Brand X

by Christianna Brand

  Dionne was waiting for him when he came to the farm. Evans, unsuspectingly rejoicing, had gone off for the day: a farmer, single-handed, has no chance of a holiday—milking waits for no man, stock must be bedded and fed. She wore an off-the-shoulder blouse that fell away from her body when she leaned forward—cultivated with exquisite care, was her habit of constantly putting her hand to her breast to keep the low neck modestly close. Her skirt was enormous, showing off the slender waist, her bare feet were thrust into an old, battered, too-large pair of shoes. His very first thought was a sort of piercing poignancy at seeing the delicate, narrow white feet so roughly treated for the rough work they knew too well how to do. He said: ‘It seems a long time since first I saw you standing in this room, hidden away in the shadows, watching me.’

  ‘I watched you. But you say now, you never saw me.’

  ‘Perhaps I didn’t look.’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘You were only a child.’

  ‘I was fourteen.’

  He said uneasily, for he was growing a little afraid: ‘At fourteen—isn’t a girl still a child?’

  ‘Some may be,’ she said. ‘But I was not.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so, as you say, long ago, here in this room, you didn’t see me: but I saw you.’ And she leaned forward a little towards him and put her hand with the trained-automatic gesture to her breast to keep her blouse close: and said brisk and cool: ‘Well, now—about this stock…’

  The hours passed. She made him some lunch with practised ease on the black old coal-burning range and he thought he had never eaten so well; she had brought a bottle of wine and a slice of white, solid, faintly sour Caerphilly cheese with Welsh butter, highly salted, and a crusty round Welsh loaf. He could not help laughing, seeing her so efficiently slicing it, holding the round hump of it to her breast and slicing inwards towards her. ‘You look like the nursery pictures of the old woman in the shoe feeding all those children.’

  ‘Bread was the one thing she hadn’t got,’ said Dionne. ‘Just soup—and children.’

  ‘And a shoe, poor thing.’

  ‘People with a pack of children are apt to have only soup-and-a-shoe, poor things.’

  ‘Don’t you like children?’

  ‘They don’t come into my life,’ said Dionne.

  ‘But…’ He hummed the tune. ‘Some—day—my prince will come…’

  ‘No children shall share him with me,’ said Dionne.

  And they worked again, man and man together, tramping through the cow byres, biffing hard fists against too loosely packed hay, passing knowledgeable hands over too thin flanks, too meagre wool: once she took a single glance at the heaving sides of an ewe and ran indoors swiftly for hypodermic and phial; and twenty minutes later the half moribund creature was staggering to its feet again and trotting ungratefully away. ‘Calcium deficiency,’ she said. ‘But it happens. It’s the mountain grazing. That’s not Evan’s fault. Now, this lamb on the other hand…’ She pointed a stubby-shod foot at the pitiful carcase. ‘The mother’s come down ill-fed from the mountain for the lambing, she’s just dropped her lamb and then taken no interest: it should have been hand-fed, while she was fattened up and meanwhile trained and taught to look after it herself. But of course it takes time and patience. You have to put her out to pasture, bring her back to the lamb, out to grass again…’ She had caught an old ewe by the heavy grey wool on its shoulders, was urging its lamb in beneath it. ‘Go on, cariad, my baby, that’s where your real bottle is. Stand still, you old stupid…!’

  ‘Oh, Dionne,’ he said, standing looking down at her. ‘What wisdom and skill there is in that beautiful head of yours!’ He looked about him, at the exquisite slopes of the mountains, still bracken-tawny under the thin sunshine, meeting the green fields of the valley, dotted grey-white, grey-white where, pair by pair, mother and baby lamb grazed peacefully. ‘And what loveliness is here, what simplicity, what peace! How can you leave it and come away to rush-about London? Surely you must love it? Surely this must be your life?’

  ‘I love it,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t my life.’

  ‘What is your life then? No mountains, no valley, no farm it seems—no children…’

  ‘One man,’ said Dionne. The lamb was sucking away happily, the ewe stood content at last to have it so. She straightened herself. ‘Now, I’ll just get the milking over and then we’ll do the sheep round.’ She gave him a teasing glance. ‘If you think you can walk so far.’

  He played squash three times a week to keep his figure taut, several rounds of golf on Saturdays and Sundays. ‘If you can do it, Miss, I daresay I can too.’

  ‘Oh, me,’ she said. ‘I’ve done it once today already.’ They had come to the cow byre and she slid a flower-foot from the rough leather shoe and into an enormous rubber boot, tied herself into an apron, gave a brief instruction in Welsh to a couple of dogs. By the time she was ready, the herd had been brought in, toiling up in their sluggish line through the crazily hanging gates, past the muck heap in front of the house, over the uneven mud ruts of the yard and into the milking shed. He stood, wrinkling his nose against the acrid smell of dung and cattle, watching, marvelling, while her white hands milked, poured, measured, scoured and swept. Nothing, he thought, had ever been more lovely than the curve of the pale face turned against a chestnut flank, the pattern of the slim body, shapeless in the huge canvas apron, bending, straightening, turning, every movement from long practise economical and effortless. And he thought of his own wife, chic, charming, delightful, gay—and of how her artificiality, nevertheless, would stand out like something almost unworthy in a setting such as this: and of the pretty minxes of the past who would have said that farming was too, too blissikins, darling, all those baby lambs and ducklings and things, but give one lamb on the menu at the Caprice any time, and talking about duckling, here was a canard pressé, only sweetie it was twenty-eight and six, would that be too much…? ‘Have you ever eaten canard pressé?’ he said to Dionne.

  She thought it over gravely, deflecting her mind for a moment from chalking up the evening’s yield on a slate. ‘No, I don’t think I have.’

  ‘You shall some day,’ he said. ‘Even if it is twenty-eight and six.’

  And so they set out upon the sheep round; and evening was falling and the blackthorn-blossom milky against the hillsides, and the top of the mountain above the farm was a million miles from anywhere else in the world. They rested, leaning back against a single great boulder, looking down to where everyday people were. ‘You see that gleam of white in the trees across the valley? That’s where my great-grandfather lived: and he was a wizard.’

  ‘I’m not surprised to hear it,’ said Charles. ‘I’d already begun to suspect you were something of a witch.’

  ‘No—I’m not,’ she said. ‘I gave it up.’

  ‘You gave up being a witch?’

  ‘I gave up my powers.’ She looked away across the gentle valley. ‘All my family have witchcraft, all our forebears have been wizards.’ She was perfectly serious. ‘Oh, I don’t mean we could ride about on broomsticks, turn people into animals, that sort of thing. But… Well, we could almost turn animals into people: that is true. When I was a child, I had six friends among the animals; a grey cat, the old farm pony, the three sheep-dogs and a raven; and what I said, whether you believe it or not, they understood and what I forbade they didn’t do, and what I commanded they did. Even the cat would follow me when I rode about the mountains, the dogs came of course, the raven flew a little ahead, looking back, watching me. And there were other powers too—I’d have cultivated them as I grew up. My grandfather wouldn’t have liked it, he’d have called it all nonsense; but it was in me, I knew my powers were there. But…’ She stared out ahead of her, the evening breeze blew the soft, ash-coloured hair away from the lovely profile of the calm, pale face where only the grey eyes burned with a passion of soon to be fulfilled desire. ‘I gave it all up. Here, on this very spot—that’s why I brought you here tonight—I gave
it all up.’

  Unease was heavy upon him, unease and foreboding and yet a strange stirring of excitement, of the promise of an ecstasy never yet dreamed of in his well-ordered, well-planned life. Almost without volition he said: ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘There was something I wanted even more than I wanted my powers as a witch,’ she said. ‘So—in another language it might be said that I sold my soul to the devil; in my language, I met my Master, here on the mountain-top and traded in my powers, for a single boon.’ She smiled, a small indulgent smile looking back upon the childishness of the last hours of a childhood, self-destroyed. ‘I didn’t know how one should go about it, I had no one to consult—as I say, my grandfather disapproved: he would have said that I had no powers, there was no such thing, I had a country child’s patience with animals and therefore some control over them—and that was all. So I had to find my own way. I came up here, bringing them with me as witnesses—my six friends. I thought there should be some ceremony only I couldn’t think what it should be. But the blackthorn was in flower as it is now, and I gathered an armful of it and brought it up here and I built a little fire, here in a ring of stones. And I formed my friends into a circle round the fire, the three dogs, the pony and the little grey cat, the raven flying in circles over our heads. And I set fire to the blackthorn and said a sort of prayer. I said, “Great Master, if you will give me the Desire of my Heart, I will give back my magic to you, from whom it came; I will renounce of my own free will all my powers.” And I knelt down by the fire and it seemed to me as if the magic did indeed drain away from me, leaving me terribly spent and empty and, just for a moment, terribly bereft…’

  He was silent, spellbound, torn between elation and terror—between joy in he knew not what, terror of he knew not what. She said: ‘I knelt for a long time, letting the strength ebb out of me, letting another strength come back, build me up again. It was nearly dark when I could get back up to my feet. You couldn’t see the mountains, you couldn’t see the valley, you couldn’t see the bracken, all coppery on the mountainsides—only a pale, pale ghost where the blackthorn blossom lay, and a tiny glint in the ashes of my blackthorn fire. But—my friends were gone. The pony had gone back to his field and the dogs to the farm and the cat was in the kitchen and from that day on came no further than the barns where she caught her poor mice; and the raven was flown and never followed me again.’ She pointed with the toe of her stubby shoe. ‘There it is still, my ring of stones. I remember as though it were yesterday, how I knelt here, how the very life force seemed to drain away from me, leaving only emptiness and loneliness… It was like being born all over again, as though once again my mother had deserted me for Death and my father had deserted me for some other life in which I was not included and I was defenceless and alone.’ And she lifted her head and for the first time looked directly at him, looked into his face with brilliant, bright grey eyes. ‘But I wasn’t, of course. I wasn’t defenceless and one day I wouldn’t be alone. My defence was my Cause, the One Desire, for which I’d made this sacrifice.’ She leaned towards him and he saw the pale face, so grave and beautiful, the bright eyes, the flower mouth: he saw the falling away of the low cut blouse and the gesture with which it was caught and held again close to the white breast. And he stammered out: ‘The One Desire? The One Desire…?’ And she came close to him and lifted her mouth to his and said: ‘You know that the One Desire has been your love.’

  Foreboding, dread, all the memories of the past, all the hopes of the future were wiped away in that one transcendent moment of winged joy when he caught and held her in his arms.

  Evan Evans returning refreshed to the farm next morning found the milking done, the churns disposed of, the shed scoured and clean, the lambs and their ewes out at pasture—and a list of his shortcomings in Dionne’s handwriting. Below the list, Mr. Shawn had written: ‘I came down earlier than planned. Please see to the above or I shall have to make re-arrangements.’ But Dionne and Mr. Shawn and Mr. Shawn’s great, green, shining monster of a motor car were gone.

  Obsession had blinded her, stupefied her against a knowledge that must surely have lain coiled like a cold snake at the root of that long-ago surrender to her infatuation. Now when for the first time she knew—she faced—that others stood between her and the fulfilment of her dream, it was too late. By right of her life’s love he was her own. She put her hand into his and went with him.

  And so that evening Dionne ate canard pressé and nobody rebelled at the price. And afterwards she danced in her lover’s arms in the candle-lit night-club, sleek, exquisitely groomed, enchantingly dressed—and yet carrying with her still that air of the fragile beauty of the countryside in spring. ‘My goodness!’ said the casual observers, squinting through the clouds of their cigarette smoke, nursing their brandy glasses in curved warm hands. ‘Old Charles is off again!’ And the more percipient among them added: ‘Cecilia’d better watch out this time. This doesn’t look too good.’ Everyone knew that Cecilia adored her husband; that her deadliest enemy had been the need in him to renew the youth that perhaps already had lasted a little too long, which, therefore, inversely, he was ever reluctant to let go. And here was youth indeed and a refreshment of beauty, an apparently limpid simplicity—in this colourless girl whom at first one hardly glanced at but whom, having once seen, one could never again ignore.

  So the days went by. The confiding wife remained in the country with their children, excuses arose to prevent the week-end visits, even the once daily telephone calls became more rare. In the tiny flat at the just-right address, Dionne played hostess, cooking foolish, delicious little meals, producing wines long ago chosen with anxious, deliberate care, parading all her repertoire of long-rehearsed, apparently off-hand charms. He in return, filled her rooms with flowers, lavished gifts, planned surprises, was as gay and foolish and effortlessly happy as the boy she had turned him into once more. Nor could they for five minutes together keep their hands from caressing, their mouths from kisses. If there was a world outside, they had forgotten it.

  After the first shock of her acceptance—of his wife and his children, of his other family, no mention was made.

  Cecilia came back to town, settled back into the big, comfortable, luxurious flat. There was much to do, the children to be got ready for the new school term, the London life opened up again, the busy diary of planning, shopping, entertaining, being entertained. Charles hung about at home a couple of evenings, uneasy as a dog on an unaccustomed leash. She said at last: ‘You’re up to something! Confess!’

  He pleaded, as he had done before, caught out now and again in those old, trivial, renewal-of-my-youth affairs; ‘You know me, darling. Be patient. I’ll be good again.’

  ‘You seem to have it rather badly this time, Charles. Don’t let it get too serious.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. He fished out a cheque book. ‘Get hold of some girl-friend and go off abroad for a jaunt. Nanny can look after the kids and I’ll be getting it out of my system meanwhile.’

  Well—she’d done that too, before now: but this time some prompting warned her to stay close to home. So she held her peace and, suffering, outwardly laughed, indulgently teasing: made light of it to their friends, ‘Charles is in the throes of one of his well known infatuations, we shall have to make it next week, by which time he’ll be cured,’ and to Nanny said, ‘Mr. Shawn is terribly busy at the office, he’ll be getting dinner out a good deal, we’ll just lead the Simple Life, you and me and the children, Nan, till the rush is over.’ ‘Yes, Madam,’ said Nanny. ‘He’s off with one of them girls of his,’ she confided to her friend, the Daily, torn between two devotions. ‘However, it won’t last long I daresay; it never does.’

  But this time it did.

  A whole new world grew up about Charles Shawn, a gay world, a young world, a world of new friends who might be let into the secret and share, to the extent that outsiders might, the new and secret life. It was a life of pleasure, of moonlight and roses, of laughter and
foolishness, of heedlessness, of heady romance. He went on a business trip abroad and she went too, secretly, the sad wife, anxiously playing her deft game of ‘pretend it’s all unimportant, don’t antagonise him by whining’, left in her pitiful dignity and pride at home. Dionne talked no more of witchcraft in these days, all that had been left forever, far away in the rough, uncared for little mountain farm in Carmarthenshire. But she exercised a witchcraft all of her own; and when their love was six months old made casual take-it-for-granted reference to ‘when we are married’. He said, aghast and taken aback, ‘My sweetest sweet—if only that could ever be!’

  ‘Not married? You and I? What do you mean?’

  ‘How can I leave Cecilia, darling, how could I leave the kids…?’

  ‘You’ve left them already,’ said Dionne.

  ‘In my heart, yes. But all the more reason that I shouldn’t in—in other ways.’ And he pleaded with her, guilty and treasonable, ‘You have all of me that matters, dearest, leave them the outward show.’

  ‘But you are mine,’ she said: bewildered, astonished that he should see it any other way, confident that of course in the end their mutual rights in one another must prevail.

  ‘I owe them this much, Dionne, all the same. My name and my—protection. I couldn’t just give them up. Surely you and I in this dear little heaven of ours—’

  She did not argue or complain, did not nag, did not pout or look tragic: there were no tears. But she came and stood close to him as she had stood on the mountain-top on that spring evening half a year of enchanted romance ago, and looked into his eyes with the same grey brilliance of passionate will to be loved; and said, ‘You and I have all our future in one another, Charles. Isn’t that true?’