by Graham Swift
But we do get there. And we meet Martha Clay …
No pointed hat, no broomstick, no grinning black cat on shoulder (only a yapping, slavering, grizzled brute of a dog, straining at a rope tether, which signals our arrival and brings Martha out of doors, oil lamp in hand). I see a small woman with a large round head. I see a woman wearing ancient leather boots. Wearing a heavy grey skirt that might have been made from a horse blanket. Wearing a series of underskirts, their tattered edges just visible, once white perhaps, now the colour of old teeth. Wearing a greasy blouse, stiff and sticky as weather-worn sailcloth, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. And over both the blouse and the grey skirt – as if, in between turns as a witch, she doubles as a charwoman – a faded, floral-pattern, full-length apron.
And as we meet Martha, we meet Martha’s smell …
But enough of Martha’s costume. (And enough of that smell!) That face! Small, moist, needly eyes. Leather purse of a mouth. Nose: bony (but in no way hooked). Forehead: bumpy-shiny, tobacco-hued. Hair: waxy-grey, pulled tight down to her scalp by a knot at the neck stuck through with two lengths of quill. And those cheeks! Those cheeks! They’re not just round and ruddy. They’re not just red. They don’t merely suggest alternate and continual exposure over several decades, without any intermediate stages, to winter gales and scorching sun. They’re bladders of fire. They’re over-ripe tomatoes.
(And, speaking of over-ripeness, this smell …)
‘Well now, well now.’ She holds up the oil lamp. ‘What brings you to owd Martha? Martha don’ git many callers this time o’ day. Martha don’ git many callers at all. What brings you to owd Martha?’
Taking in all the while Mary’s blood-stained skirt, her stricken posture …
I’ve resolved to be a bold spokesman:
‘We want you to—’
‘Henry Crick’s bor, ent we? Tom Crick. Dick’s brother. Pal o’ Freddie Parr’s, ent we?’
‘We—’
‘An’ it’s Harold Metcalf’s gal, ent it? As goes to conven’ school. All prim an’ proper. Well now, what brings you to Martha?’
‘Mary’s—’
‘Cos Martha don’ git many vis’tors.’
‘We’ve heard that you—’
‘Oh, save it up, bor! I got eyes in me head, hevn’t I? You’re a-goin to say that little missy here’s got somethin’ she wants to git rid o’. An’ by the look on it, it’s already bin tryin’ to get rid on itself. Is that what you’re a-goin’ to say?’
I nod.
‘Well now. Well now. An’ are we sure on’t? Proper sure? Cos, you see, ’ow does Martha know missy ent jist hevin’ a bad month on it? Ent jist got the owd bleedy-peedies. Cos thass what a lot on ’em thinks. Young gals. Convent gals. Little drop o’ blood an’ they thinks they’s done something wicked. Thinks they mussa got a bubby. Don’ know ’ow you gits a bubby, but they comes grizzlin’ to Martha anyways.’
She looks with twinkling eyes from Mary to me, then back to Mary again.
‘So what I’m askin’ you two young folks, what I’m askin’ is what makes you sure, what makes you—?’
‘Because – we did it!’ Mary blurts out in a wavering voice. ‘Because we did it together. What you have to do.’
‘Well now. That be different.’ She lets out a long, satisfied chuckle. ‘So Tom Crick an’ Mary Metcalf. Now that be different. Shut yer noise, Cuff!’ (to the yapping, rope-jerking dog). ‘So we did it together, did we, the two on us?’
Mary gives an involuntary gasp. Clutches herself.
‘You know, my owd Bill says young Freddie don’ come no more. To c’llect the birds. Wi’ the bottles. My Bill’s missin’ his bottles.’
Mary groans.
‘We haven’t got anything,’ I say. ‘To give. But we could get you something – anything. Please, Martha. Please.’
‘ “Plee-eese, Martha, Plee-eese.” Mrs Clay to you, bor. Where’s yer manners? Mrs Clay.’
Mary sinks to her knees.
‘Thass right, gal, you drop. You faint right away if you can. ’Tent goin’ to be so much fun gittin’ it out as it were puttin’ it in. Well, bor, best git her inside, ent we?’
Children, have you ever stepped into another world? Have you ever turned a corner to where Now and Long Ago are the same and time seems to be going on in some other place? If you ever go to the Fenland Museum in Gildsey (opened in 1964 on a site in Market Street once occupied by the old Gildsey Corn Exchange) you will see a full-scale mock-up of an old Fen cottage. But it won’t begin to tell you, it won’t begin to convey in the slightest …
Once-white plaster over wattle and daub. Earth floor, hard trodden. A turf-fire burning in a brick fireplace. Smell of turf-smoke, smothering even Martha’s Marthasmell (which consists, to be sure, of a good part of turf-smoke). A grid-iron, spits, griddles, pots, trivets; a vast kettle. Set into the fireplace, a rudimentary oven. Two solid-back wooden chairs and a trestle table. Half drawn across one portion of the room, a filthy curtain, part concealing a sheepskin covered bed. A rough wooden dresser. Lamps. Guttered candles in saucers. And that’s all. Because the rest – it’s not like a home at all. It’s full of things people wouldn’t keep inside a home – or that people wouldn’t keep at all. Two monster-barrelled flintlock fowling guns slung on hooks on the fireplace wall. Nets, spades, poles, scythes, sickles, pails. Hanging from a ceiling beam, like amputated, mummified legs, a pair of long leather waders. But take a look at that ceiling! Look what else it’s hung with. It’s hung with dead birds. Mallard – a duck and drake – teal, plover, snipe. It’s hung with strips of fur and eel-skin, a bloody-mouthed water-rat dangling by its hairy tail. It’s hung with nameable and unnameable bunches of leaves, grasses, roots, seed-pods, in every stage of freshness and desiccation. With misshapen things blackened with smoke that you don’t like to ask what they are. With all manner of bags and pouches that you don’t like to ask what’s inside.
On the dresser, incongruous items: aluminium saucepans, a tin of Cerebos salt; pinned to the edge of a shelf, a yellowed photograph cut from a newspaper. Churchill, with a belligerent cigar. Impossible intruders, stray objects from some exhibition of the far-away future …
But then we’ve already stepped into a different world. The one where things come to a stop; the one where the past will go on happening …
‘You best git you on the bed, gal. An’ take down them drawers …’
Not there! Not on that pile of stinking sheepskin!
‘An’ you best make yisself useful, bor. Hot water. There, the kettle. Stoke the fire. More water from the pump.’
Martha’s hands: the fingernails, like old pewter.
Mary stumbles feebly towards the bed. Martha follows. She doesn’t draw the curtain. I look away.
‘Thass right, bor. You turn yer head. Don’ s’pose we was so bashful when we did it together, was we? Now gal, you better tell Martha what you bin a-doin’ to yisself to make sich a mess. Was it the pokin’ about? Or was it the jumpin’ and jouncin’?’
I go out with a pail and a jug to find the pump. The dog barks. It’s almost dark. We’ll be here all night. We’ll be here for ever. When I re-enter, Martha’s holding Mary’s soaked, twisted knickers like a piece of limp meat.
‘Whass matter, bor?’
She steps past me to the doorway.
‘Here, Cuff. You go chew on this.’
She throws the bloody bundle into the twilight.
‘Now, bor, you boil water.’
She goes to the dresser and from one of the cupboards removes a bottle, a rag, a basin and a piece of rolled up oilskin. Then she takes a pot from beside the fire and tips into it from jars on the dresser a sprinkle of this and a sprinkle of that, and then from the bunches hanging from the ceiling-beams a handful of this and a handful of that.
No spells, no incantations.
She puts the pot by the hearth. She crosses to the bed and folds out the oilcloth over the sheepskins.
‘Now, gal, you jist shift yer lit
tle arse on to this. Then swaller some o’ this. Martha’s med’cin. Don’ matter if you don’ like it.’
She holds out the bottle. Mary drinks; chokes, drinks. Two bulging eyes look suddenly at me over the neck of the bottle.
‘Right down. There. Look at Martha, look straight at Martha. Well, you’re a pretty ’un. Right down. Martha’s med’cin. Do you good. Look at Martha.’
Mary goes limp, delivers the bottle back into Martha’s hands. Her eyes remain open. For a moment I think: Martha’s poisoned her, she’s killed her. Now she’s coming over to me – to deal with little Hansel, who happens to be stationed conveniently near the oven.
‘Now – how’s that kettle, bor? She’s all right. You help me git this table beside the bed.’
We carry the table. Mary doesn’t move. Blood on the oilcloth. Then Martha lights a lamp with a splint from the fire and puts the lamp and then a candle in a dish on the table. She returns to the fireplace, pours water from the now faintly hissing kettle into the pot of mysterious ingredients and puts both kettle and pot back on the gridiron. She takes a pail and places it by the foot of the bed. Then she reaches up for one of the leather bags that hang from the ceiling. There are things wrapped in a cloth. Things that look like long spoons, tongs, bottle-brushes, shoe-horns.
‘Martha’s little tool kit. You’d be s’prised, bor. You’d be s’prised how many.’
She lays the things out, surgeon-fashion, on the table. By this time the kettle is steaming. She tells me to pour the contents of the pot into the basin, to add water from the kettle and bring the basin to the table. I carry over a steaming, flotsammed, tea-coloured broth and set it down. She puts each item from the bag into the basin. Then she pushes the lit candle in its dish to the end of the table, by Mary’s head. She lifts Mary’s arm and places it so that it’s resting on the table by the candle. Mary’s arm doesn’t resist. Then she leans forward and speaks into Mary’s ear. Mary doesn’t move, or change the direction of her stare, but her eyes blink at Martha’s words.
‘Now gal, Martha don’ wanna hurt you. Martha’s goin’ to help you. But if she hurts you anyways, you jist put your hand over the candle. Right over the flame.’
Mary blinks.
Martha lifts her head, sniffs the steam rising from the basin, dips her hands into it, then looks at me.
‘An’ you best make yisself scarce, bor. You best sit you outside quiet an’ not git in owd Martha’s way. An’ stop that blubberin’.’
(Because I’m blubbering.)
‘Here.’
She holds out to me the bottle from which Mary’s drunk. I shake my head. The next moment the bottle’s thrust between my lips and I swallow involuntarily.
‘Now. Make yisself useful. Know how to pluck?’ She cocks her head towards the gallery of fowl suspended from the ceiling. I nod mesmerically (by the kitchen door, after Mother’s patient instructions – after Dad had wrung its neck – plucking the russet feathers from the old barren hen).
‘Take one on ’em birds an’ pluck it for Martha. Ent nothin’ like a bit o’ pluckin’, eh? Is there now?’
I go to the beam and reach up for the emerald-headed drake mallard.
‘No, bor. You take the duck.’ She chuckles, draws the curtain. ‘You take the duck!’
And so, while, inside, Martha Clay ministers, as only she can minister, to Mary, your future history teacher sits outside and begins dutifully to pluck a duck. It’s a moonless August night. Shoals of stars, silver geese, swim through the sky. His head starts to spin. The duck he’s holding in his hand isn’t a duck, it’s a hen. He’s sitting in the sunny space between the chicken coop and the kitchen door, where Mother stands, in her apron. But the hen’s not dead, it’s still alive. Its wings start to flap and it starts to lay eggs (so it hadn’t stopped laying after all). A copious, unending stream of eggs, so many that he has to collect them with the help of his mother and her apron. But Mother says they’re not really eggs, they’re fallen stars. And so they are, twinkling and winking on the ground. We carry the fallen stars into the chicken coop. Which isn’t a chicken coop at all. It’s the shell of the old wooden windmill by the Hockwell Lode. And Mary’s inside lying naked with her knees up. Mother discreetly retires. And Mary starts to explain about her menstrual cycle and about the wonders inside her hole and how babies get to be born. She says, ‘I’ve got eggs, you know.’ And he, ignorant but eager to learn, says, ‘What, like hens?’ And Mary laughs. And then she screams and then she says she’s the mother of God—
I drop the duck I’m holding (it’s a duck after all). It’s not a dream. What you wake up into can’t be a dream. It’s dark. I’m here; it’s now. I’m sitting (my head slumped drowsily forward) on a bench outside a cottage where Martha Clay, a reputed witch …
And Mary. Mary’s woken too out of whatever homebrewed anaesthesia, whatever witch-induced hypnosis she’s been under, into a dream that isn’t a dream, and – is saying her prayers. She’s saying them with a terrible involuntary persistence.
I rush to the door. Hesitate. Move instead to a little window that must look over the curtained-off bed. There are things which happen outside dreams which should only happen in them. A pipe – no, a piece of sedge, a length of hollow reed – is stuck into Mary’s hole. The other end is in Martha’s mouth. Crouching low, her head between Mary’s gory knees, her eyes closed in concentration, Martha is sucking with all her might. Those cheeks – those blood-bag cheeks working like bellows.
I go into the cottage. I pull back the filthy curtain. Martha appears to have just spat something into the pail. I yell, ‘Mary!’ But Mary doesn’t hear me. Her name bounces back to me. She doesn’t know me. She’s a little convent girl, staunchly saying her prayers:
‘Holy Mary Mother of God Holy Mary Mother of God Holy Mary Mother of—’
The candle is snuffed under Mary’s hand. I nearly trip over the pail. In the pail is what the future’s made of. I rush out again to be sick.
43
Not So Final
HE HALF puts out a hand to help me on to the street. He’s embarrassed, he’s solicitous. His teacher’s drunk … (And how is it our disruptive Price displays such temperance and rectitude? When I succumb to just another one, he asks for straight tomato juice.) Teachers shouldn’t be drunk. They should be upright, exemplary and sober. Ridiculous for that. Not for playing the clown. The pupil shouldn’t have to guide the master. The rebel shouldn’t have to prop the tyrant …
How it makes the bad seem not so … How it makes reality … My maternal ancestors, you know, built an empire on strong liquor …
‘By the way, Price, you’ll be pleased to know, he wants to get rid of History. Not just me, the subject. Get rid of the whole caboodle—’
A broad, sweeping and unbalancing gesture towards the unmoved twentieth-century streets of south-east London.
‘Don’t think I should drive, do you, Price? No? Sorry – no lift. I’ll get the bus. Leave the car at the school.’
‘They’ll have locked the gates anyway. I’ll come with you to the bus stop.’
We tread the pavement.
‘Steady.’
At the bus stop I declaim: ‘… the whole caboodle, the whole …’ He’s smitten with more awkwardness and gravity. As my number 53 approaches to scoop me up, a taut: ‘Goodbye then, sir. Take care, sir.’
‘Goodbye. Hey, Price, not so final. Not so solemn. I’ve got till the end of term. And we’ve got our French Revolution to finish still. Have you forgotten? Hey, Price,’ (from the platform as my bus carts me off) ‘don’t let him do it!’
And History scarcely finds time to mention that on the eve of the French Revolution Louis XVI mourned his firstborn.
44
Begin Again
WE TAKE the baby to the car. By some freak, it’s asleep. Hasn’t even wet itself. I think for a moment: it’s dead with shock. Mary sits in the back seat and clutches it and I drive. What follows is like a parody of those panic drives to hospitals made by y
oung husbands with wives in the throes of precipitate labour. Save that in our case we already have the baby and we are rushing to return it.
From the back seat Mary offers a running confession:
‘It was easy. Easy. I saw her come in. She left the pram near the way in. That was risking it, wasn’t it? I was by the fruit counter, heading for the checkout. Crowded. One of those big prams, not a pushchair. Maybe she’d just got a few things to get, and she thought – with that big pram and all those people. I watched her go up one of the aisles. Didn’t think I would ever. But then I put down my basket. Didn’t get any shopping, after all. Got a— Instead. I looked up the aisle. Went over to the pram. Looked. I got hold of the handle. Pushed, pressed, the way they do. I said, “Here I am. Off we go then.” Nobody would’ve known. Nobody would’ve known that I wasn’t the real—’
Mary, you’re fifty-two.
‘And I knew it was all right. Because it smiled. When I pushed, it smiled. Didn’t you? Didn’t cry. Did you? Then I wheeled the pram round the corner and into the lift to the multi-storey. I put my bags in the boot and the baby in the back seat with some of the blankets. Know that’s wrong. Supposed to strap them in, aren’t you? But it didn’t cry. Didn’t cry at all …’
But she says all this as if only pretending, under some sort of hypnosis, to be a woman confessing to a crime. The truth is so different, no one would believe it. The truth is a miracle. God came down to Safeways and left her a gift, a free product. A babe in the bulrushes. He said, Go on, I command you. Take. It’s yours …
(It’s what she’ll tell a presiding magistrate and a practising psychiatrist. To her husband alone – a sort of practising historian – she gives the unreal, historical facts.)
‘Would you recognize her, Mary – I mean the mother – again?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course …’
I see her in the driving mirror. Her eyes are brilliant and clear. Yes, she’ll continue this trumped-up narrative (… and just drove off. No hue and cry. No chasing police cars …), she’ll play this part of the cranky child-thief. But in reality …
