The Limits of Enchantment

by Graham Joyce

  ‘There. Let me look at you.’ Judith lifted a strand of my hair and parked it behind my ear. ‘Fern, you’re gorgeous. I could almost fancy you myself.’

  I blinked at her. ‘Couldn’t you take my place? Please?’

  ‘For God’s sake this is a date! You don’t substitute for a friend! Is that pie burning?’

  The pastry on the egg and bacon pie had caught and was smoking. Though it wasn’t too bad, and Judith said if he complained that the pie was bitter I was to say it had burned slightly in the oven.

  Everything was ready except me. I couldn’t stop myself from trembling. I made Judith promise to come back at nine o’clock to check on things. She was to look through the window and knock on the door on the pretext of having forgotten something. She promised me I would be fine, kissed me on the lips, then reapplied some lipstick before leaving.

  Arthur McCann was punctual enough. He knocked on the door on the stroke of seven.

  I took a breath and opened the door. ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘have some pie.’

  ‘Christ!’ went Arthur. He faltered, looking like he might have come to the wrong house. He looked at my hair, then at my legs, then he peered over my shoulder at the candles burning and the table all laid. ‘Christ,’ he said again, ‘you’ve been busy.’

  My cheeks burned, and my hand went up to touch the hairgrips, which were gone. My head felt as though it were swelling. Arthur had ditched his motorbike gear and had turned up in a neat grey suit and wearing a thin blue tie. He swayed slightly on the step and I caught a whiff of vinegary ale. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might have gone drinking before showing up. I stepped aside to let him in and I slammed the door shut behind him, too hard. He looked alarmed, so I opened it again and left it ajar to the evening air. Then I told him to sit in Mammy’s chair while I poured him a glass of beer. He was about to say something but I felt my gorge rising so I slammed the beer down on the hearth for him and I stepped outside, where I leaned against the wall to calm myself.

  I needed a moment just to look up at the first stars twinkling out. It helped me to think of Valentina, my cosmonaut heroine, all alone in her shiny satellite. She would know what to do with Arthur. I called myself a ridiculous little virgin, and after a moment I felt my heart begin to slow again. Finally I went back inside.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I’m all right! Do you think you’re the first man I’ve ever cooked a pie for and got dressed up like this for and entertained in my own cottage without anyone else being present? Is that it?’

  Arthur put his forefinger in his ear and shook his head. ‘Well, no.’

  I saw his ale untouched on the hearth. ‘Drink some beer, will you? Just drink it.’ My voice was shrill. It didn’t sound like me at all.

  ‘I think I’ve had enough beer tonight.’

  ‘What? You can’t have!’

  He blinked sleepy eyes at me. ‘I’m pickled already. I’ve been in the Bewicke Arms. If I have any more I’ll fall over.’

  ‘But you can’t be!’

  ‘Well if you insist!’ He picked up the beer and drank halfway down the glass. ‘It’s flat.’

  I sank slowly into the chair across the hearth, staring at him, wondering how I might liven up his beer for him.

  ‘You look fabulous, Fern. Fabulous.’

  ‘Never mind that, drink some more.’

  ‘That beer’s off I tell you.’ Then he belched silently.

  ‘Right,’ I snapped. ‘You’ll just have to eat something.’

  I pulled a chair from under the table, like a waiter in a restaurant, waiting for him to sit. Puzzled, Arthur scratched his head, came over and obediently lowered himself into the chair. Then I lifted out the pie, still warm in the cooling oven, cut him an over-generous slice and served it up on a plate with a salad.

  I was about to set it on the table before him when he said, ‘What’s this then?’

  ‘Egg and bacon pie.’

  Arthur sucked air through his teeth. ‘Sorry. I should have said. I’m a vegetarian.’

  ‘You’re a what now?’

  ‘Vegetarian. Have been for some years.’

  ‘You can’t be!’

  ‘I can be!’

  ‘Vegetarian!’ I cried. ‘But in God’s name why?’

  ‘Well,’ Arthur said in a reasonable tone, ‘I don’t think it’s right to eat animals, that’s all. Not that I force my views on anyone else. If you want to eat meat that’s your business. I happen to think it’s not necessary.’ He was slurring a little already.

  I stood open-mouthed, still holding the plate in my two hands, stooped in the act of setting it on the table and thinking how could it be that the entire district might have only one vegetarian, and I’d found him. I slammed the plate down on the table and picked up his knife. He winced a little, as if I was about to use it on him, but I set to work cutting the bacon out of his pie. I fished the bacon strips out with my fingers and made a little pile of them on my side of the table. ‘There,’ I said, ‘no meat in that now.’

  ‘Look Fern—’ he started.

  ‘Don’t say anything, Arthur McCann. I’ve spent all afternoon baking that pie for you and you’ll bloody well eat it.’ I couldn’t keep the shrillness out of my voice.

  He laughed and hiccuped. ‘All right! Calm down.’

  ‘I’m perfectly calm.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to join me?’

  I remembered the salad dressing. ‘I’ve no appetite,’ I said, fetching the dressing. I returned and spread it liberally on his salad.

  ‘Hold on!’ he said. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘French dressing. Very fancy. No meat in it either. Not going to object to that, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, have some more then.’ I soaked his plate with the stuff. Then under the pretext of opening a new bottle of beer for him I went away from the table and poured him more from the flagon. Then I decided to strengthen it with a good measure of sloe gin.

  ‘That one’s better,’ he avowed after sampling his freshened drink. ‘Though you could stand your spoon up in it.’

  ‘Are you going to complain at me all night about everything I put before you?’

  Arthur chewed grimly on the charred crust of his pie. Then he blinked at me again with eyelids drooping over bloodshot eyes. He smiled sleepily. ‘This is turning out to be quite an evening.’

  *

  The pudding went down rather better, I’m very glad to say, though I had to keep exhorting him to drink. At least my pulse rate was settling by the time he’d had two helpings of dessert. He even complimented me on my fruit crumble, which was a little unnecessary. Then, just as I was working up to asking him one or two probing questions about what he might know about Venables, I twigged that he was getting ready for what Judith warned me would be the pounce.

  Judith had told me I might expect one of only two kinds of pounces. The first she said is so blindingly obvious that it is telegraphed a long way ahead, in which men move into a kind of lumbering and distracted slow-motion world, as if their feet and their thoughts are caught in deep river-mud. These she said are easy to dodge, since you see the event coming a quarter of an hour ahead of its delivery. The other kind, she had told me, was an onslaught so fast and so out of nowhere that even the man can appear somewhat startled by it.

  So I thought I had the measure of Arthur when he started yattering about fruit crumble. But I was mistaken. I took Arthur’s dish to the sink and I was rinsing it when I heard a rushing sound behind me. Arthur fastened his arms around my waist and started kissing my neck. I supposed this to be a Type Two. The thing is I didn’t know what to do with his crumble dish. Instinctively I flapped at Arthur with the wet cloth and it caught his eye.

  He staggered back, rubbing his sore eye, and then seemed to collapse on one knee. He groaned. Feeling bad I rushed to him to see if his eye was all right and the next thing I knew was that he folded his arms around my bottom and sank his face
into my thighs.

  I didn’t know when he’d last shaved but I could feel the rough of his chin snagging on the nylon as he went, ‘Fernfernfern. You’re fabulous.’ That’s all he was saying: ‘Fernfernfern.’

  I thought for a moment he’d fallen asleep with his face between my thighs, but he hauled himself to his feet and kissed me, pushing me back against the kitchen sink. I wasn’t averse to the kiss but I could taste beer, saltpetre and sloe gin on his breath, not to mention Judith’s garlicky salad dressing. They didn’t blend well. What’s more I could feel what was inside his trousers, pushing against my thigh. After a while I tried to shove him away, but he laughed and picked me up in his arms.

  I admit I screamed – more in fun than in fear – and then he carried me through to the parlour and flung me down on the old sofa. Mammy’s lace doily on the back of the sofa was dislodged. I wanted to giggle until he reached up under my ridiculously short skirt, hooked his fingers around the elasticated top of my nylons and my knickers and hoiked them all the way down to my shoes. I screamed again.

  ‘Arthur! Get off me! What do you think you’re doing? I want to hear what you know about Venables!’

  ‘Eh? What? I’m on fire I am! Got to have you, Fern.’

  ‘Get off me, you pig!’

  But I couldn’t get myself from beneath his weight and he had already loosened his own trousers and had them down round his knees. The next thing he reared up and all I saw was his long pink cock bobbing in the air, and it seemed less like it belonged to him than something that had got loose from the exotic animals’ tent at the annual county show, and I thought damnit he’s going to stick it in me.

  So I grabbed it.

  Arthur yelped, and then froze, and then shuddered. Next he collapsed on top of me in a spasm, going Fernfernfern in my ear, Fernfernfern, and I felt his fetch in my hand. At last his spasms got gentler and his voice in my ear got quieter, and after a moment I realised he’d gone to sleep on top of me.

  I tried to get out from under him, but he was too heavy. I looked at the palm of my hand. His fetch was all in my hand, gleaming like the vernix on a new-born baby. I held it up to the candlelight, and the light raced over it like it was mother-of-pearl, or the berry of the mistletoe. It was beautiful, a kind of magical substance, hot and messy and curving to the lifeline of my hand and I thought that’s all it takes, some of that, a bit of that in the mix of inside you and the whole howling laughing crying screaming thing begins again for another soul, and I thought, what brilliant, dangerous stuff!

  He started snoring gently. I had to force myself from under him before some demon inside me wanted to push some of that stuff where it wanted to go. I shouted in Arthur’s ear. I hammered on his shoulders to let me out but he snored on and there was no waking him. At last I managed to manoeuvre my leg from beneath his great weight and roll him off me, whereupon he flipped over on his back, smacked his lips a couple of times and continued to snore. I dashed to the sink where I washed the magic star-like stuff off my hands so that it could do no mischief.

  When I went back to him I was shocked to see his thing still stuck up in the air. I was always led to believe that these things went down again after a man had fetched. But there it was, standing proud, like the last stubborn ninepin in the cave of the skittle alley, or like a stinkhorn fungus on the forest floor.

  I had a closer look. It didn’t smell bad like a stinkhorn – a fungus I wouldn’t even like to touch – in fact the smell coming from it, musty and cloying, put me in mind of the May blossom. Now that Arthur was snoring away this thing that moments earlier had been like a thrashing, snapping ferret now looked quite comical. I was wondering what would happen were I to touch it again when I heard a tapping on the door.

  Nine o’clock! It was Judith, come to see if I was all right.

  ‘Where is he?’ she said, standing on tiptoes to look over my shoulder after I’d got the door open.

  ‘Back room, sleeping.’

  ‘What?’ She pushed past me. ‘What’s he doing there?’

  ‘He was already completely drunk when he got here. Then I gave him four pints of beer and gin mixed.’

  Judith looked at me as if I were slightly mad. Then she bustled through to the parlour. ‘Good God! What’s that?’

  ‘It’s what it looks like.’ I watched Judith approach the snoring Arthur very slowly. Her eyes were fixed on his tent pole. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t wake him. I’ve tried.’

  ‘You might at least have covered it up.’

  ‘Oh pardon me, your ladyship! I’ll throw a handkerchief over it! Never mind that: what about your saltpetre and black willow buds and sweet waterlily? All useless! Completely hopeless. You said he wouldn’t even get a stand!’

  ‘Heck. Did he eat the pie?’

  ‘Of course he ate the pie. But look at him now! The opposite! I’ll never listen to you again, Judith!’

  She got down on her knees and leaned against the sofa, fascinated. ‘Look at it! Shows no sign of flagging, does it?’

  ‘What shall we do about it?’

  Judith thought for a minute. ‘We could tie a little bow to it.’

  ‘This is serious, Judith! I don’t want him to wake up and try to stab me with that thing.’

  Judith made a spring of her thumb and forefinger, reached out and flicked the head lightly. It vibrated and returned to position. Judith flicked it again.

  ‘Judith!’

  Judith opened one of Arthur’s eyes between forefinger and thumb. It was all white. Then she pulled Arthur’s hair. Harder. Then she slapped his face. He snored on happily. ‘Right. We’ll get him outside. The cold air at least might bring him round.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I don’t know! I’m thinking as I go, Fern! Get a leg and an arm, will you?’

  ‘Let’s put that away first.’

  We tried to tug his trousers up around it but the thing wouldn’t lie flat and we couldn’t button him up. ‘How the hell do men go around with one of these in their trousers?’ Judith said. She reached for something black that was hanging on a peg behind the door and covered it with that.

  ‘That’s Mammy’s best hat! Get it off him!’

  Judith sighed and replaced the hat with a tea towel. Then she snorted.

  I didn’t find it so funny. ‘I’m not using that for the dishes again,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up and let’s get him outside.’

  It was a huge effort dragging Arthur from the sofa, through the parlour and to the kitchen door. He was a big man. His head cracked on the doorstep as we got him out. Judith wanted to just dump him on the lawn and bolt the door against him, but it hardly seemed fair. Then I had another idea. I suggested we drag him to the outhouse and set him up on the toilet so that when he came round he’d think he went outside of his own volition and fell asleep. So we dragged him to the outhouse. We had to stop once to replace the tea towel, but he slid pretty sweetly along the damp cobblestones of the yard. Setting him upright on the throne was tricky, but after a struggle we left him slumped there with his trousers round his ankles, still snoring and smacking his lips in deep sleep. We left the tea towel to give him something to think about when he woke up.

  Back inside we bolted the door against him. I was exhausted, but Judith made me recount everything that had happened. In the end I persuaded her to sleep over with me in case he came back raging, so we climbed into my bed together and lay talking in the dark.

  ‘He fetched into my hand,’ I told her. ‘Then he turned to mush.’

  ‘They do that, men,’ she said. Wistfully, so I thought.

  After an hour or so Arthur came rapping on the door, calling my name. Judith and I hugged each other and stayed silent as mice. He knocked and called again. Soon he gave up and went away.

  ‘I’ll never go along with your ideas again,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up,’ Judith said. ‘Go to sleep.’

  19

  I doubted if the evening’s events had advanced my cause or hel
ped me in my predicament. The idea had been for me to quiz Arthur about my prospects and to butter him up so that he might use his influence to help me. All Judith would say about that was, ‘Wait and see.’

  The next day being the Saturday of the party at Croker’s Farm, Judith hung around all day prevailing upon me to take her along. She also spread out the Old Moore’s Almanac on the kitchen table, but only after I’d got her to scrub the table down and otherwise extinguish all sign of the previous evening’s dinner. The Old Moore’s Almanac, in addition to its precise lists of positions of the moon and information about the stars and the tides, was littered with advertisements for a lucky rabbit’s foot and a pixie charm and the like, along with written testaments as to how cash had fallen to various people after obtaining such a talisman. ‘We ought to go in for selling this tripe,’ Judith said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, scraping egg and bacon pie leftovers into the bin. ‘We could sell anaphrodisiacs as well.’

  I was more comfortable back in my own clothes, and in my own hair as it were, with three comforting iron grips pinned high above my right ear. I told Judith if that’s what tarting it up does for men she could keep it.

  She ignored me, and continued to pore over the small-print charts. ‘You’ve only got two full moons before midsummer’s day, and you won’t want to do it after; and you won’t want to do it waxing; and you won’t want to do it when you’re on the curse.’ She wet the tip of her index finger to leaf through the pages of the almanac. ‘It’s amazing how the time is eaten up if you don’t plan ahead.’

  ‘Don’t badger me!’

  ‘Please yourself. But if you really are going to Ask you’ll want to do it while you’re still here in the cottage, with easy access to the woods and the meadows. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said, and I poured what was left of her wickedly ineffective salad dressing down the drain.

  I made my visit to Mammy earlier in the afternoon that day, and Judith came with me. The visit didn’t go well. Perhaps it was the leather jacket, or that I’d arrived there along with Judith, but Mammy was confused. She didn’t seem to recognise me at all. Seeing how this upset me, Judith left me alone with Mammy and waited outside. I plumped up Mammy’s pillow and I combed her hair. She looked at me glassy-eyed. ‘Why are you plaguing me? Have you asked the mistress?’ she said.