The Midnight Witch (45 page)

“So, Beauty, I see the war has not changed you.”

The voice is instantly recognizable. I turn to see Gudrun behind me, sitting elegantly atop a bar stool, smoking a cigarette through a long black holder. She has had her glorious red hair cut and firmly set into ripples that gleam beneath the party lights. She is dressed in a glamorous satin dress without the slightest attempt at a costume. She looks a little thinner than when last I saw her. A little older, yes, but something else. There is a wariness about her now. A watchfulness. I cannot claim to be surprised. To be a German living in London through the war must have been a horrid experience.

“Hello, Gudrun. It is good to see you again. Is Mangan with you?” I peer past her.

“At such a charade? Huh! He would sooner eat his own foot. No, Mangan dislikes such gaiety these days. He is not in the best of health now, thanks to the wonderful British penal system. He prefers quieter occasions.” She draws deeply on her pungent cigarette and then exhales slowly, blowing smoke through her nose, letting the plumes drift away and watching them as they go, before she speaks again. “Besides, Mangan does not receive the number of invitations he used to.”

“Surely he was on Charlotte’s guest list.”

“Oh, yes. But he would never pay for a ticket. Neither would nor could, in fact. No, I am only here because my patron brought me. See, over there.” She points to a rotund man whose age and girth are making it difficult for him to stand the pace of the revelry. “He is a buffoon, but a loyal one. The only man left in London prepared to buy my work. He thinks one day Germans will be back in fashion.” She laughs at this, a dry, mirthless sound.

“But you still live with Mangan’s family, back in Bloomsbury?” I ask, though in truth I know. I have seen Mangan several times since the end of the war. It is true, he has suffered some lasting damage to his health, but his time in the countryside has restored him a little. He is trying to work again, I know, but people have long memories. He and Gudrun are no longer fashionable, he for his stand against the war, she simply for being German.

“Where else would I go? Mangan is trying to sculpt again. The work is really too heavy for him now. I have told him he should work in something lighter, something smaller, but, ach, you know Mangan. When did he ever listen to reason? Perry is busy doing whatever it is Perry does. Jane feeds people. The children make noise. All as if the war never was.”

“Except that it was.”

“Yes. It was.” She tips her head back and downs her champagne, and then waves the empty glass at a distant waiter to summon more. “I hear you are getting married, Beauty.”

“Yes. Next month.”

“Poor Artist, have you forgotten him completely?”

“Of course not.”

“So, in this case, you will be coming to his exhibition next week.”

“Bram has an exhibition here? In London?” I cannot keep the breathlessness out of my voice. Bram. Here. And painting again!

“At the Dauntless Gallery in Cork Street. I’m surprised he has not sent you an invitation to the private view. But, of course he won’t mind if you just turn up anyway. Perhaps you could bring your fiancé.”

I am too distracted to rise to Gudrun’s provocation. Bram. Here. In London. Most likely staying at Mangan’s house. I experience a piercing stab of jealousy at the thought of him spending time with Gudrun but not with me. But then, that is utterly ridiculous. I was the one who did not go to the station as I had promised him I would do, five years and a lifetime ago. I was the one who fell silent, who turned away. Why should he contact me ever again? Why would he think to come and see me or to send me an invitation to his show? Why would he? And even if he did, I could not accept. I am engaged to Louis. My life is moving on, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise, to him or to myself. It is true times have changed. Perhaps there are not the same barriers between us that there once were. But some remain. I am still a witch. Bram is not. No, I cannot see him or go to see his paintings, much as I admit I long to do so. In a few weeks’ time I will be Lady Lilith Harcourt, Countess of Winchester, and there is an end to it.

25.

When Bram enters the house in Bloomsbury he sees so few changes that he is taken back to the very first time he came to Mangan’s home. The dog has gone, and the children are each a little taller. Jane has gray hair now, and Perry has lost the bloom of youth, but otherwise, much is as it was. The hallway is still full of coats and boots and clutter. Doors are missing from doorways. Electricity has been installed but is not used. The hole in the wall from the house into the studio space remains. The air of pandemonium under light restraint continues.

“Children, run along, do.” Jane shoos three small boys ahead of her down the hallway. “Bram has had a long journey and the last thing he needs is all your noise. Come along, dear, Mangan is so looking forward to seeing you again. Freedom, go and put the kettle on, will you? Such a helpful boy. Couldn’t have managed without him when Mangan was away.” She pauses and lowers her voice. “You will find my darling husband a little … older,” she warns him. “He is not as robust as once he was. Still,” she adds, brightening again, “having you here will be just the tonic he requires. I’m certain of it.”

Bram braces himself for an elderly Mangan in a bath chair, so he is astonished to find the great man halfway up a ladder, paintbrush in hand, putting the finishing touches to a startling mural that covers one entire wall of the studio.

“Mangan, my dear, Bram is here,” Jane calls up to him.

“What’s that? Bram from Yorkshire? Well, don’t just stand there gawping, my young friend, make yourself useful. Pass me up another pot of paint, would you? Over there. The pea-green. That’s the one. Want to get this tree finished before Jane starts clucking like a mother hen and insists I put my feet up. Woman thinks I’m an invalid.”

“I think no such thing, I simply believe a little rest and some soup from time to time might just stop you wearing yourself to a frazzle. Talk him down from there, Bram, dear,
do,
” she says, leaving them with an exasperated flap of her hands.

“Woman would have me spoon-fed if I let her.”

“She’s only trying to look after you.”

“I am perfectly sound in wind and limb, as you can see,” says Mangan, letting go of the ladder to brandish his paintbrush expansively. He teeters horribly, and for a moment Bram thinks he will fall, but he grasps the wooden tread above him once more and continues applying paint, seemingly unperturbed.

“That’s quite some mural,” says Bram, taking in the image of a sweep of English countryside, complete with farm, barns, stream, and hedgerows. Many artists might have rendered such a scene cloyingly sentimental, but in Mangan’s hands it is depicted as something vibrant, bold, and bursting with life.

“This place saved my life, Bram, I don’t mind telling you. I was rescued from that Stygian hellhole of a jail and transported to this other world. I have never lived in the countryside, but, my word, there is so much we can learn about ourselves. When we are returned to nature, working the land with our hands, these hands, look at the calluses, honestly earned, through toil and effort, in all weathers, at one with the elements. I was … invigorated. Whatever Jane likes to tell people, I feel reborn, full of energy, and ready to work again!”

“Paintings this time, then? And on such a scale.”

“Oh, no, this is for me. An
aide-mémoire
of my time spent tilling the soil. Not that I need one, no, no, but I confess, I miss the open landscape. I wanted to have it here with me still.” He starts to descend the ladder. “No, I shall return to my sculptures, my true calling.” He reaches the ground and stands in front of Bram. “Not that there is a demand for works in stone just now, but I daresay there will be again, when the world has recovered its senses and is in its right mind once more.”

“And you really think it will? Recover its senses, I mean?”

Mangan narrows his eyes at Bram for a moment. “What? Where is that glorious youthful optimism I remember you for?”

“I may have left a little of it in Africa.”

“Ah. Yes. Bad business that. Still.” He drops his brush into an open tin of paint nearby, paying no heed to the fresh splash of green that joins others already decorating his worn trousers. He clasps Bram to him in a manly embrace. “Good to have you back with us, Bram from Yorkshire. Splendid. Yes, splendid indeed.”

Bram experiences a flash of memory of the time he overheard Mangan talking to a fellow coven member. The images in his mind are shadowy, but the recollection is bright and sharp, of the night he learned that Lilith is not the only person close to him who is a witch.

This man counts me as his friend. There exists between us a mutual trust. And yet he keeps a secret so large I wonder there is space enough for it even in this rambling house.

“Why so serious, young man?” Mangan frowns at him. “You have the world at your feet, or will presently. This is no time for the maudlin reflection I judge you are now engaged in.” He narrows his eyes and then goes on. “Or could it be a troubled heart that is giving you such a dyspeptic appearance all of a sudden?”

Bram shrugs. “You know Lilith is soon to be married?”

“I know Jane has been fussing about having nothing suitable to wear for some months now. I know all over London the great and the ennobled are dusting off their finery, and licking their lips, no doubt, at the opportunity to display their wealth and good taste, or the lack of it, at what I am told will be the wedding of the year.”

“I’m sure it would be an occasion of unrivaled glamor,” Bram says.

“Would?” Mangan raises his eyebrows. “Is there any doubt that the marriage will go ahead?”

“I … hope so.”

“Ah-
ha.
So that’s how it is. Well, well. You’ve set yourself a challenge there, my friend.”

“Do you think me unworthy?”

“Indeed I do not.”

“Do you think me unwise?”

“Ha! When has wisdom had any say in affairs of the heart?”

“We are from different worlds, Lilith and I.”

“Nonsense, you both lived in London.”

“She is the daughter of a duke. My father is a man who made his own money.”

“The war changed everything, haven’t you heard? These things matter so much less now than they used to.”

“She is very rich. My father so disapproves of my painting he will likely leave me a pauper.”

“Then she’ll have money enough for both of you.”

There is a beat. Bram holds his nerve.

I must speak. I must.

“She is a witch, and I am not,” he says.

Mangan gasps loudly, then recovers himself. He stares hard at Bram and sees there is no point in denial. It is a moment before he asks quietly, “And does such a fact frighten you, Bram from Yorkshire?”

“It does not. No more than
your
being a witch frightens me.”

Mangan’s mouth opens and then closes again before a grin spreads slowly around his face, lifting his features, and erasing some of the hardship of recent years.

“My word, young man. You are every bit as remarkable as I knew you were. Knew from the very first moment we met, I did. That you were special. That you were destined for something … extraordinary.”

“I’ll second that!” Perry’s voice from the doorway startles them both. They turn to see him entering the studio carrying a tray of tea. Bram wonders how much of their conversation he has heard.

“Tea!” Mangan is horrified. “The man journeys from the north of our country, via Africa, if you please, he comes to see us, the returning hero and feted artist, and you offer him tea? Fetch a bottle of something, Peregrine, for pity’s sake. What will he think of us?”

“I will think that tea is perfectly acceptable, and that in any case there won’t be a thimbleful of brandy left in the house, as a bottle opened here is a bottle emptied, I seem to remember,” Bram tells him.

Mangan stares at him open-mouthed and then erupts into loud laughter, slapping him on the back, causing Bram to wince since his shoulder is still tender enough to suffer under such enthusiastic treatment.

“Your memory is both unforgiving and accurate, my young friend. Come, find a perch, tell me of these paintings of yours the whole town is talking about.”

And so the three of them sit and talk of art and inspiration and the challenge of marrying the two successfully. Bram can see that Mangan has indeed aged; that his skin has sagged a little beneath his cheekbones; that his wild hair has thinned some; that the blue of his eyes has faded a tone. But the man’s inner strength, his drive and his passion, still remain. The more they talk, the more animated he becomes. Perry fulfills his usual role of supporting his mentor. Bram wonders that he is content to be always the pupil and to never, apparently, push forward his own work.

He loves Mangan, that much is clear. Perhaps it is enough, to be a part of someone else’s genius instead of striving to reveal one’s own. I’m not sure it would be for me. Not now I have rediscovered the joy of painting.

Mangan turns the conversation to Bram’s exhibition. “And now you are to have your own show, and already the art world is abuzz with excitement at this new talent. Hah! As if we did not know what you were capable of. I wish you every success, young Bram,” he says, raising his chipped teacup in a toast. “It is hard-won and well-deserved. Enjoy your opening night.”

“But you will be there to celebrate with me, naturally.”

“Ah, it is good of you to think to include me in your moment of triumph, but I fear my presence there would be … unhelpful.”

“What?”

Perry leans forward. “You see, people are still a little sensitive about the war and about what others did or did not do…”

“But surely Mangan contributed in his own way. The farm laborers were essential.”

Mangan sighs. “Alas, there are not many that will view my actions in such a kindly light.”

Perry, for once, allows his feelings of irritation and frustration to show. “It really is too bad. Even people who have for so many years adored Mangan’s work, people who know him to be a man of integrity, they have turned against him.”