Long before the road going the one way, past The Mavis, to town and the other way, past The Merle, to the city, was properly made up ‘twixt and between the two, Crowberry Hill was a heck of a haul whichever was the way you went, for them Galloways and their masters and nowadays if you was one of them old’n’s.
But those old’n’s, then as now, as was well known, never worried overmuch about the one way or the other, and were more disposed to sit and sup in either place and, in their dotage, wait upon Old Father Time, content on their trestles and their tables, twiddling with their cards and their dominoes.
Even so, for all that they seemed as much gathered in dust as those old rooms, Merle and Mavis, Mavis and Merle, and were as stiff and stolid as any of that old lumber strewn about in either place, these old’n’s were well nourished and as limber as any stripling when it came to taken a lively interest day-to-day.
And they could give you chapter and verse, if you were minded to listen, on all the comings and goings here and there.
And they could tell you how a thing was brought about and in whose name and what deeds were done and who might have had a hand in it besides and why.
And down all the days until now, even unto the time of their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfathers and great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandmothers, and all the grandnieces and grandnephews!
Or, so, it was said.
But, more than this, they said, they had the knack of putting two and two together about a thing, and could turn out a proof plain and polished even though the facts might come rough edged or snagged upon a knot!
And, by this means, could tell a story as good as any written down, by the whittlings in the wood.
Here, they might say, at The Merle, sat Alice, sipping at her stout all those years ago, this very table, and this very spot where she set down her glass night after night remarked upon the varnish.
And, there, where she hung her old black bonnet and left to this day that everlasting curl of ribbon on the hook above the bar.
And here is old Sobey, they might say, at The Mavis, in that very chair beside the fire, whiling away his time with that old cribbage board now laid to rest upon the mantelshelf above.
And his old sheepdog too, laid out much the same, beside his master and whiling away his time, and stretching out from time to time where you see his claws marks upon the wooden step.
And, did you see, when you came in, that iron scrape beside the door or that hollow step amongst the flags?
Well, that was where the lad who cleaned the boots for pennies stood, keeping tally with a chalk upon the brick.
And keeping tally since the Great War killed his father and the ‘flu’ took his brother and his mother, until the next war took him in its turn.
And, but for a fluke, his child might never have been born or christened and known as Jenny!
And, but for a turn of the wheel, Jenny might never have stood before us here and there and served us with our beer!
And this was the way it was with them old’n’s, and down all the years, and so on and so forth; each generation remaining remarking those that went before and those that came after and all and sundry, them and their dear old long-gone friends, each pointed out turn by turn.
And all, seems like, as beset by time, Mavis and Merle, Merle and Mavis, a-scribbling here and there against the warp and weft!
Or scratching with a penknife or a hatpin or a buckle or a nail, as if, by every scrape or scratch, giving notice of their living and their passing, man and woman, child and beast!
And railing against oblivion, seems like, with a nod to each along the way and to Old Father Time in particular who would carry them off turn and turn about!
from Gleda and the Freebooters
© R. Frank Wilson