A Witch in Love (18 page)

I could feel Emmaline watching me and I knew what she was thinking. I kept my gaze fixed on Caradoc instead. He sighed and sipped again at his coffee, his glasses misting with steam.

‘And then, out of the blue, she turned up at my flat above my old shop in Soho one night. She was wild-eyed, heavily pregnant, completely beside herself, and asking for a bed. I didn’t question her; I took her in and made up a bed for her in my study. My first thought was the relationship with Tom had soured, for she was in such distress, and fearful of people following her. But soon I realized that it was not Tom she feared, but someone else, someone in our community.

‘ “Don’t tell
anyone
,” she beseeched me as she fell asleep that night, holding my hand in an iron grip. “They’re after me, Caradoc; they’re scrying even now. I’ve thrown up all the veils I can think of, but it won’t last long. You mustn’t tell anyone; I’ll be gone tomorrow, I promise. I’ve found someone who will protect her.”

‘I sat and nodded and soothed her, and thought about what best to do in the morning – whether to try to contact Tom, though I had no number for him, whether I should consult her parents, or just try to elucidate what was troubling her. For the moment I just sat and watched as she fell into a troubled sleep, plagued by nightmares and fears of people pursuing her, harming her, harming her baby. It was very late before she fell into a calmer sleep and I dared withdraw my hand from her grip and creep to my own bed. Perhaps that explains why I slept so deeply and so long. I will never forgive myself for that, for when I awoke, she was gone.’

He sighed again, the tremulous sigh of an old man struggling with the painful burden of the past.

‘I never saw her again. I tried to write to her at the last address I had – my letters were returned as “gone away”. I looked for her name in all the directories I could think of but there was no listing for Isabella Rokewood. I didn’t know if she was in England or America. I didn’t even know your father’s full name; she had always referred to him only as Tom.

‘At first I expected to hear from her daily.’ Caradoc took another sip of coffee and sighed heavily. ‘But the days stretched into months, and the months into years. And I came to believe that either she was dead or – forgive me, my dear – that she had done something terrible to herself, in the name of love.’

‘Terrible?’ I said, not quite wanting to hear the answer. Caradoc looked down into his mug, and when he looked up his lined old face was troubled.

‘I began to wonder, you see … Her letters had so determinedly excised the magic from her life. It was almost as if she wanted to
be
an outwith.’

‘Can you do that?’ I asked wonderingly. Both Caradoc and Emmaline flinched, an identical expression of revulsion and fear on their faces.

‘It is … There are procedures,’ Emmaline said, half under her breath. ‘It’s illegal and very dangerous – even fatal. But it has been … attempted, so they say …’ She trailed away and her eyes met Caradoc’s.

‘You are not to know, my child,’ Caradoc said quietly. ‘You who have grown up with the outwith, almost as one of them. But could you cut out your heart, your identity, make yourself other than what you are, even if it was your dearest wish?’ He looked once again at the photograph on his desk and an expression of regret and longing crossed his lined face.

‘So …’ I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘You never heard from her again?’

He shook his head. ‘Nor you, I take it, since you told Jonathan that she was dead?’

‘No. I don’t remember her at all. And my father doesn’t talk about her – or rather, didn’t. I think she bewitched him to keep silent until I was eighteen.’

‘Interesting.’ Caradoc’s brow furrowed. ‘With what aim, do you think?’

‘To hide Anna.’ Emmaline spoke unexpectedly. ‘She put a charm on their former house to cripple Anna’s magic. One presumes, because she didn’t want her discovered.’

‘So her delusion persisted …’ Caradoc said slowly.

‘Was it a delusion?’ Emmaline asked pointedly.

‘A good question. But one we cannot answer at this moment.’ He thought for a while and then turned to me. ‘I never asked, what brought you to me?’

‘This.’ I showed him the photo of my mother, the witch-letters flickering faintly in the lamplight.

Caradoc studied each side of it and then handed it back to me, tears in his eyes.

‘Forgive me,’ he said huskily, and wiped at his eyes with his pristine handkerchief. ‘She was so lovely, so very happy in the days before the shadows came for her.’

The shadows – just the word made me shiver.

‘Do you think she was mad?’ I said in a small voice. Caradoc looked at me with sympathy, but shook his head again.

‘I don’t know, my dear. I’m not a doctor or a psychiatrist. She was not herself, that night she came to see me. But people can be transformed by great fear or great stress. You need not be mad to be driven to desperation.’

‘Like they say,’ Emmaline put in drily, ‘it’s not paranoia if everyone really
is
out to get you.’

‘And what about the person who was supposed to keep us safe – the one she mentioned when she came to you?’

‘Again, I don’t know. I’m sorry, my dear. But I can only think that whoever it was, they failed her.’

So many questions – and no answers. But in the end, only one that really mattered.

‘Do you … do you think she could be still alive?’

Cardoc sighed – a deep, tremulous breath. And I knew at once that I was not going to like his answer.

‘Frankly, my dear, I do not. I’m very sorry. But I find it impossible to believe that she could stay away so long and that a talent as great as hers could remain hidden. She was a remarkable woman. She would have made her mark wherever she ended up; she could not have failed to do so, even
in camera
. The only way she could have rendered herself so completely invisible, to my mind at any rate, is death.’

I closed my eyes. After my mother’s letter it was nothing more than I’d been expecting, but …

Caradoc’s old dry hand clasped mine, frail as paper, firm as wood.

‘But, my dear, you should not take my word for it. If you’re seeking to trace her, your grandparents would be the best people to advise. At least, your grandmother would. Your grandfather is dead.’ His grip tightened on my hand. ‘I’m sorry to tell you so abruptly. They were both desperate after your mother disappeared, you know. They tried every method they could think of – magical and mundane – and if there was the least trace of her, alive or dead, they will have found it, I’m sure. I think they never got over the guilt they felt about disowning her. It was a fine, dramatic gesture at the time, but I don’t suppose they ever thought it would be for ever. I know that Henry regretted it until the day he died.’

‘My grandmother. Could I … Could you … ?’

‘Contact her? I can do it now if you like.’ He put his hand towards an old-fashioned Bakelite telephone on the desk. ‘Do you want me to?’

I sat quite still. Did I want him to? Was I ready to meet her? To meet my grandmother; the woman who’d disowned my mother, forced her to choose between her family and her love and to split her two identities down the middle and cleave her soul.

I hesitated – but I knew the answer already. I had to meet her. I might never know the truth about my mother, but perhaps my grandmother could lead me closer to that truth.

‘Yes, I want you to.’

He put his gnarled finger into the holes in the dial and swiftly dialled a London number, one he knew by heart. Someone answered, and he spoke in a courteous, old-fashioned manner.

‘Good morning, might I speak with Elizabeth Rokewood, please? Thank you, I’ll wait.’ There was a long pause – at least, it felt long to me – and then he spoke again. ‘Elizabeth, hello, my dear. Well – and you? Thank you, thank you. Now, I have something rather curious to tell you – a surprise. A young woman has arrived at my shop; she would like to meet you if at all possible … Yes. Yes, her name is Anna. She is Isabella’s daughter.’

There was a long pause and I could hear the voice on the other end speaking quickly and crisply, asking swift questions to which Caradoc replied with affirmatives and short explanations. More talk, while I tried to remember to breathe and swallow. Then, ‘I’m sure that will be fine. Thank you, Elizabeth, I will pass on the message. Would you like me to attend? Very well. If you’re sure. Goodbye, my dear. Look after yourself.’

He put the receiver down gently and then turned to me.

‘She would very much like to meet you. She suggests tea at the Dorchester at three – would that be convenient?’

‘Yes,’ I said. My heart began to race. I was going to meet my grandmother.

I sat in The Promenade at the Dorchester and wished I’d worn something else – Dad had taken Lauren and me to the Dorchester for champagne tea after we passed our GCSEs, but I’d been wearing heels and a skirt then. Now I was wearing walking boots suitable for the rutted muddy track up to Wicker House, worn jeans that showed my hip bones, and a loose open-neck shirt belonging to Seth. I had to laugh though, when I looked down at my lap and saw that my ankles and hands were crossed in the demure posture favoured by my old headteacher. I still remembered her barking, ‘A lady never sits with her knees apart!’ at girls in assembly.

It was a good job Emmaline wasn’t here. She would have been thoroughly impatient with it all – the hushed atmosphere, the deferential waiters. We’d conferred at the tube station and eventually she’d decided to leave me to it.

‘Look, it’s your first meeting with your long-lost family,’ she said, when I told her she was welcome to come. ‘I expect they’ll want to clasp you to their bosom – and I’ve had my fair share of whiskery granny kisses, thanks. Besides, it’s the bloody Dorchester. What if your grandma turns out to be an old skinflint and refuses to pay my share of the bill? I’m not taking a chance of getting stuck with a forty-quid cream tea, Anna Winterson.’

She was joking, of course – but there was enough of a seed of truth in the joke to make me laugh, and I still had a smile on my lips from the memory of her fake indignation when a small dark woman with snapping black eyes, streaked black hair swept into a chignon, and a heavy gold necklace around her throat stopped in front of my table.

‘Are you … ?’ Her voice was throaty; it sounded older than she looked. The hand she extended was veined and fine-boned, weighted down by a thick gold bracelet and three heavy rings set with stones. I stood, suddenly sick with nerves.

‘I’m Anna. Are you … ?’

She closed her eyes and, for a moment, I thought she was going to faint, have a heart attack here in the Dorchester. A vein stood out on her forehead and her fingers gripped her handbag with fierce desperation. Then she opened deep, hooded eyes and nodded.

‘Yes.’

This was it. This was my grandmother – the one living link to my mother.

‘Gra-grandmother?’ I stammered. She took my hand in hers, her grip strong and dry, the rings biting into my hand with surprising strength.

‘My dear. I have waited so long.’

Some time later we were seated with a pot of China tea between us and an untouched plate of wafer-thin sandwiches. I was awkward with nerves and too jumpy to eat, and Elizabeth – I could not yet quite think of her as my grandmother – though glacially calm, was whippet-thin and looked as if she existed off melba toast and celery.

I had told her about my upbringing – my mother’s disappearance, the decision to declare her dead when I was young. She said nothing, but her rings flashed a trembling fire as she reached for the teapot.

‘And tell me about yourself, my dear,’ she said, pouring herself a thin stream of golden liquid and adding a slice of lemon.

‘I’m not sure what there is to tell.’ I bit my lip.

‘Well, you have power, I can see as much.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you cope with that, growing up? Did you find any of our people to help you?’

‘My mother left a charm that, um … kind of neutralized my abilities while I lived in Notting Hill,’ I found myself explaining. ‘So nothing showed until we moved to Winter. And then … well … there were a few problems but a local family helped me.’

‘So you lived in Notting Hill?’ Elizabeth gave a slightly bitter laugh. ‘Our London house is very close – Kensington. To think that we were scrying and searching and paying private detectives in America and all the time round the corner …’ She let her voice trail off and sighed. ‘We did you a great wrong when we disowned your mother, though we did not know it at the time. Poor Isabella.’

‘Tell me about her,’ I said, surprising myself with the urgency in my voice.

‘You never knew her?’

I shook my head.

‘What a tragedy.’ Elizabeth sighed again, more heavily, and passed her ringed hand over her eyes. ‘She was a lovely child – lovely. And a lovely girl. But very wilful. I suppose our fault was in controlling her life too tightly – we thought, you see, that we knew her. Knew everything about her. We thought – we all thought – that her affection was engaged by a family friend, Gabriel, but of course we were wrong, as it turned out. Heaven only knows if her relationship with your father would have run its course eventually, but our absurd overreaction ensured that it did not. I see now of course that if we had
wanted
to push her into your father’s arms we could scarcely have gone about it more effectively. But –’ she made a dismissive gesture with one slim hand ‘– it is water under the bridge. We did what we did, for the reasons we did. Your mother did what she did for her own. She’s gone. But now we have you, and a second chance to be better and wiser people.’ She smiled at me and put her hand against my cheek. Her skin was very cool, the gold rings cold against my skin; the room was hot and the chill of her touch was strange, but not unwelcome.