A Hint of Witchcraft

by Anna Gilbert

  Lord Laverborne, wealthiest of all the directors, had judiciously sold off three of his collieries. The remaining three yielded sufficient income from royalties, way-leaves and railway rents to maintain him in the manner to which he had been accustomed. He rarely attended meetings and happened to be abroad at the end of June 1928 and so missed the flare-up at the quarterly meeting.

  Quite simply – it was unique: different from any board meeting of any kind ever known. Its course and outcome were shaped, not by Quinian, acting chairman and financial manager of Fellside’s interests in an iron company, blast furnace and shipping line, not by Bedlow, whose glowering self-interest alone could defeat opposition, nor by his chief bugbear, Humbert, with his fancy theories – a chap who had never got his hands dirty nor put a penny into the company and – his unsuitability could be put no lower – an ex-parson.

  What made it different from any other meeting was the presence of Katie Judd. Uninvited, her frail spirit insinuated itself into the boardroom. The gentlemen were no sooner seated than the agenda fell to pieces. The last item became the first as Bedlow, always a stranger to formality, produced a sheaf of papers and spread them on the table.

  ‘What I want to know’ – his thick fingers trembled as he arranged the newspaper cuttings on the shining surface. He was an old and angry man. His fierce eyes under thick eyebrows glared at Humbert who sat at the lower end of the table. ‘What I want to know is who’s going to be made responsible for this. I’ll tell you who it should be. Them that didn’t want Lucknow reopened even if there is coal there which those same people know there is. If my advice had been taken seven years ago, there’d have been a sinking in Larson’s fields. By now we’d have had a fully operational pit there and yon old shaft would have been filled and levelled off as if it had never been there.’

  The thrust went home. Humbert glanced at Quinian, received a despairing nod of permission and sprang to his own defence.

  ‘I advised against developing Lucknow, although there certainly is coal there. The minutes of the meeting will confirm that I also said that at some future time it might be an economically sound project if sufficient capital were available. My estimate of the possible cost was rejected out of hand’ – he returned Bedlow’s glare – ‘but was confirmed by the valuers. Penny pinching is not to be tolerated in this dangerous industry. Besides,’ – as Bedlow opened his tightly compressed lips to interrupt – ‘there were legal difficulties as you well know. They haven’t yet been resolved.’

  He reminded them that Cosway, the original owner of the Lucknow Drift had worked it on lease. Under a clause in the agreement, if a lease expired and was not renewed, the lessee was obliged to give first option in disposing of buildings and equipment to the lessor and to restore all ground to an arable state. He was also legally bound to fill up pits of no further use or so to enclose them that they presented no danger. Ventilating shafts must be enclosed within a wall six feet high.

  For a moment, as Edward paused unhappily, controversy was forgotten, all minds having turned to the tragic absence of one particular six-foot wall. But only for a moment.

  ‘If my advice had been taken, all that rubbish would have had to be cleared away seven years ago. Yon shaft would have been filled in and the ground levelled.’ It was as if Bedlow had not been listening.

  ‘Besides the inadequacy of the proposed investment,’ Humbert persisted, ‘there were other problems. Incidentally, there may have been a six-foot wall there. None of us was here in 1901 except perhaps Mr Bedlow.’

  ‘Who was the lessor?’ Quinian addressed the question to Andrews, legal adviser to the board. He was a painstaking ambitious man of thirty-five and had come prepared, having immersed himself in the history of the Lucknow Drift.

  ‘The seven-year lease had been renewed six times but wasn’t renewed in 1901. It was Cosway’s responsibility to make all safe before the site was restored to the lessor, which he may have done, as Mr Humbert pointed out. A lot can happen to a wall in an exposed situation in getting on for thirty years.

  ‘Cosway died in 1902. His one daughter emigrated to New South Wales and married there. The lessor was Thomas Burdon, father of the present owner of Burdon’s Drapery shop. In 1913 he sold the site to the owners of the Hope Carr colliery which was taken over in 1918 by the Fellside and District Coal Company.’

  Having read from his notes, Andrews looked uneasily across at his friend Humbert.

  ‘So’ – Bedlow’s face was red with triumph and resentment – ‘this company has been responsible for that death-trap for ten years. If my advice had been taken—’

  ‘The company is also responsible for other death-traps, including those slums in Potter’s Yard,’ Humbert pointed out sharply, concealing his inner concern.

  ‘I seem to remember’ – the speaker represented the bishopric of Elmdon, also a substantial shareholder in the company – ‘that there could be no development without an agreement with the owner of the land to the west of the Lucknow site and that he was unwilling to give wayleaves.’

  Rilston. It was a decision he may have regretted, Humbert thought, considering Rilston’s financial difficulties. He was sufficiently bothered to be grateful for the intervention. The fact remained that he himself should have kept the local managers on their toes though in managerial terms the Lucknow site belonged to none of the working collieries. A rotten industrial relic mouldering for years! He had not so much laid eyes on it until the recent tragedy. If he had bestirred himself to walk that way, he’d have been on to it like a shot. All his work, skill and acumen, all the cut and thrust of his battles with Bedlow counted for nothing in view of this one piece of negligence. It was a bitter moment.

  Quinian in the chair rapidly restored the agenda. There was more than a chance that Bedlow would demand a reprimand. It would not be seconded: it was too unreasonable, but it would have to be entered in the minutes and might lead to a further enquiry and a demand for compensation. Who knew what might come to light? It was to be hoped that it would all blow over.

  And so it might have done. When he had submitted his quarterly report Humbert paid less attention than he ought to the progress of the meeting. He was conscious of a peculiar mood. Concern, regret, loss of confidence in his much prized efficiency should have depressed him deeply: he was depressed. Yet a curious sensation came and went as if – to use a mining image – into a deep seam there came intermittent and dangerous flashes of light and heat. It was not long before he understood what was at work within him.

  He remained seated when the others rose to go, almost unaware that the meeting was over, until Bedlow, having gathered up the cutting, moved in his direction.

  ‘And another thing.’ His heavy jowl quivering, he waved the papers close to Humbert’s face. One was a picture of one of the young men who had been commended for their public spirit in having recovered the body of the unfortunate girl. ‘It’s given you a boost, I dare say, to see your lad’s picture in the papers, and him too. He’s not the sort to back off from a bit of publicity, they tell me. What about the other lad? He was there as well but very likely he didn’t put hisself forward to have his photo taken. I’d like to know how your lad knew where to look for the girl. How did he know, eh? I wouldn’t have known. There’s not many that would. But he did, your lad, didn’t he?’

  Who could tell what the old man had in mind beyond an impulse to stir up further trouble for his enemy? In a startled pause several heads turned. Humbert, stupefied by fury, was dumbfounded. From the top of the table Quinian intervened.

  ‘Mr Bedlow, sir, you should withdraw those remarks. You are out of order. Completely out of order.’

  ‘The meeting’s over, isn’t it? I can say what I like.’

  ‘Yes.’ Humbert drew breath and steadied his voice, ‘And that’s the sort of thing you like to say, you narrow-minded, blundering skinflint.’ He got up. ‘Get out of my way before I lose my temper.’ He looked along at Quinian. ‘Mr Chairman, as a favour, would you mind
reconvening the meeting? It will take no more than a minute, in fact, the gentlemen don’t even need to sit down. I intend to resign as agent of the Fellside and District Coal Company. My resignation will be put in writing immediately.’

  His anger had gone. The visiting beams of light had widened and become constant. He felt and look revitalized. The sense of renewal was not unfamiliar: the same lightness of relief had come when he turned his back on the timber business and again when he left the ministry.

  ‘For God’s sake, man, don’t put anything in writing until you’ve thought things over.’ Quinian spoke urgently. He and Andrews had stayed when the others left. ‘This isn’t a resigning matter.’

  ‘Strictly speaking we’re only responsible for our own working pits,’ Andrews reminded him, ‘and the company never worked Lucknow. If anybody is to blame, it’s Rilston. A landowner can be prosecuted for any hazard on land accessible to the public and the shaft happens to be on his land.’

  ‘But only the shaft.’ The Rilstons may have had a small royalty on that account before the lease expired but Humbert was quick to see the injustice of holding them responsible when those who had made real money out of Lucknow went scot-free. ‘Even in its present state the shaft is not a hazard. No one could fall into it by accident.’ In the heat of the moment the full significance of that fact escaped him.

  True enough. Quinian was relieved. ‘The whole thing will blow over. That is, if you don’t stir things up by resigning. Your resignation will be seen as an acceptance of responsibility. The company won’t like that one bit. Heaven knows what it might let them in for in the way of claims for compensation. There’s been mining hereabouts since Roman times.’

  ‘Dubious liability,’ Andrews said. ‘That’s typical of mining. It could take years to sort out if anyone were unwise enough to try. The company will wriggle out of it, but what about you, old chap?’

  Their anxiety on his behalf touched him, but he did not share it, caught up as he already was in plans for a new project. Here was a chance to put into operation a scheme he had dallied with from time to time, never expecting it to be realized, a scheme which could be advantageous to Rilston too. A quixotic impulse to give Rilston a helping hand confirmed – and excused? – his decision to resign. ‘There’s Langland Hall standing empty,’ Rilston had said. That was years ago. The place was going to rack and ruin. It would be a public service to take it over, renovate, make the cottages habitable, find work for the unemployed. A land scheme similar to the Surrey smallholdings? Vegetables, poultry, goats, a pottery.… The possibilities were endless. He would take it on a ten-year lease, at a nominal rent, with a clause that if ever the land was to be sold, he would have the first option to buy.

  He sat on when the others had gone, absently smoothing the pages of his report into a perfect rectangle, conscious only of having found his true vocation, forgetting that he had seemed to find it twice before. It was some time before he became aware of the surrounding silence and looked at his watch. Only then did it occur to him to wonder how Sarah would feel about leaving Monk’s Dene.

  CHAPTER X

  The rooms at Langland Hall were long and low, the windows narrow. In winter, daylight came late. Indoors it was always twilight except for the fires that roared and blazed in the cavernous grates and were for ever in need of replenishing.

  Margot emptied a scuttleful of coal on the sitting-room fire and lingered – guiltily: there was still so much to be done elsewhere. She went to the window. They had been glad that the main rooms faced this way with open views to the south and west, but throughout a particularly sunless November there had been nothing to see but low skies and bare trees. She had learned not to mind the feeling of being shut in; she would even have welcomed the grey gloom that shut out all the things she was missing – if there had been time to notice it or to feel anything beyond the backbreaking tiredness of being constantly on her feet and, occasionally, disbelief that a few months could so transform her life.

  All the same it had become a habit to look down towards the road at the end of the long drive connecting the Hall with the outer world, and presently she saw the postman trudging up to the last of the three gates. There might be a letter from Alex.

  As soon as the fire was red again she must bring her mother downstairs. The attack of pneumonia had been severe, and so had Dr Pelman. ‘Madness’ he called it, to move into this old ruin before the restoration was complete. It had barely begun. The roof was sound and the plumbing worked. Doors and windows had been made weather-proof, but after more than two decades of standing empty, the house still suffered the desolation of neglect.

  The Hall had ceased to be a gentleman’s residence eighty years ago and had been let to a succession of tenant farmers. Its situation at the end of the so-called drive, now degenerated into a gated cart-road, isolated it from the nearest village of Fellside. Ashlaw, five miles away by road was for all practical purposes out of reach.

  Islands of comfort had been fought for and won against fearful odds, but floors were still bare in most of the rooms; cupboards were damp; snail tracks glistened on the flags of the vast kitchen. It would be months before carpenters, decorators and carpet-layers could make the place ship-shape.

  Edward used the word casually. Home comforts came low on his formidable list of priorities. First viewed in summer sunshine, the house had seemed to possess the romantic charm of age. Since the removal he had rarely been at home except during the most alarming phase of Sarah’s illness. The project he had undertaken involved him in problems he had not foreseen: legal, practical, technical. He had to see architects, surveyors, council officials, merchant builders.…

  He glories in it, Sarah thought, hoping the glory would last when so many other things had come to an end. She understood his need to do everything at lightning speed in order to prove that it could be done at all, knowing that Dr Pelman was not the only one to call it madness.

  ‘A mammoth undertaking,’ Edward told her, his eyes glowing, and it was as some cumbersome elephantine creature that Sarah regarded the grey pile into which she had been summarily dumped; a building scarcely less forbidding than the ruined priory 200 yards further up the slope. Had she been as she used to be, she would have thrown herself into the battle for his sake and for Margot’s. But from the moment the blow fell, the heart went out of her: she had left it at Monk’s Dene. Her illness, four weeks after they moved, had been more than pneumonia: it had been a failure of spirit. She recoiled from the truth, that this time Edward had made a mistake – and took to her bed.

  For Margot, discomforts and inconveniences counted for nothing compared to the change in her mother. It struck her afresh as Sarah shuffled into the room, having succeeded in dressing herself for the first time for over a month.

  ‘You should have waited. I was coming.’ She helped her to a chair and put a rug over her knees.

  ‘Sit down for a few minutes.’

  They faced each other across the hearth. The greater change was in Sarah, but Margot too was thinner, paler, more serious. The burden had fallen most heavily on her, but the worst was over. The nurse was gone, and, as they frequently reminded each other, most of the difficulties were temporary. In six months, Alex would have taken his degree. There would be a place for him with an Elmdon firm dealing mainly with company law and he could live at home.

  Mrs Roper was a sad loss. She gave them a day occasionally but could not be longer away from her husband who suffered from pneumoconiosis. Maud had left to be married. The Todds, a couple already housed in one of the cottages, were helpful and Bessie did simple cookery. The daily woman who walked or cycled from Fellside was reliable as times were hard and the work welcome. But resident help was essential. Despite their problems, Sarah persisted in waiting for a suitable person to respond to their advertisement: to be saddled with an unsuitable one would, she foresaw, be purgatory.

  Meanwhile, one successful outcome of the mammoth undertaking, the only one, perhaps, was the employm
ent of Ewan Judd as handyman. For the first time in his life he had a regular job.

  ‘It’s given him a bit of pride in himself,’ his mother said. He had ceased to smoulder with resentment, was occasionally heard to whistle as he chopped wood and dug beds for vegetables and had been seen to smile.

  ‘A transformation.’ Edward was enthusiastic. ‘And there’s so much more we can do in saving men from the scrapheap of unemployment.’ He dwelt on the theme. It replaced an earlier one that women should have careers and learn to be independent. Margot had gone back to school for the autumn term. A fortnight later came the removal. For another fortnight she had managed the hour-long journey from Langland to Elmdon, not including the walk to Fellside station, until the alarming onset of her mother’s illness.

  ‘You can take up your studies again,’ her father said, ‘when things are more settled. I’m not sure that your health would stand up to university life.’

  In the emergency, Margot scarcely gave a thought to her studies or the university, as on a sinking ship a desperate passenger discards personal belongings and takes to the lifeboat. When the crisis was over and Sarah took a turn for the better, mother and daughter were often alone when workmen had gone home, except for the Todds and Ewan, who was proving unexpectedly reliable and inoffensive. Ferocious as the Judds could be in defence of their own, they could be equally pig-headed in loyalty to their friends. The Humberts, especially Miss Margot, had been kind to Katie and were accepted as partisans in the guerrilla war against a hostile world.

  Margot was about to tear herself away from the fire when heavy footsteps in the uncarpeted hall announced the approach of Ewan with a trug of wood and three letters in unfamiliar handwriting.