Dark Sister Read online

  "Things are going haywire at the castle; all our ideas have been scrambled by things turning up which shouldn't really be there."

  "What sort of things?" Maggie stirred the goulash.

  He stood behind her, pressing his knees into the hollows at the back of her knees. "The layer we've worked for the last three months is supposed to be fifteenth century; today we suddenly find our way into the twelfth century with all this stuff."

  "Stuff? Get off."

  "Yes, stuff. Stuff. Nothing important. Shards of pottery. A coin and a tin plate. Just all from the wrong period. We'll have to go back to the drawing board and retrace the foundations."

  "Were there any bones?" Amy, appearing behind them, put a stop to Alex's knee-trembling activities. Amy always wanted to know if there were any bones.

  Alex had once brought a skull home to show them, but Maggie had refused to keep it in the house. If her own unease wasn't enough, Amy had demonstrated far too great a fascination for the object. She'd treated it as some kind of pet, and the line had to be drawn when Maggie had discovered her cleaning its grinning teeth with a pink toothbrush. Out went the skull. "No Bones. No skeletons. Not even a dog bone." His nostrils twitched again and he sniffed. He looked at Maggie. "What's for tea?"

  Maggie had prepared her perfume using an eyedropper she had originally purchased to treat Sam's conjunctivitis. Ash had sold her oils of gardenia, musk, jasmine, and rose geranium, and she blended them a drop at a time until the scent seemed satisfactory. Ash had told her to use her instincts in judging the strength of the smell.

  It wasn't that she was prepared to compromise over the issues which divided them; she was still angry about the question of Sam and his visits to De Sang's private practice. But she was exhausted by the arguments, and concerned that the tension in the household might be harming her children. Despite her antipathies towards De Sang, his words hadn't completely missed their mark.

  So she made her scent, her oil perfume, and hoped for the best. She applied it behind her ears, and on her wrists; and for good measure she also anointed the pillows in the bedroom and the cushions on the sofa in the lounge.

  Alex complimented her on the goulash, which was a good sign, and the first kind words in over a week. Then after dinner he switched on the TV, plumped up the cushions, and stretched out on the sofa to watch a game show. "Pollution," he said. "Everything on TV is intellectual pollution."

  "So why are you watching it?"

  He didn't answer, and by the time she had put the children to bed and washed the dishes, he was almost asleep dozing in front of the set. She sat in her chair, looking at him, asking herself if she still loved him. She thought she did, thought she might. Once he'd been the one with all the ideas, the motivator, the initiator of adventures. Now he dozed in front of game shows and cartoons. The routines of work and the responsibilities of parenthood had strapped him in. She felt a wave of compassion for him; he was doing all he could to protect her and the children from the storm, while she longed for nothing more than to be allowed an occasional walk in the wind and the rain.

  Alex roused himself. He got to his feet, blinked at her and smiled weakly. Then he went up to bed. After a while she followed him, but he was asleep before she got there. Undressed, she held her scented wrist to her face, inhaling the perfume as she looked at him. The scent produced a deep, sensuous ripple in her and she had to smile. It wasn't love and it wasn't passion and it wasn't enchantment either; but it was better than arguing.

  Tomorrow she would go listening.

  In the afternoon she deposited Sam with Mary the childminder and returned home to consult the diary. It sanctioned dawn and dusk as the best moments for the exercise, but these were times not usually available to her: the afternoon would have to do.

  She boiled spring water—from the supermarket—on the kitchen stove. Then she shredded the bay laurel, the mugwort, and the cinquefoil and tipped it all into the pan. She covered the pan with a lid and left the mixture to simmer.

  Returning to it half an hour later, she lifted the lid and sniffed the fumes. It didn't smell particularly strong, so she inhaled more deeply, twice, before replacing the lid. She felt nothing in particular. She was disappointed. There seemed nothing stimulating about the concoction; if anything it made her feel slightly drowsy.

  But she was committed. She took a thermos flask and filled it with the hot brew, screwing the cap on tight. She put on her coat, picked up the flask and her car keys, went out and drove to Osier's Wood.

  All was quiet but for the breeze stirring in the trees. Maggie left the car and crossed the brook into the willow fringed woods, finding a spot near the place where she believed she and Alex had created Sam. Here she sat under an oak. She unscrewed the cap of the thermos flask and inhaled the hot fumes rising from the brew. She practiced breathing in from her diaphragm, pushing out below the rib cage as she inhaled. She did this until the brew went cold; then she sat back to wait.

  When Alex got back from work that evening, the telephone was ringing and no one was answering. He unlocked the front door and burst in to answer the phone before the caller hung up. It was Mary the childminder. She didn't mind that Maggie hadn't been to collect Sam, but she wanted Alex to know she expected to he paid for the extra hours. Alex mumbled an apology and promised to collect Sam himself.

  He replaced the receiver and looked uselessly around the living room. The car was missing from the driveway, and he hadn't a clue why. His only thought was that something might have happened with Amy, and that Maggie must be with her. He was ready to trudge round to the childminder's to collect Sam when the telephone rang again. This time it was Anita Suzman on the line.

  Anita had gone to school to collect her own children, who finished half an hour later than Amy's younger class, only to find Amy hanging around in the playground with a teacher. She'd waited a while longer and had then decided to take Amy home with her. That had been over two hours ago, and she'd been telephoning intermittently ever since. Was anything wrong?

  "Wrong?" said Alex. "I don't know. I've just this minute got in. And there's nobody here."

  "Well, you're there now."

  Alex, his mind still on other things, was astonished at the logic of this remark. "Yes."

  "So. Would you like to come and collect Amy?"

  "Amy?"

  "Yes. She's your daughter, remember?"

  "I'm sorry, Anita, I'm not with it. Thanks for picking up Amy; it's good of you. I'd come at once, but, Maggie seems to have taken the car somewhere."

  "Would it help if I brought Amy to you?"

  Anita even offered to pick up Sam on the way after Alex had explained his predicament.

  The children looked none the worse when she arrived with them. She took off her coat and sat down without being invited. It wasn't even six o'clock, but Anita looked as though she was dressed for a big night out. "Going somewhere this evening?" Alex gave her a glass of wine.

  "No. Why do you ask?"

  "I can't think why," said Alex. He hadn't seen Anita since they'd all dined together at her house and he was reminded how lusciously attractive she was. She relaxed easily into his sofa and crossed her long legs. The sheer nylon of her tights hissed as they meshed.

  "I see you got your open fire," she said.

  "Oh, that. Yes."

  "Cosy and romantic. An open fire."

  "Is it? Yes, I suppose it is."

  She put down her wineglass. "What's going on?"

  Alex took a deep breath. "Maggie wants to go and study a course at university. I don't want her to, so she's finding all sorts .of ways to punish me."

  Anita was about to answer, but suddenly Maggie was standing in the doorway.

  "Maggie! We were just talking about you."

  "I heard. How are you, Anita?" She unbuttoned her coat, sat down and picked up a magazine.

  "We were worried about you. Everything okay?"

  "Why shouldn't it be?"

  "Anita collected Amy from school,
" said Alex calmly. "She also collected Sam. Mary has been phoning all afternoon to ask what's going on."

  "Are the kids all right?"

  "The kids are fine," said Anita.

  "That's all right then." Maggie looked at Alex. "Isn't it."

  TEN

  ‘This garden needs digging. And it needs a pond.

  "What?" Alex had followed Maggie outside after Anita left.

  "I'm going to plant a herb garden. I want my own herbs. Lots of them."

  "Why the hell are you talking about herb gardens? Where have you been all afternoon?"

  "And I want the money for some good garden tools."

  "Did you have to be so bloody rude to Anita?"

  "I don't like her."

  "You made that pretty obvious."

  "Didn't you see why she was waiting? So she could enjoy the spectacle of us having a row."

  "Anita is our friend!"

  "Correction: she's your friend. Correction: she's the wife of your friend."

  "She was looking after Amy and Sam while you were falling down on the job of being a mother."

  "It won't happen again."

  "Are you going to tell me where you were?"

  She turned to look him in the eye. "I was having a conversation. With myself. I found out some things. I found out you don't love me, for example."

  "Here we go again. Here we go."

  "You only want to own me. You can't stand the idea of me having any life of my own. I'm not allowed my own life. I'm just a clip-on accessory to your own world."

  "That old song."

  "I also found out that this garden badly needs a fucking pond."

  Alex looked up in exasperation. He saw Amy and Sam watching them from a bedroom window. "Look at that! Look at those kids! No wonder they're so twisted and fucked-up and miserable and unhappy when they've got you for a mother, disappearing and reappearing without a word! Just look at them!" Alex dived back indoors.

  Maggie glanced up at the children, saw them move away from the window. Twisted and fucked-up and miserable and unhappy. She knew it wasn't the children Alex was describing at all; it was themselves. She turned and saw the bird perched on the washing-line pole. It was a blackbird, stock-still, head cocked to one side as if listening. Its eye was focused on her. She stared at it for a long time, until it flapped away.

  That evening hit a new low. They failed to exchange a single word and Alex made himself a bed on the sofa.

  Maggie lay awake in the feverish dark. She felt anxious, troubled by thoughts too abstract to pin down. Still light-headed from the episode in the woods, she was unable to keep her mind from what had transpired there. In one sense there was little to be said. Listening, that's all that had occurred. No more, no less than that. Yet it was as if she had listened for the first time in her life, and discovered that beneath the ordinary sounds of the world was something else.

  The first change was a miraculous softening. Her brittle edginess dissolved in the peace of the woods, and so too did her visual impression of the trees, branches, ferns, grasses, and the silky feel of the leaf mould beneath her. Everything softened. The silence of the place distilled out, and even when a wood pigeon broke cover, the whirr of wings and flicking of branches was muted and distant.

  At one point she thought she might have fallen asleep, but knew she hadn't. Time had simply broken out of its tram lines. She had overstayed her allotted period by two hours. And she had indeed heard a voice, whether in the leaves or in her own head. It was soothing and, in turns, excitable. It was reassuring. It knew things she had thought forgotten. It was a voice she hadn't heard for many years, a neglected, private voice.

  It was her own, inner voice, demanding an audience. It spoke to her in a language half-formed, in fragments of words, sometimes archaic in sound; it whispered in strange accents. Strange, but familiar enough to be none other than her own mind, yet shredded and reformulated, and at last fractured into a small crowd of ghostly women at her back.

  No, she hadn't fallen asleep, because as she opened her eyes and looked around her she felt intensely awake, her perception had sharpened. Squinting up through the branches, she saw that the leaves formed patterns. They structured the light between the leaves, stringing it together like beads on a necklace, or suspending the light in parabolas, like spiders' cobwebs.

  The woods took on a moist-canvas effect. She too felt she helped to generate this moistness, and was happy to be a part of the rich mulch of woodland decay and fertility. She found herself blowing gently on the back of her hand, to remind herself to stay conscious; and the act chased a sensuous ripple through her body. She felt moist, inside and out.

  And then as she closed her eyes again, the effortless whispering returned. Sometimes it was no more than a beat under the surface of life, a rhythm, an existential hum. Then it was the versifying rustle again, which she knew must be the leaves in the trees, but which was urgent in its desire to speak, to tell, to reveal. She had opened a faucet on something shut down for a very long time, and now it would not be closed off. It waited for the twilight between dozing and sleeping, and then it began again, elusive, at the periphery of consciousness, but relentless as a river.

  The following day, with Alex at work and Amy at school, Maggie set about cleaning up in the kitchen. The pan of dirty herb water sat on the stove. She tossed the reeking remains into the sink where they instantly formed a pattern on the stainless steel. A face suggested itself in the mash of leaves; but Maggie had had enough of clairvoyance for a while, and she rinsed the leaves away.

  She did some washing, and when she came to peg it out she found something dangling from the line. It was the wooden doll on puppet strings which Ash had given Sam to play with in his shop. Maggie couldn't think how Sam had managed to bring it home with him unnoticed, but there it was. She took it down. It was an expensive toy, hand-carved and brightly painted. She decided to return it, or even to offer to pay for it, that afternoon. She also decided to show Ash the diary.

  Fetching the thing from its hiding place, she began leafing through the pages. It was a curious feature of the diary that she continued to discover, here and there, pages of faintly pencilled entries she'd previously dismissed as blank. As if the volume of contributions increased every time she closed the book. Her eyes fell on an entry on the right-hand page, dated 21st March. There was the usual list of herbs written in pen, and underneath a pencilled entry in the same fastidious hand.

  First day of spring, and so I have a one should any ask me for help with a-courting. And why not, for I do love the young, let them do, I being too old, well not so old but here it is, and it is the handfasting. Gardenia for harmony. Musk for passion. Jasmine for love. Rose geranium for protection. Yarrow for seven years' love and to stop all fear.

  Maggie read it again. It was almost identical to the recipe given to her by Ash! Only the yarrow was different.

  These being all essences, but for the yarrow, which wants the dried herb, a pinch mixed with these essences. Then pour off into two jars, and then each anoint the other from their own jar, by the moon, asking. And after the seventh night, the remaining poured into one jar and both jars be hidden in some secret place. And there's the handfasting.

  Maggie looked at the recipe sadly. It would be fun to try, she thought, but the idea of coaxing Alex to agree to join in a witch's love ritual, smearing each other with oil, depressed her. She might as well try to persuade him to fly from the bedroom window after their last spat. On the left-hand page of the diary, the previous day's entry, was another recipe:

  Dwale. Now she is a harsh mistress. A. says she is my lady, as she has my name. She is from the valley of shadows, and she stales those who would use her. Sleeping, madness and death. The leaves soared in wine vinegar and pressed against the temples brings sleep and eases intolerable headaches and agues. Two of her beautiful berries might kill a small child. A. told me they once used her juice as cosmetic—well she can keep it. Deadens pain of childbirth. A. says no
w I must use her against my enemies. Dwale is sacred to Hecate and should be picked May eve. It is one for the flying, as last night I found out. God help me, for I may have come too far in this

  The entry seemed to have broken off. Underneath these words, and scrawled in another, barely literate hand, was a further entry. Maggie had to turn the diary on its side and squint hard to make it out.

  Ha for there ain't no turning back

  It was curious. It had obviously been written by some person other than Bella, the author of the diary. Maggie had always assumed that the diary had been a very private thing; that she shared its exclusivity and sense of dark secrets only with its author. Here also were the first signs of the diarist's distress.

  She closed the book and helped Sam to put on his coat.

  Ash was fascinated by the diary. He ordered Maggie to make coffee while he leafed through its pages. Sam was allowed to play on the floor with the doll. "Dwale," he said, "is an old witchy word for deadly nightshade. You know, belladonna."

  "That's why Bella says it has her name."

  "Deadly is right. Don't be tempted to try any of this. There are easier ways to cure a headache. But who is this mysterious A.?"

  "I don't know. She keeps cropping up, doesn't she? I can't tell if she's a friend or an enemy."

  "That's right. Bella seems uncertain about it herself. I get the impression Bella is always looking over her shoulder at A. There are some interesting recipes in here. Would you mind if I copied them?"

  Maggie did mind. She prickled. "No. Go ahead."