Mrs. Sayce’s Guy

Introduction

Nugent Barker is a relatively unknown and elusive author, but the little that is known about him is in regards to his infamous ghost stories. “Mrs. Sayce’s Guy,” written by Barker, is a short story published in the 1929 literary magazine Life and Letters. This story fits within the ghost story category. “Mrs. Sayce’s Guy” is centered around the British holiday, Guy Fawkes Night. Guy Fawkes Night is an annual holiday that celebrates the end of a coup to kill King James I. On November 5, 1605, a group of anti-Protestant men wanted to kill the king and place a Catholic head of state on the throne in his place. However, the plot was discovered before the violence started. Guy Fawkes was found with the explosives and firearms that were intended to aid the assassination of the king. From this time on, celebrating the safety of the king became a national observance. Traditionally, fires were burnt and explosives and firecrackers were set off to celebrate. As it became cemented as a national tradition, people began to construct Guy Fawkes effigies and would throw them into the fires. “Mrs. Sayce’s Guy” begins on the morning before the celebration.

The story begins with an introduction to Emma Sayce, an impoverished and confused woman. Mrs. Sayce is in the process of looking for her son, Bertie, in addition to creating a Guy Fawkes effigy. Her behavior is odd, particularly in her determination to finish her effigy and make it to the evening celebrations. Her work is harried and unfinished: “For no one could have admitted that this Guy was ready to be pushed through the streets. There were lacking those final touches that her son Bertie would have given to the grand thing” (363). It becomes clear that she is making the effigy for her son, Bertie. The story indicates the he loved Guy Fawkes Night, but Bertie is never introduced into the plot. Once satisfied with her efforts, Mrs. Sayce leaves her home and begins her journey to the place of celebration. Along the way, neighbors see her and gossip about her activity. Many seem surprised as to what she is doing. “Look, Elf! Ain’t that Emma Sayce pushin’ a guy?” (365). Later, Mrs. Sayce runs into a drunk man “. . .whom she hoped never to see again. . . .” (366). He begins to question her about her drunk husband, who supposedly had returned home from or when?, and the whereabouts of her son Bertie. Eventually, Mrs. Sayce makes it to the great fire, and prepares to throw her effigy in. All of the sudden, she is stopped by a police officer who realizes that her effigy is much too heavy to be made out of straw.

“Mrs. Sayce’s Guy” is an intellectual read, fitting for its place within the high-brow periodical, Life and Letters. The periodical itself is highly concerned with literature and the dialogue surrounding the analysis and critique of literature. As a story, “Mrs. Sayce’s Guy” is difficult to parce, as its details are elusive. Furthermore, the story, with its edgy and mysterious tones, would have incited dialogue and conversation amongst its readers, making the story a literary work not only of interest to the journal, but also as a stand-out piece on its own. Within the context of the Modernist Short Story Project, “Mrs. Sayce’s Guy” is focused on the interiority of Emma Sayce’s thoughts and experiences. While the outside world is dark to the reader, the reader becomes accustomed to the anxiety, self-consciousness, fear, and distrust that embodies the interior world of Emma Sayce.

Transcription

I

The November wind had sobbed all night over Hannibal Terrace as though its heart were breaking. But dawn put an end to the monotonous sound, smiling at first, a little wanly, into those squalid windows, and eventually packing the narrow street with mist, and roofing the mist with a sulphur-coloured sky. Later, onto this shadowy daylight, a back door was opened, and Mrs. Sayce stood dimly visible at the head of her yard, clutching at a plaid shawl, and very earnestly passing her tongue over her lips:

‘Ber-tie? Break-fust!’

She could hear the voices of her neighbours on either hand. The dark morning seemed to invest each one of them with a peculiar detachment: the voice of Mrs. Parslow; the voice of Molly Gunn; Lizzy Dixon’s querulous outcry; the measured, mournful tones of Thomas Cooling; Macquisten’s brutal laughter; Nancy Tillit, Tom Tillit’s widow, calling stridently to Lettie and Jack; the united, youthful clamour of the Glydds; Henry Glazer’s mincing, almost gentlemanly accents; the quick, high, frequent giggle of Edie MacKatter.

‘Ber-tie? Break-fust!’

But whenever she opened her mouth, there was Macquisten’s mongrel dog opening his; the whole terrace reeked with the unsavoury yapping. And the voices of the Tufnell children made a high shindy^[1]A noisy disturbance or quarrel ten houses away. A boy’s head popped out of a window, and called. Closer at hand it was possible to hear an undercurrent of more inti¬ mate things. Mrs. Norgate’s baby was choking in a room next door; somebody had lost, or another had stolen, something, somewhere—it was not to be found—it had fallen under the table—it had gone down the sink; while the everlasting cluck of a hen served to bind the whole conglomeration of near and distant sounds together. It was a heartless chuckle, the voice of this one hen; terrible in its suggestion of eternal squalor; and, with a hand pressed hurriedly over her mouth, suddenly Mrs. Sayce began to cry.

The tears were running down her cheeks. And in the tiny kitchen, where damp clothes sagged between the walls, there was no further necessity to hold back her sobs while she crumbled her stale bread, or lifted, but never as far as her lips, a cup of very weak and flavourless tea. A cat was walking endlessly over the floor. Now it would strut in grotesque fashion, with erect tail, and sidelong glances at the woman at the table, who had buried her face within her hands; now it would squat upon its haunches, hind leg up, and tongue working roughly over the fur; a thin creature, though finely marked, that came to her at last, and rubbed its wasted body against her leg. The action recalled her to her senses; with an impetuous movement she caught up the animal, and carried it in her arms to the bedroom above, where the ceiling was like a black cloud over her head, and the wall-paper showed blue flowers on a faded, saffron ground.

There was a Guy^[2]Guy Fawkes effigy, commemorating November 5, 1605 (Guy Fawkes Day), when a plot to kill King James I was discovered. A man named Guy Fawkes was at the head of this plot and condemned to death. In the story, Mrs. Sayce creates a likeness of Guy Fawkes to burn in the celebratory fires., sitting in an elbow-chair, leering through eye-holes and mouth of its magenta mask into the pale light of the window. Its goblin body was the essence of dislocation. A vast inertia ran through the lolling arms, and its hands were black cotton gloves stuffed with straw.

For a short time, this wild figure was reflected in the eyes of the tabby cat, which presently began to struggle violently in its mistress’s arms, uttered a low whimper, and ran from the room; while Mrs. Sayce, starting out of her reverie, saw a cloth cap lying in a chair—a woollen muffler hanging on the knob of a cupboard door-the bed, tumbled, glimmering palely, pushed up into the angle of two saffron walls. In addition to her other duties, there was the bed to be made. Sitting on the foot of it, she rocked her body a little, looked at her toes, fell at last into complete stillness; then she snatched her clasped hands from between her knees, clicking her tongue, and crying out that she must pull herself together.

Pushed into a rent of the window-pane was a crumpling of old newspaper; this she removed, thereby letting in wreaths of the damp mist, which chilled her lungs, and crept into every conceivable corner of the room. Within a few minutes, the paper was back again in the jagged rent of the window; but her mind had been restored to its accustomed energy, she was working quickly and easily; her duties were not so difficult as she had supposed.

On one occasion, while she was bending low over rough sheets, and thin blankets, to make the tumbled bed, her foot kicked against a pipe, a man’s pipe, that had fallen to the floor; and her hand fell upon a boy’s firework, a Catherine-wheel, that was to have spun round and round. She threw the pipe straightway across the room, but the other she held for one short moment against her heart; and very soon afterwards, her bed then being made, she was patting, pulling, tying, twisting, and tweaking the embellishments of the Guy.

For no one could have admitted that this Guy was ready to be pushed through the streets. There were lacking those final touches that her son Bertie would have given to the grand thing. Some faded piece of finery, found in a drawer, and tied, or pinned, or stuck into some part of the beast’s anatomy. Anything that might bring a nod of approval, or a shrug of jealousy, from street children. Pat it into shape. Button up the coat. Wind the muffler on. Anything that should lend an air of conspiracy—there’s a big knot—and gunpowder to the whole business. And let the long ends of this muffler hang like hooligans over the breast. Presently she stood back, very quiet and still, with her hands pressed to her eyes.

Into the tiny, grotesque body, Mrs. Sayce had pushed, and prodded, and stuffed, and bundled, all the deformity of the world. Beneath a boy’s cloth cap, and from the voluminous folds of a muffler, the magenta face shone forth with a fierce, disturbing beauty. Stark and evil, it seemed to glow with a deeper light than that which was coming through the window; and to nod cunningly with every step of the stair when she carried down her precious burden, and sat it in an old perambulator^[3]A pram or stroller that was covered with the thick dust of a year. She went very carefully, now. There were so many things to be put right; little things that must not be forgotten. The thought occurred to her, that this was the most important moment she had ever known. Tuck it tightly everywhere. Prop the nodding head. Lifting her own, she listened to the voices of far-distant children, chanting the Guy Fawkes song^[4]Check footnote 2:

Please to remember
The Fifth of November . . . .

The rhythm was both cheeky and inspiring; and after a while it was broken, from somewhere in the terrace, by the quick, high, frequent giggle of Edie MacKatter. Mrs. Sayce wheeled her perambulator to the door; and through the dark November streets, she pushed her little Guy.

 

II

She had slipped out of Hannibal Terrace with scarcely a sign from her neighbours. Only once did she hear the voices of people who had recognized her—two voices, that spoke in thick, sudden tones from the morning mist:

‘Elf!’

‘Yus?’

‘Look, Elf! Ain’t that Emma Sayce pushin’ a guy?’

‘Your heyes wants seein’ to, Agatha!’

‘Ain’t that Emma Sayce pushin’ a guy?’

‘Mebbe,’ said Alfred Glydd, thoughtfully; ‘mebbe it is. . . . Sayce come ‘ome larst night. I could ‘ear ‘im sing- in’. . . . Dassay ‘e come back for little Bertie. . . .’

“. . . . it were Emma Sayce. . . .”

‘Mebbe . . . too far orf now for a bloke to see. . . . ‘

. . . And after that, the bend of the road had hidden her, and she had gone on and on, past Durrant and Lowe’s, and the shop where she bought her candles. ‘Too far orf, now, for a bloke to see.’ But not too far for her to hear the buzz of their voices, in every beat of her timorous heart. No, never too far for that! She crossed the Avenue, skirted the High School, and tilted the pram towards Tinker’s Heath.

She walked far that day. She was a little woman, pushing a Guy. Beyond Pewter Hill, the road to the Heath was long and lonely; but the length and the loneliness pleased her, for she was an artful one, and asked nothing better than to be left alone with the dark morning and the nodding, magenta face of her goblin Guy. ‘Ber-tie? Break¬ fust!’ Lor’! Hadn’t she been an artful one? Hadn’t she, now? Hadn’t she been a cunning one, jest!

Here and there, the fog was lifting; and once, far ahead, she thought that she could see the figure of a man on that dim road. . . .But he went away, slamming a gate behind him. . . . Near Rington Cemetery, a sad-faced woman called to her; and she received the penny with a queer blend of pride and distraction, thanked the lady kindly, and hurried on. Hurried on, up the road to the Heath that was so long and lonely; and the loneliness sang to her: ‘Elfred and Agatha Glydd, why couldn’t they understand?’ She was a little woman, pushing a Guy; and she was tramping, tramping, until her thin shoes began to blister her thin feet.

Up on the empty Heath a slow wind was moving, catching at the fringe of her shawl, and peopling the wide spaces with chanting voices.

Amongst them, she could hear particularly the voices of children, the buzzing of the Glydds, and the drunken tones of a man whom she hoped never to see again. . . . And suddenly one voice that began to materialize into a face, a face that she had not thought to see there, the thin¬ lipped, high-cheeked, brutal face of Macquisten. It came towards her out of the pale mist; a thrusting, triumphant face, that followed, and would not leave her, as she drew back trembling on Tinker’s Heath:

‘Come ‘ome drunk, ain’t ‘e—larst night?’ it was saying. ‘I ‘eard ‘im! Went orf agin, drunk-ain’t ‘e, larst night? Wheer ‘s Bertie?’ It seemed to have no other thought but that. ‘Come ‘ome drunk, ain’t ‘e—larst night? I ‘eard ‘im! Went orf agin, drunk—ain’t ‘e, larst night? Wheer ‘s Bertie?’ She turned to go; but the face followed her along the Heath: ‘Took the kid away wid ‘im, ain’t ‘e—larst night? I ‘eard ‘em! Left yer alone agin, ‘as ‘e—Missus? Lor’ lumme! Left yer quite alone!’ She tried to go from him; but still the face followed; and when at last it changed its question for another, she answered proudly, standing her full height, and looking at the Guy: ‘It’s a great day wid the children, Mr. Macquisten. It’s Guy Forks^[5]Check footnote 2 day. Yass! And you knows well enough as I’m doin’ wot Bertie would of wished.’ Poor, dear Bertie. Dear little Bertie. Why couldn’t they understand? Presently Macquisten’s dog came running up, and sniffed and barked at the Guy; and she hurried away, horrified, to the dwindling sound of the barking and Macquisten’s brutal laughter—hurried away, and away, across Tinker’s Heath, and down Dornford Ditch, and over the old bridge by Fell Junction that spanned the railway-line.

She was a weary woman, pushing a Guy: and the Guy wagged its head when the pram jolted, and the ends of the muffler ran in the wind, while from street and tenement, tower and steeple of the gradually approaching roadway, she thought that she could hear, exalting, echoing, rolling, flying over the darkening landscape, the Guy Fawkes song:

Please to remember

The Fifth of November . . . .

Would she ever forget it? God in Heaven, would she ever forget it?

 

III

The voice of a great crowd was behind her back; it came from beyond the entrance of the steep alley that sloped to the river. Down this dark and narrow by-way, she and her Guy had been approaching the river; but there are few people who do not look back over their shoulders at that inspiriting, terrible sound. Mrs. Sayce looked over her shoulder, and beheld a furnace in Heaven.

It might have been some celestial heart that was burning, or a bitter wound gashed by the tapering church¬ spire whose upper portion rose darkly above the summit of the hill. She had been going to the river, but here was a fire. So she turned her perambulator; and, allowing its handle to drop against her breast, pushed it up into the glaring dusk of this day that never had been very light.

She emerged from the mouth of the alley with her face shining; and walked across the level of the empty Market Square, where sparks drifted and tossed above her head, and shadows of the distant crowd ran over the ground to meet her. Sometimes, she could pick out the shape of a man’s hat, ridiculously distorted; or a woman’s dancing bonnet. Her mind was bewildered by these things, and without success she strove to follow some particularly anxious train of thought, of something that would have been done by now if she had gone down to the river: that could be done, possibly, when she had come to the scene of the fire. The many units of her thought were like the sparks that tossed above her head: brief visions that came before her eyes, and went out, and made room for more. When, at last, the people were around her, stretching their reddened, eager faces, she was full of the clearest schemes, and there was no time in which to sort and examine them. Carried along by the hurried course of the crowd, presently she was surrounded by rough-toned, in¬ definite voices that called a thousand questions at the corner of the old church of St. Mary. A child pointed, and he and his companion stared ruefully at their own inferior guy. And suddenly she looked on something that was brighter than a vision, and louder than a voice; that whirled his tortured red arms above and before her, and rocked his body to and fro, and cracked his crimson fingers, and threaded them through the house.

A burning house. A tall house where the roof and upper windows had already fallen in; it stood upon the corner of a timber-yard, and when she turned her head, Mrs. Sayce could see that certain beams, and spars, and scantlings^[6]A timber beam of small cross section, stacked in the path of falling debris, were burning too.

It was a street that rose in a half-circle round the timber-yard, as though a staircase were mounting and circling the hall of a house. When she had come to the top of it, Mrs. Sayce found herself in the grand company of children mustering their guys. Clutching at her plaid shawl, she tried to count the goblin creatures that were passing on every hand. The strong glow of the fire seemed to invest each one of them with a peculiar detachment: guys with pink faces, and guys with green; guys that were yellow, and guys that were red; blue guys, mauve guys, brown guys, violet guys; purple guys, orange guys, black guys and grey guys and snowy guys; sad guys and happy guys; artful guys, simple guys, evil and good guys; guys with fat faces, and guys that were thin as a lath; rich guys, and poor guys, and drab guys, and guys that were bright as a blessing, and guys that were grim as a curse; and they seemed to talk and laugh with one another, to hold deep conversation, to nod their masked and portentous faces as the wheels of the perambulators went round.

One or two of the bolder children were moving towards the crazy wooden fence that skirted the brink of the yard. Elsewhere, she could hear the hissing of the engines, and could see their columns of stiff, glittering water, steady as beams of moonlight, that might as well have battled with the flame of a sunset sky. Near her, two people were talking. The voices were hushed, and awed, yet tinged with a kind of shocked enjoyment; from them, she learnt that a woman had perished in the fire, whilst her boy had been saved. ‘There. Bless ‘er ‘eart!’ ‘Pore innercent kid.’ Mrs. Sayce tightened her fingers round the handle of the perambulator, and began to cry.

She was still crying two minutes later, standing by the wooden paling^[7]A fence made from pointed wooden or metal posts, crooking one of her fingers against her teeth.

She did not know that she was crying. She knew only that she was so near her goal. What a wonderful finish to her day’s journey! Yes! He would have ended it so! Bertie would have come up to this fence, searching . . . searching . . . for some gap through which he could drop his guy. . . .

He would have looked with a child’s big gravity on its last goblin hours; he would have joined the solemn pro¬ cession of guys, that marched to the fires of retribution. . . .

A fierce light shone above the jagged top of the palings. She looked about her, and already the masked gods of Treason were being thrown to the flames. Hollow-eyed, and rigid-necked, the goblin aristocrats rode up in their tumbril-perambulators and barrows and boxes on wheels, and were hurled-as light as straw, and a few old clothes, were they!—over the wooden fencing, and down into the timber-yard below. A policeman stood near her, watching the children, but he did not seem to care. He stood . . . near them . . . and her . . . and watched. A wind sprang up; a wisp of hair tapped her for a whole minute on the cheek. Then Mrs. Sayce shivered in her shawl. She would go over there—over there—where the crowd was thinner, and the wind, in that sheltered spot, would not ruffle. . . .

Did not ruffle the boy’s cloth cap, or the woollen muffler, or snatch at the mask with its rough fingers, as she stooped gently over the perambulator, and lifted her Guy, and carried him towards a crimson gap in the wooden fencing. She tried to approach nearer at that spot, but the heat stopped her. Everywhere she could hear the voices of children; the thump of the axes; men calling, and the fire hissing. In the middle of it all, a heavy footstep came, and Mrs. Sayce turned her head. She was unable for a moment to see the policeman with anything but her eyes.

When the colour of his sharp, red face, and the stillness of his helmet, had reached into her mind, she did not know what to do. She may have been an artful one in her back-yard at home, but now all her cunning deserted her, and she did not know what to do. What could she do? She hugged her arms about the Guy. But the policeman took it from her, and the policeman lifted it up. . . .

He lifted it up, and Bertie’s mother cried in her heart: ‘If only his eyes could peep through, now! If only Bertie’s eyes could peep through the mask, and see me, for one last moment, standing here!’

But there was no one to help her. All her senses were strangely acute. She could see everything very exactly; very crimson in the light of the fire. She could hear the whole world humming, near and far; the clucking of the hen in Hannibal Terrace. Yet everything around her was very still.

Everything except this man who was standing before her; whose slight, slow movements were bringing the day to its appointed end. He lifted it up, the little, delusive, goblin bundle, that surely was too heavy to be stuffed with straw. . . .

‘Oh, Mister! Mister!’

The policeman muttered: ‘Lord o’ mercy, what a heavy Guy!”

‘Mister! Mister!’

‘Lord o’ mercy, what a heavy Guy!’

And as she raised her hands to Heaven, he began to take the mask off Mrs. Sayce’s Guy.