A Hint of Witchcraft (4 page)

Alex and Lance did not devote the afternoon to their crystal set. When the girls caught up with them at the Pelmans' door it was not mentioned.

Miles found himself with an escort of four on one of those loose-knit rambling walks familiar to young people brought up in the country. Whenever Alex made such a foray, a random assortment of village children materialized in confident expectation of some spectacular feat of hedge-leaping, gate-vaulting or tree-climbing. There had been the hair-raising Tarzan episode when Alex had hung upside down from a tree, his knees crooked over a branch. Margot had closed her eyes and kept them closed in silent prayer until somehow with Lance's help he had got down. ‘Just stop it, will you?' Lance had growled.

Alex's prowess in ball-throwing was particularly admired and was on the whole safer. Anyone could throw a ball horizontally but Alex would produce one from his pocket and throw it upward to an incredible height. Heads back, chins upturned, his devotees followed its upward flight: the earth fell away; they gazed, dazzled, into the sky.

For Margot, too, there was magic in it. The ball was no longer solid. It was bodiless yet alive. It became ethereal, escaping heavenward through bird-inhabited air and even, it seemed, into the clouds. Then came the turning point, the utmost moment before the speck reversed its direction and fell with lightning speed, and there once more were the fields, the trees, the cows still munching.

At the old Toll House Lance left them and went home to fix the terminals. The others turned into the cart-road leading to Larsons' farm, Linden walking between Alex and Miles, Margot hurrying ahead in the hope of seeing the Larsons' new baby. And there it was in its pram, shaded from the dazzle of sunlight on the whitewashed wall of the house; and there, too, was Mrs Larson on the bench outside the door. She was a fair-haired, delicate young woman, still pale and limp after her first confinement. A red-combed cock strutted; hens humbly pecked; pigeons cooed; a dog crouched low and came creeping to sniff at Margot's ankles.

‘Now then, Miss Margot, what do you think of our little girl?'

‘Oh Mrs Larson.' Margot's awestruck whisper as she bent cautiously over the pram would have gladdened any mother's heart. ‘Look, she can yawn already.' Then, as the others caught up and lingered on the path at the edge of the farmyard, ‘Come and see. It's a new baby.'

Linden nodded and smiled and remained on the path. Alex called out a greeting to Mrs Larson and the two moved on. It was Miles who came to inspect the newcomer to the Bainrigg estate. As it happened she was the youngest human being he had ever seen at close quarters.

‘What are you going to call her, Mrs Larson?'

‘Well, sir, since you've asked, I'll tell you – we're not sure. Albert and me, we've got different ideas. Albert wants to call her after his mother – that's Mary – and I don't want to go against what he wants. But I want her to have a name she'll like. I've never liked mine. Nancy. Albert thinks I'm foolish, but I want to call her Lilac.' In the brief silence that followed she looked anxiously from one to the other and Margot was quick to say, ‘Of course you want her to have a pretty name.'

‘We'd be calling her after the lilac bush over there. In another month it'll come in flower and it'll be the first thing she sees and smells when I bring her out of a morning.'

‘And then in another month,' Miles said after a thoughtful pause, ‘there'll be roses.…'

‘Rose is a lovely name. I wish I'd been called Rose,' Margot said. ‘The heroines in stories are sometimes called Rose.'

‘And if you called her Mary Rose, you'd both be satisfied.'

‘I do think Mary Rose sounds more … smooth … than Mary Lilac. Mary Rose Larson would be a graceful name.'

‘There now, you're right.' Nancy had flushed and brightened. ‘And it's only fair for Albert to have his say. He'd likely be satisfied if Mary came in the christening.'

‘And you could
call
her Rose.'

‘If you would like it,' Miles said, ‘I'll send down a rose bush when she's christened. Henderson will plant it for you.'

As she told Albert, they really bucked her up. The naming had been a worry and they made it all so simple. It was very quiet at the farm. She could spend a whole day without seeing a passer-by and she missed having somebody to talk things over with.

‘The rose bush was a good idea,' Margot said, as they left. ‘She was delighted, I could tell.'

‘Do you think we saved the baby from being Lilac?'

‘I think so. I don't know why but Lilac doesn't sound right for a person's name.'

The cart track veered to the right between hawthorn hedges. Linden and Alex were still ahead, Alex talking, Linden presumably listening. On their way to Bainrigg they must pass the Lucknow chimney where something rather interesting had once occurred. It was just coming into view, a sombre intrusion on the green countryside, rising apparently from the bowels of the earth on the ridge above the village. Not that there was much of it left. Although it looked like a squat chimney it was in fact an updraught ventilating shaft, all that remained of the old Lucknow Drift.

Originally it had been encircled by a high wall but time and weather had weakened the structure. Brickwork had crumbled and been carted away for more homely use. On the north side the wall was more than half gone and the cavity had become an unofficial dump for items not otherwise disposable. Elder and ivy had encroached to within a few feet of the square stone base.

It was here that one of Alex's ball-throwing exploits had literally taken an unexpected turn. The descending ball had ricocheted from the ash tree on the other side of the path and by some freak of dynamics had fallen – plonk – into the chimney as if with all the countryside to choose from it had deliberately chosen to go there. The faint distant ghost of a sound and it was gone. A chorus of gasps from the audience as Alex sauntered to the chimney and stood on the base. Few would have ventured close to it, not while they were still at school; boys had been caned for just playing near it.

But Alex had leaned over the crumbling brickwork and intoned into the cavity, ‘Gone but not forgotten. Rest in peace.' His voice raised a weird sepulchral echo as from infernal regions. As he released his hand from the edge a loose fragment of brick fell into the void. Perhaps its sudden vanishing had a sobering effect. When Alex turned to face his juvenile admirers, he had the grace to improve on the occasion.

‘See what happens if you go near that shaft? If anything falls down there, you'll never see it again. Skedaddle off, the lot of you. A penny for the first one to Larsons' gate.'

The message went home. Threats from the schoolmaster could not compete with so striking an object lesson. With characteristic panache decently modified, Alex claimed to be a public benefactor. Toddlers had it drummed into them by older brothers and sisters, ‘If you fall in there you'll never get out and nobody'll know where you are.' An invisible circle round the base of the chimney remained untrodden like one of the forbidden areas on which a tribal wise-man has laid a taboo.

In the course of history, such places, once sinister, have become sacred, as Alex enjoyed pointing out, but as yet the chimney had taken on no odour of sanctity and served only as a melancholy reminder of the tragic variations in the history of mining.

Today nothing happened. The children drifted off to watch rats being clubbed to death in Larsons' stackyard; the others sauntered on. Margot was hurrying to catch up after taking a stone from her shoe when Miles turned to wait for her.

‘Do you often come this way?'

‘Oh yes. As far as that tree.' The ash tree at the corner of the field marked the beginning of Clint Lane. ‘And I've sometimes.…' She hesitated. ‘We shouldn't really but we've sometimes come to gather bluebells – on your private land.'

‘I wish I'd known.'

‘Through the gate, then turn left along the hedge and you come to a sort of hollow. It's a lovely little place. But of course you know it.'

‘It used to be a stone pit. The path is marked on the map as Beggars' Way. It leads all the way to Langland Priory.'

‘Through the wood? That's where the bluebells are.'

‘I hope you'll come and pick them every year. If I'm at home I'll come and help you.'

‘But boys don't.…'

‘I could hold the basket and you could tell me all the news.'

They had come to the parting of the ways. To the right, close at hand, rose the chimney, bringing a touch of desolation to the sunny afternoon. To the left, the ash tree overhung a gate opening on the fields surrounding Bainrigg House. Ahead lay Clint Lane.

Three of them, unversed in the art of leavetaking, could only ward off the final moment by repeating things already said, until.…

‘Goodbye, Miles. It's been so nice meeting you.' Linden held out her hand. This time there was no discrepancy between the charming voice and the words spoken. Released from awkwardness, the others followed suit.

‘Goodbye, Miles. You'll come again, won't you? Promise.'

‘So long. See you in the summer holidays.'

‘Well, I'll be off then, and thank you,' Miles brought himself to say, wishing he could say more. The summer holidays seemed years away. A whole term yawned ahead.

Margot liked him, especially when he smiled. He was shy but kind. She was aware of a quiet grace in his farewell gesture as he closed the gate behind him. His way lay uphill where ewes with their lambs speckled the green slope.

‘He's a thoughtful person,' Margot said.

‘A good chap,' Alex said, his eyes on Linden.

Hers, heavy-lidded and long-lashed, followed Miles's receding figure. They lost sight of him as they turned into Clint Lane. It was to be more than one summer before they saw him again.

Meanwhile Margot had the safety of her guest in mind.

‘By the way, Linden, don't ever go near that chimney.' She delivered the caution with some importance. ‘Those bricks aren't safe. Alex once—'

‘Don't be such an ass, Meg. Why on earth should Linden go near the chimney?'

‘Why indeed? But thank you for the warning, Margot. I won't forget.'

Margot was abashed: she had been silly and officious. ‘Ass' didn't matter. But ‘Meg'! She lagged behind and walked slowly past the row of workmen's cottages on the right. They were always interesting. High on the ridge, exposed to all the winds of heaven, Clint Lane was the best place in Ashlaw for drying clothes. Moreover the tenants had splendid views over the rooftops of the village below to the distant blue fells in the west.

But that was from the front windows, or from front doors rarely opened. The active life of the Judds and their neighbours throbbed in the narrow backyards with their ash-pits and privies, pigeon lofts and dog kennels, bicycles and pushchairs, but from the purposeful squalor of such scenes one had only to cross the lane to pick cowslips on the grassy bank and sit for a few blessed minutes in the shade of the hawthorn hedge.

There was a homeliness here that Margot liked. She recognized some of their own towels from Monk's Dene on Mrs Judd's line – then turned. On the opposite side of the lane where a gap in the hedge gave access to the fields beyond, something had moved.

‘Katie,' she called softly. ‘Have you been hiding?'

Katie didn't answer but she didn't shrink away either. It seemed to Margot that she was at home there among green leaves and budding may-blossom with her own back door close at hand. She was no intruder on the natural scene as she sometimes seemed elsewhere. Only her face was visible: pale-skinned, fine-boned, her features indeterminate below the fluff of fair hair rising like a halo, as if she had just alighted. Against her will?

It was a glimpse of Katie that she was to remember. She had never seen her like that before – disembodied – so that one forgot the dismal clothes and the awkward foot and the sidling walk that made her seem – as she so often did – unwillingly earthbound.

Katie's hair stirred in the light breeze. Boughs and leaves glimmered in the fitful play of sunlight so that the face, half turned away, lost definition and became unfamiliar.

‘Katie!'

A gentle movement and the face was gone: she was alone and ran to join the others. Chapman and Mrs Grey were waiting in the car. The visit was over.

CHAPTER IV

There were to be many similar days. The Greys came several times in their first year in Elmdon, sometimes the only guests, sometimes to meet other friends of the Humberts. There were picnics on the fells, tea in the garden, misty autumn walks, sledging in snowy fields, and afterwards card games in firelit rooms and songs at the piano: a pageant of family scenes varying only with the seasons; a life untroubled and safe and, in retrospect, seeming safer still.

But it was changing. Even on that first spring day there had been prophetic signs, slight and untimely as the rustle of an early-fallen leaf presaging winter. It was after that first visit that Edward Humbert took to emphasizing a topic he had touched on before: the need for girls to be equipped to earn their own living. The argument that most of them would find husbands to support them was hopelessly out of date. A million spinsters and widows had been left to fend for themselves, unprepared and untrained. What was to become of them?

‘Miss Bondless fends for herself,' Margot reminded him. They had, as it happened, just said goodbye to her. She had been staying with the Pelmans and was leaving that morning to take up a new post as companion to a lady in Cannes. She was a distant connection of Dr Pelman and came from time to time to restore order in a masculine household where disorder sometimes came close to chaos.

‘Miss Bondless is an exception,' her father conceded. ‘She has wide interests.'