The Living and the Dead in Winsford

49

Friday the fourth of January. A sunny day with the temperature a few degrees above zero — when we leave Darne Lodge that is, halfway through the morning. I’ve consulted the map and decided to head for Rockford. Castor hasn’t expressed any objections.

It is a hamlet comprising about fifteen houses, stretching along the bank of the East Lyn River. We get there after walking alongside the river from Brendon, and it has felt like a spring morning from the first stride: small birds are fluttering around in the bushes, and the ground seems to be swelling. It’s a few minutes past one, the pub is open and so we go in for lunch.

We find that the pub is hosting an art exhibition: there are twenty or so small oil paintings hanging on the walls, all of them depicting the moor. Ponies in the mist. Gates. Gorse bushes. The artist herself is also present, sitting at a table with her paint brushes and tubes, carefully dabbing paint onto a little canvas on an easel in front of her.

‘Jane Barrett,’ says the landlady when I place my order at the bar. ‘She lives here in the village. She’s pretty good — what she doesn’t manage to sell herself we usually buy for the pub. Mind you, she sells more or less everything. If you’re interested in a painting of the moor, now’s your chance to acquire one. She’s not very expensive either.’

Castor and I sit down at the table next to the artist’s.

We introduce ourselves and I say that I recognize her name.

‘Really?’ she says. ‘I suppose you must know a bit about Exmoor, then?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I say. ‘But there’s a little grave almost next to where I’m living. The lady lying there is called Elizabeth Williford Barrett.’

‘Well, I’ll be. .’ Her face lights up and she puts down her paintbrush on a rag. ‘So you must be living in Darne Lodge. It’s my grandma lying there. What an amazing coincidence!’

She smiles broadly. She is a powerfully built woman about forty-five years old, the type my father would no doubt have said was full of go. A mop of red hair, tied up with an even redder ribbon. A paint-stained woollen jumper reaching down to her knees. Lively eyes. She looks every inch a creative artist.

‘Yes, we live there,’ I say. ‘My dog and I. We’ve been there for a few months, but we’ll probably be leaving at the end of January.’

‘It’s a lovely place to live,’ says Jane Barrett, stroking Castor. ‘You couldn’t have found anywhere better. No matter what your work is, I have no doubt that you are. . well, protected.’

‘Protected?’

‘Yes. For one thing you have my grandma on the other side of the road, and for another she has made sure that the house is disinfected.’

I smile somewhat tentatively. ‘Do you mean that. .?’

I simply don’t know what to say next, but it doesn’t matter. Jane Barrett likes talking. ‘Maybe you don’t know what kind of women we are in my family. There must always be a witch on the moor, and nowadays it’s me. My grandma’s grandmother is the most notorious — the witch in Barrett’s bolt-hole. . Have you heard of her?’

I say that not only have I heard of her, I’ve even visited the bolt-hole.

‘Really?’ exclaims Jane, astonished once again. ‘But they haven’t put the place in the tourist leaflets, have they? Although it wouldn’t surprise me. .’

‘I went walking around those parts with a friend who was born in Simonsbath,’ I explain. ‘He was the one who knew about her, and explained it all to me.’

She nods and takes a drink of tea from the cup on her table. ‘I’ll tell you one thing: I’m pretty sure my mother was conceived in your house.’

‘Your mother?. . Elizabeth?’

She laughs. ‘No, Elizabeth is my grandmother. But she’s the one who was responsible for the conception. Half of it, at least. She lived in Darne Lodge with a young man at the end of the thirties, before he was conscripted for service in the Second World War. Grandma was pregnant with my mother, and gave birth in the spring of 1941. And at about the same time the man died somewhere in Africa. Killed by a German bullet. Mother and daughter Barrett continued living in Darne Lodge until they were thrown out by the owner, or whatever it was that happened. .’

It strikes me that Margaret Allen must have missed out the odd chapter in the history of Darne Lodge, unless I wasn’t listening intently enough.

‘Anyway,’ says Jane, ‘Grandma Elizabeth made sure that the house was properly protected. No dodgy goings-on were going to make it difficult for people to come to Darne Lodge. All right, I know that people have died there and that things have happened, but that’s another story. Have you felt safe, living up there?’

I think that over, then say that yes, I have.

‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I write books. I’m an author.’

She shakes my hand. ‘I thought you were an artist. You can sense things like that — especially if you are a witch.’

She leans back, sticks her thumbs in her armpits and laughs. ‘It runs in the family, and things keep repeating themselves,’ she says slightly mysteriously. ‘We Barretts only give birth to girls. One for each generation. And we keep the name Barrett. But you’ve probably seen that it says Williford on Grandma’s grave.’

I say that I have seen that, and think I know the reason for it.

‘Exactly,’ says Jane. ‘That rich farmer bastard who raped her mother. My great grandmother. And do you know, I also have a daughter. . she’s only seventeen. As pretty as the dawn, and shortly before Christmas she came home and introduced me to a boyfriend. His name is James Williford. . The choice here on the moor is a bit limited, you might say. It smells of incest, don’t you think?’

She laughs again. I think for a few seconds, then I tell her about the pheasants.

‘Lucky you,’ she says when I’ve finished. ‘Just as I told you, you can’t hope for better protection than that. Nobody put those birds outside your door. They came there of their own accord when their time was up. They lay down and died there because Death isn’t allowed in. I can tell you that we witches are on unusually good terms with birds. But perhaps that’s an indication that. . well, it might mean that you need some protection. Is that true, perhaps?’

She looks at me pretending to be serious.

‘Who isn’t in need of protection?’

‘Very true. But where do you come from? Forgive me for saying so, but I can hear that you don’t come from Oxford.’

‘Sweden. And as I said, I’ll probably be going back home at the end of this month. But thank you. . Thank you for the protection. I think I’d like to buy one of your paintings.’

‘If I can have one of your books, we can make an exchange — but perhaps you don’t write in English?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Never mind. You can have a painting even so. Witches don’t need money.’

I choose a picture with some ponies drinking water out of a beck. It’s not big, maybe twenty by thirty centimetres or thereabouts: I like it very much, and insist on paying her for it.

‘Not on your life!’ says Jane Barrett. ‘An agreement is an agreement. Pass on greetings to Grandma, by the way.’

I promise to do so.

As if I really were an author, I sit at home writing all evening. The whole of the first act and the first scenes of act two. I’d love to insert a witch into the action, but of course that’s not possible. Madame Megal will have to suffice. Work on the script seems to flow with hardly any problems: I know Bergman will be surprised by the result, but when he has read it all he will presumably understand. I remember that I have had time to prepare him for what’s coming, and I feel pleased that things have worked out in the way they have. Before I write acts three and four I must make sure I read Bessie Hyatt’s two novels: she isn’t really the main character in the drama as yet, but once we’ve moved from Samos to Taza she will undoubtedly be that.

While I’m sitting writing, the mobile phone rings several times. Only one person has the number, and so I refrain from answering. Mark Britton is a problem I don’t have time to deal with just now. We’re going to meet tomorrow evening after all, so why does he have to ring now?

On the other hand he probably doesn’t regard a telephone call as a serious event, which I have got round to doing because of the circumstances. Maybe he just wants to know if I like coriander?

But even so, I don’t answer. That thought about the possibility of my coming back here eventually crops up again, however.

Once everything has gone according to plan. In six months or so. Coming to live permanently here on the moor? Protected by witches and all the rest of it. Not in Darne Lodge, of course, but there are plenty of houses around here to rent or buy. Every village has adverts put up by estate agents.

What is the alternative? Ten more years at the Monkeyhouse?

I start wondering how much the house in Nynäshamn might be worth. A couple of million at least. . Maybe three? I would be able to get by.

Yes indeed, I’d be able to get by.