Samain

by Meg Elizabeth Atkins

  ‘Lovely. Some for me.’

  ‘Of course some for you.’

  ‘Good. Let’s walk back by the dairy and get some cream. Quickly, before the storm catches us, it’s getting so dark.’

  She took his hand and they set off down the slope. Once or twice, as they walked, she looked across at the figures on Mark Hill.

  *

  The storm split the sky and shook the earth; prowling away, livid and aggrieved, it left rain-beaten foliage, rivulets rushing wildly in gutters, and a sharpness in the air.

  ‘I didn’t like that,’ Cass said.

  ‘I hope you mean the weather,’ Henry murmured.

  She stirred, reaching for the patchwork quilt. ‘What? ‘Oh ... Yes, of course I meant the weather.’

  ‘I thought I was distracting your attention from it.’

  Instead of giving her lecherous little giggle and teasing him in turn, she made grudging noises that could have meant anything and tugged at the quilt. What she would not say, her body expressed; the contentment he loved to give her possessed it too briefly, he had felt it ebb away, lost to the uncommunicative fidget of her limbs. He sat up and gathered her, quilt as well, into his arms.

  ‘But I wasn’t was I? Distracting you. Tell me what’s the matter.’

  She lay tensely against him. ‘It’s not my fault. It’s you.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. Thinking. All the time. About me.’

  ‘I should bloody well hope so.’

  She pulled away. ‘Oh — you know what I mean. Being curious.’

  ‘Very.’

  She deflected a more explicit indication of this by grabbing his hand. Having accomplished this, her exasperation left her nothing to say and she half crouched beside him, gripping his hand, her head bowed. At length she said in a low voice, ‘I was right. I knew this would happen. Real things, coming between us. Everything’s spoilt now.’

  ‘It needn’t be.’

  She drew back and studied him. ‘You can be a sod,’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘My secret is out.’

  She said, ‘Henry —!’ between fury and laughter. Retreating further, she gathered herself into the quilt, wrestling with it, swearing at it until she had arranged herself into defeat, and some kind of order. ‘All right. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything. About you. What you’re doing at that house. What your connection is with Wynter. Where you’ve come from. Where you’re going.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. There’s nowhere I particularly want to go. I had the classically disrupted childhood, essential for the development of an unstable character. I’ve wandered about, done this and that. I was married once but it broke up; I took off my wedding ring and my name back. My mother had a difficult life, in between times I looked after her as best I could. She died a couple of years ago. I was — alone again; so I came here. I’ve known Augustus ever since I was a child, because of my father.’

  ‘Of course,’ he suddenly made the connection. ‘Alfred Allen, the scriptwriter.’

  ‘And drunk.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Spectacular. His only hope, ever, was Augustus. He could never work for anyone else, no one would have him, no one dared rely on him. Augustus — when he needed him — by the sheer force of his will, dried him out and made him write. Used him, used him up. When Dad tried to break away he got himself up to the neck in bust contracts, lawsuits, debts. You have no idea what a mess life is for a drunk. His own and everyone else’s. Only Augustus could manage him, manipulate him.

  ‘What’s become of him?’

  ‘He’s dead. It happened here.’ She moved her head towards the window in a vague indication of somewhere beyond it.

  ‘Marchstearn?’

  ‘Yes, here. The house. He was living there at the time.’

  ‘Was it drink?’

  ‘Indirectly. An accident. At the back of the house the ground drops steeply in one place, thirty feet, perhaps, and there are stones, rocks at the bottom. He fell over one night. Drunk, of course.’

  ‘Were you there as well?’

  ‘No, no, this was years ago. Years. Even then I didn’t exactly grieve. Dad had cheated death too many times for it not to happen eventually — tripping down flights of stairs, nearly getting run over ... I was fond of him in a way, he had a blurred sort of charm; but he ruined our home, my mother’s life ... You can’t have much attachment to someone so senselessly destructive.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘No hard feelings there. He lives in Eastbourne, in a very Constable Crowther way — all drying nappies and various sizes of Wellington boots. Immersed in parental bliss. It was what he wanted and I didn’t. He thought all women should be domestic, maternal and mindless, it was unthinkable to him that some just aren’t cut out for the role. Me, for instance. Why are you smiling?’

  ‘Because you’re so right, about yourself. Divided you stand; united, you’d shrivel and die.’ He was thinking of what she had said earlier, the mad logic of her assertion that she could not tell lies about real things. For her, the realities of life were too simple to be grasped; the world of pretence reassured her by its complexity and challenge. He was beginning to understand her, slowly, and rather sadly. ‘I suppose it’s what comes of being exposed to the glamour of films at an early age. Illusion, role-playing. Flesh and blood people becoming images, changing back to people —’

  ‘Oh, clever copper,’ she said, without rancour. ‘Stuff your instant psychology. It was because I was so young I saw through it — the posturing, the tarnish, the betrayal, the exploitation. I didn’t want any part of it. I made my own life away from it as soon as I could.’

  No, you didn’t. You just went somewhere else under the same spell.

  ‘Evelyn, too, my sister — she turned her back on it. She wanted her life to be ordinary, comfortable, safe. And it is. She was always a bit joyless, you know, even as a girl. We were left to ourselves a lot; when we weren’t at school we spent a great deal of our time here. She chose thedullest family in the village and sort of adopted it, married into it when she grew up. The haste with which she rushed into the humdrum, you’d have thought it was something that was going to save her from drowning.’

  It did, Henry thought. Evelyn, from what he had seen of her, had the air of a survivor. Cass hadn’t.

  ‘Henry ... Can we eat raspberries now?’

  ‘In a minute, darling. Come back here for a little while.’

  ‘No, I don’t feel like being still.’ She discarded the quilt in favour of his dressing gown, a dressing gown much too large for her slender frame but of such elegance she automatically did a Noel Coward act when she put it on. She had to make a production of everything.

  ‘But you’ve come back to live here,’ he said.

  ‘Well, why not? I was in London, sharing a grotty flat with a rather grotty woman ... I was at a loose end. Mandy looked me up and asked me — well, to keep her company with Augustus; she was finding him a bit much on her own. We’d always kept in touch, loosely, mainly through Evelyn.’ Putting on her make-up, Cass paused and looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Evelyn’s very kind, you know, she means well. I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate her. I lived with her fora while, once, but I felt so — restricted.’

  I bet you did, Henry thought. He couldn’t see Cass finding much elbow room for her dramas in Evelyn’s well-ordered life.

  ‘If my roots are anywhere, they’re here,’ Cass said, returning to her make-up. ‘And it suits me, I can do as I please. Work, or not, as I please, no distractions. And I’ve got Cesar, I’ve always wanted a horse. Oh, I suppose you think it a peculiar set-up, outsiders do ... the house, Augustus, everything; but I’ve been accustomed to it all practically since I was born, it’s not strange to me.’

  Her manner was off-hand, it seemed that she was minimising the freakishness of her circumstances with the deliberate intention of conveying that there was nothing in them to dissatis
fy her, or cause her uneasiness.

  ‘And ... Mandy?’ He would have found it easier to say your fat friend, so profoundly did he resent having the coyness of the diminutive foisted on him.

  She gave a scornful little laugh. ‘She’s lived with Augustus since — since timeimmemorial. Now, there’s somebody film struck for you. Way back when I was a girl, in the age ofstarlets, Mandy was a starlet. And a pretty elderly one even then. Couldn’t act, all cheesecake and simpers. She found her way onto Augustus’s casting couch and, by God, saw to it she stayed there. They used to say she was like cement: once she was laid it’d take a pneumatic drill to shift her. Augustus was quite a meal-ticket for her. He’d never use her in his films — he had his reputation to consider — but he could give her the silly, tinselly life she wanted, and she’d put up with anything for that. But ... well, he needs her now. There’s no one else, everyone’s dead, or gone away ...’

  ‘Were you there when the child — Helen — disappeared?’

  ‘No, I was away at school.’

  ‘But allowing for the differences in your ages, you were — or had been — her playmate. The police would have been interested in anything you knew.’

  ‘Mmm. Yes. They came to the school, several times. I was terriblyimportant, being the centre of attention — actually, it was just as much a mystery to me as anyone else. I made the most of the fuss, that was all, kids are like that, they have no conception of the finality of things. And life with my father — and Augustus — had accustomed us to all kinds of alarms. It just seemed that that was another, it wasn’t possible to imagine Helen would never come back.’

  She fidgeted about, occasionally stealing glances at him through the mirror where she was applying her make-up. A return to the subject that had caused her to enter his life, play one of her disreputable games of pretence, deceive him and lie to him, was obviously unwelcome to her. Deftly sticking on her false eyelashes she murmured, ‘But that business is all over. I went through years of it, the questions, the suspicions, the useless searching. And we’ve said all there is, between ourselves, haven’t we, Henry? I don’t think your aunt ever knew anything. I mean, how could she? Even if it was remotely possible ... well, she’s dead, there’s no way anyone can find out now, is there?’

  ‘No,’ Henry agreed untruthfully. She had her secrets, he had his. If his aunt had known anything, there was one person, and only one, to whom she might have spoken.

  8

  ‘I prefer not to discuss it, Henry,’ Lydia said.

  ‘I know. I understand. But I don’t like mysteries, and I’ve rather had this one wished on me.’

  He saw how she set her lips. If it was her opinion that he could easily wish it away again by dropping Cass, she would not say so.

  He had gone into her garden to help her with a trellis damaged by the storm, apologising for not noticing it the week before, when she was away at her aunt’s.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she explained. ‘It happened after I got back, there was another storm during the week. A dreadful one, it did a lot of damage, the river’s been in flood, and didn’t you notice as you drove by the common? Great boughs ripped off the trees.’

  He had not noticed; for once he had been unobservant, intent on his thoughts. ‘Were you all right? Being alone?’

  ‘Yes, I was really, and I knew I could go in to the captain if I found it too nerve-racking. Poor Wanda, though, I had to give her a tranquilliser. At one point I did think of taking one myself, but I’m not quite sure what they do to human beings.’

  He had seen Wanda’s tranquillisers: minute yellow tablets that were halved, quartered, then a quarter carefully cut into two, this dosage being enough to send Wanda into a heavy sleep, during which she snored with unladylike abandon. For hours after she woke she lurched about, red-eyed, on drunken matchstick legs, crashing into furniture; Henry suspected that if she had a voice she would be singing filthy songs. ‘Disgraceful female, stoned out of your mind,’ he whispered to her. She looked at him bright-eyed, wagging her string of a tail. Now that it was autumn she wore a coat during the day, to keep off the chill air.

  As they worked on the trellis Henry, carefully choosing his words, told Lydia that he had learnt of the connection between his aunt and Augustus Wynter. She listened in silence, her expression unrevealing. When he had finished she told him she did not wish to discuss the matter, her tone implying that now he had told her what he knew there was no more to be said.

  But there was. ‘Mrs Marshall, you must know that since I’ve been here I’ve heard stories — about my aunt being a witch. It’s common talk, harmless enough, but surprising to me.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said, an involuntary irony which she appeared to regret at once, saying quickly, ‘She was a good woman, a kind friend. Her memory is not served by gossip.’

  ‘Nor by doubt,’ he said, watching carefully, wondering.

  ‘No,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘I can see that, from your point of view, I can see that. But will you take my word for it that anything to do with Augustus Wynter is vicious. For him to attempt to involve your aunt in his self-dramatising, decadent — productions while she was alive was wicked; and now, still, to pursue the poor woman, to use you as a means, to tangle you in his wicked absurdities ...’

  Her distress was evident, but she had it under control. He said, ‘Absurdities have a way of multiplying if they’re not checked. I’ve come to you for common sense.’

  ‘Common sense and the supernatural make uneasy bedfellows.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, quietly, leaving her words emphatic in the silence. They had come to a tricky part of the trellis, she had to hold it in the centre while he nailed one end. ‘So there was an element of the supernatural?’

  ‘Well ...’ She fussed with the trellis, asked him to be careful not to stand on the rock plants, admonished Wanda for getting in the way.

  He asked, ‘Why did you think it wouldn’t surprise me? About her being a witch?’

  ‘It’s not as if you’re without experience of the subject.’

  He almost hit his thumb with the hammer. ‘How the blazes do you know that?’ He stared at her and she stared back with apologetic resignation. ‘My aunt?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘What’s natural about it? There must be a bush telegraph.’

  ‘I know no details, simply that she mentioned once that you had cause to understand matters normally closed to other people. Henry, please — do get on. I can’t hold this thing forever, I’m onlysmall.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He hammered furiously for a while. ‘There, now you can move up a bit, it’ll be easier. That’s it, it won’t take too long.’

  When he had finished she said, ‘I appreciate your taking this trouble, Henry.’

  He ignored her thanks, and the distance her formality put between them. ‘I can hardly, now, adopt a position of sceptical detachment.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Neither can you.’

  She gave a small sigh. ‘No ... But after we have had a talk I want that to be the end of it. I don’t want to be involved.’

  ‘Does it frighten you?’ he asked gently.

  They went to sit on the garden chairs, in a patch of golden October sunlight. ‘Yes, it does. As far as — that man is concerned. Nothing about Bertha herself could be frightening. On the contrary, her serenity, the sense of her wisdom — there was always something reassuring about her. These houses, you know, are built on the site of old cottages that had been lived in for generations. In country districts superstitions survive — about places, about people; and not merely superstition, it is a matter of record that members of certain families here were hanged for witchcraft in the sixteenth century, among them Bertha’s. All that darkness and terror, so long ago, yet it was close to her — but not in any morbid way, and, of course, she believed in reincarnation. Oh, no, I don’t claim to understand any of it, I’m a very earthbound creature. Four hundred years ago, shaped as I am, I would not have es
caped persecution, and I might possibly have found consolation in the old religion, I don’t know ...’

  It was the first time she had made any reference to her physical defects; he found her admission so touching he tried to find words to answer her, afraid his silence would seem churlish, but she went on before he could speak: ‘She had undoubted gifts of telepathy and precognition. These things can, I believe, be inherited.’

  ‘Or infectious, like hysteria.’

  ‘Well ... yes,’ she conceded; but the look she gave him told him that, his defences suddenly aroused, he was fora moment churlish. It was a very clear look, and he was ashamed of what it saw in him. He had asked her to tell him, she was not going to let him off lightly.

  She turned and gazed at where his house rose beyond the wall that divided their gardens. ‘Either way, in real or abstract terms, you have an inheritance ...’ And if she meant to imply that he had — willingly or unwillingly — by means of kinship some measure of his aunt’s gifts, she did not pursue the point.

  ‘Wait, I won’t be a moment,’ she said. He watched her hobble up the steps into her kitchen; while she was gone he occupied himself lighting a cigarette. She came back carrying a notebook. He had often seen it, she was a dedicated note-taker, writing down recipes, gardening hints, reminders to do this or that. She sat down, smiling for a moment, saying, ‘You know, Bertha described you to me. Yes. That you were tall and lean and dark-haired, that there was something prowling about you — like a well-behaved panther. She was quite right. But not just your physical appearance, she told me exactly when and how you would arrive. The hour, the day, the date. I told you a fib that first morning: I wasn’t pottering about, I was waiting. And when I saw you — just as she had said — it wasn’t with any kind of astonishment or dismay — simply a most natural, right thing.’