Penultimate chapter

Virginia took the 17th century brass pestle and mortar, from the top of the dresser, and put it in her satchel; she had won it for a small fortune at the auction house in Doncaster. She lifted the little, early 19th century, pierced brass chestnut roaster from the wall in the kitchen, where it hung by the Aga and put that in her bag, too. It was the costly, navy blue satchel she had hoped each of her daughters might use when they had started at secondary school. It had been discarded by each of them in turn, after the first half term, in favour of something artificial, cheap and fashionable. The chestnut roaster was going to have to do instead of a crucible, Virginia put the miniature similitudes inside it. The kindling bag was about an eighth full and Virginia emptied its contents in too, with the big box of Cook’s matches from the kitchen and two firelighters. Then she took a Tesco carrier bag and put a shovel full of coal in it. There was no room left for the sketch book of portraits or the envelope with the filings from the pewter plate and the other pieces from Kineburn she thought might be useful. So, she put them in a shoulder bag she’d made herself from some linen union upholstery fabric. These possibly useful fragments included a few strands of red wool from the Turkey carpet, a scrap of Gainsborough gold, silk damask from the screen that had stood in front of the huge open fireplace in the great hall in the summer months, a tiny splinter of oak from the gate leg table in the kitchen, and a sliver of red walnut from the long-case clock, which had been in the solar.

It wasn’t possible to tell the children what she was going to do. They thought she was nuts already, so it wasn’t vanity which prevented her from writing them an honest note. She just had a horror of the men in white coats and if they were dispatched by the children to find her up at Kineburn, then the utter bastards, arrogant twats, smug bitches and pig headed morons who had tried to murder Brexit and their accomplices might never get their comeuppance. So Virginia invented a Halloween Party, to be hosted by her childhood friend Jane, whom the children knew was fond of parties and still lived close to Kineburn. This would show up as a correct direction of travel on her mobile phone, if she disappeared without any other trace as a result of her devilry. It would also explain why she was going to be out all night. Virginia then mentioned in her note the various ingredients jumbled up in the livery cupboard and the fridge from which her children might concoct a curry. She explained that Phoebe was with her married daughter and would need collecting. She signed it ‘love Mummy’ and added several kisses, which looked both a bit wet and a bit OTT, but couldn’t be helped.

Virginia forced Phoebe into the Jag, where she sat trembling on the front seat, with her seat belt on, her ears pricked up and her claws scratching the leather. She bounded out with alacrity the moment Virginia opened the door, on arrival in the small town, a couple of miles away. Virginia let herself into her daughter’s house and shouted “Hello”. Phoebe galloped joyfully inside, almost pronking and found the cats’ food in the kitchen, where Virginia’s daughter was cooking.

The way back to Kineburn was mostly motorway and further west it had been raining, there was a good deal of spray, from the lorries. Virginia felt grim and didn’t seek out music. She concentrated on the traffic and summoned up all her most toxic venom for those on whom she was intending to practise her dark art. Her feelings were so powerful she felt as if they must be already floating out into the night air and finding their own way through the black night to the black hearts of her political enemies.

Arriving at her destination about an hour and twenty minutes after dropping off Phoebe, Virginia drove up to, and parked in, the much enlarged carpark at the end of the lane which led down to Kineburn. There was also a way to the house through the woods. It was far too early to be going up to the quarry yet, she would have hours to wait, so she sat in the car, reading the online editions of the papers on her phone, working herself back up to the correct level of righteous or perhaps she should say, malicious indignation, for the task ahead. Having consumed all the news and comment she could, she considered all the changes that had been made to her childhood haunts over the last thirty years and compared them to all the changes Alison Carter and the others must have seen during the several centuries since their spirits had inhabited their flesh.

There was something Virginia felt was wrong with the supposed improvements to the area which had been made recently. At first she hadn’t been able to think what it was. But it dawned suddenly as she was staring ahead. When the school bus had dropped Virginia and her sisters at the end of the lane, they had had a choice of the two ways to take home. As they would have now. But back then the choice was through a wide gate and a broad lane or a narrow kissing gate and a narrow unmade track through the woods. Sometimes they had all walked together, the same way, sometimes they had taken different paths, according to their moods. Some days they had walked in Indian file, quietly through the woods, some days they had chatted and walked three abreast down the broad lane, along with hikers and dog walkers. But now the choices were both broad paths, both made suitable for disabled access, a worthy and Christian gesture, which had swept away an important piece of Christian symbolism. There was no narrow way back up to Kineburn and the quarry, all the ways were as broad as the path which leads to destruction, from whichever direction one approached. Virginia knew destruction was what she had in mind, it would have been hypocritical in the extreme to have chosen the narrow way, when she was intending to bring about the end of those whom she considered her enemies. But Virginia would have liked to have made the positive, negative choice, it would have added a certain frisson to the proceedings and whetted the destructive appetite.

As it was she took the way through the woods and found she didn’t need the light from her phone. The moon gave light and Virginia knew the way with her eyes closed anyway. She reached the quarry above the house coming at it round the back to avoid seeing the light of her old home, shining through the woods,as it had in childhood and to avoid the tightening she knew that would bring about her chest, knowing she could not run in and find her mother and father and sisters there. But something was amiss. She had forgotten that the last occupants had converted the huge 19th century barn behind the house and in front of the quarry into a garage for their vintage cars and the latest occupants seemed to have converted it into a party barn. Loud music came banging out of it and there were dozens of cars around. Of course, there were the usual, corny bits of symbolism too, pumpkins and chains of garlic, intended to drive away evil spirits. It was no good, she had told her children there was to be a Halloween party at the place she was intending to visit and it seemed she had been right.

Virginia decided she had better go up to the beck instead. It was in truth the spot at which Alison and her friends had most often met. it was always deserted, and she was sure there was no wheelchair access to it. The way there was rather less familiar than the way home, of course, and she stumbled over tussocks, clumps of ferns and sank into molehills, causing her to trip several times. She disturbed sheep in the fields too as she went by and knocked a stone from the top of a wall she climbed. She felt ill at ease and summoned Freddy, but he only disturbed the sheep.

Arriving at the beck at last, Virginia had lost most of her enthusiasm for the task. It seemed silly. But she had come this far, and she would regret it forever if she didn’t try something. She took the satchel off her back and the linen bag from her shoulder and began to prepare the place for her fire. With the side of her brogue she moved aside as much debris from the forest floor as she could, until the peat appeared beneath, smelling as it had in childhood and prompting a Proustian moment of overwhelming nostalgia. Freddy flopped down in the bracken at her side and watched through the darkness. Virginia became aware of the sound of another creature slightly behind her and to the right. She could hear it snuffling as it got closer, of course, badgers, the beck had always been full of them. This one was probably drawn to the smell of the newly exposed peaty earth and the worms it might contain. But it had sensed Virginia, at the same moment as she had sensed it, and turned away.

Virginia constructed her fire carefully yet in such a way as to have ensured she would have been held in contempt by Titty, Susan, John and Roger, as she did so with shop-bought kindling and Zip firelighters which she had brought with her. She wondered in passing if she were letting the trivial considerations of life get rather too much the upper hand, in stopping to imagine and to weigh the contempt she would be held in by the fictional characters who inhabited Arthur Ransome’s books against the sympathy she would have had from Noel and H.O and the other characters in E Nesbit’s stories, who had a sensible mother, and always carried matches. It was a tricky problem in some ways because dear old Edith had been a dreadful old Pinko and anti Semite. Some said Arthur had been a double agent, but Virginia did not believe this. She settled for wishing she could live up to Sue and Titty’s standard but consoling herself with Noel’s forgiveness. Sometimes it was necessary to distract oneself, when one was engaged in profoundly serious and destructive activity. She arranged a careful pyramid and took out the box of Cook’s matches. Virginia waited for the kindling to catch and start to blaze, before putting the whole plastic bag of coal on top of it, including the bag, which caught and did not sulk as others of its kind had been known to do. Once the coal had begun to smoke and was glowing orange at the base in the darkness, Virginia took out the envelope with the filings from the 1620 pewter, then the envelope with the other splinters of wood and fabric, which each had their memories of Kineburn. She put them together into the pestle and mortar and began to grind. As she did so she summoned the spirit of her antecedent and her friends, calling upon them to come forward now, at this time of crisis when the nation needed their skills to deal with the traitors within its gates. Then she tipped the grounds into the chestnut roaster on top of the similitudes and set them on the coal.

As she did so she caught the faint sound of something approaching through the woods. Freddy began a deep growl, low in his throat, but Virginia could not be sure it was not just another badger approaching. When the grounds within the chestnut roaster began to burn, among the smoking wax from the sizzling similitudes and smoke that was not coal smoke began to appear from the perforations in its lid, Virginia took out the pictures from the linen bag and held each one over the flames. As page after page containing the pictures of the architects of the destruction of Virginia’s hopes for the nation were burned and flew up into the air as so many particles of black soot, Virginia called on her sisters and the devil to let them get their comeuppance. Virginia did not have time to explain to the spirits she believed had arrived at her side through the darkness, what kind of comeuppance she had in mind before one of them spoke to her, still a little way off. “What on earth are you doing?” Virginia was shocked, it was not Alison Carter or any woman, but the voice of the Poet.

Virginia did not answer, she watched the last of her enemies rise up towards the Plough, dust they were born and to dust they would return, nothing but a carbon footprint. Virginia noticed Freddy had disappeared. Then the Poet spoke again. “What are you doing?” Virginia found she could not reply. The Poet seemed flesh and blood. She could not make out his garb properly, but it seemed modern.

“I have these articles with me, this night, for driving away the evil ones who make my life miserable”. Virginia stammered out, in what she hoped was a convincing impression of a 17th century woman. Though she spoke the truth, in a way. If anyone ought to understand the need to drive the evil ones away that disturbed one, it should be the poet. Yet the Poet had insisted no magic means must be used to drive away the witches from his daughters, only prayer would he allow. He had believed one kind of magic was as bad as another, even if it brought about a seemingly beneficial result.

The strange smoke from the wax, pewter and mahogany, red walnut, oak and silk and Turkey red wool was still discernible about the chestnut burner and added somewhat to the strange atmosphere

Virginia was sure now that The Poet was inhabiting the body of a modern man, real flesh and blood, not spirit as Virginia had been used to seeing him in dreams. But she had no sense of the presence of Alison Carter or the other women.

“Why do you take this form?” asked Virginia “appearing as flesh and blood, not merely spirit.” Virginia thought of Pat. and how she was when she was manic. She had this habit of looking sideways at her interlocutor to see how they were taking her insane nonsense, to gauge the effect and to know whether to go on heaping it on with a trowel or pull back a little. It had always fascinated Virginia how subtle this form of madness was. Virginia tried it out herself, in the faint light of the small fire.

“I had no choice about the form I took”, replied the Poet, “other than that I might have eaten a little less and fasted a little more often”.

“Usually you come to me only in dreams, you appear further down the valley, by the Packhorse Bridge, or where the way broadens out, and one can choose the steep and narrow road up to the village, past Ilex Hall, or the broad farm track, back up to Kineburn”.

“I hope we took the steep and narrow road, in these dreams: Enter through the narrow gate. Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” abbreviated The Poet, in reply and Virginia was amazed to hear him half quote the words of Mathew she had pondered herself, sitting in the car, only a couple of hours ago.

“No” replied Virginia, we usually met when I was returning home to Kineburn, I dwelt there once. You used to think my long dead relative, who dwelt there in your time, and whom you mentioned in your accusation, was my mother.”

The man was embarrassed by the ramblings of this clearly disturbed woman, who spoke in this old fashioned and nonsensical way, yet who did seem to be possessed by some strange spirit. She did seem familiar to him, also, though there was only the firelight by which to make out her features, but she was not a member of his congregation.

The vicar decided to proceed as if Virginia was not present. “The other day we took a group of school children from the village primary school to a big, communal singing session. We had been rehearsing for weeks individually, then we got together to sing various songs, including the words of Pete Seeger;s which are set to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The lyrics sounded so marvellous when the children were singing it.. But they have the opposite meaning to the one in that biblical passage. We didn’t spell it out to them that it was the anthem of the European Union, they were singing, of course, some of the parents are a bit… you know, in these parts, Brexit types.”. Virginia knew now the sort she was dealing with. Of course, if the Poet were going to come back and live in another’s flesh it would be in the body of a vicar. He had been a deeply religious man and a bit of a do-gooder.

“Dost thou know Latin and Greek?” asked Virginia

“Yes, and Hebrew, of course” the vicar could not help boasting in reply.

“Why came you here tonight?” Asked Virginia

“To watch badgers” replied the vicar. The Poet would not have replied thus, thought Virginia. The vicar took a pair of night-vision binoculars out of his coat pocket. There won’t be any about, now, thanks to your fire, they don’t like company.

“Wind in the Willows” said Virginia, without further elaboration. Though she was tempted to try and ascertain his thoughts on the Titty question, as she had begun to think of it. Still men couldn’t usually remember children’s books, though a certain sort were often deeply into Swallows and Amazons, The Treasure Seekers didn’t have the same adult male following.

“Indeed” replied the vicar, softening slightly. “Do you mind me asking, are you local, where are you parked? I’ll see you back to the carpark, I have a rather good torch, though we must put the fire out first.”

“Interfering bastard.” thought Virginia.

“But let us say some prayers together first and see if we can’t drive away these evil spirits which beset you”.

“I am afeared you might drive your own spirit away if you set about that game” replied Virginia, resorting to her quasi 17th century sentence structure. “Thou wouldst crumble to dust, for dust thy were nigh on four hundred years since.”

The vicar looked at Virginia sideways in the dark, with something of the same sort of glance that Pat had been used to give, before making one of her mad pronouncements and which Virginia had been trying to pull off herself. Then he began to say the Lord’s Prayer. Virginia, watching his face, wondered if the vicar regarded the Lord’s Prayer in the same way Pat regarded a statement such as: “This work I finished last week, ‘Nude With Bag of Chips’ it’s worth £60k, but I’ll let you have it for £45k”. But she joined in with the words anyway, automatically as if she were in church and once it was finished, she struck up with the ‘Ubi Caritas’. She didn’t really know why, apart from that she wanted to avoid the ‘Agnus Dei’ which followed automatically, in her mind, she just found the central message of God’s love uncomplicated and liked the long Amen. the Poet/vicar joined in. He had a good tenor voice.

“Plenty of nasal brightness” said Virginia, out loud, when they got to the end. Which remark was just enough to prevent the vicar jumping in with anything of his own. Virginia was bossy about music. She would have been one of those nerdy boys who always guarded the hi-fi at parties, if she had not been a girl. The vicar began to kick the fire out and Virginia let him get on with it, as she picked up her satchel, the chestnut roaster and her linen bag, all the while singing Britten’s setting of “For I Am Under The Same Accusation With My Saviour” from Rejoice in the Lamb. She thought this suitable for the occasion and wondered what the poet inside the vicar would make of Christopher Smart’s words. “Smart was born the year after you made your accusation,” stated Virginia. “The year Alison Carter died, only of course she did not die, but was cursed so that her spirit walks abroad, this night, as you know.” Virginia was enjoying this bizarre game.

The vicar did not reply, but as he began to lead the way back to the car park he struck up with ‘For The Flowers Are Great Blessings’. It was really a very good performance, though of course it should have come before not after Virginia’s verse. But then he’d never have thought of it on his own, being too busy thinking of Pete Seeger and Beethoven.

Virginia had once sung ‘For The Mouse Is A Creature Of Great Personal Valour’ at a choir concert, but she thought it inappropriate for the occasion.

As she trudged along the ground, a little behind the vicar now, smelling the familiar childhood smell, of the rich earth and leaf-mould, mixed with the crisp beech leaves, which had attracted the badger, avoiding the clumps of dying ferns, she remembered the strange summer days of long ago when the woods had been filled with the scent of sulphur, odour of the Devils dick, or dicks, a plethora of prosthetic pricks, polystyrene dildos that had poked turgid from the earth.

Virginia and her sisters had discovered the strange white leather eggs/bollocks under the ground, with their jellied layer under their nubuck/chamois skin and had not known what they were. They were caterpillar-like, so far removed from what they would become, though not promising beauty, only a childhood lesson. When the fungal phalluses had poked tumescent, impudent, yet foam-like from the peat the girls had not known to laugh or be shocked by what they saw. They were simply filled with a desire to collect the stinkhorns by the bucketful, as if they were mating frogs. Only they were not mating, merely flashing, “fancy a feeble, fungal fuck? Give it a rub darlin’, gi’e us a blow job, what, never seen a knob before?” Perhaps if they had been sprouting now, she could have kicked them and sent them flying, imagining them similitudes of the members of certain members, as it were. But they weren’t so WINSTON CHURCHILL’S GRANDSON, the Vampire, the Half Frog, the Dimwit, the Father of the House, Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth, the various former Prime Ministers and the others didn’t get to feel the terrible sharp pain of sudden long distant castration, voodoo Bobbitt by mid brown size five brogue.

Virginia and the vicar walked on in silence for a bit, Virginia hoped the vicar was not thinking of which of his party pieces to come up with next. To put him off, Virginia blurted out. “I think Brexit has undone my reason.” The vicar took the bait. Virginia almost laughed out loud imagining the way he would work this confession into his sermon on Sunday. But she was rather surprised that his reply did not come in the form of religious or spiritual consolation but in the form of political vehemence. It turned out he was a Lib Dem. And he seemed to be putting his faith in the future in Jo Swinson, as PM, rather than in God.

Virginia tested his theological thinking against his political thinking, by quoting Article 37: ‘The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and her other Dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this Realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction.’

Tellingly the vicar did not reply. So, Virginia decided to sing Gibbons, “This Is The Record of John” which was the oldest song that she could remember. It would not take them back as far as Cranmer and the original Book of Common Prayer or 1571, but it might possibly have been known to the poet as well as the vicar. Virginia could not be sure if both men joined in. But whichever one sang it he remembered it better than Virginia who petered out after the first few lines. As they got nearer Kineburn, through the woods, both bodies, Virginia’s and the vicar’s, tramped on, confidently, over the ground they had both seemed to know for so many centuries, in the dark.

As they neared the car park Virginia fell back, behind a holly tree. She wanted to disappear. She did not want the vicar to see the XK8, in the car park. It didn’t fit in with the crazy woman act she had put on. The vicar did not seem to notice she’d gone at first. Virginia kept still, hardly daring to breathe as he realised that she was no longer there and turned his flashlight back into the woods. But he didn’t persist in looking for long. It seemed he was as used to none existent, mad women seeming to appear to him in reality, in that place, as Virginia and her mother had been and as Virginia was used to him appearing to her, in his former guise, further down the valley, in strange dreams. Were either of them real, she wondered, or each just a figment of the other’s imagination? Naaah! thought Virginia, even she was not so potty as to be able to imagine a man who seriously believed Jo Swinson would be the next Prime Minister.

Virginia waited in the cold damp air for another half an hour, before creeping back to the car. Once inside she waited another half an hour before daring to start up the engine. She would have to keep it running a good while, to prevent the engine flooding, or else move off and park up somewhere else for the night. She decided on the latter course of action. And decided to stop on the side of the steep road, near the Packhorse Bridge.

Having parked up in that spot she reclined her seat to its fullest extent and commanded Freddy to sit on her feet. But Freddy did not appear. She found her sheepskin fighter pilot’s hat on the back seat and pulled the travelling rug which she had brought with her, over her coat.