A Hint of Witchcraft

by Anna Gilbert

  It was extraordinary that Katie, timid, almost speechless, patronized, forgotten most of the time, should leave an emptiness so wide, an echo so persistently reproachful.

  ‘You loved her because she needed to be loved,’ her father told her. ‘There are so many things that people like Katie can’t do, but there is something important they can do: they can create love.’ In loving hearts he mentally added, remembering Miss Burdon.

  Margot, drying her tears and shedding more, could have added another name to the list of those who had not loved Katie. The simplicity of her grief was soon complicated by a worrying thought. From the garden gate at Bainrigg, Miles had seen Katie though without knowing who she was. Linden, walking down the field path towards the chimney, had not seen her. A curve in the path or a thickness in the hedge might for a moment or two have limited her view.

  But suppose Katie had seen Linden, conspicuous in her white skirt and blouse and coming towards her. They would soon be face to face, just the two of them in empty fields under a wide sky. Margot knew as surely as if she had been there, how Katie would have felt. Could it have been the sight of Linden that drove her panic-stricken to the nearest hiding place? How strange if her unaccountable fear of Linden had been in some weird way a forewarning that Linden would be the cause of her death, indirectly of course. Margot shivered in the grip of a superstitious fear as irrational as Katie’s. There were already reasons, suppressed or unacknowledged, for the gradual change in her attitude to Linden. The possibility that she might unintentionally have driven Katie to her death at the very time when Katie most needed help seemed actually to change Linden herself. For the time being she didn’t want to see her.

  Nor did she. Linden left immediately after breakfast on the fateful morning and judiciously stayed away. The atmosphere at Ashlaw for the next week or two would not have been to her liking. Among other things she missed Katie’s funeral.

  Never in living memory had there been such a funeral in Ashlaw. For Jo Judd’s sake as well as for his daughter’s, the Hope Brass Band turned out to a man and led the cortège. It was felt that the Dead March from Saul, customary for men killed in the pit, was less suitable for a young girl. Abide With Me fell more kindly on the summer scene she had so abruptly left. The procession included every adult capable of following the hearse. Others lined the main street and Church Lane. Boys clinging to railings or peering through bushes took off their caps as Katie passed, the flowers on her coffin lying almost as deep as the earth that would soon cover it. The publicity surrounding her death had moved sympathizers to send donations to her family. Some of the more generous remained anonymous: neither the coal company, the landowner, or the Mining Association would wish to accept responsibility, but as individuals they were not without heart.

  The Judds were gratified. Their prestige had never been higher. Their resentment against the world was appeased – for the time being – by the inquest, the crowds, the wreaths, the band and not least by the service in church. It was Mrs Dobie who urged the revival of the old custom of hanging white garlands in church when a young girl died. It had not happened for over fifty years and she was the only person who remembered it. Then, afterwards, the sit-down tea in the British Legion hut was photographed and the pictures were published in the Elmdon Gazette. The funeral did all that funerals are supposed to do in dignifying grief and making it bearable. The folk of Ashlaw, drawn together as they had been in other disasters, knew how to look after their own.

  On the second day after the funeral, Margot made a private pilgrimate to Katie’s grave. The little twelfth-century church of St Michael stood isolated from the village on a rise overlooking the river. Late sunshine gilded the gentle slopes beyond the churchyard wall. A mountain ash leaned over from the neighbouring pasture to shade the spot where – unbelievably – Katie lay in quietness unbroken save by the murmur of the river below.

  Margot knelt to replace a fallen spray of flowers. She smelt the dying fragrance of wreathed lilies and the sharper scent of new-turned earth, and gradually there came to her in the hush of the June evening the sense of a mysterious yet natural wholeness: the transition from life to death was perhaps no more than the gentle flow of water between green banks in the valley below. The distress of the past days yielded to blessed relief. Katie was safe: nothing would harm or frighten her again.

  Inside the church it was dim and cool. Above her head as she entered by the west door hung Katie’s maiden garlands looped to a rail. They were made of white linen in the shape of crowns adorned with rosettes. Later they would be hung on the north wall.

  Margot’s heart leapt as the awesome silence was broken by a faint beating of wings on the St Oswald window. A bird, misjudging the level of its flight, had struck the stained glass. It clung for an instant, wings outspread as if balked of entry, then took to the air once more and was gone.

  Behind her the door opened. The garlands swayed in a current of air.

  ‘Miles.’

  ‘They said you had come this way.’ To conceal his delight in having found her, he looked up at the crudely made garlands.

  ‘There haven’t been garlands since 1875,’ she told him, ‘when Mrs Dobie was a girl. It was her idea to bring them for Katie. You remember Mrs Dobie?’

  ‘No one could forget Mrs Dobie. It was a good idea. So many customs have died out – and that’s how places change. I’d like things to stay just as they are’ – how lovely she was, her eyes pensive, her lips tremulous – ‘at this very moment.’ Conscious of having spoken ardently, he looked up again at the dangling shapes. ‘They used to hang gloves on them in the Middle Ages as a challenge to anyone who cast doubt on the innocence and purity of the dead girl.’

  ‘No one doubts Katie’s innocence. She must have taken the beads instinctively because they were pretty. She didn’t realize that it was wrong – and she has paid for them, hasn’t she?’ Her voice trembled; she must find something else to talk about. ‘I’ve been looking at the memorial tablets. Thomas Rilston, Isabella, Henry … they’re all your ancestors.’

  He told her about them. All except Isabella had died in battle: Thomas at Corunna in the Peninsular War: Henry on the Northwest Frontier: another Thomas in the Boer War and the latest, Miles, his father, at Ypres.

  ‘Must all the Rilstons be soldiers?’ She saw that the question troubled him.

  ‘It’s been a problem.’ He opened the heavy door and motioned her to the seat in the porch. ‘I know it’s inconsistent after what I said about disliking change, but I don’t feel that I can carry on the family tradition of soldiering.’

  ‘I’m glad. There have been far too many deaths. Mrs Dobie was right about that too. A wicked waste of flesh and blood, she called it.’

  ‘Actually it’s unlikely that there’ll be another war in our time. The world is weary of slaughter. Killing on that scale must never happen again. I’d probably be safer in the army now than any of the earlier Rilstons but I’d still be out of my depth.’

  ‘What would you like to do?’

  He looked out from the narrow porch at ancient yews and headstones so worn by time that no one could tell who lay beneath them. Long beams of late sunlight touched here and there a carved cross or the crooked lettering of ‘here lies…’ and the bolder lines of a lost name. He could have said that he would like to stay for ever in such a hallowed place beside the one person with whom he felt at ease; that in the few hours they had spent together she had taught him how lonely he had been before he knew her. It was too soon: she was too young, her future still unshaped.

  ‘I’d like to take up flying,’ he said. He had a friend, an enthusiast with his own plane. ‘I’ve been up with him a few times and taken the controls. It’s a marvellous sensation – to look down on the earth. People shrink to pin-points in the sweep of the land – and all around you there’s the empty sky.’

  It’s people who worry him, she thought. He isn’t used to them. He doesn’t understand people.

  He was complaini
ng that when a Rilston died his eldest son was expected to give up his career in the army and devote himself to looking after the family property. As a rule he would by that time be middle-aged. In his own case since the inheritance would miss a generation, it would probably come to him at an earlier age.

  ‘Shall you like living at Bainrigg?’

  ‘More than I once thought. Yes, I could be content here. Meanwhile being at Oxford gives one time to sort things out.… What is it? You’re looking suddenly radiant?’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone yet, not even Mother. She wasn’t there when I came home from school. Miss Hepple sent for me this very afternoon. She thinks there’s a possibility – I’m sure it’s not at all likely – but it might be worth trying. Actually it was such a surprise that I’m almost afraid to talk about it.’

  ‘I hope eventually you’re going to put me out of my suspense and tell me what on earth it is.’

  ‘Oh, Miles, I never thought.… She thinks I might take the entrance exam for one of the Oxford colleges, St Hugh’s, perhaps.’

  Silenced by the sheer wonder of it, she leaned back and stared unseeing at the tablet of St Michael’s incumbents on the opposite wall. It is doubtful whether in its long history the porch had ever encompassed a more blissful moment.

  ‘Well done. If you come up to Oxford I’ll be able to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Yes! But’ – her face clouded – ‘it would mean another year’s study – and by that time you would have left.’

  ‘Not necessarily. I may stay on and take another degree. That’s one advantage of reading history, there’s so much of it. One can go on for ever.’

  She would read history too, her favourite subject even before she knew that it was also his. With Miles as guide she would wander amid the historic halls and seats of learning, hear the bells chime from venerable towers, trace the haunts of the Scholar-Gipsy. Her vision of Oxford was similar to, indeed identical with, that of Matthew Arnold.

  For a moment he had lost her. His pleasure in the prospect of halcyon days together was modified by this fresh reminder that she was only eighteen, too young to be told that he hoped to share with her not only Oxford for a few years but Bainrigg for all the years to come. He must wait, thankful for having found at last something to live for.

  Margot sensed his mood. She understood that by temperament he was inclined to be melancholy. Unlike Alex he was patient rather than decisive. Above all she sensed his loneliness. His mother had died when he was eight. Since Major Rilston had also been an only child there were no cousins on the paternal side of his family. A sudden realization of her own good fortune in being one of a complete family prompted her to say, ‘You must come and see us more often, whenever you’re at home.’ The words and manner were her mother’s. ‘You mustn’t mind my saying it. You’re so short of relations.’

  He smiled, regretting that she had given no other reason for the invitation. ‘Your long-suffering family can’t be expected to fill the gap. But it’s true: I’ve never known the kind of home life you have at Monk’s Dene.’

  ‘It’s the same with Lance, you know. He was very young when his mother died.’

  ‘Did he get over it, do you think?’

  ‘It must have made a difference, but Lance is such a strong person, so sure of what he wants to do. He doesn’t seem to think about himself, only about what he thinks important. I suppose that’s rather unusual.’

  Margot reached the conclusion with surprise. She had never consciously noticed Lance, never given thought to his character, but had accepted him as a familiar feature of daily life. There was no need, no occasion to worry about him as she had so often found occasion to worry about Alex. To worry about Lance would be not only unnecessary but incongruous. A person always intent on fulfilling some purpose or other had neither time nor inclination to deviate into any kind of worrying behaviour.

  Miles listened with some amusement to her inexpert analysis of Lance’s character, but had she known it, the topic rather depressed him. He saw in the tawny-haired habitué of the Humbert household a being possessed of all the admirable qualities he himself lacked. Miles needed no reminder of his own deficiencies: thought of himself as indecisive, unimpressive, by nature an outsider. Even the most clearly formed of his intentions so far, to marry Margot, had as yet the luminous quality of a dream, a delight devoutly to be wished for rather than a campaign of purposeful moves towards a desired end.

  His happiness was modified but he was happy still. They lingered in the porch until the sun went down, then loitered homeward in the after-glow. He reluctantly declined Margot’s invitation to join the evening meal: his grandmother was still unwell and he would be wanted at home. They parted with the pang of severance, the sensation of being wrenched apart that lovers feel even though their love be undeclared, unratified by touch or kiss. In regret and rapture, Margot waited under the arch, now draped with the blue flowers of clematis, until he turned into the village street. She would remember the past hour and cherish its memory as one cherishes a gift that has outlived the giver.

  But now she thought of the news she was burning to tell. She would wait until the end of the meal and while they were still at table – ‘What do you think?’ she would say casually. ‘Miss Hepple thinks.…’ Or even more nonchalantly, ‘By the way, I rather gather that Miss Hepple thinks I might go to the university.’ But she knew that nonchalance was beyond her, she would blurt it out, still gasping with the amazement she had tried to conceal when Miss Hepple said, ‘Your work throughout the year has been of a consistently high standard.’

  On either side of the garden path flowers were in bloom, lupins and larkspur and tiger-lilies. The perfume of orange blossom filled the air with the promise of long summer days. Had her talk with Miles roused in her a new awareness of the familiar scene? Or was she experiencing the heightened perception that warns of coming change? She saw the house as she had never seen it before. With all its windows open, curtains unruffled by any breeze, it seemed embowered in a rare stillness. It was more than an affair of brick and stone; it had garnered all the events of family life to hold and keep for ever when all the people who had come in and out had gone.

  Stillness begets expectancy, otherwise why should she be holding her breath? The tea things were still on the garden table; they had been there when she came home from school. With a pang of remorse for having forgotten her, she thought of Katie, carefully carrying out cups and saucers one at a time.

  Mrs Roper had evidently gone home. It was Maud’s afternoon off. Father usually came home early on the day of his quarterly board meeting. He must have gone out again. Alex could be anywhere.

  ‘Mother!’ She was not in any of the downstairs rooms. A house with doors and windows open and no one about can be a little eerie even when there is nothing to fear. A rose petal fell from the bowl on the hall table. Instinctively she removed it from the polished surface and held its velvet softness to her cheek as she went upstairs to change. The door of her room was open. With a little shock she found her mother there. She was sitting on the window-seat and looking down on the garden.

  ‘Mother!’

  Sarah turned, her face wet with tears.

  ‘What’s the matter? Is it Father – or Alex?’

  ‘No, no, they’re all right, I think.’ She managed a smile, sniffed, wept again. ‘I’ve been watching for you, longing for you to come home.’

  ‘Something has happened.’ Some awful unspeakable thing?

  Sarah leaned on the window-sill, her eyes on the rising ground beyond the garden where trees heavy with foliage were dark against a sky of fading gold.

  ‘I have loved it all so much,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear the thought of leaving. It will break my heart.’

  CHAPTER IX

  From the beginning Humbert had been at odds with the board of directors. As an agent he was an asset to the company: as a man he was a thorn in the flesh. He was certainly less respectful to his employers than would have been
prudent in a man dependent entirely on his salary. By temperament and education he was disposed to take a more liberal view of the country’s chief industry than to see as its main purpose the creation of wealth for its owners. The source of that wealth, he had once had the audacity to remind them, was two-fold: the coal and the men who mined it, the one inaccessible without the other.

  Such heresies had alarmed and irritated the owners, especially Bedlow. Humbert’s background alone made him suspect to a man who had started as a trapper at the age of seven and toiled his way up as pony-driver, putter, hewer, overman; had saved and studied and through sheer ruthless determination acquired a substantial holding in the company.

  Humbert would have admitted to a genuine admiration for such a man, adding the proviso that he was impossible to work with. They had been at loggerheads over Humbert’s insistence on improved safety levels, often expensive, on reasonable working hours, on the closure of dangerous seams and other measures favourable to the men. He had held his position because of his competence as a consultant engineer but also because of his skill in ironing out local difficulties. Managers, viewers and overseers liked and respected him. Less appreciated was his concern for the men on whom the industry depended.

  But the more fair-minded of the directors would have acknowledged in private that Humbert’s outspokenness, though resented at the time, had often been justified. He had more than once been proved right. He had a nose for coal and knew where it would be economic to lay out capital on boring and – more important to the diehards – where it would not.

  As far back as 1921 he had seen the danger of government decontrol of wages and had not concealed his sympathy with the men during the ten-week lock-out. He had predicted that the resumption of mining in the Ruhr would end the boom in British coal. Sure enough, demand and prices fell. Men were laid off and one sixth of all pits were closed. Coal was sold at prices below cost. Feeling had been tense during the twenty-six agonizing weeks when the miners hung on after the General Strike ended. Whereas Humbert blatantly declared that the men were starved into submission, the owners, watching the source of their wealth decline, continued to insist on longer hours and a cut in wages.