Deirdre's House: On The Town

[Peter]

Just to show there's more to life than Glory

A while ago I started an occasional series of stories about a witch called Deirdre. There were eventually three of them - The Study Window, The Nursery and On The Town. Well, I've written another and I'm going to put it up here.

But first, it strikes me that it's been so long since I first discovered Deirdre's house that some of you might never have read about it, or have forgotten. So, to refresh your memories I'll republish them here, so they'll all be in one place.

The Deirdre stories are darker than my usual stuff, so later ones will go behind spoiler tags. But this first one is kind and gentle and one I've always been fond of, so here it is, en clair:


The Study Window

One morning fair, I took the air,
Down by Blackwater side.

Traditional


'Watch out!'

'Sorry.' My response was instinctive, born of good manners rather than genuine regret. Or, more likely, cowardice. Not wanting to make a scene, or accuse the other party first.

Because it wasn't my fault. The young woman's pushchair took up the whole width of the pavement. What was I supposed to do? Step out into the road and let her by? Not likely – it was crammed bumper-to-bumper with eastbound commuter traffic, glare-blinded by the morning sun.

Twins. There were twins in the pushchair, sitting side-by-side and wearing identical artificial fleece suits in yellow and blue. Each had a bobble hat pushed down on his – or her, I couldn't tell – head. Each wore a sulky expression, not unlike their mother's.

'Go on then! Get out of the way! You blind? Can't you see I've got kids?'

Yes, I could see that; and I supposed their needs would override mine, by the simple virtue of their being children. I slowly turned my back on them and prepared to retrace my steps.

'Eh! Where're you going now?' the woman said.

I pointed up the road. A few tens of yards away the galvanised iron railings which divided the pavement from a car dealer's premises were interrupted by a gate. 'You can get past me there,' I said, half over my shoulder.

Ever since the accident I have walked with a limp, so I made slow progress. I could feel the woman's annoyance burning on the back of my neck. There was nothing I could do about it but remember to let my left leg take its own time on the forward swing and make sure that it was firmly planted on the ground before I tried to move my right, as I had been taught.

It must have taken me a whole minute to reach the gate. All the time I could hear the woman muttering and swearing behind me, the way they do these days. I expected she had a job to go to and was in a hurry. The twins; they would go into a nursery or a childminder's – day-care, as it was called. I wondered if she had a husband or "partner" at home and whether he was going out to work too. Most couples had to leave home during the day, I had read, so they could pay the mortgage on their expensive little houses.

I reached the gateway and turned to rest my back against the railings. 'You can pass now,' I said, not loudly as my leg was aching badly.

'About bloody time too.' She had bleached hair tied up on the top of her head, smudged-panda eye makeup and a scarlet slash of lipstick for a mouth. I didn't know whether to despise her or pity her. Perhaps I wasn't thinking about her in those terms. Probably I was wondering about her name. Was she a Sharon or a Dawn? A Wendy or a Karen? A Chloe or a Samantha? My mind often runs off along such lines.

She pushed past me, but as she went one of the wheels of the oversized pushchair caught against my right foot, dislodging it and throwing all my weight onto the weak side. I put out my hand to steady myself. A hiss of breath escaped my lips.

'Sorry,' she said. 'You all right?'

'I think so,' I said, but as I spoke my left leg buckled under the strain and I fell forward at a sideways angle. At the same time a red sports car, driven by a young man with a baseball cap pushed back on his head, came screeching out of the yard. It swerved to avoid the pushchair and struck me a glancing blow on the hip.

'You blind?' the man shouted. Even as I was thrown back against the railings by the force of the car's impact the thought ran through my head that I ought to buy a white stick and a pair of dark glasses to stop people asking about the state of my eyesight. Perhaps I smiled.

'Stupid old tosser!' the youth yelled back at me as he barged his way into the traffic. 'Stay at home, granddad!'

The twins must have picked up the bad temper in the air, because they both began to wail loudly. Their mother knelt down in front of the pushchair. 'Now, Ashley, shush. It's all right, Mitchell. Nasty man's gone now.' They must have had dummies hanging around their necks on pieces of ribbon. I noticed when she turned the pushchair around that both the twins' little mouths were chewing furiously on latex rubber.

'~*dugong*~,' she said. 'They don't care, do they?'

'No. They're in much too much of a hurry,' I replied.

'Are you going to be all right? Did he hit you hard?'

'No, not very hard. I think it's only bruised. I'll be black and blue in the morning. Go on – you'll be late for work.'

'I will, at that. You sure you're OK?'

'Yes, I'm sure.' She took hold of the handles of the pushchair and kicked off its footbrake. I gingerly leaned forward away from the railings and took a step. That went quite well, so I swung my leg and took another. That was good too. It looked as if I was not as badly hurt as I had thought. 'See?'

'Yes. Bye, then.'

'Bye.'

She thrust against the pushchair – which must have weighed a fair bit, loaded down with bags and toys and babies as it was – and headed off. I took another step. That was satisfactory, and the next, and the next, but then something seemed to give and my left leg slipped and wouldn't support me and with a groan I slumped down onto the concrete of the pavement.

'Help!' I cried, and it was meant to be a great, desperate howl of pain, but it only came out as an old man's asthmatic croak. It was enough, though, despite the noise of the passing cars. The young woman turned and saw me.

'Oh, god,' she said. 'You're not all right, are you?'

'No,' I said, 'I don't think I am. Do you have a, what do you call it, mobile? Could you call me an ambulance?'

The girl applied the pushchair's footbrake once more. Another pedestrian shoved past us, nearly stepping on my outstretched left foot. He muttered something, too. 'No, sorry. It was robbed off me last week. Look – do you want to go over there?' She pointed to a café on the other side of the road. 'Have a sit-down? Cup of tea?'

'I don't think I can get across the road.' There were four lanes of traffic; two heading east into Camberley, and two going west to Blackbushe and Hartley Wintney. All of them were chockablock.

The young woman shook her head. 'No. You don't look at all well. You'd better come home with me.'



What did I think I would find in her house? Not that I expected it actually to be a house. I had already formed a mental image of where she lived – a set of expectations. There would be a concrete staircase and a broken lift. Or if the lift worked, it would smell of urine and be covered in graffiti. The doors would grate and creak. Her flat – it would be a council flat – would have a front door that opened out onto a walkway. There would be wrought-iron grilles fixed across the windows and thrown-away syringes scattered among last autumn's un-swept leaves.

I was preparing myself for these horrors as we made our way slowly along the pavement. I wouldn't mind, I told myself. I wouldn't be such a terrible snob. This girl, for all her hurry, had taken pity on me and was helping me. She would be late for work; maybe have her pay docked. It was fundamentally her fault, but still… she was being kind to me in her own way and I ought to be capable, even now, of showing my gratitude to her in a graceful manner. I should not try to load a burden of guilt on her shoulders. She probably carried enough worries and cares already.

Our progress along the pavement was slow, despite my determination not to hold her up. The babies grizzled. They would be fretful at having their day's routine upset. 'Is it much further?' I asked. 'Only…'

'Here we are,' she replied. I blinked. We were standing in front of a neat double-fronted Victorian villa of polychrome brick with stone lintels and a half-glazed front door on which hung a polished brass knocker. Fully-lined curtains hung in the windows and there was a boot-scraper in the form of a cat with an arched back by the side of the quarry-tiled garden path. She unlatched the gate. 'After you.'

I didn't understand. I had walked up and down the side of the A30 many times and I had never seen this house before. Never spotted it sitting comfortably back from the main road, a safe distance from the torrent of thrumming Fords, Vauxhalls, Fiats and Hondas. I was sure that if I had seen it I would have remembered it, even if I had not summoned up the nerve to open the front gate and enter the garden so I could examine the house more closely. What number was it? I looked at the front door again. A small enamel plaque told me that the house's name was Bide-A-While and that it was number 288. The house to the left – a Seventies construction of brick and wood cladding – was number 286. The discount carpet shop which abutted it to the right was number 290. So. This house had always been here. It was I who had been unobservant all these years, I who had missed it.

The girl – she was only a girl, really – parked the pushchair on the grass and took a large iron key out of her shoulder bag. She unlocked the front door and pushed it back. 'In you go now,' she said. 'Kitchen's at the end of the passage.' She looked straight at me. 'Enter of your own free will.'



Her name was Deirdre, she said. I said I was Mister Hobbs, which seemed to satisfy her. She installed Mitchell and Ashley in a pair of high chairs and busied herself with kettle and tea-caddy while I sat down carefully on a Windsor chair and had a look around.

The best way I can describe Deirdre's kitchen is to say that it reminded me of home. Not home with Margaret, but before that. Home with Mum and Dad. Everything, from the row of mugs hanging under the painted wood shelf by the larder to the vintage twin-tub washing machine and the black enamel gas cooker was old-fashioned but, at the same time, new; by which I mean that they hadn't yet seen many years' service. The mugs weren't chipped, the cooker knobs had yet to lose their indicator numbers. The paint was fresh, but of a curious buttery shade rather than the brilliant white that is general these days. The kitchen table was made of solid wood and covered with the kind of shiny floral-patterned cloth you find in French country cottages, and the kettle, although it was electric, was a traditional model rather than being jug-shaped. Set into the back wall was a wood-framed window overlooking a garden which ran down towards a hedge. I could just make out a vegetable patch set out with stakes and lines for runner beans.

Deirdre gave the twins a plastic cup of orange juice each. 'Milk and sugar?' she asked me.

'Just milk, please.'

She poured two cups of tea and placed a willow-pattern plate of shortbread biscuits in the middle of the table. After checking that the twins were still happy she sat down across the corner of the table from me.

'This is most terribly kind of you,' I said. 'I'm sorry if I've messed up your day.'

'That's all right. I didn't have much on. What about you?'

'I'm feeling much better now, thank you.'

We fell silent. I have never been much for small-talk. And besides, I was preoccupied. Something was wrong. Well, not wrong exactly, nothing you would tell the police about, for example. But something didn't quite fit. Deirdre, for a start. She didn't match this house. I could see no way that the kind of job I supposed she did – care nurse, shop girl, office assistant or receptionist – could pay for this place. There were a number of other possibilities, of course. Perhaps she rented an attic room from the house's real owners. Or she shared the rent with a number of others. Or it belonged to her parents. Or she was married to a comparatively well-off man. (I checked her left hand for a wedding ring. Nothing.) Or was she his mistress? Was she the type of girl to become a man's mistress? I knew little of such things.

'You're wondering what I'm doing here.'

'N-no.'

'Yes, you are.' She smiled.

'It's none of my business.' I took a sip of tea to hide my confusion.

'You're right enough there.' She smiled again, enjoying my discomfiture. I have never been confident in the company of attractive young persons, so I got to my feet and, using the table-top to steady myself, went over to say hello to Ashley and Mitchell.

'How old are they?'

'Nine months.'

I pulled silly faces and growled at them, which they liked, grinning and gurgling and spraying orange juice over my jacket.

'Children!' Deirdre jumped up and dabbed at the juice-spots with a kitchen cloth. Her touch was gentle yet firm, her perfume unexpectedly light and subtle.

'It doesn't matter,' I said. 'It won't show. But… may I? I mean…'

'You want the little boys' room?'

'Yes, please.'

'It's down there, second on the left.' She frowned as I turned around to face the kitchen door, one slow foot at a time. 'Shouldn't you be using a stick or something?'

'I'd rather not. It's…'

'None of my business. You're right.'

She held the kitchen door for me and I stepped out into the passage. 'On the left,' Deirdre said again.

'Thank you,' I replied.



The passageway had seemed quite short when I first entered the house – no longer than you might expect it to be, given the apparent size of the place. But now, even though I had rested and taken refreshment, it stretched out before me like a hospital corridor with the glazed front door a distant square of light. I was still rather unsteady on my feet so I let my left hand run along the wall, risking marking it or dislodging one of the pictures which hung from the rail above. And so, when I passed the first door on the left I couldn't help pressing against it a little. It opened a few inches; and, losing my balance as I had lost it in the road outside, I fell hard against the door and my weight pushed it fully open. I nearly fell into the room beyond.

It was a study, or small library, equipped with a filing cabinet, bookshelves, a large wooden desk and a swivel-chair. The desk faced toward me and on its surface stood a very up-to-date looking computer. It was the first modern, 21st-century, object I had seen in that house. Behind the desk and chair was a sash window, shaded by a blind drawn half-way down. I could see green grass and a flowerbed through the gap between the bottom of the blind and the windowsill.

These were my immediate impressions of the room. I instantly realised, of course, that I was in the wrong place and, not wishing to abuse my hostess's hospitality I turned to leave. But…

That window… The passageway ran from the back of the house to the front door. The study was on the right of the house as seen from the front. But there was a shop right next to that side of the house. There could be no window behind the desk, only a solid wall.

Strange… but hang on, wait. I was being silly. The house was set well back from the main road. We were behind the carpet shop, not next to it. The lawns I could see must also be behind it. The house must have been built long before the adjoining properties and when the land to either side was sold for redevelopment the owners would have wanted to keep the gardens for themselves.

There was an easy way to find out. I crossed the floor of the study, walked around the back of the desk, leaned against the sill and looked through the window.

I saw new-mown lawns under blue skies. Beyond them, a hedge of woven yew. Beyond that, rising ground on which I could see fields of wheat. At the top of the slope, a grove of oak trees, moving slightly in a light breeze. No carpet shop. No road. No traffic. And, although I was facing eastwards, no sign of the busy towns of Camberley and Sandhurst.

I did not hear the study door close behind me.



It seemed to me that I would very much like to explore the garden beyond the window, so I snapped back the catch and raised the bottom sash. It was nicely-fitting and well-counterbalanced and lifted very easily under my hand. The gap was now wide enough for me to get though, so I swung first my right and then my left foot over the ledge, ducked under the window and dropped lightly to the ground outside. I stood up straight and took a deep breath. The air was clean and fresh and perfectly poised between warmth and coolness. Gravel crunched grittily beneath my feet as I walked away from the house and onto the silent-padded grass of the lawn. I reached the hedge and turned back to face the way I had come.

The house stood before me, four-square and slate-roofed as I had expected, surrounded by the gravel path I had just left and the grass on which I now stood. Ivy hugged its walls and curled around its windows. I knew that if I went round to the back and looked in I would see Deirdre and little Ashley and Mitchell sitting in their kitchen, drinking tea and sipping orange juice.

I wouldn't do that just yet. After all, I was not meant to be here. I had not been invited into this perfect garden with its immaculate lawns and flowerbeds. I should return to the house immediately and use the lavatory before I was missed. Suppose Deirdre was banging on the door right now, worried that I had fallen again and hurt myself?

But then I looked in the other direction, towards the field of grain and the woods and the sky, and I knew that if I turned back now I would regret it for ever. So I walked along the hedge until I found a gap – actually, it was a gate of grey-weathered elm – and stepped through it into the field. As is common, it was bordered by an unsown strip of ground and I was able to walk around it until I found a pathway, slightly sunken and shaded by a line of trees, which led up the hill towards its crest. I wondered if I would be able to reach the top of the slope, me with my gammy leg and all, but found to my delight that I was striding with ever-increasing confidence up the path and that my old injury gave me no trouble whatsoever.

I had taken off my overcoat upon entering Deirdre's house. Now I removed my jacket as well and slung it over my shoulder, loosening my tie with my free hand. When I reached the top of the hill and was standing on the fringes of the wood I put my jacket on the ground and sat on it. I wanted to look out over the countryside below. I hardly noticed – it seemed only natural – that I was not at all short of breath, despite my climb.

The crown of the hill was three hundred feet or so above the house. It stood like the pool in the centre of an oasis, surrounded on all four sides by its well-kept gardens. There was, as I had noticed before, a vegetable patch and a herbaceous border behind the kitchen and an all-encompassing hedge. At the front, where the A30 road ran in the world I knew, was a narrow lane. It snaked off into the distance in two directions, winding its way around the field boundaries. It would not be a fast road to drive down – in fact there were no signs of motorised vehicles of any kind.

The fields varied in colour and shape. Some were full of wheat, like the fields I had passed on my way up the hill; others appeared to be lying fallow. Yet others were meadows, running down to streams whose only indicators were rows of trees and the muddy trails of cattle. Further off in the distance, the air hazed and blurred the outlines of the countryside and I guessed at, rather than saw, the blue-grey outlines of village, church and town. The sky overhead was dappled with slow-moving clouds, casting moving shadows on the ground below.

The air… it was like electricity in my lungs, sizzling and sparking. It was a simple joy to breathe it in, to feel it charging me with new life and strength. As I sat and watched the birds soar above and below me, and absorbed this world and its living air, I felt my old pains and worries fall away from me, to be replaced by new energy and freedom.

Reinvigorated and wanting to see what the rest of this land looked like, I rose to my feet and walked around the wood for perhaps two hundred yards until I returned to my starting point. In every direction the landscape was like the one I had already seen, except that I caught the glint of a distant sea to the south and a darker patch to the east suggested the presence of a large town. I sat down again and looked towards at the house. I really should return. How long had I been away? Five minutes? Ten?

More like two hours, a voice inside my head told me. I stood up in a panic. I must go back now! But the voice spoke again. What about the wood? it said. You haven't been in there yet. And the same logic which had told me that I could not return to the house without exploring the garden would not let me leave the wood behind either. So I turned my back on the sunlit world around me and entered the cool, green shade under the trees. They swiftly enveloped me.

How big was the wood? How far across? I did the sums in my head. I had walked more or less two hundred yards or so around the top of the hill. Pretend it was circular. Then it would be two hundred yards divided by three across. That was two hundred feet. Sixty yards. Not far, not even through trees and undergrowth. Not far at all. I set out with renewed confidence. I would reach the other side of the hill-top in only a few minutes.

But woodland is deceptive. Paths fail, or do not lead straight. The sun is hidden, and the rustle of leaves, branches and undergrowth betrays the ear. I do not know if I walked in circles or retraced my steps many times. It is possible, though I can think of no particular reason why it should be, that the wood was much larger inside than its exterior dimensions suggested. I do know that I grew more and more disoriented and that my initial pleasure in the brusque strength of the oak-trees, the delicacy of the flowers and ferns that grew around their roots and the song of the birds that nested in their branches, slowly gave way to anxiety. It was high time I got back to the house; but which way should I go? I had no clear idea of direction any more and foolishly, instead of stopping to get my bearings, I walked until I was too tired to go any further or think sensibly. I was close to panic.

As time had passed, my anxiety had developed teeth and claws and become fear.

I did not know what to do next. I was hopelessly lost in this ever-different, always the same, wood. I realised that if I gave way to my fear I would probably get myself into even deeper trouble. And then the blessed thought struck me that that if I waited until sunset I would see a scarlet beacon blazing through the tree-trunks, guiding me westwards to Deirdre's house. So I sat down next to a birch-tree, putting my jacket back on as the air had become cooler, and waited. And presently I slept.

And I dreamed. It must have been a dream, for it had a dream's sharp reality. I dreamed that Margaret was with me once more. She was as she had been when I first met her; young, sparkling, raven-haired and green-eyed, bubbling with mischief and fun. She ran up to me, took hold of my hand and pulled me to my feet. 'What're you doing here, Ted? Come on! Let's get out of this dark, dingy old wood!'

'It's a very nice wood,' I protested, but there was a look – that look – in Margaret's eyes that would not be gainsaid. I never could resist her when she was in that wild mood. So I let her tug me along the path, and her hair whipped back in the wind of our passage and brushed against my face. I breathed in its scent and sighed for the pleasure of it.

I had thought the fragrance of this land's air enough for me, but this; this was far greater and more delightful. I wondered if I might not become delirious with joy and I shouted out as we ran, 'Hoi, Eloi!' and listened for the echo.

To the edge of the wood we pelted hand in hand, and down the hill to the house and its garden. Round the back to the side I had not yet seen – the west side of the house which abutted number 286. There was a conservatory built on there, and inside it was a bamboo and wickerwork sofa and next to it a table on which stood a tray, laden with teacakes and scones and blackcurrant jam and Dundee cake and a silver bowl filled to the brim with golden clotted cream. 'I'll be Mother,' said Margaret, and poured the tea, as Deirdre had done a few hours before. Although we had dashed though the door and flung ourselves willy-nilly down on the sofa, neither of us was out of breath for very long.

We ate our tea and talked and talked, and she was my darling Gretel once more. And when I looked at the back of my right hand all the standing-out veins were gone and the liver-spots which had covered it were vanished too. And when our tea was finished we found that we had, all of a sudden, run out of words to say and that we wanted to move beyond speech altogether; and we made love on the sofa while the sun swam slowly through the sky and blossomed crimson in the west. Afterwards we fell asleep in one another's arms.



And then I was on my feet with my left arm bracing myself against the wall, in the little downstairs toilet in Deirdre's house, bereft. I knew I should not stay here long, so I did myself up, washed my hands and dried them on the roller-towel. Then I gritted my teeth and walked back down the passageway and into the kitchen. I wondered what I should say. Would Deirdre and the twins still be there? Or would it be the police, wanting to know what was going on here, sir?

Deirdre looked up as I entered the kitchen. I must have looked very odd. I felt odd – I had been through so many strange experiences in the last, how many they were, hours. But… Ashley and Mitchell were still sitting in their highchairs, still slurping noisily on their juice. I picked up my teacup. It was half-full and still warm.

'Was everything all right? Are you OK now?' Deirdre looked concerned.

'Yes, thank you.' I drew a deep breath. If she thought everything was normal, then I must behave as if it were, despite all that I had just been through. 'Very well. But I mustn't detain you any longer. You'll have things to do. Shopping. Housework. Your job.'

'So I do. It was very nice of you to call on us.'

'I enjoyed my visit very much. Thank you for the tea and biscuits.'

'My pleasure. My great pleasure. I'll see you out. Say goodbye to the nice man.'

'Bye-bye, bye-bye.' The twins each waved a podgy, messy hand at me. I waved back.

'Goodbye, Ashley. Goodbye Mitchell.' See you again soon?

Deirdre handed me my overcoat and helped me down the passageway to the front entrance. As we passed the study door, I couldn't help turning and looking longingly towards it. The girl saw my involuntary movement and smiled enchantingly.

'That's my favourite room, I think,' she said. 'They're all nice, though.'

'I'm quite sure they are,' I replied. My bad leg dragged painfully as I forced myself to walk the rest of the way down the passage, towards the front of the house and the world beyond. I let myself rest against the wall while Deirdre took out the iron key and unlocked the door. She opened it and I passed reluctantly through. There was the garden path, and there, only a few yards away, the rushing main road.

'Would you like to come back and see us again another day, Ted?' the girl asked, holding the garden gate open for me. The morning sun was shining oppressively into my eyes and the heavy air was disturbed only by the passage of cars, buses and lorries up and down Blackwater High Street. My leg was hurting pretty badly now.

'Yes I would,' I said, admiring her long, jet-black, wind-ruffled hair and deep, sea-green eyes. 'I would like that very much indeed.'

[Peter]

Right, here's the second story. It's in spoiler tags because

Spoiler:

it contains scenes of violence and torture.

Here we go -

The Nursery


Ooh baby love, my baby love
I need you, oh how I need you

Holland-Dozier-Holland

Spoiler:

It is somewhere in England - and in France and America and Russia and, for all I know, in every country in the world. Somewhere in a town near you; perhaps your town. Down an ordinary street, next to the shopping centre or in the middle of a row of Victorian cottages or on the top floor of a tower block in a housing estate. Anywhere, really, just around the corner in the most ordinary, everyday places.

Off the High Street, next to the Thai restaurant and the fire station, round the back of the bookshop or overlooking Tesco's loading bay, there is a house. A special house. You may never need to find such a house yourself, but if you do it will be there for you. You may find it or it may find you. And when its front door is opened and you go in you will discover…

What?



The knife slipped in Deirdre's hand while she was slicing the cheese for the twins' teatime Welsh rarebit. It made a nasty nick in her left thumb.

'Oh, f-f-fiddle,' she said in exasperation. It was already half-past three and soon Ashley and Mitchell would be awake and ready for their tea. They were always so hungry these days. Toddlers were like that, she knew. They were probably due for another growth spurt. Hey-ho, new clothes, new shoes. Another trip to Mothercare.

It was only a tiny cut, but deep all the same. So she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and waited and regarded her thumb. And, slowly at first, then faster, like a time-lapse film, the skin knitted itself together and the two sides of the cut joined up. Five minutes later it was healed, with no trace that anything had happened - not even a little scar tissue.

Deirdre smiled to herself. There were a number of advantages to being a witch and this was not the least of them. She picked up the knife once more.



They parked the silver SL 500 in a side street about a quarter of a mile away. It was not that they couldn't have parked it closer, for they could. Nobody would have noticed. Nobody would have minded. Any traffic warden who had come across it in the course of his duty would have made a note of its presence, but somehow forgotten about it so that later, if his patrol brought him back to where it stood, it would have struck him as something new, even if only an hour or two had passed since he last saw it. It had its own kind of invisibility.

They did not leave the car so far from Deirdre's house because they cared about clogging up the traffic in Blackwater High Street nor because they wanted to avoid getting a parking ticket. It was simply that, as the elder one said, you needed a bit of a break before making a visit. You needed to get your mind into gear, he said, and his junior colleague agreed with him, as well he should. He was young and inexperienced, but not without ambition.

As ever, the traffic in the Blackwater-Camberley area was dense and slow. The Thames Valley is a prosperous place and popular among those who work in the well-paid IT industries. They can afford cars, lots of them, and what use is a car if you do not drive it? And so, although these cars were shiny and new and equipped with the latest pollution-reducing devices, the air was heavy with exhaust fumes, diesel smoke and sulphur. The younger of the two breathed it in deeply. The elder smiled to see such enthusiasm in his protégé.



Deirdre finished slicing the cheese and put it back in the fridge. She had been making bread earlier and it stood by the side of the Aga, cooling slowly on a wire rack. Cheese, toast, a little Worcestershire sauce. Apple juice. Maybe an orange each if they'd agree to eat it. The twins were at a funny age, as ever.

On another day, she might have been putting something together for one of her visitors. Henry, Al, Eloise, Joe, Mary, Ted, Tim, Christine, Cyril, James, Charlotte, Frank, Ian, Tosie, Mike, Imran, Benjamin…. The list went on for ever. On any normal day, one or another of her friends might come to her door and knock - diffidently or peremptorily as was their individual way - and she would invite them in with a smile. They would chat; exchanging news, talking about their lives, the weather, their children, their wives or husbands, what was on the television, what bargains were to be had at Blackbushe Market… And if, afterwards, a visitor might not be able to put his finger very precisely on what she had said; well that was in the nature of gossip, was it not?

Then, by intention or contrived accident, each guest would go to that part of the house where his dreams waited for him. Deirdre's house, despite its modest external proportions, had many rooms, each suited to a different kind of person and his needs. Some visitors never left the kitchen, but stayed there talking to Deirdre until it was time for them to go. For those who wished to investigate a little further there were libraries, studies, boudoirs, drawing-rooms, billiard-rooms, still-rooms, bathrooms and mysterious dusty attics at the top of narrow uncarpeted stairs. Others left the house altogether and explored the fields and woods, or city, or river, or lake, or desert, or jungle, or wide savannah, or whatever new and compelling world they looked to find beyond its walls.

One travelling man, old and footsore, brought his washing every fortnight and sat quiet-eyed while she ran it through the Hotpoint. A few wanted nothing more than to go with Deirdre to her bedroom and make love to her. They were not disappointed. Nobody who entered Deirdre's house with an open heart was ever disappointed.

Today, as it happened, the house was empty except for Deirdre and the twins. Perhaps the two in the Mercedes knew that. Perhaps they did not. It is unlikely that they cared very much either way.



Deirdre turned on the wireless. The sound of Joe Loss and his orchestra filled the kitchen; quietly at first but becoming louder and brasher as the set’s valves warmed up. 'Dum, da-dum, da-dum-dum,dum-da-dum-dum,' sang the witch as she took a turn around the table. 'Dee-dee, deedee-dee, deedee-dee, dee-dee,' picking up a dish-cloth. 'Dada-da, da-dum!'

She was drawing breath to launch into the third verse of "Wheels" when the front door bell rang. Deirdre was used to interruptions - they were in the nature of her calling - so she put the dishcloth back on the draining board, took off her apron, patted down her auburn hair and went into the hall to answer the door.

There were two of them, which was rather unusual. Deirdre's people were mostly solitary. That was one of the main reasons they came to her, or she found them.

Were they Mormons? Certainly they were dressed alike, in matching brown trilbies, nondescript grey suits, blue shirts and patterned ties. Still, she would find out soon enough. It was clear they hadn't come to read the gas meter.

'Come in,' Deirdre said, standing to one side of the doorway. 'Enter of your own free will.'

'Thank you, miss,' said the elder of the pair. He removed his hat and his younger companion did the same. The entered the house and closed the door behind them, shutting out the haze and noise of the High Street.

'I expect you'd like a cuppa,' said Deirdre, leading them down the passageway to the kitchen. She pointed to the table. 'Sit yourselves down. The kettle's on the hob.'

They each took a chair and sat in silence while Deirdre brought the water up to the boil and made a pot of tea.

'Milk? Sugar?'

'No milk, four sugars, please,' said the younger. The elder shook his head. 'No milk, no sugar.'

Deirdre smiled and poured two mugs of tea. She handed them over and sat back. She would let them drink their tea and wait for them to tell her what they needed in their own way and their own time. There was no particular rush. Ashley and Mitchell were still fast asleep, if the absence of sound from upstairs was any kind of clue. The whole house was very quiet and still. Good.

The elder guest sipped at his tea and nodded. It was evidently hot enough and strong enough for him. The same must have been true for his younger colleague for he suddenly lifted his mug and threw its scalding contents directly into Deirdre's eyes. It splashed over her face and splattered across the range behind her, hissing and spitting like an angry cat. She screamed and fell back against the brass rail of the Aga, raising her hands - too late! - to cover her face.

The younger flung his mug down onto the kitchen floor with a splintering crash. He leapt to his feet and took hold of Deirdre's hands, pulling them behind her back and lifting them up to her shoulders so that she screamed again and bent over forwards. Her forehead nearly hit the kitchen table.

'Neatly done,' said the elder approvingly. The younger felt a warm glow of satisfaction. He had made a good start.

'Put her in the chair.'

The younger kept hold of Deirdre with one hand while with the other he pulled out a spare chair from under the table. He forced her to sit down and, aware that the witch would soon recover from the initial shock and pain of the attack and start to struggle, took four black plastic cable ties from his pocket. With them he fastened her arms and legs securely to the chair. The tough nylon of which the ties were made cut brutally into Deirdre's skin. Lastly he looped her long, dark-red hair around the top rail of the chair and knotted it so that her head was pulled back and up and her throat was left exposed and vulnerable.

'Good. Very good,' said the elder to the younger. 'Now come over here and watch.'

The younger resumed his place at the table.

'Look at her face.'

He did as he was told. Deirdre's eyes were tightly closed and her skin was blotched and peeling. The tea, undiluted with milk, had been close to boiling point. She groaned, but whether it was from the pain of her burns or from fearful anticipation of what might be about to happen to her next was uncertain. But slowly, just as had happened with her thumb only a few minutes earlier when she had cut herself, she started to mend. Her scalded face began to heal itself. The livid redness faded and the swollen blisters slowly subsided and after only five minutes her skin was as clear and unblemished as it had always been. She opened her eyes; they were as limpid green and belladonna-sparkled as ever. The kitchen clock stood at a quarter to five.

'Excellent!' said the elder. 'We have established two important facts. What is the first?'

'She's a witch. An encompacted practitioner of the Secret Arts. That is witnessed by her swift restoration.'

'Correct. Any ordinary person would have been very badly scarred by your little bit of fun. Scarred for life. She would be yelling the place down. Instead; look! She is perfectly well. Once upon a time we might have put her in the ducking-stool and she would have floated instead of sinking. That would have told us what we need to know. Of course there are no ducking-stools left outside museums in these... enlightened times, but the principle remains sound. What else have we learned?'

'Er...'

The elder smiled; an expression to make his acolyte blench.

'We have also discovered this; that whatever we may do to this one, whatever tortures we may administer to her, however much we may harm her, we cannot damage her permanently. That is good, is it not?'

'Is it? I don't understand.'

The elder shook his head. These youngsters had so much to learn!

'It is this; there is no limit to the pain we can inflict on her. She can escape us by fainting for a few moments. She may occasionally require a little longer than that to recover from some of the more… extensive excruciations. But she will always come back to us just as good as new. And then we will be able to start on her all over again. It will be as it is elsewhere; where the flame is not quenched and the worm does not die. Is that not true, bitch?'

Deirdre looked up. 'Yes, it is all perfectly true.' Her eyes were tinged with a strange melancholy. 'I could choose to die, though.'

‘You could try, but I do not think you have the strength of mind. Your body will repair itself, whether you consent to it or not. It would take a greater will than yours to prevent it. Is that not so?'

'Yes; said Deirdre with a sigh. 'I suppose it is.'

'Good. So now we know where we stand. I will tell you presently why my impulsive young friend and I have come to visit you today. Firstly, however, I think we should establish - in some clear, simple, practical way - quite unmistakably in your mind exactly who is in charge of this situation.'

'I will tell you something in your turn, for you must know it. It is this; that whatever you do to me today I will always love you. That is unalterable. It is permanent and final.'

The younger one laughed and spat, and his spittle landed on the floor and ate out a sizzling crater of corrosion. 'Can we get on with it now?' he said.

'Yes,' said the elder. 'Let us begin.'

The younger picked up the steaming kettle from the stove. He pulled the neck of Deirdre's blouse forward and slowly poured the kettle's contents down her front making sure that her breasts and belly received their full share of the boiling hot water. The witch shrieked in agony and the legs of her chair beat a wild tattoo on the flagstones of the kitchen floor.

The two watched and waited as the water cooled down and Deirdre recovered. 'Of all the rooms in a present-day house, the kitchen offers by far the most scope for our operations,' the elder observed. 'So few cellars or dungeons, these days, but this is every bit as good. For example, look at all those knives on the rack over there. Knives for cleaning. Knives for filleting. Knives for skinning. A cleaver for heavier work, such as chopping. And that splendid cooker. A four-oven Aga, no less. Always kept nice and hot, even in summer. So many possibilities there...’

The elder put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, so that his face was no than eighteen inches from Deirdre's. Not so very close, it is true, but near enough that a rancid stench of decay blew from his mouth into her nostrils with every word that he spoke.

'What else have we? Oh yes, the sink. A fine, deep, butler-style sink. How long could you hold your breath if we compelled you to bend over in front of it with your head underwater? Thirty seconds? A minute? Surely no more than a minute and a half, even if you had the chance to draw breath in advance. And look over your head! What's that for? That rack? Oh, yes, it's for drying clothes. You can lower it with those ropes there, peg the wet things to it and then pull the whole contrivance back up to the ceiling. How ingenious! And how useful as a restraint! The wrists could be tied there and there and the subject suspended freely in the air for our ready convenience. What else can we see? Oh yes. What fun! Meat hooks. What more do I need to say?'

The cable ties were pulled up to their maximum tension. She did not attempt to free herself, nor did she waste any of her strength in struggling. Such a male thing that would have been; to fight back thoughtlessly, even when there was no possibility of overcoming one's captor. A gesture; meaningless, nugatory, vain. Merely a last desperate claim on a man's self-respect. It was not for her. Her strength, such as it was, lay elsewhere.

The elder took a leather strap from his coat pocket and laid it hard across Deirdre's face, leaving a broad red stripe like war paint.

'Why do you do it?' he asked. 'Why do you take them in - these worthless people? These discards, no-hopers, wasters and rejects. Why do you pamper them so? Don't you know they're our property? Don't you realise you've been stealing from us? This has to stop. You know that.'

'If she's a thief,' said the younger, 'we should cut her hands off.'

'Too much shock, not enough pain,' said the elder. 'But a nice traditional thought, just the same. “Let the punishment fit the crime", eh?

'You know we deal in pain.' He slapped Deirdre's face once more. 'What about you? How do you feel about it? Have you ever wondered about it? How you would stand up to it?

'Perhaps you fear it. You should, you know. But,' and he gave her three more vicious, cutting blows across the face with the strap, 'perhaps you have had other thoughts. Perhaps you have imagined yourself tied as you are tied now. Maybe you have considered how it might feel to give yourself in helpless submission to your master. Do you ever get a little excited, a little moist, when you read about the punishments that were administered to the women of your kind in the centuries that are gone? Do you stroke yourself? How about it now? Will you be bound naked in thongs, and writhe and moan under the lashes of my whip? Will you count the blows at my command? And will the ceaseless pain and the soaring ecstasy of your surrender become one and indistinguishable? Will you bow down before me then, open yourself to me and acknowledge me to be your Saviour and your Death? Is that not your true desire? Will you not yearn to proffer me your absolute obedience? Will you kiss the leather that binds the rattan of my riding-crop and beg me to mark you with it?'

'This is my promise. I will come here every day and every day I will whip you; whip you until your blood runs down on to the ground, whip you to delirium. And you will obey me, either because you dread the lash and wish to please me in the hope that my hand will fall on you with less vigour, or because you yearn for it and seek to embrace it totally, yield to it, wrap yourself in its toils. It may be that when I stop to rest you will plead with me to start again, only harder and faster.'

Deirdre looked up. Her face was flawless and clear once more and her eyes were brimming over with sorrow. 'You are lost,' she said. 'You are lost and sad and alone and I wish I could help you as I try to help everyone who comes through my door. I would, you know, if only you would let me.'

'I do not think that you are in a position to help me in any way.’ The elder’s face twisted into a sneer. ‘Do you think I am one of those helpless, pathetic creatures you... entertain? I know what you do for them. You are a common whore, do you know that?'

'I give them what they need. I could do the same for you, you poor, forsaken thing. Listen to me. Try to remember – were you always like this? So hard and cruel? I cannot believe that you are happy now. You had dreams once, I am sure, but I think you have kept them hidden away too long. They have festered and gone bad in the darkness. Think back. Tell me there was a time in your life you remember with joy. There must have been such a time, even for someone like you. Let me show it to you. Let me take you to it, so that you can see clearly what you have become.’

She looked deep into her tormenter’s eyes. 'There is still hope for you. Don’t give up on yourself. I won’t give up on you. I can rescue you. It’s what I do. Please let me…’

The elder looked away and, just for a moment, there was a different look in his eyes, as if Deirdre’s words had awakened something that had been asleep for many long years of men’s lives. But then…

'Shut up!' cried the younger. 'Don't talk to my master like that.' He leapt to his feet and applied the kettle and the palette knife and the flat-iron and the electrical flex repeatedly to the witch. Several minutes passed.

'I think,' said the elder to the younger, ' that you should, rather than going all-out on the subject with your, I must say, commendable enthusiasm, pay more attention to the, er, light and shade of the art of torment. Simply bludgeoning the subject like that may give you some immediate gratification but I think you will find it rather more ineffective than otherwise. Calm yourself. And sit down.' The air congealed around his words.

'Yes. Master,' said the younger, chastened. He sat down.

'Now then. Are you awake?' The elder slapped Deirdre's face lightly with the back of his hand. Her eyes flickered open. 'Ah, yes.' He sat back.

'This is beginning to pall, you know. Much as my young friend is enjoying his part in his first real punishment detail, it is becoming rather boring for me, despite your attempts at persuading me otherwise. Now, I will ask you for the first and last time; will you close your door and keep it closed?'

'No, I will not.' The witch’s voice was scarcely audible.

'Even if I keep my promise to inflict daily, continual pain on you? Unbearable pain?'

'I cannot leave my post.'

'Spoken like a true soldier in the Army of Righteousness!' The elder laughed, and his apprentice joined in.

'Very well. We will move on, then.' He turned to the younger. 'I have pointed out most of the salient features of this room, such as they relate to our operations today. But there is one or, rather, there are two items that I have omitted. What are they?'

The younger looked around. 'Um, the boots by the door? The Welsh dressers? The curtains?'

'Nearly. What do you see in the corner?'

The younger looked. 'A broom, an ironing board, an… oh…'

'Very good! Well spotted! We will make something of you yet! Yes,' and the elder turned back to Deirdre who was sitting up straight in her bonds with a look of horrified fear in her eyes which the elder could not fail to notice.

'Oh yes! A palpable hit! High chairs - two of them. It is my experience that where there are high chairs there are young children. And where there are children there must be a mother. He leaned forward once more. Again, gusts of corruption blew into Deirdre's face. 'Somewhere in this house, in a prettily decorated nursery in the attic no doubt, there are children. They are your children, are they not? You are their mother.' He smiled with a grin like a throat-cut.

A desperate horror flooded Deirdre’s mind. 'Please, no,' she said, 'I beg of you. Do not go there. The twins...' Her voice died away. She knew that the situation had passed its crisis point. From here on nothing that anybody could do would make any difference to the ultimate outcome. There was - there could be - no further hope. Knowing that, she wept. Her tears mingled with the blood and spew on the tabletop.

'Do you see?' the elder said to his colleague. 'Do you see how it all turns out? How ridiculously vulnerable she is?'

'Yes, I do. We shall always win, while they are so weak and we are so strong.'

'How foolish you creatures are! You give yourselves to us so freely, so innocently. You tie your ankles together so you cannot run from us; and so we catch you. You despise the weapons we bear; and so we wound you. You will not learn to fight as we fight; and so we defeat you utterly. You will not hate as we hate; and so we damn you for ever.'

'We cannot kill you, as you know, although we can and will come back here repeatedly and hurt you again and again if you do not comply with our requirements. The only way you can prevent our return is to close your door and keep it closed. For the very last time, will you do as you are told? Or are we to go and visit your children?'

Deirdre shook her head. 'No. I cannot do as you ask.' She continued weeping.

'Then know that you have brought what is about to happen on yourself. You could have prevented it. Come on!' They rose to their feet and left the kitchen. As he left the younger gave her one last skull-cracking blow across the back of the head with a rolling pin. Deirdre slumped forward in the chair. Blessed unconsciousness came, so that she did not hear the slow footsteps climbing the stairs, nor the opening of the nursery door, nor the voices; quiet at first, then increasingly louder and higher in pitch.

She was did not hear the screams; the metallic shredding of the air in the attic room. She was spared that agony, although had the elder considered the mercy which the younger had unintentionally granted her he might have felt it necessary to impose sanctions of his own upon the stupid fool.



Time passed, and the garden beyond the kitchen window began to glow with the evening light. Deirdre crawled back to consciousness. She lifted her eyes and looked around. The kitchen was empty and silent. There was no sound anywhere in the house. They were gone, then.

For a while she sat completely still, gathering her strength for the ordeal to come. She breathed deeply, and as she exhaled the bonds on her wrists melted, her hair unknotted itself from the back of the chair and fell away, and she was free. She stood up slowly and looked down. Her body was unmarked and perfect. Even the pools of blood and vomit which had stained the table, floor and wall of the kitchen had disappeared. She adjusted her clothing. There were some rips and tears which she would have to mend later. But now… now she must go upstairs and deal with what she knew she would find there. She felt sick.

She had failed; failed badly. Could she not have tried a little harder to avert the calamity that she knew had taken place in the nursery? For what was pain? – a minor inconvenience, surely, in the wider scheme of things. She should not have let it distract her from her purpose. And now… now there were consequences to be faced, better sooner than later.

With a heart full of dread she trudged up the stairs to the first floor of her house, rounded the landing and ascended the narrow flight leading to the nursery. She pushed open the door.

Inside was terrible carnage; mingled with the gagging stink of decay. There was no surface in the room that was not covered in bloody filth. Death, terrible death, had entered here and run amuck. Deirdre turned her face away and drew a deep breath. Did anything remain alive here? Where were they? The twins? Behind the splintered cots? Or inside the wardrobes, white-painted with a stencilled pattern of kites and balloons? Where? No… ahh! Deirdre drew herself up to her full height.

'Come out of there! Come on - I know where you are. Out! Now! Ashley! Mitchell! I am not pleased with you. Not at all.'

The boys emerged from behind the playpen. One was holding a stuffed panda which had somehow escaped the massacre unscathed. The other had a toy gun, which he dropped. To their credit, they both had the grace to look a little sheepish. Ashley had his thumb jammed in his mouth while Mitchell shuffled his feet and looked down at the carpet.

'Just look at this mess! All over the walls. And the windows. And the ceiling. It's dripping! I thought I had made it perfectly clear before now. You must, must, must tidy your room up before bed-time.'

'Sorry, mummy,' they said in turn. Deirdre's expression softened a little. 'I know, children. I know. But you can't possibly go to bed in all this chaos. You'd better come down to the kitchen and have something to eat. We'll tidy all this up tomorrow morning. Tonight you can sleep with me.'

'Thank you!' they said in unison.

Deirdre smiled. They were good children really. She was lucky to have them. And her joy in them helped to overcome the regret that she had not been able to save her visitors from the ruin they had wrought upon themselves. Could she have helped them, despite everything? She would never know.

'Deirdre, old girl,' she said to herself later, while the twins tucked into their pizza and chips, 'never mind. We'll watch an old film tonight and try to forget about all this nastiness. And tomorrow - tomorrow is another day!'

[Peter]

Here's the third precursor:

Deirdre has been badly hurt. How can she make herself better?


On The Town


We'll have Manhattan,
The Bronx, and Staten Island too

Richard Rogers & Lorenz Hart



Deirdre was feeling old. Especially so today, although there was no reason she could put her finger on why today should be any different from yesterday or, for that matter, tomorrow. The pain was no different from usual.

Nevertheless, and despite her daily immersion in the metaphysics of cosmic Time and Space, Deirdre felt, when she woke that morning, that Time had tricked her and had not left her as untouched as it had always said it would. She rolled back the candystripe sheets and Witney blankets of her bed, stepped into the woollen slippers that were neatly placed next to it, stood up, stretched her arms and yawned.

‘Ouch!’ There was an unexpected twinge in her left shoulder and an unaccustomed stiffness in her legs. Neither had been there when she had gone to bed the previous night. Nor - she looked down - had her legs had such prominent veins or her belly protruded so.

If you or I were to wake up one morning to discover that we had aged twenty years overnight I should imagine our first reaction would be one of screaming panic, even though such an event is not uncommon with the onset of middle age. We always think of ourselves as being younger than our years, even as the stiffness of our limbs and the progressive fossilisation of our minds give us the lie.

But for Deirdre greying hair, thick legs, sagging breasts and a lined face meant something more. For her to wake up in a bodily form that was so unwelcome must have a meaning beyond the simple passage of time. She would have to do something about it.



‘Ashley. Mitchell. Pay attention now.’ The twins looked up from their high chairs. Ashley was clearly annoyed at being distracted from his porridge. Mitchell simply looked away. ‘I’m going out for an hour or two.’

‘Where?’ asked Ashley.

‘Why?’ asked Mitchell.

‘I’m going to see a friend. An old friend. I won’t be long.’

‘How long?’ asked Ashley.

‘A piece of string long. Do you two want to watch the telly while I’m out? I’ll put a film on if you like. What would you like to watch? Genevieve? Dougal and the Blue Cat? Flubber? Herbie goes Bananas?’

‘Spartacus,’ the twins said in unison.

Deirdre sighed. ‘Again? Really?’ The twins nodded. ‘Oh, all right, you two, if you must. Spartacus it is.’ She waited while the twins finished their breakfast. Then she helped them down from their high chairs, took each of them by the hand and led them up the two flights of stairs to the nursery.

It had recently been redecorated and remodelled. Gone were the kites and balloons on the walls, steam trains and Spitfires on the curtains, cots and changing table on the floor. Deirdre was not the only one in her house who was changing with the passage of time and although neither of the twins appeared to be any older than eighteen months, she knew that they would soon be ready to leave baby things behind them.

Still, it was a pity they had decided they wanted to be Goths. All that black and purple! Not only was it ridiculously, stereotypically… witchy, it made the place so gloomy she kept bumping into things. Never mind. They’d grow out of it - but into what?

Despite her misgivings Deirdre had given way to the twins’ demands for a television of their own. A sixty-inch plasma screen dominated one wall of the nursery and the speakers of a surround-sound system had been fitted to every corner. The noise they made would be quite horrendous, she knew, once the film got into its stride.

She took the Blu-Ray out of its box and slotted it into the player. The screen lit up. This was where the fun began. Each twin wanted sole use of the remote control and she was double-dashed if she was going to try to arbitrate between them. Especially today, when she was feeling so old. ‘Goodbye, Ashley. Goodbye, Mitchell,’ she said, closing the nursery door behind her. They paid her no attention whatsoever.



Annie lived a few doors down from Deirdre. Not as mortals count doors, of course. They - you and I, that is - could only gain access to the front door of Deirdre’s house from the pavement of Blackwater High Street in Surrey. Deirdre’s house had many other doors but they did not open out onto our world.

Most of Annie’s visitors believed that she lived on the twelfth floor of a high-rise council block in Liverpool’s Scotland Road. Deirdre rapped twice on the cat-knocker of a door that had once been painted green but was now covered by an unsightly security grille of rusted and graffiti-spattered iron. She stepped back into the lift lobby so that the CCTV cameras could see her clearly. There were footsteps in the stairwell behind the broken firedoor. They seemed to be coming nearer. She hoped that Annie would open up before they got very much closer.

There was no response from behind the grille. Surely Annie was in? Deirdre banged again on the knocker. ‘Anybody home?’ she called, not too loudly. No point in calling unnecessary attention to her exposed position. ‘Hey, Annie!’

‘All right, all right. I’m coming! Can’t you wait?’ A rough voice blared from a speaker fixed high up in the door.

‘Annie, it’s me. Let me in, please. Hurry.’

‘Deirdre! Just a mo.’ There was a slap of carpet slippers on linoleum and a rattling of keys from behind the grille.

‘Dust and Stars!’ Annie said as she opened the door and unbarred the grille and caught her first sight of Deirdre. ‘You’ve let yourself go a bit! Come in, love, come in. Enter of your own free will.’

Deirdre passed through to the hallway and waited while Annie refitted the grille and slotted the door-chains back into their sockets. ‘Come along. Kettle’s on. You look parched.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘There you go, love. Into the lounge. I’ll be round with a cuppa in a jiffy.’

‘Thank you, Annie,’ said Deirdre, giving a sigh of relief.



Annie’s lounge window faced east across New York’s Central Park. Many of her visitors recognised the Dakota Building through the springtime trees. It acted as what Annie called a grounding point; a fixed place where they could attach themselves if the strangeness of the adventure they had found themselves involved with became too much for them. Annie would say, yes that’s where John Lennon lived with Yoko Ono until he was murdered. ‘Murdered?’ some of them would say in astonishment, and Annie would have to bring them up to date with an event that had not yet happened in their lifetimes. Then they’d talk about the Beatles and Annie would tell them about the times George Harrison had been to see her and the places she had taken him. ‘To India, to see the Maharishi?’ they often asked.

‘Yes, sometimes,’ she’d reply, ‘but more often somewhere else.’

‘Where?’

‘That’s for me to know,’ she’d reply and wink and change the subject, often without them noticing.

Annie sat down, poured the tea, and opened a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. ‘Not that you deserve any, the state you’re in,’ she said with a wink and a smile. They drank their tea and chatted about inconsequential things - people they knew, places they remembered. From time to time there was a rap on the front door and Annie got up and let a visitor in. Deirdre could hear them talking in the hallway. Then a door opened and closed and Annie returned and sat down again with a happy smile on her face.

After the third interruption Annie came back to find Deirdre standing by the picture window looking out over Central Park. It was late in the afternoon now and the buildings around her were casting long shadows across the grass and up to the first floors of the apartment blocks opposite. The westering sun coloured the spaces between the shadows with a warm orange-red haze. Deirdre opened the window and the sounds of the city came into the room; taxis and buses in the avenues below, aircraft in the skies overhead and - blanketing all - a susurration of voices. The voices of trees and grass in the gentle wind, of people in streets, offices and subway stations; the breath of the living city.

Deirdre looked out and drew the city’s air into her lungs. Its air and its life. Annie stood next to her and took hold of her hand.

‘Would you like to go out there for a while?’

Deirdre turned to face the older witch. ‘No, I can’t. My house, my visitors, the twins... I should be going back to them.’

‘Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine. Especially your two. If anybody can look after themselves, it’s them!’ She laughed and Deirdre joined her.

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘Of course I am. Now come along.’

A fire escape led from a landing next to the window down to second floor level. Deidre followed Annie and waited while she unlatched the ladder at the bottom and dropped it down to the sidewalk below. She climbed down and waited while Annie pulled the ladder back up.

‘Go on!’ said Annie. ‘Take as long as you like!’

‘Thank you.’

Annie had changed Deidre’s form for her on the way down the fire escape and she now appeared to be a tall black woman wearing smart grey business clothes and an ethnic bracelet rattling against to the gold wristwatch on her wrist. Anyone who saw her would assume that she was a rising young professional; a lawyer or a marketing executive perhaps.

Which way to go? Left? Right? Uptown or down? Harlem or SoHo? The Village? Deirdre didn’t know. This town was strange to her, known only through films and books. So, not wishing to get lost in the financial district on one hand or the wilderness of north Manhattan on the other, she faced forward, crossed the taxi-clogged street and passed through the gates into Central Park.

Immediately a grove of trees closed around her and the streetlights and noise of the city faded into the deep background. The transition from urban bustle to sylvan peace was startlingly abrupt. So startling that Deirdre stopped to look around. Behind her, the park entrance and the busy sidewalks of New York. Ahead and to both sides, the mystery of the wood, swathed in a green so dark that it was almost black. The path beneath her feet was covered in last autumn’s leaves - but this was spring. Surely the Parks Department would have swept them up by now?

Forward, said a voice from between her ears. See what you can find. So Deirdre, who was a good girl, did as she was told. Besides, she had an inkling of what was happening to her. So she followed the path, hardly noticing when its concrete turned to earth and the fallen leaves changed from umber to emerald, from crisp to soft. The midnight air grew warmer and the sky lighter. Every step she took was bringing her closer to summer, it seemed.

The wood, which had been silent when she first entered it, was coming to noisy life. Although Deirdre’s footsteps were muffled by the soft ground underneath, that only served to bring into clearer focus the rustle, patter and scrape of the creatures which lived there. Deirdre looked from side to side as she slowly walked along and now and then she caught sight of a flashing eye or the flick of a tail in the undergrowth. The moon was up and shining brightly through the overhanging branches. She held out her hands and marvelled to see them so fabulously lit, silver on black.

Deirdre walked. She was content to do so, because of the peace that surrounded her and the way that peace was seeping into her soul. She knew that the animal sounds which enveloped her were not the sound of hunters and hunted. There were no squeals of fear, no hurried scurries to the safety of underground dens, only purposeful gathering, nurturing and mating. And because of this knowledge, and the fact that she understood its nature as many others would have not, she felt a little separated from herself. She was enjoying the night-time magic of the wood, but she could not completely believe in it, despite the fact that her city clothes had melted away and she was clad in a long dress of white muslin, clasped at the neck with gold.

And so, when a man sprang out from behind a beech tree and stood before her with his arms outstretched and a wide smile on her face she did not start, for she was not particularly surprised, even though he wore nothing but a breechclout and a necklace of green acorns.

Deirdre put her hands on her hips. ‘Hello, Annie,’ she said.

The man smiled wider. ‘Annie? What are you talking about?’ he said, and his voice was as rich and warm as his ebony skin. ‘I’m Andrew. Who’s Annie?’

‘You are. Come on, don’t you think I know what this is? The Enchanted Wood? Where you will lead me to a well, beneath which lies a princess who has been sleeping under a spell for five hundred years, and whom we will awaken with a kiss, and who will take us on a ship with hull made all of cedar logs and sails woven of young girls’ dreams to the Isle of Sage where our destiny lies. And there we will conquer a fiery monster, and afterwards there will be a tapestried, firelit room with a richly hung bed of damask silk and you will embrace me and I will yield to you and we, who have earned one another by feat of arms, will make strong passionate dragon-love all night and part forever in the morning!’

She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I know this world,’ she said. ‘You get to it from the first landing of my house, through the linen press. It’s beautiful, it’s one of my favourites, but it’s not what I want right now.’

The man shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘This,’ said Deirdre, and clicked her fingers twice.



She was standing in Battery Park. Her companion from the wood was next to her. He was dressed in a sharp suit and Italian shoes. She was wearing a cocktail frock under a light coat. Her dark glossy hair was swept back from her face and tightly knotted at the nape of her neck. He was dashing and handsome, she lively and very pretty.

‘We have two choices,’ Deirdre said. ‘Back to your apartment right now…’

‘Or?’

‘Hit the town!’

‘And then?’

Deirdre grinned. ‘Then we go back to your apartment!’

‘You’re on, baby!’

‘Baby? Oh, pulease!’

‘Taxi!’



They went to a Broadway show and danced in the aisles and nobody stopped them. They found a little subterranean bar, where a young man stood with his back pressed hard against the nicotine-stained wall and an electric guitar in his hand and sang torch songs from Ethiopia and Paris in the voice of a disturbed angel. They drank Old Fashioneds and listened intently. The men in the bar looked at Deirdre, until their women slapped their faces or took them away from temptation. The girls behind the bar looked at Deirdre’s friend and rehearsed what they would say about him to their friends the next day.

They walked the streets unmolested, laughing and happy. They rode the subway uptown, strap-hanging in an empty car. They stood under a marquee and kissed invisibly.

There was a cocktail party, somewhere so far from street level that it could not be overlooked from the topmost towers, where you could walk thorough the windows onto a roof terrace and float above the city as if airborne. The 3am city, still threaded with red and white car lights, where the sounds from below reverberated from glass walls and asphalt streets to the stars above. Deirdre stood with her hands on the railing, chatting to the up-and-coming actress to her left, praising her performance, drinking in the view, feeling Andrew’s strong arm on her slender waist. Feeling young. They should go soon, she knew. This evening, this wonderful evening of people and warmth should end, as all things end. But not until… She looked at Andrew.

‘Can we…?’

‘Yes.’ He clicked his fingers twice. And he was gone.



She was sitting in a leatherette chair by the window in Annie’s lounge in Annie’s flat in Liverpool’s Scotland Road. Annie was on the sofa, smiling. Nobody spoke. Then Deirdre, as if a signal had flashed in the room, got up from her chair and fell to her knees in front of Annie. She bowed her head. ‘Mistress…’ she said. She could not express her feelings. The night – that wonderful night – had evaporated like dew on a summer’s morning. And nothing had changed. It had not been enough. She was still too tired, too scarred. She could still not face going back to Blackwater where men came out of the treacherous daylight to inflict pain on her.

‘My child,’ said Annie and leaned forward to the younger witch. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. ‘My child.’

‘Oh Annie!’ sobbed Deirdre. ‘They hurt me so badly. And I could have… I could have hit back. I still don’t know if I should have or not. I could have saved them so easily. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it had got so bad, until… until…’

‘Until you found out how it used to be. When those men came to your door. I know, my sweet. It can be most dreadfully sudden, when it happens. The irons, the stake, the fire. They haven’t gone away, those men. The witchfinders. They still want to hunt us down. They still want to torture and rape us. They are our adversaries and they come when we don’t expect them to and they turn our hospitality against us. They want misery and pain as much as we want happiness and joy. They are cruel and ugly and they want to make the world in their image and its people their slaves. They wanted to blight you with anger. They wanted you to hit back at them, to legitimise their hate. They wanted you to be as foul as them. And you such a pretty one...’

‘Pretty? Me?’ said Deirdre, looking up. Her cheeks were blotched red and white and streaked with salt. Her hair hung in lank rat’s-tails.

‘The prettiest of my children. Come to me.’ She patted her lap and Deirdre got up from the ground and sat on the older witch’s lap. She put her head on Annie’s shoulder.

‘You are tired,’ said Annie. ‘Aren’t you, my lovely?’

‘Yes, Mistress. I didn’t realise…’

‘Not Mistress. Don’t call me that. Not here. Not today.’ The air in the room had become warm and sweet-scented. The light had faded to an amber dimness.

‘Mother…’

‘Yes,’ said Annie soothingly. She undid the top buttons of her floral housecoat and lifted up her cotton blouse. ‘Here, my beautiful one. Here you are.’

‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Deirdre in a soft voice, ‘Oh, Mummy…’ She leaned forward and took Annie’s proffered breast in her mouth, rolling the nipple between her lips and sucking gently on it until the milk flowed freely. Its taste was sweet on her tongue, its warmth comforting and satisfying in her throat and belly. She sighed in profound happiness and Annie echoed her. It was all very quiet and still and private and joyful. The two witches lay together, naked now, arms wrapped around one another in the dim twilight of the room while Deirdre drew sustenance first from Annie’s right breast and then from her left. It may be that at one point suckling gave way to love-making, or it may not.



Later, Annie made a casserole of bacon and celery. Deirdre stood next to her in the kitchen and helped with cutting up the vegetables and laying the table. At one point the doorbell rang and Annie let in a boy of no more than 14 years old. He was silent, thin and wiry, and his eyes spoke of dealing and street-corner fights and the belt-buckle his stepfather wore. Annie showed him into the broom-cupboard off the kitchen and he, seeing not mops and bristles but a long beach of soft white sand under a moonlit sky, cried out in delight and ran forward until his feet raised phosphorescent trails in the quiet waves and he fell forward into the creamy waters of the bay.

‘It is worth it, isn’t it?’ said Deirdre with a smile, closing the cupboard door behind him. ‘When it’s like that. When they love it so much, when it’s so easy to help them. It does them so much good and it takes so little out of us in return.’

‘It’s always worth it,’ Annie replied. ‘But especially…’

‘When it’s hard. I know. But what about when it’s hard and it doesn’t work? What about that? Oh Annie, I’ve been so hurt!’

It still wasn’t enough. For all its delight, this brief stay at Annie’s had only named her wounds. It hadn’t cured them. More drastic measures would be necessary. She made her mind up even as she wished Annie goodbye.



A day or two later, Deirdre knocked again at Annie’s door. The elder witch answered and seeing the wicked grin on Deirdre’s face, looked down. Oh, she thought.

‘Now then Ashley, Mitchell,’ said Deirdre. ‘This is your Nana Annie and you’re going to be staying with her for a week or two. Promise you’ll be good.’

‘Yes, Mummy.’

‘Yes, Mummy.’

‘Good boys. There you are, Annie. Everything’s going to be just fine.’

‘But… but why have you brought them here?’

Deirdre pushed the toddlers through the door and into Annie’s hallway. ‘Because I’m going to do what I really need to do. Take a break. Go away for a while. Go on… you’ll enjoy it as much as they will. You’ll have fun.’

The twins looked at Annie. Annie regarded the twins. ‘Oh yes,’ she gulped. ‘I’m sure we will.’