A Hint of Witchcraft (3 page)

The clock struck one. Lance relaxed as after an ordeal. Mrs Rilston moved purposefully towards the drawing-room door.

‘Frederick dear, we've been forgetting the time.'

‘I hope you'll come again. Your husband and I seldom have an opportunity to talk.' If Edward Humbert silently added the word ‘alone', there was some excuse for him. The presence of Marian Grey and her pale-faced silent girl had been a confounded nuisance. There were several topics he would have liked to discuss with Mr Rilston who had considerable influence in the district, where his family had been the principal land-owners for more than 200 years.

‘I was meaning to ask you' – he steered his parting guest to the hall – ‘could you by any chance find a job for one of our Ashlaw lads? Ewan Judd. His father was killed on the Somme and the family are in a bad way. Ewan has never worked since he left school. We haven't been able to take on more boys of his age at any of our pits. First chance had to be given to family men coming home from the front – not even all of them. Once the Germans are back in the Ruhr, we're going to feel the difference here. By next year there could be over three hundred thousand miners out of work, taking the country as a whole.'

In full daylight, Rilston, still in his sixties, looked older, his blue eyes faded, his cheeks sunken. Humbert's conscience smote him. He was used to arguing with hard-headed directors of the Fellside and District Coal Company and felt the contrast between them and this gentle, courteous man.

‘I'm sorry, Humbert. I'd be glad to find him something to do. Certainly I'll bear him in mind. His father and my son down there together.' He nodded towards the Dene. The homely little ceremony had touched him. Mrs Dobie's protest had not been mentioned but watching her trudge away, he had felt his personal grief as part of a catastrophe too vast and irremediable to be borne except in being shared. ‘I'd like to help but I've had to turn men away. Can't afford the staff we once had, indoor or out. To tell you the truth, money is tight: all we've got is land. The day may come when we shall have to sell. I dread it. And there's Langland Hall standing empty; haven't been able to keep it in repair. All the same – Judd. I'll remember the name. Thank you, my boy.' Alex had brought him his stick. ‘You've a daughter, too, I see.'

The silent listener at his elbow was not Margot. Her father, his mind on more important issues, answered vaguely.

The old gentleman stepped out into a garden alive with nesting birds as into a world he no longer recognized, empty as it was of so much that had been familiar, of clearly marked obligations and expectations and people he had known and trusted.

‘I must apologize, Mrs Grey,' his wife was saying, ‘for taking up so much of the lane with our car. You must have come by taxi. There wouldn't be room for it to bring you to the gate.'

‘There is no need to apologize. It only meant stopping a little further up the lane. We didn't mind that at all, did we, Linden?'

Linden smiled. Her smile was charming.

‘Perhaps we could make amends. I wonder – how are you getting back to town? We could send the car. It will be coming for Miles in any case. Chapman could take you home.'

‘How very kind.'

Lance heard these exchanges with interest. He wondered what arrangement the Greys would have made if Mrs Rilston had not solved their problem. Mr Humbert had the use of a company car and chauffeur and had kept on his horse and gig. The family commonly used buses, a recent innovation and infrequent but cheap, and occasionally taxis. The station was a quarter of a mile away.

Later, from his place on the opposite side of the table he was able to take a closer look at the visitors. Mrs Grey must be about the same age as Mrs Humbert, but looked older as if always bothered by some worry or other. It was thus that Lance reacted to the fretful expression on a prematurely lined face and to Mrs Grey's tendency to fidget – with a gold chain round her neck, with a cuff, with her hair (disarranged when her hat had been snatched at by a briar dangling from that tiresome arch over the gate and coolly disentangled by Linden).

Linden? What did poor old Alex see in her? She wasn't bad-looking. Not exactly in the film-star class. Nothing like as pretty as Margot. But Lance could see that there was something about her: a difference from other girls. This time, he thought, without undue concern, Alex had better watch out. He transferred his attention to his plate and dealt with an ample helping of raised pie and cold meats in roughly – he refrained from looking at his watch – three minutes.

Seated on the same side of the table as the Greys, Margot could not see her friend without leaning forward, nor could she help doing so as inconspicuously as possible. Otherwise everything had gone well. Perfect! The word floated to the surface of her mind and lay there, pure white and shining like a water-lily. Her eyes sought her mother's. ‘You see what I mean?' they ardently asked, turning in Linden's direction.

Mrs Humbert would have described herself as weary of the very sound of Linden's name but she rose to the appeal, nodded and smiled significantly. The infatuation could do no harm and it couldn't possibly last: neither worshipper nor idol could sustain it for long. And the same applied to Alex who could be counted on to fall in love with every presentable girl he met.

The Greys were lonely, she thought. They must be looked after a little until they found their feet. A weekend visit perhaps. The extra leaves were rarely taken out of the Humberts' hospitable dining-table. When they were alone, they ate in the morning-room. The round table there seated five comfortably, themselves and Lance who had become one of the family.

Even to think the word ‘perfect' is to take a risk: there is always a snag. In this case, for Margot, it was that she couldn't quite see Linden properly: not fully, not then – or later – or ever.

CHAPTER III

As soon after lunch as politeness allowed, Miles made his excuses: he would not wait for Chapman but would walk home. With their crystal set in mind, Alex and Lance took the opportunity of leaving with him. They had got as far as the gate when Mrs Grey and the girls came out on the front steps.

‘Such a lovely day.' Mrs Grey's glance moved from the three youths to her daughter. ‘A walk would do you good, dear,' and to Margot, ‘Linden doesn't often have a day in the country.'

‘We could have gone with the boys,' Margot said, ‘only Chapman will be coming for you. There wouldn't be time. But Linden and I could have a walk on our own, just to the river and back. It's pretty down by the bridge.'

‘A pity.' Mrs Grey might not have heard. ‘Of course, I must wait here but perhaps we could pick up Linden somewhere on the way home.'

‘Not if we go with Miles. Bainrigg isn't on the way to town. But – oh yes – there's Clint Lane.' Margot explained. There was a short cut from the Rilstons' land to the Elmdon road. ‘We could come back that way and you could pick up Linden at the end of the lane.'

While Linden was saying everything that was proper to her hosts, Margot dawdled to the gate and found Katie Judd crouching by the hedge just outside, beside her a basket of the Humberts' freshly laundered linen. No need to ask why she was hiding there instead of delivering the laundry as usual: she had seen strangers in the garden and had taken fright.

‘There's nobody about, Katie. You can go up through the orchard and round to the back door.'

Cautiously Katie uncurled herself, nodded and almost smiled: with Margot she was safe. Unfortunately, before she reached the point where garden merged into orchard, Linden came down from the house. They met midway down the path under a low-hanging bough of a pear tree. Both stopped – Linden composed, hatless, her thick dark hair shining, her dress and jacket of fine worsted without a crease: Katie instantly distraught, in cast-off navy-blue serge too big for her, draggled stockings and scuffed shoes, with a handkerchief pinned by one corner to the front of her dress as if she were still a little girl. When she was afraid, as now, her pale eyes grew prominent as if they would start from her head.

Momentarily, Margot's admiration for Linden gave way to sympathy for Katie. She had always known but never fully realized that Katie's impoverishment was not just a matter of awful clothes: she had also been given faulty equipment with which to do battle against the bombardment of terrors that life inflicted on her. It wasn't fair. The worst of it was that Katie was excelling herself. She gaped, clutching the handle of the basket, her knuckles white, her knees bent. She might have been expecting the lash of a whip or a sentence of death. Whatever would Linden think?

‘Give me the basket, Katie, and you run home.'

By the time Margot came back, Katie had gone.

‘You mustn't mind Katie. She can't help being like that.'

‘I suppose she's what's called the village idiot.'

‘Well, no. Oh, no.'

Katie needed to be explained. She was simple-minded and, according to Dr Pelman, her development had been retarded by the ill effects of measles and under-nourishment. What she needed was good food, care and understanding. The Judds and their neighbours took a less rational view. If there was such a thing as a changeling, that was what their Katie was. Margot had not yet come across the word but anyone could see that Katie was different from her two older brothers and her sister. She was fair-skinned and almost thin enough to be seen through. Her fine light hair radiated from her head like the gossamer of a seeding dandelion and with a similar suggestion of being at the mercy of the wind.

The other Judds were broad-shouldered, big-boned, strong-jawed and dangerous when roused, like crocodiles. Whereas Katie existed in a state of anxiety bordering on panic, they were fearless. It was possible that, unintentionally, they were responsible for her nervousness. Any creature of the least sensitivity must, even in the cradle, have quailed from a domestic atmosphere that smouldered and could, on occasion, ignite.

On the other hand, the fiercest of their outbursts would most likely be on Katie's behalf. Let anyone lay a finger on her and the Judds would rise up and smite the offender as Judah and Simeon smote the Canaanites. So far no one had risked – or wanted – so to offend; the girl was harmless. As Mrs Judd said, Katie had never needed to be smacked. Whatever she was told to do, she did, not only from fear of the consequences if she did not, but because she didn't know what else to do. Her forté was running errands: she never forgot a message. Once a thing got into her head it remained and could not be dislodged. Her dim wits were remarkably retentive.

When crisis arose, her remedy was to hide. She was continually vanishing and being sought for. ‘Have you seen our Katie?' had become a village byword. What she loved best – it was Margot who had found this out – was quietness with nobody there. Once when they were both very young, Margot had taken two of her dolls, Anabel and Rosaline, into the garden. In a sunny spot behind the tool-shed, curtained by honeysuckle, Katie was sitting on a log, quite still. Margot, too young to wonder at her quick shrinking like a furtive animal cornered, gave her Anabel to nurse. They sat together in silence until, still without a word, she retrieved Anabel and ran back to the house.

And now the sight of the two girls face to face yet worlds apart may have been responsible for Margot's sudden feeling of concern: the concentration of numberless glimpses of Katie's plight into a steadier view. She remembered the incident of the doll and was sorry to have snatched it away: Katie liked pretty things. Margot had once given her two tatting-edged handkerchiefs and she knew – Katie's sister had told her – that Katie kept them in a paper bag in her share of a bedroom drawer. They were too white and beautiful to be put at risk when there were so many risks to be dodged and fled from.

Good gracious, it wasn't a crime if a person's stockings came down. One of her own liberty bodices with suspenders attached would fit Katie, even be too big. Well, it would have to be two, for washing.

Some or all of this she might have confided to Linden, only—

‘I suppose she's what's called the village idiot.'

Linden's voice was low-pitched, soft and all the more pleasing for never being over-used. The words had not matched the voice, not just because they weren't true, they were wrong in another way. Margot no longer wanted to talk about Katie. Besides, Linden hadn't minded the girl's behaviour; it hadn't upset her. In fact – it was an odd conclusion to have reached considering the two had stood within touching distance of each other – Linden hadn't paid any attention to Katie. Odder still to be almost sure that Katie had felt in every nerve of her defenceless being the impact of Linden. Had she also received from her the most frightening of all messages, that of being as if she wasn't there? It wouldn't matter if she didn't exist?

‘That boy.' Linden was looking up the lane. ‘I suppose he's a relation of hers.'

‘Yes, that's Ewan.' Hand in hand, brother and sister were turning into the village street.

He had been passing the gate when Katie rushed out as if escaping. Linden, following sedately, had been confronted by an individual whom she would have described as a rough lout. He had scowled at her entirely without respect. She recognized him as the fellow-traveller on the bus. He had shed his white muffler and slouched moodily, hands in pockets, cap on the back of his head. Recognition was mutual.

‘What's up, Katie? What's she been doing to you?' His manner was almost threatening. ‘Come on home.'

Linden had glanced at him with distaste. A moistening of her lips with the tip of her tongue like a fastidious cat was the only response she allowed herself to a ferocity of resentment that might have startled a girl less self-assured. She made no reference to the incident: it was not the sort of thing one talked about.