The House at the Edge of the World (14 page)

All the other kids joined in:
‘Morwenna Venton is a witch! Morwenna Venton is a witch!’ I don’t
remember minding. Matthew had us living in our imaginations in a magical netherworld and
it was appealing to be ascribed supernatural powers. The sun was warming my back and I
felt my spine curve up and my neck contract into my shoulders and I raised my arms,
spreading out all my fingers – my ten pointing digits for Sandra’s one – and
produced from deep in my chest a rasping, cursing kind of voice and said quietly:
‘I know
your
name, Sandra Stowe. I know your name and the names of your
father and your mother and your grandfathers and your grandmothers. I know all your
names.’

Suddenly Miss Arden stood in front of me. I
knew immediately that I was in trouble – it was clear that I had been ill-wishing my
classmates. She couldn’t exactly punish me for invoking curses, so I was sent to
sit in the book corner for ‘being mean’, which was not much of a punishment
as I preferred to be in the book corner.

Remembering this now, having forgotten it
for almost thirty years, I wondered if Sandra also remembered it in this way. Probably
not. I thought that it would be interesting to ask her, one day.

A couple of nights later a north-easterly
wind blew in, a lullaby gale that sang me in and out of my sleep. At around three
o’clock
I woke fully for a minute or two and lay there. I
thought of Mum and how she used to lie fretting awake on storm nights, resenting the
rest of us who had been born to these storms and who wrapped ourselves up in them,
deeper and warmer in our dreams. I realized that my heart had been missing this sound
and that I had not known it. Then I turned over and slept through the rest of the
night.

In the morning the wind was gone and the
grey air was languid with exhaustion. The faint arrhythmic squeak of Matthew turning the
handle on the coffee grinder came from the kitchen. I had given him an electric grinder
as a Christmas present one year, but he never used it. I got up and looked out of the
window. A hire car was parked on the driveway below. Corwin – blown in on the storm.

I crept into his room. The bed was in
disarray and a duffel bag was thrown in the corner, but he wasn’t there. He
wasn’t in the kitchen, either.

‘Where’s Corwin?’

‘Oh,’ said Matthew. ‘Is he
back?’

‘He’s back, but he’s not
in his room.’

‘Goodness,’ he said, pouring out
a cup of strong black coffee and applying a significant amount of sugar. ‘How you
two come and go!’ Then, ‘He’ll be in the cabin, I expect.’

I filled a Thermos flask with coffee and ran
down to the beach. At the bottom of the combe an oak lay, up-tipped across the mill
leat, its violated roots obscenely exposed. On the beach the storm had done its usual
work of dragging up a tideline of battered Atlantic plastic, entangled blues and reds
and greens – snapped fishing line, lost net buoys, discarded bottles and abandoned
buckets and spades.

A weak column of smoke dribbled out of the
chimney. Corwin lay asleep, his face hidden under the multi-coloured bedspread. Only a
hand and forearm and some strands of dark hair were visible on the pillow. I put some
pieces of driftwood
in the stove and blew the fire back to life, then
poured myself a cup of coffee and sat and waited for him to wake up. What had changed in
him in the last five years? What had changed in me? Less in me, I thought. There had
been less to change me. There was Ed, of course. But he was not so much a change as a
logical progression.

A drum tap of light rain fell on the metal
chimney cap and echoed down the stovepipe. The soles of Corwin’s boots were caked
with mud, but the creases around the ankles were packed with a fine dun-coloured sand –
African dust. I hated to think of Africa. It made such enormous demands on the
conscience.

The cabin was heating up. Corwin turned,
pushed off the blankets and opened his eyes. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘I’ve brought you some
coffee.’

He sat up. He was thinner, but more
muscular. There was a military tautness to his face, dark rings under the eyes, and he
had grown a beard, which was still dark. ‘I couldn’t sleep in the
house,’ he said. ‘The bed felt too big.’ This only added to the
impression he gave of being a recently released hostage.

I handed him his coffee. ‘How’s
Matthew?’ he asked.

‘Mum says Mark implied that he was
dying, but he seems just the same. He doesn’t change. As eccentric as
ever.’

Corwin laughed, but a little cynically, I
thought.

‘You look different,’ he said.
‘Smoother and shinier. I hope you’re not going to go all soignée on me, like
Mum did.’

‘How can you possibly tell? I’ve
just got out of bed! I’m still in my pyjamas! I hope you’re not going to go
all sanctimonious on me just because you’re a fucking war junkie.’

‘Ah!’ He smiled. ‘My
lovely foul-mouthed Morwenna. I really have missed you. Come and cuddle up.’

He shifted over on the narrow bed, and I
slipped off my boots, climbed in next to him and laid my head on his bony shoulder. I
could smell coffee and sleep on him. ‘How long are you back for?’ I
asked.

‘Sh!’ he
said, ‘Listen!’

I listened: rain, wind, waves, shingle,
seagulls.

Matthew was cooking breakfast when we got
back to the house. Yesterday’s left-over potatoes were frying with onion. He had
obviously been watching out for us, because he came to meet us on the steps at the
kitchen door, holding out his hands to Corwin, solemn and joyful like a priest on Easter
Sunday. They clasped their hands together, Corwin stooping slightly, both beaming – with
relief, I realized: they had not been sure that they would see each other again.

Matthew broke some eggs into the potatoes.
‘I will have to ask you all about it, but we won’t know where to
begin,’ he said, ‘so we’ll just let it all come out in its own good
time. Morwenna, dear, would you grind some more coffee?’

‘There’s a tree gone over, down
by the footbridge,’ said Corwin.

‘One of the old oaks? What a
shame!’

Corwin tucked into an enormous pile of
potatoes. I had never seen him eat so fast. I turned the handle on the coffee grinder.
Matthew put some ketchup on the table and wandered off to the pantry to search for brown
sauce.

‘How long are you staying?’ I
asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said
Corwin. ‘It depends on a lot of things. I’m in no hurry to leave. What about
you? Can you stay for a while?’

‘I can sort something out, I
guess.’

‘How’s Ed?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I stole his car.’

‘You should marry him and have
children,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘Lots and lots of children. And
live here. With chickens and geese and that goat Dad always wanted.’

He was concentrating very hard on pouring
ketchup.

‘Are you trying to tell me
you’ve got married, or something?’ I felt quite sick at the thought.
‘Is that what this is all about?’

Corwin laughed. ‘No,
Morwenna. It’s not what this is all about. But I release you from our
vow.’

‘But I never made that vow.’

‘So much easier,’ he said.
‘I only have to release myself. Can I, please? I want to fall in love with someone
– anyone. It doesn’t look that difficult.’

‘It’s much more difficult when
you love all of humanity,’ I said spitefully. ‘You spread yourself too
thin.’

‘But that’s the point,’ he
said. ‘I’ve lost my love of humanity. There’s too much of it, you
can’t possibly keep it up. Unless you have God, of course. God helps. But, anyway,
it’s gone. All my
grand pity
, dissipated.’ He stabbed a potato, and
shoved it into his mouth.

‘Why, then, you are bereaved!’ I
said.

‘Actually,’ he said,
‘that’s exactly how it feels. It’s a terrible thing to
lose.’

‘Are you sure anyone wanted your pity
in the first place?’

‘Morwenna, my love, sometimes you are
such a superficial little bitch. I don’t mean, “I feel really sorry for her
because she’s so fat.” I mean that quality of human understanding that
raises us
above the beasts
.’

‘Perhaps it will come back.’

‘Perhaps. But, anyway, I needed a
break. I got homesick.’

Matthew returned with the brown sauce. There
was a faecal-like coagulation around the lid, which he wiped off with a damp cloth
before handing it to Corwin. Corwin slathered the sauce over his potatoes. Matthew did
likewise.

‘Talking of the human
condition,’ said Matthew, ‘here is one of life’s great mysteries.
Brown sauce. What do you think it is?’

‘Best not to enquire,’ said
Corwin.

‘I quite agree,’ said
Matthew.

I felt depressed, all of a sudden. Somehow
we were talking as though we were at a 1930s house party. I almost expected to be
jollied off to play tennis. Matthew broke the yolk of one of his eggs
and brown sauce pooled into it.

‘I thought I’d take a walk after
breakfast,’ said Corwin, mopping his plate with a piece of Matthew’s bread.
‘Anyone want to come?’

Matthew and I looked over to the window. It
was raining heavily.

‘No?’ Corwin jumped up from his
seat. His jeans hung from his belt. He really had lost a lot of weight.
‘I’ll be back for lunch.’

When he’d gone, Matthew took my hand.
‘I think he wanted to be alone,’ he said consolingly. ‘It’s
hardly surprising. Still, I don’t remember him being quite so …’ he paused
to find the word ‘… so …
brisk
. Do you?’

When Corwin came back he went straight
upstairs to take a bath. He passed me on the stairs, and stopped to give me a
rain-drenched hug. Then he lay in the bath for a long, long time. Every so often the
plumbing whistled into action as he added hot water. When he reappeared, with his beard
trimmed close and smelling faintly of grapefruit, he was calmer again, gentler. We
alternated tea and wine all afternoon by the fire, talking of everything and nothing,
while Matthew sat with his crossword, tuning in and out. That was Corwin’s
homecoming present to me: one last unspoiled lazy afternoon.

The book that Matthew had pulled out for me
lay on the coffee table and Corwin picked it up. ‘
The Ghosts of
Dartmoor
.’

‘Matthew wants me to rebind
it.’

‘Were you going to send it to
me?’

‘I hadn’t thought that far
ahead. Anyway, you’re here now. Do you want it?’

‘Do you remember when we went looking
for the Devil?’

‘Of course.’

This was one of our favourite stories. Only
Matthew knew it – or if our parents had ever known, they pretended not to.

‘You were so scared,’ said
Corwin.

‘No, I wasn’t!’

Corwin had packed a Thermos flask of hot
chocolate and for each of us an apple and a KitKat. He had bought the KitKats with his
own pocket money in order not to
arouse suspicion
. In his rucksack were also a
torch, spare batteries, two umbrellas, a Swiss army knife, a reflective blanket, in case
of hypothermia, and 50p in 10p pieces for the telephone, in case of emergencies. Our
parents were watching
Brideshead Revisited
– I remember the programme because
my father usually refused to watch television, but everyone was talking about
Brideshead Revisited
and he had been seduced into watching it. Corwin
wanted to be at the Devil’s Stone well before midnight because, he argued, if
midnight was the witching hour then you had to get there before the witches, who would
need to get there early themselves in order
to prepare
. I had no wish to meet
the Devil, and was alarmed by the hiatus following the words ‘to prepare’.
‘For what?’ I wanted to ask, as I pulled my boots over my pyjamas and zipped
up my
quilted jacket. It seemed to me that at the end of that sentence
was a bubbling cauldron big enough to fit two eleven-year-olds, but I was tractable and,
as ever, I followed where Corwin led.

‘You had some questions for
him,’ I remembered, laughing.

‘I was going to ask him how old he is,
and what’s the worst thing you can do without having to go to Hell, and what his
real actual name is.’

‘And then,’ I recited,
‘you were going to punch him in the nose.’

We hid behind the trunk of the big oak tree
that stood in the middle of the field, and we ate our KitKats listening to the rain
falling on the leaves, wrapped up against hypothermia and watching the stone. It
disappeared and reappeared as the clouds moved across the moon, and I experienced for
the first time the immeasurable loneliness of transgression. And that’s the end of
that cute story because Matthew was out on his wanderings and came limping over the
field towards us, attracted by the shining silver blanket, swinging his walking stick.
We looked up at him and he looked down at us and whispered, ‘Boo!’ Then he
dragged us back down the hill before we had even been missed. The following day Matthew
added to the map a tiny picture of Corwin, wearing his tan and orange T-shirt and
raising his fists at the Devil.

‘Do you remember how much you cried
over that because he didn’t paint you too?’ said Corwin.

‘At least two hours. And then Matthew
came upstairs and said, “Pull yourself together, child!”’

‘He said, “You were just tagging
along. It was Corwin who went looking for him.” And you said …’

‘And I said, “But he could never
have gone looking for him without me.”’

‘Which was true,’ said Corwin,
quietly.

‘Which was true,’ I echoed.

I might have simply
stayed in Thornton with Matthew and Corwin. Matthew, I had been told, was dying. And
Corwin was unsettled. I felt responsible towards them both. Perhaps it was time to move
back. In winter Thornton felt completely cut off; it was possible to imagine an
existence protected from the rest of the world.