The Limits of Enchantment

by Graham Joyce

  I opened my eyes and I was astonished to see Chas’s face just an inch away from my own. He blinked. His breath fanned my cheek. Then he leaned in and he kissed me, so softly, and so sweetly. I felt the kiss course through my body. I shuddered internally. At that moment the only feeling I had was in my mouth, in my tingling lips; lips that seemed to have swollen. I could taste the tobacco and the pot on his breath. Then he broke the kiss and sat back. He took a pull on his cigarette and breathed the smoke back into my mouth, and I don’t know why but I wondered then if he had done that to me before.

  ‘The great thing about you, Fern,’ he said, ‘is that you don’t know what you’ve got.’

  And then he leaned over and kissed me a second time.

  *

  The man came lumbering towards us. I knew he was no danger. He would never catch us, the way a nimble dog might. But he could do us mischief by blocking our path on one side, and if he worked his dogs as a team he might try to steer us to give them an advantage.

  The dogs were yelping at our heels again. I could smell their breath now and I could hear their jaws snapping at the air. The hare in front of me made a remarkable move. It surprised me by accelerating directly at the man. I knew only that I should follow. It caught the man off guard. Then when we were within two or three yards of him we made a turn followed by a rapid second turn to zigzag around him. We raced through a gap in the hedgerow and burst clear into the next field.

  The man yelled and the dogs squealed. The dogs muscled through the hedgerow after us and I was beginning to feel tired though the hare showed no signs of weakening, and I knew it was because I was only pretending to be a hare. Out of one eye I saw the man vaulting a gate and running towards us as his dogs made up the distance.

  Chas opened my blouse and my breasts fell forward and he froze and gazed at them for a moment, as if they were somehow dangerous. I felt a tiny bit of strength returning but I was still desperately weak and I hadn’t got an ounce of energy with which to resist him. He leaned over and he licked my nipples. My heart hammered. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. He sucked at my breasts and ran his tongue under the curve where my breasts met my ribcage, and then he planted kisses on my belly.

  Then he pushed up my skirt and he tore down my knickers, and now I wanted to call out, to stop him, but I could barely move. It was as if huge weights were attached to my arms and legs. He parted my legs and hooked the backs of my knees across the arms of the chair and I tried to signal frantically with my eyes to get him to stop, not to do this.

  I wanted to shout to the hare that I couldn’t keep up; wanted to say I’m not a hare, I’m a woman. The dogs were snapping, snapping at my heels and I was running, running, and my heart was misfiring and my bones were ready to snap with the pain of exertion. The hare looked back and I knew that it saw my distress and my failure to outrun the dogs. One of the dogs drew almost abreast of me and clamped its jaws around my heel and the pain stabbed through me and I saw only a blood-red sky and I was ready to die and be torn apart. But in that moment the hare in front of me slewed to a halt, quite deliberately, and let the other two dogs take it instead of me. The third dog left me and went for it.

  Chas unbuckled his belt and lowered his trousers and his erection bobbed clear before he pushed inside me and I know a scream came from my mouth because it was almost the first sound I had made that day. It hurt. He humped at me without grace, the smell of his sweat streaming from him, his face red and ugly and contorted as he ejaculated inside me.

  He shuddered to a halt and buried his head in my breasts. I leaned forward, and I took the soft part of his ear between my teeth and I bit hard and I didn’t let go.

  Chas smashed his fist into my eye trying to get away. He kicked wildly and hurt my foot. I bit down on his ear harder, and there was an explosion of his blood in my mouth.

  I saw the dogs tear at the hare in a puff of blood that lined the sky. There was a moment of storm in the dry dust of the field. There was so much blood and fur in the air I could taste it. The dogs stripped the flesh of the hare between them. It had surrendered to them so that I could escape.

  Exhausted, I ran for cover. I returned to the same spot in the hedgerow where I had waited all day. The grass was still beaten down like a hare’s form. I licked the wound on my leg, and let myself go perfectly still. I even managed to still my breathing. I trusted to the camouflage of the hedge and hoped and prayed that the sacrifice of the hare would be enough to keep the dogs away.

  24

  I was bathing the wound on my ankle when Judith returned. Chas had gone. I had already managed to clean up the place. There was blood on the kitchen floor. I felt weak, tremulous, but I was relieved to be moving again.

  ‘You’ve recovered, I see,’ Judith said when she came in.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Weak.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I scratched my ankle.’

  I still had my back to her as I dried my foot. When I turned she saw the swelling around my eye. ‘Fern! Whatever happened?’

  ‘I was giddy and I fell over.’

  Now she was all concern. ‘Sit down. You shouldn’t even be on your feet. Look at you, you’re shaking.’ She led me back to my chair.

  I couldn’t contain myself. ‘You should have been here, Judith!’

  ‘I was only gone for half an hour!’

  ‘You deserted me! You shouldn’t have left me alone! I don’t want to be alone!’

  Judith dropped down to take a look at my injured foot. ‘That looks messy. What have you put on it? Here, give me that flannel.’

  She bathed my ankle gently, dabbing slowly at the laceration. Then she studied it closer. ‘This looks bad.’ She stopped dabbing. After a moment she looked up at me. ‘It went wrong, didn’t it Fern?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have left me.’

  ‘Tell me everything that happened. Please tell me.’

  I clamped my jaw tight. I compressed my lips.

  It hadn’t gone right, but it hadn’t gone completely wrong either. That is, events turned, as is promised to those who Ask, but not in any way I might have predicted. My first concern now that it was over was to go and see Mammy, and even though I was in no real shape to make the journey into Leicester I did exactly that. It had been three days since I’d seen her and she would have guessed what I’d done.

  Even though I still felt groggy after the ravages of the day, I put on my leather jacket and went out. I couldn’t face hitching a ride into town so I cut through the woods and waited at the bus stop for the evening service into Leicester. The wound on my foot ached. My eyesight was suffering from a flickering, no doubt brought on by my experiences. The light wouldn’t settle. There were patches of sky where it ran and spilled from the cloudless blue like quicksilver. The hedgerows too popped and quivered with life.

  I heard a motorbike approaching so I hid in the hedge in case it was Arthur. As it happened, it wasn’t. I thought the dogwood and the blackthorn were writhing and unfurling behind my back as I waited in the hedge. Some of me had been left behind. Or perhaps I’d brought the events of the day with me, and they roiled in my wake.

  I was just in time to catch the end of the visiting period. The lights in ward twelve had been switched on. I attracted a few strange glances – I know I looked like a scarecrow or even some kind of demon with my shaved head and my bruised eye, but I couldn’t disguise any of it. But when I reached the foot of Mammy’s bed I cast around for help.

  Mammy’s bed was empty. It had been stripped and the pillow was gone. Her personal possessions had been removed.

  I heard footsteps coming up behind me. It was one of the nurses. ‘Where’s Mammy?’ I almost shouted. ‘What have you done with her?’

  ‘You’re her daughter, aren’t you?’ the nurse said. ‘Come with me.’

  I followed the nurse to the ward sister’s office at the corner of the ward. The ward sister was in there, writing
something on a wall chart. The nurse sat me down. ‘She’s in the mortuary,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Mortuary?’ I said. ‘Why? When? When did this happen?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  The ward sister put down her pen. ‘I’ll deal with this,’ she said. The nurse went out of the office. The sister took hold of my hand. ‘She was very old, and very tired. She let go.’

  ‘I should have been here.’

  ‘Look,’ the sister said. ‘I know you weren’t here. But in her confusion she thought you were. She told me as much. Though you’ll be glad to know that her friend William was here when she passed away. She wasn’t alone. He asked me to tell you that he would take care of everything.’

  I was shocked to discover that William had been with her in her final moments. I got up and walked out. I couldn’t stand to listen to any more of it. I heard the sister calling after me, but I went out and I walked into the gathering twilight and I don’t know if I got a lift or if I caught a bus or even if I walked all the way home.

  Next evening I had a visit from the parish vicar, the Reverend Miller. When I opened the door the vicar was visibly shocked by my appearance. In fact he took a step back. ‘Fern!’

  ‘I know I look a fright. What can I do for you?’ I didn’t want him to come in. I’d slept very badly and I was still groggy from the depravations of the previous day.

  ‘I’ve come to talk about the arrangements.’

  ‘Arrangements?’

  ‘William Brewer came to see me last night. I told him I’d come to see you.’ He blinked at me.

  I let him in. He asked how I’d blacked my eye and I told him I’d fallen over. From the things he said I could tell he thought I’d cut my hair in a fit of grief. Then he sat in the chair and leaned forward, pressing his knees with the palms of his hands, and blurted to me that he’d had a visit from Venables that morning and that Venables had said that it was the wish of Lord Stokes and the estate that Mammy not be buried in the churchyard.

  I laughed. Of course I didn’t give a damn whether Mammy was buried in the churchyard, and neither would Mammy. I hadn’t thought about it, but I expected the council crematorium to serve just as well. But then the vicar surprised me.

  ‘Of course, I told him to go to hell.’

  ‘You whatnow?’

  ‘I don’t like the man and I don’t like the cut of his jib. And I told him that it was up to me to decide, not him and not Lord Stokes. I know Mammy had an aversion for the church, it’s no secret. But God receives all into his heart and God loves—’

  ‘The crow as he does the nightingale. Yes.’ I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Exactly. So I have no objection. There’s a place for Mammy, should you want it.’

  I admit I was astonished by this support from such an unlikely source. ‘I can’t pay you. We’ve nothing.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that. We’ve a fund. I’ll take care of it. Right now I’m more concerned about you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You’re grieving but you’re not letting go. I don’t like the thought of you here on your own.’

  And he actually offered to let me go and live with him and his wife at the vicarage, which he said had a choice of spare rooms. It was hard work persuading him that I was all right on my own. Incredibly hard work. But I couldn’t see myself sipping from a mug of steaming cocoa as he stroked a guitar while his wife sang ‘Kumbaya’. Eventually I got him out of the house, thanking him for his generosity.

  I was so perturbed by this unexpected alliance that after he’d gone I switched on the record-player and played ‘Green Onions’. I left the arm back so it would repeat and I turned it up really loud to block out the enraging chorus of ‘Kumbaya’ circulating in my head.

  The day after that I had a letter from the manager of the Nationwide Building Society in Market Harborough. It informed me that my debt on the cottage had been paid off in full. Not only that, my rent for the next three months had been taken care of. I put on my coat and marched out of the gate up to Croker’s Farm.

  It was an exceptional morning towards the end of March.

  When I got to the farm Luke was there, carrying some panes of glass. He couldn’t take his eyes from my shaved head. I asked him where I could find Chas, and he pointed to the frame of a new greenhouse they were building. When Chas saw me coming he waved. He was also holding a pane of glass. He smiled stupidly and held the glass in front of his face, mashing his nose and lips up against the glass.

  I could have smashed that glass with my fist.

  He must have seen the expression on my face, because as I approached he came from behind the glass. He lost his smile. His brow furrowed. ‘What’s up, Fern?’

  ‘Get away from me. It doesn’t make it all right.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You can’t ever make it right.’

  ‘Make what right?’

  ‘If you think you can pay them off and that’s the end of it, you don’t know me. You don’t know me at all.’

  Chas put down the square of glass he was holding and scratched his head. He shouted after me but I was already striding out of the yard. Luke said something as I passed but I ignored him. Then Greta hurried over to me.

  ‘Your hair, Fern! I almost didn’t recognise you,’ Greta said. ‘Look, I need to see you. I need some help.’

  ‘See Chas,’ I spat back at her. ‘He’s a great helper.’

  I heard her calling my name as I hurried down the lane, and the tarmac road undulated in front of me, like a set of lungs moving a ribcage up and down.

  I was certain it had been Chas who had paid off my rent arrears to try to make up for what he’d done to me. It was how he worked. Same as with the record-player he’d given me with ‘Green Onions’, to buy me off after I’d helped him over the drugs. But then I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake in assuming it was Chas. What if I was wrong? What if it had been someone else? I tried hard to think of who might do such a thing. Of course I knew it was a gift from the hare, it had to be because of the Asking, but the hare would have to act through someone. It had to have an agent in this world.

  I took a bus into Market Harborough and went to the offices of the Nationwide and questioned the manager about who had paid my rent. The manager turned out to be someone who had been to the same school as I had, though he was a good few years older. He sat at a polished walnut desk with his hands on the table, fingertips making a steeple pointed towards me. Hateful hateful hateful. Shifting his gaze from my shaved head to my bruised eye, he explained that the payment had been made anonymously; he even explained the word ‘anonymously’ to me as if I didn’t know its meaning.

  I said it didn’t seem right that folk could go around paying for things for people without revealing their identity. I asked him if it was legal and he laughed in my face. He pointed out that I didn’t have to accept the payment, that I could insist it be cancelled and remain in arrears. But what I couldn’t do was know who’d paid it.

  I was so angry I tried to slam the door on the way out, but it was a heavy door on a sprung hinge and it wouldn’t close. In my efforts I knocked over a stack of leaflets. I only succeeded in looking foolish. The manager and his staff watched in silence as I left the premises.

  From there I walked back to Keywell, determined to go up to the hideous pile – the vile Stokes Jacobean mansion – that owned my tiny cottage and a thousand acres of local land besides. My feet crunched the gravel of the long driveway as I passed the scruffy lake and the huge rhododendron bushes that were just beginning to bud. When I got to the house Lord Stokes and another man were mounted on horses in the quadrangle in front of the house, attended by grooms in cloth caps who toadied round adjusting stirrup lengths and tightening leather girths. Another chap, hands in his pockets, lounged against a brand-new Land Rover. He looked up at me from under a smart cloth cap and his fingers touched the paintwork of his new vehicle, almost protectively.

  I walked straight up to one of th
e two grooms. The mounted men and the grooms went silent, and froze, and looked at me as if I were a ghost in chains. The horses turned and looked at me, too. Lord Stokes was a man with a collapsed face the hue of claret. His eyes were bloodshot and his droopy moustache was the colour of a nicotine stain. His head withdrew into his neck, like a tortoise might, as he peered at me. Then his grey mare stamped and backed away.

  ‘Stand!’ his lordship snarled at the animal. ‘Stand!’

  ‘Where do I find the Estate Manager?’ I demanded of one of the grooms.

  ‘You don’t come ’ere,’ the groom said sharply with the vile, assumed superiority of those who wait on the rich. He pointed behind the house. ‘Get yourself to the offices, over yonder.’

  I turned and walked out of the quadrangle, but I heard Lord Stokes say, ‘Who the dashed hell is that?’

  ‘Frightening the horses!’ chortled the other rider. And they laughed.

  I walked between some yew hedges and beyond a redbrick-walled kitchen garden, and then along a gravel path to a set of outbuildings. A door stood open. Inside a gloomy office Venables the Estate Manager sat pushing a pen across a page.

  He looked startled to see me. Perhaps he didn’t recognise me at first. Then he relaxed and leaned back in his chair, pressing the tips of his fingers on the very edge of his desk. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Someone paid off my rent.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to know who paid it.’

  He looked surprised. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘No idea. It won’t do you any good, though.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘We want you out. And we shall have you out, whether you have the rent or not.’

  ‘You’ll have to pull the place down around my ears, then.’

  He leaned his elbows on the desk and locked his fingers together in front of his face, as if in prayer. He surveyed me gloomily. ‘That’s easily arranged. Easily.’