by Graham Joyce
"Could there be more?" someone asked.
"I doubt it," said Alex. Everyone stood round the circle, hands on hips, staring down at the wooden stakes.
"Why not?" Tania wanted to know.
Alex rubbed his chin. "I dunno. I just doubt it."
"What if—" said Richard, stepping over the stakes and removing the original triangle of white marker tape "—what if it isn't a circle at all?"
He took a new length of marker tape, wound it round one of the stakes and carried it across the diameter of the circle to a second stake. Thence across the circle again to the stake adjacent to his starting point, making two sides of a larger triangle. Instead of closing the triangle, he crossed the circle again to the fourth point, then to the fifth, and back to his starting point.
He'd marked out a five-pointed star.
It was a good game. "What if you're both right?" said Alex, taking the tape from Richard's hands. He inserted a short stake between each of the dagger positions before unwinding the tape to complete a circle round the five-pointed star. Now they were all staring down at a classic pentagram.
"I think we'd better keep this quite for the time being," said Alex. "We don't want people to get stupid ideas."
Everyone nodded sagely. None of them wanted people to get stupid ideas.
But Alex found he had a problem keeping those self-same stupid ideas out of his head. He was thinking about Maggie, and about how she might have known where he should dig. He was still convinced you could pick almost anywhere on this site and unearth something, but the extraordinary nature of the discovery complicated things. He could deny it no longer.
He was trying to relate this discovery to other things about Maggie's recent behaviour. He'd read enough of the diary to form a rough understanding of its contents. He could stop guessing about the other items he'd found alongside the diary, and about the sphere of her new interests. If she didn't have a lover (and he'd concluded after all that he'd been wrong, and she probably didn't) then what was it she'd been up to at ungodly hours of the night?
For the first time, he felt a nagging fear about the safety of his children. For the first time a question was raised in his mind about the stability of their mother. Because the stupid ideas just wouldn't go away.
Maggie was having a good time. She was having to shout to make herself heard above the band, and was throwing back a dirty concoction of lager and blackcurrant juice, a drink to which Kate had introduced her. It was standing room only at the Seven Stars. Gutbucket blues at maximum decibels and a fug of sweating bodies, writhing cigarette smoke and beery, frothblowing chatter. They were being corralled against the bar by two youths in black leather.
"What's he say?" Maggie shouted in Kate's ear.
"He says do we want a drink."
"I don't know. What do you think?"
Both youths held a pint glass in one hand and a crash helmet in the other. Kate beckoned to one and shouted in his ear, "Two lagers and black, but you won't get a shag out of it."
Maggie's lager went up her nose. The boy grinned stupidly and went obediently to the bar. Maggie felt some of Kate's carefree youth rubbing off on her. Kate had lent Maggie a leather jacket after telling her she looked too prim for where they were going. She was learning a lot from Kate. Like the fact that if you take the piss out of men they come back for more of the same treatment.
"Thanks. Now get back on your Lambretta," she said to the youth when he handed her a red lager.
"I ain't gorra Lambretta. I've gorra Norton."
"That makes all the difference. That makes you a person with a Norton."
"A Norton?" said Maggie. "Isn't that a two-stroke?"
"Here Derek. She thinks a Norton is a two-stroke."
"This is great conversation, boys. I could talk about motorbikes all night."
"Here! Are you trying to take the piss?"
"Get back on your Lambretta."
Several red lagers later Maggie and Kate were on the back of the two motorbikes speeding through the freezing November night. They were heading toward Wigstone Heath at Maggie's insistence. Maggie was on the pillion of the lead bike. They'd taken a cross-country lane, and she was hugging her motorcyclist out of fear and exhilaration rather than any desire for intimacy.
It was cold on the bike, icy. But wrapped in her borrowed leathers she exulted in it. It was loud, deafening even; she relished the deep, throaty roar of the Norton as it climbed through the gears, and the lash of the wind in her face. Her arms clenched the waist of the stranger controlling the machine and her thighs gripped the vibrating saddle. She wanted a bike!
The rider turned his head and shouted, "Where now?" She heard his muffled words through the crash helmet.
"Keep going! Keep going!"
She turned to see the second bike and caught a wave from Kate. Maggie was highly aroused, even though she knew she was just using these boys for their engines, their machines. She could fold herself across them and they would take her where she wanted to go. The bike hit top gear as they found a flat stretch of road. Maggie sensed a change of gear inside herself as they neared Wigstone Heath.
She felt a growing awareness as they approached the heath. There were things in the passing shadows which began to take on a faint, shimmering luminosity. A boulder. A road sign. A twisted shrub. She was sure she saw a hare crouched in the hedgerow. She looked over her shoulder, and these things seemed to hold the light from the headlamps long after the bikes had passed. She felt strange. There was a growing disquiet as they got nearer to the heath. The initial giddy excitement of the ride was deserting her.
This began to seem less than a good idea. What were they going to do when they got there? It was wrong. She was playing with these boys. It was not for her to take them there. It was an abuse of privilege.
It gave her a bad feeling.
But she didn't know how to stop it. The bikes were cruising toward the heath, locked into a trajectory, moving forward in a steady drone. Then at a bend the motorcyclist dropped down through his gears and slowed to take a sharp corner, leaning the bike into the road. Maggie saw a huge black shadow step out of the hedgerow in front of them, and the next thing she knew she was sailing through the air.
Then Kate was picking her out of the hedgerow. "Maggie! Maggie!"
She was winded and scratched, but she was all right. Dazed, she got to her feet. The injured Norton lay on its side in the hedge, engine still squealing, back wheel spinning. Its rider staggered over to her. His leathers had been sliced open and there was a bloody gash on his forearm. His friend Derek silenced the squealing bike.
"There was something in the road! There was something there!"
"I saw it, too," said Maggie. But she was more interested in what she had grasped in her clenched fist. It was a branch of belladonna, deadly nightshade, black berries clustered and gleaming with a dull light. She looked up at the stars in the clear, cold sky. They were brilliant. "It's incredible! Dwale! Deadly nightshade! She's everywhere! Speaking to me!"
"What?" said Kate.
"She's amazing!"
"That girl's concussed," said Derek.
"Don't talk rot," said Maggie sharply.
He held up two fingers in front of her eyes. " 'Ow many fingers do you see?"
"Get away, you stupid sod. I'm as clear as a bell."
The evening finished there. After that, no one was in the mood for completing the journey. The front forks were twisted on the Norton. It was barely roadworthy. They returned at a steadier pace, and the boys said good-night and dropped them off back at the house.
Music thumped from the ground-floor room. Maggie made coffee, and she and Kate sat in her room. "That cut on his arm," she said fretfully. "If I had my stuff here I could have helped him. Really I could."
"What stuff?"
"Oh, herbs and stuff. Never mind. I'll sort it out. It was just a warning, you know. She didn't want me to take those lads up there."
Kate looked at her strangely, as if
she might be concussed after all. "You know what you are, Maggie? Witchy."
"Yes," said Maggie. "And I'm sick of that fucking music."
The branch of deadly nightshade was still in her pocket. She took it out and handed the leather jacket back to Kate. Then she found a length of cotton and a pin.
"What are you doing?" said Kate.
"She gave me a warning tonight. I have a feeling, a feeling she might balance it with a gift."
"What are you on about? Where are you going?"
Maggie didn't answer. Kate followed her downstairs, to the door vibrating from the thrash music. Maggie pinned the cotton to the cross frame over the door so that the branch of deadly nightshade hung at roughly eye level. Then she hammered on the door, and without waiting for an answer, returned upstairs to her own room.
"What are you doing?" hissed Kate.
"I don't know, Kate. Sometimes I just feel guided."
"Guided by what?"
"I don't know. I honestly don't know. Listen."
They listened. After a few moments the music was silenced.
"It's stopped!" said Kate.
"Exactly."
TWENTY-FOUR
Morton Briggs, dispensing law for Moore, Bray and Toot, was the provincial English solicitor manifest. A tangy, residual nicotine smell roosted in the weft and warp of a suit shiny at elbow and butt; and the initial benumbed impression this created was perfectly complemented by a minutely knotted, egg-stained tie. A pair of tortoiseshell spectacles rested halfway along a large, puce-coloured nose. The overall effect was of confidence and complacency imparted in equal measure. Alex felt somewhat reassured.
Briggs' office was lined with books so heavy they were obviously not designed for lifting from the bookcase. The last book on the shelf, Law Reports 1967, had a binding faded on a diagonal up to the point where the sun reached its finger on a daily basis. The gas fire of the unreconstructed Victorian office generated a warm fug, and so did the bulky presence of Briggs himself.
"No, I think we'll leave that for the time being," Briggs said, twisting a pencil in his huge pink hands. "We should save that for later. It might be our trump card."
"So you don't think she'll win custody at the hearing?"
Alex found Briggs' easy confidence infectious.
"Not at the initial hearing, I don't. She left you, don't forget that. We'll oppose the injunction on the grounds of the children's interests. The judge will have little option but to preserve the status quo while he asks for reports to be prepared by the Court Welfare Officer. Then the real battle starts."
The real battle. If Briggs imparted confidence, it didn't make Alex feel any less depressed. He'd been appalled by this latest development. To his utter astonishment, an apologetic stranger in a black raincoat had turned up at his door, and had pushed a summons into his hands.
Alex had never before received a court summons. "Do I have to accept this?" he'd spluttered, looking at the envelope in his hand as if it was coated with cyanide.
"I'm afraid you already have," said the process server over his shoulder, the hem of his raincoat flapping as he retreated down the path.
He'd immediately picked up the phone to tell Maggie what he thought of it. He regarded it as an almost irreversible step on a downward spiral. When they could only communicate with each other by employing professionals, they had nothing left.
He'd pleaded with her to no avail, and he went on pleading. He'd apologized for striking her until he was sick of hearing the wheedling sound of his own voice. He'd even heard himself offer, preposterously, to accompany her on midnight walks under a moon of her choice; though he'd qualified his pleading by insisting that she come home, live with them, and behave like what he called a "proper" mother.
But she had adopted a siege mentality, he'd decided, and the only way to deal with her was to starve her out. Starve her, that is, of family affection by proscribing all physical contact with the children. Then the solicitor's letter had landed on the mat, and stakes had been raised in a way he'd neither anticipated nor wanted.
"How long will that take?" Alex asked Briggs dolefully.
"For reports? Three months at least."
Alex looked at Briggs and Briggs looked back across the top of his spectacles. Then the solicitor laid down his pencil and pushed himself back in his chair an eighth of an inch. Alex realized it was a signal: audience over.
Briggs escorted him to the door. I’ll be in touch," he said.
"Hello, stranger!" said Ash, when the bell above his shop doorway tinkled. Maggie closed the door and as she turned the light fell on her face. "You look like you've been in a fight!" Ash laughed, seeing her fading bruises. Maggie just stared at him. Ash stopped laughing. "Oh, no. You have been in a fight."
Maggie sat down while he set the kettle to boil. She had to wait while he dealt with a brief flurry of custom before she could tell him. Ash took her hand, put it to his mouth, and kissed it.
"Bastard."
"Perhaps I deserved it, Ash."
"Don't say that. Victim's mentality. All you did was go for a walk."
"He still thinks I've got a lover."
"And you still think he has."
"What makes you say that?"
The bell tinkled and another customer came in. It was a young man who wanted to buy a set of Tibetan temple bells. "I'm a herbalist," Ash explained stiffly, "not a campanologist."
"I get a lot of that," he said after the young man had gone. But Maggie was still waiting for an answer to her question. "Liz. She's a clever old bird."
"You've been talking to Liz? But I never said anything to Liz about it."
"That's what I mean by clever. She picks up a lot about what's not said by listening to what is said."
"And what does she say?"
"She says you've got it."
"It? You mean the it we're not supposed to talk about?"
"That's the one. Tell me about this grotty bed-sit you're living in."
"It's not so bad. I'm enjoying the freedom. I can do what I want for the first time in my life. I can please myself. That reminds me, I have to make a new collection, herbs, plants, oils, everything. From scratch. From the beginning. I've got loads to learn and lots of time. I want you to help me."
Ash did help her. He went walking with her. They collected what they could from the hedgerows, and he told her what she could expect in the spring. As for the more exotic herbs, he donated a quantity from his own stock and refused to accept payment. Maggie felt she was abusing his good nature, and in the end she forced him to accept a nominal sum.
He also helped her in the selection of her tools and implements. She'd lost everything when Alex had thrown out her equipment along with her herbs, so she needed a new knife, mortar and pestle and other practical equipment.
Ash suggested she do things properly. He pointed out that the equipment was represented by the Tarot suits: knife for swords, mortar and pestle for cups, wand for batons and a pentacle drawn on an altar cloth. Why not consecrate the full set at the same time?
Christmas was approaching. The city had been decorated with lights. A grand tree stood in the marketplace. Ash shut up Omega one afternoon so they could spend a couple of hours together shopping. The event made her miss her children. Every previous Christmas shopping expedition she'd cursed them for getting under her feet, yet now she wanted to fall over them.
But she also liked being with Ash. He was so unlike Alex, this tall man with the ready humour. Christmas shopping had always made Alex irritable and stressed; Ash turned it into a game, always ready with a quiverful of words for the people serving them. They might come across a griper or a complainer in the marketplace press of Christmas shoppers, and he could turn their mood with the right words. Not clever words, not smart words, but just the right words. Stroking words which would dispel provocation and restore perspective.
The approach of Christmas also meant the approach of Winter Solstice, Ash explained. "The twenty-first of Decembe
r. Shortest day. It's the same festival, when you think about it. Just older."
Maggie remembered Alex telling her that religion had its own archaeology, layers of different ages built on the same site.
"That's when we should consecrate all this stuff," said Ash, meaning the knife, mortar and pestle and other equipment.
"The twenty-first. That's the day of the custody hearing."
The custody hearing took place in the depressing precincts of the county court. Maggie was talking to her solicitor when she saw Alex come in with his.
"Is he any good?" said Maggie
"Bumbling and inefficient," said Ms. Montague, fiddling with an earring, "but quite nice."
Alex saw Maggie whispering to a woman in a dark suit in the waiting area. He stopped Briggs as they came through the door. "Is that her solicitor?"
"Montague? Yes."
"What's she like?"
"Arrogant and incompetent," said Briggs, pushing his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose. "But otherwise a decent sort."
Despite this composite of incompetence and inefficiency, the court managed to deal with the issue in under six minutes. The judge would not uphold an injunction over the property but issued a restraining order "protecting" Maggie from further assault. He ruled for the status quo pending reports to be submitted by the Court Welfare Officer. A date would be fixed for another hearing. Maggie, declining the opportunity to return to the house, was granted access to the children on two days a week.
"What I told you," said Briggs to Alex, gathering his papers.
"What we expected," said Montague to Maggie, clipping her briefcase shut.
Leaving Maggie and Alex to wonder why they'd even bothered to attend. Maggie expected Alex to wait behind afterwards. She thought he'd at least want to talk. He didn't.
