Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (7 page)

T
HE FOLLOWING day the people in the village who subscribed to
The Daily Courier
were surprised to see a leading article headed “Mad Village,” giving a lurid description of the last few minutes of the butcher’s life and a not quite so lurid description of the miller’s end. The article ended with the words, “The inhabitants of this remote village are asking each other ‘Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?’”

This article caused a panic in the village. Already there was another case of violent madness. The victim this time was the man who had helped Ebin Willoweed on the bridge—the man who had complained of nightmares. He lay screaming in his bed and his two brothers had to hold him down. They had tried drugs; they only acted for a short period and then he would start up in bed again yelling that monsters were trying to devour him and that he was a wicked sinner. People gathered outside his cottage on the Broom Road. The cries made their blood run cold, they said, and they did not ask each other “Who’s next?” because they had already decided it would be Ebin Willoweed. It must be catching, they said, as they moved a little further from the cottage. Notices appeared in prominent places saying, “Do not Drink Water Unless It has Been Boiled,”—“Trying to pretend it’s the water when we know it’s the microbes,” they muttered. That evening reporters from two newspapers appeared in the village, asking questions and generally prying. They stayed at the White Lion.

Francis Hatt and the Medical Officer of Health were furious when they read the article in
The Daily Courier
. Francis suspected Ebin Willoweed the moment he read it. It could have only been written by an eye-witness; also he remembered
The Daily Courier
was the newspaper from which Ebin had been dismissed when he first returned to his mother’s house years ago. At lunch the previous day Ebin had muttered something about a phone call and had reluctantly offered him half-a-crown, which he had refused at the time and now regretted. He was not free now to attack Ebin with his disgraceful behaviour, as the poor demented man on the Broom Road was taking a considerable amount of his time and there were several other patients, mostly suffering from internal trouble, to be attended to, besides frequent discussions with the Medical Officer of Health. They decided to engage a temporary assistant, and a young man from London who had been specialising in brain diseases was on his way to the village. “But I expect the whole thing will be over by the time he arrives,” the Medical Officer observed.

The assistant—Philip Andrew—arrived the next day, and by that time there were two more cases of the madness, two unrelated children. Their illness had started with stomach trouble; but, when they had almost recovered, their brains became affected. They moaned and shouted, and screamed that terrible monsters were pursuing them, and they clung to their parents in terror. Their poor little legs were drawn up to their stomachs by violent pains, and they frequently vomited. The man who lived on the Broom Road appeared to be recovering, although he was very weak and could take little nourishment and still suffered from hallucinations and insomnia.

There was a joint inquest on the miller and the butcher. It was held at the Assembly Rooms and Ebin was one of the chief witnesses. It was noticed that when he was not giving evidence he was scribbling away on a small pad on his knees. The other journalists were scribbling too. The doctors frowned on them for bringing unwelcome publicity and causing alarm in the village. When the inquest was over, Francis Hatt asked his old friend why he was doing this and pointed out the harm he had done and ended with “Can’t you see the village is almost on the verge of mass hysteria?”—and then he regretted the words in case they were scribbled down too. Ebin looked bewildered and hurt and said he had to do it: he couldn’t have stopped himself writing the first article; it just came pouring out as if it was writing itself and then, when it was finished, it seemed a pity to waste it. And the
Courier
had been really pleased with it, and wanted anything he could write about the epidemic.

“Francis, you can’t think what it is like to be earning money after all these years. To be working again. Do you know I keep touching wood—and it has to be real wood, not painted. The end of the pencil does quite well. I haven’t told my mother yet because I know somehow she would put a stop to it; you see, she likes to have me under her thumb. Francis, I’m sorry about it causing panic in the village, but it would have leaked out eventually; this inquest would have drawn attention to it, for one thing!” And the doctor had to agree that this was true, and suddenly gave Ebin one of his dazzling smiles, and they left the assembly rooms together.

Grandmother Willoweed sat in the morning-room eating a honeycomb out of a bowl on her lap. As she licked the wooden frame with her tongue, she bitterly regretted the day she had announced that she would not cross ground that was not her property. At the time she had wondered if she was making a mistake; but it had appeared such a grand gesture and it had seemed unlikely then that she would ever particularly wish to enter the village again. She had a very good view of the main street from the boot-room window with its coloured windowpanes of glass. She spent many an amusing half-hour in there with the galoshes and old black boots for company.

But now she felt unhappy. For one thing the honey had become mixed up in her chins and she felt miserably sticky; and she was disturbed by Ebin’s behaviour since the catastrophe of the butcher. He had told her so little about it, in fact he had hardly spoken to her for days and had become strangely independent, sitting up in his room typing away; now he had been asked to attend the inquest, and when he returned would he tell his mother anything about it? she wondered. He was undoubtedly becoming conceited and out of hand. The old lady picked some beeswax out of her teeth as she pondered on ways of putting her son in his place and brightened up a little when she decided to put the maids on to spring cleaning his room. He couldn’t sit up there in haughty isolation under those conditions. She chuckled to herself and felt happier. But if only she had been free to wander in the village and hear the screams coming out of cottage windows and perhaps even help nurse one of the unfortunate afflicted. She would dearly love to see someone who believed they were being pursued by monsters. So far there had only been five cases, but there would be more; she was confident there would be more. One of the maids might become a victim, or even Old Ives. The thought of Old Ives being devoured by imaginary monsters cheered her up considerably, and she trotted off to the potting-shed to see if he looked at all queer; but she found him looking very well, sorting out some seeds he had been drying. She wasn’t very pleased with the way he looked at her and asked how she was feeling.

It was Norah’s afternoon off, and she was wearing her shiny new blue dress to visit Fig’s mother; and she knew that if he was free in time Fig would see her home. He would not say very much except to remark on the crops as they passed them in the fields; but he would take her arm, and she would be filled with pride and happiness. It was an acknowledged fact now in the village that they were walking out. It had been one of the chief topics of conversation, combined with the doctor’s yellow car; but now the only subject of interest seemed to be the madness that had descended upon them. As Nora passed the Assembly Rooms, the people who had attended the inquest surged out into the street; and then when she crossed the bridge she passed the spot where the poor butcher had committed suicide and saw the sand which still covered his blood. When she reached the cottage, Mrs. Fig, as the village layer-out, could talk of nothing else.

“Mind you, I love a beautiful corpse as much as anyone; but there is something about a suicide, especially one with his throat cut!” she chattered in her sad little voice, and Norah felt that, even if Fig saw her home, the afternoon was ruined.

Eunice at Willoweed House was glad Norah was out of the way and she could lie on their bed and feel sick and grieve for herself. She had been very sick in the sink that morning—fortunately before Norah came down—and she thought she knew why she felt this way. She remembered the afternoon in the hayfield and another evening in an orchard when the blossom was still on the apple trees—and now little apples had already formed. “And I know what has formed inside me,” the poor girl cried, “it’s a baby as sure as fate”; and she felt her breasts and already they seemed to be enlarged. Then she put her hand on her stomach; but that remained quite flat. Slightly reassured she whispered, “Please God, don’t let me have a baby, even if I deserve one, don’t let it come.” She remembered her mother in her coffin with the little waxen baby lying beside her—and Norah had cried and called it a poor little thing, but she had hated it because it had killed her mother. Perhaps she would die too if she had a baby; “but I’m young and I don’t want to die yet. Oh, why is it so hard to be good when you are young?” she asked herself.

She left the bed and sat on the window-sill; and through the fir trees she could see glimpses of the village street and remembered how she had watched from that window so often just to get a sight of the top of Joe’s cap as he drove past with the hay cart. And sometimes on Sunday she had seen him pushing his ailing wife in a borrowed wicker bath-chair. She could tell he was shy of pushing the chair, because he only used one hand and kept laughing and joking with his wife in a self-conscious manner. But it was kind of him to take his wife out like that—he was a kind man—but his kindness could be little help to her now.

Emma had taken the children on the river, and they had been fishing with the grubs from a wasp’s nest Ives had given them. They ate cherries from a basket as they fished, and spat the stones into the water and watched their progress out of sight. “Perhaps even the cherries are contaminated,” thought Emma, “but they wouldn’t have enjoyed them if they had been boiled first.” Since she had heard of the two children in the village who were suffering from the madness Emma had been in an agony of mind in case it came to Hattie and Dennis. Dennis in particular, whom she loved so dearly and who was so dependent upon her. Although Hattie was younger, she was such a cheerful, independent child, Emma had not such strong feelings for her; she was her father’s favourite, and Emma almost hated her father and was disgusted and terrified of her grandmother. The only person she had to love was Dennis—and the dim lovers of her imagination.

That evening the baker’s wife ran down the village street in a tattered pink nightgown. She screamed as she ran.

T
HE BAKER and Old Toby pursued the demented woman through the village street; but the baker was small and Toby old and she kept far ahead of them, swearing and shouting as she ran. All day she had been behaving strangely, saying she had pains in her stomach, and then drinking and muttering to herself and vomiting. Eventually the baker had persuaded her to go to bed and she had seemed a little calmer, so the worried man returned to his baking of funeral meats and rye bread, for the great joint funeral for the butcher and miller, which was taking place the following day. Toby was standing by his master admiring an enormous pie he was painting with egg yoke when the screams started, and the men exchanged startled glances and ran to the bakery door just in time to see a figure in a pink nightdress running through the open front door. The baker made a grab at his wife who gave him a great push and shouted, “You are the Devil—you bloody devil!” and rushed away leaving part of her nightgown in his hand. Toby helped the baker from the ground and they both ran after the yelling woman, who leapt and staggered through the village, as if she was on wires. People screamed and ran into their houses. Others put their heads out of windows; children started to cry. But no one came to the baker’s aid. When she reached the bridge she stopped for a moment by the White Lion, where only yesterday she had been drinking and laughing with the journalists. One of these journalists was standing by the swing doors of the saloon bar; and he took one startled look at the wild and terrible woman and ran into the closet and locked the door. She stood tottering and put her hands to her stomach and started to retch; then she saw her husband and Toby bearing down on her and yelled in a dreadful deep voice, “Leave me alone, you devils! Oh, leave me alone!” She lurched off down the street towards Willoweed house. When she reached the huge green back-gates she clawed at them like a demented animal, and suddenly they burst open and she staggered into the yard.

The white cat, which had happily been playing with a leaf, rushed away and tore up a trunk of a beech tree and, as the baker came running into the yard, leapt to a branch, missed and fell. It fell on the unfortunate screaming woman below and clawed her bare shoulders. A look of such demented horror came over her face; then her jaws began to clamp and she fell to the ground in a fit with the cat below her. The husband, followed by the old, scarred man, stood at the gates and saw her long white legs writhing; and then she was quite still. The baker seemed dazed, stumbled to her assistance; but there was little he could do except send Toby for the doctor. He took off his apron to make some kind of pillow for the poor creature’s head and tried to pull the torn nightgown to cover the still legs; and he carefully wiped the foam from her lips with his floury handkerchief. While he was looking hopefully at the house windows and wondering if anyone would come to his assistance, Norah came running from the kitchen crying.

“Oh, Mr. Emblyn, I’ll come and help you in a moment; but my sister has fainted. She saw it all from the window and is that shocked. Oh, dear!” And the girl ran back to her unconscious sister lying on the stone kitchen floor. Then there was a sound of stumping boots and Grandmother Willoweed appeared in the yard and exclaimed, “Good God! Whatever is all this? Is the woman drunk?”

The overwhelmed baker tried to give an account of what had happened, which was difficult because the old lady constantly interrupted him, and he had difficulty with the ear trumpet. He ended his muddled explanations with, “Oh, ma’m, if only I could have a blanket for my poor wife, she feels so strangely cold.”