Chapter 2: A Favour
Nothing happened in the following few days. I went to work, came home, watched television, went to bed, went to work again the following morning. I watched the telephone like a hawk in case Selkie might call despite the fact that I had not given her my number. I watched the platform at Whitton every day as I went through but never saw sign of her, her mother, or the two men. I carefully timed my journey to always get that same train home. I looked up 'witches' and 'the office of the witch finder general' on the internet but found nothing that was of the slightest use. I bought more beer, the flatmate drank most of it, I still drank too much of it. It continued to rain. The weekend eventual deigned to roll around. Nothing happened.
Saturday, watching nothing at all of interest on the television, that same bloody novel open in my lap, I said to the flatmate, 'fuck this, lets go to the pub.'
He groaned sleepily. 'Maybe.'
'No, come on, I'm going stir crazy sitting here.'
'Could do. I'm a bit short this month.'
'I'll pay. We'll go for lunch.'
'In that case¦' he said, but still didn't move.
I threw my book at him. 'Get your lazy arse off the sofa soldier.'
He staggered up to something approaching the vertical. 'Okay, okay,' he said, 'I'll go put some shoes on.'
I stood up and turned off the television. There was a knock at the door.
It was Selkie, she was out without a coat and soaking wet and shivering.
'Christ,' I exclaimed, 'it's you.'
'Most of me,' she said, 'can I come in?'
'Yes, yes, come in. I'll err¦ I'll get you a towel.' I fussed her through into the kitchen and sat her down and then ran upstairs, found my closest to clean towel and gave it to her. She rubbed her hair vigorously.
'I've probably got some dry clothes you could fit in to somewhere.'
'That's okay,' she said from beneath the towel.
'It would just be for a while, we can stick yours in the dryer.'
She lifted the towel and looked down at where her polo-neck clung closely to her chest. She lifted it away from her skin but it sucked straight back down again.
'Actually yes,' she said, 'that is a good idea.' She dropped the towel over her shoulders.
I found her a t-shirt, a thick knit sweater, and a pair of combat trousers I had barely ever worn since buying them. She changed in the bathroom and then, rather coyly I thought, would not let me handle her wet clothes, demanding to be directed to the dryer.
'Tea?' I offered. She nodded her head and the towel, which she had wrapped around her hair turban style, wobbled precariously.
She sat down at the kitchen table. 'I need to ask you another favour,' she said.
'Shoot.'
'In a moment, when you've made the tea.'
I busied myself watching the kettle and the flatmate walked in the room. 'I couldn't find any socks,' he said, 'so I invented a way of using pants instead.'
He lifted each foot in turn, each of which appeared to have been stuffed uncomfortably inside his shoes along with two or three differently coloured boxer shorts.
'Well¦' I said, but he wasn't listening.
'Hey Mitchell,' he said, 'there's a woman in here.'
'This is Selkie,' I said, 'Selkie, Bob the flatmate, Bob, Selkie.'
He looked at her quizzically.
'Selkie's the girl I was telling you about, from the train.'
'Oh yeah,' said the flatmate, and stuck out his hand. She shook it in the normal style, with only the one of hers. The flatmate asked her, 'how old are you?'
'Twenty eight.'
He gave me a proud look, and then his face dropped. 'I suppose this means we're not going to the pub.'
'Probably not, no.'
'Oh well,' he said, 'in that case I will get to work, these socks are not perfect, they're kind of tight.'
'Tea?' I asked.
'Please.'
I put an extra bag in the pot and poured the water.
'Milk and sugar please,' said Selkie without being asked. 'Lots of both.' I put all the ingredients on the table and let her help herself.
I sat down opposite. 'So,' I said, 'this favour.'
'Something's up,' she said, 'we don't know what. I need you to drive me to Salisbury Plain.'
'Salisbury Plain?'
'Yes.'
'Today?'
'Please.'
'Why?'
'I told you, I don't know.'
I nodded. She had said 'we'. 'You said "we, "we don't know.'
'I did?'
'Who's "we?'
'That's um¦' she bit her lip, 'can I answer that question later?'
I shrugged. 'I can't force you.'
'Sorry.'
'So something is up,' I said, 'but you don't know what?'
'That's right.'
'What makes you think it's up, this something.'
'Little things,' she said, 'signs, suspicious behaviour. Somebody must have shopped me to those men on the train.'
'Signs?' I said, remembering this was a woman who was supposedly a witch, 'what sort of signs?'
'Just small ones at the moment,' she said, 'it's rained for five days straight but it always stops at twenty minutes to and twenty minutes after the hour.'
'It does?'
'It took us a long time to notice, it only stops for a minute or two, but it does it every time.'
'That's it,' I said, 'no calves being born with two heads, nothing like that?'
'Every train to Liverpool Street yesterday was exactly two minutes late.' She hid an apologetic smile behind her mug of tea.
'Every train?'
'Yes.'
'Exactly two minutes?'
'Yes.'
'And nothing more traditional, tealeaves and the like.'
'We could try if you like,' she said, gesturing to the teapot.
'It's bags,' I said and remembered that the flatmate had wanted a cup, I poured it for him and shouted the single syllable 'tea'. He answered with an entirely syllable free noise.
Selkie said 'bags will do' and took the pot from me. She emptied the last of the tea into her own mug, swirled the pot around, lifted the lid and looked inside. She shrugged and showed it to me. It was just three tea bags in a tea pot.
'Means nothing to me,' I said.
'Me neither,' she said, 'like I say, we don't know what's up.'
I drank my tea and looked at her.
She said 'you think I'm mad, don't you?'
I was trying to think of a polite way to answer that question when the flatmate walked into the room carrying a notebook and a biro. 'I'm on to something now,' he said, 'this one is going to be good.'
I handed him his tea and peered over to see what he had written in the notebook that was so good, but he quickly hid it from me. 'No, no,' he said, 'my muse must work in secrecy for the time being, but you will be the first to know.' He spooned two sugars into his tea, stirred it with his pen, and left.
'I think he's mad.' I said. Selkie smiled. 'And I saw how you hid from those men on the train. And but for that I'd think you were even madder.'
'And will you drive me to Salisbury?'
'Will I be back in time for work on Monday?'
'Oh yes. We'll come back today.'
'Oh well,' I said, 'I'll do it anyway.'
She smiled a smile that I would have driven her to Moscow and back for, and said 'thank you Mitchell.'
We both drank our tea.
It took another forty minutes till Selkie's clothes were dry enough to wear. She revealed that her mother had gone to Salisbury Plain yesterday to see what was 'up' and had not been in touch. I was the only person she knew with a car. I asked her the one other thing that had been on my mind since she arrived, why was she out without a coat, and she just shrugged and said she had left in a hurry. On everything else of note, she was as evasive as ever. We ended up talking about my television, I don't quite know how that happened.
While she changed back into her own clothes I found her a spare raincoat and said goodbye to the flatmate, he was pacing about the living room tapping his pen against his teeth and occasionally rushing back to his notebook to jot down something important. I left him to it.
As we set off in the driving rain I remembered that I had not had lunch. 'Have you had your lunch?' I asked Selkie.
'No,' she said. 'I haven't eaten since yesterday.'
'Do you want to stop for something on the way.' She looked unsure, anxious to get on. 'Or just pick up some sandwiches,' I suggested.
'Sandwiches would be good.'
It stopped raining twice on the journey, at both exactly twenty minutes after two, and twenty minute to three, and only for a couple of minutes each time before resuming with increased vigour as if the rain had simply been delayed on it's way down.
We reached Stonehenge at about three o-clock. I could not tell you how many tourists the rain had kept away because I have never actually been there before, on a sunny day or a rainy one, at that time of year or during summer, but the car park was nearly half full, which made me suspect that most people just came whatever the weather. I remarked upon the fact to Selkie.
'They're being drawn,' she said.
'They're being what?'
'They're being drawn here, they can sense something's up subconsciously and they immediately head for the nearest important place. It'll all be people on their own.'
'Why people on their own?'
'Because you need to be on your own to sense that sort of thing, unless you know what your listening for, and people with a family tend to have better things to do on a Saturday afternoon anyway. Plus there's the disbelief thing.'
'The disbelief thing?'
'When you watch a scary movie by yourself it's easy to believe in what you are seeing, monsters, that sort of thing, but if you are with another person it's much harder.' I parked the car and she turned to face me, looking serious. 'People are all connected, not by any silly psychic mumbo jumbo, but by the normal five senses, well not taste so much,' she blushed, 'not to everyone anyway. Think of it like a big net, all these people connected with each other. It's that net that binds you to reality, to sanity if you like, if it weakens, say because you live alone and don't see other people much, especially at the weekend, it's easier for you to become uncoupled from the real world, you can believe in things, and you can sense things, that you could not with another person around. Why do you think spiritual men are often hermits and monks take vows of silence?'
She stopped, waiting for an actual answer. 'To be closer to God,' I suggested.
'To be further away from this.' She knocked her knuckles against the dashboard of the car. 'Which is the same thing in its way.'
'So all these people,' I said, looking round at the parked cars, many of them, indeed, had solitary people sitting in the drivers seats, perhaps waiting for the rain to stop. 'All these people are somehow sensitive to what? Psychic phenomena.'
'Psychic, magic, supernatural, mystical, these are just throwaway words that don't really mean anything. If something actually exists then by definition it can't be any of those things, and there are people here, so the effect does exist.'
'So what is it?'
'It's the world,' she said, 'and it's people.' She paused, and looked away out of the window, thinking. Then she turned back to me and rested both hands, one on top of the other, on my knee. 'Listen,' she said, 'there have been some effects, like the rain thing, that most people don't know to watch for, but they notice them anyway, subconsciously. This makes them curious, they suspect that something strange is going on. They don't have the words for it so they call it magical, mystical, supernatural. And they know that Stonehenge is a mystical place. They know it because they've learnt it, culturally, and because it's iconic, because the shape of it stirs something inside of them. So they say, lets go to Stonehenge, and those of them who have wives or husbands, the wives or husbands say "don't be stupid, it's raining, so they don't come, only the ones who live alone make it.'
'So what is Stonehenge?'
'Just some rocks, arranged into a pleasing shape.'
'You said it stirred something inside people. Not some primitive memory.'
'Who knows. It's the effect that's important, an iconic structure is powerful in its own right. It's the effect that's important not the edifice. That's what the hippies always get wrong. They are too quick to take people out of the equation. Listen, the human tendency to¦' She tailed off, her attention caught by something in the car park. 'Oh crap,' she said.
'What?'
'See that man there,' she pointed to a man in a raincoat leaning down by a car window talking to the occupant. 'He just walked over from another car.'
'So?'
'I told you, everyone here is here alone, why would he go talk to that person.'
'Any reason,' I said, 'perhaps he wants a light.'
'No, they're both in suits and raincoats and they're both driving dark saloons. It's the government, they're watching this place.'
I peered at the man she was talking about. 'Don't look,' she squeaked urgently. 'We already look suspicious enough because there's two of us.' She put her face in her hands. 'How could I be so stupid, Stonehenge is fat too obvious, of course they'd be here.' She turned to me and said 'come on, let's go.'
'Where.'
'Avebury,' she said, 'it's just as good but nobody ever thinks of it because it's just up the road from here.'
'Aren't we going to look for your mother.'
'If they're here, she's not. Avebury is a good bet. We should have gone there first anyway. If I'd have been thinking straight.'
'Okay,' I said and started the engine.
She squinted at the two men. 'Are they the same two?' she asked, 'I can't tell.'
'Same two as what?'
'From the train.'
'I don't know.'
She said 'I'd better hide just in case,' and ducked down into the passengers foot-well, curling up into a ball.
I looked down at her, feeling a little exasperated by all this, and drove out of the car park. 'Which way to Avebury?'
'Turn right,' she whispered.
I turned right, windscreen wipers working double time, neither of the men seemed to give me a second glance.
'You can probably get up now.'
Selkie climbed awkwardly back into the seat. 'There's too many army bases round here,' she said, it's bound to be a section fourteen zone.'
'A what?'
'A section fourteen zone, don't you watch the news.'
'Obviously not that particular article.'
'Section forty-four of the anti terrorism act, in certain zones important to national security they can arrest you and search you without evidence. It's basically a license for a police state.'
'So are you a lefty activist as well as a witch?'
'No,' she said, sounding offended, 'just a concerned citizen. You don't think it's a bit draconian, the right to detain and search who they feel like.'
'Like you say, only in certain places. I can see how that would be necessary.'
'Do you know where these place are?'
'I didn't even know they existed until you told me.'
'London is one.'
'Oh,' I said, 'well does seem a bit drastic.'
She turned away from me and looked out of the window, doubtlessly disappointed with my inadequate liberal credentials. I indicated the road atlas sitting on the back seat. 'You'd better tell me where to go,' I said, 'I've never even heard of this place.'
