed,” they said in unison. The old house basked in the warmth of their happiness like a cat in front of the fire.

© Petrie Harbouri 2018

A house really needs to be lived in. It is not just a question of preserving the physical fabric – heating it to keep out the damp and so on – but also a question of keeping what for want of a better word I have to call the spiritual life of the house going. By definition, a house is conceived of and built to contain life; a house needs voices and music, food cooked and eaten, children playing, old people remembering, a cat sitting on a sunny windowsill. And nothing is more forlorn than an abandoned house, even if it is still in fairly good repair. Don’t you agree?

Christopher and Mary were looking for a place to have a picnic, not for a house, when they drove down the overgrown lane. It was that most perfect time of early summer when the trees have their full clothing of leaves but when their green is still tinged with lightness, before the colour darkens into the sober viridian of maturity. And it was one of those most perfect days, warm and scented, that generally seem to exist only in people’s memories of their childhood… They left the car at a point where the lane conveniently widened, and continued on foot. There was perfect peace: far above them a lark was singing, in the distance a dog barked, and close at hand bees buzzed in the hedge that bordered the lane. They turned the corner and came on the house suddenly. Had they first seen it in winter, with the bare boughs of the overgrown trees moaning and the rain dripping through the dilapidated roof on to the bedroom floors, or the damp rising merciless and chill through the stone flags of the kitchen floor, then perhaps they would not have fallen in love with the house instantly. “We must,” said Christopher, and “Yes,” said Mary… And so the house was bought.

Mistle House it was called locally, they discovered, although its official name was the Dower House. The agent had long considered it to be a white elephant unlikely to sell. It was too small to be converted easily into what the latest jargon called a country house hotel, and far too large for most people to consider it as a family house. It was in any case too far gone in decay for anyone with any sense to want to have anything to do with it, and had been empty and unloved for close on 25 years, owned by the faceless and all but anonymous heirs of the heirs of its last resident. But Christopher and Mary either had little sense or were too incurably romantic to allow sense any say in the matter. They determined to make the house weatherproof – to repair the roof and so on – and then move in and restore it slowly. There was a walled kitchen garden, though now overrun with thistles and brambles, and beyond it an apple orchard full of old gnarled trees. Mary had fantasies of a warm kitchen, with home-made bread baking in the oven to be spread with home-made blackberry and apple jam for tea, and Christopher dreamed of making their own cider. They had as yet no children, but both felt that as soon as the house was a little more comfortable it would be an excellent time for starting a family.

The house was glad to be bought and to have new life breathed into it. Builders and plumbers and electricians swarmed over it, giving a marked shock to its system, but by the following spring they were gone and Christopher and Mary moved in with their big black and white cat Hodge. The house felt more familiar with the chamber music that Christopher played than with the builders’ insistent transistor radio. By day the sun shone – for that year there was an exceptionally mild spring – and at night the moonlight bathed the apple trees and the old timbers of the house creaked as they settled in the unfamiliar warmth of central heating and waited to see what would happen next.

Necessarily Christopher and Mary were devoting most of their attention to the house, although they had called in a tree surgeon to deal with the oldest and largest trees and had borrowed a local farmer’s pigs to root and grub and clear the kitchen garden. They had also had the waist-high grass in the apple orchard scythed; their visions of jam and cider and apple tart were somewhat dashed when the tree surgeon took time off from his work on an ancient elm to tell them that the apple trees were too old to bear much fruit and should really be replaced. Nevertheless, they decided to leave them for the time being and were rewarded by such a profusion of apple blossom that they began to hope again. The pig farmer had whistled when he delivered his pigs to the garden. “You’re disturbing the ghosts good and proper then, aren’t you?” was all he said. Mary, who was a bit defensive at that point, having heard much criticism and frightening tales from family and friends and knowing that the bank manager had expressed himself quite strongly on the need for caution, took this as further evidence that no one really approved of their endeavour. In fact the farmer, who was a man of few words, meant it literally, for it was widely believed locally that the house was haunted.

Hodge saw ghosts perhaps. At any rate this was what Christopher and Mary said jokingly when he would suddenly wake from his sleep with a jolt and arch his back and bristle like a bottle-brush, staring defiantly at nothing and growling quietly. It would not have occurred to either of them to have believed in ghosts or haunted houses. Just as well, perhaps, for Mary was alone in the house for long periods of time while Christopher was out at work; an old house is never quite silent, but constantly emits soft sighs or faint whispering groans, so that if Mary had been of a nervous disposition she might have felt uncomfortable on her own. As it was, she was busy painting walls and stripping ugly varnish off the wooden floors – and at night both she and Christopher slept soundly.

Several times from the window she had seen a child or children in the orchard beyond the kitchen garden, but each time when she went outside they were gone. She told Christopher, who agreed that adult trespassers would be another matter but that the local children had probably been accustomed to playing in the orchard during all the years that Mistle House had been empty and were not doing any harm, so that it would be mean-spirited to chase them away. Mary wished, though, that they would not disappear when she approached. And she hoped that they would not pick the small crop of apples that in spite of the tree man’s scepticism were gradually ripening on the trees throughout the summer. Usually the children came in the afternoon and were gone before dark, but one night when Christopher was working late Mary looked out of the window as she pulled the curtains and saw a small figure sitting on a branch of one of the apple trees in the light of the full moon, with Hodge sitting on another branch watching. Mary slipped out quietly. “What are you doing?” she called as she moved into the orchard, and then, afraid that this sounded too aggressive, “Please don’t pick our apples!” The child was a boy, aged about ten, with a freckled face that looked bleached and greenish under the moonlight and surprisingly ragged clothes. “I’m not picking your apples, ma’am,” he said, “I’m planting moon seed. Moonlight is the best time for planting moon seed”. And he jumped down from the tree. “Don’t go,” Mary called, “what’s your name? Come inside and have some tea…“, but, “I’ve got to go now, ma’am,” said the boy and slipped off into the shadows. Hodge growled faintly. Mary felt somehow puzzled by the encounter, but if asked she would have been quite clear that the boy was a flesh and blood child and not a ghost.

The whole concept of ghosts is indeed rather odd, isn’t it? For why should the dead walk? Or is it only those who have died violently that walk? Any house that is more than a hundred years old will have seen its fair share of unhappiness as well as happiness, and probably some untimely deaths: why then should we think that this will be somehow impregnated in the fabric of the house in the form of a haunting? Mistle House was no exception. It had seen old age and loneliness, a grandmother grieving over the deaths of all her five grandchildren in the space of a month when diphtheria raged over the countryside, a widower with tears running silently down his face as he watched his wife laid in her coffin with her dead infant in her arms, a woman standing at the window tearless twisting and crumpling the telegram saying “killed in action”… It had also seen family quarrels, hurt feelings, love, unlove, cruelty, tenderness, happy family meals and Christmas parties with kissing under the mistletoe and a great fire roaring in the fireplace. So perhaps we could say that it was no more haunted and no less haunted than any other old house.

To get back to Christopher and Mary. The weeks passed. Summer turned into autumn. The ground floor of the house was finished. The kitchen, which both had agreed was a priority, was now a warm and welcoming space. The stone flags of the floor were sealed and covered with rugs, the kitchen table found in an outhouse had been scrubbed and sanded, there was a pink geranium in a brass pot in front of the window and Hodge had a new blue and white cushion in his basket in the warmest corner by the stove. Mary baked bread regularly.

By Christmas Mary had got to know by sight most of the children who lived locally, but she never saw the moonlit boy again. She and Christopher decided to give a Christmas party as a house-warming for all their friends. She baked and cooked and gathered holly from the woods. She had just decided that they ought to have a kissing bough of mistletoe over the door when Christopher came in carrying a large bunch of it. “It’s a funny thing”, he said, “I found this growing on one of the apple trees – I’d never noticed it till now”. They looked at each other. “Moon seed,” they said in unison. The old house basked in the warmth of their happiness like a cat in front of the fire.

© Petrie Harbouri 2018

Narrated by Erin Standlee.

POST RECITAL

TALK

TN: This is a ghost story and yet not a ghost story. The opposites being linked by ambiguity.

BR: The key factor is the house. Houses are prominent in ghost stories.

TN: Yeah. The house is an old symbol... of a very deep human need for protection against the elements and savage animals and other human predators. The house, or some kind of shelter, is necessary for survival. That’s why it’s such an important symbol.

BR: And of course the structures we build often outlive us, which provides all kinds of opportunities to imagine the lives of previous inhabitants. As she says in the story — “Any house that is more than a hundred years old will have seen its fair share of unhappiness as well as happiness...”

TN: The fascination with the unknown is a powerful thing. The people pass through but the building remains. And with the unknown there is the potential for fear, which is why perhaps ghost stories are more concerned with unhappiness than happiness. Who ever heard of a happy ghost?

BR: Right. But in my childhood there was Casper the Friendly Ghost.

TN: Oh yeah. We got that too.

BR: He was sweet and kind -- a total misfit in ghost society. A fiction within a fiction, you might say. But yes, ghosts are generally considered to be unhappy, and I'd say there’s a religious element to that. Ghosts are viewed as the restless spirits of wicked people, or maybe driven by revenge to be cruel. Definitely unholy things. Maybe they're being punished by being lost in some dark dimension of the afterlife, stumbling through purgatory, trapped in time. And the church could use their scariness to keep people in line.

TN: But ghosts transcend religions. Every culture is riddled with them. But they seem to hang around in buildings. There was a BBC television play from 1972 called The Stone Tape, which I highly recommend. It was really quite frightening. You know if you haven't seen it you should... if you can find it, you should watch it.

BR: I've never even heard of it.

TN: Yeah. Well, it was really scary, which is why I’ve never forgotten it. The premise is “residual haunting — ghosts are recordings of natural events made by the environment”. And that's what’s implied in this story perhaps. Though if this house is haunted and the “Moon Seed” boy and the other children are indeed apparitions from another world, they are completely benign and not at all frightening.

BR: Yeah, I think the story is talking about the continuity of life as represented by an old house. And also the inexplicable and rather wondrous strangeness of the world. It’s not an out and out ghost story.

TN: But what about the mistletoe? It’s the title of the story and also its culmination. It must have some significance.

BR: Yeah, yeah. Our culture's attachment of mistletoe to Christmas and kissing seems like a shallowization -- is that a word?

TN: No.

BR: Well it is now – a shallowization of ancient pagan myths about love and fertility. The story that's stuck with me ever since I was a kid was from Norse mythology. The goddess Frigg loved her beautiful son Baldur, and so did everybody else. But there was a prophecy of his doom. So Frigg went to everything in the world one by one, and got their promise to never hurt him. Except she skipped the mistletoe, which was tiny and had no roots in the ground, so it must be harmless. But that nasty jealous god Loki made a dart out of mistletoe and helped Baldur's blind twin brother shoot him with it.

TN: Hmm, clever bastard.

BR: There's no escaping prophecy. And then there were the Druids -- they had their own myths about mistletoe. But you should know that. Didn’t you tell me once that you’re descended from Druids?

TN: Did I? Well... I've said all kinds of things. But I certainly don't understand the significance the druids gave to mistletoe. I don't think anyone does, they didn't write things down. It's a parasite. Maybe that has something to do with it. Is there any symbiosis with the host plant? I'm not sure...

BR: Yeah. I'm not sure either.

TN: But back to ghosts though, and the idea of events being recorded on the environment -- I’ve often wished I was able to see all the footprints that people have left on the planet.

BR: Wow yeah.

TN: Sometimes we hear of the discovery of ancient footprints imprinted in the mud of some African landscape. Imagine if you could see them all. It would be a visual cacophony.

BR: Yeah, yeah. There are many more dead people than live ones. The overpopulation of the dead. And there's no legislating against that type of overpopulation. It's already happened. We live every day under the weight of History, you might say.

TN: That’s profound. You know, once, right here in this studio, I felt the breath of a ghost on my face. I instinctively knew that it was the man who had built this house, communicating with me, giving me his approval, or just letting me know he was there.

BR: Wow, that’s strange.

TN: But then I realized that the window by which I sat was hinged at the top. I hadn’t noticed that before. I thought it was a fixed pane. The breath I’d felt on my face was the draft coming through the crack at the bottom.

BR: Okay. It could have been the draft through the crack and the breath of a ghost simultaneously, couldn’t it? A layering of realities.

TN: I’m not sure. It could be. We’ll have to ask the cat.