The Republic of Heaven

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.'

Right, here's the second story. It's in spoiler tags because Here we go -

The Nursery


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

Holland-Dozier-Holland

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.’