The Limits of Enchantment Read online

  An act of law prohibited midwifery by the untrained ‘handywomen’ – and that’s how Mammy found herself described – on whom many poorer women had formerly relied. By putting my hand on Bunch Cormell’s belly that night I’d acted illegally and could even be prosecuted. So in search of the damned ticket I went to visit the offices of the Royal College of Midwives in Leicester.

  The floor of the small reception area was stiff with gleaming wax polish and the floorboards creaked under my feet. A huge grandfather clock ticked loudly and the place reeked with the hateful odour of pot-pourri. A superior lady with a white starched collar sat behind a desk. From her I picked up an application form and took it away with me to a table in a cafe´ on the London Road, where, with the shiny chrome espresso machine roaring in my ears, I began to fill it in.

  There was a place on the form to enter any previous experience, so I wrote that I’d assisted at perhaps fifty births. Then I crossed that out and wrote fifty-five. I didn’t mention the births I’d done on my own, like Bunch’s or on the few occasions when Mammy wasn’t able to get there. Then there was a place where I was to name any midwife who had given me instruction, and I started to write Mammy’s name before I remembered it would work against me, so I scratched it out.

  By the time I finished it the form looked a bit like it was filled in by one of Judith’s dense schoolchildren, but I took it back to the reception and handed it in to the lady with the starched collar. I tried to creep out but she summoned me back.

  ‘You hiven’t completed this kestionaire,’ she called out.

  I went back to her desk, the floorboards creaking under my nervous step. She had an elegant fountain pen and she was tapping the box where you had to say which local authority you had worked for. I explained that I hadn’t worked for any local authority. The clock ticked loudly as she examined the form again.

  ‘But you’ve put hya that you’ve had all this experience. Look. Fifty-five births it says hya.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The lady looked over her glasses at me. ‘It doesn’t do to fib, you know.’

  I coloured instantly. I wanted to spit in her eye. ‘I’m not fibbing!’

  ‘But … how old are you? When did you start this … assisting?’

  ‘When I was thirteen.’ It was true. As soon as my first period arrived, Mammy told me it was time I knew what it was all about.

  She looked over her glasses again. ‘What about the name of the midwife you were helping?’

  My fingers fluttered to my hairgrips. The ticking of the clock got louder and the odour of the pot-pourri grew more sickening as I tried to frame a reply. I stammered something about working with different ones. Then I rushed out of the building. Once outside I ran up towards Victoria Park, not stopping until I was out of breath. Then I let down my hair and went and sat in the park by the white war memorial arch, where I stayed for two hours.

  When I got back to my cottage Chas was helping himself to water from the pump. He was filling the old milk churns. ‘Hey Fern!’ he called. ‘Don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Why should I mind?’ I wanted to sound a little sour with him after the way he and his friends had mocked me in the field, but I found it hard to stay in a munk with him.

  ‘Still got trouble with the lord of the manor?’

  ‘They’re throwing us out of the cottage anyway.’ I explained to him about my back rent, and about the estate owning the cottage.

  ‘Fucking feudalism is what it is,’ Chas said cheerfully. ‘It’s nineteen sixty-six and you still have to grind your flour in that bastard’s mill. Out-bloody-rageous. Anyway, fuck him: if they turf you out you’ll come and live with us at the farm.’

  ‘I will?’

  ‘If you want to. Greta thinks you’re a fucking oracle. Luke thinks you’re gorgeous. You’ll fit in all right.’ Chas rolled the heavy water-filled milk churn to his van and hoisted it in the back. He was strong. I could smell the fresh sweat of his exertion.

  ‘Can’t see Mammy fitting in,’ I said, ‘not with your band of gypsies.’ And not with all this foul-mouthed cussing, I thought.

  ‘You and the old lady got somewhere better to go?’

  We hadn’t. Judith hadn’t offered and I wouldn’t ask, and time was closing in. But though I could see he was entirely serious there was no way Mammy could rub along with Chas’s lot.

  ‘We’re living off the land, and up there the land is owned by anyone who wants to stay on it.’ He dragged the last churn away and I followed him out of the garden.

  ‘Thought it was you that owned it.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Property is theft.’

  ‘Is it?’ I said. ‘Why’s that then?’

  He ignored my question, which was meant seriously. He was about to swing himself into his driving seat when he said, ‘Want to jump in the van? Have a look up there? Come on, Fern. You know you’re curious about us.’

  And he smiled at me, and he made a single eyebrow curve like a bird’s wing, and I felt something very deep in me let go, something deep in my womb, just for a second.

  16

  Chas would keep taking his eyes off the road ahead to smile at me as we bumped along the lane in the van. My hands started to behave as if I didn’t own them. They touched the dashboard, they brushed the door handle, they stroked the three grips in my hair. He noticed, and turned his smile on me again. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Pay attention to where you’re going,’ I said.

  ‘You’re funny.’

  ‘Funny? That’s rich coming from a blooming hippie.’

  The van lurched to a stop in the yard at Croker’s Farm. Chas jumped out, ran round and slid open the passenger door for me, as if I were royalty. ‘I can do it,’ I said.

  If this were supposed to be a working farm there was no one about. A few Rhode Island Reds pecked at the muddy ground and a sorry-looking cock eyed me from the top of an old muck heap. Two sleepy greyhounds and a whippet-cross came to have a sniff at me. The farm buildings were being slowly sucked into the ground and any pieces of farm machinery I saw were held together by orange rust. There was little evidence of anyone ‘living off the land’.

  ‘Come inside,’ Chas said. I folded my arms. I didn’t want to go in. But he held the door open for me.

  In the kitchen a wood-stove was burning and the place was warm enough, though empty. A strange music floated into the kitchen from another room. It was a music I’d never heard before, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. It made me think of sunlight on thin strands of dripping molasses. But it also went in my ear like a crawling insect. ‘What’s that sound?’ I asked.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and he led me through the house.

  Though it was broad daylight outside, the room he took me into had curtains drawn, and low-burning candles were placed all about. A number of people slouched against the walls on mattresses, smoking cigarettes. There were three or four small children there, too. Everybody was half asleep, taking little notice of me. Luke was there – I recognised him and he gave me a sleepy wave. The music was coming from a record-player by my feet. I looked down and saw the disc spinning. All I could think as I looked at these folk sitting in the dark listening to this odd music in the middle of the day was: what a waste of candles!

  A figure stirred in the corner and blinked at me from the shadows with badger eyes. It was Greta. She extricated herself from one of the children and came over, hugging me like I was a long-lost sister. I didn’t know where to look, though I did my best not to wince. She could see I felt uncomfortable so she led me back into the kitchen, with the promise of a cup of tea and a slice of Battenberg cake. Chas followed us.

  ‘What’s that awful noise?’ I asked, when we were sat around the kitchen table.

  ‘Oh that’s a sitar. Indian music, Fern, from India.’

  ‘Well you can bloomin’ well keep it,’ I said. I wouldn’t fancy that going on in my ears all day.

  Chas laughed. ‘It’s very difficult to play.’

 
; ‘I’ve no doubt,’ I said. Then I turned to Greta. ‘Was that your child there in the room?’

  ‘No,’ she said, stirring the teapot, ‘that was Forest. Chas’s little boy.’

  ‘Forest? I never heard of a boy called Forest.’

  ‘I haven’t heard of too many girls called Fern,’ Chas said.

  ‘Where’s his Mam, then?’

  ‘Oops,’ went Greta. ‘Chas don’t talk about Forest’s mum.’

  ‘Why’s that then?’

  ‘ ’Cos she’s a witch,’ Chas said.

  ‘A witch?’ I said. ‘You mean she casts spells?’

  ‘Do you want sugar? She wants sugar in that tea, Greta,’ said Chas. ‘No, not that sort of a witch.’

  ‘How many sorts are there?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘I mean she’s vicious and selfish so we don’t have anything to do with her.’

  ‘So you mean she’s a bitch, not a witch.’

  Chas rubbed his face with a large leathery hand, then said lazily, ‘You know exactly what I mean Fern, so why are you picking on me?’

  ‘He don’t like to talk about her,’ Greta said.

  ‘I’m not picking on you,’ I said. ‘What are they all smoking in there? Smells like old wet dog.’

  After finishing my tea and my slice of Battenberg cake I walked home. Chas offered to drive me but I declined, seeing as how it was only fifteen minutes, though I wished I’d accepted because Greta insisted on walking with me instead: why, I don’t know. It occurred to me I’d never met such a happy person as Greta in my life. Always grinning she was. Maddening, in a way.

  ‘How’s the old lady?’

  ‘Middlin’,’ I said.

  As we walked she mentioned the party again. I said I didn’t want to go to a party if they had that bloomin’ Hindu music going, and she said no they play their own music; and then as we walked she burst into song. It was an old whaling song I’d never heard, she being from Yarmouth she said, and it was a good one and I got it in one, though I didn’t tell her. So when she was done I gave her ‘John Barleycorn’ in return. She wanted to stop and listen but I felt stupid standing in the lane like that so I insisted we should keep walking.

  When I was done she told me what a voice I had, and asked me how many songs I knew.

  ‘Dozens and dozens,’ I said.

  ‘But where did you collect them from?’

  ‘Collect? I didn’t collect them. Mammy taught them to me when we were gathering in the fields.’ And this time I had to stop and turn my head away from Greta. It wasn’t because she was still grinning at me like a gargoyle, it was because I had the shocking thought that Mammy might never teach me another song.

  After I’d recovered I said to Greta, ‘So are you standing in for the boy’s mother, then?’ I was intrigued by the set-up at Croker’s Farm. I used Greta’s clinging attachment to me as an excuse to poke my nose in as far as it would go.

  ‘No, we all take responsibility for the children. We all act as parents to all the children.’

  ‘And who acts as Chas’s wife?’

  ‘Oh,’ Greta said, cottoning on. ‘We’re easy about that. Everybody loves everybody.’

  I was shocked. ‘Well I don’t think I’d like that! How does it work?’

  ‘I sometimes have my doubts,’ she confessed. ‘Sometimes I think it suits the men more than it suits the women.’

  I stopped in my tracks. ‘You mean you’re forced?’

  ‘No,’ she said laughing. ‘We choose who and when, of course. But the arrangement sounds all right as an idea, but when it comes to living it … Well!’

  I searched her eyes. She blushed, then giggled again, and I began to wonder what sort of people I’d fallen among.

  A few days later a letter arrived at the cottage. It was from the College of Midwives. It pointed out that there were some gaps on the application form I’d filled in and there were discrepancies, but that a new course was about to commence that very week and in view of the urgent demand for midwives I should enrol. I’d been accepted.

  The course was to take place in Leicester, and was for one evening per week for two terms. That was no hardship, since I could visit Mammy and then go on to my class. It was a special course, an accelerated course for women with some experience of midwifery and those returning to the profession after a period of absence. I tried to think whether I’d lied about anything that might get me a place on this course, but I thought I’d been truthful enough. Though the course didn’t lead to full qualification, it did offer a diploma, from where I might go on.

  I looked at the date on the letter and I checked the calendar. The first class was in two evenings’ time. After all my woes of the past few weeks it was a sudden spilling of light. I wanted to tell somebody. My first thoughts were to tell Judith, or I would have even been glad to tell Chas, or Greta. But as I hugged the letter to my heart I had to make do with a quiet word to Mammy, who wouldn’t have disapproved.

  *

  The following day Venables appeared in a bowler hat and raincoat, with Arthur McCann and another chap. I looked out of the window and saw Arthur hanging back, and I could tell he didn’t want to be there. Venables came to the door and knocked gently. When I opened the door Venables stood back and took his bowler hat off to talk to me.

  Venables got straight to the point. ‘Look,’ he said politely, ‘you don’t have to let us in if you don’t want to. But we’d like to make a survey if that’s all right.’ He had a very refined way of speaking. He was the sort of man who used his voice to stroke you. ‘To be honest with you we need to make a decision about whether to pull the old place down.’

  ‘The cottage? Pull it down?’

  ‘But it won’t make any difference to you,’ he said. ‘You’ll be gone.’

  I was so shocked by the prospect of them demolishing the cottage that I went back inside and took my seat by the fire, leaving them all standing there. Mammy was still everywhere in that house. It was the only home I’d ever known. My thoughts had always been that even if we had to leave it for a while then I might later be able to devise some way of getting it back.

  I saw Venables make a motion to the other men, and then he followed me inside. ‘I don’t want to add to your distress. But the plain fact is you’re in arrears with the rent for over a year and you’ve shown no sign to me that you can find it.’

  I shook my head. I tried so hard not to let him see the tears that were like lime in my eyes. How could someone be like that? How could they be so polite and well mannered and take off their hat and speak with a beautiful voice when they were really behaving like a dog?

  He gazed down at me. I could tell his thoughts floated somewhere between pity and contempt. At last he said, ‘We’ll leave you be.’ Then he made his way out.

  Arthur hung back after the other two had gone. I felt sorry for his shame. ‘You okay, Fern?’

  ‘Arthur,’ I blurted, hardly believing myself, ‘come on Friday …’

  ‘Friday? What, have you found some rent? I could come in the morning.’

  ‘No, not the morning,’ I said, holding his gaze. ‘And not for rent either. I’d rather you came in the evening.’

  ‘Evening?’

  ‘I wanted some company. Someone to talk to. Perhaps I could offer you a bit of dinner.’

  He seemed thunderstruck. Then he drew himself up to his full height. ‘Dinner?’

  When I nodded he looked around the cottage as if seeing it for the first time.

  ‘McCann!’ Venables shouted from the gate.

  ‘Seven o’clock, Arthur? On Friday?’

  He nodded and then he was gone, and I still couldn’t quite come to believe what I’d done. But all I could think was how Mammy would not have approved, even had this been the last option available in the history of the world. And then I wondered if that was true.

  17

  ‘Gulp. You did it. Gulp.’ Judith, by her own admission, had more experience in beguiling men than in discouraging them. Now
that I’d taken her advice, now that I’d baited the hook, now that I’d run dangerously near to whoring myself she had little to offer except to pipe up with these comic-cuts noises.

  ‘Stop saying gulp.’

  ‘Gulp is what I feel,’ she said. ‘But look at it this way: what’s the worst that can happen? That he’ll fuck you.’

  The weather had turned out very warm and that evening we sat on the grassy mound of the old motte-and-bailey castle, overlooking the few lights twinkling on in the village of Hallaton. The day’s sun had warmed the earth and I could scent it in my nostrils, knowing we were in for a hot summer even though we were still at the gate of spring. The earthworks mound was raised on a high natural point from where it was possible to survey the county all around. It was a locus of strange energy, a charged and mysterious place about which I always felt ambivalent. I looked up. Stars were coming out and in that magnificent way where one moment there are none and then you blink and there are many.

  ‘You’re so crude Judith,’ I said evenly. ‘And I don’t want him to fuck me.’

  ‘You say he’s not awful looking.’ Judith started plucking stalks of grass.

  ‘You come and offer yourself in my place, then,’ I said.

  She pretended to think about it for a moment; and then, as if I were offering her flat beer, she said, ‘Nah.’

  I gazed southwards to the darkened hill they call Hare Pie Bank and to the rolling lands beyond and had cause to think of whether Arthur might be a prospect. Firstly with a man there is always the question of his smell. They have to smell right. It’s not necessarily about hygiene. Arthur always looked well-scrubbed and passionately groomed. Chas the hippie by contrast didn’t always look too clean, but his male odour didn’t offend the nostrils either. There were probably many women who would find Chas’s smell a pleasing one. I think to love someone you have to first have a conversation through the nose.