The Changeover Read online

  "Sooner than you think if you don't hold on," he shouted back. "Don't be silly, Chant."

  The private road was a horseshoe of particularly stylish houses.

  Rich people's houses, Laura thought, envying them gardens and garages. Sorry slowed the bike and put one foot on the ground holding them steady for a moment or two.

  "Up that right-of-way," he said. "Very select! Look — the road ends right outside that little park. Let's spy out the land a bit. If we get up there we should be able to look down into all the gardens at the back with my field-glasses."

  "You and your birdwatching," Laura said. "It's just an excuse. I expect you use them mostly to watch girls sunbathing on their private lawns."

  "Don't think I haven't tried," Sorry said.

  Exploring together, they found they could look down into Carmody Braque's backyard, had seen him hanging out immaculate underwear and shirts on his washing line, and now saw him emerging once more to potter in his garden.

  "By the pricking of my thumbs..." Sorry said. "It is him, isn't it? You're looking doubtful."

  "It is him," Laura replied, "but he's changed so much."

  "He's all but sucked your brother dry," Sorry said, his half smile becoming more of a snarl. He laughed to himself. "It's people like him who give witchcraft a bad name."

  The glasses brought Carmody Braque within inches of Laura. His face had swelled into something much fuller, much more pouchy than it had been on Thursday last. His skin shone, pink and clear. His blotches had cleared away and his cheeks had even become rosy. Laura thought he looked an improbable cross between Dracula and Mr Pickwick. She could even see that his round dome was covered with a fine fluff of new hair, like the down on a rabbit only a few days old, little more than a mist invading a bare plateau. It was the same colour as Jacko's and for some reason this upset her almost more than anything else. Mr Braque suddenly stopped his ill-judged pruning operations and looked around.

  "Right!" said Sorry. "Stop! He'll feel us watching him in another moment. Let's go."

  It was a glittering morning, though cold for summer, for there had been a change of weather inland; snow had fallen on the distant mountains and was cooling the wind that came across the range and over the plain. Sorry in his heavy jacket, Laura in her old parka, put on their helmets once more, even though they had such a short way to go. Laura shivered a little as they went into the right-of-way.

  "We'll tempt him with variety," Sorry said, "with the prospect of a willing sacrifice. Can you manage to look alluring and yet act as if you were constantly shrinking away from the thought of him."

  "Shall I try to look slinky?" Laura asked.

  "You? That's a laugh," Sorry replied. "No need to make a fool of yourself. You're too young for 'slinky'. Be young! Young and knobbly — you know, like a foal! But you're a bit of a mixture, for all that, and that's what just might get him. Winter thought it might, and she's clever."

  "What do you mean— I'm a mixture?" Laura asked coming to a standstill.

  Sorry looked back at her over his shoulder.

  "You know!" he said. "At first you look skinny, but you're quite voluptuous in your way. If anyone thinks about you, that is!"

  "Voluptuous!" Laura exclaimed.

  "Shhh! I'll tell you what it means later," Sorry said. "Don't try to put things off by starting an argument."

  "I know what it means," Laura declared, following him again.

  "Are you frightened?" Sorry asked, but not as if he cared.

  "Yes, I am!" Laura admitted. "Suppose it doesn't work?"

  Sorry turned on her yet again. "Make it work!" he hissed in a low, urgent voice. Before her eyes his expression heightened, and he shone once more with the faint bloom of awe and, maybe, fear. "You're just as scary as he is. Last night you were. Look, something shifted in you, do you know that? I'll never forget it. I felt your head shift, the cranial bones— I was holding you, and you remade yourself."

  "But not on my own," Laura said, taken aback by his vehemence.

  "People have died trying," Sorry said. "That's in our records. If Winter had been wrong ... but she's not often wrong. Wrong about me perhaps, but not about you. She'll be right about this as well. She says you'll win."

  "I'll think of Jacko," Laura said, and dipped into memory, where Jacko's picture had been recorded in minute detail.

  "Have you got the mark?" Sorry asked.

  "It's in my pocket," Laura said, pushing her hands into her pockets as she spoke.

  "Hold it ready then," he said. "You'll only have the one chance."

  A climbing rose grew over an arched, rustic gate.

  "There's a bell," Laura said, detecting it and holding its clapper, while Sorry opened the gate. There was a name over the gate. " 'Jolidays'," Laura read. "Who does he think he's fooling?"

  "Most people, probably," Sorry replied. "He's got to seem like a real person."

  Carmody Braque, among his roses, turned a smiling face to meet them, but he was repelling them, not welcoming them.

  "Church of England!" he cried as if we were giving a warning and then his new face changed as he recognized Laura. He looked from her to Sorry and then back again.

  "My dear!" he cried. "I thought you were Jehovah's Witnesses! Do forgive me!"

  "Yes!" said Laura in a low voice. "No— I'm sorry to bother you, Mr Braque."

  "I'm sure you are!" he cried cordially. "I can't mistake profound sincerity. And just what do you hope to achieve, intruding on me at this early hour with your young follower?" His round eyes squinted thoughtfully at Sorry.

  "Oh..." he cried, flinging up his hand and snipping the air with the secateurs in a peculiar, exultant gesture. "Yes, I see. On the right track, dear, but alas too late. And anyway, there's not a witch, young or old, can undo what I'm doing— what I have almost done in fact. But I'm grateful to you for bringing him. I'm intrigued to see a young male witch... it's years since I saw one and the last one, poor fellow, was not very young and had a harelip. Young man... I suppose I do call you young man ..."

  "I'm a genetic freak, I suppose, like a male tortoise- shell cat," Sorry said amiably, "but I'm not here to try and compel you, Mr Braque. I know my limits."

  "And how few people do!" exclaimed Carmody Braque, inclining his head with its nap of fine, silky down.

  "I'm a sort of procurer really — a go-between," Sorry said. "The girl has a proposition she wants to put to you, and I'm here to watch over her and maybe negotiate on her behalf."

  "Really!" said Carmody Braque. "I am, of course, quite intrigued. Reeeeaally!" he said, turning his round gaze on Laura. "Speak on, my little spring bud."

  Roses around the gate, 'Jolidays', and all the stench of his true nature suddenly struck her like a blow, for, though the patches of his encroaching corruption had disappeared, they had only been the signs of an inner decay which a witch, or even a sensitive, could detect without hesitation. Laura thought she was going to be sick around the foot of the salmon-coloured standard rose to her left. But instead she looked up into his eyes and saw there, not the curious wolf, not the tiger that Sorry sometimes suggested, but something so insatiable that her recognition of it caused the sunlight to falter and the roses, the neat lawn and the expensive house to undergo a transformation. For a moment they became nothing more than a painted screen behind which a dreadful machinery was at work. Not only that, she recognized that this same machine operated at large in the world in mixed forms, many of them partial and largely impotent, sometimes tragically married to opposite qualities. On this occasion it was her lot to see it almost pure in the round, bird eyes, in the angle of his head, mirroring the more innocent, but none the less terrible, attitude of a hawk about to tear a live mouse in two, and all she had to combat it was an old ritual of possession which her hard-won new nature enabled her to use. But she knew she must not even think of that, and concentrated urgently on Jacko instead.

  "Please, Mr Braque," she said humbly, "let my little brother go. Take someone els
e this time."

  "Oh my dear ..." said Mr Braque. "I'm so sorry. I would if I could, but your charming young friend here will tell you I am an ancient spirit. I've lived off many, many people now and I have to admit the old tides are wearing a little thin. I can't take just anyone anymore. Besides, I have become something of a gourmet, you might say, and why not, since I can afford it. I look— I have to look — for just the right one, and your little brother was it this time. I stalked him for weeks. I knew your movements so well and to tell you the truth I was getting very near my limit when I pounced. Very near."

  He looked at Laura, shaking his head sadly. He longed to be known, and, having the chance at last, he boasted with the most nostalgic pleasure. "And then I've fed on so many by now I'm very very choosy. Girls like you, with rather more vitality perhaps, or sleeker, or those younger still — eight is an attractive age I think, ten is almost too old ... But one should never make hard and fast rules. I enjoy an innocent, sucking baby, withering at its mother's breast. Dear me, no one knows what is wrong. How little medicine knows in spite of all its wonderful advances! Or I seize the mothers themselves, sometimes, just when they're happiest. Or those nice old men who never seem to run out of interest in life, retired and looking forward to golf or gardening, or women whose children have grown up and who open like flowers to the world's chances, of which I am one!" exclaimed Mr Braque sniggering. "I want people who look forward without caution, who embrace the world ..." He hugged himself. "Oh, the delectable banquet of possibility all you people offer me!" Mr Braque tossed his hands into the air where his fingers fluttered like horrid butterflies. His conceit was childish, but somehow that seemed to make it more evil, not less.

  "The girl's got a proposition," Sorry said abruptly, sitting down on a white, cast-iron chair. Dimly Laura knew something had upset him in a personal way. She could not ask and he could not tell.

  "Speak on," said Mr Braque with odious courtesy.

  "I thought," Laura said, "I thought..." She didn't have to act or pretend. She was shaking with fear and began to sweat a little so that the sunglasses started to slide down her nose. She jammed them back on desperately with the palm of her hand. "I thought — if you — that is ..."

  "Do stop snivelling, dear," said Carmody Braque, beginning to pick his teeth with the nail of his left-hand little finger. "I've enjoyed talking to you. Your friend there will tell you it's rare to come across anyone who understands. But do bear in mind, won't you, that all this talk is making me hungry, my dear."

  Laura could tell, however, that Carmody Braque was enjoying himself, as a man with secret treasure might enjoy displaying it and boasting about it to someone who could never tell. In this confident and expansive mood he might put out his hand to her— he might invite her in. She hung back in hope and fear waiting, and, as if he guessed her thoughts, he added with scarcely a pause, "It's been such a treat to be so completely myself for a little that I'll thank you for the privilege by letting you choose."

  "Choose?" Laura asked, apprehension immediately fizzing in her blood.

  "Whether or not I end your brother now or spin him out over the next two or three days. While there's life there's hope (or so they say, though I wouldn't count on it) and some claim that even the last rattling moment, regardless of pain, enables us to conclude ourselves with spiritual grace. But I think he'll suffer the most terrible fear in his coma, shut away in the dark with only me for company. So I'll let you choose for him ... a sort of trade discount."

  "I thought you might like to take me instead," Laura babbled. "You could let Jacko go and take me."

  Mr Braque looked astonished and shook his head.

  "Oh, no! You just don't have the same quality of energy at all, and, though the element of self-sacrifice is interesting, curiously enough it's not particularly rare in my area of speciality." But for all that he continued to look thoughtfully at her, his round eyes widening, his tongue caressing his teeth.

  "I'd be willing, you see," Laura whispered. "And I'd know about you. I'd recognize you all the time."

  "I thought it might be interesting for you to have someone horrified by you, but prepared to submit," said Sorry. "It's its own form of speciality, isn't it?"

  Carmody Braque laughed. "What a very discerning young man you are," he said. "But my poor young people... how could you dare to put such an idea into my head? I could have both — the little brother and the big sister. Not that I necessarily will! As I told you, I'm forced to be very choosy by now.

  "Not everything works any more ... Still, show yourself, dear! You can't make an offer such as that and remain muffled up like a comic-book spy. After all, you constitute a luxury. So take off that jacket and those glasses and remind me just what you have to offer."

  "If you promise to let Jacko go!" Laura said obstinately.

  Carmody Braque ignored her words, simply grinning and repeating, "Show yourself!" But Laura did not move.

  "Only for Jacko," she repeated, pushing her hands into her pockets and shrugging her shoulders as if she were drawing herself in, making herself a smaller target for his darting gaze to strike.

  "You are in no position to bargain," said Carmody Braque, looking watchfully at Sorry. "Stay your distance, you witch, don't you dare move! Besides, you are saturating her with your power. I can't recognize her at all. She might just as well be your sister." To Laura he said, as if speaking to a stupid child, "I must know. How promising is your life to you? Are you worthwhile? Do you anticipate love for instance, or have you ... ?" He glanced quickly at Sorry and then back again with dreadful eagerness. Laura looked at him narrowly through the twin shadows of her sun glasses. He clicked his tongue impatiently.

  "Come here!" he said, and put out his hand to bring her over the space that separated them, to know her and to take her or discard her at will. Laura heard Sorry hiss slightly with an unspoken command, but she was already moving. Her hand took on a swift life of its own, leaping from her pocket, through the air. Laura stamped her mark on Carmody Braque's outstretched palm as firmly and delicately as if she were giving him a flower.

  "You've invited me in," she said. He looked down incredulously and saw her face smiling up at him from the surface of his own skin.

  Sorry, moving as quickly as his black cat, came up behind Laura, reached over her shoulder and took her sunglasses off.

  "Tell him!" he commanded urgently, while Carmody Braque looked back up at her, his expansive confidence draining away from him.

  "What have you done?" he cried. Laura heard, in his changed voice, the first groan of mortality. Their eyes met. She knew at once that a gate had opened for her. He could not be private from her any more. Nor could his fingers, closing spasmodically over the picture in his palm, prevent her following the chemical electricity of this nervous reaction and exploding in his head, where she was immediately powerful. Like a model man he was under her remote control and no matter where he was in the city she could either consume or nourish him. It was so easy it was hard to believe such an ability had not always been natural to her. All the same, her skin crawled and her stomach twisted with horror. She had no mercy to offer. Sorry merely laughed.

  "What is it?" asked Carmody Braque again, staring at his hand with the expression of someone seeing, in his own flesh, the symptoms of a catastrophic malaise. "What is this charade?"

  "You know!" Laura said very softly. "It's my mark." She had not breath or strength to do more than whisper ominously, "My mark."

  "But you're not... you weren't..." His affectation was eaten away by fear. "I couldn't be wrong."

  "We worked a changeover," Sorry said, and wrote his initials on to the back of Laura's neck with his forefinger. It was as if he had lost interest in anything other than her, while, for Laura, the world suddenly altered, growing lighter and more luminous. An energy as strong and sweet as honey flowed into her, and Carmody Braque fell on his knees, just as she had once done by Jacko's bed, watching the reflection of this very man's smile play wi
ckedly over her brother's face.

  Now with shock and triumph she discerned her own ghost, looking back at her out of her victim's desperate eyes.

  "Please ..." he cried, "my dear, young lady . .. I'm pleading with you! Is that what you want? I'll let the little brother go, of course. I'll find someone else. I didn't understand. Honour among thieves ..." He whined and wriggled closer to her, as if he might try to touch her. "I've never made this mistake before. There must be a way we can find common ground." Words poured out of him. He leaked desperation. "Now, please ..."

  "No!" said Laura and walked away, while Carmody Braque scuttled after her, still on his knees, a frantic, stunted goblin. His hands were stretched out, clutching. For a moment he looked more like a desperate crab than any sort of man.

  "Please, please talk," he cried. "Let's discuss this like reasonable people. We have to stick together, we funny ones. Is there something else you want? Money? Perhaps you'd like to take your little brother — the boyfriend, too— on a holiday. The Gold Coast! Or even the Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece where burning Sappho loved and sang, as Shelley says."

  "That's not a bad idea, Chant," Sorry said. Laura turned on him angrily, and he laughed at her indignation. "Mind you, I don't think it was Shelley who said that. I don't remember who it was but..."

  "It doesn't matter who it was, we're not going," Laura declared. She marched around the house, Sorry beside her, Carmody Braque following, making sounds of threat and supplication. "Please ..." was the only audible word.

  "Jolidays!" snapped Laura over her shoulder, pushing the gate open so fiercely that the bell rang cheerfully, regardless of the anguish of its owner. Once in the right-of-way, Laura began to run, and Sorry followed her back to the Vespa. Without looking, she knew Carmody Braque had stopped at the gate and would follow no further.

  "Right on, Chant!" Sorry said. "Are your hands shaking? Would you like me to put your helmet on for you? All set? Let's blast off for Planet Earth. Does it exist? I don't think so, but we can't afford to ignore these myths, can we? Don't worry, Chant! It's all over for him. You did everything right."