Stella Benson’s Living Alone: Part IV

The time has come to deal with the end of the relationship, such as it was, between Angela the Witch and Sarah Brown.

After coming under Angela’s influence, Sarah Brown is led by her to what will look like disaster to most people.

If anyone else had said and done to Sarah Brown what Angela did, I would expect them to be cruel, malevolent, a cult leader who makes people burn all their bridges behind them or even a front for something evil.

Angela is definitely not evil or even malicious: she is just lacking in understanding and empathy and she has no feelings of responsibility for the effect that she and her magic have on people and their lives. It means nothing to her; it is their problem not hers. She is bored or baffled by it all.

After all, she is not completely human; she is a magic person.

First, some details of the context in which the disaster happens.

Angela lays the trail

Angela makes her first appearance when she bursts in on the charity committee. She gives them a small demonstration of her powers.

Angela has a strange effect on some of the people at the committee meeting, Sarah Brown in particular. Perhaps because they have fallen slightly under her spell, some of the members feel an inclination to see her again. She leaves her broomstick - whose name is Harold - behind. Was this deliberate, or was it an accident? 

Her address is on Harold’s collar, which makes it easy for them to find her.

Four visitors for Angela

The four people who seek Angela out at the magic shop want more from her than just the taste of her magic that she gave them. They sense her powers and think that she can help them.  

Richard the Wizard’s mother Lady Arabel Higgins sees that Angela is a person of magic like her son. She wants Angela to meet Richard.

Another of the social workers, a well-meaning woman called Miss Ford, wants to introduce Angela to various ‘creative’ friends of hers who are interested in the occult. She wants to show Angela off at her weekly gatherings. Angela is unresponsive; she doesn’t see any point; she is not interested in and does not understand socialising for its own sake or any need for self-promotion. It might be an opportunity, but she doesn’t see it and doesn’t want it. She is not on the market for anything that Miss Ford can offer her.

The Mayor wants to marry Angela.

Sarah Brown wants a friend.

They have yet to learn that Angela dances to no one’s tune but her own. Angela is not interested in becoming part of anyone else’s life; instead, she invites a select few to come and live in the House of Living Alone.

More about Angela and Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown is the first visitor to arrive. She brings Harold the broomstick with her and restores him to his owner. She speaks very honestly to Angela about her unsatisfactory life and her bad health. She does however enjoy one aspect of her job - the record keeping - because it involves writing. This changes after she moves into the House of Living Alone:

“On the Monday after her change of home, Sarah Brown found that the glory had gone out of the varied inks, and even a new consignment of index-cards, exquisitely unspotted from the world, failed to arouse her enthusiasm.“

Sarah feels euphoric after eating the witch’s enchanted sandwiches, but this seems a little sinister to me. She goes back and makes a strange, impassioned speech to the witch, who says that Sarah’s job has come to an end.

Sarah trails around after Angela for a while then gets a job working on the land in the Parish of Faery. This is too much for her and she becomes exhausted and ill.

What happens next: a summary

Things start to unravel. Angela is wanted by the law. The committee members who have become involved with Angela decide to go to America and take her with them for her safety. They don’t realise that Angela doesn’t want or need their help.

The House of Living Alone burns down. They all drop out of the America scheme apart from Sarah Brown, who sells everything she has to pay for two boat tickets.

How it ended for Sarah Brown

The story ends very badly for Sarah Brown.

As soon as they arrive in New York after spending some days at sea, Angela abandons Sarah.  She zooms blithely off on her broomstick with the intention of returning to her home in England, leaving Sarah alone, penniless, ill, devastated and desolated, a stranger in a strange land.

Before Angela departs, they have a conversation that is very painful to read. Sarah Brown states her position:

"’I spent all I had in bringing you here,’ said Sarah Brown. ‘I left all I loved to bring you here. I am as if dead in England now. Nobody there will ever think of me again, except as a thing that has been heard the last of.’"

Angela’s side of the story

The witch’s reply adds insult to injury; it shows that she lives in a different reality:

“The witch looked kindly at her. ‘You know,’ she said, "when you first told me to go away, after Harold made that bad landing on a policeman, I thought perhaps you were a sort of cinema villainess, driving me away from my house and heritage…So I have been patient with you all this time, and have fallen in courteously with all your fiendish plans—as I thought—and now I am glad I was patient, for I see you meant well.

Dear Sarah Brown, you did mean well. How sad it is that people who have once lived in the House of Living Alone can never make a success of friendship. You say you left all you loved—what business have you with love? Thank you, my dear, for meaning so well, and for these fair days at sea. But I mustn't stay with you...’ "

We may ask why Angela didn’t tell Sarah that she was not going to stay in America and why she let Sarah pay for everything, but that is looking at it from a normal, adult, human viewpoint. 

The final plea for help 
Sarah Brown is about to be abandoned with no internal or external resources, never mind reserves, for coping with the unknown. It is a complete nightmare.  Anyone who has been treated in a similar way and left in a similar position will understand why Sarah Brown begs the witch to stay:

“Ah, witch, don't leave me, don't leave me like this, ill and bewildered and so far from home...."

Of course it has no effect; the witch has no heart.

Angela’s response is very chilling indeed:

"How can you ever be far from home, you, a dweller in the greatest home of all. Did you think you had destroyed the House of Living Alone? Did you think you could escape from it?"

Sarah Brown’s solo entry into New York is where Living Alone ends, but the series of articles inspired by the book is by no means ended yet.