The Bornless Keeper (1974, Gordon Williams)

 

In-between writing The Siege of Trencher's Farm -the source novel for Straw Dogs- and teaming up with footballer Terry Venables to write the Hazell series of private detective novels, author Gordon Williams made a one-shot stab at folk horror with 1974's The Bornless Keeper.

Peacock Island, owned by the rich, reclusive Bennett Family, is the subject of a curse that has kept the residents of the nearby village of Mundham at bay for decades. "Tread ye on this sacred dell, The Bornless Keeper ye shall see, pointing the road to hell". When Lady Bennett, the last of her line, dies of natural causes, and her corpse is cannibalized by rats, the authorities discover that the Bornless Keeper, a part man, part bird creature protecting the island from intruders, might be more than just an urban myth. Looking for a scoop, a crass TV crew trespasses onto the island, intent on making a documentary about the Bornless Keeper, only to be picked off one by one by the feathered fiend, who has a penchant for slashing throats and plucking out eyeballs.

If you think the horror novels of John Halkin had an axe to grind with the TV industry, then Gordon Williams wants you to hold his beer. Williams' TV crew are a cutthroat, backstabbing bunch. Cameraman Puggy Elder, might be the closest thing to a decent member of the team, but even he is willing to potentially lose his wife and children over his silly infatuation with Victoria Dryden-Chambers, an emotionally frigid career woman with a cruel streak. Victoria has been recently made executive producer of the TV company, and is very much flying the flag for women's lib, bringing her into conflict with underling producer Julian Maltravers, an acid tongued, chauvinistic dandy who thinks her job should have been his. Williams' characters are unlikable, but never uninteresting; conflicts between Victoria and Julian drive the narrative, while their bitchy, verbal punching matches animate it. Puggy might be a 'love-sick, middle aged dope' when it comes to Victoria, but she has her eyes wickedly set on Julian, if only because seducing him would give her power over him. 'You'll weaken Julian, oh yes you will' she tells herself whilst admiring her own nude body in a mirror 'then we'll see who does the mocking'. When Victoria successfully stirs the long dormant heterosexuality in the camp Julian, it leads to the hilarious line "it was a long time since he had thought about breasts".

Nearly all the major characters in the book have their guards up, emotionally speaking, provoking hostility in others, who resent what they can't understand. Victor Daniels, a detective inspector who has moved to Mundham from London, is viewed with suspicion by locals and even co-workers who speculate amongst themselves that his decampment was the result of police corruption, cowardliness or loss of nerve. While Maltravers' aversion to women, and apparent homosexually, turns out to have been the result of a childhood sexual assault by a predatory woman. Leading Julian to confront Victoria with "what do women's libbers say about the possibility of rape by a woman? By a much older woman on a frightened boy?". Sexual trauma is something of a reoccurring theme here, Victoria's lack of interest in men, and unwillingness to jump into bed with them is born out of being sexually abused by her uncle. Daniels' investigation also leads him to an uncouth old lag called Sidney Marley who narrowly survived an attack by the Bornless Keeper in the 1950s, and is now rumoured to be in an incestuous relationship with his own daughter 'Daniels found himself making a mental note of the man's interest in children'. While reading this part of the book, I couldn't help think of Arthur Mullard playing this role in a film version of The Bornless Keeper, but can't decide if this was down to Mullard matching Williams' description of the character, or whether disturbing, posthumous rumours about Mullard were the reason for that imaginary piece of casting. When it comes to this book, you don't have to be sexually messed up to be a character in it...but it helps. Somehow also figuring within it's pages is an Irish dwarf, whose schizophrenia sometimes causes him to believe he is own, dead, puritanical mother...a subject matter handled with all the sensitivity you'd expect from the 1970s.

The Bornless Keeper is the type of book that gives off a Wicker Man type vibe upon approaching it, although after reading it, and knowing all it's secrets, you'd be more inclined to cite 'Tower of Evil' as a more accurate British horror film comparison. Like Tower of Evil, The Bornless Keeper could lay the slightest of claim for providing the blueprint for the slasher genre to come.
The spectre of The Siege of Trencher's Farm, and Straw Dogs, also looms over The Bornless Keeper. There's conflict arising from the new world intruding on the old one. Daniels is very much the David Sumner of the book, an outsider, disliked and distrusted by the locals who call his masculinity into question. Daniels attempts to bury himself away in a 'peaceful' setting, only to find himself having to confront the violent side of his nature that he thought he'd left behind in the big city. The Bornless Keeper, when he is eventually revealed, is akin to the Henry Niles character in The Siege of Trencher's Farm/Straw Dogs.... a confused, pitiful figure, without the capacity to understand his own violent actions. There seems to have been little love loss between Williams and Straw Dogs' director Sam Peckinpah. The latter referred to The Siege of Trencher's Farm as a 'rotten book' and Williams publically denounced Peckinpah's film of his novel, particularly the rape scene, which isn't in the original book. Surprisingly then that Williams provides an almost identical rape scene in The Bornless Keeper which begins with "oh no, please don't, please, oh no" and ends with "don't stop, don't stop". If anything the rape in The Bornless Keeper is even more troubling than the one in Straw Dogs. What with the victim initially play acting consent out of self-preservation 'telling herself over and over again she was doing this to save her life, she began to coil her legs round his hard body' only to then begin to get authentically turned on by it, and ending with her feeling physically, and possibly even emotionally, attracted to her rapist. There's also the implication that the rape helps the victim overcome the trauma of an earlier sexual assault, according to this book, two rapes do make a right.

Perhaps because of this graphic scene, or perhaps because it invites comparisons with the Peckinpah adaptation of his earlier work, Williams used the pen name 'P.B. Yuill' for the The Bornless Keeper. The author biography in the hardback edition merely stating 'P.B. Yuill is a pseudonym. The author doesn't want his real identity disclosed'. A few years later, Williams would resurrect the Yuill name, using it as a joint pseudonym for himself and Terry Venables, when they were co-writing the Hazell novels. Much as I like the idea of Terry Venables co-writing a folk horror novel, all evidence however points to The Bornless Keeper being entirely written by Williams.

For an author whose work- the Siege of Trencher's Farm excepted- was mainly played out in an urban environment, Williams has a real talent, and seemingly affection, for a location that has truly been taken back by nature. Peacock Island is a dark fairy tale land of brambles, thorns, spider’s webs, decaying cottages and harsh woodlands. There is possibly an overkill when it comes to descriptions of the great, but sinister outdoors in the book, you feel like you should be getting green fingers from turning the pages over, but it's a wonderfully atmospheric read, of that there can be no doubt. Inadvertently adding to the experience is the fact that my copy, an ex-library one last hired out in February 1979, has this old, damp smell to it, with a slight aroma of sea air, as if it's been locked in an attic like a mad relative for the last forty years. Which feels exactly how a book such as this should smell, whenever I open it, that smell hits me, immersing me in all things folk horror and what I like to call 'odour de Bornless Keeper'.