The Witch of Exmoor Read Online Free PDF Page B

being sister, wife, daughter, mother. I had better tell you. There she is, offering the carving dish for the dog to lick clean before she hands it to David at the sink. The dog licks and wags her tail gratefully. Gogo almost smiles at the dog and says, ‘Good girl’, in a superior but approving tone. She uses this tone to man, woman, child and beast. Gogo is a consultant neurologist at a hospital in Bloomsbury. That disapproving look comes from examining the slices of other people’s brains. She frightens her patients and her colleagues. She is an excellent wife for an aspiring politician. Had David D’Anger constructed her from a range of spare sample parts, he could never have come up with anything as convincing as this. She surpasses imagination. Nobody could have invented Gogo. Not even Nathan could have designed a Wife Image as plausible, as venerable, as alarming as Gogo. And she is only forty-two.
    Compared with Gogo, young Rosemary, who is forty, is a lightweight, though of course nobody dares to say so, for she takes herself very seriously, and after all she is a Palmer and English and a good deal more respectable in appearance and behaviour than her husband. You were warm when you thought she might be something to do with the media–she is the right generation to choose such a career, and unlike the others she looks as though she may have some sense of what is going on in the ephemeral world of fashion. She probably knows the names of designer clothes, and could tell you which restaurants are in vogue. She knows the language of the day. So you will not be surprised to hear that she is the Programme Co-ordinator for one of the largest arts complexes in the country. She is in charge of a large budget. Theatre, music, art and dance all bow and beg to her.
    So there you have them. The dishwasher churns on into a noisier mode, and Patsy puts the kettle upon the tray. Yes, there you have them–Daniel and Patsy Palmer, David and Gogo D’Anger, Nathan and Rosemary Hera–for Nathan has sneaked back in again, his fag ends in his pocket. (He extricates them and drops them, discreetly, into the wastebin–the wrong wastebin, for it is the one Patsy reserves for compost, but how is he to know?) The middle classes of England. Is there any hope whatsoever, or any fear, that anything will change? Would any of them wish for change? Given a choice between anything more serious than decaffeinated coffee or herbal tea, would they dare to choose? As Nathan had considered as he walked the lawn, they are all of them already, irrevocably, halfway up to their necks in the mud of the past of their own lives. Not even a mechanical digger could get them out alive now. There are no choices. The original position has been for ever lost.
    We have forgotten about Simon and Emily. Where have they gone? They have taken themselves off to the small sitting-room where they are watching a horrible video, one of Patsy’s specials. They find it entertaining, but not quite entertaining enough. They yawn. They had talked of having a play with Emily’s new computer game, Simcity, but although Emily is game to redesign her last fantasy conurbation, Simon seems to have lost interest. He never wants to concentrate on anything for long. He lacks perseverance.
    Simon is at Oxford, at one of the wealthier colleges, reading History, or so his family believe. Emily is still at school, in the sixth form, sitting her A-Levels, and after them, whatever her results, she will take a year off, and her first solitary trip abroad. Simon and Emily are only ankle-deep in their lives as yet. Perhaps not even that. But the mud pulls and sucks.
    The dog is called Jemima. She is an elderly, overweight Dalmatian. I don’t suppose you need to know that. I don’t suppose the Palmers need a dog. But they’ve got one.
    A family weekend in Hampshire. Tennis has been played. They all play, except for Nathan. And, despite all, at this