The Limits of Enchantment Read online

  ‘And the doctor goes along with that? What’s that quack’s name? Bloom?’

  Judith blinked and looked away. ‘So far. And that might be the end of it, but Jane had a sister who took some of the mushrooms for her own breakfast and she’s been blurting to everyone how she is all right.’

  ‘But if there was one bad mushroom, and only Jane ate it, it wouldn’t affect the other girl would it?’

  ‘No, but we know it likely there wasn’t a bad mushroom, don’t we?’

  ‘Who knows that she came to Mammy?’

  Judith shrugged.

  I was thinking fast. My thoughts were rushing past me, too quick to apprehend. ‘We have to find a way to get Mammy’s jar. It will be around there somewhere.’

  ‘That won’t be easy. But I taught the younger brother at school. I could go. Express my sympathy.’

  I remembered Mammy mentioning there was one who was a schoolteacher. Judith had a way of looking at me like she was counting off the seconds as she waited for an answer. ‘Can you? Can you get in the house?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Try for Mammy, Judith! Try. Anything you can do. And find some entoloma, to leave in the kitchen, to be found. It’s easily confused with St George’s mushroom.’

  ‘You’re asking a lot. It might blow over.’

  ‘It might.’

  I needed to look after Mammy, who’d not spoken a word. I opened the door for Judith, and stepped outside with her. ‘Look, we’ll say – if anyone asks – that she came to Mammy and that Mammy sent her away as being too far gone. That’s what we shall say. But only if anyone asks.’

  Before leaving Judith touched my cheek lightly, with the nail of her finger. ‘Let me write down my address for you. Come round to me. We’re alike. You might need a friend, you know.’ She rummaged in her handbag for a pen and a scrap of paper. Bent over her bag in her cloche hat she looked like a flower in the woods. I wondered if nature really had come up with a friend for me. I watched her slip through the garden gate and break almost into a run as she got on to the lane. Then I went back inside and poured Mammy a lot of sloe gin.

  ‘Flighty,’ Mammy said of Judith. ‘Flighty, that one.’

  ‘Yes, Mammy.’

  ‘Her eye trickles colour.’

  ‘I noticed it, Mammy.’

  ‘Might make her hard to trust.’

  ‘Yes, Mammy.’

  But her mind returned over and over, like an obsession, to the same question. ‘I’m so careful,’ she said. ‘Always.’

  ‘I know that, Mammy. I’ve seen you. Drink up, because you’ve had a hard knock today.’

  ‘And I always err on the side of making it a light dose. I always think, well if it don’t work, it was meant to be.’

  ‘Mammy, you’ve done nothing wrong. There’ll be another explanation. Who knows, perhaps the stupid girl did mix up her mushrooms. Or maybe she didn’t do exactly what you said. Or maybe she didn’t trust you, and she took her problems to someone else. Maybe a hundred reasons for it.’

  ‘I wonder did she haemorrhage? Or could she not stop vomiting? If I’d known, if they’d sent for me, I could have helped. This has never happened in all my years.’

  ‘You have to stop thinking of that, Mammy. If anyone asks, you’re to say you sent her away.’

  ‘I’ve brought a shadow to our door.’

  ‘Mammy! You were trying to help the girl! You’ve always helped these girls! Remember that!’

  But Mammy was not easily consoled. And from that day forward, a slow decline set in. A kind of dusk crept over her. She went about her daily chores as usual, but in a mechanical way and with none of the vigour or spirit I’d always observed in her. She was distracted, preoccupied with other thoughts, and though I could occasionally winkle a smile out of the old woman, it was only ever a forced grin, presented merely to make me feel better. She resorted to her sloe gin more than usual, and to her snuff without seeming to take the old pleasure in it.

  This behaviour being so out of character, I wondered if there was something else.

  Wonderful Judith had done her work, having somehow got inside the house and recovered the jar – now empty of Mammy’s herbal – from the mourning Louth household. It hadn’t been possible to drop off the entoloma fungus but generally the mushroom story stuck. There were rumours, though they never went near Mammy’s ear. Judith reported them to me, and I decided not to pass them on.

  Judith excited my curiosity and I asked Mammy about her. She was one of seven children. Doll’s first six had been boys and Judith was a very late ‘mistake’. Mammy had told me that Doll was one of the few, so it was inevitable that Judith was, too, and I understood this to be the reason why she might go out of her way to help us. I asked why we’d had so little contact with Judith and her mother, and Mammy said that they were all much more full-on than I was, and that I wouldn’t get along with them. The explanation was inadequate, but I let it go. Meanwhile I learned that Judith taught primary-school children in Market Harborough.

  We received a visit from the village constable, Bill Myers. He arrived looking slightly ashamed of himself, with his helmet tucked under his arm and fiddling with a small notepad. Myers’ mother, dead these twelve years, had always spoken highly of Mammy, saying how she’d been a big help to the family in times of trouble when they couldn’t afford doctor’s fees. Myers, fingering his collar, said he was obliged to ask if Jane Louth had been to see her; and in deference to Mammy he directed most of his questions at me.

  ‘She came,’ I said, pouring him a glass of elderberry wine, ‘because she was expecting. But Mammy said she was too far gone and sent her packing.’

  ‘Is that right, Mammy?’

  ‘I sent her packing,’ she sighed.

  Myers started to make a note, then thought better of it. ‘Didn’t tell you who was the father, I suppose?’

  ‘Why would she tell Mammy?’ I blurted, too quickly.

  ‘Shut up girl, I can answer for myself!’ Mammy turned to Myers. ‘She thinks I’m senile, you know.’

  Myers tried to laugh at the idea. ‘No Mammy, you ain’t that. So she went away without you doing anything for her, and she didn’t say who the father was.’

  Mammy had been at Myers’ birth. She’d dipped the policeman in water when he was still greasy from the womb. She looked Myers directly in the eye. ‘That’s the top and bottom of it, Bill.’

  ‘That’ll do me, Mammy,’ Myers said, snapping his notebook shut and draining his glass. ‘I’ll be on my way. You look after your old self.’

  ‘I shall Bill, I shall. Have they give you that car yet?’ Bill’s village-bobby bicycle was about to be upgraded to a patrol vehicle.

  ‘Any day now.’

  ‘And what will you do with your bicycle-clips?’

  ‘I’ll give ’em to you, Mammy.’

  The fake humour was agonising. But though it beat Bill Myers, Mammy barely went outdoors for the next few days. She stayed at home fretting over the fate of Jane Louth. Over and over in her mind she prepared the tea, measuring out the quantities, hunting for error – I know she did. I attended to whatever errands needed taking care of. I grew anxious about how badly Mammy had taken it all. She looked pale and drawn.

  When the weather brightened, I rallied Mammy and persuaded her to go with me into town. I knew Mammy was afraid of the talk, that she was ashamed to show her face.

  ‘You’ve got to go to market and hold your head up, Mammy. Otherwise they’ll think you’re hiding. Otherwise they’ll think you’re guilty.’

  So Mammy relented. She heartened, washed, and put on a change of clothes. The hens were laying well so we gathered up the eggs in a basket, and put together the sewing and hauled on our coats to make the walk into the centre of Keywell, where a regular Saturday market took place.

  It was a fresh and blustery day. Puffs of brilliant white scurrying cloud speckled the sky, and it was possible, after all, to feel the surge of spring. The hedgerows vibrated with life,
and I was almost succeeding in trying to lighten Mammy’s mood when I turned my ankle on a divot in the grass verge by the roadside. I gave a little yelp and hopped to a boulder, where I sat down.

  ‘That’s a bad sign,’ Mammy said. ‘We should turn around.’

  ‘I’m all right. I’ll take off my shoe for a moment and rub it a bit.’

  ‘I don’t like it. I see something in it.’

  ‘It’s nothing. I just twisted it slightly. Give me a moment.’

  Mammy looked back down the path, and then up at the clouds. I massaged my ankle and made light of her attempt at foresight. I had to keep her going. Now she was looking into the trees and the bushes, and I knew if she saw a single magpie or a mistle thrush we would have to return home.

  I refitted my shoe. ‘There Mammy, I’m fine. Let’s get along now.’

  It was already mid-morning by the time we reached Keywell high street and the market place was busy with backed-up trucks and open stalls. There was a dairy stall where we habitually off-loaded the eggs. The market trader was a stout, red-faced man in his sixties, called Trump. I’d never liked him. He would squint at me and compress his thin lips. A line of warts, like a constellation of dark stars, ran from his nose and across his cheek. I waited until his stall cleared before taking the basket to him. Mammy stood at my shoulder as Trump greeted us cheerily enough.

  ‘Got a full basket for you,’ I said.

  The market trader made himself busy, rearranging his cheeses. ‘I’m overstocked with eggs this time.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mammy said. I looked up and down the stall. There were eggs there, but few.

  Trump wiped his finger under his nose. ‘Can’t use them today. Sorry.’ Then he turned to attend to a new customer.

  ‘That’s the first time he’s ever refused my eggs,’ Mammy said.

  I said, ‘Well if he’s overstocked he’s overstocked and that’s it.’

  ‘He’s not overstocked. We should go home.’

  ‘Don’t make more of it than it is, Mammy. We’ll sell these further on.’

  I found a greengrocer who was happy to relieve us of our eggs. After that we delivered the sewing and stopped for a moment to gossip with one old girl by the square, and though she did seem in a hurry to move on I said nothing to Mammy about it. With our business finished quickly we turned for home, passing by the Bell public house.

  The Bell was crowded and roustabout on market day. A jukebox hammered out tunes I liked by The Yardbirds and The Kinks, and a warm haze of tobacco smoke and sour ale spilled through the open door and on to the street along with the good-natured babble of voices. Sometimes Mammy took me in for a glass of stout, but today she showed no inclination to venture inside. She pressed on instead, but hadn’t made three steps past the pub’s open door before a shadow darted and someone gave her a fierce shove in the small of her back. It sent her stumbling into the road.

  Two men had loomed out of the Bell, beery, vinegary louts both unknown to me. As Mammy stumbled and looked up to see her assailant, the second man stepped behind her and pushed her towards the doorway of the pub.

  ‘Shouldn’t show your face round here,’ the first said. And this time he pressed Mammy hard in the chest, pushing her back again. Mammy roared at her assailant, but as she did so she twisted and fell into the gutter, her ash-stick clattering in the road. Mammy lay on her back, panting hard.

  I recovered from my astonishment at the first assault, and picked up Mammy’s stick to thrash wildly at one of the men, but they’d already gone, perhaps inside the pub. A few people gathered, but no one offered to help me get Mammy to her feet, and her weight seemed overwhelming as I tried to lift her. At last someone came out of the pub to help. It was Arthur McCann in his black leather jacket. He stooped down beside me in the gutter, blinking with his delicate eyelashes. Then he helped Mammy up. He dusted her down and gave her back her stick without a word.

  I heard a reed-like voice call Arthur from the doorway of the pub, ‘Arthur, I’d leave well alone if I were you.’

  The small crowd, hitherto silent, started muttering. I looked up and saw a figure I thought I recognised scrutinising us from the doorway of the pub. Mammy was on her feet, but was breathing hard. Someone found her basket and gave it to her.

  ‘Shall I get her a drink?’ Arthur said, indicating the Bell. ‘She’s had a fall. Doesn’t look too good.’

  ‘I’ll take Mammy now,’ I said coldly. I don’t know why.

  ‘Arthur’s not to blame,’ Mammy said. ‘Get me home, Fern.’

  It was a struggle. Mammy was a weight and she had to lean on me. The onlookers watched us make slow progress along the street. From inside the pub came the sound of that song ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’ by them scruffy Rolling Stones.

  Mammy never entirely recovered from the attack. On our return to the cottage she took to her bed. I was dismayed to see the extent of her bruises, on her back and her hip and her arm. Mammy was old, and old skin didn’t repair easily. Under Mammy’s instructions I made a salve from oil and fresh elder leaves, heating it until the leaves went crisp and then straining the mash into a jar. I massaged the elder salve into the livid bruises, whispering comfort to Mammy, who lay with her eyes closed. Now and then she winced.

  At dusk a screech owl settled in the ash tree in the garden and shrieked at intervals. I didn’t like it at all, though Mammy said it was a good omen.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how much you try to help people,’ Mammy said to me. ‘They always turn on you one day. This is why we keep apart. They always turn.’

  ‘Go to sleep, Mammy.’ I’d given her a soothing tea made from valerian, which Mammy always called vandal root, and peppermint. The owl screeched from the ash tree. It sat there in the full light of the moon. I looked out of the window at it, trying to scare it away with my thoughts, but it just looked back at me.

  The next day Mammy seemed even worse so I sent for Dr Bloom, the local GP. Mammy had no time for him as a doctor, and he knew it. He came – eventually – with his leather bag and his stethoscope and his bustling, superior air. I noticed he had a ring on his little finger, which Mammy told me was the sign of a Freemason. I don’t know if that’s true.

  Bloom, who always seemed to be in a massive hurry, took the stairs two at a time. Mammy gave no resistance to his examination, and he soon told me to follow him downstairs. ‘We’ll have to have her in,’ he said, running a hand through a thatch of hair thick with Brylcreem.

  ‘Not a chance!’ I said. I knew she would hate hospital, and with good reason.

  ‘She’s got abnormally high blood pressure. Plus I think she’s cracked a rib or two.’ He stuffed his stethoscope in his bag and looked up at the herb bunches pinned to the roof beams. ‘And if I leave her here she’s bound to choke herself on all this rot.’

  They’d had differences about this before. ‘She’s not going anywhere. I can give her better nursing here than in there.’

  ‘You’re as bad as she is,’ Bloom said, clipping his case shut. ‘I’ll come again tomorrow, but if she’s no better we’ll have to whisk her in.’ Then he was gone, as if he couldn’t get out of the cottage fast enough, leaving behind him a prescription for analgesic and a whiff of Brylcreem.

  That evening Judith arrived with an old man in tow. He was stooped with age. His ears were hairy, dressed with a soft, white down sprouting from both the shell and the large, fleshy lobes. He seemed to me like some kind of a troll, as he pushed past me and went directly upstairs to Mammy. I stood at the bottom of the stairs, not knowing whether to follow, but Mammy seemed to know him, because I heard her say, ‘William, look at me all laid up.’

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked Judith.

  ‘William said you and he met about ten years ago.’

  I thought about it, and then I realised I did know William after all. Mammy had taken me to his cottage once. She’d said he kept bees and she was going to show me the hives. The man I now recognised had been arthritic and ancient even then. It was a meeting stra
nge and brief. William had been planting a row of leeks in his vegetable patch. Mammy had hailed him from the gate and William had got up, knee joints cracking, wiping his hands on his rough brown trousers before reaching out to me. There was soil on his hands. I stupidly thought the old man was offering to shake hands, but instead he had reached past me and twined his fingers in my hair before withdrawing his muddy hand.

  ‘So this is yourn?’ William had said.

  ‘This is her,’ Mammy had said.

  William had gazed at me that day. I remember a blowfly buzzing past his face and he’d waved it away lazily. ‘Good,’ he’d said. ‘Yes. She might do.’ Then he’d turned back to his row of leeks. That was it. I never got to see the bee hives.

  I made tea for everyone and took it upstairs. Mammy was chattering away: the visit had clearly perked her up, though William didn’t seem to be listening. He’d drawn a chair up at the bottom of the bed and was playing a game of Patience with a pack of almost completely effaced cards that he’d laid out on Mammy’s blankets.

  ‘I hear that apple-arse doctor’s been in,’ he said without looking up.

  ‘He says Mammy’s got cracked ribs.’

  ‘I ain’t got cracked ribs!’ Mammy forced a chuckle. ‘It’s a bruise is all it is.’

  ‘He wants her to go into hospital,’ I persisted.

  At last William looked up from his cards. ‘You keep her away from there. If she goes in she won’t come out again.’

  ‘Surely it’s not that bad!’ I tried. I meant Mammy’s condition. Or the hospital. Or both.

  ‘Just keep her out of that bloody charnel-house,’ William said. He seemed cross with me. ‘It’s up to you to keep her out. Now where’s that tea I was promised?’ William gazed at me meaningfully, then went back to his cards.

  7

  After the visitors had gone I climbed the creaking stairs to see Mammy, but she was sleeping. I went back down and tidied up, then took a book upstairs with me. I thought to sit with her a while and read. Even though she was sleeping I felt she might be able to sense my presence watching over her.