A Hint of Witchcraft

by Anna Gilbert

  ‘Yes, please do. Just give me a few minutes.’

  She removed the breakfast tray and helped her mother into her dressing-gown: it was best for her to be up for part of the day. From the window they watched the car leave, Alex driving. A thaw had set in but he drove cautiously down the long curving way between white fields under a brightening sky, rose-tinted above bare-boughed trees silvered with melting snow.

  ‘We seem to see so little of him these days,’ Sarah said. ‘It may be wrong of me when he’s so very much in love with her but I do hope he won’t marry her.’ Perhaps even now, she thought, there might be a change of heart or something might happen. A miracle? She reproached herself. There was really nothing wrong with Linden.

  * * *

  For the remaining days of the Christmas holiday Sarah was sufficiently unwell to be kept in bed and Margot found neither opportunity nor inclination for the dreaded talk with Alex. On the evening after the party she had managed to murmur, ‘Did you ask her?’, had managed also to hide her relief when the answer was a muttered, ‘She didn’t give me the chance.’ Even so, she could have told him: it was cowardly not to. Worse than that – she veered from one decision to its opposite – it was probably more cruel not to tell than to tell.

  ‘You need a change,’ Lance said on the last day of his holiday. He had formed his own opinion of Sarah’s condition and knew that it coincided with his father’s: she was going to need a good deal of nursing and there was some danger of a relapse. ‘Why don’t you look up those chums of yours? Phyllis and Freda.’ He had never been sure which was which. ‘I’m going to Elmdon. You could have lunch with them and then I’ll take you to the matinée at the Court. Your father’s at home, and Alex. You won’t be missed and we’ll be back by six at the latest. It’ll take your mind off whatever it is that’s bothering you.’

  In the car he told her about an interesting operation he had watched for the removal of a gall-bladder. His enthusiasm gave to the ghastly affair the captivating power of an epic. Dimly she wondered if there was something special about Lance. Was he some sort of genius?

  ‘There is something bothering me,’ she said abruptly when all the instruments had been accounted for, the patient stitched up and everything sterilized. ‘I wish I could tell you about it but it wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘Is it about Alex?’

  ‘What makes you think…?’

  ‘If it’s about Alex, stop worrying. He can look after himself.’

  ‘Not always.’ But Margot smiled, remembering the Tarzan incident.

  ‘If he can’t, it’s time he could.’

  At the riverside café Freda and Phyllis had secured their favourite table in the window and were waiting to order. Phyllis had given up potatoes and desserts and watched the others ‘wolfing’ ice cream with lofty tolerance. She had also had her hair bobbed.

  ‘It makes me feel slimmer,’ she said, ‘though obviously I’m not.’

  Freda hesitated to take the plunge from dread of looking even more mousy. (‘Your hair is fair, long or short’, she was told yet again.) Margot had been too busy to make so important a decision.

  It was interesting to hear that Angela Bavistock was known to have confided to a friend that she would rather die than marry anyone but Alex Humbert – before moving on to the fertile topic of Linden Grey. The friendship with Godfrey Barford had apparently continued.

  ‘Otherwise she’s usually on her own. That’s our mistake.’ Phyllis though regretful was firm. ‘We’re always in twos or threes. Women are more interesting on their own.’

  ‘Is Linden, in point of fact, interesting?’ Freda wondered.

  ‘She must be or we wouldn’t be talking about her. Except’ – Phyllis gave Margot a piercing look – ‘some of us are not talking about her at all. I wonder why?’

  But Margot was engaged in working out a fair division of the bill which Phyllis’s diet had made more complicated than usual.

  It was to be their last meeting for some time. Phyllis would soon be leaving to be ‘finished’ in Switzerland. Freda was to take a housewifery course in London.

  ‘Hard luck that Meg should be stuck at home,’ Freda said, when Margot had hurried off to join Lance. ‘After all she’s the brainy one.’

  ‘C’est la vie,’ Phyllis said profoundly and with a faintly Gallic shrug.

  ‘You could say that about anything – and in English, if you don’t mind.’

  Lance had been right. Lunch with the girls, the film Under a Texas Moon and a glimpse of Miles driving out of town as they drove in had a bracing effect, though not bracing enough to bring her to the point of telling Alex. The morning of his departure was obviously not a suitable time and they rarely wrote to each other: to compose a letter on the topic of Linden’s dishonesty was beyond her. The revelation must be postponed until Easter when he would be home, though only for a few days.

  She had not seen or heard from Linden since the party. The problem was not resolved but it had receded. Neither she nor Toria alluded to it again. Toria, restored to health, had been kept on. She had nowhere else to go and could not be turned adrift especially in winter. And quite soon she was found to be useful: being resident she was there to take in deliveries, to answer the door, tend fires and carry trays. She had gravitated to a low-ceilinged room above the kitchen with its own narrow winding stair and had of her own accord taken on the early morning lighting of the kitchen fire so that there was always hot water by breakfast-time.

  She also did bits of shopping in Fellside. Most of the items were charged to the Humberts’ monthly accounts, but it was not long before Margot came to rely on her for her own personal shopping. Toria apparently took this as a compliment. When Margot first entrusted her with a purse and list, her sallow skin reddened with pleasure.

  ‘You can depend on me, Miss Humbert,’ she said and her care of the small accounts was meticulous: the prices set down and initialled by shopkeepers – and Toria waited, head slightly bowed and hands clasped like an accused person on trial while Margot counted the change.

  Gaunt and silent, stalking from kitchen to hall, from staircase to bedrooms, Toria seemed to take on – or had already possessed – something of the character of the Hall itself: large, structurally strong, of unknown age and a little frightening after dark. But Toria was by far the less demanding: food, shelter and a wage little more than nominal supplied her entire need. She was not forthcoming in manner but she was well disposed and that was fortunate for she was also a threat like an unexploded bomb. She had only to utter a few words and several lives would be altered. Margot felt a tightening of nerves when, as must happen, Toria and Ewan were seen together though the two of them did seem to hit it off; certainly there was no sign of the friction such as so secluded a life might produce between two people who were, to say the least, untypical.

  Sometimes when she saw them talking together, she could have imagined that some bond united them, some topic of mutual interest. She judged this from an occasional nod of understanding on the part of one or the other and from snippets overheard. It was surely nonsense to suppose that they could be attracted to each other. Margot considered them rather an unattractive pair, though in fairness Ewan could be described as handsome in a strongly masculine way. According to his mother he could take his pick of the girls in Ashlaw, Hope Carr and Fellside. But the difference in their ages made any amorous intention on his part unlikely, though not necessarily on hers. Actually they were rather alike, both dark-browed, both probably capable of deep feelings. Particularly, if any cause for it should arise.

  Langland Hall had so little to offer in the way of companionship that Margot was sometimes desperate for someone to talk to. Although Toria could not be called companionable, she was visibly there under the same roof – or roofs, the Hall being so rambling a structure. What could be more natural than that they should chat occasionally and get to know each other? Natural perhaps, but getting to know Toria was a slow business.

  The few words
they exchanged on household matters did develop into longer conversations though they were never long, nor could the activity be called chatting. Toria’s lugubrious expression, her features apparently carved in wood, her doom-laden utterances – it was Alex who so described them – were not adapted to light conversation. But she was interesting. Margot was curious about her. There was more in her than appeared on the surface. Though she owned nothing but what she stood up in – stood tall and strangely dignified, impossible to ignore – she seemed endowed with nameless qualities beyond those required in her humble way of life.

  ‘Now that I’ve got to know you’ – it wasn’t true but they were at least acquainted – ‘I do feel that you deserve a more comfortable life than you seem to have had. I mean, you know how to do things and how they should be done.…’ It would be too blunt to ask why she had sunk to the ceaseless scrubbing of Miss Burdon’s floors. Moreover, judging by her unconventional arrival at the Hall, her prospects had not improved when she left Ashlaw.

  They had met at the airing cupboard. With its doors wide open it faintly warmed the frigid back landing. One could linger there without too much discomfort. Margot had come for a nightdress for her mother. Toria was stacking bed linen: her long arms reached easily to the top shelf.

  ‘I’m more comfortable, Miss Humbert, than I’ve been for many a year and I thank God for it.’

  Margot murmured that she was glad. Toria’s response had discouraged her from asking the direct question she had intended, which seemed on an altogether lower level. Toria’s utterances made ordinary remarks seem worse than commonplace. Nevertheless she persisted.

  ‘How long were you at Miss Burdon’s?’

  She had been there almost two years and would have stayed longer had it not been for you know what.

  ‘Another year perhaps,’ she added, ‘would have been about enough.’

  ‘Enough for what?’ Margot could not help asking.

  ‘For the working out of His purpose.’

  Her face above the pile of white sheets she held was yellow and worn but her eyes were bright, their whites shone clear. With health – or with the fervid glitter of mania? Did she – or He – plan a similar span of years to be spent at Langland? Margot hesitated to ask, not only from inability to adopt a manner similar to Toria’s own but because it might embarrass her, though she doubted whether it was in Toria’s nature to be embarrassed. But at that point the postman’s knock sent her scurrying downstairs.

  It was a few days later that the conversation was resumed, once again at the airing cupboard which was not only warmish but free from class distinctions. Toria rarely appeared in other rooms than the kitchen and then only briefly. Consequently, most of their talk in the winter months took place on landings or in the hall.

  ‘I wonder what made you choose Ashlaw.’ Even as she spoke Margot realised that ‘choose’ was the wrong word: Toria had probably been ‘sent’ to Ashlaw and to Miss Burdon’s in accordance with some obscure divine plan. But Toria’s answer was for once straightforward and free of allusions to the Old Testament.

  ‘I was told that a cleaner was wanted at the shop there.’

  A sheet had been carelessly folded; she shook it out. Margot took the other end and they refolded it together.

  ‘I saw you once or twice from my bedroom window early in the morning. You were in the Dene beside the War Memorial.’

  ‘Wherever there’s a War Memorial I have to read the names.’

  That after all was what War Memorials were for; but there it was again, the compulsion to act in an ordained way. Yet Toria did not seem to find the compulsion burdensome. Margot perceived that it would be a support. The sense of being directed gave Toria an enviable detachment from problems that would break the spirit of lesser mortals. Somehow, on her knees for one reason or another, she had kept an independence of spirit, her mind concentrated on the course mapped out for her by a divine Cosmographer.

  ‘You feel that it’s a way of paying respect to the men who died. Or perhaps’ – a less public-spirited and more interesting reason occurred to her – ‘you’re looking for the name of someone in particular.’

  ‘Yes.’ This time it was pillow-cases. Toria inserted them narrow end first so that two piles could occupy the same shelf.

  ‘Someone you knew and cared for.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The dead soldier must have been a relative or a sweetheart. But surely in that case she would have known which War Memorial to visit. How many were there? The search for the right one could take a lifetime. Yet if anyone could maintain so hopeless a pilgrimage, Margot felt with conviction that it would be Toria. Nothing would make her waver. She had no ties, no friends, no possessions to undermine her resolution.

  ‘But you don’t know where he lived.’

  ‘No.’

  Margot stepped back as Toria closed the doors of the cupboard. As usual, just as a little progress was being made it was time to part. But Toria did not immediately walk away as she usually did.

  ‘He promised to come back. He said that nothing but death would make him break his word.’

  ‘Oh how terribly sad for you!’

  Their meeting, Margot thought, may have been as brief as it was poignant: there would be nothing commonplace about it. She imagined a desolate hillside mantled in low cloud and deserted save for two figures emerging from mist to meet face to face for the transfiguring moment. Toria for one would feel that it was destined. Then too soon, almost at once had come the parting: the hand clasp: the embrace? ‘I’ll come back,’ he must have said. ‘My name is.…’ And that was all Toria knew of him?

  But it was wrong to be disrespectful. It was terribly sad and alas, Toria had over-simplified her plight. Thousands had died un-named, their deaths unrecorded on any memorial. Perhaps, horribly maimed or blinded, he was enduring a living death in hospital or suffering loss of memory. Even if he had been only slightly wounded he would have been unable to get in touch with Toria, especially as circumstances had doomed her to a wandering life of no fixed address. Worse still, his promise might have meant less to him than to Toria. Would she be cheered by such reminders that he might still be alive?

  ‘Have you ever thought that…?’

  But she was walking away. Her tall and angular form with its plaited coronet of black hair had a regal dominance, fully occupying the narrow low-ceilinged corridor. When she came to the end and disappeared down the back stairs, an emptiness could be felt.

  ‘She’s probably imagined the whole thing,’ Sarah said. ‘He had no intention of keeping his promise, if he ever existed. I really wonder if she’s quite.…’ Much as she enjoyed Margot’s versions of her encounters with Toria, she wondered if this was a suitable or wholesome influence for her to be subjected to and how long the present unsatisfactory arrangements at the Hall could be allowed to go on. Her own physical weakness made it wearisome to think of all the problems, much less do anything about them, but she did muster strength to help Margot in framing another advertisement for a resident housekeeper to be inserted in a wider range of magazines.

  ‘We must find someone who would be pleasant company for you, someone who won’t irritate your father.’

  It was clear to both of them that Toria must stay presumably – as Margot pointed out – until the allotted span of years was complete, if only because neither of them could bring herself to tell her to go. Indeed it was in their own interest to keep her. For Margot, her splendid eccentricity was a welcome diversion, and though she entertained her mother by exaggerating it, she genuinely respected a woman who might have been pitiable yet was strong, dignified and essentially free.

  ‘The war was responsible for some very strange things,’ Sarah said.

  ‘But that was ages ago.’

  ‘It seems so to you. You were just a little girl when it ended. But it doesn’t seem so to me – or to Toria. Millions of men died. How could things ever be the same again? It was as if the whole world was rocked by an earthqu
ake and people have never settled back in their old places. When I was your age life was so safe and manageable.’

  It was as if Toria typified the folk whose lives had been disrupted in the vast upheaval, like the tramps and the down-and-out salesmen who came to the back door with shabby suitcases of dusters and socks and scarves. Many of them were ex-servicemen who had not found jobs when they were demobilized, who had fought and suffered and gained nothing by it, not even their names carved in stone. Margot’s heart sank whenever one of them came trudging up the long cart track. Unwanted goods were bought, but it was generally Toria who came to ask if they could be given bread and cheese and a mug of tea. No doubt she acted from fellow feeling – or was it from normal motherly or sisterly warmth? Did the wooden features conceal a natural kindliness? Margot could not be sure. Despite the size of the Hall its atmosphere could be claustrophobic, especially on winter days as twilight deepened and from an unlit corner or a half-open door Toria materialized with a tray or a letter come on the second post, so that in some inexplicable way she seemed to have become part of the place. And sometimes when she came upon Toria and Ewan together she felt like an intruder. They always had something to talk about though neither was by nature talkative. What could it be?

  ‘You haven’t told anyone what you told me?’ she had once ventured to ask.

  ‘Not a soul,’ Toria answered gravely, and Margot believed her without ever shaking off the uneasiness she felt when she heard their murmured voices in the unused butler’s pantry or in the dairy or in the woodshed.

  But both were strong and capable and the help they gave left her free to look after her mother, often with an aching heart as there was no sign of her recovery. Their relationship, always close, grew closer. Its balance had altered: it was her turn to comfort and advise, to wash the feeble body and comb the hair once like her own, now dull and lank. And as the weeks passed and the days lengthened, as snowdrops pierced the greensward of the priory’s roofless nave and the blackthorn came into bloom, she looked forward to Easter with both longing and dread: dread of telling Alex what Linden had done: longing to see Miles who would also be coming home.