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If you don’t know Etchy, you’ll know someone like him. 

He’s in the corner of the pub when we enter, and I put on a smile that’s tight around the edges. Etchy’s a couple of pints in already, though whatever he used to buy those will inevitably dry up on our arrival. 

‘Buckle in’ Adam whispers, leaving me at the bar.

‘And one for Etch!’ Etch shouts over, waving to welcome us to his domain. Etchy isn’t his surname or even a play on it, it’s short for Etch-a-Sketch, which comes from Sketchy because of his long anecdotes. Etchy: lean, voice like ripe figs, leading the charge for a fresh adventure, regaling you on the way back from another rave in a field with terrible, terrific stories three-quarters true, everybody’s favourite. That’s Etchy in our 20’s.

Some of Etchy is the same. He’s never paid his debts and doesn’t now, he still regales you with terrible, terrific stories but now you’ve heard them before and they’re three-quarters untrue. Everybody rolls their eyes at Etchy. That’s Etchy in our 40’s which is the one I’m putting a drink in front of now.

He’s looking pale and not very well. The light is dim, like you want it in a bar, a kindly yellow to conceal stains on the green velour seats. Faux-faded glory but with a modern menu full of old-fashioned classics, concertinaed between time hops. Which is how it feels with Etchy and his stories. When the spot’s scratched right you’re back in the 90s, leaping to tunes with 300 of your closest friends. Then the lights come on. All you can see are spills and cracks, and you catch scent of the men’s toilets and wonder how you never noticed before.

‘I’ve bad news.’ 

He reaches for our hands with his tattooed fingers across the wooden table. They’re a blotchy blue, like scrubbed off pen. His hands are faux-faded glory too. His fingers look plump next to Adam’s although maybe Adam has got too thin. Adam is always between half-marathons and fell races, me shouting after him that he can’t out jog the grim reaper. 

‘Sam’s dead.’ Etchy’s blinking seriously at us. ‘He cocks his head at me and unravels his fingers just from mine.  “Actually, Sam was before your time.’

So, it’s just Adam and Etchy’s tragedy now. I’m back on the sidelines, like cheering Adam in a race, a blurred face he zooms past. Or on the balcony at a party, watching unfolding tensions through a French window. Or, more frequently, on the other side of a lens in some forest better off without bipeds like me bothering it.

 I work with cameras. And wildlife. The cameras I operate. The wildlife I pray for. I’m patient and used to waiting while my legs cramp and my fingers freeze inside my insulated gloves, poised for that chance moment of beak, fur or claw. Weeks, days, hours for a two second flash. 

If you hear me called Eva Ready, it once was because I was first on the dance floor. Now it’s for that one-finger sure-fire click. We’ve all changed. It’s not just Etchy who’s got fat, I’ve put a bit on and always seem on some diet. Last New Year when Etchy was really nasty drunk, he kept mentioning how good I used to look, eyeing me unflinchingly while I tried not to cry.  He won’t remember. And I try not to because what’s a bit of a hurt for an eternity of friendship?

Adam’s hand grabbing Etchy’s, his other one covering his own delicate mouth. It’s been a while since my lips were there. We forget to kiss these days, though we’re close, the best of friends.

‘Sam was Adam’s best friend once,’ Etchy drawls in his musky voice, making an outsider of me. He uses their long familiarity as a stick to push me back with, as if he knows Adam better. He doesn’t. Anyway, I’ve met boy Sam. Though he’d already changed. Gone to the dark side as hippy Liz says. She’s still a hippy and she’s got fat too. 

‘Women get fat and men go bald.’ As if it didn’t matter and everything was equal.

We get in another round for the rest of the story. It’s me that goes to the bar again. When I walk back, the two of them are still holding on, reaching across the table with their paws stretched out like that Michaelangelo painting: The Creation of Adam. 

‘Sam hung himself in his big American office. He’s whatever they are in oil companies – directors? He’d not written a note but, so weird, he’d written on himself.  Sorry. Across his own feet. Foot. The one with the missing toe.’ Etchy is actually shaking now, without the lifeline of our palms touching.

‘Ad, I think this is about…the man. The Green Man.’

‘What?’ That’s me.

‘Did he have kids?’ That’s Adam.

‘No. Never had girlfriends, worse than me, haha.’ Etchy grimaces as if he’s laughing but he’s not. 

‘You know it was Sam’s company that got the fracking licence for West Yorkshire last year? Liz got arrested two months back D-locking onto their diggers in Ilkley with a bunch of young ‘uns.’

‘What do you mean, The Green Man?’ I ask. Adam wipes watery snot off his nose to tell the story.

‘Back in the day – before you – we were stoned and hanging out at Milner Field Ruins where that big mansion was, and you can see the mosaic on the forest floor. You went once, remember?’ 

I nod yes, though I’m not sure I do, and in the pause, Etchy grabs the story. Like he always does.

‘Milner Fields was haunted before it was ruins. Weird histories, every owner died tragically. One guy died of hiccups, one a thorn in his foot, probably one of consumption back then. That day we were freaking each other out with ghost stories. Sam was pretending to dance barefoot with one of the ghost wives around what’s left of the ballroom…’ 

‘It’s not a ballroom, it’s a greenhouse. Where the mosaic is.’ Adam butts in to correct, which Etchy hates. I see that thin darkening behind his eyes, wanting to take it out on someone. Maybe me. He puts his finger on his lips to shut everyone up. 

‘Then I say, let’s take a souvenir. And we all find a bit of crap, you know, odd bit of ceramic, brick, whatever, offer it to each other, giving it some speech. Hippy Liz objects though she’s simpering and hanging onto me because she wanted to get me in bed.’ Etchy looks fleetingly smug, remembering the glory days, when women put aside their integrity for a night of his affection if they were super lucky, a few minutes in the disabled toilet of The Cock and Ball if averagely lucky.

‘Then it got really strange. For all of us. Little things, like Adam slipping over and breaking his ankle, and I had a car crash – minor one. Like, every day something bad happens. Then Liz says it’s not just ghosts of rich men and their wives up at Milner Fields, but The Green Man has been seen. Playing on his pipes or whatnot. She goes on about how if it’s not just ghosts but Gods we can’t mess with them. So, Adam says we’ve got to return the stolen items.’

I am incredulous. ‘Adam said that? About ghouls?’ 

‘It’s the 90’s,’ Adam tells me, like I really hadn’t been there at all. ‘Obviously I don’t think anything is in that now. Liz made us return everything and bring something extra for The Green Man to apologise. But Sam can’t find his object and doesn’t come. He can’t really walk at that point because his foot’s swollen with this splinter he can’t get out. And Etchy…’

‘I came!’

‘And Etchy came but his gift was an apple, and he only ate it on the way there. So Etchy doesn’t make an offering, never seen Liz madder than that.’

‘This is ridiculous though, it’s not some sacred site, it’s just Yorkshire.’ But my lips have gone uncomfortably cold, as if there’s ice cubes in my pint.

‘Well, I said that to Liz at the time, didn’t I Etch? And I’ll never forget what she said – they misquote it as God’s Own Country. But actually, Yorkshire is the Old God’s Country.’

And I shudder then, a flinch beginning in my ovaries, like an embryo of a memory. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that, and it isn’t from Liz. It’s as if I know this from way back when, from when I was an egg inside my mother inside my grandmother. 

They go on, taking turns sharing this story, how they leave presents for The Green Man and a humble hymn of an apology. How Sam never showed. Liz of course says Sam’s injury is solid proof because that’s what one of the owners died of. You can look it up. Wiki it. His foot swells, and doctors mutter about him losing a toe. Then Sam started ignoring everyone, literally blanking people in the street. Perhaps a bit psychotic from the skunk he smokes. He’d always been the joker but now he smartens up and gets into making money, sells up the clapped out Mini and buys a ridiculous SUV.  He leaves Yorkshire and ends up in The City trading or something none of us understand. 

‘He changed,’ winces Adam. ‘Becomes one big capitalist bastard.’

We have another round, to Sam as he used to be before. Etchy wants us to stay longer but we say no. I glance behind when I’m putting on my coat and Etchy mouths a request so I lend him £20 I don’t expect to see back again. We leave him drinking alone.

‘Do you miss those days?’ I ask, my arm slid into Adam’s, in the quiet and warm winter that’s even milder than the last.

‘Nah. I’m very glad I met you.’ He answers tipsily, kissing my ear.

But I’d not meant before me. I’d meant those days just after we’d met, my glory days, our glory days when it was all of us together.

A few days later the weather takes a turn for the worst. It’s been so funny we’ve had to rent a car though Adam’s against driving. But the train keeps getting cancelled with the floods. Dead boy Sam’s late saying sorry for the havoc wrecked upon this planet. Damage done. 

When Adam’s phone rings from an unknown number I think it’s about the car, but it’s not. It’s a hospital.

‘Etchy crashed, driving drunk. Into an orchard of all things, back up near Shipley. He’s not conscious but we’re all down as next of kin. Liz says we have to come immediately.’

‘Was he going to Milner Fields? To make amends?’ 

It doesn’t seem very Etchy but he transferred some money after the pub and put sorry as a reference. I didn’t know what he was sorry for, and I never mentioned it to Adam.

Adam shrugs, whoever knows what Etchy is thinking?  We’re staring at each other, stuck in today, Adam in his sweaty running clothes, me in my pyjamas. Then it’s the old us,  from the 90’s, and he says ‘Eve, let’s go. And let’s get an apple and see that Green Man on Etchy’s behalf. Get the gang back together.’

‘Our gang?’

‘Of course.’ Then I’m the me I used to be, the one that seduced and won him good and proper. I’m not going to mention Etchy’s late night apology, nor the other messages that followed. This is a better story, me and Adam deep in the Old God’s Country. I snake my arm around him and kiss those neglected lips. They swell like sin underneath my mouth. For whatever those oil men are wintering upon us we’re going to make Spring rise again.

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Tabitha Bast lives in Bradford, and works as a therapist and writer. Inspired by nature, revolutionary struggle and love. Currently working on a tightly themed, dystopian short story collection “Tipping Point”. Writings range from political articles to short stories. Has had 15 short stories published, and delivers monthly writing retreats for Writers HQ.

Most recently published in 2025:”The Man Who Lied to His Wife” Bournemouth Writing Prize,  “Four Tins “ Seize the Press, “Heat” CafeLit. 

Writes a memoir/feminist blog on positive masculinity https://theboysarealright.substack.com/