The Nursery

 

 

 

Ooh baby love, my baby love

I need you, oh how I need you

 

Holland-Dozier-Holland

 

 

 

It is somewhere in England - and in France and America and Russia and, for all I know, in every country in the world. Somewhere in a town near you - perhaps your town. Down an ordinary street, next to the shopping centre or in the middle of a row of Victorian cottages. Or on the top floor of a tower block in a housing estate. Anywhere, really, just around the corner in the most ordinary, everyday places.

 

Just off the High Street, next to the Thai restaurant or the fire station. Round the back of the bookshop or overlooking Tesco's loading bay there is a house. A special house. You may never need to find such a house yourself, but if you do it will be there for you. You may find it or it may find you. And when its front door is opened and you go in you will find…

 

What?

 

 

 

The knife slipped in Deirdre's hand while she was slicing the cheese for the twins' teatime Welsh rarebit. It made a nasty nick in her left thumb.

 

'Oh, f-f-fiddle,' she said in exasperation. It was already half-past three and soon Ashley and Mitchell would be awake and ready for their tea. They were always so hungry these days. Toddlers were like that, she knew. They were probably due for another growth spurt. Hey-ho, new clothes, new shoes. Another trip to Mothercare.

 

It was only a tiny cut, but deep all the same. So she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and waited and regarded her thumb. And, slowly at first, then faster, like a time-lapse film, the skin knitted itself together and the two sides of the cut joined up. Five minutes later it was healed, with no trace that anything had happened - not even a little scar tissue.

 

Deirdre smiled to herself. There were a number of advantages to being a witch and this was not the least of them. She picked up the knife once more.

 

 

 

They parked the silver SL 500 in a side street about a quarter of a mile away. It was not that they couldn't have parked it closer, for they could. Nobody would have noticed. Nobody would have minded. Any traffic warden who had come across it in the course of his duty would have made a note of its presence, but somehow forgotten about it so that later, if his patrol brought him back to where it stood, it would have struck him as something new, even if only an hour or two had passed since he last saw it. It had its own kind of invisibility.

 

They did not leave the car so far away from Deirdre's house because they cared about clogging up the traffic in Blackwater High Street nor because they wanted to avoid getting a parking ticket. It was simply that, as the elder one said, you needed a bit of a break before making a visit. You needed to get your mind into gear, he said, and his junior colleague agreed with him, as well he should. He was young and inexperienced, but not without ambition.

 

As ever, the traffic in the Blackwater-Camberley area was dense and slow. The Thames Valley is a prosperous place and popular among those who work in the well-paid IT industries. They can afford cars, lots of them, and what use is a car if you do not drive it? And so, although these cars were shiny and new and equipped with the latest pollution-reducing devices, the air was heavy with exhaust fumes, diesel smoke and sulphur. The younger of the two breathed it in deeply. The elder smiled to see such enthusiasm in his protegé.

 

 

 

Deirdre finished slicing the cheese and put it back in the fridge. She had been making bread earlier and it stood by the side of the Aga, cooling slowly on a wire rack. Cheese, toast, a little Worcestershire sauce. Apple juice. Maybe an orange each if they'd agree to eat it. The twins were at a funny age, as ever.

 

On another day, she might have been putting something together for one of her visitors. Henry, Al, Eloise, Joe, Mary, Ted, Tim, Christine, Cyril, James, Charlotte, Frank, Ian, Tosie, Mike, Imran, Benjamin…. The list went on for ever. On any normal day, one or another of her friends might come to her door and knock - diffidently or peremptorily as was their individual way - and she would invite them in with a smile. They would chat; exchanging news, talking about their lives, the weather, their children, their wives or husbands, what was on the television, what bargains were to be had at Blackbushe market… And if, afterwards, a visitor might not be able to put his finger very precisely on what she had said; well that was in the nature of gossip, was it not?

 

Then, by intention or contrived accident, each guest would go to that part of the house where his dreams waited for him. Deirdre's house, despite its modest external proportions, had many rooms, each suited to a different kind of person and his needs. Some visitors never left the kitchen, but stayed there talking to Deirdre until it was time for them to go. For those who wished to explore a little further there were libraries, studies, boudoirs, drawing-rooms, billiard-rooms, still-rooms, bathrooms and mysterious dusty attics at the top of narrow uncarpeted stairs. Others left the house altogether and explored the fields and woods, or city, or river, or lake, or desert, or jungle, or wide savannah, or whatever new and compelling world they looked to find beyond its walls.

 

One travelling man, old and footsore, brought his washing every fortnight and sat quiet-eyed while she ran it through the Hotpoint. A few wanted nothing more than to go with Deirdre to her bedroom and make love to her. They were not disappointed. Nobody who entered Deirdre's house with an open heart was ever disappointed.

 

Today, as it happened, the house was empty except for Deirdre and the twins. Perhaps the two in the Mercedes knew that. Perhaps they did not. It is unlikely that they cared very much either way.

 

 

 

Deirdre turned on the wireless. The sound of Joe Loss and his orchestra filled the kitchen; quietly at first but becoming louder and brasher as the valves warmed up. 'Dum, da-dum, da-dum-dum,dum-da-dum-dum,' sang the witch as she took a turn around the table. 'Dee-dee, dee dee-dee, dee dee-dee, dee-dee,' picking up a dish-cloth. 'Da da-da, da dum!'

 

She was drawing breath to launch into the third verse of "Wheels" when the front door bell rang. Deirdre was used to interruptions - they were in the nature of her calling - so she put the dishcloth back on the draining board, took off her apron, patted down her auburn hair and went into the hall to answer the door.

 

There were two of them, which was fairly unusual. Deirdre's people were mostly solitary. That was one of the main reasons they came to her, or she found them.

 

Were they Mormons? Certainly they were dressed alike, in matching brown hats, nondescript grey suits, blue shirts and patterned ties. Still, she would find out soon enough. It was clear they hadn't come to read the gas meter.

 

'Come in,' Deirdre said, standing to one side of the doorway. 'Enter of your own free will.'

 

'Thank you, miss,' said the elder of the pair. He removed his trilby and his younger companion did the same. The entered the house and closed the door behind them, shutting out the haze and noise of the High Street.

 

'I expect you'd like a cuppa,' said Deirdre, leading them down the passageway to the kitchen. She pointed to the table. 'Sit yourselves down. The kettle's on the hob.'

 

They each took a chair and sat in silence while Deirdre brought the water up to the boil and made a pot of tea.

 

'Milk? Sugar?'

 

'No milk, four sugars, please,' said the younger. The elder shook his head. 'No milk, no sugar.'

 

Deirdre smiled and poured two mugs of tea. She handed them over and sat back. She would let them drink their tea and wait for them to tell her what they needed in their own way and their own time. There was no particular rush. Ashley and Mitchell were still fast asleep, if the absence of sound from upstairs was any kind of clue. The whole house was very quiet and still. Good.

 

The elder guest sipped at his tea and nodded. It was evidently hot enough and strong enough for him. The same must have been true for his younger colleague for he suddenly lifted his mug and threw its scalding contents directly into Deirdre's eyes. It splashed over her face and splattered across the range behind her, hissing and spitting like an angry cat. She screamed and fell back against the brass rail of the Aga, raising her hands - too late! - to cover her face.

 

The younger flung his mug down onto the kitchen floor with a splintering crash. He leapt to his feet and took hold of Deirdre's hands, pulling them behind her back and lifting them up to her shoulders so that she screamed again and bent over forwards. Her forehead nearly hit the kitchen table.

 

'Neatly done,' said the elder approvingly. The younger felt a warm glow of satisfaction inside himself. He was doing well.

 

'Put her in the chair.'

 

The younger kept hold of Deirdre with one hand while with the other he pulled out a spare chair from under the table. He forced her to sit down and, aware that the witch would soon recover from the initial shock and pain of the attack and start to struggle, took four black plastic cable ties from his pocket. With them he fastened her arms and legs securely to the chair. The tough nylon of which the ties were made cut brutally into Deirdre's skin. Lastly he looped her long, dark-red hair around the top rail of the chair and knotted it so that her head was pulled back and up and her throat was left exposed and vulnerable.

 

'Good. Very good,' said the elder to the younger. 'Now come over here and watch.'

 

The younger resumed his place at the table.

 

'Look at her face.'

 

He did as he was told. Deirdre's eyes were tightly closed and her skin was blotched and peeling. The tea, undiluted with milk, had been close to boiling point. She groaned, but whether it was from the pain of her burns or from fearful anticipation of what might be about to happen to her next was uncertain. But slowly, just as had happened with her thumb only a few minutes earlier when she had cut herself, she began to heal. Her scalded face began to heal itself. The livid redness faded and the swollen blisters slowly subsided. After only five minutes her skin was as clear and unblemished as it had always been. She opened her eyes; they were as limpid green and belladonna-sparkled as ever. The kitchen clock stood at a quarter to five.

 

'Excellent!' said the elder. 'We have established two important facts. What is the first?'

 

'She's a witch. An encompacted practitioner of the Secret Arts. That is witnessed by her swift restoration.'

 

'Correct. Any ordinary person would have been very badly scarred by your little bit of fun. Scarred for life. She would be yelling the place down. Instead; look! She is perfectly well. Once upon a time we might have put her in the ducking-stool and she would have floated instead of sinking. That would have told us what we need to know. Of course there are no ducking-stools left outside museums in these... enlightened times, but the principle remains sound. What else have we learned?'

 

'Er...'

 

The elder smiled; an expression to make his acolyte blench.

 

'We have also discovered this; that whatever we may do to this one, whatever tortures we may administer to her, however much we may harm her, we cannot damage her permanently. That is good, is it not?'

 

'Is it? I don't understand.'

 

The elder shook his head. These youngsters had so much to learn!

 

'It is this; there is no limit to the pain we can inflict on her. She can escape us by fainting for a few moments. She may occasionally require a little longer than that to recover from some of the more… extensive excruciations. But she will always come back to us just as good as new. And then we will be able to start on her all over again. It will be as it is elsewhere; where the flame is not quenched and the worm does not die. Is that not true, bitch?'

 

Deirdre looked up. 'Yes, it is all perfectly true.' Her eyes were tinged with a strange melancholy. 'I could choose to die, though.'

 

‘You could try, but I do not think you have the strength of mind. Your body will mend itself, whether you consent to it or not. It would take a greater will than yours to prevent it. Is that not so?'

 

'Yes; said Deirdre with a sigh. 'I suppose it is.'

 

'Good. So now we know where we stand. I will tell you presently why my impulsive young friend and I have come to visit you today. Firstly, however, I think we should establish - in some clear, simple, practical way - quite unmistakably in your mind exactly who is in charge of this situation.'

 

'I will tell you something in your turn, for you must know it. It is this; that whatever you do to me today I will always love you. That is unalterable. It is permanent and final.'

 

The younger one laughed and spat, and his spittle landed on the floor and ate a sizzling crater of corrosion out of it. 'Can we get on with it now?' he said.

 

'Yes,' said the elder. 'Let us begin.'

 

The younger picked up the steaming kettle from the stove. He pulled the neck of Deirdre's blouse forward and slowly poured the kettle's contents down her front making sure that her breasts and belly received their full share of the boiling hot water. The witch shrieked in agony and the legs of her chair beat a wild tattoo on the flagstones of the kitchen floor.

 

The two watched and waited as the water cooled down and Deirdre recovered.  'Of all the rooms in a present-day house, the kitchen offers by far the most scope for our operations,' the elder observed. 'So few cellars or dungeons, these days, but this is every bit as good. For example, look at all those knives on the rack over there. Knives for cleaning. Knives for filleting. Knives for skinning.  A cleaver for heavier work, such as chopping. And that splendid cooker. A four-oven Aga, no less. Always kept nice and hot, even in summer. So many possibilities there...’

 

The elder put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, so that his face was no than eighteen inches from Deirdre's. Not so very close, it is true, but near enough that a rancid stench of decay blew from his mouth into her nostrils with every word that he spoke.

 

'What else have we? Oh yes, the sink. A fine, deep, butler-style sink. How long could you hold your breath if we compelled you to bend over in front of it with your head underwater? Thirty seconds? A minute? Surely no more than a minute and a half, even if you had the chance to draw breath in advance. And look over your head! What's that for? That rack? Oh, yes, it's for drying clothes. You can lower it with those ropes there, peg the wet things to it and then pull the whole contrivance back up to the ceiling. How ingenious! And how useful as a restraint! The wrists could be tied there and there and the subject suspended freely in the air for our ready convenience. What else can we see? Oh yes. What fun! Meat hooks. What more do I need to say?'

 

The cable ties were pulled up to their maximum rated tension. She did not attempt to free herself, nor did she waste any of her strength in struggling. Such a male thing that would have been; to fight back thoughtlessly, even when there was no possibility of overcoming one's captor. A gesture; meaningless, nugatory, vain. Merely a last desperate claim on a man's self-respect. It was not for her. Her strength, such as it was, lay elsewhere.

 

The elder took a leather strap from his coat pocket and laid it hard across Deirdre's face, leaving a broad red stripe like war paint.

 

'Why do you do it?' he asked. 'Why do you take them in - these worthless people? These discards, no-hopers, wasters and rejects. Why do you pamper them so? Don't you know they're our property? Don't you realise you've been stealing from us? This has to stop. You know that.'

 

'If she's a thief,' said the younger, 'we should cut her hands off.'

 

'Too much shock, not enough pain,' said the elder. 'But a nice traditional thought, just the same. “Let the punishment fit the crime", eh?

 

'You know we deal in pain.' He slapped Deirdre's face once more. 'What about you? How do you feel about it? Have you ever wondered about it? How you would stand up to it?

 

'Perhaps you fear it. You should, you know. But,' and he gave her three more vicious, cutting blows across the face with the strap, 'perhaps you have had other thoughts. Perhaps you have imagined yourself tied as you are tied now. Maybe you have considered how it might feel to give yourself in helpless submission to your master. Do you ever get a little excited, a little moist, when you read about the punishments that were administered to the women of your kind in the centuries that are gone? Do you stroke yourself? How about it now? Will you be bound naked in thongs, and writhe and moan under the lashes of my whip? And will the ceaseless pain and the soaring ecstasy of your surrender become one and indistinguishable? Will you bow down before me then and acknowledge me to be your Saviour and your Death? Is that not your true desire? Will you not yearn to proffer me your absolute obedience? Will you kiss the leather that binds the rattan of my riding-crop and beg me to mark you with it?'

 

'This is my promise. I will come here every day and every day I will whip you; whip you until your blood runs down on to the ground, whip you to delirium. And you will obey me, either because you dread the lash and wish to please me in the hope that my hand will fall on you with less vigour, or because you yearn for it and seek to embrace it totally, yield to it, wrap yourself in its toils. It may be that when I stop to rest you will plead with me to start again, only harder and faster.'

 

Deirdre looked up. Her face was clear and unmarked once more and her eyes were brimming over with sorrow. 'You are lost,' she said. 'You are lost and sad and alone and I wish I could help you as I try to help everyone who comes through my door. I would, you know, if only you would let me.'

 

'I do not think that you are in a position to help me in any way.’ The elder’s face twisted into a sneer. ‘Do you think I am one of those helpless, pathetic creatures you... entertain? I know what you do for them. You are a common whore, do you know that?'

 

'I give them what they need. I could do the same for you, you poor, forsaken thing. Listen to me. Try to remember – were you always like this? So hard and cruel? I cannot believe that you are happy now. You had dreams once, I am sure, but I think you have kept them hidden away too long. They have festered and gone bad in the darkness. Think back. Tell me there was a time in your life you remember with joy. There must have been such a time, even for someone like you. Let me show it to you. Let me take you to it, so that you can see clearly what you have become.’

 

She looked deep into her tormenter’s eyes. 'There is still hope for you. Don’t give up on yourself. I won’t give up on you. I can rescue you. It’s what I do. Please let me…’

 

The elder looked away and, just for a moment, there was a different look in his eyes, as if Deirdre’s words had awakened something that had been asleep for many long years of men’s lives. But then…

 

'Shut up!' cried the younger. 'Don't talk to my master like that.' He leapt to his feet and applied the kettle and the palette knife and the flat-iron and the electrical flex repeatedly to the witch. Several minutes passed.

 

'I think,' said the elder to the younger, ' that you should, rather than going all-out on the subject with your, I must say, commendable enthusiasm, pay more attention to the, er, light and shade of the art of torment. Simply bludgeoning the subject like that may give you some immediate gratification but I think you will find it rather more ineffective than otherwise. Calm down! And sit down!'

 

'Yes. Master,' said the younger, chastened. He sat down.

 

'Now then. Are you awake?' The elder slapped Deirdre's face lightly with the back of his hand. Her eyes flickered open. 'Ah, yes.' He sat back.

 

'This is beginning to pall, you know. Much as my young friend is enjoying his part in his first real punishment detail, it is becoming rather boring for me, despite your attempts at persuading me otherwise. Now. I will ask you for the last time; will you close your door and keep it closed?'

 

'No, I will not.' The witch’s voice was scarcely audible.

 

'Even if I keep my promise to inflict daily, continual pain on you? Unbearable pain?'

 

'I cannot leave my post.'

 

'Spoken like a true soldier in the Army of Righteousness!' The elder laughed, and his apprentice joined in.

 

'Very well. We will move on, then.' He turned to the younger. 'I have pointed out most of the salient features of this room, such as they relate to our operations today. But there is one, or rather, there are two, items that I have omitted. What are they?'

 

The younger looked around. 'Um, the boots by the door? The Welsh dressers? The curtains?'

 

'Nearly. What do you see in the corner?'

 

The younger looked. 'A broom, an ironing board, an… oh…'

 

'Very good! Well spotted! We will make something of you yet! Yes,' and the elder turned back to Deirdre who was sitting up straight in her bonds with a look of horrified fear in her eyes which the elder could not fail to notice.

 

'Oh yes! A palpable hit! High chairs - two of them. It is my experience that where there are high chairs there are young children. And where there are children there must be a mother. He leaned forward once more. Again, gusts of corruption blew into Deirdre's face. 'Somewhere in this house, in a prettily decorated nursery in the attic, no doubt, there are children. They are your children, are they not? You are their mother.' He smiled with a grin like a throat-cut.

 

A desperate horror flooded Deirdre’s mind. 'Please, no,' she said, 'I beg of you. Do not go there. The twins...' Her voice died away. She knew that the situation had reached its crisis point. From here on nothing that anybody could do would make any difference to the ultimate outcome. There was - there could be - no further hope. Knowing that, she wept. Her tears mingled with the blood and spew on the tabletop.

 

'Do you see?' the elder said to his colleague. 'Do you see how it all turns out? How ridiculously vulnerable she is?'

 

'Yes, I do. We shall always win, while they are so weak and we are so strong.'

 

'How foolish you creatures are! You give yourselves to us so freely, so innocently. You tie your ankles together so you cannot run from us; and so we catch you. You despise the weapons we bear; and so we wound you. You will not learn to fight as we fight; and so we defeat you utterly. You will not hate as we hate; and so we damn you for ever.'

 

'We cannot kill you, as you know, although we can and will come back here repeatedly and hurt you again and again if you do not comply with our requirements. The only way you can prevent our return is to close your door and keep it closed. For the very last time, will you do as you are told? Or are we to go and visit your children?'

 

Deirdre shook her head. 'No. I cannot do as you ask.' She continued weeping.

 

'Then know that you have brought what is about to happen on yourself. You could have prevented it. Come on!' They rose to their feet and left the kitchen. As he left the younger gave her one last skull-cracking blow across the back of the head with a rolling pin. Deirdre slumped forward in the chair. Blessed unconsciousness came, so that she did not hear the slow footsteps climbing the stairs, nor the opening of the nursery door, nor the voices; quiet at first, then increasingly louder and higher in pitch.

 

She was did not hear the screams; the endless shredding of the air in the attic room. She was spared that agony, although had the elder considered the mercy which the younger had unintentionally granted her he might have felt it necessary to impose sanctions of his own upon the stupid fool.

 

 

 

Time passed, and the garden beyond the kitchen window began to glow with the evening light. Deirdre crawled back to consciousness. She lifted her eyes and looked around. The kitchen was empty and silent. There was no sound that she could hear anywhere in the house. They were gone, then.

 

For a while she sat completely still, gathering her strength for the ordeal to come. She breathed deeply, and as she exhaled the bonds on her wrists melted, her hair unknotted itself from the back of the chair and fell away, and she was free. She stood up slowly and looked down. Her body was unmarked and perfect as before. Even the pools of blood and vomit which had stained the table, floor and wall of the kitchen had disappeared. She adjusted her clothing. There were some rips and tears which she would have to mend later. But now… now she must go upstairs and deal with what she knew she would find there.

 

She had failed; failed badly. Could she not have tried a little harder to avert the calamity that she knew had taken place in the nursery? For what was pain? – a minor inconvenience, surely, in the wider scheme of things. She should not have let it distract her from her purpose. And now… now there were consequences to be faced, better sooner than later.

 

With her heart weighted down with dread she trudged up the stairs to the first floor of her house, rounded the landing and ascended the narrow flight leading to the nursery. She pushed open the door.

 

Inside there was a scene of the most terrible carnage mingled with the gagging stink of decay. There was no surface in the room that was not covered in bloody filth. Deirdre turned her face away and drew a deep breath.  Where were they? The twins? Behind the splintered cots? Or inside the wardrobes, white-painted with a stencilled pattern of kites and balloons? Where? No… ahh! Deirdre drew herself up to her full height.

 

'Come out of there! Come on - I know where you are. Out! Now! Ashley! Mitchell! I am not pleased with you. Not at all.'

 

The twins emerged from behind the playpen. One was holding a stuffed panda which had somehow escaped the massacre unscathed. The other had a toy gun, which he dropped. To their credit, they both had the grace to look a little sheepish. Ashley had his thumb jammed in his mouth while Mitchell shuffled his feet and looked down at the carpet.

 

'Just look at this mess! All over the walls. And the windows. And the ceiling. It's dripping! I thought I had made it perfectly clear before now. You must, must, must tidy your room up before bed time.'

 

'Sorry, mummy,' they said in turn. Deirdre's expression softened a little. 'I know, children. I know. But you can't possibly go to bed in all this chaos. You'd better come down to the kitchen and have something to eat. We'll tidy all this up tomorrow morning. Tonight you can sleep with me.'

 

'Thank you!' they said in unison.

 

Deirdre smiled. They were good children really. She was lucky to have them. And her joy in them helped to overcome the regret that she had not been able to save her visitors from the ruin they had wrought upon themselves. Could she have saved them, despite everything? She would never know.

 

'Deirdre, old girl,' she said to herself later, while the twins tucked into their pizza and chips, 'never mind. We'll watch an old film tonight and forget about all this nastiness. And tomorrow - tomorrow is another day!'