The Witch of Exmoor

by Margaret Drabble

  Gogo was appalled by this discovery. It prompted her to action. She rang Daniel, who was staying up in Madock, and asked him how he was getting on with the question of probate. Had he managed to get a copy of the earlier will out of old Mr Partridge? Were there reasonable grounds for disputing the Goltho & Goltho will? She very much hoped there were.

  Daniel, not sure what Gogo was playing at, but eager to exploit what seemed to him to be an excess of generosity on her part, confirmed that there would certainly be grounds for disputing Goltho & Goltho, who were known in the profession for practices both sharp and slack, but that Mr Partridge was not very happy about releasing the terms of the former will until death and cause of death were established.

  ‘Not a very good situation, at the moment,' said Daniel, with a hint of question in his tone. If he got Gogo to agree over the phone that Frieda’s last will and testament was unfair, would she stick to it, and would her opinion stand up in court? But Gogo had jumped quickly to the next stage.

  ‘But until we see the other will, how can we be sure it’s not even worse? She might have left everything to the Cats’ Home. Or to the Exmoor National Park. Or to that ghastly chap Cedric. I’d rather Benjie got it than Cedric.’

  Daniel said nothing to this, though he noted it. He promised to pursue the solicitor. He promised to ring Mr Rorty about the progress of the investigation, to check if the paths to the old kiln had been thoroughly searched.

  ‘And one last thing,’ said Gogo. ‘That computer she had there. I think we should remove it, don’t you? Who knows what might be in it? Rosemary says she knows how to work it. I think we should get it back to London.’

  Can you feed your will to the Internet? Can you send it through Cyberspace? Can you send your money out to the stars?

  The news of his good fortune seeps through to Benjamin. He overhears conversations. His cousins telephone him. At first it does not seem to affect him much, but slowly he begins to sink. Imperceptibly, the poison fills the bloodstream. He grows silent at home and in class. He rejects his food, he bites his lips anxiously. He is wary and withdrawn. Mrs Nettleship, his class teacher, notes the change in his behaviour, but puts it down to adolescence. Boys do get moody at this age.

  Fools’ gold, fairy gold. Lying awake late one night, sick with anxiety, Benjamin remembers that withered orange on Frieda’s cabinet. The bone needle had been stuck through it, from Britain to Guyana. She had skewered him, transfixed him. What is he to do? What has she demanded?

  His aunt Rosemary is ill also, though she has not yet found a way of pinning her sickness upon Frieda. The prim and dapper doctor is interested in her case but has not yet come up with an explanation. He gazes at the lurches of the print-out of her erratic pressure chart with a neutral expression of respect. He sends her to clinics where she offers her arm for the extraction of vials of blood and her urine in small jars for testing. He prescribes pills and tells her to eat less salt. Rosemary cannot tell from his demeanour whether hers is an everyday problem, or whether she is on the eve of kidney dialysis. He has shown an excessive interest in her kidneys. She assumes there must be something wrong with them. She does not confide her fears to anyone. She tells herself that she has two kidneys, and that they cannot both be failing at once. Can they?

  Rosemary is a fastidious woman. She greatly dislikes the feel of alien fingers upon her body, the sight of specimens of her own body fluids in bottles. The blobs of cold jelly upon her wired breasts and heart disgust her. Her heart throbs with indignation. She can see it pulsing angrily like a green volcano on a television screen. She dreads that she will be asked to mount a public treadmill. She is a Private Patient, but not all processes are private. She does not trust the clinic’s procedures. She has heard too many cases of mixed results, mislabelled diagnoses. Every news bulletin on the radio brings some new medical scandal. One is at the mercy. She takes to writing her name in large print on every piece of paper, every test result, every ECG or Blood Test Request. She does not trust the numbers.

  Rosemary’s spirits are not good, but she conceals the causes of her short temper. Her husband Nathan sympathetically assumes that she is worried about work, for he is worried about work himself. He and his firm have taken on a brave task and he is not sure if he is up to his part in it. Renfrew & Wincobank are to update the corporate image of the National Health Service.

  ‘Update’ is the word that is used: ‘alter’ is what is meant. It has become clearer, as we approach the end of the twentieth century, that we cannot afford a National Health Service for everybody, all the time. Some may have kidney transplants and some may not. Some may have their varicose veins tended, and some may not. Some may live to be ninety, and some may not. So we must alter the perceptions of the people. We must adjust their expectations. We must encourage private health insurance. We must persuade the community-minded, the socially aware, the meddling middle-class egalitarians, the David D’Angers of this world, that it is their social duty to save resources by paying into the pockets of insurance companies, in order to release funds for the sick and the poor. We must teach the poor and the sick that they cannot have what they want. We must reassure the rich that they have a right to have what they want provided that they pay so much for it that the surgeons, the anaesthetists, the pharmacists, the insurance brokers, the insurance companies and the shareholders all get what they want too. And they want a lot. They want at least ten times more than the hotly disputed, oft-rejected and as yet fictional Minimum National Wage. Some of them want and expect a hundred times as much. This makes health care very expensive indeed, and ever more inaccessible. There is no justice, no equity in this situation. Nobody would choose this if their eyes were veiled by ignorance, for each of us knows that we may pull the short straw. We can’t all imagine being poor, but we can all imagine being disastrously, expensively, prohibitively ill. Nathan’s powers of invention and persuasion will be stretched to the limit.

  Nathan Herz finds himself curiously depressed. He knows he ought to find the gross effrontery of his brief to deceive the nation a challenge, but it doesn’t inspire. Building up the corporate image or identity of an insurance company, or a shipping line, or a bank, can be amusing. But health is depressing. However many suggestions for happy images of healthy children and smiling nurses and hotel-foyer-receptionists he generates, Nathan cannot forget that his own father died in his fifties, after a short life of overwork. He died on a street corner. Many of his blood had died in the camps. Thinking about Health turns Nathan’s thoughts to Death. For however you package the whole thing up, however many Healthy Smart Cards and Credit Points and poster campaigns and little TV ad-dramas you invent, Death is where it ends. If you’re lucky, you can afford to die in a clean bed. If you’re not–well, there’s the street corner. Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. Ecclesiastes 12:5. An atavistic Jewish melancholy seeps through Nathan, and at times he enjoys it. At least it is better than all this febrile pretence that we are all having such a good time and will have it for ever. Looking around a restaurant at the munchers, he thinks to himself: in thirty years most of you will be dead. You can chomp away, but you can’t devour Death. If you pay those spiralling insurance costs, you may be able to die privately, on individually ground mince and personalized liquidized slops, but it’s going to cost you a packet. And you may not be able to afford even that.

  He finds himself wondering how it will be for him. He cannot help wondering how it was for Belle. Slow, sudden, hopeless, hopeful? Had she struggled or had she gone under quietly? He wonders if Belle had been Jewish. He knows nothing of her family, nor does he wish to. Belle had been a happy soul. She hadn’t been rich, or famous, or extravagantly talented, but she had been happy. So it could be done. But how?

  Nathan and Rosemary are not happy. Would winning the lottery make them so? Would a successful challenge to Frieda’s will make them so? Rosemary begins to think that nothing can make her happy again but the purchase of some new kidneys
. They are not yet available for sale either on or off the National Health, but Nathan will surely be able to get round that little problem for her. He can recover the trading instincts of his ancestors, and buy some in from Bangladesh. Surely any husband would be glad to do that for his young and pretty wife? It is not much to ask. Quite a small organ. Quite a young wife.

  Nathan dreams he is back in Venice, a city he loves above all others. The water of the canals laps upon the mossy steps. The steps lead down, oh so easily, so graciously, with so sweet an invitation, into the water. The water laps and sucks, sucks and laps. The green weed stirs and rises, rises and falls, like tresses of green hair. Steps of yellow, grey and pink, scooped by age, scooped and fretted by the ceaseless gentle tide. One could step into eternity. One could embark from these steps for the Orient, for one’s Long Home. Nathan loves canal paintings, marine painting?. Canaletto, Guardi, Turner, Claude Lorrain. The little frisking waves of the harbour, the steps, the temples, the prospects, the far horizons. We have said that Nathan has no taste, but that is not true. He does have taste, but he does not have taste that he can afford. He does not like modern paintings. He could put up with a Hockney swimming-pool and palm trees, but what he wants are Canaletto, Guardi, Turner, Claude Lorrain.

  He wakes, with the sound of the Thames lapping in his ears beyond the double glazing. He has always loved the water’s edge, although he cannot swim. He wakes, and wonders: could he market, not life, not health, but death? Could one take upon oneself the challenge of changing the corporate identity of death?

  He thinks of Frieda Haxby, in her kingdom by the sea. Her coast is too wild for him. She has drowned in too savage a spot. He prefers the city steps.

  Benjamin D’Anger’s health deteriorates. Gogo takes him to the doctor, who can find nothing wrong. Perhaps he has been working too hard at school? He takes his schoolwork so seriously, for a boy of his age. He should get out and about, enjoy himself more, not frowst indoors over his books.

  Simon Palmer is not in good shape either. He has not been home since the summer, so nobody has noticed the change. Nor would they have been able to interpret it, had they seen him. His tutor notes that he’s not been turning in any essays recently, indeed hasn’t been seen round much at all, and resolves to have a word with him about it, but he himself is in the middle of an expensive divorce fuelled by a drink problem, and he never gets round to it. He drinks a bottle of Scotch a day instead, and thinks himself heroic.

  Emily Palmer, far away in Florence, worries about her mother and her grandmother. She is fond of them both. But what can she do about it? She alone is of the hope that Frieda is alive and well. She imagines Frieda sitting in a bar in Georgetown in the sweltering heat, or travelling upriver amongst the piranha fish and jaguars to see the mountains of gold. She thinks this would be admirable. She herself has for some time taken the line that family life is destructive, and she has decided to detach herself from it. And if Grandma has done the same–well, good on her.

  Daniel Palmer cannot be so relaxed. The demands of river pollution prevent him from devoting too much time to Frieda, but he pursues old Howard Partridge, who had been Frieda’s solicitor for many decades, who dated back to the days when Andrew Palmer had been upon the scene. (Daniel, unlike his sisters, has authentic though not very reassuring memories of his father. Meal-times of shepherd’s pie. A walk along a towpath. A visit to a museum. Walt Disney’s Fantasia, at the Romley Gaumont.) Howard Partridge, now retired, is an old stonewaller. He has not forgiven Frieda for pursuing the VAT case against his own advice and for coming near to winning it. He cannot resist pointing out to Daniel, over the telephone, that the consequences of Frieda’s legal action against Customs & Excise have been unfortunate for other clients who have found themselves in her position. Far from establishing a helpful precedent, she had caused HM Customs & Excise to close a useful loophole. And no, he cannot divulge the contents of her will without proper authority. I am the proper authority, Daniel is on the point of saying, but then it occurs to him that maybe old Partridge knows more than he’ll let on. Maybe he is in touch with Andrew Palmer. The possibility of this shocks Daniel, and he puts the handset down with a sick dismay.

  Some news, after days of waiting, comes out of Exmoor. The cliff paths above and leading down to the old kiln have been searched, without success–no corpse, or signs of disturbance there, apart from a few cigarette ends and the wrapping from a Kit-Kat. But Mrs Haxby Palmer’s friend Jane Todd has turned up and been interviewed by the local police and by Mr Rorty. She is upset about her new friend’s disappearance and simply cannot account for it. She would be happy to come up to town to talk to the family about Frieda, as she can well imagine how worried they must all be feeling. She has to come up to town in a couple of days to see an exhibition and attend a lecture at the Cochrane Gallery: would they care to set a time to see her?

  Daniel, Gogo and Rosemary agree that they are all intrigued by the existence of this Exmoor friend. Who can Jane Todd be, and how can she and Frieda ever have got together? Patsy, who has spoken to her on the phone, says that she sounds very pleasant and very ordinary. ‘You know,just ordinary. Not Mummerset or anything.Just ordinary.’

  This is even more curious. Daniel regrets that he cannot make lunch on the day in question, but both Gogo and Rosemary converge upon the ordinary little Italian restaurant in St Martin’s Lane which Rosemary has selected as an appropriate meeting place. They get there early, to be ready for their guest, and are discussing kidney transplants when they see her approaching their reserved table. There is no mistaking the lady from Exmoor. She is wearing a good suit in a bold grid of bobbled green and heather tweed, enlivened by a sporting scarlet fleck. She has polished brogues, and a felt hat with a feather in it. She carries a highly polished maroon leather bag with a gold clasp and a gold chain. She is autumnal, and her face is delicate and soft and wrinkled and faded. She smiles at them vaguely, sits herself down, introduces herself, as she accepts a gin and tonic.

  ‘I’m Jane Todd, from Exford,’ she says. ‘This is so worrying. So very very worrying. I did like your mother. Such a nice woman.’

  Her vague smile flitters, pleasantly. She has sharp blue eyes, pepper-and-salt hair, and gentle folds of becoming chin. She butters her roll vigorously.

  She had met Frieda, she tells them, in a pub in Simonsbath. Both had been taking lunch while sheltering from heavy rain. She herself had been out walking and collecting specimens–‘I do a little botanizing, just as a hobby’–and had been examining an ivy-leaved bellflower through a hand lens when Frieda had introduced herself, and asked the name of the plant. They’d got chatting, and Jane had been most interested to learn that Frieda lived at Ashcombe, for she’d known the house in the old days. She could remember it as a hotel, and then again when it had been inhabited, briefly, by a Mr Silver from Vermont. They had talked about the house, and its curious history, and Frieda had asked her to come round for a drink one day. And so they had become friends. They’d had lunch out together several times–they’d discovered another pub which did a cheap Thursday lunch for pensioners, and thought its landlord needed their support. Frieda had been interested in Exmoor stories, and she herself had known the area all her life, though she’d lived abroad for years. Yes, she was widowed, and retired there now. Frieda had been to her cottage on a couple of occasions, and admired her botanical drawings. Jane Todd was interested in botanical drawing, had built up her own collection, was off to see this new show at the Cochrane. The flora of Alberta. With a talk by Montague Porter. Frieda had known quite a lot about flora. But of course, they would know that, wouldn’t they?

  Gogo and Rosemary, making their way silently through their penne all’ ambbiata, had exchanged glances. Was this woman that Jane Todd knew really their wayward monster mother? Jane Todd made her sound quite usual. But then, on closer examination, Jane Todd herself was not as usual as she looked. It emerged that her husband had been an explorer–yes, an old-fashioned sort of explorer. Ja
ne had travelled with him on many occasions. She could say she had seen the world. She and Frieda had exchanged travellers’ tales.

  Jane Todd could not believe that Frieda had simply vanished. The last time she’d seen her she’d been so well. They’d had their lunch, then gone for a walk through the woods to the County Gate, talking of Arthur Rackham, and fairy stories. They’d both been brought up on Rackham. Then they’d gone on together to Minehead to look at the charity shops. They’d discovered that they both enjoyed nosing around in charity shops. Frieda had been most impressed by the quality of the stuff you could find in the West Country. Not that she wanted to buy much, for both she and Jane had reached the age where they had enough stuff to last them a lifetime–but they liked to look. Frieda had professed herself interested in the economics of this new barter system, this late-twentieth-century rural by-product of an unprecedented mixture of affluence, indigence, unemployment, underemployment and a crazy rating system. Frieda had said that she was thinking of writing a book about it. So they called their visits ‘research’. Jane would report her findings to Frieda, and Frieda would report hers to Jane. ‘Now look at my hat,’ commands Jane Todd.