The Changeover (9 page)

Frowning, she turned to find Sorry standing in the doorway watching her narrowly, his cat coiling around his ankles. He did not look so very different from one of his own pictures, and, once again, just as she had when she saw him in this room for the first time, he looked more than himself, a wild man framed in the heavy architraves of the door, the telephone dimly visible in the hall beyond him.

"If you had read Wendy's Wayward Heart," he said, "you would recognize my expression. I'm trying to look rueful at being caught out in an act of sentimentality."

Laura said nothing.

"How am I doing?" he asked.

"I don't think you look sentimental," she said, nor did she think that pinning her photograph to the poster was a sentimental thing to have done. He immediately moved close to her so that he was standing almost over her, and though he was not much taller than she was, she was caught between the wall and the couch and could not step past him. He looked at the photograph over her head.

"It's not very clear is it?" he said. "I was pretending to photograph the school library. You wouldn't stand still."

"You could have asked me," she replied. "I don't mind being photographed."

"I was too shy," he said, and Laura could not tell if it was at himself or at the idea of shyness to which he directed his black smile. Laura did stand still. She remained as still as the heroine of a jungle movie who, waking to find a serpent coiled on her breast and unable to move in case it bites her, lies breathing slowly and watching light rippling over its wonderfully coloured scales. At that moment Sorry seemed brilliant, his own breathing uneven, his eyes almost luminous.

Something is going to happen, Laura thought. She was going to be kissed. On one side of a kiss was childhood, sunshine, innocence, toys and, on the other, people embracing, darkness, passion and the admittance of a person who, no matter how loved, must always have the quality of otherness, not only to her confidence, but somehow inside her sealing skin.

However, Sorry did not kiss her, but put his left hand on her breast without once taking his eyes from her face or ceasing to smile at her. Laura felt her own expression become incredulous. Nevertheless, his touch was real, and immediately changed Sorry, whose air of menace had given him only a moment earlier a sort of impervious glitter, for his face softened somehow, became a little unfocused as if he were more disturbed by it than she was.

"Don't!" she said, inspired. "Remember, you've got to be invited."

"W-well invite m-me then," he demanded, beginning to stammer, but as his voice lost confidence his half-threatened embrace became more intrusive. At that moment the 'phone rang, and she felt Sorry, leaning against her, catch his breath in surprise and, perhaps, relief.

"Saved by the bell, Chant," he remarked.

"I wouldn't have invited you," she called after him as he went to answer the 'phone. "You were saved as much as I was."

"I was planning to be very nice to you. You might have enjoyed it," he replied. He answered the 'phone and then turned, holding it out to her. "It's your mother," he said. "Isn't that wonderful! She might have known you were in difficulties."

"Not real difficulties," Laura said, seizing the 'phone.

"It was touch and go," Sorry said. "And this is me going."

He left her alone with Kate's voice coming from another world. Laura thought she could smell the hospital over the 'phone.

"How are you, Lolly?" Kate asked.

"Fine!" said Laura. "They're being terribly kind to me. Everything's fine. How's Jacko?"

"No one knows yet," Kate said after a pause. Her voice was careful, but Laura could hear desolation eating its way through her words. "No one knows yet," she repeated. "Tell me truly — do you think the Carlisles mind having you?"

"I don't think so." Laura had to speak truly. "But I mind. I hate being away from you and Jacko."

"I hate it too," Kate said, "but there's nothing you can do here except j ust sit around with Chris and me."

"What's he doing there?" Laura's voice sharpened with jealousy. "Why is he there and not me?" Kate was silent. "Mum?" Laura cried.

"I don't know," Kate answered at last. "I just don't know. I didn't plan it that way. It's just happened out of the blue. I don't know why you're where you are either. Everything happened so fast... an offer was made... it was convenient at the time and I just grabbed at it. I've wondered about that too, sitting here by Jacko's bed. Laura, I'm staying with Jacko tonight. I can't bear the thought of going home to an empty house."

"I could come home, of course," Laura cried. "I'm not a prisoner. We could be together."

"I wouldn't sleep," said Kate. "I might as well be here."

"I'd sit up with you," Laura promised, but Kate had made up her mind. She had made up her mind about something else, too.

"Laura, I think I'd better get in touch with your father," she said. "I think Jacko's so ill that he'd better be told."

To her dismay, Laura felt herself going rigid with a pain so old that it seemed unfair she should still suffer from it. She thought she was over mourning her vanished father and was furious to find she still suffered, and while she stood, momentarily struggling with this remembered anguish, Sorry came into the hall again, pointing through the arch, perhaps suggesting dinner was ready.

"It might cheer him up to know there's a chance he won't have to pay so much maintenance in the future," Laura said at last, in a hard voice.

"Don't be like that, Lolly!" Kate pleaded. "It's too serious a time to give in to thoughts like that. Part of what we like in Jacko is your father. The same with you. I mean, he's got a share in you. And he was so very fond of you. He never really got to know Jacko."

"All right!" Laura said. "Do what you think best."

"It has to be what I think best," said her mother. "I'll ring you first thing in the morning and tell you if there has been any change. And Laura — I know I'm more incoherent than usual, but I do love you and I am thinking of you. Don't forget!"

"Me too!" Laura cried. "Give my love to Jacko."

"Things no good out in the world?" Sorry asked as she put the receiver down.

"Not very!" Laura said. "I hope it's all right if I do stay tonight. I've forgotten to pack a clean shirt but maybe I could get one tomorrow morning."

"You can see that Winter and Miryam are delighted to have you," Sorry answered courteously. "And I've proved my enthusiasm, haven't I? The perfect host, I'd say."

"You're different out of your room," Laura commented, hoping she sounded more casual than she felt.

"Well, maybe!" Sorry replied restlessly. "I'm very powerful and sexy in there, but the further away I go from my room the meeker I become. At school I hardly exist. Are you hungry?"

Rather to her surprise, Laura found she was starving. They came into a room where a big window looked out on a vine-covered verandah, though now, as evening deepened outside, the vines looked like ghostly serpents, less real than the reflection of the table and the four people around it.

It was a proper dinner, with thin, clear soup, a salad, and a chicken casserole, and even pudding. Laura felt quite weak with delight at the sight of food, though it seemed heartless to be eating while Jacko was so sick and Kate so worried.

"I have been giving your brother's situation some thought," said Winter Carlisle. "Sorensen — help Laura to her chair."

"I'm all right!" Laura said in astonishment. "I can sit down myself." Such courtly manners were part of an alarming foreign ritual. There were girls in her class at school who had boyfriends they slept with, but not one of them behaved particularly nicely to the girls. Any boy who was publicly good-mannered, unless forced to be, was doomed to scorn, for everyone, in Laura's class at least, knew it was boys against girls in the world, and good manners were either a surrender or part of a trick, a manipulation, and deserved nothing but contempt.

"Be that as it may, Sorensen can be civil in order to make me feel comfortable," his grandmother said. "We are a fond family rather than a loving one, so consideration is doubly important. We can't afford to abandon it as loving families may choose to do out of confidence in themselves. Now, Laura— perhaps in a confrontation I might be a match for your Mr Braque, but I can't make him take his mark off your brother unless I get a certain power over him. Sorensen is right in thinking we should put a mark on Mr Braque in order to get that power, and that it will be a very difficult thing to do.

"It's not very different from casting the runes," Winter continued. "In the past, many magicians cast the runes. In Australia, the tribal magician points the bone and his victim withers and dies. The mark used by Carmody Braque is the same sort of thing. It is a mark of possession and has become a door into your brother, through which Mr Braque can come and go at will. He could give, but he chooses to take. He knows his own power and he would recognize ours. He wouldn't put out his hand to Miryam or me or even Sorensen."

"My mother says Jacko is terribly ill," Laura said.

She did not have to say, "Isn't there anything, anything, that can be done to help us?"

"There would be no danger," said Winter casually, "if you were a witch yourself."

Miryam smiled at Laura. Sorry lifted his silver eyes to look thoughtfully at his grandmother.

"You want to work a changeover?" he asked.

"Why not?" Winter asked back.

"It c-could kill her," suggested Sorry.

"Oh, no — surely not!" Winter replied quickly. "She's half way there, isn't she? You must admit it. You feel it yourself." She turned back to Laura. "As you know, you're what we call a sensitive, my dear. You stand on the threshold of our condition, and we can invite you in — Sorry, Miryam and I. We could help you to make a witch of yourself. Common nature, which trembles a little before you now, would let you in. And then we think that, if you found a way to mark Mr Braque, you would — what was that phrase, Sorensen?"

"Rupture his integrity," Sorry concluded.

"I don't think he's got any integrity," Laura exclaimed. "I think he's just horrible all through."

"His wholeness!" Sorry said. "The way his system holds together in one piece! We think he might begin to fall to bits if you put a mark on him. He's very old by the sound of it and it gets harder and harder to maintain an unnatural body."

"If I was a witch he'd recognize me too, wouldn't he?" Laura asked. "Carmody Braque, I mean." There, in the centre of the table, was a perfectly ordinary milk jug. The dishes at her elbow were dirty in an ordinary way. They helped her to be matter-of-fact about this extraordinary suggestion. Sorry stared at his grandmother as meditatively as if she had simply proposed Laura approach Mr Braque dressed in her best clothes,

but Winter had actually suggested she become a witch.

"He might do so," Winter said, "but you see he knows you. He's met you. He already knows you are not a witch. Now, if you wore dark glasses so that he could not look into your eyes (for they can be very treacherous windows, eyes can) and some one of us, Sorry perhaps, went with you and was recognized as a witch, we think it very probable that you yourself would not be suspected. Your own changed state would be masked. You would then have to talk him into accepting something from you, or trick him into wanting to take it... anything to make him put out his hand. And once you have marked him it is important then that he should recognize you and know exactly what you are and what you intend."

"Would I be able to change back from being a witch?" Laura asked.

"No!" said Sorry. "You can only make one changeover in your life."

Laura frowned to herself.

"It's hard to imagine," she said. "You seem different, but you don't act differently from any other family. What do witches do?"

"We're like scientists," said Sorry. "We compel nature — move it around according to our wishes — but scientists use rules that they've worked out through thought, and ours comes through imagination, I suppose."

"... and exchange," Miryam agreed. "The scientist reasons and then, by experimental or industrial processes, applies his reasoning. The price that's paid for altering nature is often paid outside the scientist himself, but witches, when they institute a change, bleed something of themselves out into the world. It builds up again, but it takes time — seconds, hours, days ... changing the weather can take a long time to recover from and even then it's no use trying to make it rain if there isn't a rain cloud in sight. Or we can dip into the future a little, but only blindly. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes ..." As she spoke Sorry lifted up his hand, the air twisted above it and a moment later a kingfisher was sitting on his finger clicking its beak but otherwise seeming quite unperturbed. "Not that any of this solves Chant's problem," he said, staring at it in astonishment. "Suppose she doesn't want to change over?"

"She doesn't have to make up her mind immediately," Miryam said in her calm way, "though you should decide within twenty-four hours, Laura."

"The hospital might work out a cure," Laura suggested, and encountered a look from Sorry that was distinctly harassed — the bare beginning of an apology for the suggestion his grandmother had made. Something about it had troubled him in a way he did not want to admit. Finding himself noticed by her he turned his head away to look at the kingfisher, which vanished a moment later as mysteriously as it had come.