by Jenny Colgan
Mrs Murray turned to her.
‘Well, fields, you see . . .’
‘Don’t start that far back,’ said Zoe. ‘What’s Savvy Rain?’
Lennox and Mrs Murray looked at each other. ‘You explain,’ said Lennox. ‘I’m busy. Rotating the lower field. Don’t get a lobby group together.’
‘What about a petition?’
‘It’s your own time you’re wasting.’
‘Come on, Lennox, you must have stuff that wants burning.’
‘Aye,’ said Lennox. ‘In my own house, to keep it warm.’ And he stalked off.
‘He says that,’ said Mrs Murray. ‘He’ll come round.’
‘I won’t come round,’ came the voice from far off.
Mrs Murray turned to Zoe.
‘Zoe,’ she said, her face looking kindly in the manner of one about to ask a huge favour. ‘You have to tell Ramsay he has to host Samhain.’
‘I can’t do that,’ said Zoe. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘He’ll understand. Tell him the committee has it all arranged.’
There was a silence.
‘Are you going to burn a man inside a big wicker cage?’ asked Zoe suspiciously.
‘Noooo,’ said Mrs Murray. ‘No, they haven’t done that for . . . Nooo!’
Chapter Fifteen
She ended up asking him on a day that had gone rather badly, and which she’d thought would be rather fun. Murdo had asked if she wanted to go out on his boat, and she had been delighted and had said yes. They’d arranged to meet down on the dockside by Agnieszka’s, who seemed oddly put out but said did they want a packed lunch, but there was no ham and cheese, just cheese and Zoe said not to worry that would be fine.
And she’d got all the children done up in various waterproofs of different shapes and sizes, even Mary, and lined them all up, Hari and Patrick bouncing with delight at the concept of going on a boat.
Then Murdo had turned up wearing a tie and had his hair smoothed back with gel and a bottle of prosecco in the cool box of the boat. And at the exact same moment Zoe had realised that Murdo had in fact been asking her out on a date, Murdo realised that he was expected to give a boat tour to four children, two of whom wouldn’t stop jumping in the boat, one of whom asked him several billion questions about whether Nessie was a dinosaur and if so which type, and one of whom had moaned about how boring and rubbish it was to be on a boat, as Zoe had sat in the end, and the rain had hosed down and everyone had tried to pretend they were having a better time than they were, except Patrick and Hari, who were having the best time of all time.
* * *
Zoe was mortified as they got home and dried off, wincing horribly at how brattish Mary had been, and how Shackleton had staggered about the place, heavy shoes standing up at the wrong time, and Murdo had tried to ask her personal questions about herself but had had to holler them through the wind at the top of his voice whereupon nine times out of ten Patrick would try to answer them.
‘Oh God,’ she said in the kitchen.
‘What’s up?’ said Ramsay. It was strange: he seemed to find more and more reasons to pass the kitchen these days.
‘Zoe had a date!’ said Patrick. ‘There was fizzy stuff we weren’t allowed to drink.’
‘That . . . that wasn’t exactly . . .’
‘You took all the children out on a date?’ asked Ramsay in consternation. ‘You were on a date?’
‘I was not on a date,’ said Zoe. ‘Well. Not after about five minutes.’
She couldn’t help it; she smiled at the memory.
‘Oh God,’ she said.
‘What?’ said Ramsay. ‘The poor chap.’
‘Oh God,’ she said again. ‘I’m just . . . I’m so used to everyone knowing I’m the au pair up here.’
‘Oh good,’ said Ramsay. ‘People in my business.’
‘I didn’t . . .’ She put her hands over her eyes. ‘I’m not sure I told him they weren’t all my children. Oh God. Oh God.’
She giggled relentlessly. ‘Oh God. My love life is over.’
‘At least you got the fizzy pop,’ said Patrick crossly.
‘I had one glass,’ said Zoe. ‘Perfectly competent to drive, thank you.’
But the fresh air and the fizz and the laughter had put roses in her cheeks and Ramsay couldn’t help smiling at the sight of her.
‘Daddy dates Rissa,’ said Patrick glumly, then in a stage whisper: ‘SHE’S A WITCH.’
‘Now, stop that,’ said Zoe. ‘Oh!’ she said, suddenly remembering. She smiled and went to her bag.
‘What’s that?’
Zoe drew out a small sheaf of money wrapped in an elastic band. She handed it to him.
‘We sold Lark Rise to Candleford!’ she said in triumph.
Ramsay blinked in surprise. ‘You didn’t!’
‘I know! Whole lot!’
‘Oh. The wood engravings editions,’ said Ramsay sadly to himself. ‘Very special.’
Zoe shook her wooden spoon at him.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘It’s what’s inside the book that’s special. The words you carry with you that are always there. The cover is just the cover.’
Ramsay looked shocked.
‘So you’re basically dissing absolutely a hundred per cent of everything I do for a living?’ he said. ‘My entire job, my reason for existence.’
Zoe smiled back at him. ‘I still fold over the corners.’
‘You don’t,’ said Ramsay.
‘I do too!’ shouted Mary from the window seat, waving Anne of Avonlea above her for proof.
‘Oh God,’ said Ramsay. ‘What have you done?’
‘I take hardbacks in the bath,’ said Zoe.
Ramsay covered his eyes with his hands.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re torturing me.’
‘Sometimes downloaded books are better, depending on what I’m doing.’
‘You are a witch,’ said Ramsay, ‘who needs to get out of my kitchen!’
‘Is that a verbal warning?’
‘I draw on things!’ said Patrick hoping to join in, showing a heavily crayoned comic.
‘Argh!’ said Ramsay. ‘Stop!’
But he was laughing as he said it, besieged on all sides.
‘I can’t believe you have let my monkeys loose.’
‘Never look at what I do to cookbooks,’ said Zoe, looking at her favourite scribbled-over Nigella.
Ramsay took the money and looked at it.
‘Oh well,’ he said. And he handed it back to her. ‘Here.’
Zoe was surprised.
‘What’s this for?’
Ramsay dropped his head.
‘I just feel . . . we owe you. A bit extra.’
Zoe coloured. She had been joking around with him, thinking that they had just been having a nice time in the kitchen. She didn’t realise she needed paying for it.
‘I’m fine,’ she said stiffly, and Ramsay, unclear as to what he’d done wrong, put it away just as his phone rang, and Larissa’s tones rang out and he turned away.
Chapter Sixteen
Zoe clean forgot about the Samhain, but the rest of the village hadn’t, and Ramsay was equable enough about it, so by Halloween there was, for the first time, a team of people out in the garden, painting and hammering.
Zoe had asked the children about going out trick or treating – or guising, they called it up there – for Halloween (and sold a lot of Scottish ghost books she’d bought in specially) but they’d all shaken their heads firmly.
‘Everyone’s horrid,’ said Mary.
‘And nobody wants to come here,’ said Shackleton, so she’d shelved the idea. It seemed like this Samhain party, whatever it meant, was a bigger deal around here anyway, and perhaps the children could have fun with that.
She realised quite quickly that she’d underestimated: Samhain didn’t seem to be a party; more like a festival. She’d let the boys get dressed up and let them loose but then saw �
�� as the grounds were lit up with flames everywhere; as a great team of drummers, and people on stilts, and slightly raggedy-looking folks started turning up – that this was very much an adult affair, not for children at all.
People were incredibly dressed up too. She was lucky to have the red dress; it was the only thing remotely suitable. At eight p.m., the drums had started and a great procession had begun all the way up the driveway, led by someone painted entirely bright red, dancing and blowing fire through a huge grotesque mask.
People were dressed as witches or the dead, screaming and hollering as the drums played loudly, and heading towards a stage where pipers were skirling, everyone drinking and shouting. The grounds were lit only by braziers. Ramsay was nowhere to be seen, and Zoe realised she’d made a terrible mistake letting the boys out alone.
Zoe ran up and down the party. It was huge. She needed to pause to get her breath, everything was so overwhelming. The night was still but utterly, bracingly cold. The huge bonfire raging down by the shoreline attracted most people, running in towards it and away again, laughing furiously. Some of the girls were wearing next to nothing, dashing like sprites in airy costumes or long tulle skirts lit up by the sparks and the light from the torches. The music sounded wild and furious now; it followed no recognisable patterns, didn’t seem to have a start or finish, but somehow, the fiddlers and the bodhran players knew instinctively what they were doing and the music got louder and wilder until your heart beat in the same rhythm as it and you felt it in your blood like a thick pulse.
The dancers were growing wilder and Zoe passed couples dancing and staggering and laughing as she tried to follow the children, who were diving in and out of the crowds of adults, threading hand in hand like a long game of ‘In and out the dusty bluebells’, and all she could hear was a touch of Patrick’s laughter in the air as she tried to follow where they’d gone.
Over in one corner she could see the tall figure of Shackleton surrounded by girls from the village, unrecognisable out of their leggings and fleeces, made-up, their hair long and tumbling, their cheeks pink and excited.
‘Is this your house?’ one of them was asking. ‘All of it?’
And Shackleton, looking tall and rather dashing in his kilt, was blinking and smiling awkwardly and saying, ‘Well yes,’ and Zoe rolled her eyes and left him to it, and carried on searching for Hari and Patrick. She knew pretty much everyone – she’d met the entire village more or less by now – so nothing awful could possibly happen, surely. There was Mrs Murray and the old colonel, and Lennox in a black mask that gave him a sinister aspect, only spoiled a little by the fact that he took his phone out and messaged Nina every fifteen seconds, just in case.
She could still hear Patrick’s giggle, rising somehow above the incredible noise of the music and the dancing and stomping and the crackling of the fire, further and further away, and she plunged once again into the melee, her red dress catching smuts from the bonfire, and someone trod on the hem and tore it, but she still didn’t notice as it was strewn out behind her.
‘Hari! Harrrrriiiiiii!’ she screamed through the crowds, pushing past kilted blue-faced men with dreadlocks; girls in long dresses, hair tumbling like mermaids; old and young.
‘Hari!’
But still nothing but the sound of a vanishing giggle on the air. Zoe started to get frightened. There were enough people at the fire, but if you wandered off towards the pitch-black woods, or the dark deep water . . .
‘Have you seen Hari?’ she shouted at Shackleton as she passed him again, but he shook his head. She ran up the steps to the front door of the house and then turned round, heart in her mouth, to stare beyond the crowds to the water.
Desperately, she broke through the crowds once more, screaming his name, suddenly utterly convinced that her boy had gone, that while she was getting herself dressed up he had crashed through the waves, down into the depths, all because she dared, all because it crossed her mind to think she might do something as wicked as attend a party.
Away from the crowd, the dark and the cold flowed on the route down to the water as if from nowhere. The wind was howling through the trees which were swishing and moaning of their own accord; the water was splashing and crashing onto the pebbled shoreline.
‘Hari! Hari!’
‘Zoe!’
The voice was clipped and authoritative. It came from behind. Slowly, Zoe turned around.
Chapter Seventeen
As Zoe turned round, her heart was in her mouth. Was it someone bearing bad news? Someone with terrible things to say?
At first she couldn’t make out the figure, just a black silhouette with the fire raging behind. It was a strange shape standing not ten feet away. Zoe moved slowly closer, and the shape revealed itself and she nearly collapsed with relief when she realised what she was looking at – Mrs MacGlone, standing bold upright, with a wriggling Patrick under one arm and a beatifical Hari under another. She didn’t look like the large weight of either was giving her the slightest trouble, despite her small size.
‘I’m just going to put these two to bed,’ she said carefully. ‘I’m not sure this is the place for children.’
‘But we absolutely want to stay!’ petitioned Patrick. ‘I think we should stay, don’t you, Nanny Seven?’
‘I absolutely don’t,’ said Zoe, the relief cascading through her like icy water. Hari stretched out his arms, and she picked him up and held him close, her tears soaking into the flannelette pyjamas.
‘Don’t run away from Mummy again!’ she said.
‘We weren’t running away,’ protested Patrick. ‘We were at a party! I had four sausages and Hari had nine.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘Absolutely nine,’ said Patrick.
‘I’m going to put them both to bed,’ said Mrs MacGlone. ‘I’ll sit with them. You . . .’
Just for a second the firelight caught her face, and had it been anyone else, Zoe might have said they looked a bit wistful.
‘. . . you go enjoy the party.’
This was far and away the kindest thing Mrs MacGlone had ever said or done for her. Zoe bit her lip.
‘Thank you.’
‘Aye.’
And she twisted around as if both children weighed nothing, and carted both of them, Patrick chattering all the time, off round the back door of the house and up the stairs. Zoe watched them go, then realised she was shivering, both from the fright and the cold. She moved closer to the fire, and found she was standing next to Kirsty, who instantly handed her over a glass of hot cider. Zoe gulped it down far too fast, feeling the blood pulse in her ears, and stretched her arm out for another one, feeling the alcohol hit her system. The children were safe – for once, it felt. She didn’t need to be worrying.
It was the most unaccustomed feeling. Zoe was used to worrying about literally everything all the time, every second of the day. About everything. The van. The books. The future. Hari. Hari’s future. Hari’s dad. The children. The house. Money. Everything.
But, she thought, it was as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Not tonight. Not tonight. In the crack of the universe, in the tiny glimpse between the light and the plunge into the long months of the dark, on All Hallows’ Eve, the Samhain celebrated misrule when the dead came back to earth . . .
Except, in Zoe’s case, she felt a little like the dead person had been her.
* * *
The music was banging to a crescendo, louder and louder, as she moved closer to the centre of the party, a raised stage by the fire near the band.
The frightening red dancers were still coiling with their torches, but something was changing; they were moving the crowds out of the way, creating a passage. Next came ten women dressed in long white dresses, swirling as they twirled their way forwards, throwing leaves in great handfuls here and there, skulls painted on their faces. Then behind them came a procession carrying a litter led by huge men in kilts, shouting lustily. On the top of the platform they had
on their shoulders was a chair, a large, ornate throne unlike anything Zoe had seen before. The chair looked part tree, branches and twigs curling out of it quite naturally to form the arms and legs. It must have been carved but looked entirely as if it had been grown straight from the greenwood.
And perched on that, metres up into the air, blocking out the starry sky, was someone in a large cape, obscuring their face.
‘MAKE WAY!’ bellowed one of the bearded men, his voice like a gravel pit. ‘MAKE WAY FOR THE LORD OF THE DEAD, THE LORD OF THE SAMHAIN!’
And from somewhere, bells pealed, sonorous and low as the procession went forward, the violins now playing a mournful song deep and long, and Zoe squinted upwards, half-appalled by the figure. Kirsty came up and stood beside her.
‘I know, it’s weird, isn’t it,’ she whispered. ‘I get scared every year, and it’s only Lennox dressed up like a monk.’
It wasn’t Lennox though; Lennox was over in the corner, filming it for Nina to watch.
The party made it to the stage and gradually set the litter down. The tall figure rose from the chair, facing the crowd, who roared its approval, and the Lord of the Dead raised a great bony finger in the air and everyone went quiet. He stepped forward, Zoe watching him, realising at last who the tall, overbearing figure was. He stood, the hood over his neck obscuring his face, and lifted up a great book from the chair, bound in thick leather, with heavy gold inset lettering on the spine, and began to intone, clearly and loud enough to reach the very back of the dancers:
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white – then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.–
Nae man can tether time or tide;
The hour approaches Tam maun ride.
Zoe didn’t understand the words, but caught their meaning well enough as the pace of the recital picked up.