Miss Mary's Book of Dreams

by Sophie Nicholls

  The woman smiled and Ella noticed, for the first time, her dimpled prettiness. She had one of those old-fashioned faces that always look slightly in soft focus, milky-white skin, dusted with freckles, blue eyes that actually sparkled. Her faded brown hair was pulled into a chignon, wisps escaping around her face, and a pair of antique earrings set with tiny sparkling stones – opals, Ella thought – swung from her ears, catching the light.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she was saying. ‘I am rather partial to a latte. But please don’t go to any trouble.’

  Ella watched as the woman dropped her bag to the floor and unbuttoned her coat. Her movements were small and nervous, as if she were used to doing things as quickly and quietly as possible, without taking up too much space.

  ‘I’m Ella, by the way.’ Ella held out her hand.

  The woman’s fingers were cool, her grasp limp in a way that usually made Ella recoil. But as their hands touched, she felt a surge of warmth infuse her palms and travel up her arms as far as her elbows. For a moment, she imagined that she heard the sighing of the wind and saw a flash of white branches against a blue sky.

  She dug her fingernails into her palms. Ridiculous. She was being ridiculous.

  ‘Bryony Darwin,’ the woman was saying, ‘and it’s very nice to meet you.’ She took a small square book from the shelf, its spine decorated in gilt-tooled lettering. Her fingers traced the letters as she read aloud. ‘Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams . . .’

  ‘Ah. You’ve found Miss Mary. She’s a particular favourite of my husband’s. He’s fascinated by her. Apparently, she lived somewhere up in the hills around here. A cure-wife, a cunning-woman, as they used to call them. In other words, a witch.’ Ella searched the woman’s face. ‘If you believe that sort of thing, of course. She was imprisoned in the Tower here in York, so Billy tells me. But this isn’t a dream dictionary. It’s more like a book of instructions, a collection of Miss Mary’s thoughts, a store of knowledge that she wanted to impart. Recipes, guidance on mending all kinds of things, from broken bones to marriages. Spells, I suppose you might call them. But part of the book is about dream prophecy, about using your dreams to tap into your intuition, to divine the future or heal the past. There are very few copies. Hence the awful price, I’m afraid.’

  The woman smiled again. ‘Intriguing,’ she said, opening the book carefully at the first page.

  Ella tapped the old coffee grounds from the filter into the sink and watched out of the corner of her eye as Bryony Darwin perched on the edge of the armchair, an expression of intense concentration on her face.

  Who was she, this decidedly odd person? Ella rubbed at a teaspoon. It was irritating. She didn’t like it, this pull she was feeling towards some random woman who’d quite literally blown in from nowhere at all, asking for books about dreams. Something about her brought back the texture of her own dream, the memory of Mamma’s hair stuck to her cheeks, the smell of rain and wet earth, the rattling window.

  She splashed milk into the chrome jug, held it under the steam. No, it was all a load of nonsense, a product of her over-sensitised imagination. What was it that her friend, Kate, had said in a stage whisper only a few days ago, leaning against the shop counter, gesturing just a bit too wildly with her coffee cup.

  ‘You get some real weirdos in bookshops, don’t you? They seem to attract, well, how can I put this, El? Misfits. Dropouts. Life’s eccentrics?’

  Ella had raised an eyebrow. She’d felt the sting of Kate’s words. She knew, after all, what it was like to feel like a misfit herself.

  ‘Readers, do you mean?’ she’d thrown back, trying to keep her tone as light as possible. ‘People who bother to read actual, real books? With difficult words in them?’

  Kate had laughed. ‘OK. Point taken,’ she’d said. ‘But you must know what I mean. How about What’s-Her-Name in our book group, for example? Takes it all so, well, seriously.’

  Ella had smiled. ‘To some of us, Kate, reading is a very serious matter.’

  Now, as she spooned frothy milk into a cup, Ella tried to let her mind go quiet, to relax it to that still, small point, to feel her way out of herself and towards the birdlike figure perched on the edge of the armchair. She didn’t let herself do this very often. It was a skill that, over the years, she’d found best used only in very small doses.

  But as she breathed deeply, staring into the bottom of the sink, she saw tendrils of softest green, the texture of moss, unfurling into flickering strands of white, patterning the air in the way that light filters through leaves.

  She heard a sound as this odd little woman turned the page, like the rubbing together of dry branches. Her head bent closer over the book and a strand of her mousy brown hair fell over her cheek. She barely seemed to notice as Ella set the coffee cup down on the little reading table beside her then crossed to the door and turned the sign to Closed.

  And now the shop was silent, except for the tick, tick of the grandmother clock and the sound of Bryony Darwin turning a page.

  Ella opened her laptop and stared at the screen, but the words wouldn’t come. They never did when there were customers. And this one, in particular, was very distracting. She tried not to sigh out loud. The cursor blinked at her, taunting.

  Half an hour ticked round before the rain began again, flung against the shop windows in cold, hard handfuls. Bryony Darwin leapt up then, her coffee untouched, checking her watch, hastily buttoning her coat.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I completely lost track of time. This is fascinating.’ She fished in her bag for a bulky purse and drew out a fistful of notes. ‘Thank you. Really. You’ve been so helpful.’

  ‘A pleasure.’ Ella smiled. ‘And I hope we’ll see you again some time.’

  Ella watched as Bryony crossed the courtyard, the collar of her coat turned up against the rain, her boots treading firmly over the cobblestones. She stood for a little while after that, staring out of the rain-streaked window. Quite apart from the fact that she’d just sold the last copy of Miss Mary, one of the rarest, hardest to get hold of books in the shop, she had the sense that something important had happened, something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Who was this Bryony Darwin? Why was she looking for a book about dreams? What kind of person wore muddy hiking boots with a blue tweed coat and opal earrings?

  She sank into the armchair where Bryony Darwin had been sitting just a moment ago and, as she ran her hands over the leather, she caught the ghost of that clean, green fragrance. But there was something else beneath it. Something that Ella couldn’t quite hold in her mind.

  ‘What do you feel, tesora?’ Mamma would say. ‘What do you know deep inside you?’

  Ella closed her eyes, let her thoughts move to the rhythm of her breathing. Yes, there it was. Right there.

  A blue-grey feeling, ragged around the edges, like the sky after a storm. And in it was such longing. And loneliness, perhaps. Something that pulled at your sleeves and wouldn’t let go. Yes, thought Ella, Bryony Darwin was lonely. Perhaps even a little desperate. She was looking for answers. Well, wasn’t everyone, in their own way?

  She sat and watched as the rain stopped and the shop windows filled with orange light from the street lamp on Grape Lane.

  She thought again of her dream, Mamma’s voice still circling in her head: ‘I flew, tesora. I flew a long way. I came to tell you to pay attention . . .’

  In the corners of the room, she felt the Signals stirring. Shivers of blue, tongues of silver. ‘Ella,’ they mocked. ‘Ell-la. Ell-LA.’

  ‘Oh, get lost,’ Ella said, out loud, jumping to her feet, snatching up the cup of cold coffee and sloshing it into the sink. ‘I’m too tired for your stupid games. And you’re not even real, anyway. Leave me alone.’

  4

  To interpret signs: Watch for portents in the everyday things, the movement of the wind through the trees, the patterns left by small creatures on the woodland floor, a tree shedding its leaves or coming into flower. A cunning-wife l
earns to interpret these signs and uses them to her advantage.

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  Bryony didn’t want it to happen. She was walking in the woods. The earth crumbled under her boots. She felt a new softness in the air and saw pieces of blue caught in the branches that were already beginning to lose their leaves. Bryony breathed in deeply, savouring it all – the scents of moss and damp soil, the sound of a bird somewhere above her head, singing its one small song over and over. But as she stepped into the clearing, there it was. She clutched at the collar of her coat.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please. No.’

  The creature only smiled and shook his wings at her. They were gigantic wings, flashing silver, green, gold, from up there where he perched in the hawthorn tree.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Bryony hissed. ‘Go on. Shoo. I don’t want anything else to do with you.’

  She stamped her foot in its tightly laced boot and clapped her hands.

  The creature put his head back and laughed. She heard the laughter echoing through the trees and bouncing off the water far below them.

  ‘You think you can shoo me away, Bryony, like a little dog? Come, now. Shouldn’t you know better?’

  His voice was gentle, musical, like the sound of the wind through the birch trees.

  Bryony turned her back. She rubbed at her face with her scratchy woollen gloves.

  When I look again, she said to herself, you’ll be gone. I’m imagining it all. It’s like what Dr Murray said. It’s all in my head. It’s not real.

  She felt the air tremble. A little eddy of leaves swirled around her and settled on the toe of her boot.

  ‘Bryony, Bryony,’ the creature’s voice sang. ‘You forget. Whatever you say to yourself, I can hear you. I can hear your thoughts, Bryony . . .’

  She whirled round, her fists clenched.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘There’s no such thing as what you pretend to be. You’re not real. I’m just making you up in my mind, that’s all.’

  The creature raised a bushy white eyebrow and gave a theatrical grimace. He thrust out his chest, which was like burnished silver, and rearranged his wings.

  ‘But Bryony,’ he said and his voice was patient, as if he were talking to a very small child. ‘Why ever would you think that just because I’m only inside your mind, I’m not real?’

  Bryony felt all the strength go out of her then. Her arms dropped to her sides and she fell to her knees on the damp red earth, pulling her coat around her. She screwed up her eyes and tried to concentrate on the ground in front of her, at the little patterns made by the twigs and leaves.

  ‘Bryony,’ the creature said again, or perhaps it was only the sound of the wind sighing through the lowest branches. ‘Listen, Bryony. It’s time.’

  The voice resonated somewhere in the back of her head and echoed through the woods.

  But when she looked up again, the hawthorn tree was empty except for a wood pigeon, puffing out his pale chest, testing his wings.

  She stood for a long time, straining after the last sounds, watching the wind moving across the surface of the lake and the sunlight turning the water black and then silver.

  ‘It’s time, Bryony,’ the voice whispered again. ‘It’s time.’

  5

  Threshold charm: On a Full Moon Friday, pull up a bay tree by its roots in one quick motion. Be sure to leave none of the plant in the ground. Bind the whole in strips of pure white linen and place it under your doormat for strong protection.

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  ‘But don’t you think they’re a bit too young for such frightening stories?’ Kate thumbed through her copy of Where The Wild Things Are and shuddered. ‘Perhaps I’m being a bit overprotective but, you know, personally I prefer this kind of thing.’ She picked up a picture book with a clean white cover and an image of a pink stuffed rabbit in the centre, framed with a heart-shaped border of intertwining leaves. ‘At least I know that this won’t give Ava nightmares. I mean, isn’t the world scary enough, anyway? I feel like I ought to be protecting her from frightening stories for as long as I can.’

  Ella looked around the circle of women, their children playing at their feet or dozing in their laps. Kate’s daughter, Ava, was determinedly dancing Grace’s current favourite doll – a Disney Rapunzel with ridiculously long hair – over the ridges in the floorboards, chattering to herself. Grace was watching her intently. Ella could see that it was taking all of her self-control not to reach out and snatch the doll from Ava’s hands.

  ‘Well, they all look perfectly happy to me,’ Florence said, setting her son, Alfie, down on his sturdy little legs, where he stood swaying his hips, as if to some imaginary music. ‘And anyway, there’s always the theory that it’s good for children to be a little scared. In fact, I read somewhere that they’re supposed to like it. It’s how they learn. You know, that they’re safe, what’s OK and what’s not, exploring the world, testing their boundaries. Alfie loves The Wild Things.’

  ‘Yes, and isn’t it also about anger?’ Sarah fiddled nervously with the top button of her cardigan. ‘I mean, I think I know what you’re saying, Kate, but . . . well, in the story, Max learns how to express his frustration in a healthy way. You know, he gets to be King and do the wild rumpus. Lily just loves that part.’

  ‘Really?’ Kate frowned and Sarah blushed, as if embarrassed that she’d said so much. She looked down at the little girl dozing in her arms, her thumb half in her mouth.

  Ella had started the Mother and Baby Book Group as a way of promoting the Children’s Corner of the shop, but her real motive, if she was honest, had been to meet other mums.

  There had been so many days over the three years since Grace’s arrival in the world when she’d felt like standing in the courtyard and screaming. Motherhood wasn’t coming easily to her. She found it fascinating and exhausting, wonderful and overwhelming. And on some days, when Grace cried or complained for hours on end and wouldn’t be soothed or distracted in any of the usual ways, she found it frustrating and boring. She’d have a rising sense of panic that she’d made a terrible mistake, that she’d ruined her life, that she’d never feel normal again. But then Grace would look at her with those big, blue-grey eyes and Ella would immediately feel guilty. What was wrong with her? Why wasn’t this sweet, curious little girl enough?

  It had begun with Grace’s birth. Not the home water birth she’d planned, in the blue rubber pool that Billy had practised inflating and filling in their tiny living room, but a tortuous three days and nights culminating in a labour theatre at York District Hospital. Forced to abandon the scented candles and carefully selected music that she’d prepared with so much happy anticipation, she’d lain for hours in a room with too-bright lights, hooked up to an oxytocin drip, only half covered by a sheet and mortified at the way that her body, so strong and buoyant throughout her pregnancy, had gradually been swallowed up by waves of pain. It couldn’t have been further from what she’d imagined. The relaxation tapes that she’d listened to so diligently, visualising her cervix opening like crimson petals, hadn’t prepared her for this.

  When Grace’s heartbeat had begun to flicker alarmingly on the monitor, she’d found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over a pillow, whilst an anaesthetist felt his way down her spine.

  And what she remembered most clearly about Grace’s arrival was not taking her baby into her arms and gazing into her eyes, as she’d imagined, but staring up at a white disc of lights above her head, whilst somewhere beyond the screen she could hear a baby’s furious cries.

  As the midwife, still wearing her mask, placed Grace next to her among the wires and tubes on the pristine bed and Grace wriggled herself forwards on her tiny forearms, searching noisily for a nipple, Ella had been deeply ashamed to discover that she felt nothing at all. A cold, blue numbness – the colour of the surgeon’s scrubs – appeared to have invaded her body. When Billy reached for her hand, she arranged her fac
e in what she guessed might be an appropriate smile for someone who had just become a mother and fished inside herself for some flicker of emotion.

  It will wear off, she’d thought. I’m in shock. It’s the drugs. It’s the fact that I can’t move anything from the waist down. But the numbness had lasted longer than that.

  In those first weeks at home, as Billy lifted baby Grace from her Moses basket and into Ella’s arms for every night feed, she’d look down into those blue-grey eyes and feel a gap opening inside her.

  And when Mamma arrived from California, armed with a suitcase of knitted toys, antique quilts and aromatherapy remedies, the ease with which baby Grace had snuggled into her grandmother’s arms had felt like a kind of betrayal. With each story that Mamma recounted of Ella’s own babyhood, the black gap in Ella’s belly where her happiness should have been had opened a little wider.

  She would never be that competent. She would never be able to interpret her baby’s tiny cries or hold her to her chest and know what it was that she wanted. It was as if Grace had a mysterious language all of her own that Ella couldn’t decode.

  ‘You’ll work it out,’ Mamma had said, guessing at a little of Ella’s confusion, her cool hand smoothing Ella’s forehead. ‘It’s normal to feel as if you don’t know what to do. It will take time, tesora, for you to get to know one another. And you’re exhausted. You’ve just had major surgery.’

  But this only made Ella feel even more inadequate. How had Mamma learned to be a mother when she’d never known her real mother herself? And from where had she acquired such unshakable confidence, such certainty? Whenever Ella thought about the way that Fabia had managed all on her own, a young widow in a strange country, without even Maadar-Bozorg for support, she felt her own sense of failure more acutely.