This week's post is inspired by this long and fascinating article on The Eeriness of the English Countryside which appeared in The Guardian. It cites several of my favourite and most deeply influential authors - MR James, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner. Thanks to them I have ALL MY LIFE found the countryside "eerie", and that's one of things I love about it: that subtle sense of creeping unease, of there being something unseen lurking behind the scenes - as the article writer says, it's about "the English landscape – as constituted by uncanny forces, part-buried sufferings and contested ownerships".
I've tried several times in my own books to evoke that feeling. Here's an excerpt from my most blatant attempt to write erotic Garner (!) - Wildwood
Avril Shearing is a landscape gardener brought in to reclaim an overgrown woodland for the handsome and manipulative Michael Deverick. But among the trees lurks a tribe of environmental activists determined to stop anyone getting in, led by the enigmatic Ash who regards Michael as his mortal enemy. Avril soon discovers that on the Kester Estate nothing is as it seems. Creatures that belong in dreams or in nightmares emerge after dark to prowl the grounds, and hidden in the heart of the wood is something so important that people will kill, or die, for it. Ash and Michael become locked in a deadly battle for the Wildwood - and for Avril herself.
By the time I got right into the high crown of the tree I admit I wasn’t just flushed from the exertion, I was feeling wickedly horny too, adding the thrill of vertigo to the dizzy surge of sexual arousal. Adding to the scents of the night was the perfume of my own body. I found a place where I could plant my feet wide apart on two radiating limbs and hook one arm over a branch near my head. My back was to the trunk and my legs were spread wide, beneath them nothing but a drop of fifty foot to the ground and the cool air that licked at the inside of my thighs. It was as if I were inviting the whole of the night into my open sex.
Go on, touch me.
From here I could see through a broad gap between the leaves, down onto the grassy wasteland that had once been a lawn. The moon had turned the long weeds and the lacy heads of the cow parsley to silver froth, but the shadows beneath the shrubby elders and the far tree line were jet black. When someone came into sight wading through the grass he was clearly visible, and left a dark furrow of bent grasses in his wake.
I held my breath. Then I recognised my army-surplus tree-hugger from Grange Wood. His dreadlocks were unmistakable. He was shirtless, and under that moonlight so pale that he seemed to glimmer.
‘What are you up to?’ I muttered under my breath, leaning forward to get a better look. His hands trailed through the flower-heads caressingly. Then my eyes widened as I realised that he wasn’t just shirtless; the waist-high foliage had been hiding the fact that he was naked. At this distance I couldn’t make out any details, but a momentary glimpse of the unbroken line of flank and hip made me certain.
Bloody hippie, I thought with tolerant disdain. Of course: it was Midsummer’s Eve, wasn’t it? No doubt he was indulging in a bit of pagan nudity for the occasion. If I kept him in sight then I might spy on a bit of sky-clad Morris dancing or whatever it was these people did. He’d wrecked my quiet moment on my own though.
Of course the fact that I was butt-naked myself made it difficult to feel really superior. Then I caught sight of his companions, and I forgot to feel superior at all. My spine crawled.
They came through the grass as he did, many of them, on either side, but they left no tracks behind them. Some danced, some skulked, and some slithered along barely cresting the grass. They were the same colour as the moonlight on the dappled foliage and it was hard to make them out; my peripheral vision caught the flicker of their movements easily enough but the poor light made them difficult to focus on if I looked directly. They were absolutely silent, not even the grass whispering as they passed.
I’m dreaming this, I told myself.
As they reached the edge of the long weeds and slipped out onto the shorter grass I lost sight of most of them behind the banks of beech leaves, though I was certain that one was a bear with a ruff of grizzled fur. It lifted its blunt muzzle to the air and sniffed and grunted before lumbering onward, out of sight.
There’ve been no bears in England for centuries.
The man with the red ’locks seemed in less of a rush than his companions, or perhaps it was only his own crude materiality than caused him to lag behind. One shadowy form dawdled to stay with him, dancing around him in circles that left no trail of bruised grass. She was easier to see as she came close to him, as if he loaned her some focus; a naked girl, whip-thin, with wild hair down to her shoulders and something twiggy protruding from that hair over her temples. I thought it might be a tiara until I realised it was branched horns she wore on her head, like the horns of a roebuck. He laughed and brushed her face with his fingertips. She twirled for him, head thrown back, blocking his progress with her slim body, twining her arms about his neck then turning her back to bump her arse against his groin. The invitation was unmistakable and he put his hands about her waist. She wriggled up against him, arching her back and grinding her bum into his crotch, writhing her head back against his shoulder. What man could resist that sort of offer?
I felt warmth flicker into renewed life in my own sex. They were up to their hips in grass and I couldn’t see any detail, but from the set of their bodies it was clear enough what was going on. He braced his thighs and took what was being offered to him, hoisting her hips so that he could sheathe himself in her from behind. I squirmed on my branch. She arched forward and he had to lean back to balance her, his hands gripping hard on her hips, his thighs working with deliberation. She made a noise like the yawn of a cat and writhed her bum in ecstatic circles. I drank in the sight with furtive, guilty fascination: the shimmy of her tiny breasts, the gape of her lips, the smooth hollow between his hip and thigh, the hunch of his strong shoulders as he pumped into her.
Bereft of those baggy clothes he was a lot more toned than I’d given him credit for. Good, strong arms, I thought. He was almost beautiful.
She was bent right forward now, nearly double, her arse thrust high under the moon. I’d never hope to be so lithe myself. It gave me a good view of his naked torso though, and the sheen on his taut belly as he thrust. He shifted one hand from her hip to clap it against her bum-cheek, clearly relishing the sound of skin on skin.
Dirty boy, I breathed. My pubic mound was pressed against the unyielding branch and leaking onto the bark. This voyeurism was entirely new to me, and the fact that spying on them was making me hot filled me with delicious shame. I could actually hear both of them panting. I watched each thrust and imagined what it might feel like as he quickened toward his goal, his movements jagged and frantic until he groaned and lurched, grabbing her tight, his muscles locked.
He was one of those blokes who really show it when they come. I like that so much in a man.
Then she changed. I didn’t see the moment of transformation; I only know that when she lifted her head next there was nothing human about it. It was the head of a hind on the long neck of a deer, her fur as white as her skin had seemed only a moment before. Her velvet-tipped antlers tossed skittishly. For a moment he froze – as shocked, I assumed, as me. I forgot how to breathe. She kicked and bucked and danced out of his grasp so that he staggered and nearly keeled over, skipping around him in ever-widening circles, and from one spring to another I couldn’t tell if it was a deer or a woman tossing her antlered head and laughing at him in great silvery peals.
I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead to the tree, clinging to its solidity.
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