GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS EXTRACTS
English Magic, by Uschi Gatward
‘Samhain’
THERE IS SMOKE IN THE AIR. It comes from the gardens that back on to the park, hovering in blue wisps over the wooden fences. If they go closer they will hear the crackling, see the sparks: the collapsing, glowing matter.
It’s starting to be sunset as they leave the toddler area and turn into the avenue banked on either side by playing fields. The park-keeper, wearing his woollen hat and donkey jacket, opens the casement noticeboard and turns the hands of the cardboard clock that says THIS PARK CLOSES AT. He turns them to five.
They have not brought the scooter today, so they walk, very slowly, holding hands. At the fields Danny, a younger park-keeper, stops his John Deere tractor (which they always admire), dried leaves piled in the back. He’s made a jack o’ lantern at the community centre. He’s proud of it; he shows it them – bright orange to match his hi-vis uniform. They show him theirs. Wow, that’s really something, I like the eyes. Yes, he’s got a baby now – his wife had the baby last month, it’s six weeks old: Devonie. Pretty name. And so lucky to be September-born, for school, you know. Lovely time of year. Welcome to the club. He waves, drives off.
Under the trees. Most of the leaves on the grass now, playing fields golden in the low sun, shiny red jewels catching the light. A late conker found today, maybe the last of the year, but fresh, gleaming – the white top vernixy, dissolving when she rubbed it with her thumb, the burnish almost damp. She feels it, round in her pocket. Waits while her child inspects a tree trunk, mossy on the north side.
The lost mitten balanced on the sapling, where it’s been for a week, getting rained on, frosted, thawing out – she unhooks it, slips it in the plastic bag with the lantern and the other things. No one will miss it now.
Past the logs – wooden structures, stumps and trunks for children to play on, sunk here at great expense by the council a year or so ago, shortly after they moved in. Getting nicely weathered, in that silvery-grey way wood does. Part of the landscape.
A horse chestnut leaf on the path, huge and dried and umbrella-like. Blight-patterned. And the leaflets curl inwards like elves’ slippers. She shakes it as they walk, rattling them home.
At the park gates she stops for her child to catch up, so they can leave together and cross the road, holding hands, quickly and carefully always, looking both ways even though it’s a one-way street, not all the drivers know that.
Down their road, towards the shop at the end, to buy apples, watching, as they slowly progress, the first pumpkins being put out. A butternut squash dressed as a witch in a frayed black cape and hat, face drawn in black marker, twigs for arms, sitting on a doorstep; a pumpkin, not yet lit, in the window of an upstairs flat. A woman dressing the privet hedge rather generously with nylon cobweb – she turns and flashes a smile. Past their own flat – glittery bats in the window, cut from black sugar paper. How the shift of sunlight on glitter catches the eye. The rowan tree outside heavy with berries.
A man across the road comes out of his front door with two large pumpkins in his hands, places them on the sills and strikes a match. You can almost smell it.
A small, early group of trick-or-treaters passes by – preschoolers with painted faces and shiny costumes carrying little buckets or baskets, accompanied by a woman her own age, in civvies.
She peers at their faces, through the dress-up and paint. (Though how would an extra one slip itself into a group like that, counted and recounted every few yards?)
They cross at the lights. The greengrocer’s fruit and veg display juts out like an apron stage. Shiny apples – red ones, green ones, Snow White half-and-half ones – every fifth one wrapped in pale violet. She could write a message on the paper, or a spell – rewrap it with the message inwards, tissue sealed with wax. She fills brown bags with the hard fruit, heaps them into a wire basket and pays at the till with crisp notes. On the counter toffee apples glisten in cellophane – she hadn’t thought of those.
Laden with the bags she walks along the parade to the church and steps inside. It is dark and empty, lit by electric pillar lights and smelling of furniture polish. She makes some sort of vestigial, half-involuntary genuflection and crosses via one of the pews to where the votive candles blaze. An old man sits in the side chapel, coat and scarf on, hat in his hands. He raises his head and nods. He looks cold.
She selects a candle – white paraffin instead of creamy beeswax taper but it’ll have to do. Lights it from one of the others, letting her hand make the choice. The candles shiver in unison.
She passes the slip of paper and pencil to her child to scribble the dedication, then posts this blank in the box. She drops a pound coin into the coin box, shattering the silence.
A last look back at the candle (flame pulling upwards, must be a hole in the roof) and they leave the man to his prayer or his thoughts, eyes closed again now, and return to the outside doors, even her soft-soled shoes sounding on the tiles.
Over the crossing – the kerbstones’ crystalline glint – and back onto their own road, more and more pumpkins out now and windows dressed, in the time it took them to buy the apples and light a flame. Pre-printed notices up, from the Neighbourhood Watch – no trick-or-treaters please. A little curmudgeonly really – everyone here knows not to knock at an unlanterned door.
Japanese anemone in one of the front gardens, gone to seed – dried and skeletal, with a pockmarked head. She reaches an arm in and snaps some off for the window. Juicy fat spiders wait in the middle of webs three feet wide, tensile and glistening, the ends caught on hedges, railings, telegraph poles. Big enough to snag a human.
The sun really setting now, a red glow at the vanishing point. Little legs getting tired, so she carries her child (getting heavier all the time) the last fifty yards, apple bags hanging from her elbows and bumping her knees as she walks, and she feels the fine mist hanging in the air like a veil.
She sets down the child and the bags in the porchway, turns the key in the stiff lock, shoves the warped wood, and they go in.
First, they warm some milk on the hob and fire up the grill – the oven door left open to heat the room – and have a cup of tepid milk and a cup of weak tea and a plate of toast in the half-light of the kitchen. She hadn’t noticed how icy her hands had got, even the held one, the bones chilled.
They wash and polish the apples and pile them into a stockpot. She snips nets of chocolate coins and tips these in as well, arranging them to gleam metallic amongst the fruit.
They carry the stockpot through to the front room (dim now, daylight fading), unpack the carrier bag and lay the contents ready on the floor below the window – the lantern, a baby’s mitten, the horse chestnut leaf, the new conker, a dry rattle of ash keys, the leaves of the maple (blood red), a beech leaf like a blood-red heart, twigs of Japanese anemone, rowanberries – and pour from a Kilner jar all the conkers they’ve found since late August – some shrivelled and rocklike, soaked in vinegar and baked in the oven, some shiny, one of them still in its spiny case. And a little wooden toy figurine she bought when she was pregnant – a jolly farmer in scarecrow dress, broad-brimmed cloth hat and patched brown jacket.
They dress themselves – grey tights and a grey rollneck for her child, a grey balaclava with ears and a grey tail. Whiskers and a black nose painted on. For herself, a dress from the back of the wardrobe, crushed velvet, cool to the touch, shiny and liquid, the colour of blackberry juice, and a sugar paper hat. Quick look in the bathroom mirror, cabinet flashing as she shuts it.
She opens the front door (its shadow arcs across the threshold) and turns the porch light on, outside air brushing her arms, a tremor of hairs, a hint of tobacco on the breeze. She turns it up to its brightest yellow.
Back in the dim room the chimney breast casts a pall. She flicks the light on and starts to dress the window.
Places joss cones – cypress and cedarwood – in a small china dish. Fetches matches, strikes one and dips the flame so it touches them; they catch and burn out and glow, filling the window with indigo smoke as well as light.
The cauldron with its fruit and coins left ready in the hallway. The pumpkin, with its manic goblin visage, centred on the sill. Checks the display from outside. Steps backward and glances down the road: the vista hazy, vaporous, indistinct. Bites into an apple. Holds it in her teeth while she adjusts the bats, rechecks. Snaps off the overhead light in the room and sees the forms of moths on the glass, inside and outside, drawn to the beacon.
Her child creeps closer now and she can feel the warmth drift onto her, arms round her neck. Perfume and grit of the incense. She leans back into the arms and her eyelids flutter closed for a moment, willing sleep.
A smoky grey cat jumps onto the sill, eyes glowing at the window, the knock of its nose on the glass and the whiskers bending. Eyes them suspiciously a while, then jumps down into the dark behind the bins.
There’s something else outside: a toddler peering round the hedge. Two years old, the shape looks familiar. Dressed in green, brown face paint on its cheeks, satin hood drawn snugly round the face, and a cloak with spines – she’s not sure what it’s meant to be, perhaps a hedgehog, or a monster. She beckons it – it comes closer. The shape is definitely familiar – those slight shoulders, sloping a little, almost unformed. It’s drawn to the window, to the lantern – to the toy farmer. It presses against the glass and traces a finger around the toy through the pane. She gets up gently and picks up the figure; the child draws back from the window – she must look like a giant. She quickly steps out of the room, to the hall, to the door and opens it just as the child has backed out of the front garden, is nearly back on the pavement. She holds the figure out in her outstretched arm, at the child’s height, apple still in her other hand. Tilts it from side to side – a little jig. The child looks at it. Takes a small step forward. She tilts it again, takes another bite from her apple. The child looks up at her. It’s wearing a brown rollneck and its cape is lined with white. Oh, she says. You’re a conker! She laughs. I’ve been waiting for you, she says, and she holds the door open.
Uschi Gatward’s short story collection, English Magic, was published by Galley Beggar Press in September 2021. the guardian reviewed called it “exquisite.” to buy a copy, head here.