The Limits of Enchantment

by Graham Joyce

Presently Bill arrived, and by that time Mrs Myers had taken out her curlers, and had spruced herself up for his arrival. When he came in he skimmed his policeman’s cap across the room to land in a chair and they kissed as if they’d been parted for a fortnight instead of a few hours. Bill hugged his wife and then spotted me. ‘Hello Fern, what brings you here? You know I was very sorry to hear about Mammy. Very sorry.’

  ‘Something’s going on,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want to go in the other room?’ Peggy Myers said. She was already busy readying something for Bill to eat. I said no, I didn’t mind her hearing; I don’t know why. I told Bill about my visit from the unknown doctor. I let him know that I knew why the doctor had come.

  ‘What makes you think someone will try to have you put away, Fern?’ Bill said quietly.

  But it was Peggy who answered for me, turning from the sink with a chopping knife in her hand. ‘’Cos that’s what they did to Mammy. It was back in the thirties, wasn’t it Fern? Locked her up in the funny farm, didn’t they? When there was nothing wrong with her.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Bill’s mother told me about it, years ago,’ Peggy said. ‘She made enemies. They were scared of Mammy, they were. Scared.’

  ‘This is nineteen sixty-six,’ Bill said. ‘They don’t do things like that any more.’

  ‘Ha!’ went Peggy. ‘My eye!’

  Bill scratched his head. ‘Hell,’ he said.

  Bill and Peggy started a discussion about whether they really could still do that to people. I learned that all it took was a doctor’s say-so, especially with me living alone. Then Bill furrowed his brow and turned to me. ‘You’ve got to tread carefully now Fern, ’cos there’s been a complaint about you, you know.’

  ‘Complaint? But I haven’t done anything!’

  ‘Well you say that. But Lord Stokes says you went up to the manor house the other day causing trouble and—’

  ‘Trouble!’

  ‘Then the manager of the building society said you were in town throwing leaflets all round the premises—’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘And then the Cormells’ lad told his teacher at school that he’d seen you sitting in the hedge with your face all smeared …’

  My stomach turned over.

  ‘And the teacher thought she ought to tell me, and well, this was so wild I went and spoke with the lad’s father and he said he saw you too, though they’re all fond of you the Cormells are, and the old man said you were causing no harm, just sitting in the hedge.’

  I tried to speak, but nothing would come out. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my head was spinning. I looked at Bill. His mouth was moving and I could hear him, but it was like listening from underwater.

  ‘So what were you doing in the hedge, Fern?’ Bill was saying.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation for some of these things. But I don’t mind saying we’re worried about you,’ Bill said. ‘I want you to do something, Fern. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t been taking drugs at that Croker’s Farm.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said.

  ‘You swear?’

  ‘I swear I haven’t been taking drugs at Croker’s Farm.’

  ‘Because you start by taking drugs at Croker’s Farm and then you end up cutting all your hair off and sitting in hedges and who-knows-what. That’s exactly what happens with druggies. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Don’t push her,’ Peggy said.

  ‘This is a small village, Fern. You’ve got to know how people are talking about you. They see everything.’

  We all went quiet. I might have knuckled away a tear. Then Peggy said, ‘Do you want a spot of summat to eat?’

  I said I didn’t. I told them I had things to do and I got up to leave. They both came to the door to see me out. ‘It’s Mammy’s funeral tomorrow afternoon, isn’t it?’ Peggy said. ‘We’ll be there.’

  After my lecture from Bill I walked back to the cottage with a leaden heart. I don’t know what my visit to the police house had accomplished, though I did at least come away with a picture of exactly how I was regarded in the community: as a little mad woman who shaved her head and prescribed herbal remedies, and who had tantrums in the building society.

  It was so unfair.

  27

  The motor of the vacuum cleaner whined from somewhere inside the house, rising and falling, and I thought I should knock louder the second time. The cleaner was switched off and when Judith answered the door she showed no pleasure in seeing me. Her face was neutral. Her hair was tied at the back in twists, and she gave these an odd little shake.

  ‘I want to talk,’ I said.

  She let me in and closed the door behind me, then went back to the vacuum cleaner and switched it on. ‘Talk, then,’ she said above the din, running the thing along the carpet.

  It was like watching someone plough a field. She ran the machine in a dead straight line from the top of the room to the bottom. Then she swung around and came back again, very slowly, very precisely, taking great care to overlap her previous track by about an inch. It was mesmerising.

  ‘You’re not talking very much,’ she shouted above the drone of the motor. ‘I thought you said you’d come to talk.’

  ‘So I have,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said: so I have.’

  ‘What?’

  I looked away. Judith continued to track up and down the carpet with bloodcurdling slowness. I glanced around at the obsessive tidiness of her house and at the matching furniture. It was all very modern, much like her. You could see she was proud of the appearance of her little terraced property, whereas I never gave mine a moment’s thought.

  After several more minutes and to my relief she switched off the vacuum cleaner. Then she unplugged it, carefully wound up the cable and stowed the machine in a cupboard. Then she turned a tiny plastic key in the cupboard door. Only after all this did she invite me to sit down and when I went to lower myself on to the sofa she protested, directing me instead to sit on a hard chair at the table, where she joined me, blinking at me like a cat might blink at a spider, the blue of her iris compromised by the leak of green. And then I told her all about it, but this time with nothing left out.

  Whereas previously I’d only told her about Chas’s assault, this time I gave her the complete story about the Asking. About what happened. About being seen in the hedge. About being bitten by the dog. About Chas and what he did. And through it all – through my retelling of the entire story – I swear that Judith did not once blink her wide-open eyes.

  ‘You should have been with me, Judith.’

  ‘I know. I left you unprotected.’

  ‘So you believe me?’

  ‘I believe that you believe it.’

  ‘That means no. You’re in love with him. You can’t believe he would do such a thing and you won’t hear a word said against him.’

  Judith folded her arms and looked at the wall.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘That’s not what I’ve come about.’

  When I told her about the visit from the doctor she actually went white. After a moment she got up, crossed to the cupboard, unlocked it, took out the vacuum cleaner, unravelled the cable, plugged it in and switched on. She began carefully tracking up and down the carpet again. I’d had enough. I got up and tugged at her elbow. ‘But what should I do for goodness’ sake? What should I do?’

  ‘Sit down,’ she shouted over the din. ‘I’m thinking.’

  After some more minutes of pushing the vacuum cleaner up and down the room she switched the thing off, unplugged it, carefully wound the cable and restored it to the cupboard. After she’d turned the key in the cupboard door, she said, ‘We need to go and see William.’

  The sun was descending behind William’s cottage by the time we arrived, a red disc tangled in the sooty branches of a tree. I’d only been there on that one previous occasion. A small, smoky bonfir
e was burning in the garden and William was out working on his beehives. I don’t know if I imagined it, but I thought I could hear the bees humming in their white boxes. The smoke subdued them, causing them to gorge on honey should fire prove a threat. It was almost as if I could hear them talking. William turned round and looked at us through his protective headgear, as if tipped off to our presence. Then he resumed his work. He wasn’t going to be hurried away from his bees.

  Judith pushed open the door and we went inside. The grandfather clock ticked. The room was scented with herbs hanging from the rafters. William’s insufferable pack of cards was on the oak table by the window. Judith and I sat in a difficult silence, waiting for William to join us.

  At last, after perhaps twenty minutes, he came in. He’d taken off his headgear and was scratching the back of his hand.

  ‘Been stung?’ Judith asked him.

  ‘Can’t keep bees without getting stung,’ he said, crossing towards the kitchen. Then he stopped abruptly and looked hard at me. ‘Hear that?’

  I blinked back at him. He went through to wash his hands and then came to join us, taking a seat at the oak table. ‘Normally I’m immune,’ he said to Judith. ‘Don’t feel it any more, you know? But if I feel it it’s ’cos they want to tell me something.’ Then he turned to me. ‘What is it they want to tell me?’

  You irritating old bastard, I thought. I looked at his hands, and at the dirt under his fingernails, and I felt like walking out of there.

  ‘Anyway you’ve saved me a journey. I was coming to tell the both of you that you’ve got to be ready tonight. We’ll come for you at one o’clock. You’ll have to sit up and wait for us.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You’ll see. Just be ready with your coat, and waiting.’

  Bewildered I looked at Judith. But she said, ‘Never mind that. Tell William what you told me.’ I then heard myself repeating the story I had told to Judith earlier. Only I added to it. I told him about the lapwings in the field, and about the things the hare told me in Mammy’s voice, and about its sacrifice, and things about Chas and the day the police raided his farm. After a while he closed his eyes, but he wasn’t sleeping. He opened them now and again to let me know he was still with it. And when I’d finished the telling of it, it was dark outside and Judith must have switched the low lamps on inside, though I hadn’t noticed her get up.

  William’s brow wrinkled. ‘Warned you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘This came about because you’re not mentally strong enough to do these things. You’re half-cocked. What did you hope to achieve?’

  ‘I wanted help. I asked. And I got it.’

  ‘Someone paid off your rent? You think that’s it? You’re half-cocked. You don’t believe it anyway.’

  ‘I believe in some things. More now I’ve seen.’

  William turned to Judith and flicked his head backwards, but minimally. It was a little gesture of dismissal and disgust. As if to say, What would you expect from this girl? ‘What do you think it’s for?’

  ‘The Asking? Only what Mammy told me.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘She said you can only knock on the door. You can ask for help but that’s all. She said you could bend events to your will, but you can’t break what has to be.’

  He smacked his lips as if someone had coated them with mustard. ‘Yes, that’s Mammy’s bilge all right. The point is you got what you wanted, didn’t you?’

  ‘The rent? You mean that the rent was paid off?’

  ‘I’m not just talking about the rent.’ I was confused. I looked at Judith, but she coloured and looked away. It dawned on me what he was talking about.

  ‘Oh yes,’ William said. ‘That’s what I told you before you went ahead and did it. You weren’t clear, were you? Didn’t clear your head beforehand, did you? Now if there is ever to be a next time perhaps you’ll think on it.’

  I thought about what he was saying about Chas and my feelings for him. I didn’t like where this was going. There was a horrible circular logic to his words. ‘But William,’ I protested, ‘was I in the hedge or in my home? I mean how is it that the Cormells could see me in the hedgerow? How is that possible?’

  ‘You didn’t disguise yourself well enough, that’s all. You should have taken more care.’

  ‘But I wasn’t really there, was I? In the hedgerow, I mean. I wasn’t actually there.’

  ‘What’s she raving about?’ he said to Judith.

  Judith shrugged.

  ‘What I mean is, I was in my own cottage. Dreaming it. Or at least my body was.’

  ‘Judith, get that doctor,’ William said.

  Judith laughed. She actually cackled at my discomfort. It was the first time I’d seen her break a smile since I’d first reported Chas’s assault to her. And it wasn’t funny.

  ‘You mean I was actually there in the field? And I was dreaming that my body was in the cottage? Is that what happened?’

  ‘Nurse!’ William shouted, and Judith cackled again.

  ‘I admit I was so far gone,’ I said, ‘that I wouldn’t know whether I was in one place dreaming about the other or vice-versa.’

  The smile went off William’s face. ‘Are you trying to be funny, girlie?’

  I know I blushed. ‘What I mean is, if I was in the hedgerow and not in the cottage at all, then perhaps I imagined the thing with Chas. I mean it’s possible, isn’t it? In which case I’ve made a terrible mistake in accusing him.’

  ‘Did Mammy teach you nothing in her time with you?’

  I felt confused, wrong-footed. ‘About what?’

  He looked at Judith. ‘You tell her.’

  Judith folded her arms tightly. ‘I’m not telling her. It’s not my job to tell her.’

  The old boy cocked his head on one side and stared hard at me again, poking his tongue inside his cheek. I was sure he was enjoying this even though he pretended to look displeased. He said nothing. The silence was unbearable, so I broke it again. ‘Let me ask you this: I made all the preparations very carefully and I sat down in a chair in my cottage. Did I then get up and go out or did I hallucinate it?’

  ‘You got up and went out.’

  ‘Yes, but what I want to know is: if I’d have chained my leg to the floor, would I have been able to go out and sit in the hedge?’

  William said, ‘You’d have been in the hedge with your leg chained to the floor. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Judith added.

  ‘I don’t know why,’ I said sourly, ‘but it’s not obvious to me.’

  ‘That’s because you live in a world where things either are or they are not. And you shouldn’t have stepped into this world where things both are and are not. Mammy’s at fault. She should have looked at you and told you not to. You weren’t fit for it. Not everyone can be.’

  I looked from one to the other of them, and I had a sudden suspicion. ‘Why are you being so hard on me? Is it because Mammy passed on her list of names to me and not to you, Judith? Is that it?’

  Though they didn’t answer, it shut them up, which was answer enough. William gathered his cards and started shuffling them in his arthritic hands. ‘Who do you think sent this doctor?’ he said.

  ‘Any of six.’

  William seemed to know some of my suspicions without me having to tell him. ‘Rule out Judith. She’s one of us, whatever you say. Rule out the vicar. He’s a chump, but he doesn’t want to harm you. Four most likely?’

  I named four people. William turned up the four knaves from his pack and spread them on the table. Turning up a fool he put that down, and he gave me a look. I knew the fool was supposed to be me but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure by saying as much. Then he turned it face down and told me to put my finger on it. I resisted. He grabbed my hand with his bony fingers and dropped it on the card. ‘You a fool or a knave?’ he said.

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘Turn it.’

  I turned over my ca
rd and it had become a knave. I looked at the four knaves and one of them had become a queen of hearts. Then he told me to turn it again and keep my finger on it this time, while he put his finger on the other end of the card. ‘Fool or knave?’ he said.

  ‘Neither,’ I said again, and he slipped the card suddenly so that it passed under one of the knaves. I stabbed my finger on it, but when he told me to turn it, this time it had become a queen of hearts and the knave was back in its old place.

  ‘So, you become a hare?’ he said. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and he slipped the card, lightning fast, under the next knave, but this time I was sure I didn’t let it off my fingertip, but when I turned it it had become an ace of clubs.

  ‘Fool become a lady; lady become a hare,’ said William. ‘Are you ready?’

  This time I was determined to keep my finger on the card. William was fast. He whisked it under the next knave. I turned it and now it was a two of spades. You had to admire the trick.

  ‘What did the hare do when it was cornered?’ he said.

  ‘Ran straight at the poacher,’ I said.

  ‘There’s your answer,’ William said.

  ‘My answer? What answer?’ I felt bewildered, and not just by William’s gnomic remarks about the hare, but by his wizardry with the cards. ‘How did you do it?’ I asked him.

  He started laughing. ‘How did I do it?’ He turned to Judith, who also started laughing. ‘How did Mammy pick her? Eh? She’s like a five-year-old! How did I do it? It’s card tricks, girlie! Card tricks!’

  And then the pair of them were cackling and hooting and hugging their ribs. I looked from one to the other, this wizened man and this misfit young woman, and not for the first time I wondered what kind of people on earth Mammy had left me with.

  28

  I had no problem in sitting up until the small hours, since my mind was running on the thought of the funeral the following day. In one sense I was relieved that William had completely taken over the arrangements, but in other ways I felt sidelined. I had no experience in these things, but I felt it was somehow my responsibility to Mammy.

  I’d left William’s cottage in rather bad odour, what with the pair of them cackling at me. What’s more the distance between Judith and myself was growing. I was feeling even more angry and isolated. Before I left William had told me to leave a single candle burning in my window for them, though he wouldn’t be drawn about what was going on. I made up a fire in the hearth and I sat and waited.