We're delighted to present an extract from Dark Enchantment by Dorothy Macardle, the latest in the
Recovered Voices series from Tramp Press, bringing neglected Irish authors back into print.
Exhausted after years of unhappiness, 20-year-old Juliet Cunningham is delighted to find herself living in a village in the French Alps. Recovering in the fresh air of the mountains, she becomes involved in local life. As Juliet makes new friends and meets fellow wanderers – such as the handsome young Michael – she hears of stories of witchery, of fortunes told, of spells, and murder … but are the rumours of the witch true, and can Juliet escape in time?
Juliet, half awake, kept her eyes shut, playing a childish game. She knew where she was – in a pet of a room, in the nicest, friendliest inn one could imagine, on the edge of a village out of a fairy tale. She pretended that was still at the school.
Eyes shut, breathing uneven and every muscle tense, she awaited the hateful clang of the bell. It would peal and clamour, wresting the girls from their beds.
'Elise, Elise, must you always lose your hair-ribbon? ... Ask for a slide nicely and don't squeal. Oh, Annette, your stocking laddered again! ... No, you can’t! Get out another pair.’ Not one of them would wash properly. They were all cross and headachy from sleeping with the windows closed and so was she ... Hurry, hurry, hurry! The break- fast bell! Weak coffee and bread in the basement. Pained glances from Madame Regnier because collars were rumpled or stockings twisted or hair untidy. And all the faults of all the eleven were Juliet’s fault.
The game stopped there. Imagination, seduced by the low, throaty gurgle of doves canoodling on the roods, let in the present, with its full, sweet astonishment. Juliet opened her eyes.
There it was, the small white and yellow room; the open window; far off, the wooded mountain behind which, yesterday, lying in bed, she had watched the sun going down like a golden wheel. A breeze was blowing the muslin curtains inward. The hands of her big watch were at twenty past seven. It was usually slow. She had slept enormously and all tiredness was gone.
Never again, Juliet vowed, would she let any fraction of her mind consent when people declared that all men were selfish and called her father ‘a charming egoist’. An egoist would have been furious with her. To make him come all this way and then to flop in a faint over the table and have to spend the day lying down! Even his ‘I warned you, didn’t I?’ had been not really cross, and he’d uttered not another reproachful word. Instead, he had made terms with the Loubiers, booked rooms here for the rest of their holiday, and gone all the way to Menton to return with their suitcases. Not a word about the expense.
Now, down below, doors were opened; buckets clattered on cobbles and water gushed. A quavering bleat rose, piteously repeated, and a girl’s voice mimicked it – ‘Mireille! Mireille!’
A step brought Juliet to her open window. She pulled her coolie coat on and stood unnoticed looking down. Young Madame Loubier was at work in a setting that Pieter de Hooch might have painted – everything was so trim and the colours were so soft and pure in the early light. The house and the wing built out from it on the south shadowed most of the yard, but the olive orchard beyond it, on the far side of a low wall and a lane, was flooded with the sunlight. A higher wall separated the yard from the street and in the far corner between the walls stood the dovecote where grey doves were fussing in and out. The goat had her stable in a wired-in cell that, with two others, composed the ground floor of the wing. Over them was an attic with curtained windows and a door from which an outside staircase ran down.
The young woman let the goat out, called to her to be milked, and sat waiting on the base of the pump. One could see that Mireille, with her silky, snow-white coat, was a spoilt and conceited pet. She greeted her mistress with playful buttings and curvettings and, during the milking, rested her head on the girl's shoulder with a comical look of patience on her sentimental face. Juliet watched, enjoying the comedy. When the goat, protesting, was shut in again, Madame Loubier placed a bucket under the spout and began to work the handle of the pump. From the attic a voice, low but imperious, ordered her to stop. Her husband, in shirt and trousers, his black hair touselled, came dashing down the suitcase like a bird of prey on a songbird, Juliet thought. His wife laughed, pretending to disobey, and he seized the handle, scolding her. Juliet listened, amused by the vehemence of his gesture, the urgency of his tirade. Never, never, must Martine attempt it! How could she forget? Was he a peasant that his wife should be permitted to injure herself with such heavy work?
He seized the handle and pumped with excessive energy, showing off, so that the bucket immediately overflowed. His wife, to tease him, made as if to lift it; he caught her by both elbows, held firmly and began to rebuke her and plead with her in tones so earnest and tender that Juliet turned away. Here was something nobody ought to spy on: something she had never before seen.
Dark Enchantment by Dorothy Macardle (published by Tramp Press) is out now.
