The Changeover Read online

  "Jacko!" she whispered. "It's me, Jacko! It's Lolly!" But his eyes and lips remained sternly shut. She took his hand, and nearly dropped it, for it was cold with a still, deep cold, as if no blood or any other function of life moved in it. She held it and kissed the palm hoping he might respond to this small affection, but he remained inert and silent.

  Laura went back into the big room and looked out of the window, though there was no chance that Kate would be coming back yet. A light rain had begun to fall. Outside, the world had matched itself up with her own grey, weeping mood. Outside there were two splashes of colour — the red telephone box at the corner of the picture, framed by the window, and the blue Vespa parked beside it. Coming up the path was a moon-walker in a white motorcycle helmet. Laura waited, like someone in a haunted house, for the knock to fall on the door. After a moment it came. Laura opened the door. Sorry stood with his helmet, like a spare head, under his arm.

  "Good morning, Chant," he said in rapid but pacific tones. "I've come to make peace." Under his jacket he wore a high-necked black jersey which made his pale hair look a definite yellow. He was quite brown with summer and his light-coloured eyes were startling against his dark skin, but more ordinary this morning — less highly charged and threatening.

  "What do you want?" she asked, thinking she sounded childish, rather than cool and slightly cutting as she would have liked to be. However, he seemed to be looking a little beyond her into their house, almost as if he were testing it for clues to other presences.

  "Isn't your mother at home?" he said. "You have got a mother, haven't you? You don't run this place alone."

  "She's out!" said Laura shortly.

  "Good enough! I'll be normal then, not charming," said Sorry. "I've a good line for charming mothers, but I'd rather not. Come on, Chant! Take a risk! Invite me in!"

  Laura stood aside to let him in but he still hesitated on the doormat.

  "Ask me in!" he told her, smiling. "I have to be asked, but then— after that — I'm hard to get rid of."

  "Oh, all right! Come on in!" said Laura rather impatiently and he stepped cautiously through the door.

  "We call on each other at odd hours, don't we, but mine's a more respectable hour for a visit than yours. Do you always wear pajamas like that?"

  Laura remembered how she had stared at him in his black robe the night before, and how she had looked critically around his room while the cat purred on his knee. Her own pajamas were scarcely more respectable than Jacko's, but at least they had all their buttons.

  "It isn't my best pair," she said trying to joke a little. "I keep the black satin ones for special occasions."

  "This is a special occasion," Sorry said, opening his eyes in apparent astonishment, "but don't rush off to change or anything. Tell me again, what's this about the little brother?"

  "He's in here," Laura said. "But a doctor has been. He's going to hospital. It won't do any good though. Only I know what happened and Mum won't believe me. She can't. No one can."

  "I promise I can believe six impossible things before breakfast," Sorry said. "That's why I gave breakfast a miss this morning before coming to test your hypothesis. Do you do science down in the fourth form? You didn't tell me last night."

  "It's compulsory," Laura said. "I'm not too sure about a hypothesis if that's what you're asking, but I know Through the Looking-Glass."

  "A hypothesis is a suggestion of what might or might not be true," Sorry explained. "You can disprove it, but you might never completely prove it. I think that's how it goes — more proof the world's lopsided. Let's see the boy before your mother comes home and tears a strip off you for entertaining older seventh form men in your pajamas."

  "You really do think you're terrific, don't you?" Laura said with a faint grin.

  "Someone has to," Sorry replied, following her into Jacko's room. "Those harridans at home have been... Heavens above, Chant!" he suddenly exclaimed. "What's that smell?" Laura could almost have hugged him because he could smell the peppermint too, but she held her breath and waited while he looked at Jacko.

  "Well, well!" he said after a moment. "You clever girl! You were right and I was wrong." Laura released a gushing sigh of relief. Sorry sat down on a chair by Jacko's bed — a chair draped in Kate's underwear.

  "Go on! Tell me all!" he said, as he lifted first one of Jacko's eyelids and then the other, not so much to look at his eyes as to notice the way they closed. Laura told her story as tersely as she could.

  "Demon! Spirit! Incubus!" said Sorry. "It sounds to me as if whatever faculty you have that makes you — you know — able to guess at some of the extreme people drifting around in the world — it sounds as if that faculty was stuck for the right word. Does this Carmody Braque have any — did he have a word branded on his forehead, say, or any mark that might have been a word crossed out?"

  "No, nothing like that," Laura said definitely. "He was quite bald — his hair was thin and clipped very short. I'd have certainly seen it." Sorry appeared to abandon a briefly-held hypothesis of his own. He stared at Jacko — picked up his hand and sighed, shaking his head.

  "Have you ever heard of the lemures?" he asked at last.

  "Monkeys?" Laura said.

  "Primates!" said Sorry absentmindedly. "No— not those. The lemures were the wicked spirits of the dead ... the lavae or lemures. I don't think your Carmody Braque is actually an incubus. I think he's a wicked spirit that has managed to win a body for itself once more and has probably gone on by absorbing the lives of others — their energy — to keep himself alive. You were almost right when you said he was a vampire, but it's not mere blood he's after. It's the essence of life itself." He looked at Jacko as if he were some sort of a rare flower whose stem had been bent by a storm. "The fact is ..." he said after a moment, and then grew silent. "You're a big, brave girl, Chant, aren't you ... the fact is I think your little brother has had it."

  "You mean you think he might be going to die?" Laura cried, hearing her voice high and hard in the dim room.

  "He's sealing up," Sorry said in his light, remote way. "Even if I had come last night there's nothing I can think of that I could have done about it." Laura began to feel very cold— as cold perhaps as Jacko lying in his blankets but not warmed by them.

  "You really think he's going to die?" she repeated.

  "He's sealing up." Sorry also repeated himself in a reasonable voice as if stating a fact she must accept. He looked quite lighthearted, interested in the problem but not affected by it. "Sealing will help for a while, I suppose. It's a form of hibernation — aestivation really ..."

  "I don't want a lecture," Laura said, staring at him incredulously, for he sounded like a teacher at school.

  "You really think he's going to die?"

  "You asked me that a moment ago. I'm sorry," Sorry said and shrugged. "I shouldn't think he'd stand out for very long against this sort of possession. Well, it's not so much a possession as a consumption."

  "Come into the tidy room," Laura said after a moment. "You could have a glass of symbolic sherry."

  "At nine-fifteen in the morning?" Sorry asked, "and on an empty stomach?" He followed her out and sat down opposite her at the table. Laura lifted her eyes to his and looked at him steadily, and his grey eyes went blank and then shifted away from hers, turning silver in the oblique light from the window.

  "You upset, Chant?" he said in a careful voice.

  "He's my brother, and I love him, and you say he's going to die," Laura said. "He was a terrific little boy and you talk about him dying as if you just didn't give a stuff about it!"

  "I used to have some brothers," Sorry said. "I don't know what I'd think if one of them was about to die, but I'm sure of this— none of them would worry about me. My feelings worked really well for years but I know they're not too good now. I suppose I did my own sealing off— a different sort from Jacko's— some time ago. But I'll do what I can for him, which is to ask Winter. She knows everything — Winter. So take a de
ep breath, Chant. You're no worse off and you might be better off... and at least you're not quite on your own with it any more."

  This was true. Laura did take a deep breath and realized as she did so that Sorry was not watching her face, but the rise and fall of the breath under her old pajama jacket. He sighed himself, met her eyes, and gave her a smile both deprecating and conciliatory.

  "You did invite me in," he pointed out, "even though you knew I was a mixed blessing."

  "I didn't invite you to watch me breathe," Laura pointed out.

  "You didn't make any conditions, either." Sorry looked away from her again. "An invitation means a lot to a witch. And the lemure could only put his mark on your brother's hand because it was held out to him. Sometimes these little rituals carry a whole lot of significance. Now you'll have to get him to take his mark off, and I think the only way to do that might be to put a mark of power on him and command him through that."

  "Could I do it?" Laura asked disbelievingly. Sorry shook his head.

  "I shouldn't think so," he said. "I think it would have to be a witch who did it— or someone similar. But the difficulty is he wouldn't let a witch get anywhere near him, let alone hold out his hand for any reason whatsoever. However, let's see what Winter comes up with."

  "Well, I'm going to get dressed," Laura said. "Why don't you look at some books?"

  "I'll make a cup of coffee if you like?" suggested Sorry. "Don't try and tell me where things are. I'll guess."

  "You'll guess wrong," Laura said. "Mum puts them in funny places."

  "But I have an instinct for coffee," Sorry said. "You'd swear it was witchcraft!"

  "It's only instant," Laura told him, like a true hostess.

  "I prefer instant," Sorry cried triumphantly. "I seem cosmopolitan now, but I'm suburban at heart."

  "I'm not even sure what cosmopolitan is," Laura replied. "Suppose you make the coffee and stop talking about yourself."

  "You're a bloody ruthless hostess," Sorry shouted after her, "You're supposed to make a guest feel relaxed." However, he sounded good-humoured.

  "Well, watch out for the kettle," Laura said. "Don't worry if it hisses. It's got a slow leak. Fill it quite full, and when it whistles it's boiling."

  She dressed rather more carefully than usual, borrowing a white shirt of her mother's to wear with blue jeans. The kettle screamed savagely and was silenced. As she was brushing her hair she heard Kate's voice and came in to find Kate, with Chris Holly at her elbow, staring with surprise at a stranger standing in the kitchen door offering her a cup of her own coffee. Sorry was friendly and polite and seemed completely at ease. He had found and set a tray and in the centre of it in one of the ex-peanut butter jars, was a bouquet of pink rose buds as perfect as if they had just come from a florist's window. Kate exclaimed over them, but Laura knew they were not natural flowers. They were the second outside proof she had had of Sorry's double nature.

  "I'll be spending most of the day at the hospital," Kate said wearily. "Chris, what can be wrong with him?"

  "Hospital's the place where they'll find out," said Chris.

  Laura looked at him suspiciously, wondering what he was doing there, but it seemed that he had offered to come round and bring Kate a particular book and, knowing she would be out in the afternoon, she had called in at his flat to explain this to him. Chris had immediately offered to drive her to the hospital in his own car which was larger and had a heater that worked so that Jacko might be more comfortable. Laura thought he looked rather bewildered to find himself there and thought, too, with prickles of dismay that Kate had really gone to him because he was important enough to her for her to be anxious about letting him down. With most people she would have remembered afterwards.

  "Laura, I don't know how long I'll be . . ." Kate began.

  "Mrs Chant, my mother suggested that Laura might like to come and stay with us for the day— and for the evening too, if necessary," Sorry said. Laura knew he was inventing on the spur of the moment. Kate hesitated.

  "That's very kind . .." she said in a doubtful voice.

  "We've plenty of room," Sorry went on, "nothing wonderful, but we'd love to have her." He had cunningly made his invitation difficult to refuse by suggesting humble hospitality.

  "Oh, look, I know it's an imposition," said Kate, "but the family next door— we usually work in with them— are away. I can't be sure when they'll be home. It would be a great weight off my mind if... are you sure your parents — that is, your mother — won't mind?"

  "Winter counts as a father, Lord knows!" Sorry answered. "They'd be angry if I didn't bring her back with me in these circumstances." He sounded grave and responsible, but then he said to Laura, "Pack your toothbrush and your black satin pajamas, Chant," in a noticeably different tone. Kate, however, did not notice, though Chris Holly did and gave first Sorry, and then Laura herself a quick, curious glance.

  Two 'phone calls later, Chris carried Jacko out to his large car and settled him down with Kate, and then with kisses and hugs exchanged between Kate and Laura, and to the sound of instructions about locking up, turning the electricity off, and promises to ring, they drove away to a private hospital which was expecting Jacko as a patient. It had a special rooming-in service, Kate said, so she could stay with Jacko for as long as she liked, all night if necessary. Chris and Kate and Jacko looked so like a family that Laura couldn't help feeling a desolate resentment that Chris should have gone and that she should have been left. Of course, she could not drive the car, but Kate's ready acceptance of his offers of help continued to disturb her.

  "Now you're in my power!" Sorry said pleasantly. "Think of that and tremble."

  "Big deal!" Laura replied. "I'm used to it from school."

  "Well, then," said Sorry, "I'll have to come up with something novel, won't I? I'll check through my romances when I get back. For the Love of Philippa might have some good ideas in it. Or Stolen Moments."

  "Why would you want to make me tremble?" Laura cried out in irritation. "What a male chauvinist sort of idea."

  "I am old-fashioned," Sorry agreed. "I didn't bring a helmet for you. I'll just crawl along but we'd better watch out for cops. Shall we take a risk and sneak a look at this antique shop?"

  Laura was glad to be diverted. Later, with a few possessions in a shopping bag, she rode on the Vespa, holding on to Sorry, but following in her mind, with her truest attention, the progress through the city to the unknown hospital of Jacko and Kate. Even without witchcraft, the world grew slightly unbelievable, as if part of her were a reading eye and most of her was a character moving through a story — a character, moreover, who had begun to suspect that she might not be entirely real, might be nothing but a puppet, or words on a printed page.

  7 The Carlisle Witches

  "Of course Sorensen was right to bring you," said the younger Mrs Carlisle. "It must have been very distressing for you, and for your poor mother. I do hope Sorensen behaved appropriately."

  "He was very polite, mostly," said Laura, "but very strange, too. He behaved as if something had gone wrong with a car, not a brother. But then he took me to the Gardendale Shopping Complex and we looked at the little shop. It was all shut up. Sorry said every chink was closed, that it was even sealed up along the bottom of the door. He said that I would have to make Mr Braque take the mark off my brother, but that he didn't know how I would do it because Braque was an old and careful demon."

  "Well, we'll have to think about that," said old Mrs Carlisle. "We are not without our powers, you know ... We are the daughters of the moon. But we'll talk it over later on."

  They were in a big, light room with a polished floor and woven rugs, the white walls so covered in pictures that they seemed to be full of windows into different worlds. One at her side showed the heart of a silver fire. Beside it was a scene in fresh, clear colours. Among little hills and trees and sparkling fountains, smiling monsters played cards or gathered flowers. In the background a great face, which was partly a bui
lding, watched the scene with melancholy detachment, and in the very front of the picture a man covered in short feathers turned an owl's face to stare out of the frame, but whether he was wearing a mask or whether he was some sort of man-bird Laura could not tell. It was one of many remarkable things in the room she would have liked to look at more closely, but the presence of her hostesses made her too shy to stare as much as she wanted to.

  "I hope Sorensen has been kind to you," his mother said. "We cannot depend upon him not to make mistakes, but I should explain to you that it is not entirely his fault. I am to blame. I sometimes make the same sort of mistake myself." She wore a plain, pink dress with a dull finish, like the outside of a rose petal, which looked remarkably beautiful close to her white hair and cool, blue eyes. It made Laura immediately homesick for Kate who could not have worn a dress of such a colour for five minutes without smudging the front of it.

  "It would be easier to explain to you if only you had known the farm in the old days," said old Mrs Carlisle. "It's probably a mistake to become too fond of land. But, you know, we loved our farm. Once the whole valley out there was ours, and it was like owning a whole world — a world with a forest, a river, a plain ... We made a dam of stones and we swam naked there. It sometimes makes me sad to think that I'll never be so close to water again— there are no private places left. There's always magic, of course, but in the past it was simple and direct." She sighed.

  "We could see the city if we climbed the hill a little way," Miryam said. "It was like, well, it was like the army of a neighbouring country amusing itself in its own way, always maneuvering on the horizon. My mother is right you know — it is probably wiser not to love land too much. It never really belongs to you. No matter how you cherish it, it comes and goes. In the end it owns you."

  "The army came closer you see," Winter said. "My husband was an oddity in his family, one of us really— a moon man— not a strong magician and not a witch. He was more like you, yourself, a sensitive. Now, his brothers have none of his touch. They're business men, big in the city. Still, we should have been warned, Miryam and I."