The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam

would happen if you just carried her downstairs and put her in the car and took her for a drive?”
    â€œOh—she’d create. She’d take a stroke after all this time, the doctor says. It’d be murder. It’s the countryside she’s turned against you see. It’s the land she hates. She hates it. She’s had enough—all them long Swaledale winters, all that scratting and scraping and never in all her life seeing anywhere more than ten-twelve miles from her home. She hates anyone that’s a traveller. She always was venomous with the gypsies—there was never a gypsy dared come anywhere near Kisdon. I wouldn’t take you up to see her, Mrs. Bateman. She’s still got a very bitter tongue. I wouldn’t trust her to see a Londoner. It’s what got into her that morning we switched on the moon and saw them men in their suits bobbing about.”
    â€œI suppose,” said Mrs. Bateman, “that she has really gone—well, a little bit off her head. In London they would take her into hospital now and then, just to give you a break.”
    â€œThat I will
not
have,” said the Egg-witch, all her whiskers bristling. “I know my duty.”
    Â 
    Just before the Batemans left at the end of summer there was a great blackberry picking going on in the Hollow Land. It was a wonderful blackberry year and everywhere you could see people patiently picking in the lanes with plastic bags and bowls and even buckets. The best place for a bramble, as everybody knew, was the Egg-witch’s lane and they went there first as soon as the berries had ripened. Harry had been sent out to get some to take home to London. He got a lift down with Mr. Teesdale on the tractor to Teesdale’s farm and then walked the rest.
    But he was too late. The bushes were bare. He thought that he would walk on to the Egg-witch’s and ask if she knew anywhere else there’d be some, down behind Blue Barns in the woods perhaps.
    When he got to Blue Barns he was puzzled because everything was so quiet. It was as quiet as on the first frightening Sunday he had called there for eggs long ago. The yard and the garden were quite empty—even the kennel was empty. The whole farm stood sunbathing in peaceful early autumn light—rosehips by the gate, bright dahlias in the borders, healthy bright potato flowers, and two or three swallows sitting on a wire warm as toast and wondering if there was any point in going to Africa.
    Harry went round the back and opened the kitchen door and called hello, as he always did now. He met complete silence. He looked in the rooms and they were empty. The kitchen fire was laid but not lit and there was an extra neatness about the table and the sink and draining-board that meant nobody had been there for some time. Harry remembered all at once the Show at Brough, where Bell and everyone had gone and where Mr. Teesdale had been hurrying to on the tractor. The kennel was empty because of the sheep-dog trials. They’d be hours getting back—sheep-dog trials being as long as it takes. And then all the judging of the plants and cakes and rum-butters.
    Never mind, he’d just go home. He didn’t like the feel of Blue Barns without the Egg-witch in it, and that was odd when he remembered how frightened of her he used to be. The house had a different quiet about it without her. Even a quiet house has some little noises in it if you listen—ticks and creaks, a hum from a fridge or a flap from a curtain or a squeak from a board. Today Blue Barns was so quiet it was like somebody holding his breath and listening for himself.
    Harry thought of the old lady all alone upstairs and prickles walked across the back of his neck. I’m off, he thought.
    And there was a tremendous and horrendous crash from just behind his head!
    He was halfway down the yard, beyond the pump before he stopped running.
    Then he listened. “I can’t,” he