entirely my own work. I knew she wouldn’t have; it would have sounded too silly, and she would have known that he’d find out as soon as he confronted me.
I watched his brow furrow, and I knew he was wondering why there were four figurines instead of only two—but all he said was: ‘Well, I can understand why you might want to stick pins in both of us—but it doesn’t mean anything, Rose. It really doesn’t. It needn’t affect you and me. We can get past this, if we can just talk it through. The thing with Barbara’s over—I give you my word.’
By my count, that was four clichés; I had to keep count because I’d promised him a needle for every cliché, starting with the thinnest one and making my way through the packet towards the thickest.
‘It means something to me,’ I said. ‘Even you must have an inkling as to just how much.’ I picked up a big hatpin and held it up alongside the Barbie doll, but it was just for show; I was keeping my real first move in reserve, because I knew it had to be timed exactly right.
‘That’s not going to help,’ he said. ‘Even if it makes you feel better, it’s not going to solve anything.’
‘It’s not supposed to solve anything,’ I told him. ‘It’s supposed to dissolve something.’ All that rehearsal-time was really paying off.
He turned the spare chair around and sat down lumpenly. His face was flushed by confusion and alcohol; he had never seemed less deserving of the nickname Barbie had foisted on him. ‘Hell, Rose,’ he said, ‘we have to be adult about this. I’m sorry it’s happened, but it’s happened. It can’t be undone. We have to get past it.’
That boosted the cliché-count to seven, with one repetition. I decided to forgive him the repetition; it was the only thing I did intend to forgive him.
‘She had no right,’ I told him. ‘It was bad enough that she gave you up, but she could at least have stuck to it. She had no right to take you back. I swore that I wouldn’t let her do that. I couldn’t stop her twisting Howard round her little finger, or throwing me to you like some kind of consolation-prize, but I swore that I wouldn’t let her take you back. I swore that I wouldn’t let her turn the gift into a curse. Curses rebound, you know. Of course you know—even Barbie knows that curses rebound on the sender. Mischief should have stopped her mischief when she wasn’t a Miss any longer—but Barbie doesn’t know how to stop, does she?’
‘It will stop,’ my errant husband said, not following the argument at all. ‘I swear that it will.’
Was that eight clichés in all, I wondered, having momentarily lost track, or seven and two forgivable repetitions? I hadn’t expected him to be quite so prolific. Carefully, I laid the Barbie doll down, on its back. I picked up one of my humble efforts, molded from candle wax.
Its arms and legs weren’t very good, but the photograph of John was neatly sealed to the front of its head. It was clipped from a wedding photograph, of course; that was one cliché I had to count against myself. Not a needle-through-the-belly sort of cliché, but a cliché nevertheless. On the other hand, I had promised myself a whole crown of scathing thorns, so I could still be reckoned to be in credit, cliché-wise.
‘Go ahead,’ he said, bitterly. ‘Stick the pins in, if it’ll make you feel better. I deserve it. If there’s any justice at all, I’ll feel the pain. In fact....’
I couldn’t let him finish. There wasn’t time. I ran the hatpin into the abdomen of the doll, aiming for the stomach, just as the cramps began to hit the real thing.
I had never seen anyone look so astonished in my entire life. I hope I managed to control the grim certainty of my own expression.
‘By my count, John, dear,’ I said, ‘that’s eight clichés and two repetitions. I’ll forgive you the repetitions, but you get a needle for every one of the stupid, shabby, pathetic things you borrowed from the standard script. The hatpin’s for the sin itself.’
He clutched his belly, still unable to believe that the hatpin’s penetration was echoing inside him, unleashing sharp and horrid pain. I showed him the packet of needles, and I showed him which end of the array I intended to start from.
He was still fully occupied by amazement. For the moment, his astonishment was taking the edge off the pain and blocking the fear, but only for the moment.
I took out the thinnest of all the needles, and stuck it into the doll; this time it went in through the side, but the point was still aimed at the stomach.
‘But I don’t believe...,’ he said, and then interrupted himself with a strangled obscenity. He pressed both hands into his booze-softened belly and fell off the chair. If it had been an armchair he’d have been able to stay in it, but I’d never kept armchairs in my room. The one I was sitting on was a swiveling-chair, the kind that some office typists use.
‘It really doesn’t matter what you believe,’ I told him. ‘A witch is a witch regardless. A sin is a sin, and a needle in the eye is a needle in the eye. How do you think I felt? Do you think it would have made one little bit of difference if I hadn’t believed in marriage, or loyalty, or love, or jealousy, or common decency? Do you?’
Needle number two went in, and then needle number three, their points aimed at the small intestine. Coldheart John broke into a cold sweat, and the sweat was pure fear. If he hadn’t believed before, he certainly believed now—if not in marriage, in magic; if not in love, in hate.
‘I’m having a fucking heart attack,’ he moaned, demonstrating his complete ignorance of the relevant warning signs and symptoms as well as a perverse inclination to heed his own fears. ‘Call a fucking ambulance, will you!’
I used my right hand—the one that wasn’t holding John’s effigy—to pluck the receiver from the phone, which lay amid the litter of all my hard labor. I used the forefinger of the same hand to peck out the numbers. It must have been perfectly obvious to John, even in his distressed condition, that I wasn’t dialing 999.
Barbie picked up almost immediately. She must have been waiting by the phone—waiting to hear the news.
I held out the receiver to John, knowing that he could just about reach it if he condescended to remove one of the hands that was clutching at his terrorized stomach.
‘Tell her,’ I commanded him. ‘Tell her what a real witch can do.’
‘You’re crazy,’ he said. His voice was raw and guttural, almost tortured; for the first time in his life he could have sung ‘Graveyard Eyes’ the way it was meant to be sung.
‘I’m not crazy, I’m a witch,’ I told him. ‘And you’d better tell her that while you still can, because you and I have six needles still to go, and you might not be in any fit condition to tell her anything by the time I’ve finished.’
In spite of his agony, he reached out and he took the phone. For the first time in my life, I felt that I was in control, that I had authority. For the first time in my life, I knew that John Coulthart was truly mine. For the first time in my life I was Rosemary for remembrance, and it all seemed to be worth it, even though I knew that I’d end up as mere Rose, crowned with thorns.
‘Tell her!’ I said—and he actually screamed.
I don’t know why we had to have nicknames, or how it came about that they got assigned when they did. I suppose it was a kind of bonding—the sort of thing young people
