A Witch in Love (19 page)

‘Would you like to meet my father?’ I asked, but I regretted it as soon as I’d said the words – I knew what the answer would be. Even before I’d finished the sentence she was shaking her head regretfully.

‘No. I am sorry, my dear, but I think no good could come of it. I am sure that we wronged him, and that he is a good man and a kind one, and he has clearly brought you up with love and honour and intelligence. But he is outwith, and our kinds are oil and water. No good can come of mixing the two – and in any case, he must feel resentment towards us; no one but a saint could not. It would be awkward and, worse than awkward, painful. No, it is better left.’

‘Then what shall I tell him?’

‘Whatever you like, my dear. You have sufficient power to deal with the eventualities, I can see that.’

It took me a moment to realize what she was saying – and when I understood her meaning I shuddered, filled with horror at the idea of enchanting my father to get my own way. That would make me … it would make me no better than my
mother
. I shook my head vehemently.

‘No! Never. I made a promise—’ I stopped.

‘Yes?’ she prompted.

‘I promised myself I would never do that,’ I finished. It was not what I’d been going to say, but it was true. My grandmother shrugged.

‘As you like.’ Then she looked at the gold watch on her left wrist and made a small tutting sound. ‘Anna, I am so sorry, the time has gone quicker than I had thought. I have a meeting. I wish I could have postponed it but Caradoc’s call came so late. Let me think … Could you meet me in two hours perhaps? For dinner?’

I thought. It would mean ringing Dad but he wouldn’t mind; he’d assume I was staying up with Emmaline. At least, he would if I didn’t correct him.

‘Yes, if I can be at Victoria at five to nine. The last train for Winter leaves at five past.’

‘I think that can be arranged. Now, let me give you directions to my office.’ She pulled a business card out of her purse. It was made of very stiff cream card, embossed with the name
ROKEWOOD
and a small emblem, a black rook, I thought. It looked familiar, and I furrowed my brow as she scribbled on the card, trying to think where I’d seen it before. Elizabeth saw me looking and said briefly, ‘The etymology of our name is from Rook Wood, hence our family symbol, and our motto:
corvus fugit
.’

She capped her fountain pen with a snap and handed me the card, now covered with sloping black copperplate, written with the finest nib I’d ever seen.

‘Take a cab to Vauxhall Bridge and follow these directions,’ she said. Then she bent and, with surprising tenderness, kissed my cheek. ‘Goodbye, my dear. I am so very pleased you have found us. I only hope we can make a fresh start. Heaven knows I was not a perfect mother, but perhaps I can be a better grandmother.’

And then she was gone, leaving only a trace of a curiously bitter perfume, which hung like incense in the air, and the lipstick stain on her bone-china teacup.

For a moment I just stood, foolishly, and then I began to pick up my bags and find my way out. The mâitre d’hôtel approached me as I made my way through the tables and a sudden, dreadful thought struck me – Emmaline’s remark about being stuck with the bill rose up in my head and I had to repress the urge to giggle hysterically. What would I do? I had no money. I did have my cash card but would they let me out to go to an ATM?

‘I’m so sorry,’ I began nervously. ‘My grandmother just left and – you’ll think this is so silly – but I’ve just discovered I don’t have enough cash to pay the bill and—’

‘Please don’t concern yourself, Miss Winterson,’ the man interrupted. ‘It has been added to Mrs Rokewood’s account. I merely wished to enquire whether you would like to rest in the ladies’ lounge, or whether I can arrange for a taxi to take you anywhere. The expenses will be charged to your grandmother’s account, naturally,’ he added, as he saw me looking doubtful.

I was tempted, very tempted. I’d been walking round London all day and I was tired and footsore. But it seemed too strange to start spending my grandmother’s money and I shook my head.

‘No, no thank you. But if you could show me somewhere I could make a phone call …’

‘Certainly.’ He ushered me through a lobby and into a small drawing room, furnished with a desk, a fireplace and a row of bookshelves. ‘Please, remain here for as long as you need to. I will ensure you are not disturbed. The telephone is on the desk.’

He shut the door behind him. It closed with an expensive-sounding clunk and I was alone.

I looked at the phone – a faux-antique gold thing with a turn dial – but I wasn’t sure whether it would need a charge card, or how to get an outside line, and in the end I just pulled my mobile out of my pocket and dialled the house number.

It rang and rang, and I tapped my foot, waiting for Dad to hear the ringer and pick up. He was probably closeted in the kitchen cooking supper, but still … He often said he was going deaf in his old age. Maybe it was true. At last the answerphone kicked in.

‘Uh … Hi, Dad. Are you there? Pick up if you’re there. OK, well, I’m stopping in London for supper so don’t worry about cooking for me. I’ll catch the nine o’clock train so … well, don’t wait up. I’ll get a cab from the station, don’t worry.’

Then I tried his mobile in case he was out and about. It went straight to answerphone but that wasn’t surprising; there was no reception at the house. I left another message, just in case, and hung up. Then I went out into the cool London twilight, twinkling with the yellow lights of shops and cars.

When I got off the tube at Pimlico it was quite, quite dark. I clip-clopped my way down Vauxhall Bridge Road in the new pair of shoes I’d bought from Topshop in an effort to make my jeans look like something more than Saturday slob-wear. I couldn’t afford a whole new outfit, but the heels at least made me feel like I was smart from the ankles down. I’d have to change back into my walking boots on the train home though, or risk breaking a leg on the walk back.

At Vauxhall Bridge I stopped, fished in my pocket and found Elizabeth’s card. It was cold on the bridge, the winter wind howling along the Thames and straight through my thin anorak. My hair whipped around my face, obscuring my vision as I tried to read the spidery black writing on the little card.

‘Go to the centre of the bridge,’ I read. ‘Stand above the second pier, downstream, statue of Fine Arts. When bridge …’

The last few words were in even smaller writing, cramped into the corner where she had run out of room. I couldn’t read it in the dim light, but there was a streetlamp halfway along the bridge so I began to make my way along until I stood by the second pier, under the lamp. I leant over the edge, trying to ignore the black water greasily swirling around the foot of the pier, and saw that I was standing above a black iron statue – of what, I couldn’t quite tell, but I was quite prepared to believe that it represented Fine Arts. I angled the card to the light again and the lamp flashed off the little embossed bird. Again it reminded me of something hovering just at the edge of my memory – but whatever it was eluded me and I peered instead at the narrow slanting letters cramped into the corner of the card.
When bridge … empties?
Yes, that looked right. The next word was even smaller, just three or four letters.
When bridge empties, jump
.

No, that couldn’t be right. I angled the card again and then had an idea and got my mobile out of my pocket. I turned on the screen and shone it at the card. The word leapt out, clear and bold and unmistakable.
Jump
.

What was this – some kind of joke? A test? What would I find down there? I looked down at the black waters, sucking and eddying at the grimy concrete, and shuddered. I was pretty sure what I’d find down there; used needles, condoms, shopping trolleys, various dysenteric bacterium. Yum.

I could turn back – I could go back to Winter and leave my grandmother waiting, and my questions unanswered, and my yearning for a family and a link with my mother unassuaged. Yes, I could turn back.

But that would make me a coward.

The parapet was curiously low, with no real safety barrier. There was even, improbably, a little ledge to help you climb up. I put one foot on the ledge and the other on the parapet, and looked up and down the bridge. It was empty of traffic, not a pedestrian in sight on this chilly winter’s night. The office windows reflected back at me blankly and the black waters swirled beneath.

I took a deep breath – and jumped.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
 hit the river with a smack that knocked the breath out of me – and then the swirling grey-green waters closed over my head. The current seized me straight away, turning and buffeting and dragging me until I had no idea which way was up, whether I was swimming or falling, or drifting or diving, or whether I would ever surface again. My lungs protested and my eyes filled with scratching silt and murk – but just as I was beginning to wonder if this had all been a huge mistake, I saw concrete steps shimmer out of the murk and a steel door lit by a bare, unshaded lightbulb that swung in the current.

My feet in their stupid heels hit something hard and, as I stumbled, I was half aware of the swirling waters, but also of tumbling painfully down a short concrete staircase and hitting the floor at the bottom with a thump that ripped my jeans and took the skin off one knee.

I stood up painfully and looked about me. I was at the foot of a flight of concrete steps, in a subterranean corridor. It might have been the underground car park of an office block. There was a smell of damp and the sound of water dripping somewhere far off – but my clothes and hair were dry. The only sign of the river was a piece of weed stuck to my shoe.

I shook it off and turned to the door. There was no handle and no lock, only an intercom grille with a button. I glanced behind me, back up the stairs, but they disappeared into nothing – the way back cut off by a slab of concrete. There was nothing for it. I pressed the buzzer.

‘May I help you?’ The disembodied voice that came from the intercom was crisply polite.

‘Er, yes … um, Anna Winterson. I’m here to see Elizabeth Rokewood.’

‘Come in please, miss. Push the door when the buzzer sounds.’ There was a click and the intercom went silent. Then the buzzer sounded, horribly jarring in the silent corridor, and I pushed and entered.

I was in a softly lit entry hall, lined with walnut panels that reflected the lamps set in sconces around the walls. A tall, grave man dressed in an undertaker’s suit was standing behind a little desk and looked up as I entered.

‘Miss Winterson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sign in, please, and then take a seat.’ He pushed a huge leatherbound tome over the desk and a pen, and I signed my name in the column marked
Name
and wrote ‘Elizabeth Rokewood’ in the column headed
Visiting
.

The tall man showed me to a bench against the wall and I sat and waited, resisting the urge to bite my nails nervously and trying to ignore the pain in my skinned knee. The building was very hushed, but not quiet – people moved purposefully up and down the hallway, their feet whispering on the soft, thick carpet. Office doors opened and closed, punctuated by the occasional deferential knock. So far, it could have been just a particularly luxurious department of the Civil Service, but the longer I sat, the more I noticed the extravagant magic underpinning everything.

There seemed to be no electricity, for instance. Heat came from fireplaces in every room, yet the flickering light in the sconces around the walls was not electric light or candlelight, but a white witchlight that burnt with a perpetual, smokeless flame. When an office junior dropped a cup of coffee with an exclamation of annoyance, the stain simply vanished into the thick carpet, which moments later was just as clean and dry as before.

The more I looked, the more I saw. Trolleys moving silently under their own steam, tropical plants thriving in a sunless room. A panelled door which opened once, to reveal a small coat closet, and then a second time, to show a glimpse of endless rows of books shimmering into darkness. I thought of Maya and how disgusted she would be at this profligate waste of magic – part of me was shocked myself, but I was impressed too, at the huge pulsing flow of power running so quietly around us.

I was so caught up that I jumped when a woman in a smart grey suit halted in front of me, smiling.

‘Anna?’

‘Yes.’ My voice was croaky with nerves and I coughed and repeated, ‘Yes.’

‘I’m Miss Vane. Your grandmother has been slightly delayed. She’s asked me to show you to her office while you wait – I expect you’d like to wash and change your clothes if you’ve been travelling all day.’ I stood up, wondering how to mention that changing my clothes wasn’t exactly an option – unless she meant putting my walking boots back on. But she was already starting down the corridor and I had to trot to keep up.

‘Library,’ she announced crisply as we passed a set of tall double doors. ‘Dining room … conservatory … speaker’s chamber … and here is your grandmother’s office.’ She knocked perfunctorily and then opened the door to a comfortable room furnished with an oak desk and a selection of chairs. There was a Chesterfield sofa in front of a low fire, and Persian rugs on the floor. The walls were hung with delicate watercolours of landscapes and flowers, except for one painting in oils above the desk. It showed a man I’d never seen with a hawklike nose and a shock of dark hair.
Henry Rokewood
read the plaque beneath. Well, well. Hi, Grandad.