The Witch of Exmoor

by Margaret Drabble

  Benjamin D’Anger stares at the moving moor, and puts another Malteser into his mouth. He sucks it, luxuriously, letting the soft milk chocolate coating melt, and then feeling the honeycomb within collapse and crush against his tongue. It is wicked and delicious. It will rot his teeth.

  Benjamin and Emily have an appointment to meet the land agent from Taunton at Ashcombe, but when they arrive there is no sign of him. It is a warm and sunny afternoon, so they open the doors and windows for an airing, then wander out on to the lawn. The garden is better kept now than it had been in Frieda’s day, for a man comes once a week from Oare to cut the grass, trim the hedges, round up the weeds, poison the creepers. The house too has been tidied: the worst of the furniture has been sent to auction, Frieda’s knicknacks have been confined to a tall corner cupboard, and her paintings brought back to London. (They, like Hot Snax, are worth a surprising amount, though unfortunately the Leland was ruined when the hind put her foot through the canvas. Nobody has yet dared to tell the painter of the strange fate of his work, though when, at last, Benjamin comes to confess, he will claim to be strangely flattered. Painters are, luckily, quite mad. Turner used one of his own favourite pieces–a view of Blythe sands–as a cat flap.)

  Emily and Benjamin lean on the parapet between the urns and gaze down at the flat and shining water. The ivy has been spray-gunned from the urns, and they have been planted with scarlet geraniums.

  ‘What do you think, Em?’ asks Benjie. ‘Do you think there’s a curse on it? Do you think Frieda put a curse on it?’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like it, at the moment,’ says Emily, sniffing the salt on the air, listening to the raucous yelping cry of a gull, to the soft distant rattle of pebbles.

  ‘What should I do with it, Em?’ asks Benjie.

  She puts her arm around him, as they lean together against the warm lichen-spotted stones of the wall.

  ‘A hotel?’ she suggests. ‘A rest home for old poets? A conference centre? What do David and Gogo say?’

  ‘You know David and Gogo. They don’t say anything. They want me to say.’

  ‘Do they want you to get rid of it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure if they know.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem a sad place, to me,’ says Emily. ‘Despite everything. I think Frieda was happy here, in her own way.’

  ‘Saul says I can turn it into a bird sanctuary. He’s got a thing about bird sanctuaries, ever since he started reading up the life of this Yorkshire explorer called Waterton, who owned acres of Guyana and married a Guyanese princess and came home and turned his estate into a bird park. Saul’s making a TV programme about him. He says we’re probably all related. Waterton, and the princess, and the Sinnamarys, and the D’Angers.’

  ‘Well, so what?’ says Emily. The ethnic bit loses her.

  ‘I don’t see the point in turning this into a bird sanctuary,’ says Benjie. ‘It’s a bird sanctuary already. Look.’

  They watch a large black bird–rook, crow, jackdaw?–as it perches in the ash tree. It struts, puffs itself out, settles, hunches up its shoulders, squawks. Various unseen small birds answer chippily. The black one hunches again, squawks again. It is sinister, ridiculous. A robin hops out of a bush and comes to perch on the urn near Benjie’s right ear. A blue tit of preternaturally vivid and primal blue and yellow and cream swings provocatively from a twig. A wren scuttles noisily in the undergrowth. These birds are indifferent to people. They think they own the place. They are brazen.

  The water shimmers, and a great ruffle of breeze sweeps over it, turning the pale-blue silver to slate and back again. It is irresistible. They have to go down. They abandon the land agent, and answer the call of the sea. They are ill-shod for the expedition, but who cares? They run down the lower lawn, and out of the wooden gate at the lowest end of the garden, and into the steep lane that descends to the beach. They scramble down, dislodging stones as they go,past the high banks studded with the flat green discs of pennywort, straggled with the long leggy green stalks and white stars of stitchwort, pierced by the pale green cowls of arum lilies. They jump down the log-edged steps, which somebody has repaired since Frieda’s day, and on to the shingle. A kingfisher hovers, flirts its wings, and darts away from their approach in a flash of pink and emerald-blue.

  They begin to pick their way westwards, towards the grey point, over pebbles, over rocks, across patches of mud, across pools, across the living crunch of limpet and barnacle. Benjie’s trainers serve well enough, though they are soon soaked through, but Emily’s slither and slip, and from time to time she has to take them off to get a grip. Soon her feet are bleeding, but she has no wish to turn back. They reach the point, and there is another point, and beyond it another, headland after headland, reaching on to the open Atlantic. On they go, pausing from time to time to examine a wonder–a striped stone, a shell, a plastic bottle, a viscous amber suckered stump of oarweed, a cork, an ancient lobster-pot. They come across a whole tree trunk, lying above the waterline, of a bright rusted orange, soaked to a chewed fibre, and a great root, four feet across, knobbled and whiskered like a giant celeriac which clings still to the rocks it grew amongst. They find a solitary, shipwrecked Brussels sprout, and a pierced metal barbecue tin. They clamber across sloping diagonal slabs of sliced violet, across rounded fissured boulders of hard blue-green, across beds of burnt sienna that have been scarred by satanic knives. They look up at the wooded crags above them, and listen to the drip of waterfalls. They hear the roar and grind of water rushing down a cleft in the cliff, and come across a miracle–a river which disappears steeply into the shingle, then bubbles up with renewed force and turmoil three yards further down the slope to the shore. They round the second point, but still they cannot turn back, for there, ahead of them, tucked under the hill, is the old kiln, and above it is the third point of Hindspring. So on they go, and onwards, to the next point and the next. They are young, and on they g°-

  The land agent, when he arrives, may find himself waiting for some time.

  ENVOI

  Frieda Haxby Palmer stretches, yawns, and adjusts the brim of her panama hat. She takes a sip of her gin and tonic. The cooling wind lifts her hair slightly, and the smell of the sea is sharp. She is utterly content. She is in heaven.

  ‘Well, I must say,’ she says, as she reaches for her pocket binoculars to scan the archipelago. ‘I think this is absolutely splendid. Don’t you?’

  Nathan agrees. He seems to be drinking a more than acceptable Gewurztraminer, a wine which he might have found a little sweet in his previous incarnation, but here it seems just the ticket.

  Belle, the dear innocent, is enjoying a glass of applejuice–it is of the purest Pearmain, she assures them.

  All three of them are enchanted by their fate. This is so very much pleasanter than anything they had ever thought of. They are not quite sure how it has come about–have they done anything very special, to be so lucky as to find themselves sailing on a fine crimson-sailed three-masted schooner across a sunlit sea to what can only be the Isle of the Blessed? Or does everybody come here in good time? Better not to question too closely. Better just to sit here, in these comfortable blue-and-yellow-striped deckchairs, and accept with gratitude whatever the white-robed crew may bring. For this is the voyage to end all voyages. And it is free.

  Question they may not, but they may converse. They have established that all had died by water, and now they sail upon the water. A myriad of little rainbows sparkle in their wake, and the rise and fall and swell of the sea soothes them like babes unborn. How wonderful it is to be dead, and without fear! Though, as they discuss their various endings, they discover that none of them had died in fear. Not even Belle.

  Frieda, as the senior citizen of the party, tells her story first. She describes her delightful residence at Ashcombe, and the many agreeable rambles surrounding it. She tells them of her mushroom expeditions with Will Paine, and their suppers of fungus stew, it was a fungus that undid me,’ she says, with hig
h good humour. ‘I was walking along the coast path one evening, just beyond Hindspring Point, when I saw beneath me the orange winking of a patch of chanterelles. It was a very steep patch of moss and bracken and old tree roots–there’d been a bit of a landslip a couple of years ago, I was told–and a sheer drop beyond that–so I knew it was very very stupid of me to try to scramble down. But I just couldn’t resist. I had to have them. And of course, like a bloody fool, I lost my footing, slipped, and fell. And that was it. I must say, to do myself justice, I’ve climbed down a lot worse bits of scree in my time. You should have seen Sweden! But I suppose I am getting on a bit. Anyway, that’s what happened. And my last thoughts were, Frieda Haxby, you’re a bloody fool. That’s all I remember. Telling myself I was a bloody fool. I didn’t feel a thing.’

  And she laughs, and knocks back what is left of her gin and tonic.

  Belle is next to speak. Her tale, which had so haunted Nathan Herz, is short, like her life, but heard by the ears of eternity it is not sad. For here is Belle, unblemished, to speak of it. ‘It was party time,’ she says, smiling. ‘I was with my friends. We’d been drinking a bit, I suppose, and some of us were a bit high–you know what it’s like. It was a great evening. You know what I mean. August, you know. A great night. We were all having a good time. And then–wham. Not a big crunch, but wham. And I remember thinking, thank God Marcia couldn’t come. She had a rotten cold, poor Marcia. I suppose something hit me on the head. I can’t remember a thing.’

  She pauses, sips her juice.

  ‘A short life and a merry one,’ she says. ‘That’s what I had. What more can you ask?’

  ‘You never asked for much,’ says Nathan, fondly. So Belle remembered nothing of the looming dredger, the fierce tide flowing fast through the piles of the bridge, the water bobbing with cans and bottles, the women in their summer dresses, the clinging to belts and buoys and driftwood and plastic chairs? All this was gone as though it had never been, in divine amnesty, and Belle’s hand was miraculously restored. ‘You never asked for much,’ repeats Nathan, with indulgent admiration. ‘In fact, if you ask me, you were seriously underpaid. People exploited you. You should have asked for a rise.’

  ‘Oh, get along with you,’ says Belle. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t talking about money. Men are always talking about money. There are more things to life and death than money.’

  ‘Still,’ says Nathan. ‘I think you should have had a better innings. It wasn’t fair.’

  ‘Innings, outings,’ says Belle. ‘It’s all the same to me.’

  Nathan tells her that she is blessed with a happy temperament. Belle assures him that his temperament is pretty good too and that he’d always been, well, popular in the office. Frieda listens to the young things with approval and nods like an old sage who has foreseen it all.

  Nathan describes his own adventure next. He is still at a loss as to how to explain his actions. He can remember quite clearly his win at Lingfield (the horse had been called Easy and Over) and his dinner in Greek Street. He can recall his happy maudlin chat with Baxter Coldstream, his mellow yet slightly troubled sensations as the cab bowled over the bridge. He remembers walking down to the river, and down the steps, and down the slipway, and standing in the river in his shoes. ‘I must have been pissed out of my mind,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I keep trying to tot up how much we’d had–it can’t have been all that much, can it? But I remember thinking, if I walk down into the water now, it will all be all right. So I did. And it was. And here I am. I must have had a heart attack, I suppose. Is that what they said?’

  But as the other two had predeceased him, they cannot enlighten him on this matter. Instead, they turn their attentions to a very agreeable lunch which has materialised on deck. If this is death, they think rather well of it. They may be an oddly assorted little trio, but they seem to have plenty to talk about as they enjoy their unpretentious salmon mayonnaise. They discuss, for example, the scenery–Nathan is of the view that they are somewhere in the Med, whereas Frieda opts for the Swedish archipelago in good weather. Belle is not into the naming of places, but she nevertheless volunteers the Canaries. Not that she’d been there, but she’d seen the brochures. It doesn’t really matter where they are, does it, for it is all quite heavenly, says Belle.

  The table is cleared, and coffee arrives, and the ship sails on.

  ‘Well,’ says Frieda, wiping her mouth and fingers vigorously on a large sky-blue napkin. ‘That was delicious.’

  She turns to Nathan, with a smile of replete satisfaction, of happy anticipation.

  ‘Now, Nathan,’ she invites, ‘you must tell me how young Benjie enjoyed his nice surprise. Such a remarkable boy. How’s he getting on? Were they all astonished, or had they guessed?’

  Nathan is for a moment at a loss. Is there ignorance in heaven? Yes, he can see there is. He coughs, mutters, prevaricates.

  ‘Well, there’s been a few setbacks,’ he explains, i’m sure it will all work out for the best, but when I left I’m afraid there were a few problems. Benjie hasn’t been very well.’

  ‘What do you mean, not very well? Been sick has he?’ asks Frieda, with the robust contempt of the immortal. But as Nathan begins to mumble out an account of Benjie’s depression, his fever, his suicide attempt, her manner softens. She listens with what is almost a parody of concern.

  ‘And you think all that’s just because he came into a bit of money?’ she asks, appearing to be sincerely bewildered.

  Nathan nods. He may not be a hundred per cent convinced by some psychological interpretations, but this one seems to him to be pretty obvious.

  ‘Well, blow me,’ says Frieda. ‘Who’d have thought it? I meant to cheer him up, give him something to play with. What I’d have given for a bit of backing at his age!’

  Nathan feels free to point out that she had done well enough without any backing. And goes on to suggest that the unexpressed envy of the rest of the family had not been very good for Benjamin.

  Frieda laughs, but not very happily.

  ‘Well,’ she says, quite testily, ‘I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean any harm. Just a bit of fun. Perhaps I should have left it to David after all.’

  ‘That might have been even worse,’ says Nathan.

  Frieda rallies, grows indignant. ‘What do you mean, worse?’ I suppose you mean the rest of you would have liked that even less, do you? Well, I don’t suppose it was very well intended. To tell you the truth, I got sick and tired of hearing Mr Sugar-wouldn’t- melt-in-his-mouth-D’Anger go on and on about social justice, as though you could get it by waving a wand. The Just Society! Let him have a try, I said to myself. Let’s see if the noble D’Anger presses the bloody button. But then I thought better of it. Of course he wouldn’t. Who would? So I thought I’d experiment with Benjie. Give myself a generation to play with. I wonder what happened to those Grisewood shares. Did they hang on to them?’

  But Nathan knows nothing of Grisewood, and cannot enlighten her.

  ‘Oh well,’ says Frieda, after a few moments of sulky silence. ‘So I got it all wrong. I just wanted to shake things up a bit, that’s all. I mean, everything happened too slowly, back there.’

  ‘I’m sure nobody blames you,’ says Belle the peacemaker. ‘I’m sure it will all work out for the best.’

  ‘You know nothing about it, young woman,’ says Frieda, who is mortified by the revelation of her own obtuseness. Ha? she handed on a poisoned chalice to young Benjamin? Has she favoured and undone him, as Gladys had favoured and undone Everhilda? How stupid can she have been?

  ‘Then tell me about it,’ says Belle, equably. ‘Tell me about this Just Society. Whose idea was that?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ says Frieda.

  ‘Well,’ says Belle, putting her head back and shutting her eyes in the warm sun, and feeling the pleasant heat beat on her eyelids, ‘we don’t seem to be in much of a hurry.’

  In heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage;, nor shares nor the buying n
or selling of shares. But there seems to be food, and there is no reason, reflects Nathan, why there should not be conversation. As Frieda remains silent, Nathan prompts her.

  ‘You could tell Belle,’ he says, ‘about the Veil of Ignorance. That’s where it all begins. I’m never quite sure if I got to the bottom of it. Now’s my chance.’

  And so they sail on across the sparkling ocean, in happy seminar, towards the Isles of the Unimagined, until kingdom come. Maybe one of them will get it right this time.

  ‘Jump for it!’ cries Emily Palmer, as the tide comes in. And Benjamin D’Anger jumps.

  January 1996

  Porlock Weir