(5/20)Over the Gate (26 page)

'And it's my belief she hasn't had a good wash since her poor husband went. She don't waste much on soap, I'd be bound!'

'As for that black skirt she wears, it's time it was burnt. She bought it up the Jumble a good eight years ago, that I do know, and she's had it on, day in and day out, ever since!'

So spoke the good wives of the village, and among them was young Mrs Wilier. As Lucy's closest neighbour she particularly felt die shame of such a slut in the neighbourhood. Newly married, with a cottage as spruce as endless scrubbing and polishing could make it, Mrs Willet was already spoken of as a paragon of cleanliness. She was to be honoured as such ad her days.

Time passed. Lucy continued to exist on the pension granted by Sir Francis, and now administered by his heir Sir Edmund. Only the minimum repairs were done to the cottage to keep it weatherproof. Lucy neglected the property to such an extent that it was hopeless to do more.

She was seen very little in the village. She now began to mutter to herself and her animals, emerging when dusk began to fall and when she would not be bothered by the sight of any neighbours or casual passers. It was at this stage of Lucy's decline that young Bob Willet became convinced that she was, without any doubt, a witch.

He had said as much to his older brother Sidney as they walked home from school one summer's day. Mr Hope had read them a Russian folk tale with a description of Baba Yaga, the witch, which seemed to young Bob a faithful portrait of Lucy Kelly who lived so perilously near them.

Perhaps he half-hoped for a decisive denial from his brother. If so, he was disappointed.

'Might be,' was Sidney's perfunctory comment. At that moment he was engaged in swishing the heads from a bed of stinging nettles, and was clearly too engrossed to give the matter of Lucy Kelly much attention. Bob did not press the point, but it seemed to him that Sid too considered it a possibility. It was alarming, to say the least of it.

In the days and nights that followed, Bob listened with growing terror to any conversation about their elderly neighbour. He did not like to speak of his fears to Sid, but he did mention it, as casually as he could manage, to another boy of his own age.

Ted Pickett, Bob was relieved to find, took his remarks quite seriously.

'She might be,' said Ted slowly. 'You see you can't tell, unless you know she flies on a broomstick.'

'Well, she don't do that,' said Bob flatly.

'Or has a black cat.'

'She's plenty of they,' said Bob, feeling a little shaky.

They sat in silence for a little while. Then Ted began again.

'The way to find out is to go down her place when the moon's full. That's when witches dy. I know that for a fact, Bob. I read it in a school book.'

'What time?' asked Bob practically.

'Any time it's real bright,' replied Ted, 'on the night it's true full moon.'

'Come with me?' asked Bob.

'Not likely!' answered his friend. 'I'm real frightened of anything like that,' he added with disarming honesty. A playfellow rushed up at this point, carrying the limp body of a long-dead grass snake. In the pleasurable few minutes following, Ted forgot the witch for ever.

Not so Bob. He could think of nothing else. He was frightened of the idea, but none the less fascinated. In school, when his mind should have been on the intricacies of punctuation or the problems of fractions, it roved instead to Lucy Kelly's cottage. What spells could she weave? Could she ready dy? How could he find out if she ready were a witch or not? Was Ted's test the true one?

As the month wore on towards the night of the full moon, the boy's tension mounted. He had made up his mind that he would go alone, if the night were fine and bright, to see for himself just what went on at Lucy Kelly's cottage.

Full moon, according to the almanac pinned on the kitchen wall, was on September 17th. The day was cloudless and still. From the hot schoolroom young Bob could hear the harvesters working away under ideal conditions. Already many of the corn fields bore rows of stooks, the sheaves sagging together with the weight of a fine harvest.

The boy half-hoped that the weather would change, and that nightfall would bring such rain or tempest as would mean a postponement of his plans. But the weather held. At half past eight, he mounted the creaking stairs to the bedroom under the thatch, which he shared with his brother Sidney. Outside, the world was still bathed in golden light, and the swallows and swifts dived joyously through the air, snatching the flying insects that hung in the sunshine.

Bob had intended to stay awake untd all the household was abed, but fresh air had made him drowsy and he was asleep before he knew it. Luckily, he was roused by the sound of his father and mother going to bed. It was nearly dark, but a great golden moon, low on the horizon, gave promise of a bright moonlit night.

Bob's heart thumped at the thought of the adventure ahead. He was not quite sure what he was going to look for. Certainly a broomstick, and perhaps evidence of actual flight by old Lucy. If she did fly, as Ted Pickett had said, then this was just the sort of night for her jaunting.

He listened to the sounds of the household. Sidney lay on his back, as always, snoring slightly. Bob knew that he had nothing to fear there. Once Sid was asleep, nothing—short of screaming in his ear—would wake him. The two girls, in the tiny slip room at the back of the cottage, slept as heavily as his brother. Only the youngest child roused occasionally. He slept in his parents' room, and if he should wake up, it was reasonable to suppose that his parents would calm him without having to leave the bedroom. Bob reckoned that he could leave the house and return without much trouble.

He heard the clock at St Patrick's, across the fields, strike eleven, and waited a little longer. Midnight was supposed to be the time that witches chose for their flying operations, as Bob well knew. Then he slipped from his warm bed, dressed with shaking fingers, and crept fearfully downstairs.

The creaks and groans from the ancient staircase brought his heart into his mouth, but no one stirred. He made his way through the kitchen and let himself out by the back door.

The night was mysteriously beautiful. It was scented with corn, warm earth and garden dowers. The moonlight was so bright that young Bob could have read by it, had he been of such a mind.

He slipped through a gap in the back hedge, out of sight of his parents' bedroom window, and gained the lane. It was white in the moonlight, and dropped away to the hollow which was his destination.

His boots seemed to make a dreadful amount of noise on the gritty road. A cat shot across his path—one of Lucy's, he guessed-and frightened the wits out of him. By the time he reached Lucy's, he was bathed in sweat.

There was no gate. Bob crept on tip-toe up the overgrown path with one wary eye upon the upstairs window. It was tightly shut, as indeed were ad the others downstairs, Bob noticed. It was as quiet as the grave, and in the light of the moon, the little grey cottage seemed to merge into the crepuscular background of the silvery willows and rank dead grass surrounding it.

At the side of the house was a lean-to shed made of wood, which had once been tarred, but was now weathered to a ghostly grey. If Lucy really had a mount then this would be its stable, Bob decided. He crept quietly towards it, intending to enter, but froze in his tracks long before he gained the lean-to. For there, propped outside the door, as large as life, was a stout broom, or besom, made of birch twigs.

Bob was almost sick with fright. Was it waiting there for Lucy to ride shortly? Or was it simply an innocent garden besom, such as bis mother used to sweep their garden path? Who could ted?

He decided to creep right round the cottage, listening for any movement of Lucy's within. He passed by the broomstick, almost expecting to see it pulsing with hidden life, and was relieved to gain the shelter of the side wad. Here was crouched a tabby cat, sitting sphinx-like and motionless—only the glittering of its moonstone eyes showing that it was alert and wakeful.

The boy padded along the back of the house where the shabby thatch was so low that it pricked him through his jersey as he grazed by the edge. Stinging nettles and docks made a rank and painful jungle here, and he was glad to reach the side of the house where the hens had pecked a bare patch. A little window looked out on this side and Bob peered within.

As far as he could see, it was Lucy's primitive larder. A dish or two stood on the shelves, and some onions were hanging from a hook. There seemed to be little more, except for cobwebs.

The front of the house was in full moonlight. Two small windows, cracked and grimy, glinted in the moon's brilliance. Through one Bob could see little, for a tattered curtain obscured his view, but he heard the sound of a cat jumping to the floor, as though he had been observed, and the cat was making for cover.

All around him was silence. His heart had ceased to thump so dreadfully, but he still sweated with fright and die nape of his neck felt tight with terror. As he edged along to look into the remaining window, the clock of St Patrick's struck twelve, and the boy froze with renewed horror. Now was the witch's hour!

As the last clear note died away into the warm stillness, Bob looked into Lucy's living room. Moonlight lit the dishevelled apartment, and at first sight it appeared empty. Then suddenly, in the shadow beneath die window, Bob saw a dark figure roll from a low couch or mattress hard against the wall. He shrank back, out of sight, his mouth dry with fear.

Lucy was clad in her daytime black, her grey hair looked wilder than ever in the light of the moon. Her crazy eyes and one long tooth glinted from the shadows as she stumbled, muttering, about the room.

She snatched a black shawl from the tumbled bed and dung it round her shoulders. From a peg on the door she clawed an old black trilby hat of the long-dead Seamus's, and clapped it on her eldritch locks. Then, with purposeful haste, she emerged from her door and made her way towards the lean-to.

But before she reached the broomstick, Bob Widet had fled.

'So you never found out,' I commented, as Mr Will' finished.

'I found out one thing,' said Mr Wilier grimly. 'And that was not to go scaring folk at night. My dad heard me coming in and caught me on the stairs. I got a cuff on the ear as made me see stars as well as moon that night, I can ted 'ee.'

He paused for a moment, contemplating that distant night encounter.

'Looking back now, I'd lay a wager the poor of gal was making for her privy in the lean-to, but that warn't in my mind at the time, as you can guess.'

He rose stiffly from the gravestone and picked up the bill-hook.

'Wed, best get back to work, I s'pose. But it makes you think, don't it? You see, I reckons I was as keen to believe in my witch, as little of Joe is to believe in his King of the Sea. It's a sort of
hunger,
if you takes my meaning.'

'"More things in heaven and earth, Horatio",' I quoted. Mr Widet looked a little startled.

'I wouldn't know about Horatio,' said Mr Willet reasonably. 'I'm only telling you my opinion.' And he resumed his onslaught on the long grass.

The next day Amy came to tea. She was elegant in a new brown and white dog-tooth check suit which I much admired.

'You could have bought it for yourself,' said Amy. 'It's been in the window of Bakers in Caxley High Street for over a week.'

'I haven't been to Caxley for three weeks,' I said. 'Nor anywhere else, come to think of it.' Amy pursed her hps impatiently.

'Are you ever going to get yourself out of this rut?' she demanded. 'You were excessively naughty about that Devon job, and ad because you didn't want poor little Lucy Colgate to come here.'

'Poor little Lucy Colgate,' I pointed out with some warmth, 'weighs over eleven stone, and is the last person on this earth needing anyone's pity—great, smug, insensitive lump of self-congratulation that she is!'

'Now, now!' warned Amy. 'You see what I mean? You are getting positively
warped
living alone here—a mass of neuroses—coveting my suit, and now picking poor Lucy to bits.'

'Let's have some tea,' I said. 'It might sweeten me.'

She followed me into the kitchen, and watched me stack a tray.

'My cousin teds me,' she said, 'that there is an excellent post going at a comprehensive school in her town. I think she said there arc four thousand puplis and two swimming pools.'

'Good luck to them!' I said. 'But I prefer thirty-six pupils and two buckets of drinking water. And who knows? I may live long enough in Fairacre to see water laid on to the school! No, Amy, "I won't be druv!"'

Later, we walked across to our Harvest Festival. It was a perfect evening of mellow September sunshine. Through the west window the golden sun lit the nave and burnished the sheaves of corn and ad our offerings of fruit and dower.

Mrs Pratt was bumbling happdy at the organ, improvising a voluntary until such time as the vicar and choir entered. As this was an important festal day in Fairacre, and the church was suitably crammed, there would be a procession from the west door down the nave.

Suddenly there was a scuffling noise behind us, the west doors were thrown open, and the sunlight streamed in. Bathed in its golden light the choir and the vicar slowly made their way eastward while we scrambled to our feet.

Come, ye thankful people, come!
Raise the song of harvest home!

we sang fortissimo.

Mrs Pringle, foremost among the contraltos, swayed past me lowing powerfully. Mr Willet was not far behind, holding his own among the basses. Ahead, several of my puplis, unnaturally clean and holy, raised their voices in song.

It was good, I thought suddenly, to be taking part in something which had happened in this church for many years, without fail, an act of thanksgiving for the harvest which surrounded this ancient building on every side. Just so did Sally Gray, Fred Hurst, poor Job the Fairacre ghost, Mrs Next-Door and a host of others who now lay so quietly outside these walls, rejoice together, as we did, for mercies received. I looked about me. Amy, friend of many years, stood by my side. In front of me I could see Elsie Blundell and her husband. Two pews ahead were Mr Annett, from Beech Green, and his wife Isobel with Malcolm, my god-child, and dear Miss Clare. My eye roamed to the chancel where the choir was now in place and still singing lustily. Mr Willet's honest face was red with his exertions, and I remembered, with affection, the story of his midnight adventure.