Antique Dust

by Robert Westall

  Tetley summed it up. ‘Not a fault. We might as well have been looking for Besingfield Castle.’ That was a famous local saying. Besingfield had had a castle once, but it had totally vanished. Even the site wasn’t known. It must have been one of those timber motte-and-bailey structures that just rotted away.

  The only compensation was that Burridge hadn’t gloated. He’d let us out looking very subdued. With anyone else, I’d have said frightened. He gave me a long, lingering look as he closed his grey front door. But whatever I was going to get him on, it wasn’t going to be a Notice of Time and Place.

  Ah well, another day, another dollar, as Linda would say. As an American girl, she’d been taught how a husband should be welcomed home, if you want to keep him. Dry Martinis, newly-iced; an Ella Fitzgerald on the stereo. It was getting dark early; heavy grey clouds, feeling like thunder. Maybe she’d have the candles lit on the dinner-table. I could do with forgetting work.

  I put the car in the garage, round the back, and walked up through the unkempt orchard, whistling feebly. I hadn’t got round to the orchard yet; the old crab-apple trees had grown together, blocking out the dull sky. The grass was waist-high. Last year’s leaves, and the leaves from the year before that, crunched drily underfoot. It was very dark under the trees. But I could see the windows of my house; every one was lit, upstairs and down. I wondered why . . .

  Till I heard the other footsteps behind; following me. I pulled up, thinking they were an echo of my own, expecting them to stop. They didn’t. They went on, pattering around me in a semi-circle to the right, in the shadows among the long grass. Getting between me and home. Two sets of small footsteps . . .

  Like a big heavy dog might make.

  They came nearer, circling.

  I ran at them, wildly.

  Nothing there.

  But the footsteps began again, behind me. Again I ran at them; doubled back suddenly, wildly circling every tree and clump of grass.

  Nothing. Except that I could hear the sniffing now. The same sniffing, the same smell, that I’d had at Burridge’s house. I was just going to make a panicky run for the house when that strange anger that I’d felt before came to my rescue again. This time I welcomed it, felt it surge through me and, at the same time, heard the footsteps begin to retreat. Through a growing red mist of rage, I followed them, to the edge of the ploughed field that stood next to our house.

  The footsteps left the orchard; the sniffing ceased. But nothing showed across the darkening field.

  When the strange anger began to fade, I knew that the thing, whatever it was, had gone. I felt light, carefree. Whatever it was, I had the better of it. I was whistling again as I opened my front door.

  Linda didn’t run to meet me. She came slowly, like an old woman.

  ‘Linda, what’s the matter? Are you ill? Have you called the doctor? Sit down, I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  To all of which she said nothing. Just came and sat down. I put an arm round her, and she leaned against me, limp, like a lost child.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. It’s silly . . .’

  ‘What’s silly?’

  ‘Oh, take no notice of me, Dave.’

  ‘I will take bloody notice. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh,’ she pushed back a strand of hair wearily, ‘I keep imagining things – it’s so silly. But when you’re alone all day . . .’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Dog’s feet, padding. First outside the house . . . then inside. And a smell . . .’

  She wouldn’t let me send for the police. What could we have told them?

  ‘There must be somebody we can talk to.’

  She looked up with half her old smile. It had cheered her up that I’d been hearing the same things; she’d been wondering if she was going round the bend. ‘If Burridge is doing this – and I still can’t believe it – we need to talk to somebody who’s lived here all their lives. Newcomers like us, they’d just laugh.’

  I thought, and said, ‘Reg Totton – he owes me one for today.’

  ‘Ring him up!’

  ‘No – let’s just go,’ I said, with half a grim smile.

  Reg opened the door himself, a bottle of Sainsbury’s red plonk in one hand, and a corkscrew in the other. He was wearing an open-necked check shirt and an open navy cardigan, and looked not at all like a man getting over a migraine. The worst thing you can do with a migraine is drink.

  ‘Evening, Reg!’

  ‘The wine’s for the wife,’ he said, clutching it defensively.

  ‘Come off it, Reg. It’s a fair cop!’

  He grinned engagingly, showing his missing teeth. All the rest are his own, as he’ll tell you ten times a day, if you let him.

  When his wife grasped that I wasn’t going to sack Reg on the spot, and deprive him of his pension, she grew amiable enough to ask us to stay to dinner. It shows how the Tottons spoiled themselves that none of us went in the least hungry. I eyed Reg’s comfortable paunch, and decided there was such a thing as growing old gracefully.

  But she tensed right up again when I mentioned Burridge. ‘Reg is not going back to that house. The last time he went, wi’ Nevinson, we had bad luck for months. We’re only just clear of it now. He’s not going back.’

  ‘What kind of bad luck?’

  Reg moved uneasily in his chair, but he couldn’t stop her.

  ‘All sorts o’ bad luck. Every year Reg takes a prize for his tomatoes at Besingfield Show. As long as we’ve been married. Barring one or two Highly Commendeds. Well, this year, the day after he went down Burridge’s, all the plants died overnight. Fine an’ healthy in the evening – a mass of grey mould by the morning. Couldn’t save a single bit o’ fruit, even for bottling.’

  ‘C’mon, Greta – maybe I over-watered them.’

  ‘After forty years? Maybe you were over-watering the cats as well – three dead within the week. And we nearly lost our first grandson wi’ a miscarriage – it was touch an’ go for four days. It doesn’t pay to cross Burridge.’

  I watched Reg. He was wriggling with embarrassment, but he wasn’t denying any of it. He was pulling at his lip.

  So I said quietly, ‘What gives, Reg?’ He gave me a shrewd look.

  ‘You had trouble, Mr Dobson?’

  I told them.

  ‘That settles it,’ said Greta. ‘Go on, Reg, they’re entitled to know.’

  ‘Well,’ said Reg, ‘I want to be fair. I’d lived fifty-odd years alongside Cunning Burridge, and he never did me no harm. Did me a bit of good, once. Me mam took me to him for warts. All over me face, I had ’em, and the other kids called me “Pig”. I was bloody paralysed, going into that house, I can tell you. But he just told me to be brave, cut a potato in half, and rubbed it all over me face. Then he wrapped it up in newspaper, and told us to throw it into the first field we passed where there were pigs. When the pigs nosed open the packet an’ ate the potato, me warts would go. And they did, like magic. Cost me mam five shillings.’

  ‘That’s witchcraft,’ said Linda.

  Both the Tottons stared into their fire uncomfortably. Finally Reg said, ‘Well, there’s witchcraft an’ witchcraft. Burridge is all right, if you don’t cross him. He’s done a lot of good in his time and no harm. Till Nevinson got across him.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘Nevinson got across everybody. A right bastard to work for. Not like you, Mr Dobson. There was only one slacker when Nevinson was CTO – Nevinson. Off for long lunch-hours, drinking wi’ his contractor mates. Shifty, too. You’d think he’d gone off for the whole afternoon, then he’d come back at five to five, and bawl you out for having a game o’ shove-ha’penny.’

  ‘There was more to it than that, Reg,’ said Greta, viciously poking the fire, her mouth set like a rat-trap. ‘There was sending workmen off into the back of beyond, then calling on their wives . . .’

  ‘Aye, he was a wicked womanizer. An’ he didn’t stop at a slice o’ the
cut cake. He was after the unmarried ones as well. And at the Council, bloody fool. They reckon he scored with every typist in Secretaries . . .’

  ‘Till he come to Susan Myerscough,’ said Greta, with another vicious poke. ‘Susan fixed him, wi’ his tom-cat ways.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She went to old Burridge about him. It weren’t fair, Nevinson should’ve left Susan alone. She weren’t fair game. Susan’s the marrying sort, unlike some. He got her pregnant, an’ he wouldn’t marry her, so she went to Burridge.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘That’s not for us to say. You go an’ ask Susan if you’re that interested. Susan Nevinson, as she is now, and I never saw a merrier widow. Fine little boy he left her with, I’ll say that for him. And a fine whack o’ life insurance. Now not another word, Reg!’

  Reg looked at me, shrugged helplessly. I hope there never comes a time when Linda does that to me.

  After a silence, Linda said, ‘What do we do, now?’ I knew that even there, in the solid, chintzy warmth of Reg’s sitting-room, with the Dralon curtains drawn against the night, she was still listening for those paws, that sniffing. And tomorrow morning was only ten hours away, when I’d have to leave her alone again.

  ‘Aye,’ said Reg, after a long pause. ‘Burridge has got a hold on both of you. Did you leave anything at his house, Mr Dobson? Belonging to you or Mrs Dobson? Something small, like – a used handkerchief, or a stub of pencil? Hair and nail-parings is best, of course, but cloth or a pencil would do it.’

  I thought carefully. Made a mental check of all my gear. I’m the careful sort. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You sure? A pencil you’ve sucked, or a stamp you’ve licked?’

  ‘Nothing, I tell you.’

  ‘He couldn’t have stolen fluff out of your coat pocket, when you hung it up?’

  ‘I kept my coat on!’ He was starting to get on my nerves.

  ‘Get on wi’ it, Reg,’ said Mrs Totton, nearly as tense as I was.

  ‘Well, did he give you anything?’

  ‘No . . . yes. He was carrying a mug of tea, the first day I called; he stumbled and spilled some on my arm. How does that bring in Linda? Is tea enough?’

  ‘Tea drunk, no – goes straight through you. But tea spilt on your arm . . . leaving a stain on your coat, your shirt. Where’s that coat now?’

  I glanced at my donkey-jacket. ‘I’m still wearing it.’

  ‘And where’s the shirt?’

  ‘In the laundry-basket at home.’

  ‘So he can reach you, and he can reach Linda . . .’ He made a great play of tamping down his pipe and lighting it. I looked at Mrs Totton. She nodded, grimly.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Linda. ‘That’s medieval.’

  ‘So’s Burridge.’

  ‘What is he – some kind of witch?’ Her New England accent was very strong.

  ‘He’s a cunning-man, Mrs Dobson. The old ’uns still call him Cunning Burridge. There’s still a few cunning-men, plying their trade in Essex. In me grandfather’s time – afore the National Health Service – there were three or four in every town. People would come from miles away, like to doctors. And I’m not sure they didn’t do us more good than doctors.’

  ‘Lay off, Reg, this is the twentieth century!’

  ‘In London maybe, Mr Dobson. Not in Essex.’

  ‘So,’ said Linda, in a flat, beaten voice, ‘suppose you’re right; what do we do next?’

  ‘Well, you can do one of two things. Either go and ask him to take the witching off you voluntarily . . . but he’ll want something in return . . .’

  ‘Like not demolishing his house?’ I said. ‘What’s the other alternative, Reg?’

  ‘Well, if the cunning-man has used something to put a witching on you, they do say that if you cut that thing up and burn it piece by piece on your fire, the witch will be driven to your door afire wi’ fever . . . in a muck sweat. And he’ll go on burning till he’s taken the curse off you, see? You’ve got him, see? An’ if he won’t take the curse off, an’ you burn the last piece, the witch dies . . .’

  We all stared at each other, aghast.

  ‘We’d better be going,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the meal, Reg. Smashing cooking, Mrs Totton.’

  ‘Tek care, lad,’ said Reg.

  I put away the car, and followed Linda up to the house. She had all the lights on again, and she was standing holding open the front door, with the light streaming down the path.

  ‘I heard it,’ she said. ‘I heard it as soon as I unlocked the door. It’s inside the house.’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. I went to the dirty-laundry basket, and grabbed the shirt I’d worn to Burridge’s. It was one of my favourites – green with a white stripe and white collar. ‘Where do we burn it?’

  ‘But it’s nearly new . . . suppose nothing happens?’

  ‘If we burn it and nothing happens, we’ve got one less thing to worry about.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so cold, Dave. Let’s sit by the Aga. Want a whisky?’

  ‘A bloody big one.’

  It was snug by the Aga. We sat in our old wooden rockers, Linda cutting the shirt into half-inch strips, and me lifting the Aga lid and popping them down one by one.

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Linda, after a bit. ‘The sniffing thing . . . I just suddenly feel, know, it’s gone.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but it could come back. Let’s go on. It’s too late to save the shirt.’

  She held it up with a giggle. The tail was gone; and most of the front. ‘Shall we try a bit of the tea-stain itself?’

  ‘Why not?’ But some streak of caution made me add, ‘Only a bit.’

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Snip.’ A tiny piece of tea-stain fell on the floor, and I picked it up and put it in the Aga.

  After another half-hour, Linda said, ‘I feel silly. He’s not coming, is he? It’s not going to work. Let’s go to bed – I’m whacked.’

  I looked at my watch; gone midnight. I felt whacked too. But something hard and fierce was growing in me, like a backbone I never knew I had, that made me say, ‘Give it another half-hour. We’re six miles from where Burridge lives. And he’s an old man. And I don’t think he’s got a car.’

  Snip, snip, snip. I recharged our whisky-glasses. A cruel hunter’s excitement began to grow in me, a sadistic joy I’d never known.

  ‘I think it’s working. I feel he’s coming.’

  But the hammering on our front door still shook me rigid. One minute we were snug and giggling, and the next we were terrified. The knocking was so wild, so endless. I’ve only heard that kind of knocking once before, and then it was a car crash. Linda stood and stared at me, white, open-mouthed.

  ‘Get on the phone to the police,’ I said. ‘Dial 999, and keep the fuzz talking. Pretend we’ve lost Tigger or something. While I answer the door.’

  I picked up the remains of my shirt and the scissors, and shoved them into the pocket of the duffle-coat I was still wearing. I passed Linda as the police answered, and opened the front door.

  Burridge fell through, on to the doormat on his hands and knees. Sucking in great gouts of breath, his back heaving, the back of his neck a colour that is dangerous in an elderly man. He made no attempt to speak, just knelt there, fighting for breath. On and on. I was terrified, not of him, but that he might die on my doormat; at the same time I had never felt colder towards any human being in my life.

  I signalled the horrified Linda to get off the phone, before Burridge’s stertorous breathing brought the whole Essex Con­stabulary thundering down on us. I felt I could cope with Burridge now. Linda made some quavering response about pussy just walking through the door (I ask you, at twenty past one in the morning!) and hung up.

  Together, we got Burridge into a kitchen rocker. Hard going. He was a heavy man, and slippery with perspiration. He stank of sweat; his overcoat was soaked, though it was a dry night.

  I loosened his collar and tie, and played the hypocrite in a heartless way
that shocked me.

  ‘Hello, it’s Mr Burridge! Are you ill, Mr Burridge? Shall I call an ambulance? Linda, ring for an ambulance!’

  With that gesture of his hand, Burridge cancelled the order. But it was a frantic version of that gesture. He kept throwing himself about in the rocker; nearly rocked it clear across the room. His eyes were trapped and desperate; he rolled his head from side to side; there was dried scrum round his lips. Though he wasn’t dying, yet.

  ‘The shirt. Give me the shirt!’

  I took it out of my pocket and looked at it mockingly. ‘I’m afraid there’s not much of it left, Mr Burridge. Best throw it on the fire, eh?’

  I lifted the Aga lid. He screamed, as I have never heard a man scream.

  ‘Give . . . me . . . that . . . shirt.’

  ‘Why? So you can use it to work other spells on us? So you can send your sniffing-thing bothering my wife again?’

  In spite of his sufferings, his eyes were contemptuous.

  ‘If . . . I . . . take . . . back . . . the shirt . . . it’s all over.’

  Linda moved across, snatched the remnant from my hand, and gave it to him. He snatched it as a refugee might snatch a crust, and immediately became still. His head drooped, his eyes closed. I might have thought him dead, but his breathing was steadying, and the puce colour was seeping out of his face. I noticed the state his clothes were in – boots scuffed, trousers torn, overcoat smeared with yellow mud. He looked, with his grey hair in tats all over the place, like an old tramp.

  I poured him a small whisky and gained his attention by tapping its wet rim against his hand. He sipped it slowly, head still down. He wasn’t sweating any more, but his soaked clothes steamed from the heat of the Aga and the stink was horrific.

  But when he finally looked up, he was his old calm, sure self again.

  ‘Who told you?’ he asked, as if he had a right to know. ‘Who told you what I’d done to you? And how to cure it?’