by Syd Moore
We emerged quite a while later, after Sam had amused Hannah with a couple of nuggets of information about our last case, then done his very best to deflect the rest of her questions, banging on at length about the intricacies and details of his PhD. This eventually had the desired effect of glazing Hannah’s eyes. She was, she began to insist, more of a UFO kind of girl. Nevertheless she did promise to come and visit the museum one day, which we both made delighted sounds about. We weren’t proud. You took customers where you could.
‘Not sure what we got there,’ I said as we walked back to the car. ‘With MT. I mean she gave a suitably vague description of the apparition. Period dress, as Mary described. It’s consistent, but that could mean they conferred. Or Mary told the staff and they told MT.’
‘Or maybe MT saw what she was expecting to see because she was spooked and because of the stories in circulation.’
I considered it. ‘I expect to win the lottery if I buy a ticket. It ain’t happened yet.’
‘That’s different. I’m saying that if people expect to see ghosts, then they will,’ said Sam. ‘Sometimes it’s even involuntary.’
I made a pfft sound with my lips.
‘Honestly, Rosie,’ he said. ‘The human brain is a wild and untamed thing. We’re only just beginning to understand its complexities.’
He would have no disagreement from me. I had to read government policy documents. There was no greater illustration of bizarre and twisted minds.
‘And,’ he said. ‘Did you know that belief in ghosts is actually on the rise? A recent survey found that fifty-two per cent of respondents said they believed in them.’
It never ceased to bewilder me how so many people could express belief in something they couldn’t prove. Like Santa. Or the tooth fairy. Or God. ‘That’s amazing,’ I said, and added a low whistle.
‘I tell you what’s also amazing, young lady,’ Sam went on.
I took a moment to enjoy his use of ‘young’.
‘That that glorious woman didn’t kick us out of her house earlier. Behave yourself, Ms Strange.’
Eh? I thought. ‘What glorious woman?’ I said.
‘You must have notice how stunning she was,’ he said with a smile.
‘Who?’ He had me there.
‘MT.’
‘No, Sam,’ I sighed. ‘I didn’t actually.’
‘She was immaculately turned out.’
‘That’s what women do when they have a hot lunch date. They get dressed up.’
‘Oh,’ he said, deflating around the shoulders. ‘Do you think she was seeing a man?’
I looked at him and considered the possibility he might be intentionally winding me up. ‘Well,’ I said to him. ‘Yes, if she’s straight, which I think she probably is. I didn’t have my gaydar going off, did you?’
‘Not my gaydar, no.’ He grinned idiotically. The moron.
I was starting to feel uncomfortable but decided to ignore the feeling and just get in the car so we could hop on our way. ‘But that’s a point actually,’ I said, as I opened the door. ‘She was going out. Ray said he was going to phone to say we were coming, didn’t he? So why was she buggering off to lunch before we arrived?’
He shrugged. ‘Hot date, like you said. I expect she has a lot of those.’
Was that ‘wistful’ I was hearing in his voice? Surely not.
‘Not a particularly difficult choice for her to make,’ I sniffed. ‘Hot date versus ghostbusters.’
‘Oh, Rosie,’ Sam moaned. ‘Don’t you start. It’s bad enough from Joel and MT.’
I giggled, glad he’d said something negative about her, and turned on the engine. ‘Home, James? To mull over what we’ve found out and sort out a plan?’
‘Good idea.’
But before we’d reached the bottom of her road, he was back on it again. ‘So what makes you think she was going off to see a man?’
‘Obvious.’ I said. ‘Roots not long done. Gone to town on the make-up. Nice mani. French polish. Bet she’s had a recent pedi too.’ And, I refrained from adding, her low-cut top was a dead giveaway – we’d all copped a glimpse of those cosmetically enhanced mammaries.
Sam leant his head against the window and sighed. ‘She’s obviously a woman who likes to look good. And surely she does indeed.’
I raised my eyebrows but carried on driving. I hadn’t seen him so taken by a woman before. Not so dramatically anyway. It was quite un-Sam, really. He veered more towards repressed British male specimen than bold metrosexual. And yet over the past week or so I had also started to entertain the idea that something hot and dark lurked beneath that surface. I’d glimpsed it once or twice. Even so all this fawning was really quite atypical. And a bit sick-making.
We drove on for a couple of minutes then softly, he muttered, ‘She’s incredible.’
‘Incredible? Really?’ It popped out before I could stop it. But I couldn’t see what was so astounding about the girl. Sure, she’d made the most of what she’d got but no more than the majority of my friends did. MT weren’t no Angelina Jolie, it had to be said.
‘You’ve got eyes, haven’t you?’ Sam nudged me.
‘Careful. Not while I’m driving.’ He was usually anal about that sort of thing.
‘She was gorgeous,’ he went on. ‘That hair, it’s magnificent—’
It was pretty good, I had to concede, but not entirely a gift from God. ‘Ah, yes. Extensions,’ I told him. ‘My friend Cerise quite often sticks them in. They’re easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for – all those clips, hairnets, stray synthetic mono-fibres.’
‘Really?’ He sounded shocked. ‘Well, they’re, er, still magnificent. And those eyes, absolutely startling.’
‘Coloured lenses, I expect.’ I was thinking back to their sapphire luminescence. ‘I’ve got some that make my eyes look amazing too, you know.’ I made them big and flashed them at him.
He was bloody well looking out the window. Like a lovesick fop. ‘But, I mean,’ he continued to moon. ‘Hers are huge too, aren’t they? It’s not just down to the lenses. If indeed that’s where that brilliance originates.’
Jesus. ‘Well, I expect it does come from contact lenses and the “hugeness” as you describe it, can be very easily achieved with the right skills. Make-up is an art. Like any craft you have to put in the hours and practice to get it right. She’s good, I’ll give her that. Reckon she’s gone for an eyelash perm to get the kink going on there, then layered on the mascara. Overdone it a bit if you ask me. I hate it when it goes clumpy like that. All those flakes. They get in your eyes and then you end up with those nasty black bits in the corners. My friend Cerise calls them eye bogeys. That’s what MT’s got coming her way,’ I said. ‘Eye bogeys. Poor girl.’
It had no effect. His adulation was ridiculously undiminished. ‘Fantastic skin,’ he mused out loud, pretending to talk to himself. Jeez he was getting irritating. ‘Glowing and sun-kissed. Very “Girl from Ipanema”.’
‘The “Girl from Ipanema” was dark-haired.’ I stopped myself from adding, like me. ‘And Brazilian. A bit more tasteful. MT is more your brassy “Blonde Ambition” kind of chick, don’t you think? You know, a bit “Material Girl”. A bit “Desperately Seeking …”’ Still no response in the passenger seat. ‘And tan-wise you can do wonders with a dab of bronzer on the cheekbones. And I saw dark wrinkles round the wrists. A dead giveaway. Her “Ipanema” look comes straight out of a bottle. Home job too. I prefer salons, personally. Less imperfections.’
My colleague, however, was in for the fight. ‘Oh, come on, Rosie, even you have to concede she’s got a breath taking figure for someone so petite.’
‘Short,’ I corrected. ‘And those tits aren’t real, Sam.’
A tremor passed through the front seats.
‘The waist certainly is,’ Sam bleated.
I remembered the way she came in from the hips. ‘You can thank Gok Wan and his high-tech shapewear. He’s a blessing to girls without a good outline.’<
br />
‘Shapewear?’
‘Modern speak for corsetry.’
‘She’s not big though, is she? She’s slender. Lithe.’
She was. I sniffed with distaste. ‘People that thin don’t like food.’
‘Ah-ha,’ he said with glee. ‘But we caught her going out to lunch.’
‘She was going to meet a man.’
Sam made a ‘pooh’ noise with his cheeks then turned to face me in the seat. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
I kept my eyes on the road but thought his voice sounded like he was smiling. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
He turned his face away and looked out the window again. I thought there was a slight shake to his shoulders but I wasn’t going to dignify him with a glance. I think that was exactly what he wanted me to do. Instead I drove on.
Within a minute he’d started humming a tune. ‘Don’t Cha.’ Pussycat Dolls. I recognised it straight away.
Pathetic.
I screwed up my face and made a huffy noise.
What was I doing? I wondered, as we stopped at the roundabout. Sam was perfectly entitled to be attracted to other women. I was attracted to other men, and anyway we didn’t even know if we were attracted to each other. Or at least I didn’t know if he was attracted to me. And anyway, I was his boss and all that.
I repressed a sigh. It was complicated. I shouldn’t be making it worse by acting like an idiot. I ought to be more generous, have a little more grace. ‘She was quite stylish, I suppose,’ I said, with gargantuan generosity. ‘Though it takes one to know one in that regard.’ A point well made, I thought.
His gaze brushed my cheek and neck but I still wasn’t going to look at him like he wanted me to. I heard him sigh and wondered if he was summoning MT up mentally, going over those inches that looked about as curvy as a little boy. A little boy with big false knockers.
‘You’re right,’ he said dreamily. ‘Stylish. Alluring. Glamorous.’
‘Glamorous is easy if you know how,’ I said, and pushed my foot down hard on the accelerator. As I did, I caught sight of my lovely boots. Black and gold. Black-and-gold leather. Amazing. Now that was glamour.
‘Now that’s glamour,’ I said to Sam, trying at the same time to nod at my feet.
‘What?’ his attention drifted back into the car.
‘Glamour,’ I repeated. ‘Now that’s glamour.’
‘Glamour,’ Sam said, chewing the word over carefully. Then he paused and sat up straight. ‘Oh, Rosie, you’ve just said something incredibly interesting.’
‘And you’re sounding surprised because?’
He shook his head. ‘How funny.’ Then he rummaged in his bag and pulled out his notebook. Flipping the pages over, he started chuckling quietly and making notes.
I waited a couple of minutes for him to explain. When he didn’t I said, ‘Are you going to let me in on this or do I purely serve as the butt of your jokes these days?’
‘A very nice butt it is too,’ he said.
This time I did dart a look at him. But his face was angled down, the expression hidden in shadow. Though a slight repetitive heave to his shoulders suggested he might be chuckling again.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, it’s a witch thing,’ he said smothering – yes, it was there – a definite laugh.
‘Go on then.’
He sucked down a long breath and tried to make his voice steady. ‘The glamour. Have you not heard of it? I’ve never thought about it before but it really adds credibility to my theory about Essex Girls and Essex witches. You know how I think that recent stereotype may well have grown out of the former.’
‘Uh-huh. You’re not going to tell me the Essex witches were glamorous, are you?’
‘Not quite. But glamour originally was the ability to make people see something or someone in a more positive light or more attractive way than it or they really were.’
I considered this a moment. ‘Yep, that sounds about right.’
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘It wasn’t cosmetic but a spell. A bewitchment. Something illusory that could be used by witches to seduce men.’
‘Oh, typical,’ I said. ‘Poor men. That seems like a “she made me do it, your honour”. Always the woman’s fault.’
‘I’m not defending it. But that’s what it was. It had a demonological context.’
I was getting his drift. ‘Are you suggesting this aspect, this glamour, the witch thing has descended from the witches to the Essex Girl?’
‘It’s something to consider: Essex Girls are glamorous. An aura hangs around the stereotype that points to this enhancement and illusion. Oh yes, all those unsubtle bewitchments wreak havoc over men, don’t they? The glamour tests, pulls and sometimes breaks the male will. The Essex Girl threatens because she is attractive. That’s why she’s put into a box, a stereotype, in the first place. So she can be controlled. And disempowered.’
‘Like women accused of witchcraft.’
‘Also controlled. Also disempowered by their label.’ Sam paused. ‘ The Hammer of Witches by Kramer and Sprenger.’
‘The what?’
‘Also known as the Malleus Maleficarum. It was a medieval best-selling guide to witch-hunting. Written by two Catholic clergymen in Germany. Had a how to spot a witch section, how to hold a trial, how to prosecute, interrogate and torture. And there was a whole section in which they debated how witches “by some glamour” turned men into beasts.’
I could have laughed at what he’d said if the rest hadn’t been so damn hideous. I’d seen pictures of equipment that witch-hunters used to extract ‘confessions’. We had a whole wall of them in the Witch Museum. Though they were unlabelled. I’d decided to start researching so we could explain what they were used for. I’d got as far as the heretics fork and found myself too traumatised to continue.
The image of the torture device made me cringe in the driving seat. ‘I suppose they weren’t talking metaphorically?’
‘Doubtful,’ said Sam. ‘Everything was taken rather literally back then.’
‘God,’ I sighed. ‘Were these women really so threatening?’
‘Indeed.’ He buried his face in his bag and rummaged. ‘And sometimes also threatening to other women. If you can believe that?’
I detected a note of light sarcasm in his voice and shot him a glance but he was still hunched over his bag.
‘Ah-ha, here we are,’ he said, and brought out a slim, printed black volume. He turned to a page then read out, ‘Glamour, when it was defined during the witch craze, was the demonic ability to confuse reality and distort the senses. To create an illusion. Though, generally, it was a power that wasn’t used by the witch but attributed to her by her persecutors.’
‘What do you mean? That it didn’t really exist? People just said it did to get the witches, or—’ I remembered he’d been quite a stickler on that point, ‘Sorry, I mean, women accused of witchcraft – to get them into trouble. Convicted.’
‘Yes, it also functioned as an excellent excuse,’ he said. ‘If a man slept with a woman deemed unsuitable, usually because she was of a lower class, then he could cry “glamour”! The scheming seductress had used a spell to make her appearance seem more attractive him so she could charm him into bed.’
‘I suppose it was also a good excuse for rape.’ I tutted loudly.
‘Could well be,’ he said. ‘Box junction.’ Then he waved his hands at the windscreen.
‘I can see it thank you very much,’ I told him.
‘Then why are you sitting in it?’ he asked.
‘Because that car didn’t move like it should have done.’
He sighed and twitched his hands. Someone behind me blared their horn.
‘But anyway, I was saying that there were men, probably still are, who were frightened of women and this glamour.’
‘Yes, they’re called misogynists.’
Sam said nothing.
I moved out of the box
junction and felt him relax next to me. ‘Probably the biggest glamour,’ he said, ‘the biggest illusion of all was the myth of demonic witchcraft. That it existed like they thought it did.’
I made an agreeing noise.
‘But dear gal, thank you.’
‘For what?’ I said.
‘For mentioning it. Glamour has been a timely reminder: we should certainly take heed.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
He smiled and tapped his nose. ‘That which the wise among us are loath to forget – things are never really what they seem.’
CHAPTER TEN
I rotated my glass. The action made the ice tinkle inside. I liked that sound a lot. And it was important to relax and unwind after an intense day like the one we’d just had. That’s why I’d gone for spirits. Medicinal. Sam returned to type and ordered a Coke. Personally I would have preferred to go a bit further field to somewhere that wasn’t full of neon and white leather. However the location of the Buzz Bar, opposite my flat, meant that it was staggering distance. Not just for me, unfortunately, but also the hordes of marauding drunks who took up residence from Friday to Sunday, fagging, screaming, shouting, fighting and regularly sauntering over to urinate in our communal entrance. Or sometimes copulate. Or from time to time, I’d also been told, to snort a ton of class A’s.
It was Sam’s idea to come here. I was so flabbergasted that he’d suggested a drink that he could have led me anywhere. He didn’t usually. I, personally, was always quite up for one. But right now I was most definitely in need of a little snifter to settle my nerves: Mum had phoned in the afternoon to say the doctor was sending Dad for further tests. I had a very dry mouth and clammy hands as I told her not to worry, that it was perfectly normal and encouraging that the surgery was investigating everything, taking it seriously. Sam could see how it rocked me. So he brought me here.
‘I’ll get them in, you go and find a table. What you having?’ he asked as we leant on the bar.
‘A Buttery Nipple please.’
He stopped and took a breath, reddened slightly on his cheeks then said, ‘I don’t quite know how to respond to that.’
