“You’ll be the death of your mother, son,” said my father. “It’s wise that I am to keep her so well insured.”
“Daddy,” said I. “You know a lot about most things, don’t you?”
“More than a lot,” my daddy said, stuffing his face with his sprouts. “But you’re right that it’s most things I know.”
“We’re doing a project about sacred herbs.” I toyed with my dinner and diddled at spuds with my fork. “I have to collect a number of different ones, and I was wondering if you might know where they might be found.”
“Herbs?” said my father, thoughtfully. “There’s parsley and sage, Rosemary Clooney and Time magazine.”
“These are a tad more exotic”
“Rosemary Clooney is exotic, or am I thinking of Carmen Miranda?”
My mother ceased with her snivelling. “What sort of herbs do you need?” she asked.
“Mandragora,” said I. “And Bilewort and Gashflower.”
“Cripes,” said my father. “If it isn’t toilet talk, it’s sexual deviation.”
“They’re herbs,” I said. “Surely you’ve heard of them?”
“Oh yes,” said my father. “Of course I have, yes.”
My mother, always polite, smiled thinly at my father. “Your father has a lot on his mind,” she said. “What with his bestest friend dying so tragically and everything. If you want to know about herbs, Gary, then go and see Mother Demdike in Moby Dick Terrace.”
“I’ve heard folk say that Mother Demdike is a witch,” I said.
“Wise woman,” said my mother.
“Surely that’s a euphemism,” said I.
“No, carrot,” said my father; “no, motorbike. Am I close?”
“Sorry?” said I.
“Oh, excuse me,” said my father. “I thought it was one of those word-association tests.”
“One of those what?”
“I did these tests,” said my father. “A psychologist chap came down to our GPO works and wanted volunteers to do these tests. You got paid five pounds if you took part, so I took part.”
“Your father will do almost anything for science and a fiver,” said my mother.
“Yes,” said my father. “So this psychologist showed me this series of inkblots and he said, ‘Tell me what each one looks like.’ He showed me the first one and I said it looked like two people having sex. Then he showed me another and I said it looked like a man having sex with a donkey. And then he showed me another one and I said that it looked like a lady having sex with a tractor. And so on and so forth. And do you know what the psychologist said?”
I shook my head.
“He said that I was obsessed with sex.”
I shook my head again.
“And do you know what I said to him?”
I shook my head once again.
“I said, ‘Me obsessed with sex? You’re the one who’s got all the filthy pictures!’”
The sun went behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance.
“I have to go now,” I said. “I’ll call in on Mother Demdike. If I’m not home by midnight, direct the policemen to her hut and tell them to look in her cauldron for body parts.”
“Won’t you stay for pudding?” asked my mother. “It’s sprouts and custard.”
I declined politely and once more took my leave.
I had an hour to waste before I met up with Dave, so I decided not to waste it at all and instead wandered over to Moby Dick Terrace and the hut of Mother Demdike.
Now, it has to be said that Mother Demdike had something of a reputation in our neighbourhood. She lived all alone in a little hut at the end of the terrace. She was said to eke out a living by casting horoscopes and selling gloves that she knitted from spaniel hair. She smelled dreadful and looked appalling. She was really ugly.
Now, I’ve never seen the point of ugly people. I suppose I was born with a heightened sense of aesthetics. I enjoy beauty and abhor ugliness. Mother Demdike was undoubtedly ugly; in fact, she was probably the rankest hag that had ever troubled daylight. It pained me greatly to gaze upon her, but the seeker after truth must endure hardships and, if I was to reanimate Mr Penrose, I required the necessary herbs. So if Mother Demdike could furnish me with those herbs, having to look at her ugly gob for half an hour was a small enough price to pay.
I had never actually spoken to Mother Demdike. I’d seen her out and about. A tiny ragged creature, all in dirty black, befouling the streets with her ugliness, trailing a ferret on a string. She cursed all and sundry, puffed on a short clay pipe and spat copiously into the kerb. Children feared her and adults crossed the street, and also themselves, at her approach. People, it seemed, really feared this old wretch. She could put the evil eye on you, they said. She could turn milk sour and wither your willy with a single glance. I have no idea who actually ever went round to her place to have their horoscopes cast or to purchase a pair of her spaniel-hair gloves.
For myself I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. As far as I was concerned, Mother Demdike was just an ugly old woman who fancied herself as a bit of a character. A studied eccentric. I mean, a ferret on a string? Come on!
Around her hut was a low black Neuburg fence, of a type that you just don’t see any more. The gateposts were of the Hirsig design, possibly the very last pair of such gateposts in the district or indeed anywhere else outside the Victoria and Albert Museum. Although they were common enough in their day. Which was a day when Hansom cabs rattled cobblestones and Jack the Ripper had it down upon “hooers”. The gate that hung between these posts was a Regardie, with a Mudd cantilever catch and a Miramar double coil spring. The path that led to the hut was of Cefalu stone slabs pointed with a three-to-one cement and silver-sand mix. These details may appear irrelevant. And perhaps they are.
The hut was a dank little, dark little, horrid little hovel, with sulphurous smoke curling up from a single chimney. Bottle-glass windows showed the wan light of a meagre fire. I hesitated for just a moment before knocking with the goat’s-head knocker. Not for fear or for any such whimsy, but to rebutton my fly, which had come undone.
Knock, knock, knock, went I with the knocker.
“Enter,” called an old voice from within.
I pushed upon the door and entered. Sniffed the air and marvelled at the pong.
“Gary Cheese,” said Mother Demdike.
“Mother Demdike,” I replied. “Good evening.”
The hag sat at her fireside. The hut boasted a single room, which served her as everything it should and could. There was an iron fireplace. A rocking chair in which the crone sat. A lot of herby-looking things dangled down from all over the low ceiling. A ragged rag rug sprawled upon the packed-earth floor and a great deal of magical paraphernalia lay all around and about.
I cast my eye around and about. I viewed the paraphernalia. It all fitted so well. If you were going to adopt the persona of a witch woman you had to do the job properly. You’d need the scrimble stone and the alhambric and the mandragles and the postuleniums and also the fractible buckets.
Mother Demdike had the lot. She also had a great many ancient-looking tomes, several of which appeared to have the stamp of the Memorial Library’s Restricted Section upon their spines. I raised my eyebrows at this. This dishonest woman was helping herself to my reading material.
“Come closer, my dear,” said Mother Demdike.
“If I come any closer,” I said, “I’ll be behind you. Which, considering your pong, is no place I wish to be.”
“You’re a rather rude little boy. Do you know what I do with rude little boys?”
“Cook them up in your cauldron?” I asked, stifling a yawn.
“Cook ’em up for my dinner.” And the hag cackled. Cak-cak-cak-cak-cackle, she went.
“That’s a horrid cough you have there,” I observed. “You should take some linctus.”
“Come and sit beside me.” The crone extended a wrinkled claw and beckoned to me with it.
“Do you mind if I just stand here with the door open?” I asked. “I mean, I understand about the ambience and atmosphere and everything and I respect your right to behave like an old weirdo, but, well, you know.”