The Limits of Enchantment Read online

  I sensed he might know something he didn’t want to reveal. ‘Why would you do that for me?’

  Arthur finally stopped regarding the leak and looked instead at me. ‘Stop it, Fern! You know why!’

  I looked at him and thought, Well it isn’t fair what we get away with; how we can make men dance, and pretend we don’t see them hop and skip; making out we know nothing about it. And I felt sorry for Arthur. ‘I’m grateful for anything you can do.’

  I got him to take off his coat. I made him a cup of tea and I laid out the exact details of my money situation. He whistled and scratched the underside of his chin for an inspiration that didn’t come. We had a laugh about the day Mammy had stung his backside with her stick and I tried to thank him for the time he’d stuck up for us in Keywell but he didn’t even want to talk about it. ‘It was a disgrace,’ is all he said, and the subject trailed a silence behind it, and that gave him a cue to get up to leave.

  ‘There’s another thing.’ He shuffled his arms into his wet coat. ‘Those hippies from Croker’s. They’ve been drawing water from the pump here.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I’ve been told to tell you they can’t.’

  ‘But that’s just mean!’

  ‘I know. They’re doing no harm. But the Norfolk Eel admitted he couldn’t stop you from giving them water, so I’ve told you that as well. Up to you, Fern, but you ain’t doing yourself any favours with the estate by going against them. Up to you.’

  Arthur put his soggy cap on his head, though much good it would do him since outside it was still raining hammer and nails. But he had other things to do. I let him go and shut the door behind him a fraction too quickly. Then I turned and thought for a minute, and a drop of rain from the leaking roof went plop in the pan.

  That morning the rain curved in the grey air and set in hard until after midday, and though it didn’t blow over completely it fell back and later the day brightened a little. I put on my thick woollen coat and my boots and decided to go for a walk in Pikehorn woods, to think things through. I wrapped a black scarf around my head to save my ears from the stinging wind, and I didn’t give a damn, frump or not.

  The efforts of the estate to evict us from the cottage were not merely about the rent. They wanted the cottage, perhaps to install one of the estate labourers, and now that Mammy was off the scene the power that held them back from merely seizing it was away with her. I was a girl with little experience and no protection. I thought about Arthur again, but it seemed to me that the rush to find a man to help me – any available man – was a kind of weakness.

  The electricity lines carried across the fields by giant pylons were hissing with water. I got off the road and went into the woods all heavy from the downpour. The black path – a rich compost of bracken root and mouldering leaf – was waterlogged. But the green ferns were springy and the trees and the thicket were rinsed clean, singing with water. I found in the dripping outdoors a crackle and a power fizzing on leaf and frond and branch. The rain had charged the air. It smelled good.

  I knew the woods as well as I knew the land. The earth and its delivery of plants and bushes and herbs was a consistent calendar. In fact it was better than a calendar. What use was it to know that it was the fifth or the tenth day in March if the earth told you that the year was loitering? The days might pass but if the land wasn’t ready you couldn’t trot it on. No good collecting camomile in May if you’ve had a lot of rain or the blackthorn sloe in autumn if you’ve not had a frost. Only the leaves of the field turning make a calendar, a leafy almanac telling us the true time of year. We charted their constellations in the hedgerow; and they told us where to walk.

  In the woods I was often in the condition (Mammy would complain) of being seduced. Even as I walked I felt myself going, drifting, but this time I didn’t call myself back, and there came to me a kind of vision. The beads of rainwater on each branch-tip or bud and on every bracken leaf began to expand; perfect, light-refracting silver spheres inflating until they were pregnant globes of light. The bracken became heavy under their new weight, tilting back until the fleshy spring of the green stems snapped back and triggered like catapults, firing the globes into the air; so did the budded branch-tips of the trees, flinging iridescent baubles of light into the air.

  I knew I could ride these baubles of light. Get right inside them, and drift free over the houses, where I would hear folk talking. The moment was a gift. If only I could calculate its meaning I would have been beyond the reach of this world but at that moment I was soaring, soaring in the spaces between the trees. I felt in no need of help. I felt I could answer anything.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The question brought me crashing to earth, a moment of panic, a clumsy descent in which I couldn’t find my voice to answer; a moment in which I had to reassemble my person, to find the throat, the tongue, the words that might not arouse suspicion. But suspicion against what?

  ‘Did I startle you?’

  I was startled indeed. It was none other than Venables, the Estate Manager. The Norfolk Eel himself, and I could do nothing but stare at him stupidly. He looked back at me with spaniel eyes. His cheeks were so soft and rosy you wanted to stroke them with a finger. And though he smiled gently at me, there was an aura of sadness, of personal tragedy about the man that made me want to protect him.

  Ridiculous really, when this was the man getting ready to evict me. I dared him to say anything about my walking in the woods. The Stokes estate liked to pretend they owned these woods, but I knew they were owned by a trust and that the estate land merely abutted the tree-line. But he didn’t.

  ‘I was admiring you. You seemed so lost in thought,’ he said.

  ‘I was,’ I countered.

  ‘I do that. Come here to lose myself I mean.’ He took a step towards me but folded his arms, which was a clever way of advancing and stepping back at the same time. ‘But you know what’s odd? I was on my way to your house. To visit you.’

  ‘To visit me?’

  Mammy once told me that in the woods she could make whatever she wanted to appear. Yet I hadn’t wanted this soft-talking man to appear. I hadn’t called him.

  ‘Yes! Were you thinking of going back? We could walk together. I’ve got some news. Something that might cheer you up.’

  I hesitated. I was intrigued, because in all of my years with Mammy no one from the estate had ever visited the cottage, and I’d never thought it strange. But I was annoyed, too, because my bubble-moment in the woods had been popped, and I would never know where it was leading me. He seemed to read my thoughts.

  ‘Hope I didn’t spoil a perfect moment for you.’

  We walked back to the cottage. On the way he held up a spiny branch in an arch over my head so I might pass safely through it. He even offered his hand as we climbed the stile, and against all my instincts I took it. He refused to tell me his bit of news until we were installed in the cottage.

  Once there I made up the fire. Venables was a tall man, and I sensed his eyes on me constantly. He politely refused tea, sloe gin and elderberry wine but accepted a glass of water. I stripped off my wet coat and pulled my chair closer to the smoky fire.

  ‘I hear Mammy’s in the Royal. You must miss her.’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘Now what’s this news you have for me?’

  ‘It’s about you leaving this house.’

  ‘I’m not leaving the house. You’re throwing us out.’

  ‘Here’s the amazing thing. It’s your good luck that Amy English is leaving the service of Lady Stokes to get married, and they want to replace her at the house. So there’s an opportunity for you, if you fancy it, to be trained.’

  Service. I heard the word tinkle like a bell in my head. It sounded antique even to me. ‘Do they still do that up there?’

  ‘Personal maid. A respected position. I spoke up for you.’

  ‘But you don’t know the first thing about me!’

  ‘Look Fern, Mammy has her
critics in this parish, as you well know, and there are a lot of people who are full of prejudice. But I’m not one of them. And there are others who speak up for you. I simply reported that at the house. The position is yours if you want it. Accommodation, everything.’

  ‘What about Mammy?’

  He sniffed. ‘We’re prepared to help with that, too.’ He emptied his tumbler of water, leaned across to place the glass on the table and let his voice go low. It had the effect of making me lean closer towards him. I almost felt he was trying to seduce me with his voice. ‘Sometimes events have a habit of arriving together. Like meeting in the woods. Sometimes these things are not accidents. They are meant to happen. Sorry if that sounds a bit mystical, but I do believe life has a way of shaping a path for us.’

  I admit I giggled. I tilted my head back and laughed. He smiled and nodded enthusiastically, pleased with his engineering.

  Sobering, I said, ‘I’d rather cut my throat.’

  His rosy cheeks took on a deeper shade. ‘But it’s an opportunity. It would solve your predicament.’

  ‘My predicament? I’d rather be a hermit in the woods than go into service waiting on the so-called quality. Those people you work for: haven’t you looked at their hands? They’re reptiles. Anyway it’s medieval. Didn’t it occur to you to ask whether I might like it before volunteering my services? And what clever scheme have you got lined up for Mammy in all of this?’

  He tilted his head and arched a single eyebrow very high, still smiling, but with a far-fetched tolerance. ‘Fern, you don’t have the luxury of this attitude. You’ve no education to speak of and no resources. I’ve done my homework on you. Don’t think you’ll be allowed to follow Mammy’s line.’

  ‘I have a mind to get a diploma.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s medieval, Fern. With your history, they won’t let you practise. Midwifery is a proper profession, and I’m afraid you’re tainted by association.’

  ‘What do you mean ‘‘tainted’’?’ I looked him in the eye. ‘This is Mammy’s house we’re in.’

  ‘I know that. And I don’t want to show any disrespect. But while she’s away I’m trying to steer you to a better path. You can see that, can’t you Fern?’

  Now I understood why they had never come to our door in all these years. It was because Mammy would have chased them away with her stick, and they knew it. ‘You’ve come to save me, haven’t you?’

  He smiled. He knew what I meant. ‘You’re very beautiful, actually. Underneath. Everyone agrees. But that doesn’t change anything.’

  Get him out of here now, said a voice in my ear. Get him out. I stood up. ‘I’ll consider it.’

  Venables took his cue and got to his feet. ‘I can be a good friend, Fern.’ He paused at the threshold. Get him out, said the strident voice, get him out of here. ‘By the way, what were you doing? In the woods?’

  ‘I was giving thanks and praise for all the things I have,’ I said.

  ‘Really!’ He smiled feebly at me and made an odd little punch in the air, in front of his nose. I don’t know why. Then he turned to go. The gate whined on its hinge and the spring snapped it back into place after he passed through.

  Evil to your black heart, I thought, watching him walk away. ‘Was that you, Mammy?’ I asked in a whisper. ‘Was that your voice telling me to get him out?’

  I was still muttering to myself when a boy stepped from behind the bushes. He wore an anorak with the hood pulled so tight around his face only a tiny oval of mouth, nose and eyes was left exposed. He came up the garden path, sidling like a crab.

  ‘I hung back while I saw the Norfolk Eel,’ he said, casting around him. ‘Only my mam sent me to tell you Bunch Cormell her waters have gone and she says if it’s not to be Mammy it’s to be you. Did I do right to dodge the Eel?’

  I flicked at his hood, this sweet little boy. ‘You did well. I’ll get my coat and I’ll follow you down the road.’

  11

  That sound, when they suck the very first draught of life. It’s a click, a key turning in a tiny lock before the eerie ripple of knowing, the awesome shudder of recognition. Then they wail it out again! Oh I love that first sound.

  It was Bunch Cormell’s fifth, and her first four could not have been any easier than this one. Wait, Mammy had taught me, standing at the foot of the bed with her hands lightly clasped as she waited for time to round the corner; and if in doubt wait a little longer. All I had to do beyond putting my hands on Bunch’s belly, and after inspecting the dilation, was to wait on nature. The boy, so he was, slipped out as easily as a fish. I checked him over and stroked his tiny nose to get rid of some mucus; I cleaned the child and laid him on Bunch’s belly; I helped latch him on to Bunch’s huge, expert breast; and then I delivered the afterbirth, and within the half hour I had my coat on. Oh, this job of life: you wouldn’t want any other.

  ‘You’ve got the touch, Fern,’ Bunch said happily. ‘You have.’ Bunch’s husband was a farrier, but her own biceps were bigger than his and she would put her fists up to anyone. Her sleek black hair was plastered to her rosy face. Her dark eyes were liquid with happiness. Otherwise she looked like she’d done nothing more than run to catch a bus. ‘Just like Mammy, you are. Better than. But don’t tell ’er I said that.’

  ‘If they were all that easy you shouldn’t need me. Now, you’ve four wide-eyed sprats outside the door. Shall I send them in?’

  ‘Send them. Will you be burying that?’

  I took some old newspaper out of my bag and wrapped up the afterbirth. ‘In your garden?’

  ‘Up by the rhubarb patch, Fern. Please.’

  I opened the door. Bunch’s husband and their four children were gathered on the landing. The children filed in, all with eyes like sloe-berries, but averted, and stepping clear of me as if I were not merely a midwife but a frightening herald from another world. The farrier let them go ahead of him, and touched my arm. Then he pressed two folded banknotes into my hand.

  ‘It’s too much,’ I protested.

  It did seem such a lot when the state offered the help for free. The man looked at me with the same sloe-eyes as his children. ‘Heard you had some bother with the estate. Bunch will have my hide if you don’t take it.’

  I felt the fluid gathering at the back of my eyes. I almost couldn’t stand this big, brawny man’s kindness. But I said, ‘Go and see your strapping new lad. He’s a pretty one.’

  Dusk was falling on the small vegetable garden in the back yard. A halogen lamp had come on in the street behind the house and it cast a dim light on the garden, enough for me to see by. I took my small trowel from the bag and buried the afterbirth in the earth near where the young crowns of rhubarb had pushed through the mulch. The soil was black and damp and turned easily. Mammy always told me to bury it deep enough so that a fox might not unearth it but not so deep that the bees might not know about it. Though I knew the difference between Mammy’s practical common sense in midwifery and her rampant superstitions, I was always faithful to her instruction, and to the needs of women like Bunch who wouldn’t be satisfied if I didn’t do these things.

  Mammy said we did this to dig into the world from where the baby had come, to return to the earth the vessel in which the baby had arrived. For this reason she said you should always be careful to shake the soil loose from your fingers, because you had plunged your hand into that other world. When I looked up from the job, I saw in the corner of the garden a hare, and it was looking directly at me. And I knew.

  I knew because my skin flushed, almost as if it wanted to peel itself off my bones. A terrible fear rippled behind the flush of my skin. The hare was a big one. It gazed at me with large eyes, yellow and lunar. Its grizzled, reddish brown fur had a sheen, a lustre. The creature was immobile, but its massive hind legs were compressed: hard-packed muscle waiting to spring. Long black-tipped ears stood erect, listening.

  I was astonished to hear myself speak to it, as if it were human, as if it might reply. ‘What are yo
u doing here? So far away from the fields?’ Or perhaps I only thought these words. The moon-like yellow eyes gazed back at me and for a second time I felt a frisson, a prickle almost like a fur along the length of my own spine. My stomach squeezed and I felt paralysed by this unreasonable terror – not of the hare, but of the quivering air around it, and of this numbing of my senses – and I still had my knees locked in the dirt where I kneeled. Then came a warm stench, the sudden odour of the animal, like a signature flourished at the foot of a message as it turned and moved through the hedge, and was gone.

  I recovered and the fear had gone too. After all it was only a hare. I cast about to see if anyone else had seen. I got up and went to the downstairs window and looked in. There was no one, only the flickering blue light of the television broadcasting to an empty room. The Cormells were busy upstairs admiring the new addition to the family. I felt a little foolish. I went back and finished tamping down the earth with my trowel before dropping the tool in my bag.

  Then I remembered Mammy. What with Venables’ distressing visit in the afternoon, and with this job at the Cormells’, I’d neglected Mammy. I thought of her in hospital, alone, unvisited.

  The next day was a Saturday, and Judith called. We discussed the pressing problem of my rent. Judith must have heard dismay in my voice. ‘Make some tea,’ she said. ‘We’ll think again.’

  I stepped outside to draw water from the pump in the yard but the handle found no resistance. When it wants to dry, I thought. Bad luck pulls more bad luck. ‘It needs priming,’ I shouted. ‘I’ll go to the well.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Judith shouted, emerging from the house. ‘Isn’t it time the estate piped water into this place? They’ve got men orbiting the moon and you’re drawing water from a bloody well! It doesn’t seem right. Are they too bloody mean? Come on, we’ll go together.’

  I grabbed the metal bucket upended against the wall. On the way I told Judith about the hare I’d seen in the dusk of Bunch’s garden.

  Judith stopped in her tracks. ‘Have you Asked?’