Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  Tonight, it was Fliss’ turn to open their gathering by casting their banishing spell. Each member of the Craft Club had their own personal style of their ‘practice’ as they called it. Fliss’ involved what appeared to be advanced yoga moves.

  “We reach for the cobwebs and corners.” Fliss’ arms were flung very wide at this point. Roz had watched this banishing before and always thought that cobwebs and corners were the most interesting part of any room. This evening she was struggling to think at all. The more Fliss waved her arms and asked the beneficence of the Spirit Goddess, the more Roz Woodhill yawned. Fliss was not unaware but rather than confront Roz’s rudeness she threw her banishing moves more vigorously towards her.

  “We dash the darkness from the corners.” Fliss folded herself forwards and flung herself upwards, arms raised, head tilted back, “We throw the shadows from the edges.” Her arms were flinging in each compass direction now. There was a lot of hand flicking, Fliss’ compass including all the South South Easts and South South Wests, rather than the basic four points.

  “We push the darkness…” Fliss’ voice had raised itself by several screechy decibels and just as Roz thought she ought to intervene in this tedious display, Mari stood up from the table and pushed her way past Fliss and her banishing.

  “’Scuse me… thanks…” Mari moved to the French doors and opened them; she was fanning at her face. “Phew… is it just me or is it hot in here?”

  Everyone, it appeared, was relieved to be saved from the banishing spell. Roz was slightly miffed; she did not, as a rule, tend to relinquish control of the Craft Club.

  “If you don’t mind?” Fliss’ voice was hard and plastic. She glared at Mari.

  “If I don’t mind what?” Mari took neat little breaths, wafted a hand at her face. “So stuffy in here…” she made a pointed glance at Fliss.

  “If you don’t mind, Mari, I was in the middle of our banishing spell.” Fliss was holding herself very stiffly. Roz could only hope she’d pranged a neck muscle with that last handwaving.

  “Oh, I think we were done, don’t you? You’ve banished all the cobwebs,” Mari looked to the others, “and I think my interest is just about banished too.” She sat back down. For several seconds no one spoke as if they were all replaying what she had just said to pick out the meanness of it. It was unlike Mari. With a little uncertainty Kirstie sat forward and the meeting began.

  It was Fliss, once again, who started to cause ructions. She had been talking for some time about the necessity of seeing each other’s Book of Shadows. No one agreed with her on this point. Each of the members of the Craft Club kept their Book of Shadows very much to themselves and each had their own personal style. Kirstie’s book, for example, was mostly filled with textile squares that she’d sewn and created herself and called ‘spells’. It was, and Kirstie knew this, more a workbook for her sewing ambitions than a grimoire.

  “My Book of Shadows is private,” Kirstie insisted. “Sorry but that’s how I roll.” She was pulling a face, her hand waving like a policewoman stopping traffic. Several other club members were nodding agreement. Fliss was looking irritated.

  “The trouble is we need to keep to a grammar of process.” Everyone looked puzzled at this but Fliss ploughed on. “If we want to progress we need to be a team, to share. I thought that’s what being part of a group was about.”

  “Coven,” Mari spoke up, a sharp little bark, her fingers tapping on the table. Fliss looked around.

  “What?”

  “Coven.” The word was one the Craft Club liked. To them it smacked of their united witchy community, of shared power and togetherness but, suddenly, from Mari’s blood red lipsticked lips it was like a tiny piece of darkness. Something altered in the room. Roz Woodhill felt it sharply. She glanced around the table. There were several Craft Club members who appeared unaffected. What was that?

  “Coven.” Mari said it again.

  “Will you stop saying that?” Fliss rolled her shoulders “How is that relevant to anything? Why can’t we share our thoughts? Hmm? It doesn’t seem unreasonable and that way…” As Fliss talked there was a slimy slugness about her lips. She licked at her lips as she struggled onwards. “We all learn from each other. We shouldn’t be selfish…” The lip gloss was gluing her lips, it was bright pink and, Roz thought, clashed so horribly with everything else about her. It was lip gloss for fairies; by rights Fliss should have been wearing something flouncy and a little pink ballet wrap cardigan made of angora. Instead she wore her usual office casual. Fliss looked, at all times, like someone who was about to take an audit.“Yes. We should. I don’t want you sharing my secrets.” Mari was confident and relaxed. “Your trouble is you’re trying to make witchcraft into the boy scouts.”

  The flashing truth of this halted Fliss for just a moment, but only a moment. Fliss continued with her diatribe. “We need to standardise how we do things otherwise how will we learn from our mistakes?”

  “Standardise?” Hannah looked unconvinced and turned her gaze on her closest Craft Club friend, Kirstie, who was already shaking her head.

  “No. That’s not what my magic is about.” Kirstie shook her head more vehemently. “I work from the heart, from the three wisdoms… I’m definitely more touchy-feely in my practice.”

  Fliss’ tongue licked at her lips a little; they were looking sticky now and as she spoke up to defend her theory the effect was clear.

  “We all need to know what we are each doing.” She moved her mouth harder as little spittles of gloss stretched and gooed, not too much, just enough to make it awkward, to make it repulsive. Around the table several of the Craft Club members were trying different methods of reacting. Kirstie and Hannah were looking directly at Fliss, their eyes locked on the slimy lips. Jill and Alice looked at the table top and Bobbi was making a terrible gurning face at everyone as if to ask, “Can you see this? What is wrong with her mouth?”

  “We need to know… what we are all doing so we can learn from each other.” Fliss wiped her mouth with a tissue; it didn’t help, little pocks of paper caught in the general mucousy goop. Mari was shaking her head, determined.

  “We need secrets. We need darkness. Be selfish with your knowledge so others can’t steal it,” Mari continued, her fingers drumming on the table.

  Fliss looked at the horrid pink in her hand, her mouth making little spitty sounds.

  “What? Sorry, what?” Fliss was flustered; the slimy goop was finishing, the lip gloss cleaned off her face.

  “Thief.” Mari’s word was small and spiteful. Fliss put a hand to her mouth for a second, as if she might be sick.

  “Let’s move on, shall we…” Roz attempted to steer the meeting back to, well, she wasn’t sure where. She felt odd and rattled and what she really needed was a good cry.

  “Okay. I’m okay.” Fliss recovered herself; she consulted her tablet, swiping at the screen so she did not have to look up into Mari’s unflinching stare.

  “I think we can hazard a guess that Fliss’ Book of Shadows is mostly spreadsheet.” Mari piped up. Everyone stared. Fliss looked bewildered, a new look for her and not one that suited her thin face.

  “What?”

  Mari licked her lips. Roz noted that there was a slight waft in the air as she did so, something sweet and sickly like rotting fruit.

  “You’re obsessed with rules, Fliss. With regulations. Don’t you understand?” Mari leaned forward conspiratorially. “There are no rules for this stuff. This is… power. Raw. Unfettered.” Mari flung her arms up. The effect this time was very different, sensuous and free. “We fanny about, traipsing all the way up to The Sisters once in a full moon when really, what’s to stop us running stark naked round the garden on a starlit evening?” She began to peel at the edges of her waterfall cardigan; her large bosom was only just contained within her soft satiny shirt as her fingers fumbled at the tiny pearly buttons. “Look at the night… It’s time to release the Goddess.” She kicked off her shoes and stepped out throug
h the window. Rain was pattering. She paused, shivered a little in the chill damp.

  “Ah, stuff it, it’s pissing down.” She turned back looking disconsolate, her lipstick streaked slightly across her face, spotting her teeth. “I don’t know about you lot but I’m about gagging for some cake and a bottle of wine.” And she began to pad towards the kitchen.

  Grateful for the interlude, Kirstie, Jill, Bobbi, and Alice almost ran towards the kitchen.

  Roz’s kitchen, dominated by a range vast enough to roast a deer in, was a masterpiece of hand-carved craftsmanship. With so many shelves packed with so many jars it would be a revelation to most people that there was no hint of chicken stock or teabags.

  As the tea was brewed and cups found and put out there was an unveiling of cakes in their black, Craft Club tins. There were some black cakes which looked quite chic. Liquorice. Treacle. Beetroot and treacle. Treacle and liquorice.

  Except tonight even the cakes caused argument.

  “Lemon?” Fliss looked at the epic beauty of Mari’s cake.

  “What’s wrong with lemon? It’s straight from the Earth Goddess.” Mari was sullen at the verdict on her efforts. Roz looked at her. There was something distinctly different about Mari this evening. Roz struggled to pinpoint it. She certainly had not washed her hair. Ah, it was the lipstick, some new colour making her lips look bloodied and venomous. Roz saw where it had left little crimson smudges on two or three of the other women’s cheeks where they had greeted each other with a hug on arrival.

  “I love lemon,” said Kirstie. Mari blew her a smoochy kiss, the red lipstick rubbing off on her teeth. Roz, slightly repulsed by this, looked away and revived her spirits by giving Kirstie a withering look.

  “Lemon isn’t very Wicca is it?”

  “It’s bloody delicious though,” Kirstie confirmed through a mouthful of buttercream icing. As she did so two of the other Craft Club women reached in and took greedy slices, their hands sticky with buttercream and a heavy scent of lemon suffocating the kitchen.

  “Its quality isn’t in question.”

  Bobbi and Alice were smearing cake into their mouths now.

  “No, it isn’t. This is lush.” Bobbi’s voice was thick with sponge and lemon curd. Roz did not notice, choosing instead to continue her lecture.

  “It is just that if we are going to meet and make ceremony then I think we need to have a few ground rules and personally I don’t think ‘lemon’ is going to add to our craft,” Roz decreed. Her attempt to doom the luscious looking lemon cake was failing. The Craft Club women were reaching for more, dispensing with slices now and clawing at the cake.

  “Lemon sours,” put in Fliss. This appeared to be the final judgement as at that point a greedy scuffle broke out between Bobbi and Alice over the last slice and finally Roz’s husband, Matt, had to come in from the games room and pick the two women apart.

  * * *

  “I thought you’d gone out,” Roz could barely talk, her head was ringing, she felt quite ill. Matt had mopped the floor and there was a crisp scent of lemon and floor cleaner that was not helping.

  “Not tonight,” he confessed.

  “You do usually when the Craft Club come round.” Roz wanted very much to reach for him, but he seemed to be standing so far away she hadn’t the energy.

  “Yeah. I dunno. Tonight I just… didn’t feel like it.” He leaned the mop against the worktop and moved to touch her hair. He kissed the top of her head and closed his arms around her. The relief she felt was huge, as if a wall had tumbled down around her. Lovely. Lovely. She loved him so much, how could she forget how much?

  16

  Aftertaste

  Michael was not the best of passengers, especially when Charlie was driving. As they neared the roundabout at the Castlebury turn off his foot pumped out into the footwell. Charlie was used to this.

  “Thanks for the emergency imaginary braking there, Michael, always effective.” As she spoke she was careening onto the roundabout, sliding the van in behind a small runabout car. Michael clutched at the door handle.

  “Assume the bracing position,” Charlie joked as they rolled around the roundabout. “Emergency exits are here… here… and here.” She waved her arms about, never taking both from the wheel, but the dramatic effect was very amusing as Michael winced and braced in the passenger seat.

  “I am not a good passenger,” he admitted, as he always admitted whenever she drove. Charlie did another lap of the roundabout for a laugh, pipping the horn for good measure. “Alright, alright,” he protested. “You made your point.”

  They were on their way to pick up the empty barrels from the Hillman wedding at Hartfield Hall. This time there was no mix up over the entrance as Charlie took the proper turn off and they drove straight to the stable block.

  It looked like a battlefield. At the far end the windows to the orangery were a series of shards in splintered frames. Inside the tables were knocked over and at the far end, stacked up like a barricade as if against a battle.

  “Okay. Somebody had a party.” Michael’s feet crunched over broken glass. He lifted a chair out of Charlie’s path and a bottle rolled towards them. Charlie picked it up.

  “What is this?” She looked over the fat green bottle. It was not one of theirs. It bore a gilded red apple shaped label with dark green lettering, ‘True Brew’. She looked up at Michael. He shrugged.

  “Don’t know it. Guests might have brought it.”

  Charlie took a sniff at it and drew back, the acrid sharp scent stinging at her, making her think of thorns.

  “Doesn’t travel.” They moved towards the centre of the stables where the organisation had been. There was no one around.

  “Let’s just get the kegs and go.” Michael gave an involuntary shiver and stepped towards the far end of the stable block. As they did so there were other kegs strewn around, emptied, all bearing the gilded red and green label of ‘True Brew’.

  “How much did they drink?” Charlie asked as they entered the stable block. Michael turned to her.

  “Not nearly enough apparently.” He stepped aside to reveal to Charlie the Drawbridge kegs, neatly stacked exactly as she and Jack had left them. A small spider was sitting in its neat web between the top two barrels. They were silent for a few seconds.

  “But I… I don’t under…” Charlie was stunned. She looked back outside into the detritus of the wedding. “What happened? Why didn’t they drink it?” She looked back and forth, back and forth, even though no resolution offered itself.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with it.” Michael approached the stack, began to examine the kegs for damage or leakage. “Everything looks okay. They don’t look touched. At all. Not one drop.”

  It was very puzzling.

  Charlie and Michael loaded the van together.

  “I’m not sure what’s happened… or where this leaves us.”

  “You mean we can’t charge them for beer they didn’t drink?” Charlie reasoned. Michael nodded.

  “Effectively. I mean… they paid the deposit for the brewing… but no one drank any of the beer.”

  They were pondering the situation and arguing about who was going to drive back to Drawbridge when a thin, precise voice cut into their thoughts.

  “What is happening here?” Michael jumped, and, as he did so, he revealed a tallish woman dressed entirely in black with a severely geometric haircut standing behind him. It was rather creepy in Charlie’s book, the way that she had, well, crept up on them.

  “We’re collecting the barrels from the wedding yesterday.” Charlie informed her. Her glasses were very round and magnified her eyes. Charlie, who always looked everyone in the eye, was unnerved by the directness of this woman’s stare.

  “Ah. Yes. That small disaster.” The woman raised a thin white hand in a supplicating gesture. It was made thinner and whiter by the intense blackness of her sweater.

  “What?” Michael blurted.

  “Yes,” the thinnish, blackish fig
ure smiled a thinnish, smallish smile. Her lips, Charlie noted, were very red, the lipstick a glossy colour that made Charlie think of roadkill innards.

  “Yes?” Michael asked with a puzzled frown.

  “Police were called in the end. It was very ugly.” The magnified eyes looked away from Michael towards Charlie. Charlie felt a compulsion to look away and fought it. Who was this old bat?

  “Is Winn around?” Charlie asked. The thinnish smile thinned out further until, combined with the smear of lipstick, it looked like an opened vein.

  “Indeed.”

  Charlie was not the most patient of people which combined well with Michael’s burning desire to be the Politest Man in Britain.

  “Well, we don’t need to trouble…” he began.

  “Who are you?” Charlie asked outright. This woman might, for all they knew, be trespassing and although Charlie was aware of the lax rulings regarding wandering into Hartfield, there was something about this woman that rankled her. Charlie knew that Winn would take an instant dislike and that would, most likely, result in an incident involving a twelve-bore shotgun. Charlie doubted this woman could outrun or outwit Winn Hartley-Hartfield.

  “I’m so very sorry to have disturbed you,” Michael began, as he was taking a step back towards the van. “We do have permission. We are from the Drawbridge Brewery and it is just a simple task we’re engaged upon, to retrieve the barrels… we will be gone in a mere moment.”

  Charlie stopped staring at the thinnish woman and stared at Michael. What was wrong with him? He was smarming so hard he was going to leave a slug trail. In fact, was he bowing? As he moved back towards the driving seat, he was, yes, distinctly dipping from the waist. What on earth was wrong with him?

  “Good. All of this debris needs to be cleared. These barrels, those bottles…” she pointed out a stack of the ‘True Brew’ bottles that tipped from and rolled underneath the horse troughs.

  “Yes. Yes, of course, it won’t take us…” Michael was already rolling up a sleeve and gathering the bottles to himself, the last dregs of some dripping out onto his arm, down his trousers. Charlie stepped in.