‘Well, what’s money to you, when I’m going to leave you a million pounds?’ she retorted. ‘You must do as I ask, or I shall never sleep peacefully again. That girl killed herself, didn’t she?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes.’
‘Then she must not be allowed to
So I bought the doll — it was, as I had anticipated, extremely expensive — and took it to Aunt Eglantine. On the bed was a tangle of wool, some of it black, some of it orange.
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘you don’t want to dabble in this kind of thing. Chaucer’s Madame Eglantine would never have dreamed of such heathen goings-on.’
‘Witchcraft must be met with witchcraft,’ said the old lady. ‘I hope you cut the holly and did not buy it.’
‘Anthony had a tree in his garden.’
‘You will have to glue this wool on to the doll’s head when I’ve teased it out a bit more.’ I sat silent while her old fingers pulled at and fluffed up the wool. Then she told me what I was to do with the doll, but after my dream, which had been detailed and extraordinarily vivid, I could not face Belas Knap again. I took the box containing the holly-pierced doll to Uley. I did not ask for the key to the long barrow, for the last thing I wanted was to advertise my presence in the neighbourhood on this occasion. I put the box, with the orange-and-black-haired doll in it, under my arm. Then I got out of the car and walked alongside the big field to Hetty Pegler’s Tump. I laid the box down on Hetty Pegler’s whale-like side and extracted the doll. Then I wondered whether Aunt Eg had intended me to use the box as a coffin (a curious tie-up here with my dream), but, as I doubted whether Neolithic man had concerned himself with coffins, I slung the box and then its lid over the rounded hump of the long barrow and laid the parti- colour-haired doll on the miry ground, wedged up against the wooden door of the burial mound. I knew I should have to lie to Miss Eglantine, but, even if I had had a key to the place, nothing on earth would have induced me to open up and put the pierced body of Gloria Mundy’s representative inside that ghost-haunted long barrow.
I trusted that rain and the Cotswold snow would soon do their worst to the doll, and so render it an unacceptable object for any innocent child to pick up and cherish.
—«»—«»—«»—
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[A 3S Release— v1, html]
[November 24, 2006]
