by Finch, Paul
“Maybe,” he said, not picking up on that, which irritated me even more. “Anyway, this old woman already had a reputation for being ‘a healer’. A herbalist, a midwife, something like that. But she seemed an obvious suspect. I don’t think she was actually tortured. I seem to remember hearing that torture during witchcraft trials was illegal in England, but they searched her house and found what they called ‘witch-bottles’. Those are glass jars full of human piss, hair, fingernails, even blood …”
Despite everything, my interest was again pricked. I’d always been raised to believe that most, if not all, of those poor women executed in the witch-hunting era were nothing more than social outcasts picked on because their neighbours didn’t like them. And nothing in my studies had told me otherwise.
“The next thing,” Purlock said, “she was taken to Carlisle, where a full-scale enquiry was held. Apparently she named a few names, and the net-result was that six women from Bleaberry Beck, all elderly – with the exception of the young lass who started it – were convicted of making covenants with devils and using magic to harm life and limb. Sentence of death was duly passed, again with the exception of the young girl, who was put in the stocks on market days for the next six months. The remaining five were brought back here and hanged.”
“Here?” I said.
He nodded and smiled again, though it was a smile without humour. “Here . Right on this spot.” He indicated the grassy hummock beneath our feet.
At that moment, the sun passed behind one of the few streaks of cloud in the azure sky, and dimness slid over the valley. The lake went from shimmering blue to leaden grey. A gust of wind rippled its surface. Irreverent as my outlook on life tended to be, I was caught out by this abrupt change of mood. I glanced at the ground on which we were standing, half expecting to see some withered timber upright half-buried in the grass.
“About ten years back, a bunch of neo-pagans tried to erect a commemorative plaque here,” Purlock said. “But local folk tore it down and threw it into the lake. The story’s not taken lightly, you see. Not in Bleaberry Beck.”
I gazed again at the lake. Quite close to where we were, there was a swirl of white water. I imagined the rusted old signpost just below the surface, catching the currents.
“And what’s … well what’s all that got to do with the shop?” I asked.
He glanced at me, again seeming surprised by my ignorance. “Do you honestly not know what ‘a poppet’ is?”
I was stung by his tone. That Dean Purlock should know something related to historical events that I didn’t was a new experience. But I couldn’t very well pretend otherwise. I’d only ever heard the word used to describe a baby.
“Originally, a poppet was a witch’s effigy,” he explained patiently. “Witches would supposedly cast spells on people by making models of them, and then either burn the models or hammer nails into them. It was a voodoo type thing. Anyway, that shop’s been in Bleaberry Beck for as long as I can remember. It was there when my grandmother was a girl. I don’t know whether it was called Poppets when it first opened, but, according to folklore, the dolls it sold, or at least the first few batches of them, were carved from the very gallows on which the Cumbrian Witches were hanged.”
Now that would have impressed me had it been true, though I sincerely doubted that it was. In fact, I was beginning to doubt that there was truth in any of this. I wasn’t sure what kind of game Purlock was playing here. If this was his revenge, it was a rather strange one. What was its ultimate ambition – to prevent me buying a present for my baby sister? I decided there and then that I would definitely buy one for her.
“Where does the ‘no faces’ bit come in?” I asked, deliberately sounding unfazed.
“Well …” And he remained entirely serious as he told me this. “The local belief is that if any of those dolls gets a face, it’ll give the restless souls of the hanged witches a new focus … a body in which to dwell. Apparently the first few did have faces, and bad things happened … not just to the ones who carved them, but to those came into possession of them as well.”
*
I did buy one of the dolls for Bella.
It was mid-afternoon, shortly before Purlock was due to drive me to the railway station, when I crossed the village and popped into the shop. The irony was that, in attempting to put me off – and I still couldn’t understand why he felt this would be some kind of victory over me – he’d fired my interest. Even if the curious story about the witches was a load of bunkum, which I still suspected it was, it meant that I wouldn’t be able to find a more interesting present for my sister’s birthday. Bella was the sort of precocious brat who was difficult to buy for at the best of times; something like this would be very different from the norm.
I’d like to be able to report that the atmosphere inside the shop was spooky; that I genuinely felt I was in the presence of the unworldly. But I can’t. I was served by a chubby, elderly lady with silver-rinsed curls and a bright, flowery dress. She was cheerful enough and made friendly conversation while I trawled the shelves. When I finally handed her the doll I’d chosen – a female figure clad in peasant garb consisting of a shawl, a head-scarf and old, patched-up skirts, and carrying a crooked walking-stick (in truth, the closest thing I could find to what I imagined a village crone would look like) – she slipped it into a brown paper bag, fastened it with tape, then handed me my change and my receipt. All very mundane.
However, I didn’t want to leave it at that. I felt I had to say something, anything to elicit more information. So before I left, I opened the bag and took the doll out again. I stared at the blank spot where its face ought to be. Like all the other dolls, it had been smoothly varnished so it was impossible to tell how old the wood actually was. I knew it couldn’t have dated back to the seventeenth century. It would have perished beyond use. But I still wanted to know more.
“They’re, er … lovely,” I said.
The lady smiled. “Thank you.”
“Who makes them?”
“We have our own workshop.”
“Local artists, I’ll bet.”
“For the most part.”
“They, er … they look very new.”
Which puzzled her. “I’m sorry?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase my next question. “What I mean is … well, I’d been led to believe they were quite old. I mean like … well, really old.”
“You mean antiques?”
“Older than that. I was told that some of the dolls here were at least a couple of hundred years old.”
She smiled again and shook her head. “If that was the case, they’d be a lot more expensive.”
I almost commented that they already were quite expensive; I’d just handed over £19.99 for this one alone. But then goods in craft shops in England’s rural regions are always absurdly dear. So I held my tongue and turned to the door. And behind my back, as though she’d read my thoughts, she quietly remarked: “There’s often a price to pay.”
I glanced back. “Excuse me?”
She looked up. “What’s that, sorry?”
“I thought you said something.”
“I said ‘have a lovely day’.”
“Oh right … thanks. And you.”
Half an hour later, we were ready for off. Purlock insisted on going upstairs and bringing down my bag for me, even though it wasn’t very heavy – it only contained dirty undies and the new doll – and we set off for Windermere in his father’s Forestry Commission truck. It was only a forty-minute drive, but for a short while I didn’t think the ramshackle old vehicle was going to make it. It jolted and juddered, but kept on going even along the narrow Cumbrian lanes.
We still weren’t comfortable together. As we’d left Purlock’s house, his mother and father had seen me off in warm and friendly fashion. They really liked me; I was undoubtedly the sort of person they’d hoped their son would meet once he’d achieved what had once been virtually unachievable – getting int
o Oxford with a blue-collar background. Clearly, he hadn’t told them that I’d admitted to doing the dirty with his imaginary girlfriend. And the more I brooded about this as we drove, the more evident it became to me that there was nothing he could tell them – not without making himself look rather pathetic. The long and short of it was that Francine had not been in a relationship with him, despite his desire that she was. She’d been entirely a free agent.
Maybe Purlock himself was starting to realise this.
“Sorry about all that,” he said as we drove into Windermere, which as always was log-jammed with holiday traffic. “I mean … my attitude this afternoon. I was still kind of shocked, but really I had no reason to be.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, feeling warmer towards him. “It’s perfectly understandable.”
“I was just being daft. Losing Francine is one thing …”
There he goes again, I thought. Talking as if he’d actually had her to lose.
“But losing a mate as well,” he added. “That’d be too much.”
That bit I did agree with. The commencement of our ‘finals year’ was now only two weeks away. There wouldn’t be time for sitting in pubs or making merry jaunts back home once all that got started. We’d all be working hard, and would need each other’s support more than ever. It would have been ridiculous to lose a friend at this stage.
“I guess we must seem like a bunch of hicks to you,” Purlock said. “I mean … that crap about the doll shop. All that spook stuff.”
I sniggered. “Don’t worry. You didn’t have me fooled for one minute.”
“But that’s the point, Rich. I wasn’t trying to fool you. I know this is the twenty-first century and all, and we’re supposed to take the piss out of things like this, but some old stories just won’t go away.” He concentrated hard on the traffic.
“Dean,” I said, “you have heard the theory that magic and superstition only actually affect those who believe in them. It’s all about the person, not the magic.”
“Yeah, well that’s a theory.” He still concentrated on the traffic, but had reddened around the collar. No doubt my use of the word ‘superstition’ had annoyed him again.
“Listen, mate … seriously, don’t be worried that I’ve bought this doll. Bella’s just a kid. She’ll look at it for a minute, then put it on a shelf and never notice it again.”
He nodded, but he still seemed tense. There wasn’t much else I could say, and I was glad five minutes later when we pulled onto the station forecourt.
“Thanks for putting me up,” I muttered as I climbed out.
His response was to gesture with his hand as he gazed through the windshield, the forestry truck’s engine chugging noisily. I thanked him again, pointedly, hitched the bag to my shoulder and entered the building.
There was actually no reason for me to leave the Lake District at that moment, other than my not wanting to outstay my welcome at the Purlocks’. My own family were cruising the Med, and would continue to do so for the rest of the month, so I’d already made the decision to return to hall instead of going home. With the new term not kicking off for another fortnight, it would give me a chance to get re-settled in my digs and perhaps start some prep work. First though, I was facing a three-hour train ride down to Birmingham, from where I would get a connection to Oxford.
The train was on time and, because it was now late afternoon on a Sunday, relatively empty. I was able to pick my spot and, having dumped my bag, I settled down with plenty of room. I was then surprised to see Purlock appear on the platform. There was a restrained urgency about him. He seemed troubled as he scanned the train in either direction, perhaps looking to see if I’d boarded yet. Just as he spotted me through the window, we began to pull out. He approached the platform edge quickly, getting dangerously close, shouting something, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was.
I watched him as he fell behind into the distance. He didn’t wave.
As an afterthought, I checked my mobile phone, expecting that he would call, only to remember that its battery had died the previous night and that I hadn’t yet repowered it. I wasn’t hugely concerned. If the poor sap wanted to apologise for his foolish behaviour, the start of term would be good enough for me. It wouldn’t do him any harm to stew in his own juice for a couple of weeks.
I’ve often been able to deal with long journeys by dozing. It was easier than normal on this occasion because while staying at Purlock’s house I’d had to sleep on a camp bed. It hadn’t been massively comfortable, and during the three nights I’d spent there I’d only been able to snatch intermittent snoozes. So, from the moment the train set off, I was able to place my feet on the seat opposite, roll up my anorak and shove it behind my head as a pillow, and drift away.
The gentle rocking of the carriage had a soothing effect. I was comforted by the knowledge that the day’s most onerous task – my admission to Purlock – was over and done with. Okay, this probably wasn’t the last we’d hear about it, but now that the cat was out of the back, Francine and I could at last start behaving like a normal couple.
On those few occasions I opened my eyes, I caught fleeting glimpses of the mountains as they rolled past; of pine trees and high, rock-strewn slopes, and, over the top the vast bowl-like sky. It was a bit too relaxing. If the journey continued like this I might not wake up in time for my stop. There was another problem too; only a minor thing, though it became more of a niggle as the journey wore on.
It was the woman sitting facing me.
I was only vaguely aware of her. I sensed her rather than saw her, but I hadn’t noticed her earlier and now assumed that she’d boarded at one of the later stops. She was glaring at me, however. She sat rigidly upright, her shoulders straight and stiff, her eyes ablaze.
I awoke with a start.
At first I didn’t know where I was, but then the swaying of the train reminded me. Beyond the window, I saw the flatter moorland of central Lancashire, which indicated that we were well on our way south. Of the woman, though – of any woman – there was no trace. Fellow passengers were visible further down the carriage, but they were a good distance off. Nobody sat in my immediate vicinity.
A dream then, albeit a very vivid one.
I tried to get comfortable again, but something had now changed – either in the atmosphere, or in me. I’m not sure which, but from this point on I found the repetitive clanging of the sleepers aggravating, the constant crash of the couplings more likely to induce a headache than help me nod off. It was stiflingly hot as well. Modern British trains – and I use that word ‘modern’ with deep reservations – don’t have windows that can be opened. Instead, their carriages are supposed to be air-conditioned, but inevitably these ventilation systems, if they’re working at all, are barely noticeable. So by the time we reached Birmingham I was hot, tired and extremely irritable.
I was also starting to feel a little depressed, because it had struck me that I’d have to spend the next two weeks alone in my hall of residence. It was feasible there’d be a few others who had come back from vacation early, though Crawford House had accommodation space for over four-hundred and the bulk of this would be deserted. I hadn’t considered this before, but now I didn’t like the idea at all: those dark, silent passages, those numerous closed doors behind which there would lurk yet more darkness, more silence.
Of course, first had to negotiate Birmingham New Street station, one of the biggest, busiest and most chaotic crossroads on the entire British rail network. The instant I stepped off the train I was mobbed by the Great Unwashed. Crowds of commuters pushed their way from one platform to the next like herd-animals in anoraks; people with micro-intellects shouted, argued and struggled with ridiculous amounts of baggage; deafening tannoy announcements made in unintelligible Midlands accents exploded in my ear. I was jostled and bumped as I fought my way through to an information board, only to then discover that I had over an hour to wait for my train. As if this wasn’t bad enough, I end
ed up spending most of this time queuing at the ticket-machines. When I finally caught my connection to Oxford, it was an even slower and more ponderous journey than it had been to Birmingham. The compartment was jam-packed, and I had to stand most of the way. We stopped so frequently that we were rarely able to accelerate to a decent speed.
By the time I reached my final destination, I was thoroughly fed up and exhausted. What was more, it was well past eight o’clock in the evening. The streets were quiet, shadows were long, and a dull reddish twilight had descended on the dreaming spires.
*
It was with some relief that I finally got back to Crawford House, but my conversation with the bursar didn’t fill me with delight. Mr. Cheerwick, an elderly ex-soldier, who was as much a part of our hall as the ivy in the quadrangle or the mosaic tiles on the passage floors, let me in with his customary nod and smile, then retreated into his office to get my key. “I received your letter in good time, Mr. Henderson,” he said. “Everything’s ready. The heating’s back on in that part of the building and there’s plenty of hot water.”
He was an amicable chap, Cheerwick, and though shortish and bent, always dapper, even at this time of day. The trousers of his smart black suit were sharply creased, his chalk-grey moustache neatly trimmed.
“So there’s no-one else here yet?” I said.
He shook his head. “You’re the first, and will be for quite a few days. I’ll be around though, as always. Twenty-four seven. Just give me a shout if you need something.”
“I will. Thanks.”
I went into the building. My first port of call was the common room, where I checked my pigeon-hole, though that was an act of pure optimism as it was highly unlikely any mail would have arrived for me here during the summer holidays. As I’d expected, there was nothing.
I still dawdled there. The common room, which had its own bar and darts board, was a den of activity during term-time. Tables and chairs would routinely be scattered about. There’d be newspapers and magazines lying everywhere. The TV would be on. More importantly, the room would be filled with people chatting, reading, playing cards or engaged in typical student horseplay. Now it lay deserted and cold. The tables and chairs were neatly stacked. A steel shutter had been pulled down over the bar, and padlocked.