Who or What was It?

I want to tell you about a very odd experience I had a few months ago, not so as to entertain you but because I think it raises some very basic questions about, you know, what life is all about and to what extent we run our own lives. Rather worrying questions. Anyway, what happened was this:

My wife and I had been staying the weekend with her uncle and aunt in Westmorland, near a place called Milnthorpe. Both of us--Jane and I, that is--had things to do in London on the Monday morning, and it's a long drive from up there down to Barnet, where we live, even though a good half of it is on the M6. So I said, Look, don't let's break our necks trying to get home in the light (this was in August), let's take it easy and stop somewhere for dinner and reckon to get home about half past ten or eleven. Jane said OK.

So we left Milnthorpe in the middle of the afternoon, took things fairly easily and ended up about half past seven or a quarter to eight at the ... the place we'd picked out of one of the food guides before we started. I won't tell you the name of the place, because the people who run it wouldn't thank me if I did. Please don't go looking for it. I'd advise you not to.

Anyway, we parked the car in the yard and went inside. It was a nice-looking sort of place, pretty old, built a good time ago, I mean, done up in a sensible sort of way, no Muzak and no bloody silly blacked-out lighting, but no oldeworlde nonsense, either.

Well, I got us both a drink in the bar and went off to see about a table for dinner. I soon found the right chap and he said, Fine, table for two in half an hour, certainly, sir, are you in the bar, I'll get someone to bring you the menu in a few minutes. Pleasant sort of chap, a bit young for the job.

I was just going off when a sort of paunchy business type came in and said something about, Mr. Allington not in tonight? and the young fellow said, No, sir, he's taken the evening off. All right, never mind.

Well, I'll tell you why in a minute, but I turned back to the young fellow, said, Excuse me, but is your name Palmer? and he said, Yes, sir, and I said, Not David Palmer, by any chance? and he said, No, sir; actually, the name's George. I said, or rather burbled, A friend of mine was telling me about this place, said he'd stayed here, liked it very much, mentioned you; anyway, I got half the name right, and Mr. Allington is the proprietor, isn't he? That's correct, sir, he said. See you later and all that.

I went straight back to the bar, went up to the barman and said, Fred? and he said, Yes, sir. I said, Fred Soames? and he said, Fred Browning, sir. I just said, Wrong Fred, not very polite, but it was all I could think of. I went over to where my wife was sitting and I'd hardly sat down before she asked, What's the matter?

What was the matter calls for a bit of explanation. In 1969, I published a novel called The Green Man, which was not only the title of the book but also the name of a sort of classy pub, or inn, where most of the action took place, very much the kind of establishment we were in that evening.

Now, the landlord of The Green Man was called Allington, and his deputy was called David Palmer, and the barman was called Fred Soames. Allington is a very uncommon name--I wanted that for reasons having nothing to do with this story. The two others aren't, but to have got Palmer and Fred right, so to speak, as well as Allington, was a thumping great coincidence, staggering, in fact. But I wasn't just staggered, I was very alarmed. Because The Green Man wasn't only the name of the pub in my book; it was also the name of a frightening creature, a sort of solid ghost conjured up out of tree branches and leaves, and so on, that very nearly kills Allington and his young daughter. I didn't want to find I was right about that, too.

Jane was very sensible, as always. She said stranger coincidences had happened and had still been just coincidences, and mightn't I have come across an innkeeper called Allington somewhere, half forgotten about it and brought it up out of my unconscious mind when I was looking for a name for an innkeeper to put in the book, and now the real Ailington's moved from wherever I'd seen him before to this place. And Palmer and Fred really are very common names. And I'd got the name of the pub wrong. I'm still not telling you what it's called, but one of the things it isn't called is The Green Man. And my pub was in Hertfordshire and this place was ... off the M6. All very reasonable and reassuring.

Only I wasn't very reassured. I mean, I obviously couldn't just leave it there. The thing to do was get hold of this chap Palmer and see if there was, well, any more to come. Which was going to be tricky if I wasn't going to look nosy or mad or something else that would shut him up. Neither of us ate much at dinner, though there was nothing wrong with the food. We didn't say much, either. I drank a fair amount.

Then, halfway through, Palmer turned up to do his everything-all-right routine, as I'd hoped he would, and as he would have done in my book. I said yes, it was fine, thanks, and then I asked him, I said we'd be very pleased if he'd join us for a brandy afterward if he'd got time, and he said he'd be delighted. Jolly good, but I was still stuck with this problem of how to dress the thing up.

Jane had said earlier on, why didn't I just tell the truth, and I'd said, since Palmer hadn't reacted at all when I gave him my name when I was booking the table--see what I mean?--he'd only have my word for the whole story and might still think I was off my rocker, and she'd said of course she'd back me up, and I'd said he'd just think he'd got two loonies on his hands instead of one. Anyway, now she said, Some people who've read The Green Man must have mentioned it--fancy that, Mr. Palmer, you and Mr. Allington and Fred are all in a book by somebody called Kingsley Amis. Obvious enough, when you think of it, but, like a lot of obvious things, you have got to think of it.

Well, that was the line I took when Palmer rolled up for his brandy, I'm me and I wrote this book, and so on. Oh, really? he said, more or less. I thought we were buggered, but then he said, Oh, yes, now you mention it, I do remember some chap saying something like that, but it must have been two or three years ago--you know, as if that stopped it counting for much. I'm not much of a reader, you see, he said.

So. What about Mr. Allington, I said, doesn't he read? Not what you'd call a reader, he said. Well, that was one down to me, or one up, depending on how you look at it, because my Allington was a tremendous reader, French poetry and all that. Still, the approach had worked after a fashion, and Palmer very decently put up with being cross-questioned on how far this place corresponded with my place, in the book.

Was Mrs. Allington blonde? There wasn't a Mrs. Allington anymore; she'd died of leukemia quite a long time ago. Had he got his widowed father living here? (Allington's father, that is.) No, Mr. Allington, Sr., and his wife lived in Eastbourne. Was the house, the pub, haunted at all? Not as far as Palmer knew, and he'd been there three years. In fact, the place was only about 200 years old, which completely clobbered a good half of my novel, where the ghosts had been hard at it more than 100 years earlier still.

Nearly all of it was like that. Of course, there were some questions I couldn't ask, for one reason or another. For instance, was Allington a boozer, like my Allington, and, even more so, had this Allington had a visit from God? In the book, God turns up in the form of a young man to give Allington some tips on how to deal with the ghosts, who He, God, thinks are a menace to him. No point in going any further into that part.

I said nearly all the answers Palmer gave me were straight negatives. One wasn't, or rather, there were two points where I scored, so to speak. One was that Allington had a 15-year-old daughter called Marilyn living in the house. My Allington's daughter was 13 and called Amy, but I'd come somewhere near the mark--too near for comfort.

The other thing was a bit harder to tie down. When I'm writing a novel, I very rarely have any sort of mental picture of any of the characters, what they actually look like. I think a lot of novelists would say the same. But, I don't know why, I'd had a very clear image of what my chap David Palmer looked like, and now I'd had a really good look at George Palmer, this one here, he was nearly the same as I'd imagined, not so tall, different nose, but still nearly the same. I didn't care for that.

Palmer, George Palmer, said he had things to see to and took off. I told Jane what I've just told you, about the resemblance. She said I could easily have imagined that, and I said I suppose I might. Anyway, she said, what do you think of it all?

I said it could still all be coincidence. What could it be if it isn't coincidence? she asked. I'd been wondering about that while we were talking to Palmer. Not an easy one. Feeling a complete bloody fool, I said I thought we could have strayed into some kind of parallel world that slightly resembles the world I made up, you know, like in a science-fiction story.

She didn't laugh or back away. She looked round and spotted a newspaper someone had left on one of the chairs. It was that day's Sunday Telegraph. She said, If where we are is a world that's parallel to the real world, it's bound to be different from the real world in all sorts of ways. Now, you read most of the (continued on page 310)Who or what was it?(continued from page 204)Telegraph this morning, the real Telegraph. Look at this one, she said, and see if it's any different. Well, I did, and it wasn't: same front page, same article on the trade unions by Perry--that's Peregrine Worsthorne--same readers' letters, same crossword, down to the last clue. Well, that was a relief.

But I didn't stay relieved, because there was another coincidence shaping up. It was a hot night in August when all this happened--or did I mention that before? Anyway, it was. And Allington was out for the evening. On a hot night in August, after Allington has come back from an evening out, the monster, The Green Man, finally takes shape and comes pounding up the road to tear young Amy Allington to pieces. That bit begins on page 225 in my book, if you're interested.

The other nasty little consideration was this: Unlike some novelists I could name, I invent all my characters, except for a few minor ones here and there. What I mean is, I don't go in for just renaming people I know and bunging them into a book. But, of course, you can't help putting something of yourself into all your characters, even if it's only, well, a surly bus conductor who only comes in for half a page.

Right, obviously, this comes up most of all with your heroes. Now, none of my heroes, not even old Lucky Jim, are me, but they can't help having pretty fair chunks of me in them, some more than others. And Allington in that book was one of the some. I'm more like him than I'm like most of the others; in particular, I'm more like my Maurice Allington in my book than the real Allington, who, by the way, turned out to be called John, seemed (from what I'd heard) to be like my Maurice Allington. Sorry to be long-winded, but I want to get that quite clear.

So: If, by some fantastic chance, The Green Man, the monster, was going to turn up here, he, or it, seemed more likely to turn up tonight than most nights. And, furthermore, I seemed sort of better cast for the part of the young girl's father, who manages in the book to save her from the monster, than this young girl's father did. You see that.

I tried to explain all this to Jane. Evidently I got it across all right, because she said straightaway, We'd better stay here tonight, then. If we can, I said, meaning if there was a room. Well, there was, and at the front of the house, too, which was important, because in the book, that's the side the monster appears on.

While one of the blokes was taking our stuff out of the car and upstairs, I said to Jane, I'm not going to be like a bloody fool in a ghost story who insists on seeing things through alone, not if I can help it--I'm going to give Bob Conquest a ring. Bob's an old chum of mine and about the only one I felt I could ask to come belting up all this way (he lives in Battersea) for such a ridiculous reason. It was just after ten by this time and The Green Man wasn't scheduled to put in an appearance till one A.M., So Bob could make it all right if he started at once. Fine, except his phone didn't answer; I tried twice.

Jane said, Get hold of Monkey; I'll speak to him. Monkey, otherwise known as Colin, is her brother; he lives with us in Barnet. Our number answered, all right, but I got my son Philip, who was staying the weekend there. He said Monkey was out at a party, he didn't know where. So all I could do was the necessary but not at all helpful job of saying we wouldn't be home till the next morning. So that was that. I mean, I just couldn't start getting hold of George Palmer and asking him to sit up with us into the small hours in case a ghost came along. Could any of you? I should have said that Philip hasn't got a car.

Well, we stayed in the bar until it closed. I said to Jane at one point, You don't think I'm mad, do you? Or silly or anything? She said, On the contrary, I think you're being extremely practical and sensible. Well, thank God for that. Jane believes in ghosts, you see. My own position on that is exactly that of the man who said, I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm afraid of them.

Which brings me to one of the oddest things about this whole business. I'm a nervous type by nature, I never go in an airplane, I won't drive a car (Jane does the driving), I don't even much care for being alone in the house. But, ever since we'd decided to stay the night at this place, all the uneasiness and, let's face it, the considerable fear I'd started to feel as soon as these coincidences started coming up, it all just fell away. I felt quite confident, I felt I knew I'd be able to do whatever might be required of me.

There was one other thing to get settled. I said to Jane, we were in the bedroom by this time, I said, If he turns up, what am I going to use against him? You see, in the book, Maurice Allington has dug up a sort of magic object that sort of controls The Green Man. I hadn't. Jane saw what I was driving at. She said she'd thought of that and took off and gave me the plain gold cross she wears round her neck, not for religious reasons, it was her grandmother's. That'll fix him, I thought, and as before, I felt quite confident about it.

Well, after that, we more or less sat and waited. At one point, a car drove up and stopped in the car park. A man got out and went in the front door. It must have been Allington. I couldn't see much about him except he had the wrong color hair, but when I looked at my watch, it was eight minutes to midnight, the exact time when the Allington in the book got back after his evening out the night he coped with the creature. One more bit of ... call it confirmation.

I opened our bedroom door and listened. Soon I heard footsteps coming upstairs and going off toward the back of the house and then a door shutting, and then straightaway the house seemed totally still. It can't have been much later that I said to Jane, Look, there's no point in my hanging round up here. He might be early, you never know. It's a warm night, I might as well go down there now. She said, Are you sure you don't want me to come with you? Absolutely sure, I said, I'll be fine. But I do want you to watch from the window here. OK, she said. She wished me luck and we clung to each other for a bit, and then off I went.

I was glad I'd left plenty of time, because getting out of the place turned out to be far from straightforward. Everything seemed to be locked and the key taken away. Eventually, I found a scullery door with the key still in the lock.

Outside, it was quite bright, with a full moon not far off, and a couple of fairly powerful lights at the corners of the house. It was a pretty lonely spot, with only two or three other houses in sight. I remember a car went by soon after I got out there, but it was the only one. There wasn't a breath of wind. I saw Jane at our window and waved, and she waved back.

The question was where to wait. If what was going to happen--assuming something was--if it went like the book, then the young girl, the daughter, was going to come out of the house because she'd thought she'd heard her father calling her (another bit of magic), and then this Green Man creature was going to, from one direction or the other, he was going to come running at her. I couldn't decide which was the more likely direction.

A bit of luck, near the front door there was one of those heavy wooden benches. I sat down on that and started keeping watch first one way, then the other, half a minute at a time. Normally, ten minutes of this would have driven me off my head with boredom, but that night, somehow it was all right. Then, after quite a long time, I turned my head from right to left on schedule and there was a girl, standing a few yards away; she must have come round that side of the house. She was wearing light-green pajamas--wrong color again. I was going to speak to her, but there was something about the way she was standing....

She wasn't looking at me; in fact, I soon saw she wasn't looking at anything much. I waved my hand in front of her eyes, you know, the way they do in films when they think someone's been hypnotized or something. I felt a perfect idiot, but her eyes didn't move. Sleepwalking, presumably; not in the book. Do people walk in their sleep? Apparently not, they only pretend to, according to what a psychiatrist chum told me afterward, but I hadn't heard that then. All I knew, or thought I knew, was this thing everybody's heard somewhere about its being dangerous to wake a sleepwalker.

So I just stayed close to the girl and went on keeping watch, and a bit more time went by, and then, sure enough, I heard, faintly but clearly, the sound I'd written about, the rustling, creaking sound of the movement of something made of tree branches, twigs and clusters of leaves. And there it was, about 100 yards away, not really much like a man, coming up at a clumsy, jolting sort of jog trot on the grass verge, and accelerating. I knew what I had to do. I started walking to meet it, with the cross ready in my hand. (The girl hadn't moved at all.) When the thing was about 20 yards away, I saw its face, which had fungus on it, and I heard another sound I'd written about coming from what I suppose you'd have to call its mouth, like the howling of wind through trees.

I stopped and steadied myself and threw the cross at it and it immediately vanished--immediately. That wasn't like the book, but I didn't stop to think about it. I didn't stop to look for the cross, either. When I turned back, the girl had gone. So much the better. I rushed back into the inn and up to the bedroom and knocked on the door--I'd told Jane to lock it alter me.

There was a delay before she came and opened it. I could see she looked confused or something, but I didn't bother with that, because I could feel all the calm and confidence I'd had earlier, it was all just draining away from me. I sat her down on the bed and sat down myself on a chair and just rattled off what had happened as fast as I could. I must have forgotten she'd been meant to be watching.

By the time I'd finished, I was shaking. So was Jane. She said, What made you change your mind? Change my mind? What about? Going out there, she said; getting up again and going out. But, I said, I've been out there all the time. Oh, no, you haven't, she said, you came back up here after about 20 minutes, she said, and you told me the whole thing was silly and you were going to bed, which we both did. She seemed quite positive.

I was absolutely shattered. But it all really happened. I said, just the way I told you. It couldn't have, she said; you must have dreamed it. You certainly didn't throw the cross at anything, she said, because it's here, you gave it back to me when you came back the first time. And there it was, on the chain round her neck.

I broke down then. I'm not quite clear what I said or did. Jane got some sleeping pills down me and I went off in the end. I remember thinking rather wildly that somebody or other with a funny sense of humor had got me into exactly the same predicament, the same mess, as the hero of my book had been: seeing something that must have been supernatural and just not being believed. Because I knew I'd seen the whole thing; I knew it then and I still know it.

I woke up late, feeling terrible. Jane was sitting reading by the bed. She said, I've seen young Miss Allington. Your description of her fits and, she said, she used to walk in her sleep. I asked her how she'd found out and she said she just had; she's good at that kind of thing.

Anyway, I felt better straightaway. I said it looked as if we'd neither of us been dreaming, even if what I'd seen couldn't be reconciled with what she'd seen, and she agreed. After that, we rather dropped the subject in a funny sort of way. We decided not to look for the cross I'd thrown at The Green Man. I said we wouldn't be able to find it. I didn't ask Jane whether she was thinking what I was thinking, that looking would be a waste of time because she was wearing it at that very moment. I'll come back to that point in a minute.

We packed up, made a couple of phone calls rearranging our appointments, paid the bill and drove off. We still didn't talk about the main issue. But then, as we were coming off the Mill Hill roundabout that's only about ten minutes from home, Jane said, What do you think happened?--happened to sort of make it all happen?

I said, I think someone was needed there to destroy that monster. Which means I was guided there at that time, or perhaps the time could be adjusted, I said; I must have been, well, sent all that stuff about The Green Man and about Allington and the others.

To make sure you recognized the place when you got there and knew what to do, she said. Who did all the guiding and the sending, and so on? she said. The same, the same chap who appeared in my book to tell Allington what he wanted done. Why couldn't he have fixed the monster himself? she said. There are limitations to his power. There can't be many, she said, if he can make the same object be in two places at the same time.

Yes, you see, she'd thought of that, too. It's supposed to be a physical impossibility, isn't it? Anyway, I said, probably the way he'd chosen had been more fun. More fun, Jane repeated. She looked very thoughtful.

As you'll have seen, there was one loose end, of a sort. Who or what was it that had taken on my shape to enter that bedroom, talk to Jane with my voice and share her bed for, at any rate, a few minutes? She and I didn't discuss it for several days. Then one morning, she asked me the question more or less as I've just put it.

Interesting point, I said; I don't know. It's more interesting than you think, she said; because when ... whoever it was got into bed with me, he didn't just go to sleep.

I suppose I just looked at her. That's right, she said; I thought I'd better go and see John before I told you. (That's John Allison, our g.p.)

It was negative, then, I said. Yes, Jane said.

Well, that's it. A relief, of course. But in one way, rather disappointing.