Living Alone | Page 8

paper packets which she
had seen the day before in the witch's possession.
"What do you do with your magic?" she asked.
"Oh, many things. Chiefly I use it as an ingredient for happiness,
sometimes to remind people, and sometimes to make them forget. It
seems to me that some people take happiness rather tragically."

"I find," said Sarah Brown, rather sententiously, "that I always owe my
happiness to earth, never to heaven."
"How d'you mean heaven?" said the witch. "I know nothing about
heaven. When I used to work in the City, I bought a little book about
heaven to read in the Tube every morning. I thought I should grow
daily better. But I couldn't see that I did."
Sarah Brown was naturally astonished to meet any one who did not
know all about heaven. But she continued the pursuit of her ideas on
happiness. Sarah Brown meant to write a book some day, if she could
find a really inspiring exercise-book to start in. She thought herself
rather good at ideas--poor Sarah Brown, she simply had to be confident
about something. She was only inwardly articulate, I think, not
outwardly at all, but sometimes she could talk about herself.
"Heaven has given me wretched health, but never gave me youth
enough to make the wretchedness adventurous," she went on. "Heaven
gave me a thin skin, but never gave me the natural and comforting
affections. Heaven probably meant to make a noble woman of me by
encrusting me in disabilities, but it left out the necessary nobility at the
last moment; it left out, in fact, all the compensations. But luckily I
have found the compensations for myself; I just had to find something.
Men and women have given me everything that such as I could expect.
I have never met with reasonless enmity, never met with meanness,
never met with anything more unbearable than natural indifference,
from any man or woman. I have been, I may say, a burden and a bore
all over the world; I have been an ill and fretful stranger within all
men's gates; I have asked much and given nothing; I have never been a
friend. Nobody has ever expected any return from me, yet nothing was
grudged. Landladies, policemen, chorus girls, social bounders,
prostitutes, the natural enemies, one would say, of such as I, have given
me kindness, and often much that they could not easily spare, and
always amusement and distraction...."
"Ah, how you interest and excite me," said the witch, whose attention
had been frankly wandering. "You are exactly the sort of person we
want in this house."

"But--ill?" said Sarah Brown pessimistically. "Oh, witch, I have been
so wearisome to every one, so constantly ill. The first thing I get to
know about a new hostess or a landlady is always the colour of her
dressing-gown by candlelight, or whether she has one."
"Illnesses are never bad here," said the witch. "I bet you twopence I've
got something in the shop that would make you well. Three fingers of
happiness, neat and hot, at night--"
"But, witch--oh, witch--this is the worst of all. My ears are failing
me--I think I am going deaf...."
"You can hear what I say," said the witch.
"Yes, I can hear what you say, but when most people talk I am like a
prisoner locked up; and every day there are more and more locked
doors between me and the world. You do not know how horrible it is."
"Oh, well," said the witch, "as long as you can hear magic you will not
lack a key to your prison. Sometimes it's better not to hear the other
things. You are the ideal guest for the House of Living Alone."
"I'll go and fetch David my Dog and Humphrey my Suit-case," said
Sarah Brown.
At that moment a taxi was heard to arrive at the other side of the ferry,
and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all right, I'll be
there in half a tick."
"I hope this isn't Peony in a taxi," said the witch. "I get so tired of
expelling guests. She's been drawing her money, which may have been
tempting."
They listened.
They heard someone alight from the ferry-boat, and the voice of Miss
Meta Mostyn Ford asking the ferryman: "Do you know anything about
a young woman of the name of Watkins, living at Number 100

Beautiful Way----"
"No, he doesn't," shouted the witch, opening the shop door. "But do
step in. We met yesterday, you may remember. I'll ask the ferryman to
get half-a-dozen halfpenny buns for tea, if you will be so kind as to
lend me threepence. We don't bake ourselves."
"I have had tea, thank you," said Miss Ford. "I have just come from a