That Old Black Magic

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Oh well,” said Anna, “that’s because I was brought up by my grandma, an old Welsh woman from Tenby. She used to sit by the fire spinning her wool and singing them to me. And the grislier, the better.”

  Spooner shook his head. “Astonishing,” he said. “That sounds exactly like my childhood. Except the old woman in my case came from Shetland. She kept hundreds of jigs and reels inside her head and I’ve tried desperately to remember them all since she passed away. It’s a way of bringing her back, I suppose.”

  “Did she teach you ‘The Lady Highwayman?’” Anna sat forward, her smile now completely genuine and lighting up the room better than any bulb or candle.

  “Aye,” said Spooner. “For some reason you made me think of her. Must have been the dungarees, eh?”

  “Oh, what else do you have?” said Anna. “Let’s see if I know any of them.”

  “Now then,” Spooner consulted his mental song repository, “there’s ‘Barbara Allen’, ‘The Three Ravens’, ‘Miss Bailey’s Ghost’…” Anna nodded along as he spoke. “… ‘Down Among the Dead Men’, ‘Jack Hall’ and ah, I know – how about ‘The Witches Reel’?”

  Anna clasped her hands together. “That’s one I don’t know,” she said. “Please sing it for me and I’ll try to join in.” She opened her violin case.

  “This was one of Granny’s favourites,” Spooner told her. “It’s about the trial of Francis Stewart, the Earl of Bothwell, for using sorcery to try to kill King James VI. He was supposed to have had a coven of witches perform the reel on a cliff top one night when the King was sailing past, so that a storm would brew up and capsize him.”

  From within her case, Anna produced a very old, yellow-brown violin.

  “That’s the sort of song I want to learn,” she said, tucking it under her chin and lifting up her bow. “Away you go, then.”

  Spooner remembered back to the fireside of his own youth, Granny’s voice keening:

  “Cummer gae ye before, cummer gae ye, Gin ye winna gae before, cummer let me, Ring-a-ring-a-widdershins, Linken lithely widdershins, Cummer carlin cron and queyn, Roun gae we!”

  After the first verse, Anna joined in on her instrument. Her fingers were as light and deft as the cadences of her voice. She had each note almost before he had come to it himself.

  “Cummer gae ye before, cummer gae ye, Gin ye winna gae before, cummer let me, Ring-a-ring-a-widdershins, Loupen’ lightly widdershins, Kilted coats and fleein’ hair, Three times three!”

  “Oh!” Anna enthused. “It’s brilliant!”

  “There’s one more verse,” said Spooner and she started to dance around him as he sang it.

  “Cummer gae ye before, cummer gae ye, Gin ye winna gae before, cummer let me, Ring-a-ring-a-widdershins, Whirlin’, skirlin’ widdershins, De’il tak the hindmost, Wha’er she be!”

  Anna’s face shone as she sat back on the bed, laughing. “Can you write it down for me? I can remember the tune, but the words are a bit hard to follow in your dialect.” Laying her violin back in its case, she opened her bedside chest of drawers. “Have you got a pen?” she asked, producing a notebook and turning to a fresh page.

  “Oh, aye,” Spooner felt in his jacket pocket, trying not to look the way he felt: heady with the exhilaration of her accompaniment, almost as if he was drunk. He knew why the landlord of the Victoria had wanted so much for her to come back.

  “You know how to do the reels as well,” he said, taking the book from her.

  “I just do what comes with the music,” she said. “No one’s ever taught me.”

  “Well, I never,” Judith stood in the doorway with her tea tray. “Are you doing a concert together already?”

  “Oh thank you, Judith,” Anna sprang back up to take her offerings. “That’s so kind. Mr Spooner was just teaching me a song I didn’t know.”

  “Well, there aren’t many of those, are there?” Judith said.

  “I’ve tried to remember all the ones I lost,” Anna said. “I’ve put them in that book you gave me. It’s nearly full up now, but there’s room for another, isn’t there, Mr Spooner?”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s going so well,” said Judith. She was amazed by the transformation in her lodger. Though she had been aware that music was the key to unlocking Anna’s torment, she obviously hadn’t been playing the right kind with her. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  While Anna poured, Spooner flicked through the pages of her book. It was as she had said a huge collection of songs, a lot that he knew and many that he didn’t, but all with a supernatural theme. It was time to risk treading a little further down this path. He waited until he heard Judith reach the bottom of the stairs.

  “Bertie said you used to play as a duo with another woman,” he said. Anna put down the teapot carefully, looked from one cup to another.

  “Do you take sugar?” she asked, without looking at him.

  “Aye,” said Spooner, “I’ll take a spoonful if you have it. And just a wee drop of milk.”

  She followed his instructions without replying and passed the cup over to him.

  “Thanks,” he said, wondering if he had smashed the fragile trust he had just established. He took a sip. The tea was strong but not stewed, just the way he liked it. Anna poured a cup for herself and curled back up with it on the bed, blowing across the surface of the liquid.

  “That’s right,” she finally said. “Clara.” Her voice had returned to its former whisper. “But we’re not friends any more. Nor are we likely to be ever again.”

  Spooner shrugged. “Ach, it makes no odds. You’ve talent enough for two people,” he said, “and it doesn’t affect the offer I’m making. I was just curious.”

  Anna looked at him. “No, I’m sure people will have told you how brilliant she is. I can’t deny it, she’s a far better singer than I am and the way she plays piano is perfect for your London bands, she has a jazz background, unlike me. It was my idea for us to do Spellbound, and I taught her nearly all my songs… But, she taught me a lot too.” The sea green eyes washed over Spooner and travelled far away.

  Quietly, he asked: “How long were you together?”

  “Not long,” Anna continued to stare into infinity, “about a year, I suppose. I met her at the old Empire, another thing that doesn’t exist any more. We were part of the same bill: I was playing the violin for a tightrope walker and she was singing. I’ve been round this circuit for ten years now, since Nonna died and I left Tenby, but I’d never come across her before. She was what they call a mystery. Said she’d been working in London and she knew the music for all the latest shows. When I asked her why she’d come here she just shrugged and said she was trying to forget someone.” Anna shook her head, blew again on her tea and took a sip before resuming.

  “You know when we were playing just then? You felt something, didn’t you?” Her eyes focussed on his again. “A connection. Words that didn’t have to be spoken. Well I had that with Clara. Better than with anyone. It was the way she sang, but something else, this aura she brought with her. We only did two songs of hers but they always brought the house down. Brilliant, they were. A bit like gypsy music – I’ve played with some gypsies in my time – and a bit like Jewish music. Old, but so modern at the same time.”

  “Like nothing else you’ve ever heard before,” Spooner remembered Norman’s words. “That was what the landlord of the Victoria told me. If you don’t want to come to London, he told me to say you’ve got a permanent invitation to play there.”

  Anna put her cup down shakily in her saucer. “The Victoria,” she said. “Oh my. That was when it all went wrong. That night with her and the officer.”

  7

  BEWITCHED, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED

  Monday, 17 February 1941

  “The officer?” Spooner echoed. “Who’s that?”

  “Good question,” said Anna. “And one that I don’t think I have the answer to. He called himself Ralph Nicholson. I called him ‘the officer’ because he looked like o
ne and he talked like one and he drove around in a big black Bentley. The original Mr Tall Dark and Handsome, he was. To Clara, anyway,” a note of bitterness crept into her voice.

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “Another good question.” Now that she had started on this subject she had bottled up for so long, Anna found herself unable to stop talking. “I’m not really sure. When I first met Clara, I was living in a hostel on Broad Street – it was cheap and a step up from some of the fleapit boarding houses like she was living in at the time. I got her a room and from then on, we did just about everything together. Except for when she went for her piano lessons. I can only think that she met him there.”

  “Really?” said Spooner. “Her piano teacher was given to matchmaking, was he?”

  Anna scowled. “I don’t know. I never met him and it was something she was quite mysterious about. She called him Professor De Vere and went on the train to meet him. He wasn’t based in Brum, but somewhere out over Dudley way.”

  A siren went off in Spooner’s mind. There was a Triple-U he had once shadowed called Simon De Vere, whose social life took in regular meetings of the British Union of Fascists and The Right Club, as well as visits to a bookshop near the British Museum that stocked highly expensive occult works. De Vere kept an account there and a townhouse in Chelsea, he was the son of an Earl with an ancestral pile in Worcester-shire, an aristocrat whose blue blood could be traced back to the Norman Conquest, when his ancestors rode behind King William. Traces of his heritage lived on in the lines of his high forehead, its black tresses swept back from a widow’s peak, the slim, aquiline nose and high cheekbones that guarded his deep blue eyes. Spooner had seen the charisma De Vere exuded through his cultured tones and those hypnotic orbs and always ended his reports pegging him as a fifth columnist. But, despite a big sweep in May 1940, in which all the leading figures of the organisations his suspect admired had been arrested and interned, Spooner had never learned of the same fate befalling De Vere.

  “That was one world I was never invited into,” Anna went on. “I thought it was because I didn’t come from the right background. I mean, Clara was always as strapped as I am, but it was obvious she’d come from money. She had this steamer trunk that she’d sometimes get things from – a mink shawl or a string of pearls – and tell me they were heirlooms. Now, I’ve not had much to do with the upper classes. They slum it in the music halls when they fancy, but they don’t mix beneath their station, that’s one thing I do know. So, with him being a professor, that’s what I thought it was – at first.”

  Anna put her cup aside and leaned forward, as entranced in her own mystery story as she had been with Spooner’s song. “Then, I started to wonder if that was how she knew all those songs I was telling you about, that it was him teaching them to her. ’Cos she did like to make up stories, did Clara, and after a while I started to realise that. Even her calling him ‘the professor’ might have been some kind of private joke.

  “So one night I followed her. I did what I often do to avoid being noticed,” she hooked her thumb through one of the shoulder straps on her dungarees. “Dressed up as a boy. Pair of trousers, hair under a flat cap, and off I went. Sure enough, she took the train, all the way to Stourbridge, and when she got there, there was a big car waiting. A black Rolls-Royce Phantom, driven by a chauffeur. Now,” she fixed Spooner with a knowing look, “when have you ever met a piano teacher that puts on that kind of service before?” Spooner shook his head.

  “Thought not. So, of course, I couldn’t follow her any further. But soon after that, the officer came to our next show, waving a bunch of red roses and a bottle of champagne for Clara. She started doing everything with him. Never had any time to practise, turned down bookings, spent all her time at his place. In the end, I had to go back to working with Nils – the tightrope walker – to earn enough to get by. Then it happened for the first time…” Anna’s gaze slipped away from Spooner’s.

  “The hostel got hit in an air raid last October, the same one that did for the Empire. Luckily, neither of us was in at the time, and the damage wasn’t too bad. Of course, Clara’s boyfriend came to help us clear out what we could find. It was all covered in dust and rubble, but no one had been in and robbed the place, like what sometimes happens.

  “When I was putting my bags into the boot of his car, I saw that Clara’s trunk was already in there. And it wasn’t all covered in dust, didn’t have any dents or marks on it either – in fact, it didn’t look like it had been touched, which did strike me as odd. But I wasn’t really thinking clearly at the time, so I didn’t say anything.

  “The officer had a place for her at his flat, but, of course, there wasn’t any room for me. He was generous enough to let me use his phone and ring around all the people I knew. I’d almost forgotten about Mrs Simpkins. She was an old friend of Nonna’s, came to Tenby for her holidays every year, and I remembered then that she started taking in lodgers after her husband passed away,” Anna gave a sad smile. “I looked her up and she was so pleased to hear from me, she said yes, of course I could have a room and to come right away. He drove me there, and that caused a sensation. From the time we stopped outside Mrs Simpkins’ door and rang the bell to the time she answered it, just about every old biddy in that street had come out to stare at us. Though driving around West Brom in a Bentley with a redhead in a mink coat, I suppose that was inevitable.” Spooner could picture Mrs Smith leading the race to the doorsteps.

  “After that, Clara seemed more committed,” Anna said. “I thought at the time it was because the air raid had got her what she wanted – she could move into his posh flat and keep me at arm’s length in West Brom. And maybe she felt a bit guilty about that, ’cos for the next month, we did quite a lot of shows, including that one for your friend Bertie. I started to get my hopes up that night. There was a crowd of us who wanted to carry the party on to the Vic. You never think lightning’s going to strike twice, do you?” She answered her own question with a shake of her head. “I got a lift with Nils so I didn’t see it, but when we got to the pub, it was obvious Clara and her boyfriend had a tiff on the way and now she was doing her best to annoy him. That’s why she asked the landlord if we could play some songs, and that’s why she chose the one she did.” Anna looked back up at Spooner, who nodded silently, not wanting to break her concentration.

  “A song about drinking and charvering.” Her voice turned harsh, along with her words. “She wanted to let him know that he was nothing special, there were plenty more where he came from. And I was so happy that she had fallen out with him that I joined right in.” Anna smiled grimly, her eyes starting to shine. “She cast her glamour over both of us. He dragged her off the piano and out of the door and then the air raid sirens went off. I tried to follow them, but the bombs started dropping and everyone was panicking. By the time I got outside, his car was gone and the sky was bright red with flame. It was the BSA factory, burning.”

  A lone tear leaked from the corner of her eye and ran down her face. She rubbed it away with the back of her hand. “I didn’t get back to West Brom until the morning. By then there was nothing left of dear Mrs Simpkins, or the house. Just those nasty old women, staring at me. Only one of them was kind enough to get her husband to bring me to the Citadel because she knew the Sally Army helped bombed-out women.”

  “Jesus. I’m sorry to hear that.” Spooner shook his head. “But now you’ve said it, don’t you think it makes sense to try and make a fresh start in London, away from all these bad memories? We’ve plenty of work and I’m sure I can find you somewhere to stay.”

  He wished he could cross his fingers behind his back as he said these words. He felt sure that once the Chief had spoken to Anna he would see what he could now – an innocent who had been ruthlessly used – and that he could persuade Norrie to give her work. He felt quite spellbound himself by her talents.

  Anna rubbed her eye again. “It’s very kind of you and I don’t know what I’ve done to deser
ve it,” she said. “But will you let me think about it first?”

  “Of course,” said Spooner. “I know it’s a big decision. Only I’ve to be away back to London tomorrow afternoon,” he gambled, hoping to speed up her contemplation, “so if you want to get a lift down there with me, you’ll have to let me know by then.”

  She nodded. “Can you come back at the same time tomorrow?” she asked. “I just want to talk to Judith about it. You know,” she tried her best to smile, but emotion kept tugging the corners of her mouth downwards, “she’s been so good to me.”

  “That’s fine,” said Spooner, getting to his feet. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Thank you for letting me in. I’ve no’ seen anyone like you before and I really appreciate it. I hope we’ll be able to work together.” Leaving one of his business cards on her music stand, he offered his hand. Her fingers were as tiny as the rest of her, but her grip was firm.

  “You don’t know what this means to me either,” she said, following him to the door. “Thank you and see you tomorrow.”

  Spooner’s head was spinning as he stepped back on to the street outside. But it wasn’t so full of this rich seam of new information and all its ramifications that he didn’t notice the black Ford Anglia parked further down the street from him. Nor that, as he moved away, it waited only a few seconds before following. This time it stayed behind him all the way to John Bright Street and only as he turned into the car park did it sail past. He couldn’t quite see the driver’s face. He had a black fedora tilted down over his eyes.

  Karl was dreaming again. It came to him every time he closed his eyes, though each time it was different and more disturbing than the last. Now the bark of the tree began to writhe before his eyes, forming itself into a face – Clara’s face. Her eyes were knots and her mouth a pitch black hollow that filled him with the greatest sense of terror he had ever known – worse even than the drop from the plane. Now it was not just his radio that was flashing out her distress signal in morse. Now he could hear her screaming from a place he couldn’t reach her: “Help me! Help me! Help me!”