‘Excellent start. Yawning is good for relaxation and allowing our bodies to be refreshed and in the moment. Join me in awakening our conscious selves.’ She yawns. Everyone joins in yawning, long and hard and way, way, way too loud. Lewis, back from a brief spell in Time Out, is walking a thin line already.
‘Wonderful.’
Lewis yawns again and makes everyone laugh. Gwyneth pretends to take it on the chin and smiles a patronising smile. ‘Are we ready?’
Lewis yawns a tiny yawn. This time Gwyneth doesn’t even pretend to smile.
‘We are going to start with, what I like to call the “actor warm-up”.’ She makes inverted commas in the air and uses a voice which she clearly thinks is funny. I don’t really get it, but I don’t want this woman to feel embarrassed. Just because she’s an adult it doesn’t mean life’s easy.
‘I don’t think we need to warm up, Miss. It’s boiling.’
‘Jemima Morgan, is it?’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘I’m keeping my eye on you.’
Jemima preens. ‘I’m glad, Miss, because I’m really good at Drama.’
‘Wonderful. Now, please don’t call me Miss. Call me Gwyneth.’
A ripple of laughter.
‘Gwyneth.’ Lewis tests it out and gets a laugh again.
‘The first part of the warm-up is to shake your faces like this.’ She clasps her hands together and shakes her head loosely. Some of the class copy her with so much energy that there is a danger of their heads falling off. I do it half-heartedly, so I won’t mess up my plaits. She makes us pretend we have a busy bee on our fingertip, waving it around while we make a buzzing noise; do an impression of a horse, which makes my lips tingle; and sing lots of la’s back to her. Gwyneth loves every minute of it. I don’t.
By the time we finish the warm-up, we are struggling to breathe, it’s so hot, and we are instructed to sit in the shade of the willow tree. Gwyneth looks panicked by the state of us. She’s not a teacher so I guess she doesn’t think about health and safety. Even in this willowy green tangle, the sun has lemoned the grass, but it’s heavenly after the piercing bright of the yard.
We sip from our forever bottles and wait. Even Lewis is too hot to cause trouble.
Gwyneth unwinds her sparkly neck-scarf and sits on the grass cross-legged. ‘The curse!’
She looks at me. I look at Susan Stevens. Susan Stevens stares solidly at Gwyneth and refuses to catch my eye.
‘The curse on this town was put here by a horrible, terrible witch.’
I shrink into myself.
‘I am about to tell you the tale of the evil witch they named Winter!’
‘Heard it.’ Lewis has recovered.
‘Ah, little boy, but you haven’t heard my version.’
The class scoff at her attempt to humiliate. I want to tell her she’s just being nasty because he spoiled her moment.
She lowers her voice and, despite the heat, we are caged in this emerald world and her words charm us.
‘In the middle of Witch Point woods, centuries ago, there was a humble cottage. A woodcutter and his wife lived there with their seven daughters. Beautiful were their daughters. Kind and true.’
She looks around, eyeballing us to make sure she has our attention. She does. Everyone loves creepy stories, even when they’ve heard them a million times.
‘One fateful night, a witch came upon that humble cottage and peering through the windows saw the happiness of the family who sat by candlelight inside. The wicked witch wanted to kill their love stone dead, so bitter was she.’
Gwyneth punches her own leg for emphasis on the word ‘dead’. You can tell it hurts her, but she doesn’t stop.
‘The evil, pus-covered hag put an enchantment on herself to disappear her pimples, vanish her pustules and make the fleas which crawled from her ears jump off her skin and look for others’ blood on which to feed.’
This is gross, but everyone except for me and Susan seems to be loving it.
‘She cast a bewitchment on herself, to make her look like a lonely and destitute girl. When the family sat in front of their meagre fire to eat, she crossed their poor threshold and sat down at their pitiful, scrap-filled table.’ Gwyneth acts this all out, wrapping the willow fronds around her like rags.
‘“Who are you?” the woodcutter demanded,’ Gwyneth booms in a deep, stern voice, throwing the leaves aside and putting her fist up, ready to fight.
‘“I am but a poor and meek and destitute girl, Sir,” the witch replied.’ Gwyneth is all innocence and wringing hands.
‘“Let us take her in, poor little wren,” the woodcutter’s wife cried.’ In a very shrill voice, apparently.
‘“Oh yes! We would so love an eighth sister! Please, father!”’ Gwyneth gets a bit carried away here, trying to portray ten different characters at once. I am worn out just watching her.
‘The witch wormed her way into the family’s affections and trouble came soon enough.’
We all lean in.
‘One night, as the snow began to fall, the witch convinced the sisters that they should all come with her through the woods “to a place of great beauty”. Being trusting and good through and through, they followed her out into the woods. Soon the blizzard became so thick they couldn’t see their path home. She lured them to where the seven rivers meet, at the Falls of Snow waterfall, and there she drowned them in revenge for all the witches who had been dunked and drowned before her. They haunt the rivers forever.’
Gwyneth gives a theatrical cackle to end.
I don’t feel well. This story of the witch – it feels wrong. My heart thuds painfully. Something twangs my memory, out of reach. I try really hard to remember, but it’s cloudy and I can’t get to it.
‘What does dunked mean, miss?’
‘It means the witches were held underwater to see if they would cast a spell to save themselves. If they drowned, they weren’t witches. If they lived, then they were.’
‘That’s stupid.’
‘Thank you, Lewis.’
Dorcas pipes up. ‘They did other things to them too. Rolled them down hills in barrels filled with spikes. Burned them at the stake. They crushed them with huge stones to get false confessions. They even killed their pets if they were thought to have helped with witchcraft.’
‘That’s enough, thank you, Dorcas.’
‘What happened to the witch called Winter, Miss?’
‘She was caught by a witch hunt and hanged for her hideous crimes. As she swung from the noose by her neck, she left an evil curse on the poor town and its people so that everyone would have bad luck forever. An everlasting curse on Witch Point.’
The class has heard this legend before, but they’re still excited to hear such a dramatic rendition. I feel as if I’m going to be sick again. By the look on Susan’s face, she feels the same.