The Woodwitch

by Stephen Gregory

  Andrew took the bow-saw and went to the woodshed. He hardly glanced at the badger, although the smell of it was stronger still. There was a stack of logs which he had brought back on the wheelbarrow in lengths of three or four feet, and he heaved them out of the shed, ducking under the badger’s dangling snout, and carried them over to the cottage. There, wedging the logs between a pair of heavy boulders, he set about sawing them into small sections suitable for the fire. The wood had dried just a little since he had retrieved it from the forest, allowing the blade of the saw to cut more smoothly through without the logs sappily gripping. Soon, as he worked throughout the morning, there was a growing drift of sawdust on the ground, white and fragrant, something which was fresh in the suffocating staleness of the mist. The logs fell into a pile and then Andrew returned to the woodshed for the wheelbarrow, going slowly and methodically from the cottage to the shed and back again with loads of fuel. He stacked the wood neatly against the walls, tremendously satisfied to see the little building fill up, to smell the scent of resin which hung in the air and tried in vain to eclipse the pungency of the dead animal.

  Phoebe strolled out of the cottage to watch. Sniffing the privet, she squatted and strained until a pool of yellow slime bubbled from her. She turned and inspected it, before sitting down and dragging herself through the wet grass to wipe her backside clean. A slick of the slime glistened where she had slithered. For the rest of the morning the dog lay still, gnawing the bark from a stick, but she limped away again, and a third time, to strain more froth from her. ‘Poor Phoebe,’ said Andrew soothingly. ‘What’ve you been eating?’ But he suspected he knew the answer already, having found the chewed remains of a toad near the cottage the day before and wondered whether she had had it in her mouth. He knew (because Jennifer had told him at some length when it was toads which preoccupied her for a short while instead of owls or foxes) that these unattractive creatures secreted a poison in the glands of their heads, a toxin which was released in times of stress. If Phoebe had picked up a live toad, she would certainly have been adversely affected, and even the skin of a dead toad exuded the poison. ‘Is that it, Phoebe? Have you been at that toad? Well, you won’t do it again, I bet, not after the first time. It’ll teach you a lesson . . .’ and he reflected that both he and the dog had come from suburbia with only a smattering of experience and knowledge of the country; here, on their Welsh hillside, on Andrew’s desert island, they were learning each day that there was a big difference between Jennifer’s expeditions into the ordered, comely Sussex woods and now their climbs through the plantation. Wales was different. The forests were wet and quickly dark; pop-eyed females stepped from the shadows and then vanished again; shotguns crashed away the silence and made a greater, more terrifying silence; a cauldron of mist boiled over, it sunk the world into a place of fumes where hounds cried out and ravens panted . . . Thinking of these things and watching as Phoebe wrung more poison from her, Andrew continued to saw. He stopped and looked around when he heard a shout from the hillside behind the cottage. It was the kennel-maid, ploughing through the bracken.

  Andrew put down the saw and moved across to Phoebe. Remembering the girl’s warning about the hounds, he sent the dog inside the cottage. She obeyed immediately, as though she had already scented the approach of the hounds. When he went back to the corner of the building where he had been at work, he saw that there were three hounds with her, big white leggy creatures, rangier than the hounds he had seen in England and with heavier coats. They danced around him, perfectly harmless and affectionate, just wanting him to touch their heads and stroke their lovely velvet ears, and he was crouching down to greet them as the girl trotted breathlessly to him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. He had forgotten her name. Glancing past the grinning faces of the three hounds, he saw that she was wearing the same waterproof green jacket, the one he had seen her wearing around the kennels, baggy green trousers tucked into black wellington boots, and a man’s flat cap. Her face was flushed with the effort and exhilaration of following the hounds. ‘You’re looking very rosy,’ he added. ‘Giving you a bit of a run, are they? Aren’t they lovely dogs . . . ?’

  ‘Hounds . . .’ She panted the single word, grinning as frankly as her three animals. Regaining her breath, she went on to correct him. ‘Your little pet is a dog, Andrew, just about. These are hounds.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ he smiled, straightening up again. ‘My mistake. A typical townee, aren’t I? And I didn’t really catch your name last night either.’

  ‘Shân,’ she replied. ‘That’s s-h-a-n, with what we call a little roof over the “a”. Where’s the little beast then? Snoozing in her basket, I expect . . .’ And she looked pointedly around for Phoebe.

  Andrew squatted once more to fondle the head of the most affectionate hound. ‘Yes, Shân, you’re dead right in actual fact. She’s got the runs, some sort of bug she’s picked up, so she’s inside, feeling very sorry for herself. Do you want to come into Cockerel Cottage for a cup of tea or something?’

  He was surprised then to see the girl’s face quickly redden, first of all on each cheek as though she had been slapped quite hard, and then across her forehead. ‘What do you mean “or something”? You cheeky man! I might have to tell my big brother about you when I get home again!’ And she tried to cover her embarrassment by bursting into a fit of giggles. Andrew laughed too, but felt his own cheeks begin to glow. The kennel-maid, no more than a schoolgirl really, put up her hands to her mouth until her blushes faded, and after that he watched her tiny tongue slip out and slide across her lips. ‘He was watching you last night, you know, my brother was. He’s not as daft as he looks, fortunately! Very protective of his little sister, he is.’ Andrew shrugged and said nothing. ‘No, I’m not coming in for a cup of tea, or anything else for that matter, thank you,’ the girl went on. ‘Unlike you, I’ve got work to do, running some sense into these three buggers . . .’ She pulled her cap on more firmly, her short dark hair as ragged as a boy’s beneath it. ‘Come on, you three, let’s go . . .’ and she moved to set off down the hillside, through the mist, towards the river.

  Without thinking, Andrew called after her, ‘Going to that party tonight, are you?’ at which she spun round and shouted, her face split in two with a grin like a stoat’s, ‘I dunno, Andrew. Will you be there? Watch out for my brother, you naughty man!’ By which time, the hounds were loping ahead of her and she trotted after them, calling in Welsh.

  Andrew watched her go. As she went, she became more and more like a child, a boy, smaller and slighter and jauntier, until she dropped out of sight into the trees on the riverside. Seconds later, the grey ghost of the heron rose wearily into the air, as Andrew knew it would. It flapped upstream and banked three times, swerving from an imaginary attack, for the girl had awakened it from its recurring nightmare and now it flinched, still dreaming, from the shadow of an imaginary falcon. Andrew’s meeting with the girl, Shân, lasted no more than a minute or two, and then she was gone with her hounds. He remained still, his boots powdered with sawdust, and caught himself thinking of Jennifer, imagining her here on the hillside. Guiltily, he thought of her as almost an alien being . . . utterly out of place in the mist, in the sawdust, in the company of the imbecilic sheep, in the brown bruises of the mountains, in a country of quag and fog, in a land which was toxic with toads. Jennifer, dear Jennifer, he thought (and the name itself rang wrong, too prim and starched), what would you say to the mossy walls of the cottage, to the eggs on the mantelpiece as they prepare to erupt, to the badger in the woodshed? What could you say to the kennel-maid, a child as frank and inviting as only a child can be? Jennifer, he whispered to her (thinking of her pinned-back hair and the way she grimaced at his kisses), Jennifer, even the heron here is different from your heron in Sussex . . . yours is a powdered old spinster, stiff and upright, peering around as gimlet-eyed as a headmistress, but mine in Wales is a ghost which inhabits its own self-inflicted nightmare, a nightmare in which it is relentlessl
y haunted by a falcon, so that it flinches like a spastic from any passing shadow . . . Jennifer, what would you think of your watercolours now, your scenes of sun and colour, all smudged with the drizzle and the mist? Did you misjudge Phoebe, to portray her as you did? Now she’s cowering in her basket, her belly inflamed with poison, her face a-quiver with snarls . . . Andrew licked his lips. His mouth had gone very dry. He thought of the kennel-maid giggling, the spreading of her blushes over her face and down her throat, and he saw the tip of her tongue go wetly around her mouth. Yes, he might go to the party, instead of celebrating Hallowe’en alone with an ill-tempered Phoebe.

  He returned to his sawing of the logs, while the day, like the dog, nursed its own particular sickness. There was very little light, only the dun-coloured drabness of the clouds, until the evening came. Then the clouds rolled away and revealed a night as clear and crisp as the day had been stale.

  *

  ‘Yes, this time you can come with me, Phoebe,’ Andrew said, preparing to go down to the hotel. She flapped her tail at this, sensing from the tone of his voice that they were about to leave the dampness of the cottage for the clarity of a fresh evening. ‘Want a walk? A bit more cheerful tonight, are you? Good girl, Phoebe . . .’ and the dog rose stiffly from her basket to stretch herself and lick away the dishevelment of her coat. It was half-past eight. Andrew, determined to enter into the spirit of the occasion, was working in front of the bathroom mirror, crudely painting his face into what he thought might be a passable likeness of a vampire or a ghoul. He had some shoe-whitener, which he daubed all over his cheeks and chin and forehead until he was ghastly pale, and then he found a black felt-pen with which he outlined his eyes and the corners of his nose, before blacking in a cruel moustache and goatee beard. Unfortunately, his vampire still had blond curls and a pair of heavy spectacles, but there was not much he could do about that; at least he had made an effort. Rummaging around the living-room, searching the pockets of his jackets, he eventually found a red ball-point pen and sketched a trickle or two of blood from the corners of his mouth. That was the extent of his disguise. As for his clothes, he had only brought with him to Wales a suitcase full of casual shirts, a few baggy pullovers and some waterproofs, hardly the wardrobe of a bloodsucking fiend, so he merely wrapped a scarf around his throat and put on his customary anorak and wellington boots.

  Phoebe watched with an almost human expression of puzzlement on her face. ‘Come on then, you hound,’ and she leapt with her old enthusiasm towards the door at the idea of a walk. ‘You’re part of the outfit tonight, Phoebe, one of the hounds of hell, black and satanic and ready to spring at the throat of any passing virgin . . . Come on, you great fierce beast!’ She was jumping and wheeling and yapping as he spoke. Good, he thought with a glance at the watercolour of the dog which was baring its teeth through a mist of condensation, that’s more like my old Phoebe. His eyes went automatically down to the mantelpiece. Still the other three jars were unchanged, the eggs like dirty golf balls plugged into an unplayable lie. And in the fourth, the phallus was more like a garden slug, just a smear of slime which had slithered to a standstill on the wet soil. Andrew was ready to go out. Having built up the fire to survive, he hoped, until he returned, he fixed the guard in front of it and checked that everything was switched off. He took the torch from the table. As soon as he opened the door, Phoebe shot out, scrabbling with her claws for traction in her eagerness to be off. ‘Bloody hell, Phoebe, wait for me . . .’ and he followed her away from the cottage.

  Outside, all was clear and still. Every shred of the shroud which had mummified the day had gone. A gibbous moon hung like a medal on the deep blue uniform of the sky. The hills and every scar of them, all the tumbledown walls and the stitches of the derelict tin mines, each wound of scree which had clattered down and grazed the ground away, the heaps of spoil from the slate tips, every sheep which dotted the valley like crystals of quartz in a granite boulder . . . all of this was lit by a clear light. Andrew turned back to see the cottage. Its whiteness had become silver and even the running stains of rust were erased. From the chimney, a pillar of smoke rose perfectly straight, an exclamation mark of pale blue against the mass of the mountain. Ahead of him, the dog ran and stopped and stood, shining black and finding a moonbeam wherever she moved. She waited for him to catch up and then together they walked down the hillside towards the gleaming ribbon of the river. They trod quietly among the trees which leaned softly on each other and whispered, conjuring their own breeze, and soon the floodlit hotel appeared before them, ugly in its brilliance when the rest of the landscape was so splendid, a dazzling white block of fluorescence, brazen and vulgar. Beneath the chestnut trees which lined the drive, the horses froze solid in their stillness and then shifted their weight from hoof to hoof with a massive sigh of resignation, oblivious to the man and the little black dog which went crunching over the gravel. ‘Wait now, Phoebe,’ he called softly, ‘you’re going to need your lead on. Come on, come here.’ She trotted obediently to him and consented to his attachment of the lead to her collar. He felt nervous, with his face made up. The skin of his forehead and chin had gone dry and tight, he sensed that the ink and whitewash might not be suitable for application as a cosmetic. Nevertheless, now he had arrived he would go in, with Phoebe. It was only a bit of fun, a few pints and a bowl of soup. Inhaling a great draught of the clean night air, he opened the front door of the hotel, turned from the lobby and stepped into the

  bar.

  His senses were struck by three immediate impressions as Phoebe pulled him into the room. First of all, his glasses steamed up at once so that he could see none of the faces in the crowd; he was aware only of a number of people gathered closely together in the confined space of the hotel lounge. Secondly, after his lungful of air as he and the dog stood under the moonlit chestnut trees, his nostrils were greeted by the combined odours of cigarette smoke and human sweat. And the third impression was that the room, which had been a hubbub of voices and laughter heard from the lobby, suddenly fell silent. Andrew halted, restraining Phoebe. It was like a dream, where the senses are disarranged and disoriented, where events are a sequence of inconsequences. As he reached for his glasses with his free hand, before he could clear his vision, someone shouted the single word, ‘Pinkie!’ and the room itself seemed to burst into laughter, since for him there were no individual mouths and faces but simply a smoke-enveloped blur of laughing people.

  ‘Pinkie, come on in!’ the voice rang through the din, the voice of the kennel-maid. ‘Don’t just stand there . . .’ and by this time he had wiped the lenses of his glasses so that suddenly her bright and candid face appeared before him. ‘Bloody hell, Pinkie, what have you done to yourself? Come on and show yourself to the others . . .’ He felt her hand on his, and she led him from the door towards the crowd of people at the bar. Phoebe baulked at this, tugging in the other direction and snarling, but the girl bent suddenly to the dog and yanked her along by the scruff of the neck. ‘What’s its name? Phoebe? Come on, Phoebe, you frightened little thing, you’re all right with Shân. I won’t hurt you . . .’ To Andrew’s surprise, because he was about to save the dog from the girl’s rough handling, Phoebe stopped her snarling and trotted with the girl, her tail wagging like a feathery black banner. There, at the bar, he was dismayed to see that not one other person in the hotel had taken the trouble to put on a Hallowe’en mask or any sort of costume. No wonder the conversation stopped, he thought; who told me it was going to be a costume party? But then the girl was pressing a pint of beer into his hand and slipping Phoebe’s lead from his other wrist. ‘There you are, Pinkie, or is it Count Dracula? Not sure that the wellies are really suitable for a vampire though . . . Cheers!’

  All around him, the conversation was buzzing in Welsh. He took several long mouthfuls of beer, grateful to the girl for her brisk intervention and prepared to forgive her use of a nickname he had not heard since his schooldays. There were not as many people as he had guessed from his first
impression of the room, no more than fifteen pressed around the bar, but the smoke and sweat and perhaps the meaninglessness of the chatter made the sensation of clamour more powerful to Andrew. Glancing across the lounge, he was pleased to see that Phoebe was sitting contentedly in the middle of a circle of admirers, who seemed to be complimenting her on the gleam of her coat. In any case, she was grinning up at them, languishing in the caresses they lavished on her. ‘She’s all right, no need to worry about her,’ Shân was saying. ‘Everyone here’s like me, we’re all used to having lot of dogs around. I’m always a bit rough with them, ’cos I know that’s what they like best. Even your little lap-dog would respond better to being shoved around a bit. Soon get her used to the sheep, if she knew she’d get belted for chasing them . . .’ Her voice trailed off, and Andrew watched a blush blooming over her face.