The Witch of Exmoor Read Free Page A

track. It’s more or less impassable. Deep ruts. Great pot-holes. Stuff growing out of the hedges. It was bad enough getting down it in the spring. God knows what it’s like in winter. And it’s four hours from London even if you put your foot down all the way along the motorway. And then all those miles over the moor. There’s a sign, written on a piece of cardboard. I stopped to read it. It said BEWARE OF VIPERS BREEDING. ’
    It is the first time they have heard this detail: they respond with suitable admiration.
    â€˜Did it mean it literally? Vipers, literally vipers?’
    â€˜I should think so! It looked real snake country to me. You could feel them round about. You know, roots and bracken. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing there. She’s got no connection with that part of the country at all. If she wants to go native why doesn’t she go back to Lincolnshire where she says she came from? Or Sweden, come to that?’
    â€˜She always said she wanted to live in the country,’ says Daniel.
    â€˜Yes, but why choose Exmoor? It can’t mean anything to her.’
    â€˜Hampshire means nothing to me,’ says Daniel. ‘But I happen to like it here. I don’t see why she shouldn’t live on Exmoor if she wants.’
    â€˜In a derelict hotel?’
    â€˜I thought you said it was a folly.’
    â€˜It’s hard to know what it is. It’s enormous. She only lives in a bit of it.’
    â€˜And it’s a four-hour drive?’
    â€˜At least. It was just over 200 miles on the clock, but the last 60 are a nightmare. And I can tell you it’s not very nice to drive for four hours and then have the door more or less slammed in your face.’
    Daniel and Gogo like this bit best.
    â€˜So she didn’t want you to come in?’
    â€˜Not really. She kept me out there in this terrible overgrown courtyard. Netties everywhere. And it was pissing with rain. She had her back to the door as though she was guarding something. I had to say I was dying for a pee before she’d let me in. And then she said, why didn’t you stop a bit earlier and pee in the hedge?’
    They all laugh at this sally, and not for the first time.
    â€˜What was the lavatory like?’ inquires Emily, freshly.
    â€˜Well, it was clean. But sort of basic. No lavatory
seat,
for example. Nothing extra. Except spiders. Those long leggy ones. Lots of them-’
    â€˜Her familiars,’ says Gogo.
    â€˜No pot plants, no toilet rolls, no little cane tables, no volumes of verse?’
    â€˜There was a toilet roll, but God it was damp. The damp there is a killer.’
    â€˜And she gave you a slice of corned beef,’ prompts Gogo.
    â€˜Yes, a slice of corned beef. And a piece of soggy Ryvita. It tasted a thousand years old. There’s a cold like mildew down there. It bites. It’s full of microbes. Full of fungus spores. It fills the lungs. I can’t describe how horribly cold it was. And this was mid-May.’
    â€˜She wasn’t expecting you,’ ventures Patsy in extenuation.
    â€˜How could she be expecting anyone if she won’t have a telephone?’ returns Rosemary.
    â€˜Perhaps she really doesn’t want to see us,’ says Daniel. (This is the kind of thing he says.)
    â€˜Well,’ says Rosemary, with gravitas, ‘that would seem to be the message. She says she doesn’t want to see anyone. She says she’s too busy. I said busy doing what, and she said she was busy being a recluse. She said it was a full-time job.’
    They all laugh, and there is a respect in their laughter, for Frieda has turned the tables on them this time. They are surrounded by friends who complain at length of the burden of visiting their aged relatives, their aunts with Alzheimer’s, their fathers grumpy with cancer or heart conditions or gout, their mothers whining of the treacheries of the past: none of them has a mother