Written With My Left Hand

by Nugent Barker

  ‘I quite understand you now, ma’am,’ said Gertie Macnamara, ‘and it does great credit to your woman’s heart, it does reely. ’Twould be a sad pity if the death of Mrs Pinkney was laid at our door.’ So saying, she offered Mrs Rushbridger a drop of dropwort, and Mrs Rushbridger swiped it off without winking.

  The two women set theirselves down at the dropwort tea-table, and Gertie Macnamara, rubbing her hands backards and forrards on her two nubbly knees, asked Mrs Rushbridger what her plan was. Mrs Rushbridger said it was the simplest thing in the whole world. It was only to bewitch the bottles, so that the deadliness of the pizon should go into the syrup, and the goodness of the syrup should go into the pizon. ‘I knows ezactly where them bottles be,’ said Mrs Rushbridger, staring into space, ‘you can see um on Mr Gimp’s manklepiece in the parlour. Pizon to the right, syrup to the left. Them liquids beän’t the same to look at, mind ye, ma’am, and that’s why ’twill be necessary to command um to exchange naturs instead of commanding um to exchange bottles. And when it’s all fixed up shipshape and above board, I’ll git my old friend Dudley Gimp to sell a bottle of his syrup to my friend Mrs Pinkney.’

  ‘I quite understand you, ma’am, said Gertie Macnamara, nodding her head. ‘I knows the shop, and I’ll git along there jest afore cock-crow. That bit of sarcery will be the easiest thing I’ve ever done—though difficult, mind ye, with it,’ she added, wishing to impress Mrs Rushbridger. ‘Another drop of dropwort, ma’am?’

  Now, it stands to reason that Gertie’s repitation for sarcery had been the cause of many jalous fits amongst the witches of Runcton and far beyond, and even her dearest friends would have given up their very besoms if so be they could only git the better of her without being discovered.

  It so happened that Mrs Itch-Weed was lurking in the shadders of Runcton Mill that night—lurking for what she could larn in the way of gossip—and she overheerd the whole of this conversation. Well accardingly, she jumped on her besom in a trice, and flew off to Dudley Gimp’s shop, and made her way, by sarcery, into the old man’s parlour. The little room was black as magic, but by the light of her eyes she could see the bottles gleaming on the manklepiece, pizon to the right, syrup to the left; overhead she heerd the old chap snawing in his sleep; and after she had spat a curse she lifted her arms towards the bottles on the manklepiece, rattled her fingers, and chaunted out as follers:

  Changed be the naturs of them two Bottles,

  So Pizon cures

  And Syrup throttles;

  Thus do I beezle Gerts and sich breed,

  Yours sincerely,

  Mrs Itch-Weed.

  Thus the spell was pernounced, and there they stood a moment afterwards, a bottle of harmless pizon to the right, and a bottle of deadly syrup to the left; for I’ll say this much of Mrs Itch-Weed, sir, she was as good at sarcery as what Gertie was, though without the manner, mind ye.

  Well, of course, Mrs Itch-Weed didn’t want to be catched out by nobody at the last moment, so off she flew to Appledram, wheer her people lived; then, jest afore the cocks began to crow, there in her turn stood Gertie, as planned and promised, in Mr Gimp’s parlour, with Mrs Rushbridger sitting beside her to see that the spell was pernounced all shipshape and above board. The old feller was still snawing overhead, and the little room was still as black as magic, and by the light of her eyes Gertie could see the labelled bottles gleaming on the manklepiece, pizon to the right, syrup to the left; leastways, that’s what she thought, not knowing that Mrs Itch-Weed had gone and beezled her; and after she had spat a curse she lifted her arms towards the bottles, rattled her fingers, and chaunted out as follers:

  Changed be the naturs of them two Bottles,

  So Pizon cures

  And Syrup throttles;

  Thus do I cast me venom purty,

  Yours with love and hisses,

  Gertie.

  Wheerupon she patted her back hair, to show how difficult it had been.

  As soon as Gertie had cast her spell, she and Mrs Rushbridger went off into the dawn, little knowing that they had done the ezact opposite to what they had set out to do, and that pizon was pizon, and syrup was syrup, jest as they was afore Mrs Itch-Weed had got going on ’em.

  ’Twas so arly in the day that no one catched sight of Mrs Rushbridger as she stole home to bed. Laying awake, she listened to the birds and thought to herself how everything had gone off shipshape and above board; and fust thing in the marnun she called on Mrs Pinkney, who was still fast asleep with the clothes pulled over her head.

  ‘That’s a nasty cough you’ve got, ma’am,’ said Mrs Rushbridger, coughing as loudly as ever she could.

  With that, Mrs Pinkney popped her head out of the clothes.

  ‘A nasty cough you’ve got, a very nasty cough indeed, ma’am Didn’t ye hear un?’

  Well, sir, they argeyed it over and over, as to whether Mrs Pinkney had heerd herself coughing or whether she hadn’t, while Mrs Rushbridger got more and more flabbergaisted at the way things were going; but all of a sudden Mrs Pinkney began to see reason, and grew as flabbergaisted as Mrs Rushbridger herself. ‘Why, by Job,’ she hollered out, ‘I do believe I’m going to die!’ ‘That’s better!’ cried Mrs Rushbridger; and thus encouraged, Mrs Pinkney sat bolt-upright in her bed, while her friend advised her to go to Mr Gimp’s as soon as she was dressed, and to ask him to sell her some of his syrup.

  Well accardingly, Mrs Pinkney began to pull on her clothes at a hem of a rate, and it waun’t many minutes before the two women arrived at Dudley Gimp’s, Mrs Rushbridger looking as long as a doctor, and Mrs Pinkney giving out the most leddy-like coughs you ever heerd. ‘Can’t ye do better than that?’ whispered Mrs Rushbridger. The shop was crowded, and that was exactly what Mrs Rushbridger wanted. Old Mrs Chiddle was there, and Dan’l Sparshot, and Flo Boyling.

  ‘Marnun, Mr Gimp,’ said Mrs Rushbridger, over Flo Boyling’s head. ‘I’ve brung pore Mag Pinkney along to see ye. She’s got a cough, and wheer she catched it I don’t know, but ’tis the fearsomest cough I’ve ever listened to, and I thought maybe ye might sell her an ounce of that syrup to drive un away.’ With that, Mrs Pinkney coughed again, and Mr Gimp put his hand to his ear.

  ‘It don’t sound bad enough to me, Mag,’ he said. ‘You wait ontil you’re coughing fifteen to the dozen and a bit over. You don’t think as I’d throw the stuff away down that throat, do ’ee?’

  ‘Ye should ought to hear her coughing in her sleep,’ cried Mrs Rushbridger, skeered to find that things warn’t going all shipshape and above board; but Dudley Gimp only laughed and winked at Flo Boyling and reckoned how he wouldn’t ever be likely to find hisself in such a persition, and with that he turned to Mrs Pinkney and told her to come again when she had summat to cough about; and then a moment later, up went his eyes, and he began to chuckle and to thump the counter with his closed fist and to jerk out between his teeth: ‘Lawk, by Job, what a fool I be! ’Tis high time I had a swig of it meself, I reckon! I made it, didn’t I?’ With these words, he put his hand amongst the pots and pans and brushes and eggwhisks behind him, and opened the door that was never there ontil he had opened it—and before Mrs Rushbridger could make up her mind about the sitiwation, there was Dudley Gimp taking down the bottle of syrup from the manklepiece in the parlour, uncorking it, throwing back his head, and holding the bottle to his lips; and when at last Mrs Rushbridger hollered out, in a tremenjous voice: ‘Lard a mussy, Mr Gimp, don’t ye drink that syrup!’ Dudley Gimp was laying on the floor as dead as he was before he was borned, and a bit further.

  Now, I reckon you think I’ve got that wrong, but I haven’t. Everything I’ve told ye is true. I told ye that Dudley Gimp was a chemist, didn’t I? So he was. He made pills and boluses, knock-me-downs, pick-me-ups, potions, plaisters, pizons, and tinctums; but he was a very bad chemist, which is jest the sort of thing ye’d expect him to be; and that there pizon was sich hem feeble stuff, it wouldn’t have worrited a fly for two minutes or a bit under; and that there syrup was the
most deadly pizonous liquid in the whole of Sowsex, don’t you make no mistake about that.

  So there ’tis, sir, look at it how you will, the story that Timothy Weem told my father years later only goes to show how plots laid by Itch-Weeds and sich like be no hem use against Macnamaras.

  Now, there’s jest one other bit I’d like to tell ye, before I goes home to my supper. Mrs Rushbridger became a witch. Would ye believe it! Yet there’s no doubt whatsumdever that she was a borned witch. Out of admiration for Gertie, Mrs Rushbridger went over to the witches, lock, stock, and barr’l.

  She chose a night when the mill was humming like a beehive and the witch-ball was almost busting with eyelight. Mrs Darlington was there, and Mrs Esther Roadnight, the black-haired witch of Wittering, and Nellie Nightpiece, she was there, and Harriet Cowheel too, the liddle pippin; and so was Mrs Wilberforce, of Gizzard Hill, divining by a cock picking up grains; and in the middle of ’em all were Mother Spelthone and Jane Weddle, plying their needles, lifting their skinny wrists in the air, up and down, up and down.

  The Invalid

  ‘DERE he is agäun! Hark at ’n! Hark at ’n Knockin’ below!’

  Her sister went up to the bed. With loving eyes Mary gazed down at the distorted, frightened face of Ann.

  ‘Hark at ’n, Mary! Döan’t ye hear en now? Bangin’ at de kitchen door? He’s standin’ below! ’Tis gittin’ much nearer and louder! Oh, why döan’t ye spik! Why döan’t ye spik and do summat, Mary, instead of gazin’ dere?’

  Her sister bent over the bed. With loving fingers Mary smoothed back some of the wild, dishevelled hair of Ann. Time was passing very slowly in that room.

  But suddenly Mary straightened up her back, and walked towards the locked and bolted door, in front of which a great pile of furniture was standing, a monstrous barricade. She put up a hand with an aimless gesture, touched the leg of a chair or a table, dropped her hand again.

  ‘Dere aun’t no more I can do, Ann; what more can I do? Lookee, my purty, what I’ve done in here. I’ve pulled up de two chairs, and de big täable, and de liddle täable, and de liddle chest.’

  ‘Den pile um up agäun, Mary! Täake um all down, and push yer bed agäunst de door as you done yasterday, and pile up de farniture on en, säafer and tighter!’ Mary took down a chair, and hugged her thin arms round the little chest; Ann encouraged her with two bright eyes peeping from the bedclothes: ‘So’s naun shall git in! So’s he shan’t git in! Do ye know what he’s lik, Mary? He’s lik a gurt skelinton, wud a gurt skull and gurt smilin’ teeth; he’s naun but a passel o’ böans!’

  ‘Dat be only what de picturs say, surelye. How shud a marn know what he looks lik? May be dere aün’t no such a pusson, Ann.’

  ‘Adone-do, wud yer blasphemous tark! Aün’t us two bin hearin’ all dat knockin’ down below, time and often, dunnamany days?’

  ‘Reckon it bëan’t no more use tellin’ ye dat ’twas me you heerd yasterday, out in de wood-house, gittin’ logs fur yer fire—and when ’taün’t me, ’tis de wind: you döan’t believe dat no longer.’

  The invalid laughed scornfully, a clear and lusty laugh. Mary crept up to the bedside, and poured out a glass of her sister’s medicine.

  ‘Dr Lollie wull be comm’ dis evenun, or if he can’t git away, den tomorrer marnin’ he wull be comin’. He’s darter said so, and dat’s an unaccountable good marn, always doin’ as he says. And do you know, Ann, Dr Lollie says dere bëan’t so very much de matter wud ye, ye’ll soon be up agäun and gooin’ about.’

  ‘Dat’s a hem purty doctor!’

  ‘But ’tis true, Ann! Ye’d no ought to miscall Dr Lollie. By Job! Reckon dere’s a tidy number of years to goo yit, afore us finds ourselves lyin’ in de churchyard!’

  ‘Mary!’ cried Ann, ‘when be ye g’wine to give me dat medicine, instead of tarkin’ dere? It justabout does kip me from gooin’ to pieces. Eh, dearie, dearie, what a larmentable poor crittur I be!’

  The candle made a grotesque shadow of the bottle and Mary’s moving hand.

  ‘Hrrglp!’ gulped the invalid.

  Three minutes later she was sleeping soundly.

  Early in the afternoon Ann waked again; starting up from the bed-clothes, she cried that she could hear a great knocking at the cottage door below.

  ‘Dere’s bin no knockin’, Ann,’ said Mary. ‘ ’Twas you dreamin’.’

  Nevertheless she held one of the chairs in her hand; she was standing near the barricade of furniture, and Ann began to scold her for such deceiving words.

  ‘ ’Tis no use pertendin’,’ the sick woman answered—‘no use whatsumdever. Dere’s bin knockin’ agäun, and you were gittin’ a new holt to de farniture afore I catched yer!’

  ‘’Twud höald a giant.’

  ‘But it wudn’t höald him! And ye dudn’t think so, nuther—dat’s hem certain! Build en up, Mary! Pull en all down, and build en all up agäun, säafer and tighter!’

  So Mary took it all down, and built it all up again until it was as strong and as safe as a prison door. She did this very slowly, often pausing to drop her arms and to think; for it was an important and a difficult thing to do. And once her sister cried: ‘What a time you do täake! Who knows when he mightn’t be on us, knockin’ at de door!’ But it was built up at last. Mary’s bed was at the bottom, and the chairs were at the top; and Ann, finding that the work had been done as near as possible to her satisfaction, began to fill in the long period of waiting by staring about the room, listening to the rising wind as it swept over the roof and rattled the curtained windows, and at frequent intervals calling to Mary in her querulous voice: ‘Come here, Mary! No. Goo back to de door. I can just manage to pour en out fur myself. . . . Wheer are ye, Mary? Wheer ye got to? Come over. No! Goo bide by de door. It mustn’t be left fur one moment now; you shud ought to know dat as well as I do!’ Presently she asked for a fresh candle to be lit; and a blue-bottle fly made the queerest big shadows swirl over the room, while the invalid lay on her back for two hours, staring at the ceiling.

  Towards sunset Ann grew restless again; she began to fret over the tiniest things—her pillow was uncomfortable, Mary must come and pat it; the medicine had left such a taste in her mouth, why hadn’t Mary made her a cup of the weakest tea? But her greatest trouble was to wonder why the knocking had ceased, and when it would come again.

  ‘D’ye think we can’t hear en perhaps, wud all dat farniture stuck up dere? Better täake en down agäun, Mary; aye, täake a liddle bit of en down: den we shud ought to hear de knockin’ below, surelye.’

  ‘Guess it aün’t naun to do wud de farniture,’ said Mary. Yet she went to the door, and, standing on tiptoe, reached for the highest chair. She coaxed it forward by curling a finger round one of its legs, and pulled until it tipped over into her other hand. This she did, though with less difficulty, to the second chair; then she slid the chest to the edge of the smaller table and opened out her thin, weak, receiving arms.

  ‘How slow you be!’ cried the younger woman.

  The chest tilted forward; a drawer fell out; over the floor bright, useless things were scattered.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Ann, with her hand to her ear, ‘I can’t hear naun. And de chairs and täables wudn’t mäake no gurt difference, nuther—we’ve heerd dat knockin’ so often wud um all stacked up dere. Better put um back quick, Mary—quick! quick! afore he comes! Aye, put um back, Mary, do. Aün’t I töald ye dunnamany times to kip a good holt on de door?’

  ‘Mayhap he’ll not be comin’ agäun,’ said Mary.

  ‘Dat’s no answer whatsumdever,’ said Ann.

  Mary stooped slowly, and picked up one of the scattered trinkets that had fallen to the floor. It was tarnished and broken; and she was about to put it back into the chest, but changed her mind, and slipped it into the pocket of her blue print apron.

  ‘Bëan’t ye g’wine to do as I tell ye?’

  ‘I be just g’wine, Ann . . .’ The voice trailed off. Then she went over, and sat upon the edge of her si
ster’s bed.

  ‘I was just thinkin,’ she said softly, ‘when Dr Lollie comes tonight, I wull be pushin’ de dresser away from de kitchen door, to let en in?’

  ‘You wull.’

  ‘And de round täable, and de fower chairs, and de heavy bread-pan?’

  ‘You got um all heaped up?’

  ‘Dey’re all heaped up into a gurt mountin’, säum as in here.’

  ‘Den döan’t ye have um down a moment longer dan be needful; and if dere’s knockin’ gooin’ about when Dr Lollie comes, wait ontil ’tis over.’

  ‘I’ve töald ye it won’t be comin’ agäun!’ Mary cried, a flush mantling into her cheeks. Ann shifted a foot. Her sister was in her way. She hated people sitting on the edge of her bed.

  ‘I’m dyin’,’ she snapped pettishly. ‘You and Dr Lollie knows very well as I’m dyin’.’

  ‘Eh, Ann, I cudn’t bear to lose ye!’ Mary put out her hand as though to touch her sister’s hair, but Ann wriggled down more cosily into the bed.

  ‘Well, may be you won’t lose me,’ said the muffled voice, ‘if only you kip him away. ’Tis a good thing I reminded ye of de kitchen door, surelye! So now goo back and do as I töald ye: goo stack up de täables and chairs: by Job!’ cried the invalid lady, poking out her chin, and digging its rather angular point into the top of the bed-clothes, ‘de devil hisself cud have walked in, wud you tarkin’ dere!’

  So Mary went back to the door, picked up the scattered trinkets, put them into the drawer of the chest, and stood the chest upon the little table; then she placed the two chairs in their former positions, coaxing them gently, and standing somewhat insecurely on the tips of her toes; and Ann, soothed by the recent conversation, slept. She slept through half of the guttering candle; and when she awoke at last, she saw her sister, asleep in a chair.

  Impossible to believe it! How could she believe it?

  ‘Mary! Come here!’