The Witch of Exmoor

by Margaret Drabble

  It is not possible to query the situation. It has already gone beyond questioning. Frieda, as usual, leads the conversation. She addresses the subject of vegetarianism. She inquires of Cedric the statistics of the conversion of the young to this modish though hardly new lifestyle, and asks him whether he believes red meat is bad for the body and what the evidence is that it may be. Cedric is no longer in agriculture–he is, some think and David knows, something to do with transport now–but he is expected nevertheless by Frieda to be an authority on such matters, and he struggles, in the hostile circumstances, bravely. What can he be expecting? A primitive and summary execution by the tribe for having once dared to tamper with their mother? He speaks of new dietary advice from the Ministry of Health, of the safety of freezing and radiation processes, of the importance of balance in the diet. He speaks of BSE and CJD. What is this? A seminar? A television cross-examination? At what bar does he now stand and where, oh where is his drink?

  David D’Anger, as so often, comes off best. Frieda pets him. David drinks very irregularly, and never in public life, so the evening is no hardship to him. He is also, by and large, a vegetarian, and he rescues the sagging conversation by speaking lightly and dismissively of his own reasons for this choice–it is not through religion, he emphasizes, for his family are in origin a quarter Muslim, a quarter Hindu, and half Catholic, ‘which would allow me to eat just about anything sometimes’. (He smiles.) But he does not like meat. And a side benefit of this–a political side benefit–is that he offends no one. As he has no principles, he can eat or pretend to eat a little meat if social circumstances demand it. Equally he can decline. ‘Nobody is offended by a vegetable,’ he says–though even as the words leave his lips an image of that offensive Koran-inscribed aubergine which had caused such a scandal a few years back flashes across his mind. He zaps it, censors it, blots it out, and is relieved to see that he has not transmitted it to any of the other guests.

  Frieda is full of praise for his diet. ‘You see how well David looks on it,’ she says. ‘See, how well he looks.’

  It is embarrassing, but they are all forced to admire David, as though he were a slave or (in his case more probably) an indentured labourer upon a sugar plantation in the days of long ago.

  Sugar too David does not much take, and in this choice he admits to political motives. As nobody seems to be prepared to introduce any fresh theme, David is obliged to continue with a set speech upon sugar. The taste for sugar, he argues, has ruined not only our teeth but also our intellect and our culture. (David himself has dental problems and has been forced to spend a great deal of money on his teeth.) Sugar is bad for the brain. Sugar is imperialism and colonialism. Its history is appalling, and its present is sinister. Of course as a Guyanese-born intellectual he is bound to be worried by the history of sugar. He admires the French for standing out against sugar and Hollywood. He admires the Swadeshi movement in India which rejects Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken. He and Gogo are strict about sugar in the home. His son, Benjamin, does not eat sweets or drink canned drinks. Benjie is not allowed baked beans. It’s difficult for Benjie to resist peer-group pressure, just as it is difficult for the French and Indians to resist the subtle, the insidious, the pervasive sweetening and Americanization of foods. But the French resist, the Indians resist, and Benjie resists. David says he is proud of Benjie. Benjie may eat the odd Mars Bar on the tube on the way back from school, but he’s staunch enough most of the time. He doesn’t even like Coca-Cola.

  Frieda listens with what seems to be approval. Benjamin D’Anger is her favourite grandchild and she makes little attempt to conceal her preference. Moreover, food production has become one of her latest hobby-horses, and she has been responsible for encouraging David D’Anger to interest himself in the subject. Nevertheless, she does not now help David out in his self-appointed social task of entertaining the gathering. David begins to speak in a more and more unnatural tone, as though participating against the clock in some radio quiz competition that awards prizes for unbrokenly boring and undeviating monologues. Son Benjamin exhausted as a sub-topic, David veers off towards the import of expensive inferior American sugar drinks into Guyana. Why import at all when the local fruit drinks are of such high quality? He knows Frieda has heard of the possibility of a legal case over the inaccurate use of the term ‘Demerara’ as a trade name. It could hardly succeed in the courts, but it might be of use in helping to raise a more combative national consciousness. (Cedric Summerson looks appalled by the thought of a combative national consciousness, even in Guyana, an unimportant and impoverished ex-colony on the other side of the world. To be honest, he is not quite sure where Guyana is–is it in Africa? No, from what Frieda’s suspiciously plausible son-in-law seems to be saying, it must be in the Caribbean. Not an island, clearly. Next to Venezuela, perhaps?)

  David describes the Demerara case, which has some similarity to Maori land right cases in New Zealand, to Aboriginal protests in Australia. An ancient treaty has been exhumed, a treaty between plantation owners and some sort of local co-operative of indentured labourers, which seems to give a special legal status to the term ‘Demerara’ and to all products associated with the word. Can this legal status be revived? Daniel Palmer almost forgets his discomfort as he engages his legal brain with this bizarre piece of subtropical antiquarian pedantry, as he searches in the recesses of his memory for the date (1460?) of the treaty which the Germans used to justify their nineteenth-century claim to Schleswig-Holstein. Nathan Herz is equally intrigued by parallels with the successful twentieth-century actions of champagne in fighting off apples, elderflowers and other invaders. As they show interest, David begins to shy off, for he realizes that Cedric Summerson is at last beginning to pay attention, and will certainly not be a friendly witness. Better to keep the cards of Demerara close to his chest.

  It is left to Frieda to take up the tale. She points out that most of the sugar now consumed in such dangerous quantities in the United Kingdom comes from her own homelands, not from David D’Anger’s. The sugar beets of Peterborough and Bury St Edmunds have long since taken over from the sugar canes of Guyana and the West Indies.

  ‘My father’, says Frieda Haxby Palmer, addressing David D’Anger with a dangerous glint, ‘used to plough the beet fields, while yours was at Harvard. We’re New Sugar, your family is Old Sugar, David. Not that much money came down to us from it, or not that we ever saw. Who owns British Sugar pic these days, Cedric? I’m sure you would know, wouldn’t you?’

  Cedric Summerson, who does know, and suspects that she also knows, decides to pretend he has not heard the question. (British Sugar, you may wish to learn, became the British Sugar Corporation in 1936, when Frieda’s father, Ernie Haxby, was a young man: it became British Sugar pic in 1982, was then taken over by Beresford International, and in 1991 was swallowed up by Associated British Foods pic, a thriving conglomerate which also owns Allied Bakeries, Burton’s Biscuits, Twinings Tea, Ryvita and Jacksons of Piccadilly. Nathan Herz knows he ought to know this, but he has become confused with the brand names of Tate & Lyle–who are they? Are they a competitor? And aren’t they British too?)

  Getting no answer from either Cedric or Nathan, Frieda continues. ‘It would be hard to say, David, wouldn’t it, which of our forebears might have expected to do better? If you’d been veiled by ignorance, which society would you have chosen to be born into? Eighteenth-century England or eighteenth-century Guyana? How would you have calculated the odds?’

  (Only Gogo picks up the significance of this question, for only goodwife Gogo, at this point, is familiar with its philosophic terminology, with the concept of the Veil. Daniel and Rosemary are later to remember it all too well.)

  David smiles, demurs, indicates that the conversation is becoming esoteric, is excluding Frieda’s other guests. Clearly they have been over this ground before.

  ‘The D’Angers’, pursues Frieda, ‘once owned plantations. They worked their way up. They owned a valley full of eagle
s and they exported Demerara. Isn’t that right, David?’

  ‘That’s how the story went when I was a boy,’ says David.

  ‘Sugar and rum and coffee,’ teases Frieda. ‘Thousands and thousands of pounds of the stuff. While we lived on whalegut and turnip.’ Her audience grows restless. All this talk of food does not make them hungry, but it does make them nervous. What is she playing at? Is it a game? They cannot have been asked round simply for a discussion. Surely there will be dinner? They have been asked for a meal, but there is little sign of one, though there is perhaps a faint smell of cooking somewhere in the recesses of the house, a stale and not wholly appetizing odour of, is it, onion? Or is onion waiting in from some passing teenager’s polystyrene walk-about pack? They cannot have been asked round for a drink, for water is not a drink. Nor could anyone in her right mind ask even her own family to come all the way to the Romley borders just for a drink. Is she, they wonder, in her right mind?

  She seems to be, for when she judges that they have suffered enough, she makes a move. ‘I’d better go and see to the cooking,’ she says, disclaiming any help as she heaves herself stoutly to her sandalled feet. ‘No, don’t come yet. I’ll call you when I’m ready. I’ve got something really special for you. I’ve had to go a long way to get this meal together, I can tell you.’ She smiles at David, with a horrible favour. ‘And don’t worry, David, I have remembered that you don’t eat meat.’

  Daniel later claims that it was at this moment that it flashed across his mind that she had some trick in store–cow heels, pigs’ trotters, stewed baby–something of the sort. But he did not voice it at the time. Instead they all sat in paralysed discomfort, unable to speak in her absence because of Cedric Summerson’s presence. Nathan puffed at his eighth cigarette. What a comfort was nicotine, what a blessing was smoke. David, gallant, game, polite, the glass of fashion and the mould of form, attempted to engage Patsy in a diversionary chat about the video censorship board on which she sat, but Patsy’s response was muted. Yes, she limply agreed, the new technology was a worry, but she still thought people greatly over exaggerated the dangers of ... and her voice almost died away, for she could not be bothered to work out what the dangers of what were...

  In that large bow-fronted room overlooking the green, they had spent so many evenings: doing their homework, watching television, squabbling, talking, crying, complaining. It had been the family room. Since their departure into their own lives, Frieda had filled it with more and more books, more and more papers. Tables full of papers were dotted about, box files were heaped in corners. Frieda had spewed her work all over the house. Once there had been lodgers upstairs, but now every room in the house was full of Frieda’s junk. She lived alone amongst the unfiled documentation of her past. The room had not been decorated in decades, yet in it now nestled uneasily some signs of late-twentieth-century post-industrial life–a fax machine perched on a pile of old copies of the Economist, a photocopier in a dirty white shroud, a cordless telephone crowning a boxed set of the shorter OED. Somewhere upstairs she was alleged to have a computer, but nobody had actually seen it.

  In the old days, there had been a sewing basket of something called ‘Mending’ under the window-seat. Frieda had never done much mending, but it had been there–a historical relic, a tribute to her rustic Lincolnshire past. Now, in its place, was a wastepaper basket full of what looked like old tights.

  They sat, oppressed, and waited meekly for her command. And at last she called them and released them from the terrible game of statues she had forced them to play. She ushered them through to the dining-room, where the faint wafting of unpleasant cooking smells slightly intensified. The table, however, took them by surprise. The old scarred gate-leg familiar of their youth had been covered, exceptionally, with a cloth–a slightly rust-stained beige linen cloth, embroidered with baskets and garlands of flowers done in not very elegant chain stitch–a Lincolnshire heirloom, no doubt, from Grandma’s collection. And at each place setting was a whole battery of cutlery, from the old green baize-lined box–Haxby plate, Palmer plate, none of them knew, and they had never seen it in use. There was a wine glass at each place, and matching side plates from the set which had come out for special occasions, and a dinner plate–each dinner plate covered with a silver cover. Well, not silver, perhaps, on closer glance–they had, perhaps, been bought from a hospital or school dinner charity sale–but, with the overall attempt at formality, they gave well enough the impression of those fancy silver-service bell-jars which pretentious restaurants and clubs favoured in the 1980s. A bottle of wine stood in the centre of the table.

  ‘Sit yourselves,’ she said.

  There was a placement, a label by each plate.

  They sat. She sat. They watched her.

  Ceremoniously, slowly, with dignity, she raised the lid from her plate. In unison, they imitated her action. Round the table, seven metal covers were lifted. They stared, amazed.

  On seven large white gold-rimmed plates reposed what looked like small, shrivelled beefburgers. On the eighth plate, in front of David D’Anger, was a small round display of bright green peas. Nothing more, nothing less.

  To laugh, to cry, to eat? They paused. Frieda paused. Never had the etiquette of following one’s hostess’s lead seemed more relevant.

  She pitied them, reprieved them for a moment.

  ‘A glass of wine?’ she asked.

  A ripple of relief ran through them, as Daniel leapt up to help, surreptitiously inspected the label, lifted the alas already lifted cork. He poured a little of the dark red into each glass. Two more bottles stood on the side. (Do they need a poison-tester, or will she drink herself?)

  Frieda picked up her fork. They picked up their forks. She put hers down again. And so did they.

  ‘Now,’ she said in pity, ‘I’ll tell you what you have before you. And you can eat it if you wish. If not, you may proceed to the next course.’

  She rummaged in the large black bag hung from her chair arm, produced a piece of paper, put on her spectacles. She cleared her throat and announced, ‘What you have before you are Butler’s Bumperburgers. And here is a description of what they contain.’ She adjusted her spectacles, began to read. ‘The makers of Butler’s Bumperburgers were fined £2,000 after trading standards officials in Somerset found the product contained no meat. Hot Snax of Middleton, West Yorkshire, admitted false labelling of the burgers, which were made of gristle, fat, chicken scraps, and water from cows’ heads.’

  A silence fell. Gogo recovered first, as she smartly put the cloche back over her plate. ‘Lucky you, David,’ she said, eyeing his supernaturally green peas.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said David. ‘I’m not so sure at all.’ He prodded a pea, pierced it and pointed it in interrogation at Frieda.

  Frieda looked approving. ‘Clever boy, David,’ she said. ‘Quite right.’

  ‘But what’, asked Daniel, ‘can you do to a pea?’

  ‘Sell-by date?’ suggested Nathan quickly.

  ‘Clever boy, Nathan,’ said Frieda. ‘But worse than that, worse than that. These peas were frozen long, long before the concept of sell-by date had been dreamt up. God knows how old they are, but certainly pre-1978, I’ve been assured.’

  ‘Still,’ murmured Gogo, ‘all the same, I’d rather have the peas than these things. Given the choice.’

  ‘Say it again,’ said Nathan, entering with a professional curiosity into the spirit of the occasion. ‘Water from the cows’ heads, did you say?’

  Rosemary left the table and went off to retch in the downstairs cloakroom, and simultaneously Frieda rose to her feet and started to clear the plates, scraping the brown wrinkled matted fibrous discs into a plastic bag. Conversation broke out, glasses were raised, cries of, ‘What’s this wine, Frieda? What vintage?’ were well fielded by Frieda, as she snatched David’s peas from him, but not before he had defiantly, with bravado, eaten at least three. The demonstration was over, and Frieda disappeared into the kitchen and retur
ned with a large dish of macaroni cheese and a bowl of salad. ‘Clean plates, I think?’ she said, as she took a new pile of the old chipped set from the dresser and began to serve. The macaroni cheese looked delicious. They set about it with gratitude, with cries of appreciation and relief, as they began to ply Frieda with questions about her performance–whom was she testing, and how, and why, and where she had managed to get hold of those beefless burgers, those antique peas? Why had she done this thing to them? Was it, they now dared to ask, an attack upon poor Cedric, upon the government? Had she become a vegetarian? Was she joining an animal rights campaign?

  Frieda dished out, sat down, tucked in, refilled glasses. ‘Look,’ she said eventually, when she had their calmer attention. ‘I wanted to give you all a meal to remember. It’s our last supper. Our last supper in this house. I’ve got rid of it. I’m off.’

  Where to, they wanted to know, and she told them. To the sea’s edge. To the end of the road. They must come and claim what they wanted, before she got the house-clearance men in. There were still old toys, old school reports, old textbooks from Romley Grammar School upstairs. They must make a date.

  The move had been coming up on her for a long time, she said. She had grown to hate London. She had come to hate the human race. What was the point of it? ‘I resign,’ said Frieda, telling her amber beads as though they were a rosary. ‘I leave it all to you. To you, Cedric, and to you, David, I leave the politics. You can divide it equally. That’s fair. I leave justice to Daniel, who will surely be made a judge soon. Judges get younger every day. I leave education to Patsy, and the arts to Rosemary, and the free market to Nathan, and the health service to Gogo. That just about covers the lot. I’ve had enough.’

  And they saw that although she now smiled and fed them clean food from a large dish, she had gone mad.