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About the Book

Walwyk seemed a dream village to the new schoolteacher, Miss Mayfield. But dreams can turn into nightmares.

When it becomes clear that one of her pupils is being abused by her grandmother, Miss Mayfield is determined to do something about it. But Ethel won’t say anything, despite the evidence of Miss Mayfield’s own eyes, and someone seems to be actively discouraging her from investigating further. As she tries to get to the truth of the matter, however, Miss Mayfield stumbles on something far more sinister: Walwyk is in the grip of a centuries-old evil, and anybody who questions events in the village does not last long.

Death stalks more than one victim, and Miss Mayfield begins to realise that if she’s not careful, she will be the next to die...

First published in 1960, The Witches was made into a classic Hammer film in 1966, starring Joan Fontaine and directed by Cyril Frankel, who has written an exclusive foreword for this new edition.

About the Author

Peter Curtis is the pseudonym for Norah Lofts, a distinguished historical novelist whose books are still in print today. She died in 1983.

Title Page

PETER CURTIS

Foreword by Cyril Frankel

I entered the film industry soon after retiring as a major from the Reconnaissance Armoured Car Division. One of my earliest films, made in 1953, was Man of Africa, which was filmed in the hilly district of Kigezi in Uganda. It was the first film made with an entirely African cast. It was whilst I was in Africa that I saw firsthand the influence of witchcraft on the tribes I worked with during filming. I talked to village elders and learnt that they practised witchcraft in the event of domestic upheaval and conflict. As such it was part of their everyday life.

When I returned to England my agent Dennis Van Thal told me that the world famous actress Joan Fontaine had arrived in London with a script and was seeking a director, and that he had recommended we meet. Having been a passionate film goer since childhood, I had of course seen Joan Fontaine’s Oscar winning role in Rebecca, so I was honoured to have been considered. I cannot recall exactly what we talked about, but whatever it was we must have seen eye-to-eye because after the meeting Joan told Van Thal that she would be happy for me to direct The Witches. It was an incredible moment for me, especially as, until then, the one star I had worked with was Googie Withers, who was a delightful, relaxed actress.

At the time my only experience of English witchcraft had been in a pantomime, and the three witches in Macbeth, so The Witches was a very interesting challenge for me. Together with the writer, Nigel Kneale, I first worked on improving the script before turning my mind to who would play the male role opposite Joan. In the end, it was not a difficult choice; I had been deeply impressed with the subtle acting ability of Alec McCowen in Waiting for Godot and I was certain he would be ideal to play opposite Joan. They worked well together, though Joan later joked to me: ‘You should have cast a tall handsome man!’

So with the cast in place, and the beautiful village of Hambleden in Buckinghamshire found as the setting, shooting began in April 1966. During this time, I was fortunate enough to meet with Maharishi; he introduced me to a mantra and I began to meditate regularly. This discipline helped me enormously when tensions erupted on set and I needed to calm people down. In this way, I like to think I was practicing witchcraft myself during the filming.

The whole experience of directing The Witches was remarkable. Starting with my production of Man of Africa and firsthand experience of witchcraft amongst the natives, leading to meeting Joan, studying with Maharishi, and filming in the English countryside, it was a once in a lifetime experience.

Seeing the film again after so many years I am surprised how compelling it is but it is Joan’s performance that holds the whole thing together. She floats onto the set and expresses the emotions of each scene almost entirely through the movement of her eyes. It is enchanting to watch.

An interviewer once asked Joan which were the best reviews she had received. She answered without hesitation: ‘The best reviews were for The Witches and later a stage performance in Austria, also directed by Cyril Frankel.’ I like to think we brought out the best in each other.

Man of Africa has yet to be shown in England though it has been featured in several film festivals around the world. I understand that a release of the film is planned to coincide with the publication of my memoir, Eye to Eye, later this year.

London, January 2011

1

THE INTERVIEW HAD BEEN ARRANGED TO TAKE place in London at half-past three on a Saturday afternoon. This was a time so extremely convenient to Miss Mayfield that she was disposed to regard it as providential. It had saved her from the embarrassment of having to ask for time off to attend an interview in which she might not be successful, and from which she might be obliged to return to face her present Head’s resentment. In her diffident attempt to maintain secrecy she had left Alchester without the precaution of obtaining a testimonial. This she recognized as the action of a fool, but she had taught in the ugly Midland town for a bare two years, and she carried in her shabby handbag a coolly eulogistic report of her twenty years’ work in Africa. If that did not suffice, and if the interview showed any sign of leading to a new appointment, then would be time enough to approach Miss Stevens and break the news that she was contemplating a move.

Canon Thorby had written, ‘Claridge’s Hotel would be convenient for me, since I have another appointment there earlier in the day. I shall be waiting for you and if you ask at the desk, someone will point me out to you.’

He wrote on thick smooth paper which justified the term ‘cream-laid’. His writing was small, elegant, meticulously legible. It called up an imaginary vision of the writer, plump, rubicund, with a fringe of silvery hair and tranquil blue eyes. Kindly, perhaps a trifle pompous.

To Miss Mayfield, whose experience of such places was negligible, the hotel seemed very large, very impressive and full of women whose clothes in no way resembled her own. As she entered, the thought came and remained with her for half a minute, that a new hat might have been a wise investment. She countered this with the certainty that it would also have been a waste, and self-indulgent into the bargain; a hat was a hat, and the one she wore was adequate. Being, though shy, almost entirely without self-consciousness, she asked for Canon Thorby and followed the lordly young man who set out to glide her, with an outward composure that belied her inner trepidation.

Canon Thorby had secured a corner table, half masked by a huge bowl of long-stemmed roses, freesias and white lilacs in unseasonable proximity. From behind this floral screen he was watchful, and was on his feet, regarding her speculatively and then with a welcoming smile before she was within speaking distance. He was quite unlike her mental picture of him, being tall and spare, with a reddish-brown, weathered complexion and a full head of rust-coloured hair, just touched with grey at the temples. His eyes, however, were blue and tranquil.

They shook hands and Miss Mayfield sat down and replied to his questions regarding her journey, his comment on the coldness of the November weather.

‘After so long in Africa, I imagine you feel it keenly,’ he said. ‘I should warn you here and now that Walwyk is much colder than London.’

Perhaps, she thought, his other appointment had been with some more suitable candidate, and he was trying to hint, kindly, that Walwyk was not the place for her. A sense of disappointment, of failure, made itself felt. It had sounded such an ideal post, so quiet, so entirely different from her present one.

Unobtrusively tea had been placed on the table, and from the position of the cups and the teapot she saw that she was expected to pour. She removed her shabby gloves, and hoping that no tremor would betray her nervousness, lifted the pot.

‘I take milk, and I like it put in first. No sugar,’ the Canon said.

She managed his cup neatly, but in pouring her own she felt her hand waver. Some tea slopped into the saucer.

‘I believe you are nervous,’ he said with a smile. ‘There is no need to be. I should be on tenterhooks, for I am still to be put to the test. I had a surprising number of applications, but there was something about your letter . . .’ He moved one hand sightly. ‘I’m seldom wrong about such things, though I may seem rash and hasty. And now that I have seen you, I have, no doubt at all.’

‘You mean . . .’ she began, and had no breath left with which to complete the question.

‘I mean that you are exactly what I am looking for. The question is, can you be persuaded that we are what you are looking for?’

It seemed too easy. It could, of course, be an answer to prayer, but Miss Mayfield, though her faith was strong and humble, had had considerable experience with prayers and knew that the answers were very seldom as direct and simple as this.

She said, ‘I haven’t asked my present Head for a testimonial. The Walwyk post sounded so attractive I feared there would be great competition. And to go back, having made plain that I wished to get away from Alchester, would have, been . . . Well, I shouldn’t have liked it much.’

‘The Miss Tilbury with whom you worked for an extremely long time, in what must have been testing circumstances, seems to have thought highly of you.’

‘I brought the original of that. And perhaps I should, in honesty, point out that Rose – Miss Tilbury – was my friend.’

‘That is itself a credential; twenty years together at the back of nowhere . . . I had great difficulty in finding Entuba, even on a large-scale map. What Mission was it, Miss Mayfield? CMS?’

‘Strictly speaking, I suppose it wasn’t a Mission at all, not in the usually accepted sense. It was Rose’s private and personal venture. She’s a . . . very exceptional person; almost a saint, I think.’

She realized that she had not come here to give an account of Rose Tilbury.

‘Go on,’ Canon Thorby said. ‘This is extremely interesting.’

‘Rose Tilbury’s father was the Squire in the village where my father was the doctor. I was an only child, and she the one girl in a family of boys, so we spent a good deal of time together. When I went to college, Rose had a season in London and made quite a sensation, she was so beautiful. But she didn’t get married, and afterwards she went out to visit one of her brothers who had settled in Kenya. She said that as soon as she got there she knew what her life work was meant to be – work for and with the natives. She had some money of her own, and several well-to-do relatives from whom she would beg quite shamelessly. She came home – just after I’d graduated – to tell her people and to collect stores and funds, and she talked to me about . . . about what she planned. And by that time my father was dead, so I said I’d like to go back with her. And I did.’ In her enthusiasm she forgot to be cautious. ‘It was all very amateur, I suppose. The school seemed to grow up of its own accord, and then another friend of Rose’s, who’d had some medical experience, came and joined us, and we had a kind of hospital, too. We were all young, full of ideals and plans, and then – it seemed quite sudden, too – old and tough with experience, but still convinced that we weren’t wasting time. Three of the children who came to us knowing nothing, literally nothing, passed on to Fort Hare and did well. There were others who were promising. . . . It did almost break my heart to be obliged to leave.’

She stopped abruptly, feeling the tightening of her throat, the threat of a quiver in her voice.

‘On account of your health, I think you said.’

‘Yes. I had recurrent bouts of fever. In the end I was far more nuisance than help. I . . . I was told that the only cure was to come home.’

She was ashamed of her failure to be completely honest and mention that the fever, in the end, had led to a breakdown. But she had learned that people – particularly prospective employers – were very odd in their reaction to that word; they seemed to think that once having suffered a nervous breakdown you might at any minute run berserk with a hatchet.

‘And has Miss Tilbury, all this time, supported her venture entirely from her private funds?’

She imagined that he had slipped in the practical, mundane question as a counter to her emotionalism and shot him a grateful glance.

‘Practically. There were grants we were eligible for – towards the end of my time there, that was – but Rose always said there were so many strings attached that it was hardly worth it. And then her godmother died and left her quite a lot of money. Our personal needs were very small, of course; books and the children’s food and the hospital were the expensive items.’

Canon Thorby leaned back in his chair with an immensely satisfied expression.

‘It’s quite remarkable – the curious way things occasionally work out. You see, you have precisely the kind of experience to fit you for my post, which is also a private, or – if you prefer the term – independent school.’

Ah, it had seemed too good to be true. Here was the snag. The pay in private schools was notoriously poor; and although Miss Mayfield’s personal needs were still small, she had been in the habit, these last two years, of sending to Rose every shilling she could save. It seemed very little to do after having failed her and deserted her.

As though from a long way off, she heard Canon Thorby explaining about his school, which had been started by his great-great-grandfather years before universal education was thought of.

‘It began almost by accident. The family had a tutor, much beloved, and eventually it became the question of what was to happen to Mr Seeley. So the school began. When, in 1870, it became law for every child to attend school, that for the whole area – Renham, Catermarsh and Walwyk – was, very wisely, I think, situated at Renham. Children in those days were still deemed capable of walking three miles morning and afternoon, and our school could have closed, but by that time it had become a family hobby. And so it has remained.’

‘It must be a very expensive hobby.’

‘Oh, it is. Especially nowadays, with all the trimmings, free milk and dinners, which I feel bound to supply. I couldn’t bear it if any Walwyk child had cause to think it would be better off in a State school! My Junior mistress is Froebel-trained, my Senior a graduate. My gardener – an ex-Sergeant Major – takes the boys for physical training, gardening and woodwork; I myself teach Scripture to everyone and Latin and mathematics to any ambitious scholar. We have one at the moment, Juliet Reeve, my butler’s daughter. We hope to get her into Cambridge. My forebears, you see, were quite disgustingly rich.’ He made the statement neither boastfully nor deprecatingly; he might have been saying that they were all bald. ‘My grandfather, a far-sighted man who seemed to have considered the possible devaluation of money, endowed the school lavishly. It has never yet cost me a penny of my private money; and if it did . . . Well, though hit by taxes, like everyone else, I am still quite disgustingly rich.’

But even so . . . would he pay the Burnham Scale?

‘In your advertisement, Canon Thorby, you made no mention of salary.’

‘That was deliberate. You see, I don’t hold with this newfangled notion that in order to obtain good people you must offer high salaries. That merely attracts the timeservers. People – more particularly those in occupations which might be called vocational – work best when they work for the love of the job. Isn’t that so?’

Exactly what she had feared!

‘That is partly true, like most generalizations. But I must be frank with you. I have a commitment. At Alchester I am paid the Burnham Scale for graduates, at a low level; my years in Africa didn’t count. In Walwyk, I suppose, my living expenses would be lower, and I should not have fares. I could manage with . . . perhaps fifty pounds less than I now earn. If I went lower than that, I should be acting selfishly.’

‘You sound as though you would like to come to us.’

‘I should indeed. From the moment when I read your advertisement. To live in the country . . . To be Head . . . Oh, I know,’ she said earnestly, ‘that towns like Alchester are necessary, economically, and someone has to live in them and teach in their schools, and I know most teachers have to be assistants and take orders. The truth is, I suppose that I am too old to adjust.’

A silly thing to say; but then, if he couldn’t pay what she needed, it didn’t matter. She must go back to Alchester, to Miss Stevens with her whims and experiments, which were never successful, to the noisy, overcrowded, often hostile classes.

‘I don’t think,’ Canon Thorby said, ‘that we shall fall out about money. I’m prepared to pay Burnham Scale salary for graduates, with the extra emolument for Headmistresses in country schools. I will take into consideration your twenty years in Africa. I also provide, free, a rather delightful little house, furnished. It once belonged to an aunt of mine, who left it to me, and I thought the best use to which I could put it would be to provide a comfortable, dignified home for anyone who was prepared to share our way of life and devote herself to teaching our children. You see, I am aware of the drawbacks. We’re very isolated. We have been cut off from the outer world for as long as fifteen days after a heavy snowfall or an exceptionally rainy season. At the best of times the nearest cinema is fourteen miles away, the nearest theatre twenty-eight. Our social life is limited and you will not find Intellectual company within a wide radius. It is – we might as well face it – a lonely, dedicated life. You’ve had a taste of that; you may desire a complete change.’

‘I have had that, in Alchester.’

‘I’m trying to give a fair picture. You see, I intensely dislike changes. I don’t wish you, in six months’ time, when you have been in Walwyk for six weeks, to come and tell me that you are lonely, unhappy, buried alive, stagnating in a backwater.’ He brought out each expression as though it were set in quotation marks. ‘I have a long memory. Some twenty-four or -five years ago we had three changes in as many years, bad for everybody. Then we settled down and that was delightful. Our present Headmistress has been with us for twenty-two years and is leaving for the happiest of reasons. I should like to feel settled again, after Easter. So . . . would you like some time to think it over before deciding?’

Once or twice during the course of her lifetime Miss Mayfield had been aware of a voice in her mind which had issued a criticism or a warning which had little or nothing to do with her conscious thought. As though another, more cautious and sophisticated person had made a comment. It happened now. The voice said quite clearly, You should see the place.

But this, she argued back, is the last week in November. If I am to leave Alchester at the end of the Easter term, I must give in my notice by the end of December, to take effect at the end of April. I have no other free weekend before Christmas. And then there are the fares. She thought of Miss Stevens; she thought of the ‘flatlet’ which she shared; of the fog; the clatter.

She said, ‘I think I have decided. If you consider me suitable, I should like, very much, to come to Walwyk.’

‘Splendid. I will confirm, in writing, my offer of salary and accommodation. And I hope, from my heart, that you will spend long happy years with us. Now, what are your immediate plans? Are you staying in London overnight?’

‘Oh no. I must get back. I looked up the trains. There is one at five-fifteen. I might even catch that.’

He glanced at his watch.

‘If you wish to, you shall,’ he said. They rose and walked towards the entrance. Nobody came running, complaining that the tea had not been paid for. He was known and trusted here, obviously.

Outside the door the man in uniform flicked a finger and a taxi slowed and swerved. As it did so, suddenly from nowhere a little wizened old woman popped up, holding on her arm a flat basket in which lay small bunches of desiccated white heather. She said, in a mechanical, whining voice:

‘Buy a bitta white hevva for luck for the lydy, sir?’

The commissionaire made a wide, scornful gesture of dismissal. Canon Thorby cried:

‘Wait! We’ve had our luck, haven’t we, Miss Mayfield, but we may as well have the symbol of it.’

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