Ross Gilfillan - The Snake-Oil Dickens Man

I don’t know when I first encountered Merriweather but he seems a part of every memory I have of my new existence at the hotel. My life was quite suddenly, utterly changed. It seemed no stranger to be working my hands to the bone in the role of unpaid factotum to a hotelier than it did to find myself receiving personal tuition from Elijah Putnam, who had retired from his position as schoolteacher and had taken rooms in the Particular, to which I repaired every day.

But it wasn’t the work, exhausting as it always was, that made my days so miserable. I think I could have borne that well and enjoyed some parts of it, too, had I known that Merriweather were not always somewhere about the building, ready to box my ears or make threats of violence that would be directed not at me but at someone else and these I feared more than anything Merriweather might do to me.

I knew that the woman who worked mostly in the laundry and whom I sometimes caught stealing along the corridors was my mother. She cut the strangest figure of the establishment. It wasn’t just her worn-out appearance: she was taller than her posture suggested, her hands wrinkled from her work, rather than by nature, although what age she had then attained was hard to guess. Her clothes were patched and stained and she and they smelt strongly of the wash-house.

What was more extraordinary was the way she carried herself – like a whipped animal. She kept closely to herself and could even sometimes be heard running ahead of footfalls in an effort to conceal herself from any approach. She rarely met a glance and her eyes that were normally cast down were often shielded anyway by the wild mess of lank locks that fell about and often concealed her physiognomy. It could be a shock for a stranger to catch her with her face unobscured and find that she was actually pretty.

I discovered that this was my mother not long after I moved from Elijah’s house to the Particular Hotel. I had been helping Mary Ann, the cook’s girl, to knead the dough. The kitchen was warm with the baking and Merriweather, whom I had already identified as an enemy to children, was playing at cards in the saloon. I was happy to be there with Mary Ann. She wasn’t more than a few years older than I was and had become my only ally in this inhospitable place.

There was fun to be had when Cook wasn’t about and as she was napping, the bread-making had become a great game. Water was splashed and flour was spilt. Just as we were becoming so riotous that Mary was saying ‘Hush, you’ll wake Cook’, I caught sight of a figure in the corner of my eye and stopped everything, fearing Cook or Merriweather had caught us fooling.

But it was the woman I had seen skulking in the corridors. She hastened through the kitchen and out into the yard. Mary Ann looked up from her dough and muttered something like, ‘They hanged the witches at Salem,’ and giggled. I was shocked.

‘Is she a witch?’ I asked. She certainly looked like one.

‘Aye and a terrible one at that,’ said Mary Ann. ‘You seen all them cats in the graveyard?’ I had. There was a whole colony of feral cats there. ‘Them’s her families and she dances nekkid with ’em on dead men’s graves, come a moonlit night.’

‘Has she ever put a spell on you?’ I asked, terrified to find such awful danger so imminent.

‘She sure has. Turned me into a bullfrog one day and I had to hop all the way to th’pothecary, get some help.’

I don’t know if we were overheard or whether chance had played its part but when we looked through the door the woman was to be seen sweeping the back porch.

‘She’s got a broom too!’ I exclaimed, weak with horror.

‘I’m so scared I could just faint,’ said Mary Ann. ‘I never seen her with her magic broom afore. Likely she’ll murder us here or take us with her on her broom and do it in the forest. Oh, Billy, help me!’

‘What can I do?’ I said, scared stiff but unwilling to let down my only friend. ‘Shall I get a gun?’

‘Guns is no good ’ginst witches,’ said Mary Ann. ‘You gotta go right up to them and look straight into their eyes. Then you gotta say, “Listen, witch, to this my spell, get thee gone or burn in hell.” And then you says, “Begone old hag, begone!”’

‘You sure?’ I asked, and Mary Ann said it had never failed yet and the last witch they had, vanished in a cloud of smoke.

From where we had ducked down under the kitchen table, I could see the woman passing and repassing the door, sweeping the fall leaves back onto the yard. I had no doubt that this was indeed a powerful witch who might at any moment look up from her labours and make me into one of the hogs which were then squealing beyond the stoop.

I looked at Mary Ann who was pouting and appearing awfully frightened and I knew what I must do. I emerged from under the table and edged about the kitchen to where the door stood open. I looked once again at Mary Ann who signalled me to go on. Mustering my courage, I stepped out on the porch. There was no one there. Relief flooded my soul. ‘She ain’t here, Mary Ann,’ I called. ‘That witch musta seen me coming and took flight.’

Then the woman, who had been around the side of the house, turned the corner and looked at me. Her hair had been brushed off her face, whose still-youthful appearance seemed ill-fitted to her crone’s hands and stooped posture. Her green eyes were unusually bright and, to me, menacing. There was nothing to do but defend myself. I said something that approximated the incantation Mary Ann had taught me. I don’t know exactly what but it seems to me I called her a witch and an old hag more often than had been prescribed.

She remained where she was, still looking intently at me. I wondered if I had transfixed her and whether at any moment she might disappear in smoke. The spell seemed to be taking hours to work and I said, ‘Get thee gone, hag,’ louder and louder and still she stood there. Maybe in my panic I was finally shouting the words because the next thing I knew, Merriweather was standing by me, looking mightily amused and saying, ‘So you’ve met your mother, have you?’

I hardly need to tell you that I was terrifically shocked at this fantastic revelation. I , the son of that monstrosity? I had known that Elijah and Mrs Putnam were not my natural parents, whom I had vaguely understood were both dead. To find that my mother existed under the same roof and that she was as I saw her was a shock of cataclysmic proportions.

I was revolted but whether by her weird appearance and my newly-discovered relationship to her or by my stupid and heartless behaviour, I was too young to know. Whichever it was, such was the revulsion I felt that I concurred willingly with Merriweather’s dictate that I should at all times avoid her society.

And so, for the first year or so, I saw little of the woman they told me was my mother. I worked as usual, performing the same routine chores and becoming adept at anticipating what needed to be done to keep the business running smoothly. Merriweather let up on beating me and began to lean on me instead. I won’t say I was happy but I was becoming accustomed to my lot. But sometimes, as I performed some mechanical and dull task such as blacking the boots of the guests, I would be unable to stop my mind from returning to that woman and wondering about my own origins. But this was never productive and my curiosity stopped short of breaking Merriweather’s injunction and overcoming my own disgust, to talk to the woman herself. Besides, I had much to occupy me now and the times at which I had leisure to consider the oddities of my birth were few. Increasingly, I found my evenings taken up with the hours of tuition I was receiving from Elijah Putnam.

Boys will accept a status quo easily, especially when they have never known anything different and I don’t think I ever properly questioned why Elijah Putnam had singled me out for special attention at his school. Perhaps I assumed that it was because of the affection I was due as his ward. Nor did I find it strange that upon the death of his wife, he should throw up his position of schoolmaster and move into the rooms on the second floor of the Particular Hotel.