The Witch of Exmoor Read Free

Nathan. ‘And poker, and backgammon. But I don’t get much time for them these days. Rosie doesn’t like it, do you, Rosie?’
    Husband and wife smile at one another, in not quite convincing collusion. Nathan takes his hand away from Rosemary’s, and fishes in his pocket for a crumpled packet of cigarettes.
    â€˜Do you mind, Patsy?’ he asks. ‘I’ll go in to the garden if you like.’
    Patsy shakes her head, and reaches behind to the dresser for a saucer to serve as an ashtray.
    â€˜Smoking is gambling,’ says Emily, staring coolly at her uncle. ‘It’s just a question of luck.’
    â€˜A question of luck as to when or whether I develop the fatal cough? Yes, I suppose you’re right.’
    â€˜In the just society,’ asks Emily, turning back to David, ‘would there be any smoking areas? Or would it be altogether forbidden? Would there be sexual reproduction? Would there be illness and death?’
    â€˜Smoking areas could be agreed. Or not. But the other things would have to carry on as now, I’m afraid. Otherwise you would end up with a society without anything recognizable as human beings at all.’
    â€˜How nice,’ says Emily, still staring hard at David.
    â€˜That might be the only way,’ says Simon. ‘You could devise this perfectly just system, but then human beings would come along and mess it all up. Much better to redesign the human beings.’
    â€˜What a gloomy couple you are,’ says David, smiling his charming televisual smile.
    â€˜I’m
not gloomy,’ says Emily. ‘Simon may be, but I’m not. I’m just being radical. I mean you might as well go back to the original plan. If you’re going to have an original position, it might as well be
really
original.’
    David is not sure whether she is being quite clever or very stupid. The evening grows late: surely it is time these teenagers went to bed? His own son had politely vanished hours ago, like the good boy he is.
    â€˜A society without human beings’, says Daniel gravely,
‘is
a radical concept.’ Patsy permits herself to snigger.
    â€˜A society without human beings’, says Gogo, breaking her silence, ‘is exactly what
she
seems to have designed for herself.’
    Nathan and David and Patsy quickly exchange guilty glances: so the game of Unhappy Families is back upon the table. David has done his best to distract, but he has failed. The Palmers are relentless. They could bring any topic home. They could lasso conversations about gardening, or the cinema, or the Hubble telescope, or the sugar industry, or Guyanese politics, or the slave-trade, and bring them home to graze about their mother.
    â€˜I mean, for God’s sake,’ says Gogo. A long pause follows. She has the floor. ‘The Witch of Exmoor,’ she says, echoing a phrase that Rosemary has tried out on her over their picnic lunch on the lawn.
    â€˜It just isn’t habitable,’ continues Rosemary. ‘She can’t go on living there. At her age. It’s impossible. We all thought the Mausoleum was bad enough. This is a thousand times worse. At least the Mausoleum was in reach of public transport. Well, almost. I think Daniel ought to go and have a look. Show a bit of masculine authority.’
    Daniel smiles his thin, dry, bleached smile. His spare face is briefly irradiated by a sad, mocking, uncertain light. His sisters mocked him much.
    â€˜Describe it again, Rosie,’ he says. He enjoys her recital. He might as well take pleasure from it.
    â€˜
Well'
says Rosemary. ‘To begin with, it’s vast. And it’s hideous. And it’s uninhabitable. And what electricity there is keeps going off. And it’s about to fall into the sea.’
    â€˜It’s literally on the
edge
of the sea?’
    â€˜On the very edge. Perched. And the drive–well, you can’t really call it a drive. It’s hardly even a