The Changeover (10 page)

"Was it from the future?" she asked, and he nodded.

"But not very far in the future," he told her. "Not much over a day. It'll fit in somewhere."

"Don't give yourself a headache," said Winter warn- ingly. "He's showing off," she added to Laura. "A materialization like that, even though it is only a little thing, is quite hard to achieve and very wearing."

"It was really beautiful," Laura said. "Like getting a little present from tomorrow."

"Sorensen has a real affinity with birds," Miryam said, and for the first time Laura heard a note in her voice that suggested she might be proud of him in her own cool way. But Sorry looked into space as if he half expected it to punish him for taking liberties, and said
very little for the rest of the evening.

Laura's bedroom was upstairs, looking out over the courtyard with its leafy population of birds and chessmen in the form of topiaries. From her window she could see the wood, the last remnant of Winter's farm, and through its leaves and branches the occasional light of the Gardendale subdivision, quite as pretty as Christmas lights, set among the poplars and birches. Though she knew this was a beautiful and mysterious house of numberless rooms, she was briefly homesick for the noise of traffic, the dangerous streets, even for the Supermarket from Outer Space, all part of the happy year now breaking up around her, becoming something to be remembered, not a time she was actually inhabiting. She pushed the bolt on her door, wondering if she was, perhaps, frightened of Sorry, and deciding that really what she wanted was to feel contained, shut off with her own thoughts, away from all the seductions and persuasions of the Carlisle witches.

"Chant!" said Sorry's voice urgently in her ear, and she woke, startled, to find she had been sleeping. The darkness was thick and soft as if she had been wrapped in fur.

"What do you want?" she cried, really frightened now, first by the darkness and the unfamiliar room that lurked beyond it and then by Sorry's voice somewhere close to her face.

"Shhh! Don't be scared!" he said. "I haven't come to ... I don't mean any harm. Listen, don't let Winter con you into anything, will you? She's a tough proposition, old Winter, and she always thinks of her own advantage first. Don't let her work a changeover on you unless you are quite sure it's the only way to save your brother — and even then — make sure it's what you really want to do. Don't give in without making her tell you whether or not there's an alternative. She will tell you honestly if you ask her, but make sure you ask her."

"Is it so terrible — being a witch?" Laura asked, sitting up in bed. She put out her hand in the dark and after a moment touched Sorry's face.

"No— it's not terrible, but it separates you off," he said. "You mightn't want to be stranded over here with Miryam and Winter and me."

Listening to his voice in the dark, Laura found herself remembering the exact feel of his hand in the touch at once intimate and remote earlier that evening, and to her astonishment wanted to feel it again so that she could think carefully about it. She touched his face in the dark like a blind girl trying to find out what expression he was wearing.

"How did you get in?" she asked. "I bolted the door." She felt him smile.

"Very sensible," he said, "but it's a poor witch that can't go through a door."

"Aren't you pushing it a bit far?" Laura asked sternly. "I think what you've been doing to me counts as sexual harassment."

"You've been reading Woman's Weekly," Sorry replied. "Never mind — as harassment goes I expect it's the best sort there is."

"It's not fair!" Laura hissed.

"Fair!" Sorry answered. "You know what you can do with 'fair'! Besides, one way and another, I didn't think you'd mind. I thought we could take a short cut perhaps. You don't want to go through all that 'getting to know you' bit, do you?"

"I don't know," Laura said. "I don't know anything about that. I've never been out with a boy. Have you— with a girl, I mean?"

"Do you want a reference?" Sorry asked.

Laura's hand still touched his face.

"Have you ever been to bed with a girl?" she asked, and he was silent. "Have you?" she persisted.

"Not here," he said at last.

"Did you like it?" she asked. "Was it like it is in the last five lines of a Barbara Cartland?"

"It was nice in bits," Sorry said. "As a matter of fact I got into a hell of a lot of trouble over it. But then I might have been the villain, not the hero. If only I knew for sure."

"What's it like being a witch?" Laura asked.

"Nice in bits," he said again. "Sometimes the two things seem to go together. Listen — I'll show you — I'm very good you know. Think of some place— some place you remember as wonderful." Before Laura could stop it a certain memory came into her mind.

"Not that!" she was about to say, but Sorry said, "Got it!" as if she had passed him something in the dark, and the room began to lighten towards the window.

"Nature is like a holograph in some ways," he said. "Any part contains the whole picture."

Just for a moment Laura was looking into something like a peephole no bigger than a small coin, the next moment a most peculiar sensation overcame her, as if she had suddenly been asked to contain a memory of every place in the world. Whatever she named she saw, what she saw she struggled to name, not one ocean but all oceans, deserts of ice, coloured only with sunrise, sunset and the shifting lights of the aurora, sand sifting to the very boundary of sight. Somewhere in the flesh of the earth the dreadful earthquake shuddered, the tide walked to and fro on the leash of the moon, rainbows formed, winds swept the sky like giant brooms piling up clouds before them, clouds which writhed into different shapes, melted into rain or darkened, bruised themselves against an unseen antagonist and went on their way, laced with forking rivers of lightning, complete with white electric tributaries. Out of this infinite vision an infinity of details could be drawn, but Sorry had settled on one, and from the endless series a particular beach was chosen and began to form around Laura — a beach of iron-dark sand and shells like frail stars, and a wonderful wide sea that stretched, neither green nor blue, but inked by the approach of night into violet and black, wrinkling with its own salty puzzles, right out to a distant, pure horizon.

Laura had once, many years before, visited this beach with Kate and her father. Now she smelt the strange smell of salt, mingled with the organic scents of rotting seaweed, and of sand, alive with more lives than she could begin to number.

"That's restful," Sorry commented. "Sweet dreams, Chant. See you tomorrow."

He was gone, and Laura, both disturbed and comforted, watched the waves break on the curving sand and went to sleep again at last.

In the morning she woke early to the song of many, many birds and went down through the old house, still and empty at that hour of the morning, its rooms inhabited only by the abstract brownish-gold of early sunlight. Then a noise drew her out of the back door and she found Sorry himself, squatting half-naked before his motorbike doing some unexplained maintenance.

"I made some coffee a moment ago," he said as casually as if he were used to having her around. "There should be enough for you, too. It's still hot, if you hurry."

Laura found the coffee and came out to sit on the step and watch him.

"Doesn't your bike go?" she asked after a moment. "I need to get home and put on a clean shirt."

"Have one of mine," Sorry said. "No, I suppose it would be a bit too big. OK. She's jake! Give me ten minutes and I'll be able to take you home and check the bike at the same time."

Laura sat on the step, leaning back against the door, and felt for the first time completely comfortable in Sorry's company. Later, she climbed on to the back of the bike with the skill of increasing experience, and they roared off down the drive, opened the gate, closed it again, and came out of the enchanted world of Janua Caeli into the Gardendale subdivision. There it lay, innocent, and sleeping its Sunday morning sleep, streets almost totally empty, houses washed over with early, tawny light, but beginning to turn pink along the ridges of the roofs and the rims of the narrow chimneys.

Laura saw with amazement Chris Holly's car outside their gate.

"Sorry," she said climbing off and standing beside him, "that's Chris Holly's car."

"Is it indeed?" said Sorry in a disinterested voice.

"Kate went off in it," Laura frowned uncertainly. "She must be back — something's wrong."

"Something's still wrong with this bike," Sorry said. "I'll tell you what— jump back on it and we'll have a little burn up round by the estuary and pick up your shirt on the way back. Anyhow, it's very early. Your mother might appreciate not being woken."

"You don't understand..." Laura cried scornfully. "All I want is news of Jacko ..."

"No, you're the one that doesn't understand ..." Sorry exclaimed almost desperately and at that moment, almost as if given a cue in a play, Chris Holly opened the door and walked down the path to collect the milk. At the gate he glanced around rather selfconsciously. He was wearing Kate's good raincoat which was very long, and his feet were bare.

Almost at once he saw Laura and Sorry staring at him.

"Damn!" muttered Sorry mostly to himself. "Don't take it to heart, Chant. Stay cool."

Laura was more than cool. She climbed back on to the Vespa and said very coldly, "Let's go somewhere else."

"It's none of my business," said Sorry, "but I don't think you should take it seriously. It's nothing really."

"Laura ..." exclaimed Chris Holly uncertainly, looking appalled.

"Go at once!" Laura commanded and thumped Sorry on the back. He nodded, and they shattered the early morning silence tearing off down Kingsford Drive.

"It's not so dreadful!" Sorry said, sounding rather bored. "Your mother thought she might feel more cheerful if she spent the night with Chris. Well, why not? I'm in favour of anything that makes people feel better about bad times."

"Jacko's so sick," Laura said, but Jacko's sickness was only part of the reason for her pain.

"It won't make him any worse," Sorry said, "and it might make her feel better."

"You don't understand about things like this," Laura cried. "You haven't got a heart."

"Lucky me!" Sorry replied. "But it doesn't mean that what I'm saying isn't true."

It was going to be a very hot day. They were walking along one of the tracks around the estuary where the city's river, after turning through ranks of houses and small factories, met the sea and fell under the influence of the moon. The hills were on their left, the water on the right, though as the tide was out there was more mud than water. Ahead of them were two lakes, settling ponds for a sewerage system speckled with ducks, black swans and geese, and reflecting the jagged rim of the hills as exquisitely as less ambiguous water.

"You'll forget it," said Sorry, trying again. "Forget it now."

"I won't!" Laura said, with sullen determination. "I'll never forget it."

"Well no, perhaps not totally forget it." Sorry grew increasingly perplexed and irritated. "You'll just stop thinking about it. Other things will happen and you'll start thinking about them instead, so you might as well stop thinking about it now." He took off his jacket as he spoke, so that the sun fell on his back and shoulders. They came round a bend in the path and looked into a bay where the film of water, no thicker than a sheet of paper over the mud, nevertheless reflected the morning light with an intense silver whiteness, but as they walked towards the shining expanse, a gust of warm wind blew across the bright surface and it vanished, turning suddenly grey. They disturbed a heron sitting on a partially submerged log, and it rose and flew past them sinking its head on its breast as its flight settled down, trailing its long legs behind it. Laura wished she could fly off alongside it, and then dissolve into the honey-coloured air like sugar under the warm stirring of the wind, and never have to feel anything again.

"No chance!" said Sorry beside her, reading her thought by some uncanny skill of his own. "We've just got to grin and bear it. Look at the mud. It's very calm, isn't it? Let's calm ourselves by looking at mud for a while." However he was staring after the heron as he spoke as if part of his attention were flying with it.

"It's easy for you to bear it," Laura said sharply.

"Thank goodness!" Sorry agreed. "I don't mind if you think I'm insensitive. It's my triumph that I am. It's a victory. Holy cow! Why suffer?"

"I didn't choose to suffer," Laura answered resentfully.

"You can choose not to though," he assured her.

They sat down among the cocksfoot and clover and stared out over the mud, pocked by crab holes and woven across with tracks left by the crabs in their steady, sideways commerce, scavenging and threatening assiduously. Sorry put his arm around her shoulders, but it was not comforting and not even very distracting for he had grown remote. It was rather like being embraced by a tree.

"I know what I'm talking about," he said. "Look— I only met my mother three years ago. She sent me off when I was a month old — did she tell you? She feels obliged to confess from time to time."

"She did mention about that," Laura admitted. "She seemed guilty about it."

"Don't think I blame her," Sorry added. "I think she did the right thing. It wasn't her fault that it didn't work out."

"What went wrong?" Laura asked, willing to be distracted a little.

"I went wrong," said Sorry. "I could go through the looking-glass and the others couldn't. It was as if everything around me had an extra piece tacked on to it that I could see and work with and no one else knew about. I could make trees blossom, cabbages grow... I could make the rainclouds roll away ... I couldn't make it rain then (that's a lot harder) but still, I could find anything lost and I could read any book. Actually, that wasn't witchcraft but it might just as well have been. At first I made them uneasy and then they seemed to get used to it. The oldest brothers left home and I went cheerfully on. But then my father lost his job — redundancy they said, but I think he'd upset somebody there in some way. He got another job, but not such a good one, and besides he was beginning to get a bit older and that worried him ... he had to blame someone and he chose to blame me."

"How could he?" Laura said, bewildered.

"There was no difficulty at all," Sorry assured her. "It's not a skill, blaming other people. It's an instinct. He got very frightening over it."

"But you weren't adopted," Laura said. "They could have given you back, if you made them feel uncomfortable."

"Oh, no," said Sorry, and laughed. It was a light laugh, amused and not in the least angry, but for some reason it chilled Laura to the bone. "There was one really important reason why they couldn't give me back, or get rid of me in any other way, and if I tell you what it was it makes them sound ... it makes them sound mean and trivial, but they weren't. It wasn't a trivial reason, though we're brought up to think it ought to be. She paid for me. Miryam paid them quite a lot to look after me— more than it cost to keep me — something over for their trouble — and by the time things got really bad they had absolutely come to depend on getting paid. Their standard of living— the house and car for example, partly depended on getting that money every six months."

"Like maintenance!" Laura said, understanding at once.

"I got sinister in every way to Tim — my foster father. Well I'd always been illegitimate (Miryam tells me she really doesn't know who my father is and tried to arrange it so she'd never know). Then I'd always been left-handed. And there was the— I suppose I have to say the supernatural element, though it seems to me that I'm more a part of nature than most people, not outside it or above it. I always feel I work with it, not against it. Well, whatever it is I learned to hide it pretty quickly once I could see how it was upsetting him, and then, blow me down, he moved on to my left-handed- ness. Poor Tim! He started to drink a lot about that time. He'd get terribly drunk about — oh, say once a month— then he'd spend the next three weeks repenting, and we all had to repent along with him. Part of my repentance was learning to become right-handed. He said it was for my own good. I've always stammered,"

Sorry said. "I think nature intended to balance out a tendency to talk too much by making it harder to talk at all. Well, my stammer just got worse and worse and at home I lived like a one-handed babbling idiot. Even when Tim wasn't there I was always practicing for when he was. Then he lost his job again and was home a lot more. In the end I got so peculiar at school they sent a welfare officer around to see what was going on ... and that just... it was the end." Sorry laughed despairingly. "Tim went absolutely bananas. He thought I'd complained, or so he said, but really I think he just wanted an excuse to have a real crack at someone. He said the country was run by sinners — hard to argue with that, one way and another — that the wrong people had the money. He mentioned Miryam by name and then quoted the Book of Revelations and f-finally," Sorry said, "he gave m-me the m-most terrific hiding he'd ever g-given me. I mean he was a really b-big man and he b-beat me up. When I was little he used to play a fighting game called 'Bears' with me. This was a game of 'Bears' for grown-ups, I suppose."

Laura stared at him in alarm, for though his voice was perfectly cheerful, the emergence of his stammer was somehow unnervin
g. He smiled at her lightheart
edly but as he did so the stigmata of an old punishment discoloured his face, even displacing his summer tan so that his cheeks swelled and his eyes blackened, and she could not be sure if he knew what was happening to him, there before her, or if he was quite unaware how memory was betraying his apparent unconcern.

"I c-c-c-could h-have k-k-k-" Sorry was abruptly unable to speak. He frowned, closed his eyes and then said in a strained but calm voice, "I could have killed him, but I was too sc-scared, and besides that, in my head he still felt like my f-father. Look!" he cried with relief, "there's the kingfisher."

It was perched on a projection on the bank behind him, which rose at that point in great steps of clay and rotten rock, partly overgrown with bushes of white daisies, bracken and periwinkle, as well as late foxgloves. The kingfisher flew down to Sorry's outstretched hand, so that Laura could see, once more, its creamy breast the colour of primroses, and its blue- green back.

"Would it come to me if I were a witch?" she asked, and Sorry nodded absently. Perhaps he was brooding on the story he had told to demonstrate his light-heartedness and which had, instead, illustrated to Laura the harsh interaction of event and memory. "What happened then?" she asked.

"Then?" said Sorry derisively. "Oh, then the f-f-f-fat was in the f-f-fire." But he was over his anxiety and merely making fun of his impediment. "No way could I have gone to school the following day and told people, 'Oh, yes, I do have a few bruises. I walked into a door.' I would have done it. In a way I wanted to protect him, but he didn't want to take the risk. He pushed me down stairs into the basement, and locked me in a little cupboard down there. I could sit up in it but I couldn't do any thing really energetic like standing, and he said I had to stay there until I'd got rid of the devil in me. I wasn't even allowed to go to the lavatory, can you imagine, not that that was urgent. What with one thing and another I'd just been." He laughed and fell silent.

"Your father doesn't sound to me as if he could have been really very kind in the first place," said Laura.

"I think life got to be like war for him." Sorry looked for a moment as if he were overwhelmed by any explanations he might try to give. "I've thought a lot about it and I've talked about it, and I've read books written by people who've watched other people very closely, and what I've worked out is this — that Tim managed really well in a certain setting, but being out of work put one part of his mind into a state of constant despair— even panic, and who can live with that? I think being violent with me was one way he tried to make sense of it. I mean by having someone or something to blame."

"It was an awful way — stupid too," said Laura.

"Lord knows how much choice he had," Sorry replied. "Once he started it was hard to stop. He couldn't admit weakness."

"Well, you must have got out," Laura said at last.

"I must have, mustn't I?" Sorry said. "I don't remember. I don't remember anything for ages after that. The next thing I remember is Miryam crying, but I was in hospital then. I was brought back to Janua Caeli later. Apparently, after about a day, Tim began to come to his senses a bit, opened the cupboard... and no Sorensen! I'd gone. I don't know how. I turned up in the courtyard among the clipped trees, quite out of my skull and then Miryam realized something she hadn't realized before— that I was all that she'd intended me to be in the first place, give or take the little matter of my sex."

"Not so little!" Laura said.

"Well, thanks for your confidence," Sorry replied. "About average, I suppose!"

"I didn't mean that," Laura cried furiously. "You know I didn't mean that."

"OK, OK," he said. "It was just a smart answer. I'm sorry. See? Events have conspired to make me name myself everytime I apologize."

"Do you mind? Being called Sorry? It's just a nickname," Laura said.

"I'm used to it," Sorry replied. "Miryam took me to a witch doctor over in Sydney— a real witch doctor— but a psychotherapist, too. I mean she was a witch like

Winter, Miryam and me, as well as having university degrees and all that. She was terrific— she really used her capacity for something other than special effects. If I ever live to grow up, which sometimes seems doubtful, I'd like to be like her."

"A psychotherapist?" Laura asked doubtfully.

"Heaven forbid," Sorry replied. "I'd like to work for — I don't know — the wild-life division, or be a ranger or something. I could use what I've got in some tactful, useful way, helping damaged bush regenerate, helping threatened bird populations. Anyhow Chant, there's a moral to all this and it's that you can get over anything ... People have got over much worse things than this sort of rubbish."

"But you haven't got over it," Laura pointed out bluntly.

"Don't let's tell anyone that!" Sorry said quickly. "Look at my school record. Helping in the library, photographing all sorts of unsuspecting birds, and climbing the heady ladder of success to be a prefect. I'm in the top-half of the class for most things and Katherine Price and I fight it out for top place in English. If that's not getting over things, what is it? I don't want to die, really. I'm interested in what happens next, so I've got to keep on. My advice is ... just say good luck to your mother. Being miserable won't change a thing... not a thing." He flung his arm into the air and the kingfisher took off like a brilliant dart. "Away with it all!" said Sorry softly. "So— all right— it's not fair. Another thing that isn't fair is that I'm sitting here in the sun with you, while poor old Tim is currently doing cane work or whatever, in occupational therapy in some nuthouse. I'm a tribute to the power of money and education. Miryam knew what to do and had the money to do it. She just dropped everything and carried me away. If ninety-percent of the world thinks