A Place With Two Faces

by Mann, Josephine

  “Here she is, her do-gooding done,” said Margaret, “How is the sufferer?”

  “She says much better. She looks awful but she’s up and eating even if it was out of a salad bowl and with a wooden spoon.” Jenny felt the flash of intelligence, which passed between Robert and Margaret at her words. She looked from one to the other.

  “Saving washing up, I expect,” said Robert lamely. And Margaret broke in quickly with, “Oh Jenny, Robert wants a driving companion, he’s on his way to Fowey. To get a bit for the boat, did you say?”

  “I did. Will you come, Jenny? It’s dull driving alone. I promise not to work charms. Oh and by the way, I forgot to tell you last night that we’re not allowed to work alone. At least three witches must work together and preferably a full coven of thirteen.”

  “But every time I go anywhere with you something horrible happens, it’s asking for trouble,” said Jenny dejectedly.

  “That’s simply not true,” Robert told her. “Nothing happened when we went sailing; well, nothing unconnected with the ordinary hazards of sailing, and the dead rat turned up after you’d been to Truro with Margaret. Come on, Margaret’s fixing up a bloodbath for her baddies so that the goodies can live happily ever after; she wants to be alone. And if you’re left alone you’ll only brood and frighten yourself with thoughts of werewolves and vampires and other supernatural horrors.”

  They collected the spare part for the outboard engine. Robert explained that Mavis’s second son was about to descend on them for a holiday and the boat was his great joy. Then they crossed the harbor by ferry and explored Pol Ruan. Steep, sunless, the past seemed to hang reproachfully over its narrow streets of tightly packed fisherman’s cottages. It was, thought Jenny, a much more likely habitation for pirates than Fowey.

  Robert didn’t mention witchcraft until they were on their way home. “What did you think of our fertility Sabbath?” he asked. “Wicked Jenny, sitting there in the dark watching us; I bet you were terrified.”

  “I thought it seemed rather childish,” answered Jenny, determinedly brutal. “All that dagger and sword waving and dancing and cauldron jumping. I mean what’s the point?” Robert gave her a sideways glance.

  “Well, I suppose any religion looks ridiculous if you haven’t been taught the symbolism which lies behind the acts,” he said. “The dagger is called an athame. All a first grade witch needs is a robe and an athame; it makes you the ruler of the circle. The sword is for forming magic circles, for dominating and subduing rebellious spirits and demons, for persuading angels and good spirits. You also have a wand for calling up the sort of spirits who are not persuaded by swords. I must show you my weapons.”

  “And do you always dance naked, or just for fertility rites?” asked Jenny.

  “Always. There are two theories: one, that without clothes we are nearer to our God and the other that our bodies generate more power without them.”

  “But Nigel Forrest wore a sort of loincloth?”

  “Yes. Some covens believe that the high priest ‘must not be as the others,’ he has to be easily distinguishable from the masses. But if he wore his robe and everyone else was freezing, it would look like privileges; hence the rather unattractive loincloth.”

  “You’d like him to be more grandly dressed?”

  “Yes, I enjoy ceremony and ritual, I’m moved by it. Also, though the young are lovely naked and most people look all right up to middle age, the elders would be improved by some sort of ceremonial robe.”

  “I thought Nigel Forrest looked quite impressive: a sort of animated skeleton,” said Jenny. “A prophetic figure.”

  “And you wouldn’t believe in a portly prophet,” teased Robert.

  “No, they have to look as though they’ve lived in the desert for years, existing on dates, and Nigel Forrest does. But he’s not a bit impressive in the daytime, done up in all those sweaters to save heating.”

  “Our trouble is that we’re overloaded with third grade witches and elders. We’ve too much talent around. Some of us ought to go off and start covens of our own, but the population’s so thinly spread down here that it seems impossible to find enough initiates.”

  “That’s why you all want me to join?” asked Jenny.

  “Partly and partly because we like you and want you to be one of us and partly because we enjoy the craft and feel it’s worthwhile and that makes us want to ‘hand on the torch’ to younger people.”

  Oh, hurry up with that car, thought Jenny. She had to get away. She could feel circumstances sucking her down toward the bizarre horrors of witchcraft and then there was Robert, offering the comfort and company she so badly needed and yet “ever seeking new love.” Mandy could say “I told you so,” her mother could regret the nice farmers and the fresh air; she was going back to Bexley the moment the car was rewired.

  Robert said that he wouldn’t come in, he and Mavis were going out to dinner, “but thanks for coming,” he said kissing her. “See you soon.”

  Jenny saw it before she reached the porch and knew at once that it was evil.

  “Robert,” she called, “Robert, look!” He was turning the car, but the note of urgency in her voice made him stop and get out. Jenny was in the porch now, gazing with horror at the dangling doll with its dark hair and cherry-red pants suit.

  “Look, it’s me,” she said to the two men, for Nigel, digging plantains from the courtyard grass, had also heard her cry. “Look!” she said again, pointing to the tiny dagger, a dolls’ house table knife, implanted between the shoulders.

  Robert reached up and untied the doll from the cross beam. Its clothes were wet, dark-stained. They looked down at the flagstones and saw a small red pool.

  “It’s blood! Real blood!” cried Jenny hysterically.

  Robert looked at Nigel. “One of us?” he asked.

  “I hardly think Jenny would have contacts in any other coven,” Nigel answered stiffly. “We’d better go in and ask Margaret who has been here.”

  They can’t say it’s the wind or the rain or the cats this time, thought Jenny, even Margaret will have to admit that this exists. She looked at the doll in Robert’s hands and shuddered to see herself murdered in effigy. It was horrible. Who could hate her so much?

  Margaret, dragged bemused from her book, protested, “But no one’s come, not a soul. I’ve been struggling with the end so I might not have heard a car, but I’d have certainly heard a knock.’”

  “And if you were working in the garden, Nigel, you would have seen a car,” Robert pointed out.

  “In the last half hour, certainly,” agreed Nigel, “but earlier I was in the old billiard room sorting through some silver I bought at a sale last week arid, as you know, it looks out on the other side of the house.”

  “And Rosemary?” asked Robert.

  “She’s still feeling a little unwell, lying down in her bedroom so far as I know.”

  Margaret looked from the stabbed doll to Jenny’s white face and said, “Someone is trying to frighten you away, you realize that, Jenny, don’t you? Whoever it is wants to frighten you, not to kill you, and the sickening thing is they’re succeeding; you’re preparing to bolt, eyes popping like a frightened rabbit, aren’t you?”

  “But if you believe in witchcraft you must believe that this is a way of harming people,” protested Jenny. “And if it is, how can I not be afraid?”

  “Oh we can render this object harmless in a matter of moments,” Nigel told her as he took the doll from Robert and pulled the knife from its back. “Have you a newspaper, Margaret?” he asked moving the electric heater from the grate.

  “A lighter would be better,” said Margaret, “Half a minute,” she darted out.

  “As high priest, I hope you’re going to take the appropriate steps to stop this sort of thing, Nigel,” said Robert, unusually pompous.

  “I most certainly am,” snapped Nigel shutting his mouth with the grim finality of a trap. Margaret’s lighter made a miniature holocaust and within moments, t
he blood-soaked doll was reduced, to ashes.

  “There,” Nigel stirred the remains with a poker, “all danger is past.”

  “But why should anyone want to frighten me away from here?” asked Jenny. “What am I supposed to have done? And it’s all very well to say that danger is past, but whoever it is will soon think up something else. And, anyway, how do you know he or she hasn’t made two dolls; hung one in the porch to frighten me and is at home, gloating over the other one, with pins stuck in all the vital parts?”

  A very uncomfortable silence fell in Margaret’s writing room.

  8

  The Flight In The Fog

  Friday was cold and drizzling. A cheerless day, from which, all the previous hope and warmth of spring had vanished; winter was back, grim bleak and wholly without promise.

  Jenny, standing at the dining room window looking across the dank garden at the dripping gutters of the bedraggled halfhouse, had just decided that she would go mad with a mixture of fear and melancholy if she had to spend many more days at Kilruthan, when the telephone rang. It was Mr. Trevor with the news that the Mini was ready. Overjoyed, Jenny was quite unable to keep the delight out of her voice as she relayed the information to her employer.

  Margaret was still irritable, still struggling with the unresolved end of her book. Nicholas was dead. The searing blow dealt by the knowledge of his low birth, the fact that he had spent every penny that could be raised or coerced from the estates had together driven him to a mood of despairing recklessness. He had consumed wine in quantities, which would have “prostrated an ordinary man,” ordered his finest pair of horses to be harnessed at midnight and, with the dark and passionate Bella almost as drunk as himself, had set off on the wild, reckless drive that had ended in death for all four of them. The crazily driven carriage had left the road and plunged over the cliff edge, to land on the jagged, cruel rocks a hundred feet below.

  Richard had found his elevation equally difficult to face. Confronted by the castle ruins, the mortgaged estates, the untended land and penniless tenants, he was proving hopeless and helpless. His courage and enthusiasm had ebbed away with adversity and so, worst of all, had his passion “despite loving glances and endearing gestures from bright-eyed Anne.” Margaret couldn’t galvanize him into action. Shattered by his experiences, he refused to take up the heroic role she had destined for him. How could she wed Anne to this gray, broken man? She began to yearn for the dead Nicholas, profligate he might be, but at least he had shown spirit.

  Her annoyance with Richard spilled over into reality and fastened itself on Jenny. All the way to the garage, she lectured her on the evils of flight, of withdrawal, of the refusal to face life, of lack of spirit. “I know that as soon as you’ve got your little car home you intend to be off,” she went on, keeping the offensive. “You ran here to escape from your young man, instead of staying in London and giving him a resolute, ‘No, not on your terms.’ And now you’re preparing to run from the old religion, from Wicca. Of course you don’t have to become a witch if you don’t want to. Everyone’s entitled to settle for the religion they fancy. Announce with conviction that you’ve decided to be a Christian, a Mormon, an agnostic, it doesn’t matter what, we would all respect it. It’s this tendency to flight that’s so despicable.”

  “But it isn’t just that I’m afraid that Robert will talk me into being a witch against my will,” explained Jenny. “It’s all the horrible things that have happened to me: The threatenings with the rat and the poppet, the accidents. I suppose it’s cowardly to be afraid of being hurt, but I am. And then there’s the feeling of being hated, that’s horrible too, especially when you don’t know why you’re hated or by whom. I can’t bear it, I like to be liked.”

  “No one can be ‘all things to all men,’” said Margaret briskly. “If one is going to do anything at all in the world one has to armor oneself against dislike. Friends and enemies are opposite sides of the same coin like hate and love… But I can see you intend to run from the lot, straight back to Mum. Is this the garage?” she slowed up. “Now, are you all right for money?”

  It was Margaret’s taunts that deterred Jenny from leaving immediately, she felt that she had to resolve the rights and wrongs of it in her own mind; she felt that she could survive another day or two now that she had her car back and Nigel had said that he would deal with her persecutor, so perhaps things would improve.

  On Saturday morning, she finished typing the final draft of the book, except for the two missing chapters. She felt that it would be unreasonable of Margaret to complain at her leaving once the book was done, though other work was piling up; the agent had written to say that an article for Women’s World was overdue. Some other magazine was asking for a short story and the stack of unanswered fanmail grew daily as Margaret struggled with Richard’s unexpected collapse.

  Jenny went to see Rosemary and found her worse again. She was in bed and seemed to be breathing with difficulty and in pain, but she was still adamant that she wanted no doctor, needed no medicine.

  I can’t just leave her like that, Jenny thought, re-crossing the courtyard through the drizzling rain. I must do something about her and I must decide what I am going to do. She thought of her employer’s taunts again. It was true, of course, that she had run from Colin. It was true that she longed to run now. If she could just forget about Rosemary, simply remove herself from the dangers of an ancient and primitive religion. Did she really owe any bond of loyalty to Margaret? Surely it was right to flee from even a vague suggestion of evil, common sense to fly from danger?

  Suddenly, she came to a decision; she would go to Ermeporth and see Bromwyn. She was, after all, high priestess of their coven and if Margaret refused to act, then Bromwyn was the obvious person to consult. Julie Carr was the only other woman, but she was younger and only a first grade witch without influence.

  She drove to Ermeporth and found the Pot Shop open but without customers. Bromwyn was arranging a shelf display of Easter eggs. She dropped one when she turned at the sound of the door bell and saw Jenny. She wore brown pants and a turtlenecked orange sweater and no bra, Jenny observed.

  Jenny said, “Oh dear, what a disaster.” They stood looking down on the crumpled egg still contained in its blue wrapper.

  “Not really a disaster,” said Bromwyn slowly, “it’s only a small one. Shall we eat it?” She picked open the wrapping and offered the shattered contents to Jenny.

  As they ate Jenny nerved herself to speak, “I came to consult you about Rosemary,” she said. “Did you know that she was ill again? She seems to have a lot of pain, but she won’t hear of my sending for the doctor. I wondered if the reason was something to do with witchcraft – if she was having witch medicine or treatment?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. You see we can’t do good to ourselves, it’s not allowed; we have to ask another coven to work for us, but Nigel hasn’t said anything about it…”

  “Is there anything in witch rules forbidding ordinary doctors?” asked Jenny. Bromwyn shook her head.

  “Well, according to Rosemary, Nigel thinks they’re a waste of money,” Jenny went on, “and he doesn’t do a thing about her himself; he doesn’t take her meals, I don’t think he even looks in to see if she’s alive or dead. Someone ought to speak.to him.”

  “You don’t sound as though you care for Nigel greatly,” said Bromwyn in mildly surprised tones.

  “I don’t,” Jenny allowed her indignation to take hold. “Why’s he so mean? I don’t believe he can be as poor as all that and if he is why doesn’t he grow lettuce or something, he’s got all that land?”

  “He’s a collector by nature,” Bromwyn explained. “He spends all his money on objects, beautiful objects mainly, sometimes rare ones. He. prefers things to people; it’s not unusual.”

  “Well, I still think that someone ought to tell him to take an interest in his wife,” said Jenny firmly, “and you are the high priestess. I’m sure she ought to have a doctor and I do
n’t think she should be left on her own all day. She staggers downstairs and gets herself horrible looking meals which she eats out of the salad bowl with a wooden spoon.”

  Jenny saw the same start of recognition that this piece of information had jerked from Robert and Margaret, but Bromwyn had less self-control. Her look of repose vanished abruptly as a tick convulsed the right side of her face, her body made small restless movements of distress as she wrung her hands and cried, “No witch may work alone. All ill we do rebounds on us threefold,” in muted, but ringing, tones of prophecy.

  “Well I wish it would hurry up and rebound on the person who’s doing all these horrible things to me,” complained Jenny. “I think as high priestess you ought…”

  She stopped abruptly as the shop door opened behind her and the high precise voice of Bernard Hawker broke in. “I do hope that I’m not intruding on the private confidences of you ladies…”

  “I was just going,” said Jenny looking at the well-fed pink, unlined face, the silver hair and dark suit and observing the air of confidence and friendliness that was belied by his inability to look either her or Bromwyn in the face.

  Jenny left, squeezing past the enormous black limousine which was blocking the tiny street, and ran to where the Mini was parked on the quay. She wished that she had left Bromwyn undisturbed. Now that she had seen beneath the wretchedly thin film of tranquility, she felt that Bromwyn would be unpredictable as an ally and dangerously demented as a foe. She was quite capable of having rolled the boulder, exposed the well and of bringing the gruesome rat and poppet to Kilruthan and if she had, well, Jenny was afraid that matters would not be improved by this confrontation.