A witch at dusk

Dusk wasn’t falling, it was plummeting, this far south. But I’d worked out a way to avoid writing a 3000-word chapter by slamming it into 500 words of power dialogue. It’s fewer words but it’s more creative energy and that energy wasn’t here, on the boat. But there was a churchyard I’d discovered at 11pm a few nights back, when it was dark and windy, and the rather intriguing tone of the leading bell had given me to believe that there was an energy worth channeling there.

A circa 1280 build, I estimate, probably replacing a wooden structure from further back. May even have been apsidal at one point. Village in the Domesday Book so almost anything could have been there; and, remarkably, evidence of the long-outdated notion that the far north end of the churchyard wasn’t consecrated ground. Most of it rebuilt between the 15th and 17th centuries, plus significant repairs in the 19th. But anyway, that leading bell – I can’t think it was originally designed that way. I can think that the bellfounder heard something unique in its tone, and believed that, centuries later, after the thunder and ice had taken its toll, literally, that its uniqueness would ring out, literally. If that’s what he thought, he was right, and I’m a witness.

I needed a name for the cop in the witness room, interrogating my main character. (It’s not just a murder novel – I’m a far, far better writer than that. Ha.) Like anyone who’s ever had to name a band, you realise that the struggle is to make the decision, and after that it’s just a label. From out of the sound of that bell, I think, I named the cop after my scary piano teacher, Mr Langley (sorta bell sounding) who knew all the technicalities but almost nothing about the feel, which is probably why he was so angry all his days. He kinda reminded me of that bell – tolling in time, but feeling out of place. I think if he’d heard that bell it might have been the “gonny not be that guy and just be you please” alert I always thought he needed. 

The characters in place across the desk of an interview room, I settled myself on the west-facing bench in the churchyard and began bouncing attitudes. It was so, so easy – once I take responsibility for my characters it always is. It wasn’t just me responding to the rapidly deepening darkness: the (what do they call it) environment control systems on my laptop were struggling to dance against the changing light, flickering and basically arguing against five billion years of sunsets, while I ignored its attempts to reassure me that it had been worth the money I’d paid for it. 

There came a noise from behind me. A slow, laboured, irritating swishing. There’s around fourteen minutes of dusk where your eyes can’t decide if it’s evening or night, and neither can laptops, and that’s when all the ghosts of the universe have been defined. That’s when I was. I didn’t want to look round in case I broke the moment for whatever it was moving towards me. Then it stopped. Its existence bounced off the ancient, thick walls of the church’s north side to my left. I felt it; I didn’t see it. Then I realised I was sitting in semi-darkness with a brand new £1000 laptop, and wondered if I was going to have to suddenly be Glaswegian at a chancer.

‘Hello,’ she said very quietly.

I put on my most presentably Sunday, TV, meet-the-potential-mum-in-law voice because her caution demanded it. ‘Hello! I’m sorry, am I in your way?’

‘No, no,’ she replied with a tone of something European in her voice. ‘I’m just taking my cat for a walk.’

‘Or is she taking you?’ I sonically smiled too wide.

‘He,’ she said more firmly.

Lots of information there. I closed the laptop; I felt that whatever she needed from the churchyard was much more important than what I needed. But I didn’t put it back in the bag. No idea why.

‘It’s lovely here at dusk,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

‘Of course not!’ I sonically smiled, with more control. As she turned towards the bench, the dying embers of the day’s sunlight adverted me to a large pair of spectacles, grey hair and an aluminium walking stick. Which amazed me, because the person I’d heard wasn’t as old as the frame I was seeing.

And… we talked. We talked about growing tomatoes; about the grief of losing pets, and how that’s meant to help you with losing humans; about my new adventure on the boat; about her dream of emigrating to Australia or New Zealand; about it doesn’t matter a fuck because we just talked. And as the dusk died and gave way to an ice-crystal blue night, bats flapped their way out of the church tower and circled around us, while her cat made a point of keeping his back towards us and cleaning his paws, ready to jump in if I turned out to be a threat to his best friend.

By the third time she said goodnight it really was time for her to go. She told me: ‘I wish you luck in your ––‘

‘Adventure,’ I cut in.

‘Yes. And I hope it doesn’t ever become boring.’

There was a tone there that I had to pursue. ‘Education never ends. You’re never too old for new adventures,’ I said.

‘No, I’m not,’ she replied with the mettle and metal of someone who’s been through more than twenty minutes in a churchyard at dusk can cover. ‘But,’ she went on, ‘One can only move at the speed of the slowest in your world.’

‘That’s kinda what society is for,’ I replied, wondering why the fuck I was using all my best lock-in lines five hours before the pubs even shut. ‘It’s to make sure as many of us survive as possible. It’s not to make sure we’re happy – it’s to make sure we survive.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘We went to New Zealand for a holiday. He didn’t like it very much.’

By now we could only see each other in silhouette from the lights beyond the churchyard. That probably made it easier. ‘But you’re happy, aren’t you?’ I asked, because I couldn’t ask nothing but I didn’t want this moment to end with anything negative. ‘You’re not just content… you’re happy?’

‘Happy enough,’ she told me with that metal and mettle tone, a sound like the bell, that had become more powerful with years of weathering, and knew what it was above and beyond the slowest in her society. ‘Happy enough. And I love him. Enjoy your adventure!’

She moved away, swishing like those moments earlier when I hadn’t understood her energy. The swishing wasn’t laboured or irritating any more. It knew exactly how it sounded, like her voice, like the bell, and fuck you if you don’t get it. Her cat, who I think had been pretending to stalk his best friend while really keeping a protective watch over her, galloped out from the unconsecrated north end of the yard, stopped in front of me and gave me a stare I couldn’t see, because it was dark and I’m not a cat. But I knew the trick: a blink is a smile. I believe he blinked back, even though I couldn’t see it. Then I winked, one eye followed by the other – that fascinates them because they can’t do it, and they wish they could because a half cat smile is even more mysterious than a full cat smile. Then he raced after his best friend, who was swishing with waves of energy back to where she wanted to be.

I think I met a witch at dusk in an ancient churchyard. If I did, I hope I meet many more.