Midsummer's Eve Read online

  He was fascinated by the squint. I told him that there were two other peepholes in the house. These we called peeps. One of them looked down on the hall so that people could see who their visitors were without being seen themselves. This was in the solarium; the other was in another room. This looked down on the chapel. It was in an alcove where ladies could sit and enjoy the service from above on those occasions when there were guests in the house with whom it would be unseemly for them to mix.

  In exchange he told me a little about his home which he was at pains to make me believe was more impressive than my own. In a way it was because it was so strangely mysterious. Cador was a magnificent house but there were many such houses in England; and according to Digory there were no cottages in the world like Mother Ginny’s.

  Digory had a natural eloquence which even a lack of conventional education could not stem. He made me see the room which was like a cavern from another world. Jars and bottles stood on the shelves—all containing some mysterious brew. Drying herbs hung on the rafters; a fire always burned in the grate and it was like no other fire; the flames were blue and red and pictures formed in them. Battles were fought; the Devil himself appeared once with red eyes and a red coat and black horns in his head. By the fire sat the cat which was no ordinary cat; she had red eyes and when the firelight shone on them they were the colour of the Devil’s eyes, which showed she was one of his creatures. There was a black cauldron on the fire, always bubbling, and in the steam which rose from it spirits danced. Sometimes Digory could see the face of some inhabitant of the neighbourhood; and that meant something important. He was always discovering something fresh. There were two rooms in the cottage—one leading from the other. The one at the back was where he and his grandmother slept—she on the truckle bed with a red cover, and the black cat always slept at the foot of her bed. Digory’s place was on the talfat—a board placed immediately below the ceiling which I was able to visualize because I had seen it in some of the labourers’ cottages. There was a stone-paved yard at the back and in this was an outhouse in which Mother Ginny stored her concoctions—a source of income to her and which could cure anything from a cold in the head to a stone in the kidney. She was very clever; she could get babies for people who wanted them and get rid of them for people who didn’t want them. She was as clever as God.

  “She couldn’t be a god,” I told him. “She would have to be a goddess. Of course she is rather ugly for one of them, but I suppose some of them might have been ugly. There were the Gorgons and Medusa. Fancy having snakes for hair. Can your grandmother make her hair into snakes?”

  “Of course,” said Digory.

  I was very over-awed and longed to see inside Mother Ginny’s cottage though I feared to.

  The harvest had been bad that year. I heard my father talking very seriously to my mother about it. He said the farmers would be tightening their belts. Last year’s had not been too bad; but this one was really alarming.

  Jacco and I used to ride round the estate with him quite frequently. He wanted us to show an interest in it.

  “The most important thing for a landowner is to be proud of his estate,” he told us. “He has to care for it as he would for a person.”

  He always listened with sympathy to what the tenants had to say. It was said that having had to “rough it” himself, he had a special understanding of their troubles, unlike some squires who had been accustomed to soft living all their lives. My father was much loved for this quality as well as respected.

  Following on the bad summer came the hard winter. I awoke most mornings to see a frosty pattern on the windows; there was tobogganing down the hill and skating on the river. The gales were so strong that the fishermen could not go out. During most mornings people went down to the beach to collect driftwood. Fires were needed all through the day and night to keep the house reasonably warm.

  We were all longing for the spring.

  And what a pleasure it was when it came—at last to see the buds appearing on the trees and in due course to hear the first cuckoo. I remember a spring morning when I went riding with my father. It was a holiday so I was free from my desk and my father had suggested I go with him on his rounds.

  We called at the Tregorrans’ farm and sat talking in the kitchen where Mrs. Tregorran brought forth a batch of currant buns from the oven and my father and I tasted one each and drank a glass of the Tregorran cider.

  Mr. Tregorran was a somewhat morose man; his wife was melancholy too. So gloom pervaded the house. Mr. Tregorran talked with habitual pessimism of the effect the weather had had on crops and livestock. His mare Jemima was in foal. He hoped luck would not run against him and that she would bring forth a healthy animal, though he doubted this, due to the conditions of the last months.

  “Poor Tregorran,” said my father as we rode away. “But he really enjoys bad luck so perhaps we should not pity him too much. Never look on the black side, Annora, or you can be sure fate will find a way of turning that side towards you. Now let’s call on the Cherrys and get the other side of the picture right away. I always like to do those two together.”

  Mrs. Cherry, the mother of six, was once again pregnant. It was a perpetual state with her. As soon as she was delivered of one child, another was on the way. But in spite of her constant disability, Mrs. Cherry was perpetually cheerful; she had a loud booming laugh which seemed to accompany all her remarks—funny or not. Her body, made larger by her state, continually shook with merriment, for no one appreciated her mirth as wholeheartedly as she did herself. George Cherry, her husband, was a little man, not much above his wife’s shoulder, and he seemed to get smaller as her bulk increased. He walked in his wife’s shadow and his almost sycophantic titter never failed to follow her hearty laughter.

  Soon after that visit two disasters struck the place.

  Mrs. Cherry had milked the cows. “I always believe in keeping going till me times comes,” was a favourite saying of hers. “Never was one to believe in lying up too early like some.” So she kept to those farm duties which she could perform and halfway across the yard from the cowsheds she saw a riderless horse galloping past the house.

  She went to the gate and out to the path. By that time the horse had turned back and was coming towards her. She saw it was the Tregorran mare which was in foal. She shouted, but she was too late to get out of its path and as it galloped past her she was knocked back into the hedge.

  Her shouts had brought out the workmen.

  She was, we were told, “in a state.” And that night her child was born dead.

  Meanwhile Tregorran’s mare, attempting to leap over a fence, had broken a leg so it had to be destroyed.

  The neighbourhood discussed the matter at length.

  I went with my mother to call on Mrs. Cherry when she had recovered a little. It was about a week after the incident. Her fat face had lost most of its colour, leaving behind a network of tiny veins. She shook like a jelly when she talked; and for once did not seem to find life such a joke.

  My mother sat by her bed and tried to cheer her.

  “You’ll soon be well, Mrs. Cherry, and there’ll be another on the way.”

  Mrs. Cherry shook her head. “I’d be that feared,” she said. “With the likes of some about us who knows what’ll happen next.”

  My mother looked surprised.

  “You see, me lady,” said Mrs. Cherry conspiratorially, “I knows just how it happened.”

  “Yes, we all do,” replied my mother. “Tregorran’s mare went mad. They say it sometimes happens. Unfortunately there was the foal. Poor Tregorran.”

  “’Tweren’t nothing to do with the horse, me lady. It was her. You know who.”

  “No,” said my mother. “I don’t know who.”

  “I was standing at the gate when she passed me. She said to me, ‘Your time won’t be long now.’ Well, I never did like to as much as speak to her, but I was civil-like and I said yes it was close now. Then she said to me, ‘I’ll give ’ee
a little drink made of herbs and all that’s good from the earth. You’ll find it’ll give you an easy time, missus, and it’ll cost you so little you won’t notice it.’ I turned away. I wouldn’t take nothing from her. That was when it happened. She went off muttering, but not before she’d given me a look. Oh, it was a special sort of look, it were. I didn’t know then that it was for my baby.”

  “You really don’t think Mother Ginny ill-wished you?”

  “That I do and all, my lady. And not only me. I heard she had a bit of a back-and-forther with Jim Tregorran.”

  “Oh no,” said my mother.

  “’Tis so, me lady. I know she have cured some warts and such like but when there’s trouble around ’ee don’t have to look too far to see where it do come from.”

  My mother was very disturbed.

  As we walked home she said: “I hope they are not going to work up a case against Mother Ginny just because Tregorran’s mare ran amok and Mrs. Cherry stood in her path.”

  My father was coming out of the house and with him was Mr. Hanson, our lawyer, and his son Rolf. I was delighted as I always was when Rolf came. I loved Rolf. He was so clever and he had a special way with me. I believe he liked me as much as I liked him. He never let me know that he considered me too young to be noticed. He was eight years older than I but was never superior about it as Jacco was, and Jacco was only two years older than I.

  Rolf was very tall and towered over his father, who was rather portly. Rolf was not often in Poldorey because he was completing his education and was away for long periods. I thought he was very handsome, but I heard my mother say that although he was not good-looking he had an air of distinction. He was certainly good-looking in my eyes, but then everything about Rolf was perfect as far as I was concerned. His father was always telling us how clever he was and so, even on those occasions when he did not accompany his father, he was often discussed.

  Rolf had travelled a good deal. He had done what they used to call the Grand Tour and he could talk fascinatingly about places like Rome, Paris, Venice and Florence. He loved art treasures and the costumes of long ago. He was always collecting something and he was passionately interested in the past.

  I used to listen to him enraptured but I was not sure whether it was what he was telling me or just that I simply loved to be with Rolf.

  When I was very young I told my mother that when I was grown up I should marry either Rolf or my father.

  She had said very seriously: “I should settle for Rolf if I were you. There is a law against marrying fathers and in any case he already has a wife. But I’m sure he’ll be flattered by the suggestion. I’ll tell him.”

  And after that I would think that I would without question marry Rolf.

  As soon as he saw me he came to me and took both my hands. He always did that. Then he would stretch back, still holding them and looking at me to see how much I had grown since our last meeting. His smile was so warm and loving.

  I cried: “Oh Rolf, it’s lovely to see you.” I added hastily: “And you too, Mr. Hanson.”

  Mr. Hanson smiled benignly. Any appreciation for Rolf delighted him.

  “How long are you here for?” I asked.

  “Only a week or so,” Rolf told me.

  I pouted. “You should come more often.”

  “I’d like to. But I have to work, you know. But I’ll be back in June for a few weeks … round about Midsummer.”

  “Would you believe it,” said Mr. Hanson admiringly, “he’s interested in land now. He’ll be trying to pick your brains, Sir Jake.”

  “He’s welcome,” said my father. “How’s the Manor coming along?”

  “Not bad … not bad at all.”

  “Well, are you coming in?” said my mother. “You’ll stay to luncheon. Now, no excuses. We expect you to.” My mother smiled at me. “Don’t we, Annora?”

  My attachment to Rolf always amused them.

  “You must stay,” I said, looking at Rolf.

  “That,” said Rolf, “is a royal command, and one which I personally am delighted to obey.”

  My mother was still bursting with indignation about Mrs. Cherry’s remarks and mentioned what she had said.

  “I hear,” said Mr. Hanson, “that Tregorran is talking freely about the woman’s ill-wishing his horse.”

  “Superstitious nonsense,” said my father. “It will pass.”

  “Let’s hope so,” added Rolf. “When things like this happen people work themselves up into a superstitious fever of excitement. Civilization drops from them. They blame the forces of evil for their misfortunes.”

  “If Tregorran had looked after his mare properly she would not have been able to get out,” said my father. “And Mrs. Cherry should know by now that it is unwise to stand in the path of a bolting horse.”

  “Exactly,” agreed Rolf. “They know they are in the wrong but knowing makes them all the more determined to blame someone else. And in this case it is the supernatural in the form of Mother Ginny.”

  “I know,” said my mother, “but it does make me uneasy.”

  “It’ll pass,” put in my father. “Witch hunting went out of fashion years ago. What about luncheon?”

  Over the meal the subject of Mother Ginny came up again. Rolf was very knowledgeable on the subject.

  “There was a period during the seventeenth century,” he told us, “when the fear of witchcraft was rife throughout the country. The diabolical witch finders sprang up everywhere … men whose task it was to go hunting for witches.”

  “Horrible!” cried my mother. “Thank Heaven that is done with.”

  “People haven’t changed much,” Rolf reminded her. “There is a trait in some human beings which leads to an obsession with persecution. Culture … civilized behaviour is with some just a veneer. It cracks very easily.”

  “I am glad people are a little more enlightened now,” said my mother.

  “A belief in witchcraft is hard to eradicate,” said Rolf. “It can be revived with an old crone like Mother Ginny living in that place in the woods.” He looked at his father. “I remember one of the Midsummer’s Eve bonfires a few years ago when they were leaping over the flame because they thought that gave them a protection against witches.”

  “Yes, that’s so,” added my father. “I stopped it after someone nearly got burned to death.”

  “It makes gruesome reading—what went on in the past,” said Rolf.

  “He’s been interested in these old customs for a long time,” his father told us. “But I think more so since last year. Tell them about last year, Rolf?”

  “I was at Stonehenge,” Rolf explained. “A fellow from my college lives nearby. I went with him. There was quite a ceremony. It was impressive and really eerie. I learned quite a lot about what they surmised was the secret of the stones. But of course it is all wrapped up in mystery. That is what makes it all the more fascinating.”

  “He even had some sort of robe to wear,” said his father.

  “Yes,” agreed Rolf. “A long greyish habit. I look a little like one of the Inquisitors in it. It is rather like a monk’s robe but the hood almost completely hides the face.”

  I was listening enraptured as I always did to Rolf.

  “I should love to see it,” I said.

  “Well, come over tomorrow.”

  “What about you, Jacco?” asked my mother. “You’ll want to see it too.”

  Jacco said yes he would but he was going out with John Gort tomorrow. They were going for pilchards. John Gort said there was a glut and they’d fill the nets in a few hours.

  “Well some other time for you, Jacco,” said Rolf.

  “But I’ll come tomorrow,” I cried. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  “I’ll look for you in the afternoon,” Rolf told me.

  “You ought to come over, Sir Jake,” said Mr. Hanson. “I want you to see the new copse we’re planting.”

  “So you are acquiring more and more land,” said my father. �
��I can see you will soon be rivalling Cador.”

  “We have a long way to go before we do that,” said Rolf regretfully. “In any case we could never rival Cador. Cador is unique. Ours is just an Elizabethan Manor House.”

  “It’s delightful,” my mother assured him. “It’s cosier than Cador.”

  “They are not to be compared,” said Rolf with a smile. “Still we are very satisfied with our little place.”

  “Oh it’s not so little,” said his father.

  “How are you getting on with your pheasants?” asked mine.

  “Very well. Luke Tregern is proving a good man.”

  “You’re lucky to have found him.”

  “Yes,” agreed the lawyer. “That was a stroke of luck. He has come from the Lizard way … looking for work. Rolf’s got an eye for people and he felt he was the right sort. Good-looking, well-spoken and above all keen to make good. He comes up with ideas for the land. You must remember, Sir Jake, we are novices at the game.”

  “You’re doing very well all the same,” said my father.

  Rolf was smiling at me.

  “Tomorrow then?” he said.

  The Hansons’ place was called Dorey Manor and was on the edge of the wood which bordered the river. They had bought it some ten years before when it had been in a state of dilapidation. The lawyer and his wife—Mrs. Hanson had been alive then—had set about restoring it in a leisurely way; it was when Rolf began to take an interest that developments proceeded at a rapid pace. Now they were constantly acquiring more land.

  My father used to say jokingly: “Rolf Hanson wants to outdo Cador. He’s an ambitious young man and he’s attempting the impossible.”

  “He is making the Manor and its lands into a sizable property,” added my mother.

  There was not doubt that Rolf was proud of Dorey Manor. He was so interested in everything, and being with him made one interested too. I always felt more alive with Rolf than with anyone else.

  He was waiting for me in the stables. He lifted me down from my horse, holding me for a few moments and looking up at me, smiling.