her he was on to her game!
She said, ‘Fortunately it’s not my first choice for breakfast either, but if you want a menu, you’d better find yourself another restaurant.’
She turned and went inside, walking rather stiffly and leaning on her stick.
Hat, feeling himself reproved, followed.
He found himself in a shady old-fashioned kitchen entirely free of anachronistic technology. His nose, sensitized by the chill morning air, caught a whiff of something vaguely familiar from his old life, quickly swamped by the delicious odour of new baked bread traceable to a rough-hewn oak table on which three tits were assaulting the dome of a cob loaf while a robin was doing its best to open a marmalade pot.
‘Samson, you little sod, leave that be!’ roared the witch. ‘Impy, Lopside, Scuttle, what do you think you’re playing at?’
The birds fluttered off the table but with little sign of panic. The tits settled on a low beam, the robin perched on the edge of an old pot sink, all casting greedy eyes back at their interrupted feast.
The witch picked up a long thin knife and Hat took a step back. But all she did was trim the pecked dome off the loaf then carve a thick slice from the remainder.
‘Help yourself to butter and marmalade while I mash a new pot of tea,’ she said.
She turned away to place a big blackened kettle on the hotplate of a wood-burning stove. Hat spread the bread thickly with butter and marmalade and sank his teeth into it. God, it was delicious! The best food he’d tasted in weeks. In fact the only food whose taste he’d noticed in weeks. This was a good dream.
One of the tits fluttered down on to the table and eyed him boldly.
‘Sorry, Scuttle,’ he said. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this.’
The witch glanced round at him curiously.
‘How did you know that one was Scuttle?’ she asked.
‘Two blue tits and a coal tit, not hard to guess which one’s Scuttle,’ he said.
‘So, apart from your problem with blackbirds and parrots, you do know something about birds. That what you’re doing out so early? Bird-watching?’
‘Not really,’ said Hat, thinking, You know exactly what I’m doing!
She turned to face him across the table.
‘You’re not an egg collector, are you?’ she demanded.
‘No way!’ he replied indignantly. ‘I’d lock those sods up and throw away the key.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘So if you’re not twitching and you’re not thieving, just what are you doing wandering round my garden so early in the morning? You don’t have to tell me, but unsatisfied curiosity only gets you one slice of bread and marmalade.’
She smiled at him as she spoke and he found himself returning the smile.
He certainly wanted some more bread, but what answer could he give?
He was saved from decision by the sound of a cracked bell.
‘Clearly my morning for dawn raids,’ she said.
The bell rang again.
‘Coming, coming,’ she cried, turning to open a door into a shady corridor that ended at another door, this one with a letter box and an upper panel of frosted glass against which pressed a face.
Hat sliced himself some more bread as she moved away. Even in dreams, a young cop had to take his chances. As he sank his teeth into it, he kept a careful eye on the Crunch Witch to see what reinforcements she may have conjured up.
She opened the front door.
A man stood there. He too carried a walking stick, this one ebony with a silver top in the shape of a hawk’s head, and he wore a black trilby which he removed as he said, ‘Good morning to you, Miss Mac.’
‘And to you, Mr W,’ said the witch. ‘Why so formal? You should just have come round the back.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s so early, I thought I’d better be sure …’
‘That I was decent? How thoughtful. But you know what it’s like at Blacklow Cottage: up with the birds, no choice about it. Come on in, do.’
She led the newcomer into the kitchen. He moved easily enough though with a just perceptible drag of the left leg suggesting that, like the woman’s, his stick was not simply for ornament. He stopped short when he saw Hat.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I didn’t realize you had a guest.’
‘Me neither till five minutes back,’ said the witch. ‘Mr Waverley, meet … sorry, I don’t think I got your name?’
‘Hat,’ said Hat. This little rush of names made him uneasy. Not Waverley, that had no resonance. But Blacklow Cottage set up some kind of vibration …
‘Mr Hat,’ said the witch. ‘Sit yourself down, Mr W. I’m just making a fresh pot of tea.’
She turned back to the stove. Hat studied Waverley openly and without embarrassment. (Pointless letting yourself be embarrassed in a dream.) Waverley returned the gaze with equal composure. He was in his early sixties, medium height, slim build, with a long narrow face, well-groomed hair, still vigorous though silvery, alert bluey-green eyes, and the sympathetic expression of a worldly priest who has seen everything and knows to the nearest farthing the price of forgiveness. He was wearing a beautifully cut grey mohair topcoat, which reminded Hat that despite the sunshine this was a pretty nippy morning.
He shivered, and this intrusion of meteorology bothered him like the name of the cottage. First the taste of food, now weather …
‘Do you live locally, Mr Hat?’ asked Waverley.
He had a gentle well-modulated voice with perhaps a faint Scots accent.
‘No,’ said Hat. ‘I got lost in the forest.’
‘The forest?’ echoed the man in a faintly puzzled tone.
‘I think Mr Hat means Blacklow Wood,’ said the witch with that nice smile.
‘Of course. And you’re quite right, Mr Hat. As you clearly know, this and one or two other little patches of woodland scattered around the area are all that remain of what used to be the great Blacklow Forest when the Plantagenets hunted here.’
Blacklow again. This time the vibration was strong enough to break the film of ice through which he viewed dreams and reality alike.
Now he remembered.
A dank autumn day … but his MG had been full of brightness as he drove deep into the heart of the Yorkshire countryside with the woman he loved by his side.
One of those small surviving patches of Blacklow Forest had been the copse out of which a deer had leapt, forcing him to bring his car to a skidding halt. Then he and she had pushed through the hedge and sat beneath a beech tree and drunk coffee and talked more freely and intimately than ever before. It had been a milestone in what had turned out to be far too short a journey.
Yesterday he’d driven out to the same spot and sat beneath the same tree, indifferent to the fall of darkness and the thickening mist. Nor when finally he rose and set off back to the car did he much care when he realized he’d missed his way. For an indeterminate period of time he’d wandered aimlessly, over rough grass and boggy fields, till he’d flopped down exhausted beneath another tree and slept.
The fog had cleared, the night had passed, the sun had risen, and he, waking under branches, imagined himself still sleeping and dreaming …
The woman placed the teapot on the table and said, ‘So what brings you out so early, Mr W?’
The man glanced at Hat, decided he was out of it