The Limits of Enchantment

by Graham Joyce

  ‘The pie?’

  ‘Yes, the pie.’

  ‘Well in previous years it was Mammy shall we say—’ And here she stopped and plucked at something invisible on the tip of her tongue. ‘Yes Mammy who helped with the pie. Though she declined more recently over the last few years because it is such a lot of work, making the pie. So over the last few years we had Carlton’s bakery sort it out, though nobody thought too highly of it. So we’re going back to making it ourselves this year.’

  ‘Yourselves?’

  ‘We three being on the committee, shall we say. Me being chairman. And we thought to ask you.’

  ‘To ask me?’

  ‘To help with it, m’dear. Not all on your own. But to bring us a bit of Mammy in the mix. Shameful, that business at the churchyard. Shameful.’

  I was stunned. My eyes filled with tears.

  ‘There,’ Peggy said. ‘Told you she’d say yes. This year’s pie will be the best yet.’

  ‘Is the girl up to the job?’ William growled. ‘I want to be convinced she won’t make a hash of it.’

  ‘Of course she can do it!’ Peggy growled back.

  William clenched his teeth, folded his arms and looked away.

  ‘Well?’ said the committee chairman, still nursing her arthritic knuckles.

  ‘Well?’ was my feeble response.

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Yes. I can.’

  ‘That’s it then, m’dear.’ With that the committee got up, Peggy and the old lady seeming pleased with themselves, William looking like someone overruled. And as they left William turned and looked at me. Without a word. Without a flicker on his lovely sour old face.

  After they had gone I sat back in my chair and thought about what had just happened. I’d been offered the job of joining the pie-making.

  Hare pie.

  That hare pie. Over in Hallaton they had been making the hare pie for the festival for so long no one can remember when it first started. The church kept trying to stop it. The church hated it.

  Mammy told me that well over a hundred years ago they did stop it. But then it started again. Some say it didn’t even get started until a hundred years ago, but others say there was a parson in the eighteenth century. He tried to stop the pie and the parishioners smashed his windows and daubed the words ‘No Pie No Parson’ on the rectory wall. He put the pie back quick enough.

  I don’t know. I think it’s one of those things that has no beginning and will have no end. There will always be a hare pie and there never was a hare pie. But it wasn’t true what the old lady said, about Mammy tiring of making the pie. They stopped her. Or another parson, or vicar, stopped her. It was after they’d had her inside for those years. They never let her back in the kitchen again. Poor Mammy. And how she loved to bake. ‘How they hate you if you’re a little bit different,’ she would say. ‘They hate you so.’ To which she would add, ‘And it ain’t necessary.’

  But then here they’d come, asking me. The three of them, and I wanted to say, what? Ask the hare for hare pie? But you don’t say anything. You are asked and you put on your apron and bake. That’s what you do.

  Though what I know, because Mammy told me, is there hasn’t been a hare in that pie in how many years. ‘It’s beef and ham, it is. Beef and ham. What sort of a hare pie is that?’ Mammy was appalled. Because on hare pie day it’s the one day of the year when you can eat a hare without being cursed. That’s the point of it. That’s why we have permission. I would never eat a hare on any day but Easter Monday. You are cursed with cowardice any other day. Everyone knows that. But somehow and for reasons beyond my sight this year it had fallen to me, and I would give them a hare pie. I would.

  And the first thing I did was to go into the woods to tell Mammy.

  Arthur found out soon enough, and on the Wednesday he came calling. What with him carrying one of the barrels of ale for the Bottle Kicking we both now had a role to play in the Easter festival. He was cock-a-hoop, and I was busy busy busy.

  ‘Have you been to tidy Mammy’s grave?’ he asked me, knitting his eyebrows.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all the talk. I’d like to get hold of the person who did that.’

  I had plenty of other things to think about. I had to make ready a giant pie by Easter Monday. I also was scheduled for my ‘assessment’ the next day which was the day before Good Friday. All I could think was: if they are going to lock me away, how am I going to make the pie? I wondered if anyone had considered this.

  I spent the evening before the assessment cleaning up. Greta had told me to make the place look spick ’n’ span. She told me to lift some of the stranger looking bunches of herbs down off the rafters, and to gather up a few of the more sticky bottles and jars off the shelves. It felt like an insult to Mammy, but I did as Greta suggested and I stored everything in the lean-to. I even took down the jar of Mammy’s nail and hair clippings from the hidden shelf, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I returned the jar to its hiding place.

  I dusted and polished every nook. I scrubbed the floor and I wiped down the paintwork. I washed the chair-covers and the tablecloth and I laid it all out as pretty as I could. I worked hard.

  Even though I’d worn myself out with cleaning I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept thinking about Mammy, how she was delirious and slipping in time and telling me about when she was locked up in that awful place. I thought about them sterilising her without her consent.

  In the morning I put a jar of spring flowers on the white tablecloth, and in the mix I included some bright yellow sunny coltsfoot for peace. I was still arranging the flowers when an officious-looking woman in a smart business suit appeared at the open door. The woman wore half-moon spectacles and she carried a folder. Her hair was scraped back and tied behind.

  My heart skipped when I realised who it was. ‘Greta! The suit!’

  Greta sat herself down. ‘Place looks nice.’ Laying her folder and a pen on the table, she said, ‘It’s all in the act, Fern, you know that.’

  ‘No I don’t know. Where did you get the suit?’

  ‘Stowed away. Haven’t had it out in nearly two years.’ She looked at me across the top of her spectacles and if I hadn’t known her I would have felt intimidated. ‘Shall we rehearse a few things?’

  At ten o’clock sharp Dr Bloom, the local GP who’d ushered Mammy into hospital before she died, arrived with the other doctor – the one who’d insinuated his way into my house with egg custards. A tall and rather gaunt woman followed them. Her face was red and chapped as if exposed too often to the wind on the fells, and her hair was pewter-grey, cut into an unfashionable bob. She said her name was Jean Cavendish and she introduced herself as a ‘social worker’.

  I’d occasionally heard the term ‘social worker’ without really knowing what one was. I was about to ask her what a social worker does exactly, when I heard Greta saying that she thought everyone would be more comfortable sitting at the table for the proceedings, and that there was a chair for everyone.

  The egg-custard doctor looked at the chairs as if they were slimy. ‘And who might you be?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m Greta Dean. I’m here to counsel and advise Fern in the process of this assessment.’

  ‘I didn’t know anything about this,’ said the egg-custard doctor, looking round at the others.

  Greta sat down and pulled out a chair beside her for Jean the social worker. Jean accepted a seat, and so did Bloom. At last the egg-custard doctor took a seat, eyeing Greta with suspicion. ‘It’s simple enough. Fern has hired me to ensure that all the legal issues are correct.’

  ‘Hired? I’d be very surprised if she could afford a solicitor!’

  ‘That’s Fern’s business, surely.’ And then Greta beamed him one of those smiles that had always infuriated me. I was so glad to see it used on the man in this way that my spirits lifted. ‘Could I ask you to introduce yourself?’

  ‘This is all a little bit formal, isn’t it
? We—’

  ‘Fern refers to you as the egg-custard doctor after you came upon her with egg custards. I really can’t in all conscience refer to you as the egg-custard doctor.’

  This got a repressed giggle from Jean the social worker, and a sniff from Bloom. Jean said, ‘I think it would be a good thing if we all introduced ourselves properly.’

  So we went round the table. The egg-custard doctor said his name was Glaister and that he was employed by the County Health Authority to ‘help in these matters’. I’ll bet you are, is what I thought. I went last after Greta. ‘I’m Fern, and I’m not bats.’

  Greta blinked at me. She’d warned me not to make any reference to that, but I’d forgotten. Then Glaister tried to take control of the meeting. Without anything being said, he decided he was chairman of the proceedings. ‘Shall we crack on, then? Firstly Fern, I want to tell you that this is an informal and friendly meeting set up to establish a few things, that’s all, and that we will ask you a few questions and you can be relaxed about your answers.’

  Greta interjected immediately. ‘Though it’s important that you understand, Fern, that while this may be an informal meeting, its express purpose is for Messrs Bloom and Glaister, and Miss Cavendish, to make an assessment of your mental health. They may, at the end of this meeting, recommend that you would benefit from hospital treatment. If they do so, they have full legal power to make that happen. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘In that case,’ Greta said, ‘you need to understand that while this meeting is informal, you don’t have to regard it as completely friendly.’

  ‘Are you qualified in the law?’ Glaister said.

  ‘Fully,’ said Greta.

  ‘Do you have the credentials?’

  ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.’ And Greta smiled that toothsome smile.

  ‘Stop it, George,’ Jean said to Glaister. She’d obviously known the man for years. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  And then the questioning began.

  And while it went on I thought of Mammy, and of the years we had been together, and of her many kindnesses and her occasional bad temper. I wondered now if she’d adopted me because they’d scorched her ovaries. I knew because she’d told me – that Mammy had brought me back from a hospital where there was another patient who couldn’t keep her baby. Now I realised what sort of a hospital it was. My natural mother must have been a patient there. Possibly my father too. There was no point in speculating. I truly didn’t care. Mammy was my real mother through and through. Blood may be thicker than water, but I know that kindness is thicker than blood.

  I remember once when I’d gone with Mammy to a difficult birth. The mother was hardly in her first flush of life and seemed like a mature woman to me. I’d just had my first period and Mammy joined up the dots for me and said look at this one, this is where it all leads. Anyway we went to the woman and found her in such agony that Mammy had to use all her skills and all her craft, and we were together in her house the whole day and most of the night. The woman screamed and wailed. And afterwards when the fat bonny little thing was safe and gurgling in her arms she said, never again, never again.

  Ha, you all say that, Mammy told her. But the woman insisted. She wasn’t going to let her bloke near her. It wasn’t going to happen. She’d keep her fellow away from her with an axe before that happened again, and could Mammy give her anything else for the pain? There she started crying all over again, and where for many women it would be a joy and a relief for this woman, as is also the case for many, it was a sorrow and a hurt, because there was no love in her house.

  Mammy gave her one of her special concoctions and after a while the woman settled a little. The woman wished bitterly that her own mother was there, her having died some years before. Well, Mammy was the only mother of the moment, so while the woman cradled her new baby in her arms, Mammy got up on the bed and cradled the mother, and hushed her and soothed her and poured love into her ear. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘there’s something in us that makes us forget the pain, and there: we go and do it all over again. But the pain will all fall away, I promise you.’

  I remember it seemed a shock to me at the time, to see Mammy mothering this grown woman. Now that I know a lot more, not at all. And then Mammy spoke softly to the woman and stroked her hair, but all the time it was into my eyes she looked as she spoke. ‘And after all the pain and the suffering has fallen away, that’s when.’

  ‘Could you answer the question, Fern?’ asked Jean.

  ‘Fern?’ Greta prompted.

  I was so distracted I had to ask them to repeat the question.

  ‘Do you hear voices?’

  ‘I hear Mammy’s voice. She helps me in times of difficulty.’

  Greta winced visibly. She’d coached me not to say such things and again in the distraction of the moment I’d forgotten.

  ‘Do you believe in magical acts?’ Bloom asked.

  ‘You’re going to have to define what you mean by magic,’ Greta said.

  I said, ‘I can’t imagine anyone living without the hope or expectation of some magic in their lives.’

  ‘Have you ever performed an abortion for anyone?’ Glaister asked.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Greta said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with any of this.’

  ‘No, I don’t see your drift, George,’ Jean Cavendish said.

  ‘Can we ascertain, Dr Glaister,’ Greta said, looking over the top of her spectacles at him, ‘how you came to be involved in this particular case?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I can see how Dr Bloom and Miss Cavendish are involved here, since this is their professional catchment area, but I’m not sure how you came to be interested in Fern.’

  ‘I was called in. Professionally.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say nor for anyone else to know.’

  I noticed the silver ring on the little finger of Glaister’s pudgy hand. It was the same as the one worn by Lord Stokes. ‘They’re Freemasons,’ I said. ‘Lord Stokes, Dr Glaister here, Mr Venables and lots of others.’

  Bloom looked at the ceiling and blew out his cheeks. ‘For God’s sake!’ went Glaister. Jean Cavendish looked hard at me.

  Mammy had told me that the men who had had her put away before and during the war had been Freemasons. She’d said you could never prove it. She’d said it was a secret band of men – often in positions of authority – who worked to help each other and if you crossed one of them they formed against you and did each other’s work. ‘Thick as thieves,’ she said. I remember asking her if it were true that there were secret societies, to which she said what are we? And though I’d never thought of we few as quite like that, since we carried no insignia nor did we make oaths or secret handshakes and the like, I supposed that was what we were. Though you should never try to name them, she told me. And when I asked why not she’d said that they would make out you were far-fetched and mad, and they would conspire to have you put away.

  I knew everyone who was a Freemason because Mammy had listed them for me, and I’d coded them in my notebook. Every businessman, local politician, police officer – no, Bill Myers wasn’t a Mason as far as I knew – civic dignitary, and every local authority employee (and it didn’t escape me that maybe that’s how my credentials at the College of Midwifery had suddenly come to be checked) who was known to us was listed. They were our opposite numbers, our shadow forms, a kind of mockery of ourselves Mammy used to say.

  Dr Bloom said, ‘Fern, do you think people are conspiring to get at you?’

  ‘I would say that in this case,’ Greta put in quickly, ‘there are definitely people who are out to manipulate Fern.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Glaister sharply.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jean Cavendish. ‘We are acting in Fern’s best interests after all.’

  ‘What I mean is that even if a person is paranoid there
may still be others conspiring against them.’

  ‘So you agree that your client is paranoid?’ Glaister said.

  ‘Aren’t we all a little paranoid?’ Greta tried. ‘I mean your reaction to my previous remark was somewhat paranoid, wasn’t it?’

  ‘This is getting ridiculous,’ said Bloom. ‘I’m pretty convinced I’ve heard enough anyway now, what with all this wild talk of Freemasons.’

  Jean Cavendish had her hand under her chin. She appeared glum. She swivelled her head and looked at Bloom. ‘Well I’m not all that certain.’

  Greta seemed relieved. Bloom and Glaister had made up their minds a long time before this mock trial had ever been mooted, and we all knew it. Cavendish was my only hope.

  They talked endlessly. The questions were interminable. They asked about my childhood and about my relationship with Mammy when I was a girl. Glaister tried to bring up abortions again but Jean Cavendish ruled him out of order. I couldn’t concentrate. I just couldn’t remain focused. Even though I knew it was crucial to stay with the discussion I kept drifting off.

  Then I did hear voices, but outside the door. There was a knock, and Greta went to answer. When she came back she announced that she’d asked a few people to offer a character witness. I wasn’t surprised by this, since Greta and I had discussed it beforehand, but I didn’t know who would stand up for me on the day. Glaister didn’t like it at all, but Jean Cavendish said she didn’t see how it could hurt. Greta went outside and brought in Peggy Myers.

  Peggy introduced herself as the area policeman’s wife and gave as good an account of me as anyone could. I blushed to hear some of this goodwill spoken in front of me. She also mentioned that my standing in the community was high enough to be asked to bake the hare pie. Peggy also made a speech about the desecration in the graveyard, and looked like she wanted to pin the charge on someone in that very room.