The Witch of Exmoor (15 page)

She was a pretty young woman, with fair hair, a tilted nose, a fair creamy skin, full lips and a visible bosom. She wore a crisp longsleeved white blouse over a black skirt, belted with a black leather, gold-buckled belt. An English rose. Her name, she informed them, was Felicity, and she was there to help them in any way she could. She blushed again as she spoke. Would they like to book a table for dinner? Would the young man be dining with them? They would find a minibar in Room 12, though not in the young man's room (Room 14) next door. Which newspaper would they like in the morning?

Gogo watched this little comedy from a distance. She never interfered with David's conquests. And the girl was a harmless girl, a country–county girl. Not like those sharp-toothed metropolitan vampires at the studio, those ambitious little graduate politicos who offered their sexual services as research assistants. David's vanity deserved appeasement. Let him have it. She could no longer give what he needed.

And in bed that night, as David turned to her, as he now so rarely did, she tried not to turn away. She held him to her. She loved him, for what that was worth, but she was no wife to him. She did not want to lose him, but how could she keep him? Childbirth had traumatized her. She thought of her mother, as David sadly embraced and caressed and entered her, and wondered how Frieda had broken away into freedom. She remembered her grandmother, that sour old bag in Chapel Street, that endless talker, that killjoy: was she herself a killjoy now? Sex did not interest her. She had chosen the head, the brain, the nervous system. An ancestral puritan rural deadness had flattened and unsexed her. She suspected that neither her brother nor her sister was much interested in sex. They preferred status, money, power. How had Frieda Haxby managed to break away and run off with so many ill-assorted men? Or had they been, as Daniel sometimes hinted, a cover? For status, money, power?

Gogo knew that she had done David a great wrong, through love of him. She had loved him so much that she had been unable to refuse his formal proposal of marriage. But for his own sake she should have denied him. Now they were bound to one another for ever by that child sleeping in the next room. Gogo believed that her husband had once loved her. She hoped that he was unfaithful to her, for if he were not, how hard his life must be. She hoped that David had not killed in himself all the natural man. He too had chosen the head, but his body, unlike hers, could still speak. How could he remain with her? Should she not forgo him for his own good? What was this loyalty that kept him by her side?

An inky flood of sad regret flows upwards through the stranded body of Grace D'Anger, and tears fill her eyes. Her husband folds her in his arms and rocks her quietly. She is beyond his reach, and he loves her. But she cannot return.

 

(Grace D'Anger's suspicions about her sister Rosemary's marriage are, as you will have noted at once, quite false. Rosemary Palmer married Nathan Herz for sex. Anyone but Grace D'Anger would have spotted that. The suspicions reveal more about Grace than they do about Rosemary.

Her speculations about Frieda are nearer the mark.)

 

Four days the D'Angers spent on their slow approach to the siege of Frieda in her stronghold. For four days they strolled streets, climbed hills, ate cream teas, drank shandies, inspected lifeboats. They walked across the dinosaur backbone of the clapper bridge at Tarr Steps, they pulled reassuring banknotes from holes in unfamiliar walls. (Holidays in England did not come cheap.) They thought of visiting the Island of Lundy, but could not discover the times of the boats. High up on the Brendons they ate a sandwich in a pub where they met a dog with three legs and a man with none. They were told tales of smugglers and highwaymen. The night was dark over Exmoor and the stars were brighter than in London.

They also amused themselves by making a personal survey of the ethnic minorities of the South West, both resident and tourist, comparing the evidence of their own six eyes with the statistics provided by David's supply of surveys, handbooks and almanacs. I am compelled to say that the D'Angers do this wherever they go. You might think this indicates an unhealthy obsession with racial origins, and you might be right. On the other hand, you might put it down to a natural sociological curiosity. I don't have to have a view on this, I am simply reporting the facts. The latest edition of
The Almanac of British Politics
informed the D'Angers that the Black-Asian population of Somerset hovered somewhere between 0.8 and 1.4 per cent, and personal observation introduced them to a turbaned sheik walking alone on the top of the Quantocks, a family group from Wolverhampton eating fish and chips at Combe Martin, a
Q
8 petrol station manager, a student group of quantity surveyors of Middle Eastern aspect measuring the beach at Porlock Weir, and a scattering of signs for tandoori take-aways, Chinese take-aways, Taj Mahals and Curry Paradises. The vegetarian curries of West Somerset and Devon were, to David's disappointment, not very good; David needed a curry fix several times a week, which was easy enough to find in London and Middleton, but not so easy in this outpost. David had held high hopes of Watchet, where a consignment of Ugandan Asians had once been billeted, but none of them seemed to have settled. Watchet offered Battered Cod.

No, this was the white man's kingdom. Beaker folk and Belgae, Bronze Age and Iron Age, Celts and Romans, all had been white, or white-ish. There had not been much assimilation or infiltration here. David and Benjamin D'Anger were conspicuous in the crowds. But then, thought Gogo proudly, they were conspicuous anywhere.

On their last afternoon of carefree wandering before their planned assault upon Frieda, they made their way to the Valley of Rocks beyond Lynton. As they left the green car park Benjamin feared that this celebrated stretch of the coast path would prove to be an Old Lady's Promenade, but as they strode on the crowds thinned, and soon they found themselves alone, with black mountain goats skipping like small horned devils above them and seabirds wheeling below them. The path picked its way along the edge of the precipice, and the waves broke on the sterile purple stones. The famous rocks were perched perilously, erratically, in a strange high ridge, in tormented anthropomorphic configurations, as though a scene of great tumult at the dawn of the world had frozen as it cracked. Benjamin could make out a great beaked witch's profile, a goblin's hunched back. These were the bones of the old world. If he half shut his eyes he could make them move, he could make them rise up and drag their buried limbs from the green turf and walk. He could make the ground itself heave and spew forth more boulders. He could open a cavern and entomb these strolling earthfolk for seven times seven years. Darkest night would encompass them. At his will the rocks would tumble, the seas would rise. He narrowed his eyes and the horizon quivered, the grass squeaked.

And then they emerged in Victorian Lynton, and had a cream tea.

That evening they sat together in the bar of the hotel where they had become regulars: this was their second night in residence. (The barman complained that English holiday-makers were not what they were–in the old days a family would settle for a week, a fortnight, a month: now two nights counted as a long stay.) They ordered drinks and spoke of Frieda. They congratulated themselves on having provided themselves with good camouflage. They were seasoned sightseers now, with stickers and souvenirs to prove it. If Frieda wished to cross-question them on their journey, they had their answers ready. How would she receive them? When they arrived at her gateposts, should they send Benjamin in first, like a sacrificial lamb?

They had come a long way for this meeting, and they set off the next day with uncertain expectations. Already in reconnoitre they had passed and repassed the turning that led to Ashcombe, but now they had to accept its challenge. The little narrow high-hedged lane plunged deeply and steeply. Tracks led off it, to Bolt Farm and Desolate Farm and Sugar Loaf Hill, and there were one or two acorn symbols and coloured arrows marking footpaths and bridle-ways. But they passed no walkers and no horses. The lane deteriorated into a track, as Rosemary had said it would, and brought them to a gate called
PRIVATE
.

Of' this too Rosemary had spoken, but she had found the gate closed, and had got out of her car to wrestle with it. Now, for them, it stood open. Was this, they wondered, a good omen? Had Frieda opened it for them? Was Frieda waiting for them now, at four o'clock in the: afternoon, like a good granny, with the kettle on the hob? With caution they descended, bumping downwards over cattle grids and pot-holes. As yet there was no sign of the house. They passed a derelict Gothic gatehouse, and continued down through high Victorian rhododendrons and giant hollies and rowans red with bunched berries of blood. The foliage was reckless, exuberant, profligate. And suddenly there before them, below the next turning, was the house, and beyond the house, the sea.

Cautiously Gogo lurched the car forward over the last few yards, and brought it to a halt before a square archway which led through the front (or was it the back?) of a high three-storeyed grey stone building into a courtyard. As Rosemary had warned them, Ashcombe was not a building of much charm. Of all the charming cottages and farmhouses and gentlemen's townhouses of the West, this was surely one of the ugliest. It sat there, defiant and large and out of keeping. Like a mental institution, a penitentiary. Whoever could have built such a thing here, and how, and why? Rosemary said she had thought it had once been a hotel, but had given no reasons for this supposition. It did not look very cosy or welcoming. No Felicity here.

Gogo switched off"the ignition.

‘Well?' she said.

'Avanti,'
said David.
‘Su forza.'
(He sometimes spoke Italian when he was nervous. It was a give-away.)

‘She can't
eat
us,' said Gogo, laughing falsely as she opened the car door.

‘Fee, fi, fo, fum,' said Benjamin. He was enjoying himself. He knew by no w that she was in there, somewhere. He sensed her. And so it was that, after all, he found himself leading the party. Boldly, he marched beneath the arch and across the courtyard towards a corresponding arch in the far wall: somewhere there must be a door, somewhere here must be the quarters that Frieda had occupied and civilized?

‘Grandma!' he called. ‘Grandma Frieda! Where are you? Are you hiding? Can you see me? Where are you?'

It was a fine afternoon (how lucky they had been with the weather!) and a clear north light beat backwards up from the sea, which glittered at them through the double arch. They could hear waves upon the rocks and shingle below, and the gentle soughing of wind in small weathered trees. Benjamin called again, and this time, at his call, an ancient black and white sheepdog emerged from a door in the wall of the second arch. It advanced upon him, wagging its tail. Benjamin patted it, softly, for it was a frail and bony dog. Then he followed it into the building. Gogo and David, in the courtyard, looked at one another, paused, then heard him call.

‘Here she is! Come along, here she is!'

And they followed the boy and the dog, and there, in the garden room overlooking the lawn and the terrace, where once teas had been taken, was Frieda Haxby. She was waiting for them. She stood, and smiled, with her arm round her grandson.

She too, a hundred years late, was about to take tea. They saw a table, spread with a white cloth, with a china tea-set, with a fluted silver pot and a silver jug and a silver sugar-bowl. There were scones in a heavily gadrooned silver cake-basket and sandwiches upon a. blue Wedgwood plate. A fruitcake embossed with almonds and cherries stood proudly upon a cut-glass cake-stand. Thick cream was heaped in a cut-glass bowl. It was a tea.

And Frieda Haxby was wearing her tea-gown. There she stood, shoulder to shoulder with her grandson, in a floor-length gown of radiant midnight blue embroidered with silver. Sequins sparkled on her bodice, and ran in little streamlets down her full soft draped skirt. Silver earrings dangled from the lobes of her ears, and her wispy grey hair was arrested by a
diamanté
pin.

‘David, Grace,' she said. ‘Grace, David. You have come all this way.'

She sounded moved. What was the old fox playing at this time? Slow-witted, Gogo moved forward as in a dream to peck her on the cheek; David followed her example, with more simulation of conviction.

‘I'm
so
pleased to see you,' said Frieda in a gracious, a sociable tone.
'Do
come and sit down, I'll go and put the kettle on. Make yourselves at home. I'll be back in a moment.' And out she glided, with the teapot, in a rustle of silk.

They dared not speak in her absence, for fear of breaking the spell, but they looked around in wonder, and soon they saw that all was not as wonderful as it had seemed. This was a stage set, and you could see into the wings. Only the table and its precious loading spoke of order. The floor was an old, faded, bleached parquet, unpolished for decades, with blocks missing or rising from the plane; the papered walls were stained with damp. The light fittings were askew, and the curtains hung in uneven bunches, tied back by string. The tea-table was spotless, but round the far edges of the vast room stood other tables covered in familiar intellectual Mausoleum clutter–papers, files, cardboard boxes. ‘But', whispered Gogo'to David, ‘it's all quite
clean.
And how much
weight
she's lost.
That
can't be a trick, can it?'

‘No,' said Frieda, returning with a reassuringly blackened and mundane kettle and the silver pot of tea, ‘I really
am
a lot thinner. That's not an optical illusion, I promise you.' She had overheard them, or read their minds. ‘I really can get into this dress. So I thought I'd wear it for you. Milk, Grace? Do tuck in, Benjie. The sandwiches are Marmite and cucumber, not very exciting, I'm afraid. And the scones are Readymix, but I
did
make them myself. Milk, David? Or do you still prefer lemon?'